Monday, February 1, 2010

Hey Man, Got Any Grass?

One area that I've never felt that confident about in area design is setting down grass on a rural area. I'm back to that point in the Shivering Pines since I've finished the trees, placebles, and texturing. This is the part where I make a quick backup erf and just throw caution to the wind.

It always comes down to how much is too much, and whether to use a pattern or subscribe to chaos. Actually, I think it is a combination of both. I normally plop down a humanoid creature to judge height and begin to throw a few patches here and there to see how it blends. I've never been one to use more than one grass type at a time, instead preferring to use the smallest brush possible and the lowest possible pressure to have the ultimate control over placement (I also use the hell out of my cntrl-Z).

Things are coming along nicely! Taking a look, I have quite a few of my main areas framed out nicely.

In Order of Appearance:

-Shivering Pines Forest
-Spinehollow
-Dra'ithkyrn Family Crypt
-Evertide
-Evertide Sewers
-Sea of Aluun
-Crown Port
-Sampeatos Jungle
-Jungle Ruins
-Crypt of Eldrynn

Now if I could just find someone to handle the NPC designs, dialogue, and scripting....badda-bing badda boom lol. Seriously though, I would like to bring in some additional writing talent to help fill in some of the gaps.

I'll have to work to get the design doc finished so that there exists a little clearer picture of what this adventure is all about. At the moment, the walkthrough reads like a bullet point list which I need to make legible paragraphs out of.

By the way, has anyone had a chance to try out this nice looking Mimic model that was put on the vault by ArtEChoke? http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2Models.Detail&id=195

I haven't tried it in the toolset/game yet, but the screenshots look very promising.



4 comments:

Josh said...

Some of your best work yet I think (in terms of area design). Great work!

Lance Botelle (Bard of Althéa) said...

Hi,

Thanks for the heads up on the mimic. I will take a look at it for sure.

Your second screenshot does look rather atmospheric. :)

And I know what you mean by requesting help. Funny enough, I need more help with area design than the other aspects at the moment.

Lance.

Jclef said...

Fanfreakintastic! 0.0

That Mimic and the Doppleganger both look awesome. I'm going to use them - have to!

Raith Veldrin said...

Thank you kindly!
As I look back over my area design (even in the first Solvheil mod) I shudder at the vast quality difference between then and now. The more I practice, the more chances I tend to take with color and texture.

I hear ya on the Mimic and Dopple, its like, when there's that good a model out there, there is a bubbling urge to somehow get it into a mod. Reminds me of when I saw the Drider and Beholder and knew some rewrites were in order.

Design Documents: