My First Project in Illustrator

[su_liam]

It's pretty easy to get okay results out of Bryce. Better quality imagery is much more difficult, and precise measurement...? Yeah, that might be for the expert... I d'no, never managed it.

BTW, I tried importing my terrain into Blender as an obj. Twice. First time I exported at really high grid resolution. Took forever to export. Ran just over 130MB(1,216,800 polys). When I finally got to try importing it Blender farted and fell over dead. Tried exporting it at a lower polygon count(about 5.7 MB, 58,482 polys). Looked terrible. Still slow. Somewhere in between might look better. But it wouldn't be quick.

Texturing in Blender can be kind of a nightmare, too. That thing has a lot of power under the hood, but it's like driving a 454 Cobra. Lots of ditch time.

[su_liam]

This is probably the last bit of play I'll do with this terrain. Bryce again, 'cause Blender was being a noodge. The 2.5 Alpha can't seem to import .obj yet. And I can't get a sufficiently detailed obj in a size small enough for 2.49 to handle(goes straight from rounded and lame to slow and crashy . I think I have a good water tex here. I saved it for more serious work. I added a dark lower surface to hide the edges of the HF and then clipped the lower elevations of the HF to break up the edges. I think these two ideas, at least will prove useful. For good climate maps I need to create a set of selections based on elevation, latitude and combinations of the two, as well as distance from water. Maybe I'll take it into Wilbur for that and some light erosion. Maybe not... I really need to get back to more serious things like Hydrology, Long-term Climate Change, Remote Sensing and A Burphaban Island. Not necessarily in that order .

EDIT: Might be worthwhile to paint in some surf around the edges. Wouldn't necessarily be in scale, but neither is the transparency. Could give a nice illusion of reality.

[Steel General]

I don't understand some of terminology and such that you're using - but I do find it interesting to see how this is progressing

[su_liam]

I'm not sure what the terminology issue is. I have two versions of Blender on my computer. One is the 2.49 version, stable, but staid and… 32-bit. The other is the 2.5 Alpha. All kinds of new bells and whistles, doesn't really work yet. An alpha, what can you do?

The water tex? I just found a good looking set of settings for the water surface. Unfortunately, this good looking water has a bit of transparency and the square region isn't perfectly centered in the view. Annoyingly the edges of the terrain show through. So I did two things. First I made another flat surface under the terrain and water surfaces. This worked, but you could still see the straight edges of the terrain. Then I used a feature in the Bryce Terrain Editor to clip the lower elevations in the terrain leaving void areas where the elevation was below a given value. Instead of laser-straight edges you simply saw the terrain disappear into the depths of the water. More satisfactory.

In other news, I just found out that Bryce has a new version out, 6.3. Yay! They have also put out a public beta of Bryce 7. It has a type of instancing. Vegetation is finally not entirely a nightmare in Bryce. As an aside, having nothing to do with my current project, I have attached an image with vegetation. Two separate vegetation types and multiple instances. This is the first time I've done vegetation in Bryce beyond one or two lame-looking trees in the middle of a tiny island.

[su_liam]

Desa Hutan means Forest Village, Seberan means Far Side(across the river). This is at the confluence of the Air Mengalir(Flowing Water), and Sungai Hitam(Black River) rivers. The capital of this little kingdom in the tropical northwest of the Burphaban continent is Takhta Raja(Royal Throne). I also have a couple of pictures of a city model I built with my kids Connor and Sophie. The North Arrow is only an approximate indicator. In the view Seberan is in the foreground, while Desa Hutan is just across the river. Much of the area beyond these little towns is a thick, nearly impenetrable jungle surrounding this little waypoint outpost of civilisation. In this part of the world, Desa Hutan is considered a major trade center.

EDIT: As you can see from these maps, I am definitely approaching the limits of my base maps. Probably time to do a little local refining.

[su_liam]

Now this world has, to all appearances has a lot of sapient races(Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Orcs, Goblins, Humans, Trolls, Ogres, Reptile Men and Hobgoblins). This isn't even including the clearly the clearly magical horrors and wonders, such as Demons, Angels, Fairies, Vampires and all manner of Zombies. Trying to rationalize the evolutionary tree of any classic swords-and-monsters fantasy world is challenging, and this one is pretty much an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink world. I'm mostly a science-fiction guy, that gives me two problems when I'm in a fantasy mood. Firstly, I still kind of want a sort of kinda semi-reasonable world. I might want to have a ship from the Interstellar Federation land there when I decide I want a Space game, but ain't tired of my characters yet . So here is my attempt at bringing a touch of Newton and Darwin into my insanely hyper-diverse Zauberland.

