Greeting Strongholders, it has been too long.
One day last week when I was ruing the the number of unfinished maps I have in my editor, I popped the old CD back in just for a little look at what could have been.
One thing led to another, and soon I was back in the editor toying around with an old map. Now this map was almost ready to go years ago...
--You might rememberBurghead - Apostle of the Picts--
...well the original map was designed for a seige, and that scenario was just a little filler before the main event. I started working on the seige version again, and then I begun to look at my old research for that map, then I played around with some eyecandy tricks that I was too impatient to try when I was younger and before long, the whole map was getting a Dark Age makeover. The original was not terribly historically accurate; it still looked impressive, but it was not a Dark Age settlement. Plus I thought it would be lazy to essentially post the same map twice, just with different troop dynamics.
So many tedious hours later, I have some nice goodies to show you guys from this map. There is still a lot to be done; some of these eyecandy tricks take a long time to make. Hopefully I can get it released too, that would be nice.
Here are some of the images I have been working from:
Notice the thatched round houses, long houses...no big buildings. Some farms within the fortress as well.
This has been one of my primary references, an artist's interpretation none the less. But you can see the kind of buildings present in an iron age settlement.
Here is a closeup of the wall. You can see that it is topped by a wooden palisade; looks almost like wicker...perhaps I could use shields to achieve this?
So here you go: A little house and farm/garden complex.:
Some day last week, I discovered that by 'sinking' certain buildings, I could make them look like single storied buildings that fit in with the dark age look I was going for. That is a sunken inn, and a windmill, both still fully functional by hiding some steps down to them. By careful placement of shrubs and dirt, I could hide any 'lowering artifacts'...does this look convincing to you?
Next up is a lowered wooden keep:
This was difficult to achieve. I used the magic eraser to get rid of the camp fire. There is still a little lowered stretch that I could not reach with the eraser. Perhaps someone could enlighten me on whether it is possible to erase entire campfires? I am not so experienced with the eraser. Alas, doing this was a mistake in this case as there are a number of farm buildings that won't receive a farm worker now as the campfire is defunct after this trick.
A few more alternatives to your standard hovel. If you rotate the map, these two form one big longhouse, sort of:
By now, you have probably noticed the shield topped walls. This was the most elegant solution I could come up with for this design problem. These shields have been placed on sections of wall that are 25 clicks lower than normal walls. Normal height walls have been place in front of them and behind them to make them seem shorter and to hide the ugly shadow that are at the bottom of them. Ideally there shouldn't be a wall in front of them, but it looks rather unsightly if there is none. This process is very time consuming and tedious. It is not perfect, it only works well on straight sections. There are ugly artifacts with the diagonal pieces that need to be hidden with more bits of wall, so the whole thing looks a bit too bulky.
The other option is stone walls with wooden palisade on top. This is a tricky one work with, and also they don't work well diagonally as it looks too jagged.
Anyway, finally we have another sunken keep and kitchen garden on the go here:
Placing shields on terrain that is 20-30 clicks lower than the surrounding terrain can make for nice looking fences, the kind of wicker (woven wood) fence that was very common in the dark ages.
Kudos to Sulis who utilised shields as fences in his Mercia map and they looked pretty good. edit: I just went back to the editor and he too has lowered his shields to make more realistic fences. I know that Warlord Designs were also toying with shields in an unreleased New World themed map. Also a few design inspirations from Lord Ako as he was great at recreating cultures and geographical features that you wouldn't typically expect to find within an medieval England based game.
There you have it. I still want to perfect some of the tricks shown here, particularly the walls. Some compromises may have to be made. But I'm glad I could come up with what I think are some novel ideas in this map. I haven't really seen many sunken buildings and shields used like this before. Hope you enjoyed it, and if I get more progress on the fortress, I will make a big screen shot (playing in HD is great!)
"the only thing that makes me feel safe is the fact that this is the 20th one of these camps my school has done and snakes are reptiles so they get their energy from the sun so when the sun goes down hopefully they will go to sleep or whatever they do and not decide to sleep with me when they discover there log isn't very comfortable."-scragins
One day last week when I was ruing the the number of unfinished maps I have in my editor, I popped the old CD back in just for a little look at what could have been.
