Fall 2009 Design Contest

[manikus]

I did finish both the stairs up and down, but I may still do telelporters. I can't say that I'm terribly happy with the compromise of 3D versus one-point perspective. I ended up doing one-point, but with textures...

Hey, this post made me a Harper.

[Uatu]

Hmm - what you speak of is so very complicated I don't even know if what I am doing is 3D or 1-point-perspective...

[Dinonykos]

Would I be impolite when I asked you for showing the stairs? Did you do the spiral thing, or something like this?:

I think the problem is that slots H, P, and J are used not only for the central distant walls. However, in most dungeons, you won't be able to reach positions where the inconsistency would be visible, and furthermore, one won't look very critically at this, I assume...

[manikus]

Let's just say, my wall doesn't look as nice as yours, Dinonykos. But, I'm going to steal your method and do it that way.

There is an obvious problem with the wall, and I was going to fix that by making a special to allow it to go the rest of the way up. There is another issue I have with the way I made the wall and it's placement on my map. Your style, Dinonykos, will not only look better, but it will solve the issue I have with placement, without needing to redo my map.

For your entertainment, here's what I did. Ouch! :[ (Please note, the backdrop is my checkered floor template and not the actual backdrop I'll be using.)

[Shadow Stranger]

Original Gold Box games swept stairs under the carpet by using the tunnel graphic. 3D AD&D games may give hints on how to handle the perspective. A bit of shadow at the top might help.

[manikus]

I've totally redone/am redoing the stairs to be the same kinds as Dinonykos showed with his awesome wall.

[Dinonykos]

Well, your approach is quite interesting. It is not impossible to do it that way and also to have it more or less perspectively right in the distance, however, you will need two, and in case the stairs should not only be used in a 1-square-width corridor, but also in rooms with 2 squares width, four walls to accomplish it. Thus in your screenshots, the stairs should consist of slots A and B from two different walls, meeting in the center of the viewport, instead of slot E from a wall in front of the party. Maybe you already did it that way, I cannot conclude from the screenshot...

I thought about making a huge treehouse earlier, in which a similar kind of stair would be used, however, I dropped that idea because it would be very much graphical effort. With your stairs, it's more or less the same. The player of course will consider it impressive, but it will take days until it is really convincing...

If you still have not totally lost hope of getting somehing like this done, I could try to come up with templates (they are just forming somewhere in my brain). While thinking about it, I realize that to make it absolutely perfect, 8 walls are needed...
My treehouse stairs would have been easier, since with organic looking walls, it is easier to hide minor perspective inconsistencies...

By the way, any progress with the channels? I guess I asked earlier, but I darkly remember you were distracted by other things...

[Dinonykos]

Whow, I forgot that you would also need some walls for the stairs to go back down... And maybe you want the player to be capable of looking down into the room from which the stairs ascend? This is even more interesting than I thought some minutes ago.

[manikus]

I did use slots A and B. Without doing that the side walls would have covered up the stairs.

I've totally abandoned these stairs... It was a learning experience. There was just far more work left to do to make them work than to start over from scratch making walls similar to yours posted above, Dinonykos. I would still like to try and finish my contest entry on time, though I am beginning to wonder if that will happen.

To what channels were you referring, Dinonykos? Do you mean sewers? I don't have any plans at this moment for doing any more special art projects for a while, unless creating a bookshelf wall counts.

[Dinonykos]

At least theoretically, you could also have used slot E, athough I admit it would be very strange to do such a wall...

Well, we discussed rounded sewer walls earlier. I guess it was more than 2 years ago, and I myself have not yet done anything about it.
BTW, I think I am finished with the design, but the tutorial... For me it is a pain. Should be possible to do it, though.