First off, Humans, Goblins, maybe some others like the Trolls? Yeah, they ain't from around here! They showed up within the living memory of some elves. Somehow they came here from their respective worlds. Maybe they were just pulled here from their medieval huts by some magical storm or maybe they are survivors of colonies placed before the great war between the First Human Empire and the Gabrook Interglobal Confraternity knocked them to the ground. I'm still considering the history. Suffice to say, Humans, Goblins and by extension Hobgoblins didn't evolve here. As would be expected by any human scientist of the 21st century, these two separate and separately evolved races are indeed separate species and thus incapable of interbreeding. Fortunately, they are fairly compatible biochemically, at least to the point of being able to eat the same things, which are just the kind of things they found on this world.

Now onto the definitely native folk. The Elves, Dwarves, Halflings and Orcs do come from this world. Now there are a lot of headaches for a biologist on this world. Many of the plants and lower animals on this planet are very familiar to humans(oaks, apples, pines, peaches, deer, wolves, and squirrels to name a few) and some are recognizable to the Goblins(parasol trees, shoreweed, stingbush, spiderdogs and songfish to give human names to a few), this isn't the major headache. Apparently, if humans got here by their own devices, they would already have noted that the Precursors, before they lost interest in this plane, seem to have gone on a massive terraforming orgy through a major portion of known space, and also seemed to borrow genetic material from any naturally evolved ecology they found that was close enough biochemically to their own digestive needs. On the other hand, while it's conceivable that the locals are hominids evolved from primate stock planted by the Precursors, the possibility of such things as half-orcs and half-elves is rather shocking. More shocking, is the Reptile Men, brought into being through the breeding of orcs with goblins(?). Fortunately half-elves aren't all that common 'cause there just that many elves around any more, halflings are chummy but they usually draw the line a bit short of interbreeding and dwarves... not as chummy as the halflings, not as hedonistic as the elves, and lacking in the orcish love of rape-and-pillage, it doesn't come up much. If a scientifically advanced galactic culture finds its way here I'll leave that whole headache to their scientists.

Elves and Dwarves are really the same species. Until they mature at about thirty years of age(Earth years), the children are fairly similar to each other and to halflings(who reach maturity at about twenty-five and of a pretty similar size to the their contemporaries). After maturity, the real differences between the three groups comes down to the use of magic and their ability to alter their own shape. Halflings are for the most part uninterested in magic and exercise no capacity to alter their form. They age gracefully and gently till their in their nineties and usually pass on comfortably before their hundredth birthday. Dwarves focus on attaining a respectable and attractive personal appearance, which they will maintain for the remainder of their lives. This appearance tends to be swarthy, portly and hirsute even for females. Dwarven magic is typically specialized towards their interests in tinkering, delving, and mining with a focus on the geomantic arts and enchantment. Elves retain the ability to change their appearance as their tastes, fashions and situations change. This is a gradual process taking potentially decades. Fortunately, elves are far from flighty in their sense of aesthetics and tend to approach what they consider to be an optimum fairly quickly, making only minor modifications over their lifetimes. Sometimes, in times of great stress and responsibility, elves attain a more gnarly and formidable appearance, still beautiful, but oftimes terrifying in its awesome grimness. This has become more common among the great elven leaders as they watch and try to overcome their race's decline. Elven magic, while no more or less powerful than that of the dwarves is often flashier as befits their cultural nature and more generalized. Elven healers are greatly sought after, being the only real specialists in elven magic.

Reptile Men are the only hybrid folk to have created a truly distinct culture of their own, half-orcs being hunted among orcs and driven to the status of underworld thugs in human culture, and half-elves having the cultural adaptability to do quite well for themselves in either of their parent's cultures. The Reptile Men came into being long ago after a raid by orcs on a goblin village. The youths proved too tough for either orcs or goblins to eradicate, but were driven out into less hospitable habitats where they proceeded to prosper and create a society of their own. Reptile Men are smart, incredibly tough, adaptable, and, while they lack the mindless aggression of their orc parents, they are highly territorial and react violently to trespassers in the unpleasant places to which they have been relegated.

In terms of spatial distribution, the northern node of the Al Burphaban continent was largely populated by halflings, the larger southern node was distributed between the great elven empire in the lowlands and the cavern fastnesses of the dwarves burrowed under the mountains. Orcs dominated the great Angloia island in the south, now held by the human Grand Imperium. Goblins first colonized the southernmost tip of the Al Burphaban continent, near Wilaya Janubi. Humans colonized coastal enclaves on Angloia and up and down the west coast of Angloia. The First Imperium rose by largely exterminating the orcs of Angloia, after which it acquired most of the human enclaves on the continent by conquest and peaceful diplomacy. As the Elves declined the Goblin Kingdom and the Imperium expanded to fill the vacuum. In the north humans colonies grew alongside the halfling communities from west to east. After the fall of the First Imperium the goblins expanded up the west coast to Al Qallaffiyeh Bay. During the time when the goblin kingdom was about halfway through expanding to its current size a human proselyte succeeded in converting the goblin king to Islam. Under islam, the goblins were more tolerant to humans, even allowing them to retain their cultures if they agree to abide by moslem goblin rule. In the regions around Al Qallaffiyeh Bay over half the population is still human. The successor states to the human empire in the north were far less peaceful and tolerant. In many places, halflings were reduced to second-class status, relegated to ghettos in many of the human kingdoms of the north. In some places, the successor states tried to exterminate the halflings. These kingdoms were less than successful, and in their stead are now some of the few remaining halfling-dominated states. Fortunately for humans, halflings are poor with concepts like revenge and grudges, preferring peaceful coexistence.

