If you attended PAX East 2014 this year, you might have seen LEGO Artist extraordinaire, Mariann Asanuma, constructing a WildStar Rocket House made entirely from Lego pieces. As promised, Carbine Studios donated the entire 50,000 piece Rocket House, along with a $10,000 check, to Child's Play, a game industry charity dedicated to improving the lives of children with toys and games.
If you're a Lego fan, you're definitely going to want to check out NetDevil's LEGO Universe, an upcoming MMO that will contain a seemingly infinite amount of those digital bricks. But how does the team go about designing this world when everything must be crafted from such small pieces?
Well, the art team has been posting a series of articles regarding this very topic. In the third installment, which is the most recent, world artist Nathan Storm shows how he uses concept art to create a physical model of an item before it's copied using digital bricks.
Nathan says one reason his team normally builds physical LEGO models before going digital is that, “Digital creations can be much more flexible than physical ones. For instance, we could design digital models that wouldn’t physically hold together. Building with physical LEGO bricks helps us keep that connectivity in LEGO Universe!”
You can also read part 1 and part 2 in the series if you missed them.
Do you ever wonder where game developers get their inspiration? Well, in the case of LEGO Universe, children's creations can lend a hand in the development process.
Kids got the chance at a recent LEGO Universe event to solve puzzles using LEGO bricks that players may face in the online world.
The fun challenges were specially crafted to reflect obstacles faced by the LEGO Universe development team: How would your minifigure cross a LEGO Universe canyon while protecting a treasure? What would you build to entertain a powerful but sleepy ninja? The kids’ teams overcame these challenges by creating solutions like hovercrafts with camouflaged compartments, sliding pods, a lava-flow obstacle course and an amazing maze game!
More information on their creations can be found here. Lego Universe is set to launch in 2009.
