Thursday, July 9th, 2020 –

– Thursday, July 9th, 2020 —> +24˚C / + 83˚F – Mostly sunny & hazy with maybe 30-50% of the sky supporting smallish clouds – with Severe Thunderstorm Warnings for later – Where I’m at in Atlantic Canada @ 4:57 pm –

– “Nikki & Draelen in Landsdrop just past Sundown.” – The area they’ve been working on lately –

— Things have gone a lot more smoothly lately since we got everybody to “Lock” all their heightmaps when they were finished ‘Messing with them’ —> Jim managed to build an impressive cavern in less than an hour. and he didn’t have to drag all the parts out beyond the area and work on them, then drag them back and fuss for several minutes to get them lined up right. — Charging straight ahead with your head down and your eyes closed might not be the most effective strategy in world-building.

– “Nikki & Drae in the Landsdrop Cavern” –

— The idea is – crystals in the stone reflect firelight in different colours and intensity – & Jim is correct – on a decent gaming monitor this looks fantastic. –

– “The drop at Landsdrop” – the irregular line of rocky cliffs that give the area its name. –

— The cliffs that give the “Landsdrop” area its name – An “escarpment” in geological terms? The term is often used to describe the Niagara region of ‘southern’ Canada. – At first we were not overly thrilled with the look of the texture we’re using here – At a distance it can look funky – but I guess the fog in the ‘atmosphere’ goes a long way to help that when you’re at avatar level on the ground. But some of our avatars will have functional wings. And we’ve been wondering if characters with ‘Night Vision’ would see what we developers see when we turn on the lightbulb — everything? Another quirk with this texture: When you lower the ‘scale’ to something like 0.25 large areas with this texture look great – but when your character gets close – not only is the magic gone, but it looks like the texture failed and left you with reddish purple lines and foggy fields of grey and tan. So – we guessed that we can use that for cliffs seen at a distance – where nothing exciting will ever happen – and maybe gradually bring the scale back up to ‘normal’ closer to the ground – & closer to where anything might happen.

— Let me digress for a moment – Jim’s theory is to let every player believe their character has an unfair advantage and counsel them not to do anything stupid while they’re at lower levels – “Don’t jump off a cliff if you don’t have the right magical armor -” … stuff like that. I rolled my eyes at that idea at first, but then, the more I think about it – yeah – that works. A thief should believe he or she has an unfair advantage when it comes to picking pockets of npc’s. – Then learn caution when they go up against the higher leveled & more perceptive npcs and player’s characters. Yeah – that works.

….. — T.R. —