Flooded Coastal City Game Environment Reference Board

Environment art reference for a flooded northern port city in a game: architecture, waterline rules, weathering by height, overcast light and scale.

Updated

This board was built for an art team blocking out a vertical slice set in a flooded northern port, and it is laid out the way the team reads it: left to right, from the plan to the finished light. The first column holds the paperwork. A one-page plan from the art director sets the rules everyone works to, a kit table lists every modular piece with its grid, owner and status, a checklist tracks what has to be true before the greybox review, and the review sheet itself is filed alongside so nobody has to hunt for the running order. The architecture column fixes the building language before anyone models: brick terraces along the water, soot-dark warehouses, a cast-iron pier and a ruined church nave, with a short note on which materials belong and which never appear. Keeping the list of exclusions as visible as the list of inclusions saves a lot of rework later in production. Water gets its own column and a contact sheet of six photographs because it is the hardest thing for a team to agree on. The note beside it gives hard numbers for high and low water, the colour and clarity of street water, and where debris gathers, and the palette turns those decisions into hex values the shader artists can sample. A film reference is saved with a line about exactly what to take from it, rather than left as a vague mood. Weathering is organised by height rather than by material, so artists paint wear in bands that match the tide. A B-list cluster keeps the good reference that did not make the cut, ready for prop and decal work once the kit is locked. The last column settles one sky and one sense of scale, with a second palette, a mist clip for timing the fog VFX and a field recording of lapping water to play in reviews. If you are making your own game environment reference board, the lesson is to pin numbers next to pictures: a photo shows the mood, but the waterline height is what keeps a dozen artists building the same city. Photos by Diana ✨, KoolShooters, Francesco Ungaro, Tomas Anunziata, Tim Mossholder, Nikita Belokhonov, Maria Ovchinnikova, Chad Madden, Saiful Zaree Johar, Th2city Santana, Zekai Zhu, Jackson Jacob, Sersh Marsh, Jean-Paul Wettstein, David Kouakou, Anastasia Golts and Justyna Serafin on Pexels. Sound: "Water over rocks as tide recedes" by earthcalling (Public domain) on Wikimedia Commons.

Kit — Old Quay block

  • Piece
  • Grid / size
  • Owner
  • Status
  • Terrace façade, 3 bay
  • 4 m grid, 3 storeys
  • Kofi
  • Greybox done
  • Warehouse wall + hoist door
  • 4 m grid
  • Kofi
  • Blocking
  • Quay wall + steps
  • 2 m modules
  • Ada
  • Greybox done
  • Pier legs + deck
  • 6 m spans
  • Jonah
  • Not started
  • Railings, 3 rust states
  • 2 m runs
  • Jonah
  • Modelling
  • Waterline trim sheet
  • 2048, 2.4 m band
  • Tomás
  • In test
  • St Anne's nave shell
  • Bespoke
  • Kofi + Priya
  • Concept
Detailed close-up of textured red brick wall surface, ideal for backgrounds.
Weathered stone steps covered in moss and lichen leading up a historic wall.
A lone streetlamp is submerged in flood waters, highlighting the impact of urban flooding.
Harrow Row street
Harrow Row street
Bonded warehouses
Bonded warehouses

A × visual grid — Water + waterline (4 images) — view it on the board above.

Barnacle band
Barnacle band

Weathering by height

Paint wear in bands by height, not noise.
- 0–1.1 m: always under; silt, weed, near black
- 1.1–2.4 m: tidal band; barnacles, green algae, hard tide mark at the top
- 2.4–3.5 m: salt bloom, white crust, spalled brick
- Above: soot runs under sills, moss on ledges, rust streaks from every iron fixing
Iron is orange only in the splash zone, dark brown above. Hashima for the concrete: rebar out, faces spalled, no paint left.

Overcast November

  • Fog at 40 m — #b8bab2
  • Wet slate — #3e4346
  • Soot brick — #5b4036
  • Wet sandstone — #8a7a61
  • Sun break — #d8c291
From the tower
From the tower

Good reference that didn't make the main board. Pull from here for props and decals once the kit locks on 27 Nov.

Railing rust
Railing rust

Before greybox review — 13 Nov

[x] Kit pieces snapped to the 4 m grid
[x] Waterline at 2.4 m on every piece
[x] Boat route blocked end to end
[x] Scale figure and boat in every bay
[ ] Fog ceiling height set in all three zones
[ ] Tide mark decal test on the quay wall
[ ] Rooftop crossings checked for jump distance

One sky, one scale

One sky for the slice: late November, mid-morning, full overcast. Fog ceiling at 40 m so St Anne's tower goes into it. Ambient does the work; no hard shadows. The sun break is one scripted moment at the pier, about 8 seconds, low from the south-west. Always give the eye a boat, a door or a railing to measure by. Eye height in the boat is 1.1 m above the water, so the terraces tower; keep that.

Building language

- Victorian brick terraces, three storeys, sash windows, sandstone sills and lintels
- Bonded warehouses: soot-black brick, cast-iron columns, hoist doors on every floor
- 1960s concrete blocks inland only, never on the quay
- St Anne's is the tallest thing; keep its tower in sight from every street
- Two in three ground floors are bricked up or boarded. People live from the first floor up; washing lines, planters and ladders start there

St Anne's nave
St Anne's nave
Plaster rot
Plaster rot

Floodwater

  • Street water — #4d594a
  • Silt — #6a5d45
  • Algae band — #5e6a3a
  • Surge foam — #c8cac1
  • Deep channel — #2b3531
Hashima Island

Includes a nested board (open it from the canvas above)

Boat for scale
Boat for scale

Waterline rules

Mean high water is 2.4 m above the old pavement, low water 1.1 m. Street water is still, brown-green, never blue and never clear past 20 cm. Surge only on the sea side of the quay wall. Debris collects in corners and on the windward side of doors, not spread evenly. From Stalker, take the shallow water over tiles and rubbish: the floor reads through it, and that is what makes it feel abandoned.

Old Quay slice — the plan

The city

Calder Reach is a northern port forty years after the sea came up and stayed. Nobody rebuilt. People moved up a floor and carried on. Ground floors are drowned at high water; life starts on the first floor, and boats tie up at the first-floor windows.

The slice

Old Quay block: Harrow Row (hero street), the bonded warehouses, St Anne's and the pier. About 220 m end to end. The player crosses it by boat and over the roofs.

Rules for everyone

One sky: late November, overcast, fog ceiling a

Sun break, rare
Sun break, rare
Stalker (1979 film)

▶ Street current at the turn (plays on the board above)

♪ Water lapping — under the pier — 0:30 · 0 BPM · M4A (plays on the board above)