GAMING
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At the end of our first Subnautica 2 session, I mentioned that we had an idea for the room blocks that we'd save for next time. I was being deliberately vague, but we already knew exactly what we wanted to try.
We wanted to build SEED.
Not a base called SEED. Not a little sign somewhere near Jenny. We wanted to use the room blocks to build an enormous SEED logo and suspend it in the ocean beside our base.
There is a reason for that.
SEED by Klang Games is the game that inspired us to create AnvilGaming in the first place. We're big fans of it, we've spent a ridiculous amount of time playing it and it was the reason we wanted to start creating guides and useful content for other players. So building the SEED logo inside another game felt like a rather appropriate thing to do.
Subnautica 2 was a pretty good place to do it too. There is, after all, an awful lot of empty ocean.
We started with the enormous cliff next to Jenny. We'd already built our main base hanging off the edge, so it seemed like the perfect location for the logo.
The first version of the SEED logo was connected to the cliff. We built a room attached to the edge using supports, then started constructing the four letters using the room blocks.
To connect everything together, we used corridor blocks across the tops of the letters. It was already starting to look like the thing we'd imagined, although there was one small problem.
The game really likes supports.
As we were building the letters, we noticed that Subnautica 2 would sometimes add support beams between the gaps in the structure. The letter E was particularly good at attracting them, with beams appearing between the horizontal sections where we wanted the gaps to remain completely open.
At first we thought we'd simply have to live with them.
Then we started adjusting the size of the horizontal sections of the E.
And the support beams disappeared.
That little discovery gave us another idea.
If changing the size of the E could remove the supports, what would happen if we removed the corridor connecting the E to the D?
We tried it.
The D stayed exactly where it was.
That was rather exciting.
So we started removing everything else. The remaining corridors went. The supports went. Finally, we removed the original room that had been attached to the cliff.
And suddenly we had four massive letters spelling SEED, completely free of supports and just floating there in the ocean.
Four enormous letters. No structure holding them up. No cliff connection. No sensible explanation for why they were staying where they were.
It looked amazing.
Putting the logo beside Jenny made it even better. Our base is already hanging over the edge of the massive cliff, and the SEED logo now sits out in the open ocean just beyond it.
It isn't a particularly useful structure, obviously. It doesn't provide storage, crafting facilities or somewhere to hide when something enormous decides it wants to eat us.
It is a giant SEED logo floating in the ocean.
That's the point.
And because we were already making the area look rather impressive, we decided Jenny deserved a little upgrade as well.
We expanded Jenny a little and added a viewing platform overlooking the SEED logo.
It was partly practical and partly because, after putting all that effort into building the logo, I wanted somewhere to stand and look at it.
The viewing platform also gave us a much better position for screenshots and made the relationship between Jenny and the logo feel more deliberate. The base hangs from the cliff and the logo floats beyond it, with nothing but the ocean separating the two.
It ended up looking considerably more impressive than our original plan of "let's see if we can spell SEED with rooms."
There was, however, another problem we needed to solve before we could properly capture it.
The moonpool was too visible in its existing position.
When we started lining up the screenshots, we realised it was getting in the way of some of the angles we wanted. So we moved it to a better position and decided to make it large enough for two tadpole docking platforms.
That gave us somewhere to keep both tadpoles ready to go, which was useful for more than just making this particular video. We wanted the vehicles available for our future sessions too, so this was really the beginning of getting our exploration setup properly organised.
With the moonpool sorted, we built the two tadpoles and prepared to get the footage we had been planning.
This was the bit where the whole thing finally came together.
Mr.Pendragon took the filming role and got his tadpole into position while I planned to come in from behind the logo. The idea was for him to pan around the SEED logo while I appeared through one of the gaps in the E.
It was supposed to look quite cinematic.
Getting the shot ready wasn't entirely smooth. Before the footage you see, Mr.Pendragon managed to smash into one of the coral domes. Thankfully, that particular part of the filming didn't make the final clip.
Once we were both in position, though, we were ready.
I came around the back of the logo and headed for the gap in the E.
And then I crashed into the SEED logo.
Not spectacularly. Not even particularly dramatically. Just enough to make it very clear that I had failed to navigate through a gap I had personally helped build.
Unfortunately, you can't quite see the actual collision in the final clip because the radar indicator on my tadpole was still active. Mr.Pendragon had forgotten to turn it off, so there is a rather helpful little indicator giving away my position instead of allowing me to make the surprise entrance we'd planned.
Still, the fly-by worked, the logo looked fantastic and we got the footage we wanted.
You can check out the short clip below:
For us, this was always about more than simply building something that looked cool.
SEED is the reason AnvilGaming exists. Our enthusiasm for Klang Games' game and our time spent playing it was what originally led us to start creating guides and content around games we enjoy. So having the opportunity to build its logo inside Subnautica 2 felt like a fun little tribute.
And Subnautica 2's building system happened to give us exactly the tools we needed.
The best part was that we didn't have to cheat it into existence or build some enormous conventional structure and pretend it looked like a logo. The room blocks genuinely let us construct the letters, and discovering that we could remove the supports made the final version even better.
Once those supports were gone, it stopped looking like a strange collection of rooms and became exactly what we'd wanted from the beginning.
A giant SEED logo floating in an alien ocean.
Although the logo was obviously the main event, we managed to get quite a lot done around Jenny during this session.
We made the base bigger, added the viewing platform, moved and expanded the moonpool, built two tadpole docking platforms and constructed the tadpoles themselves. That means we're now properly set up to use them during future sessions rather than having to stop and build everything when we decide we want to explore further afield.
And we now have one of the most recognisable logos from the game that inspired AnvilGaming sitting outside our front door.
I'd call that a successful session.
Session 02 started with an idea we had already decided on before we finished Session 01, and somehow the finished result ended up looking even better than we'd hoped.
The SEED logo is enormous, completely unsupported and suspended beside Jenny in the middle of the ocean. It is probably not what the Subnautica 2 developers had in mind when they created the room blocks, but that's one of the things I love about building in these games.
You start with a collection of building pieces and a stupid idea.
Sometimes the stupid idea actually works.
This one definitely did.
And after all that work, I think the SEED logo deserves to stay exactly where it.
At least until I crash into it again.
Session 03 starts with Mr.Pendragon inside a giant clam and ends with a death by starvation. In between, we reach the Tadpole Pens, go down into the Graveyard Caves, fix Jenny's power, find a face in a rock and crash into our SEED logo for a second time.
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In our first AnvilPlays session of Subnautica 2, we race through the early objectives, build our cliff edge base before reaching Camp One. There are resources to gather, alien creatures to investigate, a surprisingly effective face-chomping and several completely avoidable deaths caused by forgetting that oxygen is rather important underwater.
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