Sunday, December 11, 2011

Loadscreens for Crimmor

In Path of Evil, I used GIMP to add a painted effect to area screenshots. For Crimmor, I wanted a more personal feeling. I elected to use unedited screenshots, generally from viewing angles the character would have. I added area name to them since the character is a local to the city and would know the name of the area, assuming there is a unique name.
 

For the text, in GIMP, add a text box. The font I picked is called killigraphy, a freely downloadable font. You can get it from http://www.dafont.com/killigraphy.font among other places. You can see from the font map the letters have a sharp look, reminding me of a rogues' typical weaponry. A number of letters have a particularly "weaponlike" look, particularly f, j, and t. It doesn't have capital letters. I used 72 point, centered. To give the written text a more 3d effect of still liquid ink (fluid, smooth, changeable, like a good rogue), after typing in your text, select Filter -> Decor -> Bevel from the GIMP menu. I used default bevel settings.


For the curious, the Auric Commorancy is a the name of the city's temple to Waukeen. I used a thesaurus to come up with some interesting sounding words, auric means pertaining to gold (Bond fans might remember the villain Auric Goldfinger), and commorancy is a dwelling or residence. So it's just a fancy name for "Gold House", fitting for a temple to Waukeen. Most named buildings have their named taken from the Dragon magazine article on Crimmor, written by Ed Greenwood (creator of the Forgotten Realms setting) himself.

4 comments:

  1. Hi Kamal,

    I really do think your area designs are superb! I am lost for words at Drover's Gate. You really are an artist!

    Lance.

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  2. I can't take credit for the third shot, the smithy. I changed the floor and wall textures I think, and re-lit the area, but that's a prefab area. Especially early on, there's a lot of prefabs I worked with to make them fit my idea about how things should look in Crimmor, generally grimy and dirty.

    As for Drovers Gate, that's the sunrise setting. I'm very pleased with the daynight setting, to the point where I've stopped my pc during test runs to watch the sunrise/sunset. I will be very happy if I hear of anyone doing that when I release the campaign, which will probably be in the first half of next year. You can download things now (they mostly work, but the city's nearly empty for instance), I put the links in one of my posts, and those links are up to date.

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  3. Those shots look great. Will these be random load screens or area specific?

    Also add the 'k' to your weapon like letters.

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  4. Area specific loadscreens. I'm not a fan of random loadscreens if they are screenshots. One thing I'd considered for loadscreens was paintings or drawings of medieval crime and punishment, but I was unable to get enough work in good enough quality. That would have been fine for random, since it would be just thematically related.

    There are loadscreens covering areas that would be spoilers, and I don't know if you can do "random except for ..." loadscreens.

    Also there's p and q, where the loop looks like a hand guard of a blade.

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