The "Too late for the challenge" Dwarf Fortress Challenge

[moutarde]

I'm posting this here instead of the lite challenge forum, because I don't foresee finishing this in the next 5 days. But who knows? If I do, I'll move it over there. Taking the theme very literally, I did all the planning in Dwarf Fortress, with exported images from the game itself, and from an iso viewing program called stonesense. I started by drawing an elevation map of the surface and transforming it into an isometric perspective. The top slice of pie, with the actual fortress being several other slices underneath. Anyways, here's the iso elevation map so far, with horrible, unfinished blending between each layer, and lighting effects that will probably work out nicely.


On a side note, I know this has nothing to do with my real, massive and very unfinished project in the regional/world forum, but Dwarf Fortress ate nearly a month of my life and I need to get this out of my system

[moutarde]

Roughed in a little colour and worked on the blending between elevation levels. Still needs more smudging/blurring, especially around the lower elevations.

[moutarde]

Started blending the elevations together properly (aka the slow way), and it's looking much, much better. Phew! Before you know, I'll be drawing little trees and rocks (and magma!!)

[moutarde]

Yay! Elevations are finished. Next up is to colour it properly, then to start decorating the surface, and finally to start into the fortress proper

[ravells]

This is looking very cool! Have some rep and keep going!

[moutarde]

Thanks Ravells Made my first real stab at colouring this earlier today, and it looked like butt. Gonna have to experiment some I guess.

[moutarde]

Hit some roadblocks and realized I had merged some layers I shouldn't have merged... Blarg! Almost back to the point where I'll be doing some new stuff again. I've been trying to find a boulder brush with no success, or even just a half-decent picture of a boulder. Thanks a lot, Boulder Colorado! :p

[moutarde]

I think I've been stressing out too much over the ground itself. Since it turns out the boulder icons I made are looking pretty cartoon-y when shrunk down to 2% of their original size, I might just end up using all the work I've done so far as a kind of tracing template. I've also realized that I'm probably going to lose what little detail there is on the slopes when I paint in the grassy areas... And to think I havn't even started on the actual fortress yet

[moutarde]

Decided to post new updates to this map in a thread in the regional/world section instead.