MerricksDad's Weapon-A-Day

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Getting back to the textures to finish this bit up. Last week I spent some time up in Traverse City among the black spruce and american larch. Not a lot of pictures taken of value, but I did figure out the differences between black and white spruce, as well as the differences between european and american larch. Also got a lot of fern variety photographed.

 

Edit:

Postponed, gotta go dig out a birds nest spruce in the rain. Maybe later '>

 

Edit:

 

So uh, since when does a bird nest spruce have a 3-inch taproot and 4 underground offshoots?

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               http://digital-photo...-a-spiders-web/
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Verilazic]

               

In case you're looking for inspiration for future designs, a couple of today's posts gave me the idea for a suggestion: Brick Launcher. Or maybe Weaponized Brick? Double Brick? Battlebrick?

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ia.Pepper]

               

In case you're looking for inspiration for future designs, a couple of today's posts gave me the idea for a suggestion: Brick Launcher. Or maybe Weaponized Brick? Double Brick? Battlebrick?

What posts inspired you? PHoD's?  '>

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               

Talking of bricks... I seem to remember that Tara King from The Avengers (the UK TV Spy Spoof of the 1960's not the Marvel super heroes) used to keep a brick in her handbag for bashing unsuspecting bad guys with. So how about a "weaponised" handbag? 

 

TR

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Mecheon]

               

Talking of bricks... I seem to remember that Tara King from The Avengers (the UK TV Spy Spoof of the 1960's not the Marvel super heroes) used to keep a brick in her handbag for bashing unsuspecting bad guys with. So how about a "weaponised" handbag? 
 
TR

Holistic Detective, one of the most legendary dwarves in Dwarf Fortress history, despite being an expert in all combat weapons, despite having her own cult, despite wearing legendary adamantite armor, used only one weapon. With this weapon she slew armies of goblins by the dozen, turned battlefields into whirlwinds of bone and sinew. With this weapon she was unmatched

This weapon? A leather handbag

(also she sort of became a dark god and well, yeah)
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Verilazic]

               

What posts inspired you? PHoD's?  '>

Hehe, yeah. And TAD's too. XD

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Resurrection:

 

Back on plant textures for a bit, and then I have a few more weapons to release: first I need to separate the sword from the Deities and Demigods challenge so you can play with that broadsword Malkizid is using.

 

Also working on a module, currently titled "Life and Times of Young Selvetarm". Of course that will not stick, nor does it sound at all interesting. The idea is to upgrade and re-release my drow content from last year, and then add some more stuff, including a bunch of Selvetarm godthings. Here's a list I am currently toying with:

 

Selvetarm as a young elf

Selvetarm as an orb of chaotic shadow

Selvetarm as an aranea with red markings

Selvetarm as a drider with red markings

Selvetarm as Zanassu the Spider Demon, a specific demonic aranea

Selvetarm as "The spider that waits"

Vhaeraun, Father of Selvetarm, Son of Lolth, in elf form

Giant Selvetarm Statue locked in combat with a Giant Clangeddin Statue (yeah that is kinda specific)

Targus/Garagos, ally of Selvetarm (or Selvetarm in Garagos form)

Altar to Selvetarm

Selvetarm themed outfits and gear for warriors and battle priests

Named weapons of Selvetarm

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Verilazic]

               

I still am working on the planning phase of my long-term Drow module project, so basically everything you listed is like the sweet sweet sound of spiders skittering in the darkness.

 

<Ugh, I just creeped myself out.>

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Still working on plant textures for a few of you. I just finished collection on a few hundred fallen and colored leaves for various northern species, including mostly oak and maple. In total, after being cut out, I should be able to make a 20x20 icon sheet for white oak, red oak, and red maple. Other leaf types have less variety, so I also have smaller icon sheets planned for black cherry and cottonwood. Most every other leaf around here except tulip poplar and basswood tend to look the same on the ground, so there won't be much reason to differentiate between them for fallen leaves, meaning I will probably just make a 10x10 plate for all the rest at once.

 

I also have a large variety of fall color for poison ivy, virginia creeper, cat brier, raspberry, and blackberry. I'm trying to stay less specific on everything else, unlike with the spring colors. I've also collected really red samples from some viburnums, burning bushes, and apple, but very little variety.

