Labyrinth With Basic Lighting

Here are some shots of Labyrinth components from inside of Realm Crafter Standard.

One thing that is noticeable to me are some lighting artifacts where breaks in the mesh occur (over the doors for example). Not much I can so about that as the models were created using a "brush" application that builds the model in sections, and that's just the way it renders. Personally, I feel the look of the lighting and shadows is well worth it.

I'm interested in how people feel that might use a graphic set like this in their games, could you live with the lighting artifacts?

Also, how do you feel about the current level of texture repetition, and is there too much clutter around the doors?

-D

The Labrynith Level Contruction Set

It's been an unusual week. My WIP post in one game engine forum regarding my upcoming dungeon kit was met with a mix of both anticipation and troll flame. I think the trolls successfully trashed the thread for everyone. A forum moderator even insisted that I was posting work by another artist. Which is just straight crap! Just looking at the screen shots you can tell it is plainly not the same textures or models. I contacted the "other" artist and discovered that he also created a Dungeon Kit about 4 years ago. While explaining to him the inspiration for my work, it's features, and how it was unique, I realized that maybe my project was perhaps poorly named.

What I am creating is really a game developer kit containing the graphic assets for one or more sprawling labyrinth(s) of rooms, passages, and stairs - Some of which may be used used as a traditional "dungeon", but it is really more expansive than a medieval type of prison. Of course the developer using the set could create a level with very few rooms to make a classic dungeon, but they could also create something on the scale of Tolkien's Mines of Moria, which became known as a "dungeon" in the D&D sense.

Some of the design features I've worked into the set are a door coupling system to allow some forgiveness when positioning the rooms. It gives a little more margin for error. The components of the set are grid based, normal components are 1-4 squares in length and or width and 1 or 2 squares high.

The kit is being produced to allow export to MAP format, which means curves are not an easy thing. So geometry wise, it's not very organic and may look a bit dated. I also don't currently have the means to attach normal maps to my exports in non obj format. So what I had to do was bake the texture in ZBrush, and then tack that 2d baked texture onto the models. I think it came out looking pretty good considering, but it doesn't have the nice shader 3d effect of true normals. On the positive side, you can use them in engines without advance shader support.

I've done a lot of work on the project this week, adding a more finalized texture set and about 20 more components.

Click the pic to zoom in!

Dungeons For Realm Crafter Standard

It took a bit of work, but I managed to work out a pipeline that gets my buildings file format properly into Realm Crafter Standard. So, I am planning to include a release of my modular dungeon kit this fall in the Realm Crafter format as well as for TGE.

This screen capture shows a curved hallway section of the kit that I used for testing. You can zoom in by double clicking the pic.

More For The Store

I was intending not to create any more TGE specific art, instead planning a software upgrade that would allow proper normal maps to be assigned to 3d models so that they could be used in more current game engines like TGEA, T3d, Unity 3d, ShiVa, etc... But upgrading the software needed to create that level of work has been slow going as it is a bit expensive.

In the mean time, I've fallen back to creating some MAP/DIF work for ye old die hards using TGE. Running with my recent dungeon efforts, I have started a fully modular dungeon system that will allow the developer to manually connect a series of pre-made halls and rooms to create completely custom dungeon-crawl style level(s).

So far I am up to 44 parts in 2 texture schemes. Most are various sized rooms and halls with 1-4 doorways, but I'm also creating smaller "parts" like plain floors or walls so that the developer can build a totally unique type of room or hall to best fit their needs.

Unlike previous TGE interior releases we have made, this one will come with optional animated doors, and DTS dungeon props.

I also intend to include 3 complete dungeon levels so that developers can quickly drop a pre-made level into their game.

I expect to make this available in our online store at www.golemgraphics.ca some time in the fall.