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[The Amethyst Dragon]

The theme for this month's challenge: "Elemental Planes Stuff":

  

Elemental Planes Stuff: Creatures, structural placeables, tilesets, weapons, armor, environmental effects (scripting is CC too!), sounds, etc.

 

 

This theme was suggested by The Amethyst Dragon.

 

Guidelines:

•  

• It must be fully working in game.

• Use of vanilla NWN or publicly available texture is fine.  Just remember that NWN textures must have dimensions in powers of 2 (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc.).

• Teamwork is welcome.

• Beginners most welcome. Don't be afraid, just try, you'll be surprised!

• "Custom Content" includes many sorts of things: models, scripts, prefabs (areas, items, creatures, conversations, quests, etc.), sounds, portraits, or anything else new for the game.

• All submissions must be finished, working, and emailed to NWNCCCMakers@gmail.com (or a non-Vault link provided) by February 1st, 2015. Sooner than that is perfectly fine too. ;-)

 

 

Somethings you could include in the download/email that would make packaging everything up easier and faster:

•  

• 2da lines needed.

• Screenshot from in game for use on the vault page (this also gives me hints on how to display the new goodie). Formats: .bmp, .jpg, .png, or .tga

• Portraits (if needed) of your new goodie. Placeables and monsters should include a portrait.

• Inventory icons (if needed) of your new goodie.

• Any credits you would like listed.

• If this is your first entry, please tell me what name you would like your work listed under and provide a link to your other NWN content if you want that displayed as well (the link bit is totally optional).

• Also if you would like an invite to the CC Makers group, send Rolo Kipp a friend invite. The group is nothing spectacular, mostly just documentation on 2da lines.

 

Remember, the Challenge is all about fun, sharing, creativity, and surprise!

 

This thread is for all sorts of discussion about this month's theme: ideas for things to make, questions/concerns, announcement of what you intend to make, screenshots of work in progress and/or finished projects.  

 

If you want to discuss the Monthly Custom Content Challenge idea as a whole or wish to submit ideas/themes for future monthly Challenges, please post in its thread here. 

 

When submitting a new theme, please provide a title and short summary of the theme.

 

If you have a technical question about some custom content creation, please create a separate thread so that the answers can be found later by anyone, not just people interested in this Challenge. 

 

We'll try to help!

 

Have no fear and join the fun!

 

And finally, you can: 

 

Submit theme suggestions. 

Vote for February's theme.

Email content to: NWNCCCMakers@gmail.com

[The Amethyst Dragon]

Announced/Intended Projects:

 

Ice Lances/Spears (weapon models) by MerricksDad

 

 

Emailed/Downloaded Projects:

 

Ash Zombies (creature models) by MerricksDad

Dao (creature model) by Shemsu-Heru

Djinni (creature model) by Shemsu-Heru

Efreeti (creature model) by Shemsu-Heru

Janni (creature model) by Shemsu-Heru

Marid (creature model) by Shemsu-Heru

Earth-Assimilating Human (creature model) by The Amethyst Dragon

Elemental Earth Weapons (weapon models) by The Amethyst Dragon

Falling Water Set (placeable models) by The Amethyst Dragon

Giant Bubble Interior (placeable model) by The Amethyst Dragon

Guide: Placeable Visibility Limit (placeable model) by The Amethyst Dragon

[The Amethyst Dragon]

At one time, we were very short on new theme suggestions, and Elemental Planes Stuff was brought back from the orphan themes list for a 2nd chance (it originally got 0 votes in the poll for May 2011).

 

This would be a great month for reskins of existing creatures (to make them better fit air/earth/fire/water elemental planes), perhaps with added emitters (fire), crystals or rocks (earth), transparency (air), or txi texture animations (water).

 

This could also be a great month for exotic elemental planes themed tilesets. Maybe a City of Brass set with metallic buildings (could be a reskin of something else), islands of rock within the planes of fire, water, or air (and marked with strong traits of the surrounding element). And such tilesets would go great with new elemental plane skyboxes (or skyspheres that work better with unlocked camera angles).

 

Placeables that fit the elemental environments would be great, too. Columns that ripple/shimmer with glowing light like embers in a fire, walls that look like flowing water of various shades, subtle placeable VFXs to show currents under the water or in the air, giant "bubbles" to surround pockets of breathable air the plane of water, new fire/lava placeables that give off dynamic light (for illuminations, shadows, etc.).

 

Onto item ideas... How about earth elemental armor that uses OldTimeRadio's plt + tga trick (plus self-illumination) to add glowing crystals, glowing (but not flaming) metal spears (for the salamanders released a while back), air/water weapons with built in trailing effects or txi files to make them mostly transparent, crystal-edged blades, solid stone bludgeoning weapons, new ioun stones, armor with fainty glowing (self-illuminated) edges in various elemental colors (orange, green, blue, white, whatever).

