More Moondial Madness!!!

Yes indeed,...it's that time again! Time for Richard to request that I add to the existing Darkstarr Moondial once more, due not only to the change in the recent order of the moons in the night sky, but also due to some slight changes in the magical constellation overlay and background stars that exists in the sky-dome itself!

Much like last time, when changes were made to the original Moondial to account for us getting much closer to our actual in-game sky and all its celestial bodies,...this time, with our system incorporating not only the correct moon order, but also the ideology and actual timing of the attacks of the Cabalists and their unholy minions, the Moondials themselves (which Richard always wanted to be functionally-accurate tools of celestial observation) needed to change once again to reflect our most recent updates...

The magical constellation overlay seen when using either the Astrolabe or the Moondials changed only slightly, with me "cleaning up" the lines a bit to organize the night sky into 12 "sectors" roughly in the middle of which each constellation can be found (with the outliers being Chaos and the Principals interlocking circles, which are not currently factored into the attacks of the Cabalists, and are bisected by a line between two sectors)... By gazing into a clear night sky when these items are invoked, you can now easily see the sector line demarcations stretching from one axis of the celestial dome to the other, with the constellations hovering between them either above or below the galactic swath. The three middle horizontal lines pass through the two outlier constellations, with the central horizontal line describing the path of the galactic swath itself. Here's a portion you can see below.


What this means, as far as the Darkstarr Moondial is concerned, is the addition of an extra ring around the outside to which are attached iconic versions of the primary constellations (mimicking the Devotional depictions, of course), and the alignment of their "sectors" as compared to the various moons in orbit around our world.... One then uses the Moondial more easily and accurately now by merely standing beside the Moondial facing the planet at its center, visually aligning yourself with the constellation representing a Devotional within the town you're interested in, and seeing which moons fall within that sector slice that angles in from the sector edges on either side of the constellation toward the center of the world... The Cabalists representing the antivirtues of those moons should be attacking any city bearing that particular Devotional at that time... In the example below you can see that towns hosting a Devotional of Honor are being currently attacked by Avara while Dolus prepares to withdraw his minions, and Nefas is readying his forces in vicious support that is soon to come!


In addition to upgrading the Darkstarr Moondial in this way, I was also tasked to create a variation on it which is a silver version held aloft by a hand of bluish-purple marble. I'm not sure how this will become available, but I enjoy its alternate color scheme... While I like the gold/bronze warmth of the original, blue and silver are some of my favorite color combinations!


And lastly, having created these, I was asked to begin work on two other versions of the Moondials. I'm quite excited by these, because one is a version you'll be able to craft yourself, made out of materials such as brass, copper, silver, wood, and various mechanical parts and pieces (recipe yet to be determined), and the other is meant to be an "ornate" version you can purchase which will come in four sizes (tabletop, "room"-sized like the ones above, Village Lot sized, and Keep Lot sized)... The exact scale of these has yet to be determined.

Below you can see them in their beginning stages as compared to the existing Darkstarr version. The Craftable Moodial (lower left), will eventually be seen as made from multiple materials as described above, and has a "naturally-mechanical" look to it, with no magically-floating elements, and sports a slightly tilted "cage-dome" representing the tilted axis of the world itself as roughly compared to the abstractly-depicted rotational plane of the moon and suns. The discs bearing the supports that hold up each of the celestial elements rotate independently upon the base column. The central Moondial is the beginnings of the "Ornate" version, which will appear in the four sizes mentioned, and unlike the others can be walked beneath when large enough. It showcases cool, glowing "Aetheric Energy" elements that typify some of the more arcane/technological devices in our game, such as the orbital rings of the moons, and the magically-projected celestial dome that surrounds the construct as a whole in which the constellations can be seen.



I hope you all enjoy these so far. Stay tuned, and I'll update this thread with more images and progress descriptions as I keep working on them!

Take care everyone!

Scottie ^_^

 

Aaaaah this is so cool! I can't wait!

 

Totally cool @Scottie. Will this change (to the Darkstarr Moondial) be in R41?

 

I believe that's the plan! And thanks so much!

Scottie ^_^

 

I hope one of the larger ornate ones will fit inside a village stone basement.

 

As I play with sizes, I'll see if I can make that work! I'd really like to see that happen, as I think walking into an underground observatory/lunatarium would be awesome.. One thing to note, however...placing a moondial on a map with no skydome (such as underground scenes like player basements and such) will look cool because the devices are set to move quickly and spin more actively, but will not be functional for gauging attacks and moon positions (since they can't access any skydome data they need to do so)...

Eventually I'd like to set one up in a specially-designed chamber made to fit it to look the coolest, like the observatory in the Dark Crystal... ^_^

 

@Scottie , When it's done, I'd still like to make a real desktop version.

 

I think that if one could walk inside and stand in the center of the planet looking out then the feeling of the magic will be much enhanced.