 

There are still at least 100 gigs of other photos I have already taken which need sorted out and cut. This should keep me busy all winter, give or take a few models here and there. If I have a full day of nothing else going on, I can probably process 5 images of any given species, for about 10 species. After that, I tend to need a rest from the monotony. But that should give me another plant pack to release every week or so.


I know there are requests already out, and I am working on those first, but if you have specifics you would like to see, just ask and I will try to bump those first, especially time sensitive fall colors.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_rjshae]

               

Did somebody request a shrubbery?

 

Today I was looking at this model and thinking: it'd be interesting to have some large hedge placeables for building a maze...

 

Shades of the toxic hedge maze in Pool of Radiance.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

oooo, now that would be interesting as a set of placeables.

 

 

Edit:

 

How many people have successfully built maze-like placeables and not screwed up the pathing? If this is something we could actually use and would not confuse the crap out of npc walk paths, then I think I could easily do up a bunch of variety sets, which could easily be texture replaced. We could easily do shapes in these forms, and do some additional corners or center placeables in forms of shaped topiary.

 

Edit Again:

 

Also without downloading and looking at it, can I assume that the bent sections match up to 1/2, 1/4, 1/6, 1/8, 1/10, and 1/12 arcs? Would that make sense?

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               

@ MerricksDad FWIW I had been thinking along similar lines with the exception that instead of hedges I would use walls. The curved hedges do make me a bit nervous given NwN's pathfinding abilities. Two other thoughts that I had were

1. Make the placeables as two parallel walls with a gap between them that had been tested for being wide enough for a PC to navigate successfully and

   
2. Have separate development and game haks. The development haks having wall thickness black lines to make it easier to design the maze. This would be done by having different textures (black for the base and transparent for the rest). During development you would use both haks (with the development hak higher in the list than the game hak) and remove the reference to the development hak when the maze design is complete.

But given my lack of modelling skills I never got around to it. Add to this that my ideas may well be more trouble than they're worth.

 

TR

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Bannor Bloodfist]

               

oooo, now that would be interesting as a set of placeables.

 

 

Edit:

 

How many people have successfully built maze-like placeables and not screwed up the pathing? If this is something we could actually use and would not confuse the crap out of npc walk paths, then I think I could easily do up a bunch of variety sets, which could easily be texture replaced. We could easily do shapes in these forms, and do some additional corners or center placeables in forms of shaped topiary.

 

Edit Again:

 

Also without downloading and looking at it, can I assume that the bent sections match up to 1/2, 1/4, 1/6, 1/8, 1/10, and 1/12 arcs? Would that make sense?

You would have to use the lowercase double letter paths as in aa, bb, jj, etc that were added for the original aztec set by chandigar.  Few people ever bothered to use those path nodes, but they were secificaly created and added to allow the original aztec exterior with its double pathed building sides would allow you to walk along the path, but not directly on the side walls... I don't think Chandigar ever went back and assigned the correct paths to that set, he just created a completely new version instead, and since everyone likes 'new' better than 'fixed' folks went with the new set instead.

 

Anyway, with those, you MIGHT be able to create a properly pathed set, but they would likely not look exactly as you would expect, meaning you would be placing two of those specifically shaped mdls into/onto ONE mdl and pick the correct path node for that combo, so, you would end up with all sorts of variations to get them all to line up correctly with the various path nodes we have available.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_rjshae]

               

How many people have successfully built maze-like placeables and not screwed up the pathing? If this is something we could actually use and would not confuse the crap out of npc walk paths, then I think I could easily do up a bunch of variety sets, which could easily be texture replaced. We could easily do shapes in these forms, and do some additional corners or center placeables in forms of shaped topiary.

 

Perhaps then in NWN it would need to be implemented as an extension to an exterior tileset? Maybe with two rows & columns of potential hedges per tile, arranged in various ways? Could get messy though.

 

Also without downloading and looking at it, can I assume that the bent sections match up to 1/2, 1/4, 1/6, 1/8, 1/10, and 1/12 arcs? Would that make sense?

 

It looks that way. I'd guess he (or she) was thinking in terms of concentric rings of hedges.