 

On the scripting side, the elemental planes are foreign places with their own unique environmental effects, be it on movement, breathing requirements, damaging energy (heat), or even changes to the effects of spells. There's also room for strange quasi-magical radiations from crystals, stones, magical flames, magical pools/fountains, and more that could have uniquely scripted effects. And do you dare eat what's considered by the denizens of the City of Brass to be a "hot pepper"?

 

And don't forget prefabs. This theme is a fertile field for those that want to use existing content to create something small scale (a single item left behind by a slain earth elemental) to large scale (perhaps an entire colony of halflings that started as a small group of pilgrims sucked into a portal to the elemental plane of water, only to settle on an island paradise within a permanent air bubble).

 

Yeah, just throwing out some ideas to get everyone's creative juices flowing, since the original theme description is kind of sparse.

[Shemsu-Heru]

Some ideas for placeables and/or Tilsets:

 

Elemental Plane of Air:

 

Flying Castles
The weightless nature, empty disposition, and hospitable environment  makes  the  Elemental Plane  of  Air  ideal  for powerful  individuals  seeking  privacy.  These  individuals include  wizards  and  sorcerers  who  want  uninterrupted time for long-term studies, clerics of all alignments escaping  the  threats  of  more  dangerous  planes,  and  even monasteries and  libraries  whose  users  seek  solitude  and reflection. Any chunk of rock or mineral large enough to support  a  building's  foundation  is  the  site  of  somestructure (or at least it has been in the past).

 

 

 

Djinni Strongholds
The  djinn  are  among  the  most  accommodating  of  the outsiders that make the Elemental Plane of Air their native realm.  They  tend  to  settle  the  larger  chunks  of  physical matter on the plane, shards of rock and earth ranging from a  thousand  feet  to  several  miles  across.  Each  of  these islands  has  its  own  gravity,  and  the  guests  of  the  djinn move around as on the Material Plane.

 

 

 

Elemental plane of Earth:

 

The Great Dismal Delve
The most civilized race on the Elemental plane of Earth is the dao (as they will undoubtedly tell you). These genies are  found  in  a  number  of  communities  and  are  often  at odds  with  the  native  elemental  life  because  the  dao continually  desire  to  deal  with  extraplanar  races.  The greatest of the dao communities is the Great Dismal Delve, also  known  as  the  Great  Mazework.  It  is  here that  thegreatest leader of the race makes her home. The  delve  itself  is  a  maddening  maze  of  passages, memorized by the dao but confusing to the traveler. The dao and their slave races live here in dark splendor, eagerly mining gems for trade. Slaves, often the losers in bets and bargains  made  with  the  dao,  build  and  rebuild  passages, fend  off  elemental  attacks,  and  are  otherwise  slowly worked to death by their uncaring masters.

 

 

 

Elemental plane of Fire:

 

The City of Brass
The  City  of  Brass  is  populated  by  powerful  efreet,  and  is considered  by  many  efreet  to  be  their  home  and  their capital. Efreet may be found elsewhere on the Elemental Plane of Fire, but even far-flung settlements owe fealty and allegiance to the grand sultan who rules the City of Brass from his burning palace.
The  city  itself  is  cradled  in  a  brass  hemisphere  forty miles across, floating above a plate of cracked obsidian at the heart of the Elemental Plane of Fire. Stairs of burning basalt  and  rivers  of  flame  stream  up  from  the  surface below  to  the  well-armed  gates  of  the  city.  The  city  walls may  be  reached  by  flying  creatures,  but  the  efreet  take  a dim view of interlopers who refuse to present themselves at one of the city's gates.

 

 

 

 

Elemental plane of Water:

 

The City of Glass
For  travelers  with  less  of  a  taste  for  palace  intrigue,  the City  of  Glass  is an ideal gathering spot on the Elemental Plane  of  Water  (especially  for  travelers  who  breathe  air). Located  at  a  stable  collection  of  portals  to  other  planes (stable  in  that  they  do  not  move  in  relationship  to  each other),  the  City  of  Glass  consists  of  a  great  sphere  of unbreakable glass, half filled with water. Visitors enter the city through any number of openings along the water side, or  through  magical  portals  in  the  air-bubble  half.  Many buildings cross the boundary between air and water, there are  buildings  filled  with  water in  the  air  half,  and  buildings equally stocked with air beneath the water's surface. By  mutual  agreement  of  the  city's  resident,  “down”  is toward the water half of the sphere.

 

 

 

[MerricksDad]

oh...It's on

[Mecheon]

Hello! Anyone have a texture for salt? I need it for my plans. My project, if you will. Odd plans, but something that's been around

As for other things, take a look at these utterly -majestic- mineral creatures.

