Month: June 2020

– Saturday, June 27th, 2020 —> +13°C / +55°F with the sun shining through a hazy greyness with no defined clouds in the sky, but the weather network thinks it’s foggy and the weather underground says it’s cloudy @ 7:45 am Atlantic Time –

— Well – uhh – Progress in the Game-Building Realm 🙂 –

– Elise and Volffe in the Crimson Birkenport Sundown –

— The above screen-shot looks better on the spiffy gaming monitor – And this shot kind of shows that characters can look completely different depending on Point Of View – Volffe looks like he should be related to Keith Richards in this shot – & the “3-point lighting” has me wondering where the crew with the lights and reflective photographic umbrellas were hiding. 😉 – I mentioned in another blog that I have had a long-standing aversion to Red Skies – but – at least on my yummy ASUS gaming monitor – this looks fantastic to me.

– “Volffe in Birken Hills” – All of Birkenport used to look like this. –

— The above shot is more like what Volffe really looks like – a little more “Highe” Elf, a little less Forest Elf – & a lot more serious looking. – Most of the background behind Volffe is the one landscape texture I used for the whole area – and I wasn’t too pleased with the way it looked, and the way it was hard to cover over with higher layers of textures to add grass and dirt and paths and roads – and later – flowers and stuff – But that’s changed. And waterfalls and rapids were something that I found extremely difficult to fake at first – Kept hoping my artist friends could come to the rescue inside 3D Max or Maya – but they were all too busy with ‘real life issues’ and the ‘Guaranteed’ full-version – non-watermarked copies of Maya I bought for two staffers turned out to be Educational Versions and watermarked and therefore useless. Lesson Learned? Argghhhhh —> But with patience and the right ‘magic words’ { grumble, grumble – } I got ‘ocean’ like water to look like rapids and/or waterfalls, and used sparingly – with just enough landscape tweaks and a couple of rocks dropped into strategic locations – I managed to cover the creepy edges of the tipped up bits of ocean that were so hard to match to the more level flowing river water –

– “Elise’s Garden” behind the Birkenport Town Hall –

— This is a vast improvement over the original look of Birkenport – Experimented with several different ‘ground cover’ textures, some work a lot better than others. And the grass and flowers that came in a couple years after I started this – look really good under most circumstances. Some of the two level stuff { far right } looks wonky if it’s not placed on at least a bit of a hill, or hidden by ‘weeds’.

– “Elise & Volffe at Birkenport Town Hall” – Front Entrance –

— & We learned that we can make ourselves a decent looking, ‘not-quite-cobblestone’ road or path by messing with the ‘scale’ and putting the ‘stone path’ in the top level of textures in the hopes that it covers everything else. The building is one of the stock, ‘example’ buildings { of fantasy architecture } & I really want to replace these buildings. We might be able to start using our new and improved Max pipeline in less than a month.

— Officials in Birkenport are supposed to be notoriously corrupt. New arrivals in port are often knocked unconscious and robbed of almost everything they have and then thrown in jail for having ‘no visible means of support’. — Thieves and members of certain races will wake up in jail with a throbbing headache and an npc ally who will help them escape { possibly as a ruse to have the big mean constables track down the newcomer and miss the more experienced ‘ally’ } – but, with a little bit of luck – the newcomers will find at least one resourcefull new friend who can hustle them to safety and maybe even front them with the gold needed to buy a “Bounty Hunter’s License” which will keep them out of jail – and then the new friend should lead the newcomers to the ‘Travelers Aid Society’ where they will be given rusty weapons to defend themselves and possibly useful items like armor to wear beneath their street clothes and information about were to go for more advanced training in self defense and where the nearest churches and chapels are and where they can find a reasonably safe room for the night.

– “Elise & Volffe standing night watch -” { After strategically placing lamp posts and using some of Moe’s magic to transform the brilliance and hue of the light they emit. } –

— Turning up the lights from “1” to “2” or “3” makes a big difference. Changing the hue of the light can radically change the ambiance – Elise went and built the light-keeper a hovel to live in and winked at him, thanked him for his dedication and ran away before he asked if that meant he gets a raise in his miniscule salary or thought that maybe she had the hots for him and tempted fate by trying to put a move on her. She may look like a barefoot hippie, but she has a mean martial arts kick, a nasty uppercut and a powerful left hook.

– “Latest View of the coast of ‘Norff Land’ -” —> The Ymmps’ chosen new homeland –

— Even without the fog – the coast of Norff Land is beginning to look impressive. This highly defensible area gives the Ymmps a sense of safety – as it is sandwiched between “Khatzhya” {{  Home of the Khatzen – whose reaction to fear and rumours that they are a race that killed a lot of demons as they escaped from Hell – has the goblin race { “Ghardra” here in Aerendel } avoiding this area like the plague – }} – and the very dangerous ‘Forbidden Mountains’ across a narrow stretch of open water in the Inland Sea.  – & —> Not to mention the impassible ‘Northern Shield’ mountains north of ‘Norff Land’ and Khatzhya – and the rest of the continent…

— I wanted to fully enclose the Inland Sea as quickly as I could and then worry about finishing touches on most of the real estate around that sea. —> And I’m happy with the results so far –

– “The Norff-Land <—> Forbidden Mountains Straight” { named by Ymmps } –

— ‘Norr Land” has fjords that jut into the straight a little farther and the more protected coast of Nordika. The “Forbidden Mountains” were not finished when I bit the bullet and decided I had to link the ‘Highe’ Elf Homeland of Cerulena { in the center of the Forbidden Mountains } to the rest of the areas that border on the Inland Sea. The Forbidden Mountains { the huge square – right of center, almost vertically centered – } is four times the size of most areas. And being ‘impassible’, almost nothing will ever happen there. Bad guys who discover that that is where the hidden city of Cerulena is hidden – if they’re stupid enough to try to attack – won’t last long. The Highe Elves can permanently kill player’s characters with their really powerful spells.

— But anyway – I’ve been working on ways to make the exterior mountains look a lot more to my liking, and I think I’ve managed to make them look convincingly snow covered above a certain altitude year round.

– “Elise – On Governor’s Hill.” – { There is no Officially Appointed Governor of Birkenport – A series of mean sonofaguns have designated themselves ‘Governor’ and fortified themselves behind thick, high walls, with lots of well paid mercinary guards. } –

— Altruistic Hippie – Elise – ignores politix, and only attacks tax collectors when they try to rape her.  But then she re-distributes the tax money they’ve extorted – back into the hands of the poor. And when the tax collectors disappear { teleported into the nasty northern valleys and crevices of the Northern Shield Mountains – where it is very hard to survive – } The governor usually shrugs it off and finds more ‘tough-hard beedy grastards’ to collect taxes for him and shows them his collection of the bodies of previous tax collectors who tried to cheat him.

— But Elise is really proud of the efforts Volffe and she put into upgrading the lighting in the town or city of Birkenport – which will have more and better looking buildings in the near future.

— And I think I should probably stop here and hit the ‘publish’ button. – “Have a good life!” –

~~~~~ Jim