The Harvest Moon Consortium

[Christopher]

Pixelknight requested a sticky for people to list current projects. You are welcome to post on this thread at let others know what you are working on so as not to double up on projects.

[Guest]

Theme:
An old wind hewn desert version of NWN's mine's and caverns. This was inspired by movies like Dune, the Mummy, and The Scorpion King plus the D&D Desert of Desolation adventure series. When going into a desert I would have expected a lack of water. This includes tight areas that feel almost clostrophobic which open to vast cavernous expanses with an epic feel. The end deliverable should also have a feeling of Biblical Ancient Persia 450BC and give a visitor emotions of mystery, tension, surprise, and awe.

There should be "seamless" transitions to most other interiors.

Completed:
Retexturing of tdm_* .tga (however I'll have to go back over this after seeing Velmar's mines and caverns)
Water planes and emitters removed.
Sand toppers over normal rock facing added to many tiles.
Remodeling of meshes that do not fade to black for the pits that were once obscured by water.
Intigration of Firehazurd's Tunnel crossers in the black wall area with cave wall transitions with some orginal tiles for the Wall terrain.
Intigration of Never Roofers' Cavern Roofs

Currently working on:
Tunnel Chamber terrain tiles that transition between Floor, Wall, and other Tunnel Chamber tiles.
Groups that open up the TunnelChamber on the same tile as the Floor. This also makes for nice winding narrow raised ledges and surprise ambush points.
Groups of open multi level platforms spanning Tunnel Chamber and Floor heights.
Lowering the wall blackness on standard tiles to a 0 z vector for better visual elevation transitions.

Planned:
Sand fall emitters.
Tunnel Crossers in open areas using underdark stalagmites instead of the mound topper.
Corridor adjustments for alcoves and swinging rock trap placeables.
Additional bridges from the Desert, Crypt, UnderDark, and Forest
Underdark structures
Enterances from UnderDark, Crypt, Castle Interior, Rural Interior
Original suspended Rock Terrain so a room appears to held from the ceiling overlooking the black abyss below.
Original LOTR inspired cavernous structures like cavern embedded towers and fortress
Original Cavern Ledge crossers that merge with the tunnel crossers.
Original Elevation changes that support the cavern roof... this includes pseudo elevation chages of level 1 & 2 caverns and level 1 & 2 chasm and their combinations.
Original Multilevel groups that link combinations of cavernous and chasm terrians together.
Standard structures on various pseudo elevation levels.
Tilemagic scripted invisible placeables in an erf.

Outside the scope of this project:
Lava, sludge, Water terrains (That is what tile magic script is for)
Skyboxes (this is an interior tileset)

[Guest]

Need some input and draw upon wealth of experience present in these forums... So let me throw the quandary out there.

I'm intigrating tunnels in the black areas between open spaces and debating on what height to place the black top at.

The objective is to have the player only really use an over the shoulder or side view of tunnel traversal. The non-mini maps for these tiles also disguises direction in the black to cause more mysterous tension.

If I keep the mesh with black texture at 3m height (as per the standard tiles) people can see more tunnel then perhaps I would like from a birds eye view once they zoom in far enough.

If I make the black at a 0m floor height, I'll be redoing a lot of standard tiles, but the player always has that tight feel they would loose with a bird's eye view.

The deciding tile group is a tunnel with starts out at ground level from a cave wall and then slopes downward to meet the height of the rest of the tunnels. The tunnel height is just slightly over 3m. The tunnel floor z-index is -4m. and so I'll be making a black "shell" to disguise/hide the part above 0m if the black mesh is at 0m height. The first pic is it's usage, the next is the model at 3m black height, and the second is black height at 0m.

I might have worded this clear as mud... But my question is, and perhaps this is such a small detail of being able to see that 4m, I shouldn't worry about it, would it cause some unforseen hinderances and be more frustrating than bennifit?

[Chandigar]

Need some input and draw upon wealth of experience present in these forums... So let me throw the quandary out there.

I'm intigrating tunnels in the black areas between open spaces and debating on what height to place the black top at.

The objective is to have the player only really use an over the shoulder or side view of tunnel traversal. The non-mini maps for these tiles also disguises direction in the black to cause more mysterous tension.

If I keep the mesh with black texture at 3m height (as per the standard tiles) people can see more tunnel then perhaps I would like from a birds eye view once they zoom in far enough.

If I make the black at a 0m floor height, I'll be redoing a lot of standard tiles, but the player always has that tight feel they would loose with a bird's eye view.

The deciding tile group is a tunnel with starts out at ground level from a cave wall and then slopes downward to meet the height of the rest of the tunnels. The tunnel height is just slightly over 3m. The tunnel floor z-index is -4m. and so I'll be making a black "shell" to disguise/hide the part above 0m if the black mesh is at 0m height. The first pic is it's usage, the next is the model at 3m black height, and the second is black height at 0m.

I might have worded this clear as mud... But my question is, and perhaps this is such a small detail of being able to see that 4m, I shouldn't worry about it, would it cause some unforseen hinderances and be more frustrating than bennifit?

IMO its all about time cost vs benefit. I personally wouldn't do it... if the builder wants to make the tunnel really spooky they can just set a really close fog distance.... but this also lets them to allow the players a further view if they want. You can always make nice sample map to show potential builders how you see it as working (ie close clip distance @ black).

[Guest]

Thanks for the valuable input,

After sleeping on it, another reason came to mind. And of course I like a good debate.

If their camera was zoomed in just outside of the tunnels... As the character comes back to an open Floor area, they would also be able to see thru the underside of the floor and walls of the approached standard tiles.

Is there another way to circumvent this and still keep a continuous side view?

[Chandigar]

Thanks for the valuable input,

After sleeping on it, another reason came to mind. And of course I like a good debate.

If their camera was zoomed in just outside of the tunnels... As the character comes back to an open Floor area, they would also be able to see thru the underside of the floor and walls of the approached standard tiles.

Is there another way to circumvent this and still keep a continuous side view?

Hrmmmm they shouldn't be able to. At no point in the tileset should be be looking through the back of a poly. "standard" interior tiles have caps to the walls to prevent this from happening for example. If you have a tunnel, the only difference is that you have an opaque roof as well....

In other words, the walls of the tunnel should transition smoothly to the tunnel entrance in the side of the open areas.

In other other words, it should be a circular tube meeting a circular hole and not a circular tube meeting a square hole... the only way you'd see through the back or floors of the open room would be if you were seeing *through* the walls and floor of the tunnel.

[Guest]

Perhaps I may have clouded my explaination more than it should have been.

Yes, I am in complete agreement one continuous surface is the way to go.

Remembering DLA sewers where you can actually see thru the back of the walls linking the tunnels to open areas with different camera angles. Perhaps that same effect would also happen here if the open areas were left uncapped.

[Guest]

Ah jumping thru many hoops and stubbing a toe or two... finally have some visuals on new geometry. Until now I never really had the respect for the tileset masters that I do now...
[IMG]http://66.148.2.237/media/gyrusnet/scre ... lthole.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://66.148.2.237/media/gyrusnet/scre ... owerin.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://66.148.2.237/media/gyrusnet/scre ... werout.jpg[/IMG]

[Chandigar]

Very nice, this is lookin great!

[9fires]

I so totally agree. Thats cool