Sunday, June 29, 2008

Wow... yeah a little side tracked.

On top of being addicted to Mass Effect for the last week, I've admittedly gotten a little behind with regards to building.

You know, you can tell where Mass Effect was dumbed down for the console crew, but at the same time Bioware managed to overcome the limitations of the Console at least to a certain extent, and on top of that, the backstory in the game has a depth and richness I haven't seen in some of their games in a very very long time. The more you explore, the more you find. It's a veritable smorgasbord of story depth all hidden that you can find little by little. The more you find, the richer it becomes.

My addiction level to the game is finally subsiding so I'll be building again, but I'll be honest it's one of the best games I've played over the last year. It tops Bioshock and Crysis as far as sci-fi goes and the depth of the world around it is just unbelievable.

I had meant to build a bit this weekend, but I friend's Bachelor party distracted me this weekend. Wow... I don't think I was sober all weekend. We bumped into a Bachelorette party while we were out there too and I know I ended up with a Bachelorette's garter I remember tongueing it off her leg, and there's pictures of me wearing it like a bandana over the weekend (wow those things stretch, she was a tiny girl), so while a lot of things were a blur, I am pretty sure I had a lot of fun.

Well back to building, I have started on Mouth of Song, but admittedly have only gotten the height map done.





The little speck on the hill is a human.

This area is going to look like Deep forest. The trees here will be huge. In the Forgotten Realms there is a tree called a Shadowtop. Basically they are enormous trees that blot out the sun in a deep forest. I'll be using live oaks scaled up by a factor of 3. They'll actually be taller than the hill. I'll also be turning off the fade for them (which works now by the way).

Mouth of Song is a small shrine to Elistraee, it will have a night and day cycle and if players enter at night they will run into a coven of Ellistraee worshipers here. They will then send you to the Grove of Fangs to hunt for more clues in order to find Claw Hollow.

I may add some encounters here, daytime perhaps some kind of Trolls or perhaps some Wyverns along with a nest nearby. At night perhaps a Drow Raiding party looking to kill some Ellistraee worshipers.

I'm going to have to decide on the Texturing though, the ones I've tried so far haven't looked the way I wanted it to, so We'll have to see how it comes out.

3 comments:

Frank Perez said...

What, no pictures from the party? Nah, scratch that. We wouldn't want to violate Blogspot's terms of service. :P

Speaking of having fun, I was also drawn into the black hole that is Mass Effect. I swear, that game has had a mass effect on decreasing productivity in the modding community. Congratulations on getting back on track. There's only so much security decryption a gamer can take before it gets old.

Anonymous said...

Hiya Ph....

Nice update. :)

It seems you are verily a master at creating areas. If I understand correctly you have essentially smothered corruption issues.

I wondered if you would mind dropping me a PM on the Bioware boards ?

In friendship

Jfoxtail

Phoenixus said...

Hey there guys, thanks for the compliments.

Lol and yeah those party pictures would probably be not only over the line, but probably a little embarrising too :). But wow did I have fun.

Jclef:
I can't say I've smothered corruption issues, but when I find them I can generally get around them or fix them now that I understand what causes them.

PS: I sent you the message.