We told you about it last week, some students created a map called «Darkin Temple», which is the world of League of Legends and adding in some ingredients and ideas from themselves. In order to know more about these students, we have got an interview with them.
Interview of the SRU team (Super Ramen Unicorn)
[M] Zedd : Hello, first of all thank you for taking time to answer some of our questions !
Can You present yourself and your group for the viewers ? Who are you guys ? How did you met ?
[Team] : Hello, my name is Duy Nguyen. I am the team leader of SRU (Super Ramen Unicorn). SRU is comprised of a group of students mostly based in San Francisco, CA. The team was small and started off with only a few close friends. In the last few months, we saw great potential in our map and recruited more members to share the workload and to bring our map to life. In total, we have around 16 students that participated on this project.
[M] Zedd : We discovered the map « Darkin Temple » that you created by your people! It’s amazing and pretty complex! How does this project begin? What made you guys want to create it ?
[Team] : We love playing League of Legends, especially ARAM in between study breaks. So we thought that it would be an awesome idea if we can make a game mode specifically for League of Legends since they didn't have that many.
[M] Zedd : Since When do you work on the map ? How many times did it take to arrive to this amazing result ?
[Team] : I've made some sketches for the map, but I did not know the workflow and the process of making the map. Last year, I joined the Riot Games environment team as an intern, and had the basic idea of how to build assets for League of Legends. When I came back after the summer internship, I talked to my friends about making a League style map and everyone was excited about the idea. The project started around September 2014.
[M] Zedd : Why did you choose to go for Darkin’s world? Did you all agree with the background of the map ?
[Team] : I had the idea 2 years ago when Aatrox was first released and read his lore. I thought that the Darkin Civilization was unique and very cool, and began my sketches there.
[M] Zedd : Which are your sources of inspiration ? Do you all are big fans of League of Legends Lore ?
[Team] : We all love League of Legends lore, and I thought that it would be awesome if the Darkin civilization was the origin of all Rune Tera. I talked to the team and we tried to relate our favorite champions to Darkin culture. For example, the map features many symbolic elements such as: the Sun (Leona), Moon (Diana), Blood Wells (Vladimir), Knights (Aatrox), Judicator (Kayle), Enforcer (Pantheon)… The list will be much longer when we finish the rest of the map.
[M] Zedd : How is the distribution of the tasks within Your Team ? Who does what ?
[Team] : We are influenced by the Riot way of doing things. I took what I learned over the summer internship and applied it to my group. We let everyone critic each other’s work during our weekly meetings. I believe that having people be vocal can help generate more ideas and help the artwork reach a higher quality. Normally, we have weekly tasks assigned to each member of the group. Everyone is on a very busy schedule with work and school, so we keep track of their progress in a Facebook group.
[M] Zedd : What was the hardest part to create ? Did something blocked you during the process of creation ?
[Team] : We met a lot of obstacles working on the project. Many of us are students, so we have very little experience in working with teams to deliver a finished project like this. When the New Summoner's Rift came out last year, we also had the challenge to keep up with the quality that Riot showed. As a group, we overcame that challenge and produced something we are all proud of.
[M] Zedd : Your goal is to finish the map for the end of the year right ? What will be the next step ?
[Team] : We plan to finish the project by end of this year. I hope that after the project, the members will have the knowledge to produce more artwork and find jobs in the games industry. I hope that someday we could come back as a team again and make games from what we learned.
[M] Zedd : Will your map be playable ? As a real demo ? How are you planning on doing that ?
[Team] : We are not programmers, so the final product will be a video fly through in a game engine. The video will showcase all the art assets, environments, characters, and animations. As of right now, we reached a milestone in our project. Our group has worked hard and will now take a little break from the project. Then, we will come back to finish and polish our map before the end of the year.
[M] Zedd : Did you contact Riot with your project ? Or did Riot contact You maybe ?
[Team] : I worked at Riot last summer as an intern. Two months ago at the Game Developer's Conference, I talked to the Riot art director and other artists to seek feedback on our project. They gave us really good critiques and feedback, and from there we leveled up the art work and had a better direction to take our map.
[M] Zedd : Are you planning to continue doing some other fan-made map or concept around the League of Legends’s world ?
[Team] : We all love League of Legends, so there will be more fan art coming for sure. The character artists on our team are really talented, and they have a lot of skin ideas in mind. So I hope we will have more to show in the future.
[M] Zedd : Thank you for your time ! A last word for the French community ? And the rest of the players ?
[Team] : Hi everyone. Thank you for taking some time to look at our project. We could make our favorite game better by giving Riot our feedback. We can all try to make our own game mode and show them potential new features that can be added into League. I hope we could see more fan-made content in the future, and last but not least, let’s play more League of Legends!!! :)
