The Art of... Source of Madness
The twin horrors of machine learning and procedural generation have been applied to monstrous effect for Carry Castle’s Loftcraftian rouguelite, Source of Madness. CEO and technical artist Per Formander takes us to the edge of reason
Per Formander, CEO and technical artist
HOW DID THE IDEA FOR THE GAME’S VISUAL DESIGN COME ABOUT? It was quite a long journey. Originally I was looking for a game asset pipeline that would suit our two-man team well. At that time, I made the decision of turning my sketchbook doodles into game assets. However, my drawings were in black and white and they didn’t really stand out as much as we would have liked. After a year in development, I found out about a new style transfer AI called Deep AI, that would use neural networks to translate hand-drawn images into assets (think what apps like Prisma do now with your photos). I tried it out and figured I could input all of my old ink sketches to generate beautiful art assets. This worked very well!
WHAT WERE YOUR INFLUENCES AND HOW IMPORTANT WAS IT THAT SOURCE OF MADNESS WAS DISTINGUISHABLE FROM THE MEDIA THAT INFORMED IT? Our main influences art-wise are probably Diablo 2, the Polish painter Zdzisław Beksinski, and Rain World. While I wanted our game to stand out, I also wanted to resurrect my childhood memories of Diablo 2, with its grimy, fantastical catacombs. With the perspective we picked, I think we walked the balance fairly naturally.
74 | MCV/DEVELOP June 2022
SOURCE OF MADNESS IS A HUGE DEPARTURE FROM YOUR PREVIOUS TITLES. WAS THAT A RISK? Honestly, no. Everything Must Fall’s style was made with the mindset of “what would look good and run well on a VR headset?” But it was also a project that forced us to do a lot of introspection and realise what kind of games we wanted to make. Carry Castle has always had a goal of sustaining a healthy indie lifestyle that would leave us creatively fulfilled, rather than focus solely on making money.
WHO WERE THE ARTISTS ON THE GAME AND WHAT DID THEY BRING TO THE PROJECT? Originally it was only me, but after two years we brought in Johannes Gustafsson. He was given the responsibility of using all the tools Robin Lindh (co-founder and programmer) and I made to churn out a lot of the environmental concept art assets that we’d use to fill out the world. Source of Madness is my brainchild, so I guess a lot of it is from my desire to create worlds for people to explore. I made concept art and assets while on vacation in Japan and Italy, so the sketchbook asset pipeline is still well and alive in some form.
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