The Harvest Moon Consortium

[DM_Mask]

[quote=Bannor Bloodfist;11920]Suffice it to say that since EVERY tile will pass through CM3, they will compile without issue, except for maybe the animated water tiles....[/quote]

*Pats bannor on the head* Your are truly learning the fine art of publicizing my boy... I'm proud of you.

[Izk The Mad]

Yet another reason to check out CTP, huh? And I'd like to think I'm working on the "right skybox" Bannor mentioned.

I've had some success with the Underdark tileset as a "deep sea" floor (see my earlier pic). I have to agree with Bannor that the right lighting and fog settings, combined with placeables, can create a very convincing underwater area. I think the right sounds really help, too. IIRC, I used some of the sewer and lava sounds for mine.

I haven't experimented with kelp yet, but I wanted feedback on this variation I'm working on for Purple Puppy at d20. She wanted something more blue, and possibly with coral. I don't know about the coral. I've found placing things near the bottom is tricky with perspective up close, not to mention that parallax effect of not moving with the scene when the player does.

[IMG]http://www.rpgmodding.com/forums/pictur ... tureid=166[/IMG]

[Tybae]

That looks really good. That would be great for a warmer water environment where the water is more blue. The kelp would work better in the first one you showed in environments where the water is more green. The only reason why the water is blue in the pic I sent is because it was from an aquarium. They filter the water before it goes in the tank so the tourists can see them.

A great background for that one would be a school of small fish, maybe some coral here and there. The only critique I would have is to make the wreckage have less sharp angles. As things sit under water, they accumulate coral, seaweed and sea creatures. You could even make the sunken ships have a more in focus view and have holes in the sides of them. That would look great, IMO.

You're talents are getting better Izk. I can already see that you're giving them more and more thought as you progress with your work. Great job. :thumb:

[Izk The Mad]

My talents aren't as good as you think. That ship is a placeable. Like I said, just a simple gradient with some light beams. Everything else is my own deep sea area from my module. That's what I meant by "in context". I didn't bother to change the fog color, since I'm just testing. But I think it works with the first aqua blue version.

I did add some noise to the gradient layers, then blurred it to make the water look murky. And the light beams fade out before they reach the bottom. So I did give it a little thought, but not much. :rolleyes:

[Tybae]

You know, I find sometimes that my best work comes from either accidents or just plain luck. Even though it's just preliminary, it still looks really good and you have an excellent base to do more with. I do realize that it's not fully finished yet, but that's a canvas for a multitude of things. That's what it's all about, you create 1 base and make a boat load of recipes from it, so to speak.

[chaos_theocrat]

It's very true! Some of the best ideas do indeed start modest and often by accident. When I was designing my Drowned Temple of Dagon prefab, for instance, it began as an experiment in using the ice block placeables for icicles that hang from the ceiling. A novel idea that blended enough with the frozen wastes tileset, for it to appear convincing once I found just the right lighting for it. Then, from there, I built up other ideas until what I ended up with was better than what I began with. I could perhaps poetically compare it to a flower: from a single stem can bloom something truly beautiful. All it takes is care, time, and just the right light before you have not merely a flower but a whole garden that wasn't there before. :icon_idea:

[Izk The Mad]

Tybae, somewhere in my art schooling I picked up the expression "happy accidents". And it's happened to me too, more than once.

chaos, I had wondered what tileset you used for that Dagon Palace. It was the ceiling that tricked me, though I could see the evil castle elements. A placeable, I assume.

Well, it only took an hour or so, but I'm updated, so I had to do this:

[IMG]http://www.rpgmodding.com/forums/pictur ... tureid=171[/IMG]

Yeeeehaaaa! 1.69 is here! I'm so delighted to finally get to work with this tileset. Not to mention a few other things. And I'm off from work tomorrow... :p Oops, I mean today! Late night, it seems.

[Izk The Mad]

Well 1.69 is worth that long wait, and I can see my skyboxes will be on hold for a little bit. I have some updating to do for my module, and I'm sure I'm not alone. I plan on getting back to these very soon, and hopefully get my thread back on topic too. :p

I was just thinking about these skyboxes, though. I want to have a finished product in the near future, especially after all the interest, suggestions and helpful advice I've gotten so far (thanks again, everyone!). I've been trying to create a nice variety, but I realize I could always add more to it later in an update. If I may get personal for a moment, I don't always finish some of the creative projects I start, but I'm going to commit myself to finishing these. I've been trying to participate more in the NWN community which has given me so much, and I'd rather not disappoint anyone by not following through with all of this.

Also, I just found out some weird little thing I did awhile ago may possibly have been very useful to the community, but I had sorta kept it to myself. I had a surprise while I was reading Proleric's 1.69 guide, as I see there's a bug with saving and loading games, with horses assigned to henchmen disappearing on load. I knew about that bug six months ago and built my own modified set of x0/x2 hench scripts to deal with it. At the time, I had been adding custom companions to some of my henchmen and I noticed that problem. I searched all over for a fix with no success, so I started my own thread at the Bio boards about it here: Link. It's a bit of a lengthy read at first (one of my very first posts), which may have discouraged more interest, but with the help of Nereng I was able to figure out what was happening and script around it. I thought about releasing those scripts as a set but never did, due to lack of interest, from both (seemingly) the community and myself. My own disinterest being in dealing with the whole Vault process for the first time. I may still look into that sometime and take a look at what's been done to script around it, but I suddenly feel like I was a bit of a pioneer, lol, and I wish I had released those scripts. I'm still using them, with improvements, so my henchs' horses aren't going anywhere. They'll even respond to basic henchmen shouts. It may also be a little bit of an ego thing, but I'm just disappointed that my efforts could have helped somewhere, somehow, especially with something as significant as the long awaited horse system. Which brought me back to the idea of finishing these skyboxes for everybody. Anyway, sorry for this long rant. Should've saved it for my blog. Ha! At least I ended on topic! Time to go back to my 2das...

[Izk The Mad]

*Izk looks at yesterday's post, shakes head, and mumbles about sleep-deprivation* :rolleyes:

I was wondering if anyone has suggestions or requests for skyboxes. Of course, I'm looking for surreal or simple ideas, and nothing too normal or fancy, hopefully. I just want to make sure I have a decent variety. I have a few more I want to try, and I still need to finalize a few of the existing ones. I don't intend to rush these, since I still have a few surprises up my sleeve that I've been working on. I would like to finish a "version 1" soon though, since 1.69 is out.

I like having multiple ideas to play with and think about. I've used ideas or techniques from one to improve others. Plus I'll get bored or frustrated with one and need to work on something else for a while. In fact that's why I'm on here now, I'm bored from looking at 2das.

So if anyone has an interesting suggestion for the version 1 set, let me know.

[chaos_theocrat]

Today, we got a request from raven280 for interior ceiling skyboxes. If you can do them, Izk, I think they'd be very popular. A very good idea for an addition to your first skybox set release! Plus, they'd go well with the Underdark and Ice Cave ones that are already in the CSP. Let us know if you decide to take up the challenege...

Suggestions: Four Interior Skyboxes in total
Castle Interior Ceiling Skybox (A high, vaulted stone ceiling, perhaps?)
City Interior Ceiling Skybox (Wooden beams and rafters, very medieval.)
Cave Interior Ceiling Skybox (Like the Ice Cave skybox, only not so icy.)
Dungeon Interior Ceiling Skybox (Like Castle Interior, but maybe darker?)

Also, I re-opened one of the threads here that I must have accidentally closed, so all is well with that. Just to let folks know, so they can post.

- Farewell for now!