Crown of the Immortals

Shadowfall's by no means dead- but I will for a while be transferring my energies to helping with THIS project:

crownoftheimmortals.blogspot.com

I think if you take a look at some of the screenies, already you can see why I'm excited.

Back, after two months

It's been a while. Someone's mentioned how Shadowfall's going- well, I played over it this week and I'm suffering from a little bit of product dismay; at least, I know I've done a lot of better stuff since. So while I figure out whether it's worth ploughing through and redoing it all, or releasing it as might not be up-to-scratch, I've been working on a few other mini-projects.





One's a sci-fi experiment that won't be released live; the other is a couple of desert areas. And I've spent the last few days coming up with a concept for the Hallowe'en project.





The idea is; one night per year (Hallowe'en) Kelemvor releases the dead and the damned into a pocket plane for a carnival they'll never forget. Plus, if they can complete certain challenges, the damned can return to earth...





Carnival of Souls it is, then.





Captions:
1) Enjoy the light-hearted circus games- lobbing coconuts, say, at severed heads.
2) Meet friendly, like-minded people.
3) Accept the challenges.
4) Find true romance.
5) Face your darkest fears.

Desert Town

First of two desert areas (the second one's a desert city, below, populated with a few Red Wizard encounters) I'm at a loss to include anywhere. And yes, the decor for this one does bear some resemblance to the SoZ screenshots. (Inspired, not stole. Inspired.)

Desert Battle

I'm not sure what I want to do with these two areas. I do like 'em, though- and there's a great new Day/Night 'African Desert' on the Vault which would go great with them.

Kult Screenies

This is the project which will probably never come to light, as it was only really ever an attempt to see how far I could stretch the toolset in terms of making an NWN2 sci-fi module without breaking out the custom content. But I think I've learnt a lot from this in terms of being more adventurous in modding.

But, yes, that is a young Ammon Jerro in the 4th shot- and I do want to use him sometime, if I get a chance, as a romanceable companion, in another mod.

A Night at the Gala (Undercover)

The Masked Ball is...well, not nearly complete (as obvious by the clusters of similar-looking people wearing the same colour, and the single butler wandering around). I'm adding in more movement, more NPCs...some of whom are ambassadors from beloved FR locations.

This section's going to be a bit of fun, really. You're sneaking into the ball under the guise of the Waterdhavian Ambassador- but you can either hurry on and throw away your disguise as quickly as possible, or, if you're feeling cheeky, hang around the ball hob-nobbing with the emissaries, insulting powerful states and baiting Vaxis, the antagonist. Being 'undercover' is also a great way for you to encounter the villain, trade a few (verbal) blows, without it having to end with him/her teleporting away rather than fight.

Also a shot (still messing around with height/distance) of another cutscene from the top of Vaxis' tower. It will be tidier.

Almost forgot...congratulations to the Golden Dragon winners!

Back in town

Returning to the toolset for the first time in ages...I wanted to go for something epic...so I began work on the Forlorn Tower endsequence. I've cut most of the cutscene bars out to avoid spoilers, but I liked the feel of the area already too much not to share!

The mountain on the right-hand side in the second screenshot is going to be Shadowfall...once I can summon the patience to make a 0.1 replica of all the buildings. Creating a 'tower' outside area was fraught with problems, number one among which was the stretched textures. Obviously building the cliffs up a bit, changing angles etc can help towards that...but tbh...it's a tower, it has to be pretty vertical. I was pleasantly surprised with the last screenshot, because the stretching actually gives an impression of speed and falling when the static camera's at that angle. Yeah....deliberate artistic decision...hmm...