Howdy all!

If you were around at the launch of Season 9, I hope you were suitably impressed with the rebuild of Earth Spacedock. However, if you are like many people, after the “ooohs” and “ahhhs” wore off one of your first thoughts was probably, “Hey! Where’s the Club?!” 

We spent a good month on preproduction, planning and whiteboxing for the new ESD, and Club 47 was always included in the planning. However, when it actually came down to building everything, we were a little overambitious and a little tight on time and reached a point where we had to make a decision. Try to do everything originally planned? Or delay something, and devote that time to polishing the rest? We decided to delay the completion of Club 47 in favor of polishing the rest of the map, with the expectation that we’d get back to the Club at some point in the future.

Well, good news! The future is here! 

The process has pretty much been the same as we showed in the previous Dev Blog on building ESD. We started off with a list of things we were trying to address. 

1. First and foremost was that we wanted Club 47 to feel more like a real Club.  It needed to be its own space, separate from the Concourse and the rest of ESD.  This was an issue with the old Club 47 and its location directly behind the glass on the old ring. 
2. We wanted the new Club to consist of more varied and distinct spaces.  There should be a dance floor still, but there should also be more relaxing areas, away from the Disco. 
3. We also wanted to be able to see both Earth and the Shipyard from the Club. 
4. And lastly, we wanted the dance floor to be more interesting than just a couple of scrolling textures.
    

I started off whiteboxing the room. This is just a very rough layout of the space, without textures. From there, I had some assistance from our new concept artist, Hector Ortiz. Hector took the rough whitebox and did some paint overs. He would take screenshots of the space I’d modeled, and quite literally paint over them to help refine the layout, determine colors and materials, and otherwise contribute ideas. It can be difficult for us to comprehend how big a space is when there is nothing in it. So it took a little back and forth to nail down the scale of the whitebox room, and how big everything really was.

Once Hector finished his concepts, I started really modeling and texturing the space. Concept art is just that, conceptual. So, while they can be great guides and references, some concessions had to be made, and things changed a bit as the space was built out.

In the end, the new Club 47 is split into three main areas. The Disco remains, with a vibrant dance floor of changing colors and patterns, and a view overlooking the interior Shipyard of ESD. The Cantina is in the center, with the doorway leading back to the Concourse, and a bar serving various synthehol drinks and food from the replicators. The Lounge is the mellow side, with booths for up to eight people and an observation area looking out toward Earth and passing ships. 

I can’t wait for the new Club 47 to finally open its doors and turn on the music.

Party on, Dudes.

Nick ‘TacoFangs’ Duguid
Senior Environment Artist
Star Trek Online

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