Magical House Mod

[ub3rman123]

So this platform with the tower and rooms on it would be floating above the explorable place?

[JulianSull]

It could be. Originally I thought of it as more of a magical platform which held the different rooms inside of it magically and switched between them. Then one side would have the rocks of the asteroid on it so the player could enter the special areas, including a locked room.

The idea behind this house is I want to to work for two types of players: Explorative and Achievers. There should be the option of exploring the entire house and all of the different areas and there should be spells and buttons to quickly move your from place to place. The player can explore or actually use the house.

I think if we have it floating it will be easier for the player to see the alchemy tower and we could put the doors to the other outdoor rooms just below it. We would however need to create some kind of elevator. Now that I think about it, we could just use a button that teleports you up and down so that might work =D.

[ub3rman123]

Another quick mock-up.

You could put a teleporter on the platform that leads down to the asteroid's surface, but I'm not sure what you plan to do with the surface.

The modeling on the platform is finished, though.

[JulianSull]

The reason the asteroid is so big is because there are a number of things I can do with it. For instance, the trainers can have special obstacles that go out onto the asteroid and the magical testing facility will have to have a lot of space for the big spells like Nuclear Blast. I like that design though.

[ub3rman123]

So if that desgin's okay I'm gonna start fleshing out the tower and columns.

How large will this asteroid surface be? What keeps the player from just wandering 'til they fall off?

I'm thinking something like what was in the Midas Magic water plane. Use the cave chasm set with it very large and without a roof.

[JulianSull]

I was thinking that the topography of the asteroid itself would keep them on. So basically, the player would have some areas to explore, but the rocks/mountains restrict the player from going too far. Otherwise we would need to create a miniture planet. One thing I'm unsure about is how to retain the day night system. There is no atmosphere so there is no sky in this. That means we would constantly need to paint the sky with a starry texture and leave the sun in the sky. I know it can be done...just not sure on how it is done.

EDIT: The Asteroid will be very big.

Edited January 17, 2011 by JulianSull

[ub3rman123]

How about having the whole thing in an interior?

View distance might be a problem, but it can be faked with scaling.

[JulianSull]

So just a sky box then? Shouldn't be too hard. We'd need to create the asteroid itself though. Actually, why not just a worldspace with a sky box?

Edited January 17, 2011 by JulianSull

[ub3rman123]

I'm not sure about how well that'd work. I've found that an interior can be a lot more controlled than a worldspace. If we set the sky to black in a worldspace, it'd have to be lit by hand. Much easier to specify an ambient light in an interior.

If it's possible, you could set the sun color to a dark gray color. There'd be no day or night, though. I don't think... I don't have much experience altering light and sun colors.

[JulianSull]

True, but it leaves two problems. Some spells only work outside, so the spell testing area wouldn't work. Also we would have to model the entire asteroid which would be a ton of work =/.

EDIT: It might work if we just use a lot of meshes instead of one giant mesh...Maybe if you create just one giant asteroid instead and a few smaller rocks for me to play around with. I won't be able to make too many hills...but I think I can work with it.

Edited January 18, 2011 by JulianSull

[ub3rman123]

Oh yeah... Forgot about the interior thing on Midas Magic. It'll have to be an exterior.

[JulianSull]

I don't know if you saw this but:

http://www.tesnexus.com/news/index.php?id=805

It's a pretty big contest. I've been working out a quest to get the house and some dialogue needed. I'm going to finish it up and try to get some more people on this. It'd be nice to win and if we make this as planned, I really think this could be an easy winner.

[ub3rman123]

How do you plan to make it Nexusian?

Also, I'm not 18 yet, so I could just give you the meshes and call it a resource.

[JulianSull]

For one, the areas are designed and partially inspired by Midas magic and PJs spells. Also, idk if you saw but the synth had key + key = key to hidden room. Well, i think this settles what the hidden room will be about =D. Also, a Nexus is a series of connected groups...so maybe a slight modification to the design could make this a reality.

EDIT: Little update: I added a couple of rooms. Shouldn't be too hard for me to make up since they're inside and not scripted. I have designed the overall story for how you get this house and why it exists and I'm working on setting up all the necessary lines for every character. Looks like there are 6 major characters, 1 minor and 1 super minor. Five of the characters will work in the house, one helps you find it, one starts the quest and one is the antagonist (the previous owner).

Edited January 20, 2011 by JulianSull

[ub3rman123]

I've actually gotten myself involved into another entry for the competition (And some untimely school projects...), so I'll have to work on that more. I'll make the more necessary models that you can't fake with a resource, though.

Edit: Problem. The rules for the competition are "contain the authors own work ONLY. You cannot use other author’s content from any other modification". So if you plan to enter this in the competition, I can't help you in any way.

[JulianSull]

In that case I think I'll work on a separate mini project while I work on this one (probably a little bit more slowly)

[ub3rman123]

Continuing work... I'm on the tower now. What should the roof of it be? Flat on top? What I have right now is a thin cylinder with 3 levels of ring-shaped windows going around it.

How about making it match the columns in style? The cylinder shape seems a bit boring.

[JulianSull]

What do you have the columns looking like right now?

[ub3rman123]

Haven't started on those yet. I'm thinking of doing the architecture like that Byzantine style I mentioned earlier. Painted tan stone colors, with many details in it like recesses and such.

[JulianSull]

So like one of these guys?

http://i00.i.aliimg.com/img/imagerepos/gd/zh/gdzhongzhen/1268642597045_hz_fileserver3_1032175.jpg

[ub3rman123]

Pretty much, yeah.

Takea look at this tower.

[JulianSull]

Looks good, just make sure there is a good spot for a battle at the top of the tower. Should be outside on the roof

[ub3rman123]

Basic shaping of the tower. I'll add windows and details in the style of that image I linked to it, and the roof'll be flat as it is.

[JulianSull]

Looks great. I'm finishing up the dialogue. After I review it I'm going to start looking for VAs and plan out some gameplay.

[ub3rman123]

.

I'm not sure if the interior will be too small in terms of floorspace or if the ceilings will be too high if this only goes 3 floors.

What'll be inside the tower again?