Probably one of the most used and useful tools in the game is the Multitool. This little guy makes it possible for you to turn those lovely trees, eggs, and metal scrap into usable resources for building and maintaining your ships, and crafting cool items such as the glider.

We want the multitool to feel distinct and somewhat important due to its multi-purpose functionality. Our initial design had three functions: salvage, repair and shipbuilding. Dan, our fantastic concept artist, drew some ideas based loosely on power tools. The talented Jack then created a model based on those concepts.

Although the finished multi tool had a distinct look, it didn’t quite feel right when held in the character’s hand; to me, it felt too heavy. It could also be improved by moving parts or the ability to change shape to indicate being in a different mode. Luke had also come up with another function – he wanted players to be able to scan stuff which would reveal information and lore. Adding another function to the multi tool felt a bit convoluted. So we decided to split it into two tools.

One would salvage and repair (the multitool), the other would scan and ship-build (the tentatively named scanner).

We created some more concepts for the multitool using the idea of moving parts and only two modes. But I still wasn’t feeling the designs so I thought I’d try out a few ideas in 3D. I wanted something which fit around the characters hand so she/he could run with it, without it feeling unbalanced. As players were likely to use this tool a lot, it would probably spend a lot of time in the character’s hand. Luke also liked the idea of spikes or prongs coming out of the front of the tool. I made a few iterations till we settled on a design which we felt worked.

I think the tool feels distinct and still has a feel of being scavenged, jury-rigged, or handmade.

SCANNER

One of the ideas Luke had for the scanner tool is that the scanning part would shoot out a spike which would attach to an object — a little like a taser — and then the information would be printed out. How the tool looked in ship building mode was left up to me.

As with the multi tool, I played around with a range of ideas till I felt I had something which worked.

Hopefully you can see as I progressed with the designs that they became less and less gun-like, which I think works better for this tool.

Naturally, both these tools need cool effects to give appropriate feedback to the player. Perhaps we’ll cover that in another post!

James

Artist

@broadleyboy on Twitter