Sunday, May 4, 2008

On to Quaervarr

Ok after the cutscene where Lady Alustriel begs your assistence to save Quaervarr, which coincidently fits right into your goals because of the things that have happened since you arrive in Silverymoon. Though what happened in Tragidor is known to few, Lady Alustriel is one who knows.

So after the sewers and the audience with Alustriel, I needed to build Quaervarr. So I spent the weekend turning Red's Wilderness prefab into Quaervarr...

Red did a really good job of portraying a wilderness village...
Red Wildvill


But it had some things that didn't fit so I made a few changes...
Quaevarr


Namely I changed the lighting to my normal default lighting, and retextured the entire thing. These are the textures I used. This is the town square area giving a good glance at them...
town square


I also added some more cabins to the upper right side, being that Quaervar is very similar to Tragidor...
extra houses


Then added the druid grove for Amera Clearwater who is a notable NPC in the area.
druid grove

All in all it was very productive and should suit my needs very well. I had been meaning to begin supporting other authors by using prefabs. Granted when I say I'm using a prefab it means It's probably not going to look anything like it was. But I have to thank Red. He had an excellent basis for what I needed and did a really good area to start with.

So now I just have to start the opening cutscene of the arrival in Quaervarr that highlights the danger the town is in.

Technically Quaervar is a lumber town of around 900 people with 68% human, 27% Half elf, and then whatever is left is Dwarven. But obviously there's no need to design that much and no way I could. But this should give a good basis and a feel for Quaervar.

Notable NPCs
Geth Stonar: Village Elder or Mayor
Amera Clearwater: Leader of the local druid circle

Geth and Amera have a relatively good relationship, and the town of Quaervarr often turns to the Druids when in need of guidance when in trouble. In this case the attacks from Claw Hollow have stepped up and the town is in fear for it's existence.

Your arrival heralds the turning point.

5 comments:

Frank Perez said...

Your area design is looking good as always. Since you mentioned that you were having problems with the city portion of the adventure, I'm curious as to what the city looks like. Anyhow, welcome to the world of blogging. I just got into it myself.

Phoenixus said...

Well thank you Frank,
Unfortunately I deleted the pictures from my Pics Page to make space for others... but they are up on the Vault currently...

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2PrefabAreas.Detail&id=343

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2PrefabAreas.Detail&id=344

I'll be releasing another one probably on Monday sometime.

Jclef said...

Now this is for real - out of anyone in the community, your exterior area design skills have improved the most, I believe.

Looking at the exteriors in Tragidor pt.1, and then seeing these...

These are Professional. You've certainly come the farthest I'd say, in this department. Not that I think pt.1 areas are bad - they're good, but these...

I am Certainly looking forward to running around these beautiful sceneries - and looking forward to more SS's in the meantime! ;)

Phoenixus said...

Thanks Jclef,
That is a heck of a compliment. I think things really started to change once I got Gametap here at work and began play the old infinity games again. I had forgotten just how intricate the designs were. But those were always hand painted backgrounds, and once I started seriously looking at how detailed they were an immitating them, I found my designs began to really take off.

Thank you for the compliment though, saying it's professional looking says a lot.

Frank Perez said...

I took a look at the screenies you posted at the Vault. They're both really good, but I prefer the second one. It takes guts to cut off any portion of work that has already been completed, but sometimes it has to be done if the module's quality is to be maintained. Besides, the non-city exteriors that you've done are excellent.