Like if one took the bell tower asset.
Made a stairwell going up instead of the ropes.
Then in the tower where the bells are remove that and replace with the really large ornate moondial surrounding it.
Then sell that as a complete building asset, like the Bell Tower.

That would limit the amount of work necessary since it is based on existing assets, while creating a really cool new experience.

Just a thought.

 

So - what happens to the current version of the darkstarr moondial if we like it's current art?

I would prefer an upgrade option of maintaining the current art to the new art

 

i haven't used a basement since i got a good enough machine that i don't have to sequester myself to have reasonable performance while crafting, but i would love a planetarium basement.

 

That would be totally sweet.

 

I bet that silver one will be a telethon reward.

 

I would think an arena basement would be ideal. Like the town size? So you could see it from two levels.

I find it odd though that it would need to access a sky dome.. since all of that data is based off a live clock is it not? I suppose it would be problematic otherwise to have dozens of moondials in a scene.. would be like having dozens of sky domes. hmmm Well either way, I'm looking forward to these.

 

Make a giant version of it and place it in some Town, would be a notable landmark

 

AWESOME NEWS!!!

That is the one decoration that came out before I stared that I have always wanted!!!

 

Aye, I'm not a fan of the new virtues tagged on the edge even though they add functionality.

 

It's understandable that you, and possibly others, might want that. However, because this object had always been conceived by Richard as a functional tool based on our cosmology first, and a piece of art second, the current version of this object will change much like the earliest version changed (even more dramatically in that past case) when the last set of revisions took place... As always, it's important to note, that this game (and everything it contains) is a work in progress...

When this object was originally created by our excellent artist Bob, based on Stephen Daniele's whimsical concept sketches, the exact nature, order, and functionality of our cosmos hadn't yet been fully determined... It took awhile for us to define all the cosmological/astronomical elements, and even then we knew that it hadn't been perfectly nailed down just yet... Bob's original work represented a beautifully-crafted artistic placeholder for what was to come...

When I was tasked to revise it for the first time we had already added eight additional moons to accompany the Sundered Moon across the sky in our actual skydome, and had determined the constellations that would grace our starry heavens. At that time, due to the chaotic theme of Darkstarr himself, the Moondial named after him bore the few moons it contained in chaotic orbits around our game's planet as depicted. It even had a few moons with little moons of their own! Though the geocentric orbit of all the heavenly bodies was maintained, our addition of moons came also with the understanding that they all lay level on the same rotational plane, and rotated at different distances around the same axis offset from our game's horizon. Since we could no long depict the moons in a multitude of chaotic orbits, to keep the "chaos theme" I instead added artistic arcing flourishes each offset at slightly different angles (as if to roughly) represent each moon's own rotational axis which would, when the moons rotate around the world at varying speeds, retain a bit of the chaos of Bob's original...

These recent set of revisions became necessary as our plans to incorporate the Cabalists and their attacking forces began to crystalize into a functional system. With that, as well, came Richard's decision to re-order the moons themselves in our game's sky to match his conception of the proper order of the Virtues, and thus their corresponding Anti-Virtue moons, which had been set properly to pass through each Virtue constellation's "sector" slice of our heavens, thus signaling the period during which the Cabalist associated with that particular moon will be attacking any town hosting the associated Virtue's Devotional... Likewise came the addition of the Virtue Symbols indicating the constellations, to help visualize when the dreaded moons have entered the "House" of each Virtue...

Of course, because it's nearly impossible to recognize any of these cosmological signs during the day, having all Moondials (of any particular style) properly displaying all the elements needed to track these events (including the new moon-order and representations of the Virtue constellations and their sector demarcations) is an absolute necessity in Richard's mind...even though it revises the look folks may prefer or have gotten used to... And the code, of course, has gotten revised as well (the older code no longer being supported or maintained), to reflect all this new functionality, and would break any older versions of the Moondial...

And thus, these changes must come to pass...

I can only promise that I did my best to make these additions as visually appreciable as possible (much as I shall treat the work I do to create the new versions soon to be offered)... But at least, if the Darkstarr version no longer pleases you enough to display, you can still hide it away in some chamber of your house, and use it to track our game's cosmological events as the tool it was always intended to be...

Scottie ^_^

 

We've had this debate before with the stretch goal Elven armor. If Bob's artwork could some how be preserved as a prototype, as we have had for the last 30+ releases, then I am all for this change.

However, you deny the art side of its existence as a museum piece on the evolution of the product by making the wholesale changes as described. We can step up to the next evolution, but some product of the stories past should remain.

 

Love the work you're doing and how you're focused on making this functional, it will be an incredibly useful tool! Any chance the virtue symbols could be engravings on the upper surface of the main ring rather than "charms" tacked onto the side?

 

The engravings rotate separately from the main ring because the main ring has the sun attached to it. I do think that the size of the symbols could be maybe reduced just a bit.