Custom Content Challenge: November 2015: Wizard's Tower

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Hands are different than planned, and don't yet have chain emitters on them, but they'll pretty much look like this, maybe a pinch smaller. Right now they are offset by 100cm from their bases and don't have pwk data. They're meant to go in the holes on the teleporter circle, but I'll make them so they have pwk for any old use. They're slightly too big to go in the holes and not mess with the light column, so I'll probably take them down 10% in scale.

 

 

I may change this portal later to take up 4 tiles. I started work on a Crumbling Crypts set just to get away from the need to write scripts for a while. It won't be done any time soon, but I expect to put at least two versions of this tile group in the set. It will be more useful as a larger object. This one I have trouble walking into with larger characters, and with the hands placed in the holes, there is even less visual room. If I make it 2x as wide, I can get really big creatures held down by the spectral hands and their chains.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               

<groan warning>

 

Hmmm, handy  '> . One question - Why has the top-left one got the uk flag as part of its texture?

 

TR

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_rjshae]

               

Reminds me a little of a notion I had for an illusory visual effect representing a wizard lock spell: glowing chain shapes hanging across the door with a large glowing padlock shape in the middle. One of these days I'll get to it...

 

Do you think there's a way to do an animated magic mouth visual effect? '> Those always seem to show up around a wizard's haunts.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

Do you think there's a way to do an animated magic mouth visual effect? '> Those always seem to show up around a wizard's haunts.

FWIW, Dobervich already did an animated magic mouth.  It's been in CEP for a while, IIRC.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Birdman076]

               

 

I kinda did some icons. Been sitting on 1000s for years now and don't have a whole lot of time working 2+ jobs these days but it pains me to sit on this stuff and not use it. So, i've converted to tga but they need to be named properly, I can pass them onto to anyone and everyone if someone has the time to rename them?

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

               

Sorry - been thoroughly distracted by Diwali celebrations with some friends - and annoying everyone by constantly making detailed notes and images of festival lanterns and so forth which will immediately get hit with bricks for the Maldrapur Chronicles... Forgot all about so-called Wizard Towers... So, where was I? Hm. Rubbish Wizard Tower Number Six...

Why it's sat in an estuary, I do not know.

As is clear, this one's a sort of tall, somewhat delicate looking, spindly thing. With bits on. All very elegant, but likely to come crashing down in a heap of sundered rubble when huge Spleen Beasts attack. Or if a strong wind blows.

The closer one gets to it, the less architecturally likely it looks.

The one large, solid bit of tower is, for reasons only known to crazed, debased, so-called architects (found frothing madly in a mouldy sanatorium somewhere), stuck up in the air, supported upon a daft tangle of filigree nonsense that doesn't look well suited to supporting a Sumo Rodent let alone a dirty great tower.

Fear the Insane Architects of Doom, for they are Obvious Mentals.

The Deluded Shabby Hyena Article denies all accusations of actually being the Deranged Architect. It was some completely other different Shabby Hyena of near identical appearance.

Oh yes, and that spiral staircase is a tad doubtful as well. I mean, what's wrong with these damned wizards? Why can't they just put their front door on the ground like anybody else? No, they've got to stick it sixty feet in the air and then build a whopping great weirdo thing just to reach it without the aid of levitation powers or the surreptitious casting of a "Become Rubbish Bird" spell. Idiots.

You'll just have to accept the moderately pathetic and feeble excuse that the entire structure is somehow supported by High Incomprehensible Arcane Forces. And string.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_3RavensMore]

               

PHoD, is that spiral stair walkable? 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

               

As far as I know, it's (essentially) impossible to walk on a Placeable's walkmesh. A PWK simply stops you charging headlong straight through brick walls or tree trunks or whatever. You require a WOK, which is only used for Tile models (and Chinese cookery), to actually go clambering about on something. To the best of my knowledge you can't nail a WOK to a Placeable.

Tried that once. Didn't work.

 

Even tried calling the Placeable a Tile instead of a Character, but the game engine still just looked at me sadly and shook its head in despair ay my ill-advised and unethical experiments.

 

Also, the Spiral Stair in question, much as I'd love to make it climbable, is a tight spiral which would require three (possibly even four) layers of walkable mesh overlapping each other, which wouldn't be possible even if it were a Tile.

