Echoes of a Sunless City - Work in Progress

[Sexbad]

Looks beautifully ominous. I'd like to help in any way I can (writing, acting, extra hand for level design). Break a leg!

[einfrnirdyr]

Level design I can do. No problems. Writing I can do, too. Voice acting might be handy, though.

My extreme weakness is scripting. Really. It's pretty bad.

If I take one peek at a line of code I start dribbling and drooling. Second look at a line of code results in portions of my brain liquifying and oozing out of my skull. Any third exposure to code reduces my physical form to little more than an amorphous mass of soggy protein lying on the floor, quivering and pleading for someone to come along and gather me up with a mop and bucket.

Anyway, thanks for your offers. I always like to keep my options open.

[einfrnirdyr]

Awright. Some signs of life at last...

Images of Work in progress for map no.1. Not the original setting as planned for the start of this campaign. Nonetheless, this is as good a place as anywhere else to start; and adaptability to changing necessity is always a big plus. Yeah, a reasonably easy to relate to environment right before the Player is plunged into unfamiliar territory always does wonders.


Wow. It's a little path from the local village. Too bad this is going to be as close as you get to it...


...so down the garden path you go. Pretty soon you won't be in Kansas any more, Dear Dorothy.

As you can see, I need to understand how to get SkyBoxes working properly. I did find a SkyBox thread on these forums, but I didn't quite get the gist of how they work. A tutorial would be sweet.

As usual, any help would be greatly appreciated...

Thank you.

[Frontcannon]

This looks absolutely great!

[DamnNoHtml]

Looks like some great outdoor terrain. I know for a fact making outdoor levels in the editor is pretty limited.

For a skybox, you need a .dds file (6 contained images) inside your custom stories folder. But, you can achieve an almost better effect by setting the level fog to a certain amount with a slight blue-white tint. It also adds specular bloom to the trees and looks pretty good.

[Neurological]

Thats some nice work there. I wonder if the engine is capable of vertex painting on the models, it would help to make terrain texture more various.

[Evil Ash]

Wow! Really loving what I'm seeing. The outdoor shots look great. The city itself look well designed and though out. I love the wooden grate/floor in the third shot. Good level design.

Can't wait to see more.

[einfrnirdyr]

Sorry, how are the .dds textures used..? I am not getting the desired result.

I may use fog. It will depend on how the rest of the map goes. Light blue fog would be great for this outdoor path, sure; but a substantial portion of the map will be underground, too, and I don't think that lightly coloured fog will work in those locations.

Still, it's worth experimenting with once those other areas are built. I may be able to get away with setting the fog min Z draw distance at a greater range than the largest underground location so that the fog doesn't affect those parts of the map. I will keep that in mind while building those areas. Keep 'em tight and still allow the fog to do its thing outdoors. Yeah, I should keep that in mind when building the subterranean portion of the map.

Thanks, either way, I will try it out.

[Armored Cow]

Just don't place the fog area underground.

Also that last picture showing the door to the city is so awesome.

[einfrnirdyr]

Work is progressing nicely. Still laying geometry and making major leaps forward. Well... not too many leaps forward - you just don't know if there is a gaping hole in the floor that you may disappear into if you're not careful.

Here's an image to demonstrate that philosophy.


There are some places you just don't go to without having the lights on... and then of course, there are other places best avoided entirely.

Enjoy.