OK, so: there are supposed to be more rock layers—the player shouldn’t see any kind of horizon, just layers and layers of rock going up for 30 feet or so. The layers should look less polygontastic. The rock should look like rock. There should actually be a few of these areas, connected by tunnels. That little hollow should have water in it. I’m still not sold on this sky texture. And WTF is up with the lighting?
Buuuut… the project exists, and crappy work that’s done is better than awesome work that doesn’t exist.
I’ve been thinking about minimalist Age concepts, and I think this is going to be the smallest possible thing I’d be happy working on. I’m aiming for a feel similar to the Mojave Desert (lots of inspiration from Red Rock Canyon specifically). It’s not actually an old design, but it’s an aesthetic that’s very nostalgic for me, since I was living near that part of the world when I first played Myst :)
I’m kind of conflicted about how much info to release about it as I work on it, but I think I’ll want to err on the side of “more information, more transparency, use blogging to hold myself accountable” rather than “withhold specifics so that I don’t look like a fool for promising something I never deliver”. I want this project especially to be one that’s an incremental step rather than a monolithic Project TM—I hope that I can have it Really Really Done in under 2 months, and have the basics worked out much sooner than that. I won’t put the thing up for others to actually visit until it’s not-embarrassing-to-me-as-a-developer/artist (that is, until I think it’s at least 3 out of 5 as far as visuals go, and ideally with a journal in the age). But I think I’ll post screenshots and info as often as I feel I’ve made real progress.
OK, so at some point I had the bright idea to make A Writing Desk an IC Uru blog. So this second blog is going to be out-of-character musings about the whole writing-in-character process as well as some accountability for the actual 3D modeling I’m doing. It’s only kind of silly to have two blogs for the same project(s), right?
