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Crossbeam Studios explains Orb screenshots

by rawmeatcowboy
01 June 2006
GN 1.0 / 2.0

Crossbeam Studios has put together a little write-up on the first batch of Orb screenshots that popped up. The backlash has been kind of upsetting for the team, understandably so. They felt the need to explain just what the situation was behind the screens, and I urge everyone to read the following piece.

“Okay guys, here’s the full story. As many of you know, our internal art server went down… not a huge deal, as all the artists have backups of their work. Unfortunately this is a holiday weekend, and many staff went on trips to go back home to families. Essentially these screens had to be completely made in about 24 hours (the time approx. from server crash to screens being released) because all of the art was gone, save for like Simique or Maron, which everyone has copies of on staff. But we promised you guys screens, and come hell or high water, we were going to get screens to you, even if 4 department heads had to be up a full 24 hour period (as we were), to get them to you, crappy as they are.

Now, the trees, look like crap and don’t fit, because they aren’t ours. They are from a content pack sold on garage games we happened to have, and didn’t have time to get our own trees back, same goes for the grass.

Now, there was some art direction here in the planning. It’s night time because we were going to have the torches along paths in the temple area, with a particle effect and everything. Didn’t pan out, as the torches we’re sent to me about 2 hours before the screens went up, and even then, they had to be redone slightly because the exporter kept crapping out and giving us corrupted torches.

I could include a few more examples, but really eveything about this screens, well, sucks, because of very poor timing. Many of the artists are now back home, and have ben sending us the files that were lost in the server crash (we didn’t lose the server or the data, its just still down). Next week we will have this whole place done visually, and believe me, it will look much better.”