[Coyotemax]

Wow.

You could have an entire series of novels based just on that alone! (or decades of gaming fun)

That's great, I wouldn't have any problem with the suspension of disbelief aspect. there's enough thought in there to make my inner scientist happy

[su_liam]

Yeah it's coming out a little coredump-wise, 'cause it's stuff I keep thinking about, like while I'm doing dishes(or... homework) and I really need to just get down on, um… paper. I should also put down my story of the Red Queen and the Vampire King, before it completely molds.

[su_liam]

First off, my ideas on skeletons, zombies and mummies. These are kind of derived from the GURPS Fantasy rules. Something true of a lot of things I do, especially in the fantasy genre. Okay, so: mummies > zombies > skeletons. In other words, mummies are tough SOBs, they'll eat a double load of buckshot and just keep comin', zombies are equally tough, but decay will get them in the end, skeletons... yeah throw a whole lot of 'em at the enemy, should slow 'em down… maybe. Now zombies are pretty easy for a necromancer to make: find a fresh corpse, say a little incantation and sprinkle a little of the cheap fairy dust. Can't find a fresh corpse, take matters into your own hands, "Say hello to my little friend!" Skeleton: same technique, exactly, but why bother? They aren't worth much and are just as expensive as the much better zombie, what you can't find any fresh corpses? Over time, as decay sets in, zombies become skeletons. Skeletons are forever so long as they don't trip over legos or some other trivial obstruction and break themselves. Mummies are expensive, they take a lot of effort to create and require expensive material components. This pretty much follows those GURPS rules I was talking about. The difference is, you can't just wave your hands over an existing mummified corpse. If the corpse is fairly fresh you get a well wrapped salted zombie, if its had time to season you get a skeleton in bandages. Eh... No, this is evil. It takes weeks and starts with a live subject. The necromancer kills his victim slowly, saying his incantations and sprinkling his (EXPENSIVE) fairy dust while removing a vital organ here, packing salt in there, draining fluids... A true mummy is clearly the work of a sadistic inhuman monster. We're talkin' Pinochet bad here. Fortunately they're also kind of a pain to create. Usually requires blood and bits of flesh from the caster and a lot of time and effort. Skeletons, zombies and mummies have the huge advantage of being perfectly loyal. They will fight for their master until they are a stack of broken bones on the ground. There is no Turn Zombie, etc spell, they can only be Dispelled or destroyed. Something like Turn Undead could cause them to ignore your party, but any attempt to turn them against their creator is futile. Of course if the necromancer has a mishap while creating his undead monster, well… he will probably have created a monster implacably bent on his immediate destruction. Not a lot in between. These are very simple clear entities without guile or gorm.

Vampires. Where did they come from? Nobody knows. As far as anyone can tell, all vampires are of human stock, which sets a limit to how long they've been around. When a vampire feeds on a human, instead of ingesting the life force of his victim, he can feed it back in a corrupted form. This does not feed the vampire's dependence on blood, and in fact costs him some of his own… puissance. When he's done, though, he has a thrall, a powerful vampire slave who, for a time, will obey his every command, even unto it's own destruction. This is a temporary thralldom though, in some cases a particularly powerful sire could hold its thralls for years or even decades. When the younger vampire breaks his thrall, as inevitably happens, his first goal is to destroy his sire after that to escape. If the sire manages to evade death and the erstwhile thrall escapes the attempt with his life(this isn't a totally self-sacrificial compulsion, though the ex-thrall will often take some pretty stupid risks to kill his old master). Actually, given the difficulties inherent in this life-cycle, siring of thralls might need to be made easier, perhaps just a normal side-effect of feeding. In that case you could see a sire commanding his less-gifted thralls to stake themselves to save himself the trouble. Eventually, after the compulsion passes, the former thrall and his sire can come to cooperate as equals. At least as well as any two evil, brilliantly manipulative, sociopathic monsters that don't play well with others… Yeah. Anyway. This isn't to say there isn't room in my world for romantic vampires, oh dearie no, but they aren't all covered with glitter and you really don't want your daughter getting involved in that sort of relationship.

Resurrection is sometimes considered to be one of the more socially acceptable necromantic activities, but the creation of revenant life is not without its hazards. One theory about the origin of vampires involves a resurrection spell gone catastrophically wrong. For other examples of ways in which resurrection could go wrong, I would suggest reading the story of the Monkey's Paw and Pet Sematary. My world will definitely have some toxic dumping grounds for this sort of necromantic oopsie...

[Steel General]

Interesting stuff here Su_Liam