“At the beginning with Lume, we’d actually had grand plans for a huge game,” adds Katherine, “but we couldn’t risk everything while our ideas were untested. That’s why Lume was based around just one house. Luke originally had sketches for a big city set into a cliff face, with cable cars and houses suspended in mid air. “That was our original Lumino City,” he says, “but I’m so relieved we didn’t launch straight into trying to make that. I’m pleased we let the idea breathe. With Lume under our belt, we were more confident, more skilled and had the finances to spend some time developing Lumino City and making it something truly special.”

With the ultimate goal and vision in mind, start from simple ideas and verify untested concepts one by one.

Soon after, while working on his sketches in a cafe on Leather Lane, some artwork on the walls caught Luke’s eye. He couldn’t quite believe what he saw. The artwork was pretty much identical to the sketch in front of him he’d drawn of the Lumino City cliff face.

“能近取譬，可谓仁之方也已。”灵感来自于生活中的偶遇。（详见于《论语·雍也篇第六 6.30》 子贡曰：「如有博施于民，而能济众，何如？可谓仁乎？」子曰：「何事于仁，必也圣乎！尧舜其犹病诸！夫仁者，己欲立而立人，己欲达而达人。能近取譬，可谓仁之方也已。」）

“We actually built the whole game as a wireframe first. It was pretty essential, both to help the team build models, but also to get our heads around the scale of the game. Plus, we could start our game testing early with these rough versions.”

Do not be perfect at the beginning. Too early optimisation is the source of all evils.

It’s December, everyone is in a big photographic studio at 7am, and it’s so cold.

No pains, no gains. There is no easy success in the world and all history.

“I still hadn’t finished some of the models,” says Luke, “I spent every waking hour in that studio fixing things up. At about 4am one morning I realised it was time to go home when I was standing on a ladder using a scalpel, getting more and more unsteady whilst balanced over all these delicate models. One slip would have been a disaster for the game, and probably for me. I got down and went home to bed”

Staying up till 4am in the morning. Great work needs blood, toil, tears and sweat.

“Looking for details like that reflection in the window was a key part of making it work,” says Luke. “We’d be diving in and altering things throughout the filming, turning lights and motors on and off, opening and closing doors. If we’d forgotten anything we couldn’t go back after we’d filmed it to re-shoot it. Any mistakes we made would have to be laboriously fixed in post production, and we really didn’t want that.”

Additional graphical touches were provided by Dan using code. He was able to mask a mirrored version of the table inside the image of the ball bearing, creating a moving reflection on the underside, just as you’d expect to see in real life. Sounds recorded from a real pinball table were sourced and used to add weight to the ball,

Details are the linchpin of the final success.

更多阅读：《Lumino City通关启示》