The Making of Sequanna Colossus

Hey folks, I have a few screenshots to share today of my progress in uncloning Sequanna Colossus. The map features a few scattered ruins, a village oasis (part of which has sunken into a sinkhole), a bandit camp (whether or not they are actually bandits is tbd) and a nomads camp.

Some of the inspiration for this map comes from the Rub' al Khali in Saudi Arabia, and Goblin Valley Utah.

This map is still a work in progress, and still needs to undergo a visual effects pass. As always, feel free to leave feedback.

Sequanna Colossus


The Ruins



The Village Oasis



The Barren Foothills


Nomad's Camp


The Mesa Pillars


Chris Wolf
Level Designer

 

a desert of the heart?

 

Were you able to expand the map size, use the newer larger maps?

Do we have a shot at seeing it in R42?

Looks great so far!

 

We need to be able to leave footprints in the sand dunes ! (And other types of soft terrain)

 

I like the sand dunes!

 

Nope. I was told to keep it the same size in the interest of time. We have other maps that need our attention.

While the world building is almost done, the level still needs to be filled with enemies, resources, and local quests, so I would not expect it for R42.

 

Looking good!!

 

I wish it was something easy to do. That sort of tech often requires that you have it available before you start world building. Going back to update every map can be a time consuming task. We are currently experimenting with projection based weather effects. It might be possible to adapt this system to leave footprints within the projection. So... maybe one day?

 

There was something in the patch notes awhile back about a 'supreme lich lord' near Sequanna Colossus...is this a thing?

Awesome job. Look forward to exploring the area!

 

If nothing else just proximity based tracking similar to other games? Shadowbane had a few types of tracking and even one skill called 'with catlike tred' that allowed players to remove themselves from the tracking list but it had a short duration. I wouldn't mind if some of the more difficult to learn or elusive types of skills had prerequisites to learning them.

 

Yea, I was just thinking at the least just some decal that disappeared over a short time, and this would apply to sand, snow, beach, mud... inspired by Pokemon, brought up before in this thread.

Something a little more persistent that lasted longer would be great also as @Ancev mentioned, and was suggested here before.

But I don't really know the tech that would go into this to make it quality.

 

I think we are talking about two different things.

Leaving footprints in terrain is easy enough. The typical way to do it is to add a normal/bump decal at the location of footprint oriented to the terrain, usually powered by time of the animation. The difficult part is figuring out what texture the player is walking on to determine if a decal should be placed, and then propagating this method to every map. A similar system is used for determining what sound a players footsteps should make depending on what surface they are walking on.

 

I'm going to bring it up to our art director. Chances are there this is already something he has thought about, but that it has been put on the back-burner along with footstep sounds. I can't make promises, but its something I would like to see too.

 

Very nice Sea Wolf I like this and am excited to see. You have done a great job. It would be great to find discoveries here but I imagine that is to come back and add so much more discovery-wise to scenes So I found a few examples of secrets spots

 

This looks awesome! I love the sand dunes too, and that would be totally awesome if it would leave our footprints (even if just for a few seconds until the "wind" blows them away.)

 

+1 on the footprints idea.

Excellent work, really excited for this scene!

 

This is very cool! I am looking forward to crossing those dunes!

 

I thought they mentioned in the last telethon that footsteps might be in the future? Can't remember where they said it..

But the desert looks awesome! Love the sand dunes.

 

They were talking about one of their debts working on the decals- was between hour 2 and 4

 

@Sea-Wolf, just curious - what was the old 'cloned' scene for Sequanna Colossus? I love the new scene looks but also loved the old one too .