Silgrad Tower from the Ashes

Black Marsh: Trust us, bring your own food.™

Hey folks,

I have been working on a secret project, for a little while now. It WILL take a long time to finish. I also have to mod slower than I'm use to.

First, some disclaimers:

This work is only for Blackmarsh. I won't be handing out the files, finished or otherwise, to others and/or their projects - not even if requested.

Here are some pics:

http://img210.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=screenshot2zz.jpg

Yep, it's a tree city that is in progress. I have ideas on how to make the transition from exterior world landscape, to interior world city space, that will be FPS friendly and also make sense to the player.

The huts will be place amongst the branches, some on platforms. There will be bridges, most likley, to go from branch to branch. I will have to preplace the huts where they will go, then take careful screenshots of the huts/etc where they are placed, so that the layout can be replicated in CS.

The reason is that I will have to add collision up the sides of the branches and over the player's head, so that the player does not fall from the city and into nothingness. But so that I don't add collision that will end up blocking access to a hut or other crucial area, I will have to preplace the huts/etc, so that I can collision around them as well. I plan to use the settings of that vanilla collision box that allows arrows to pass through (but not the player), so that ranged fighting can occur up in that city, if needed.

I *might* make a version without the ceiling collisions and with lower side collisions, so that bold and daring players with flying races or flying mounts, can have fun flying from area to area in the upper branches, all the while still allowing the NPCs to not fall off the branches (mostly). But this version would not be a priority.

Koniption

I've already previewed this and mentioned it elsewhere (without the pics or explanation) but it's got tremendous potential for Murkwood. The story is that Rickious, who originally planned concepts for this model, got busy again so the prolific KP took over. We're passing ideas back and forth on its development as we go but we figured it would be good to reveal some progress after the recent period of slow development (and my enforced absence).

There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes at Black Marsh because there are some of us that prefer the modding side of things to discussing ideas and suchlike on the forums.

Yo everyone,

Besides still working in the background, quietly, like ninja...I made some bamboo plant models because the urge hit me (and a "project" at The Wormhole could use them, so these models are going to the Craftybits team, when the misc tweaks have been finished):

http://img227.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=ba...single.jpg

That nubby short model is a bamboo corm, which is eaten in cuisine around various parts of the world. It is harvestable and has harvest animations.

Ibsen, do you think you might need these plants for Blackmarsh, too, in certain regions?

I still need to tweak some stuff on them, though, before I can send them to you.

Your call.

Koniption

Obviously Ibsen has the final say, but I think those would be really useful in the southern coastal regions (we need something to separate them from the west coast).

I was also thinking, though, Elseweyr might be really interested if that would be possible...

great looking texture job on that bamboo tree, KP! Im impressed!

Oooh, yes! Me likey lots! Gimme gimme gimme! :yes:

I know what you mean, Deeza (RE: Southern coastal regions) but, as things stand, the mangrove region on the southern coast is complete barring landscaping. I could, however, replace the existing plants with the bamboo varieties but the other option would be to hand-place them...and there isn't a great deal of non-watery landmass on which to situate them. In reserve, I also have morcroft's seashell models that I intend to distribute in this area since they're closer to the shore. You may have missed my work on the mangroves recently: Mangrove Development but this will show you that there may be sufficient room to make the most of the models.

One alternative is to replace the GreenTi plants in the jungle region preset for the Arnesian jungle with bamboo which should fit in nicely although the frequency of GreenTi in that particular preset is not very common. So I may need to hand-place more and in greater variety or substitute another flora item....but I'm not going to have KP's cool elephant plants make way for them.

A probably better alternative would be to combine morcroft's tupelo tree for the Talu swamps with the bamboo. After all, I am looking for tall, thin trees that stand in water and are tightly packed and although some speedtrees are likely to help fill the canopy above, these could help to provide that sense of density needed for the region. Most of the region is intended to be covered in knee-high water but I can mass-produce chunks of such items given a sufficiently flat surface. It would make it look repetitive but that's sort of the point. I'd like the player to get lost in there.

A definite yes to the Talu swamp I think - it seems to be the least developed of them all right now.

Aye, and I think your timing is impeccable, KP! I don't see how I missed requesting bamboo from you before... =)