Behind the Scenes

All but a few images in this game were created by me, specifically for this game. I chose to keep the story very light (practically nonexistent) and focus on creating interesting and unusual visuals. To achieve this, I chose to use Bryce, a program I've been using for two years to create 3D rendered artworks, such as Native Species.

A 3D rendered image made in Bryce 5.5. blobs of water rise from a flat grassy plane dotted with boulders. blobs of dark purple liquid and a glowing, multi-coloured orb float above. the scene is covered in a dense, dark fog.
Native Species, 2024

Most areas are a 3D rendered image created in Bryce 5.5. For some scenes, the creation process was very quick. For others, I first had to import models made by other people, or models I made myself in SketchUp Make 2017, a program I was first introduced to in middle school. The creators of any models not made myself can be found on the credits page, alongside a number of other assets. All the models were downloaded from Sketchfab.

A 3D rendered image of a cave made in Bryce 5.5. there is a staircase leading into the cave ceiling on the left. there is a house on the right.
Under The Ice, made in Bryce 5.5

Once I was happy with how the scene looked, I rendered it at double the final resolution, since Bryce renders can have visible artifacts at lower resolutions. Some scenes rendered in just a few minutes; the longest render time was almost nine and a half hours.

Once the render was done, I took screenshots of my virtual petz in Petz 4 and pasted them into the rendered image in an image editing program.

A screenshot from the game Petz 4. Zane is playing with a yellow tennis ball. nearby, there is a music box and a hand vacuum.
These are a few of the props I used for taking pictures.

There are a few areas that are not 3D renders. These areas are instead screenshots of my desktop, the desktop of my Windows 98 virtual machine, or of the video game Half Life 1. These scenes were much easier.