 

So the answer is, basically, "no" with additional outbursts of frustrated "nnrrrrgh, ghungh, pfffftht!" noises sweeping in from the east as the Shabby Hyena Weirdo whumps repeatedly off the stairs, fails to ascend, becomes vengeful and embittered and morosely nails an Area Transition Trigger to the ground at the foot of the stairs instead...

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

               

And in the grand and honourable tradition of Starting a Post with a Response to a Question and FORGETTING TO ACTUALLY POST YOUR POST by the time you Finish Answering the Question... heeeeeeere's Number Seven (which should have been in the box above)...

Had to make one out of wood. Had to... They made me do it.

They?

Er... Yes, you know, higher forces, unknowable cosmic influences, nameless thingies, that sort of stuff... um, well, Fifi, actually.

She said "I need a sort of wooden tower with a big balcony all around and lots of big windows"... I said I wasn't doing one of those, Fifi said something else that I shan't repeat and suddenly I'm making a wooden blob with balcony and windows... I'd assign strange and mysterious psychic powers to Fifi if it wasn't that I know perfectly well it's just a good old fashioned mix of brutality and seduction.

Since the textures for both sorts of window were already in the Big Bag marked "wiztow", it didn't seem too problematical to indulge my shapelier and (allegedly) better half - and also it hurts less to do what she says.

Before anyone asks, the rubbery balcony is not walkable, being a Placeable and all that rubbish about PWKs and WOKs Buffalo and so forth... Actually, no buffalo are involved. At least, not that I'm aware of. Unless there's some insidious conspiracy of Digital MicroBuffaloes going on that I'm unaware of... I'll shut up now before I start to sound strange...

That's the last of them - all the Wizard Towers I did... I MIGHT do a couple more before the end of the month, maybe, depending upon time, but probably not. Busy hitting other stuff with bricks now. And checking under the carpets and behind furniture and beneath Aliens to see if there are any Malevolent Buffalo of Improbable Smallness lurking insidiously...

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

I updated the summoning circle to have an animated aurora-like appearance by using a three-frame animesh right and left. This on top of the base glow looks a lot better than previously. I also updated the stone hands by removing the stretched texture and replacing it with the face normal-oriented texture map.

 

I'm not sure if I will complete the hands as planned, but instead allow them to be modified for various use later, using the large knocker-looking chain link as a base for something else. I was going to make a spectral chain texture, but I'm not sure how good that would look given that you can move the hands as placeables. I think I will omit it, and just leave these open for interpretation/modification later. Somebody else can do placeable chain sections, or otherwise emit a spectral chain from point to point without a placeable.

 

I started work on some higher quality lecterns, but I don't know if I will finish that, as I started work on some crypt library tiles, based heavily on tiles in Drakensang Online, and mixed with content from Dungeon Keeper 2. I'm going for a tiny tileset which can be used to create wizard rooms within a tower, or in a dungeon, without lending any idea what shape the structure housing the library actually is. I'm doing squared-off tiles, with no visible access to the outside world.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_3RavensMore]

               

PHoD, for some reason I thought the towers were tiles. 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Not that we need any more placeable books, but I needed to make these to fill a book shelf anyway. They're higher poly than normal placeables, giving them a softer or beaten-up look.

 

 

and a few more

 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

PHoD, for some reason I thought the towers were tiles. 

You know, it's too bad it's so (seemingly) difficult to get new tiles into an existing tileset.  AFAIK, every additional tile (even variations), have to be added to the .SET.

 

Can someone familiar with tilesets chime in on whether there is a way to add a variation (specifically a variation) to an existing tile without having to touch the .SET?  Other than replacing an existing tile in a tileset, are there any "drop in" solutions for tiles at all?

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_3RavensMore]

               

All that I do is copy the .set file entry for the tile I want to duplicate, add it to the end of the tile list as a new tile, and increment the total tiles by 1.  That seems to work for me.  I know, that's editing the .set file, but compared to everything else in making/editing a tile, that's the easiest part.  I don't think there's a way to do it any other way, but I could very easily be wrong. 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               

@MD Any plans to convert those books to item icons as well? If you do, grab the scripts from my micro maps so that they can be picked up, placed in the PC's inventory and dropped back down as placeables again.

 

TR