One thing led to another, and soon I was back in the editor toying around with an old map. Now this map was almost ready to go years ago...
--You might remember
...well the original map was designed for a seige, and that scenario was just a little filler before the main event. I started working on the seige version again, and then I begun to look at my old research for that map, then I played around with some eyecandy tricks that I was too impatient to try when I was younger and before long, the whole map was getting a Dark Age makeover. The original was not terribly historically accurate; it still looked impressive, but it was not a Dark Age settlement. Plus I thought it would be lazy to essentially post the same map twice, just with different troop dynamics.
So many tedious hours later, I have some nice goodies to show you guys from this map. There is still a lot to be done; some of these eyecandy tricks take a long time to make. Hopefully I can get it released too, that would be nice.
Here are some of the images I have been working from:
Notice the thatched round houses, long houses...no big buildings. Some farms within the fortress as well.
This has been one of my primary references, an artist's interpretation none the less. But you can see the kind of buildings present in an iron age settlement.
So here you go: A little house and farm/garden complex.:
Some day last week, I discovered that by 'sinking' certain buildings, I could make them look like single storied buildings that fit in with the dark age look I was going for. That is a sunken inn, and a windmill, both still fully functional by hiding some steps down to them. By careful placement of shrubs and dirt, I could hide any 'lowering artifacts'...does this look convincing to you?
Next up is a lowered wooden keep:
This was difficult to achieve. I used the magic eraser to get rid of the camp fire. There is still a little lowered stretch that I could not reach with the eraser. Perhaps someone could enlighten me on whether it is possible to erase entire campfires? I am not so experienced with the eraser. Alas, doing this was a mistake in this case as there are a number of farm buildings that won't receive a farm worker now as the campfire is defunct after this trick.
A few more alternatives to your standard hovel. If you rotate the map, these two form one big longhouse, sort of:
By now, you have probably noticed the shield topped walls. This was the most elegant solution I could come up with for this design problem. These shields have been placed on sections of wall that are 25 clicks lower than normal walls. Normal height walls have been place in front of them and behind them to make them seem shorter and to hide the ugly shadow that are at the bottom of them. Ideally there shouldn't be a wall in front of them, but it looks rather unsightly if there is none. This process is very time consuming and tedious. It is not perfect, it only works well on straight sections. There are ugly artifacts with the diagonal pieces that need to be hidden with more bits of wall, so the whole thing looks a bit too bulky.
The other option is stone walls with wooden palisade on top. This is a tricky one work with, and also they don't work well diagonally as it looks too jagged.
Anyway, finally we have another sunken keep and kitchen garden on the go here:
Placing shields on terrain that is 20-30 clicks lower than the surrounding terrain can make for nice looking fences, the kind of wicker (woven wood) fence that was very common in the dark ages.
Kudos to Sulis who utilised shields as fences in his Mercia map and they looked pretty good. edit: I just went back to the editor and he too has lowered his shields to make more realistic fences. I know that Warlord Designs were also toying with shields in an unreleased New World themed map. Also a few design inspirations from Lord Ako as he was great at recreating cultures and geographical features that you wouldn't typically expect to find within an medieval England based game.
There you have it. I still want to perfect some of the tricks shown here, particularly the walls. Some compromises may have to be made. But I'm glad I could come up with what I think are some novel ideas in this map. I haven't really seen many sunken buildings and shields used like this before. Hope you enjoyed it, and if I get more progress on the fortress, I will make a big screen shot (playing in HD is great!)
"the only thing that makes me feel safe is the fact that this is the 20th one of these camps my school has done and snakes are reptiles so they get their energy from the sun so when the sun goes down hopefully they will go to sleep or whatever they do and not decide to sleep with me when they discover there log isn't very comfortable."-scragins
[This message has been edited by Younghappy (edited 04-28-2013 @ 06:42 PM).]