The City of Darincedon, Week 1.

The city of Darincedon is beginning to come alive, one building at a time. Right now, it is two streets, one in, and 3-4 foundations where houses and other buildings will be added later.

Some of the textures are final, some are not. The models that are in place, are probably final, but the skins are definately not ready. Here are some screenies of what exists so far:

Click to enlarge:



The view from 3d Gamestudio (A7 Engine). The white lines are level geometry built in Gamestudio. The blue lines are models built in trueSpace 7.6. The purple are sprites made in Photoshop. The yellow orbs are lights.

From the top left, clockwise: Birds-eye view, 3d View, Back, Side

The level is further divided into groups so if I want to edit one building, I select it, scope down and do what I need to do. What this does is it makes everything else in the level invisible so I don't work in a cluttered workspace. This also enables me to do macroscopic edits to a building without having to select everything by hand.



Here is another angle



This is another shot in the editor, with the 3d screen maximized. Here you can see the street between the inn and the bakery (the inn is to the left, the bakery is the unfinished building to the right.

The cobblestone street will be getting a new texture, as will the texture. The bakery will be recieving walls as soon as the inn is finished. I want to get the half-timber design in the inn and finish the level geometry within. Then light map the inn, then move on to the bakery.

I might add windows to the bottom floor of the inn, but I'm not sure how I want to do that, so I haven't done it yet.

The black squares are sprites. They're suppose to simulate the halos that are around a streetlamp at night. The editor's 3d view does not do overlay (removal of black areas) or transparencies so you don't get a good view of the effect from this screen. When I run the game, a script sets those sprites to transparent and overlay.



From above, looking down on the unfinished in. The large stone blocks you see (one by the stable and the other is on the bottom to the right) are going to be closed houses (houses the player can't enter)



Another birds eye view in the editor. Circled is Tomas's secret hide-out, which is accessed through the bakery. This area is underground.



Here is a shot in the map preview after the scene was compiled. I compile often since it allows me to preview the map and check the geometry, make sure everything looks right.

Since this is preview mode, the script isn't running, therefore the streetlamp halo is opaque. But the halo is a targa file with an alpha channel, which allows for certain parts to not be drawn.

There is a static light sitting over both streetlamps. RGB(200,150,0), range 400 units.



This shot looks down the street from the stable. It is still dark in that area because there are no lights there yet. Right now, the game's resolution is 640x480 and I will increase that later.



This dark preview shot shows the interior of the ground floor of the inn. Later, it will be detailed with several tables, ale barrels, chairs, a fireplace, ale bottles, wine bottles, steins, and other items. Upstairs is a hallway with six closed rooms. The walls will also take on a half timber design. The opening is a back door that opens to another street. Eventually, the room will be populated with patrons, a barmaid, an innkeeper, and cooks.

There is also a cellar that will hold barrels and crates.

It will also be brightly lit, but since I have nothing inside, I would not know where to put the lighting yet.



This was shot while running the level with the scripts active. Right now, I have a model that moves around via the WSAD keys just so I can check collision detection and make sure that doorways are wide and high enough and to make sure that the character can climb stairs.

This room will be a meeting hall. The bookshelves will be reskinned and the table replaced. The fireplace will be retextured and a fire will be put in it, as well as a dynamic light that simulates a fire flicker.



And last, here's a shot after the character comes out of the hide out, out of the bakery and onto the street. Here I hoped to get a screenshot of the lamp halo but it didn't show up in the screenshot.

The lampposts will be reskinned. But A7 doesn't draw unskinned models so I threw something on to get the model to show up.

while(thisCodeDoesntWork)
{
   smashComputer();  //take out some pent out anger
   throwDartsAtBoss();  //take out more anger
   sleep(6*60*60);  //sleep six hours
}