How about places like the Skywall from Warcraft? Its their city of the Djinn, made of solid cloud. Or the Deepholm, with its rivers of mercury and shuddering spires, along with odd creatures like the rotating Gyreworms or the Shale Spiders. Or the Molten lands of the Firelands, along with fierce creatures like fire spiders, fire turtles or the Hellhounds

Unfortunately Warcraft's water plane isn't looked into all that much. But in terms of that, I've always thought a neat placable would be something like a tube of water, because, heck, elementals. They don't give any dangs about the rules of reality and if they want a giant tube of water to go up through air, then they're going to make it happen. Best thing like this is the Skyway levels from Ecco 2, or Hanging Waters from Defender of the Future, but I can't find any good pictures of those

[MerricksDad]

I've got a ton of mineral books, but you might want to just look up halite mineral on google. You can get a ton of different colors of salt. Some have great closeups of the crystal shapes. There are also some excellent mineral pages out there, both for identification, and for posting gps locations of deposits. Their online specimens rival those of national museums.

[Mecheon]

Nah, salt salt. Like, a big ol' pile of it

Cause the critter I'm making is made from salt, y'see. TXI'd to be constantly flowing

[MerricksDad]

 

Good enough? Need an alpha channel?

[MerricksDad]

I made this salt weird years ago, which is why I knew how to animate the maggots a few months ago. It uses a skin, but because of all the goings-on with the texture/skin combo, I had to only use a texture of 256 size with no more than 32 fps distortion. Not the texture above, but the smaller texture I used has an alpha channel which highlights the horizontal and vertical edges of the individual salt cubes. Due to the distortion type I used, I wasn't able to make a good flowing texture for the weird, but I'd love to see somebody come up with a flowing water txi to use instead. Itching to see what you come up with!

[Tarot Redhand]

So how about the inside of 4000 years dormant volcano? I was about to post an image here but to be honest a 360 degree panorama is so much better. But to give you a taste

 

 

I am guessing that one of the inspirations for Jules Verne's "Jouney to the Centre of the Earth" was this volcano. Today, if you get to Iceland first, you can take a tour of this interior for yourself. In fact the tour website has a wealth of information on it.

 

So you could use this for the elemental planes of Earth and/or Fire.

 

TR

 

PS anyone able to pronounce its name? Thrihnukagigur volcano, Iceland

[MerricksDad]

On a trip to the inner planes, I once brought back some interesting foods.

 

[Carcerian]

On a trip to the inner planes, I once brought back some interesting foods.

 

 

Recalls the Wormy Comic's "Old Brimstone"

 

 

 

[Carcerian]

Elemental Refreshments? (PLCs / Holdables?)

 

 

 

 

[Tarot Redhand]

How about this picture (at the end of the link) as a reference for the demi-plane of ice?

 

TR

[Mecheon]

I made this salt weird years ago, which is why I knew how to animate the maggots a few months ago. It uses a skin, but because of all the goings-on with the texture/skin combo, I had to only use a texture of 256 size with no more than 32 fps distortion. Not the texture above, but the smaller texture I used has an alpha channel which highlights the horizontal and vertical edges of the individual salt cubes. Due to the distortion type I used, I wasn't able to make a good flowing texture for the weird, but I'd love to see somebody come up with a flowing water txi to use instead. Itching to see what you come up with!

Works charms!

Except my first TXI is crashing the game on what I've got at the moment so that's going to require some fixing with my usual tactic of sledgehammering a working solution out, but hey, it'll work eventually. I'm planning on this skin being a shared resource through a few critters, so once its working on the one I'm using as a test it should work on the lot

[MerricksDad]

When I used the large texture posted, it totally crashed the game too. It's just a complexity issue. You should be able to reduce the complexity by simply using a smaller version, or using a smaller chunk of the whole. Keep the refresh rate of the anim low-ish and it should be ok. For me the large texture crashes both the toolset and the game on loading of the model.

 

I don't want to deflate your experience, but if you like, I can simply hand over what I already have which does actually work. You can tweak the animation to whatever you want. Right now mine is just a copy of the one I shared for the maggot golem. It is a 256x256 patch of salt with a slightly crisper edge, and then it also has edge highlights for the envmapping.

Oh, also don't try to use a complex animated texture in conjunction with self illumination. Death lies that way.

 

Edit:

 

I ended up trying to see if I could modify my TXI animation a bit and get something more like the flowing salt I too wanted for my weird. After playing with the deformation type (arturo, wave, life, perlin, water, etc...) I found that only arturo was worth the processor time. I did change my translation channels around a bit and got some better results. Still wasn't able to make it how I really wanted. I remember doing this all years ago, but I had to refresh my memory why the others were crap. They kill the hell out of my video card due to the math involved (poor little guy). The next best bet I found was "water", which is substantially different, but still not what I was after.

[Shemsu-Heru]

 

The djinn are genies from the elemental plane of Air. It should be noted that “djinn” is the plural form of their name, while “djinni” is the singular.

 

 

This creature uses a modified version of the "archimage animations" from: Alternate Combat Animations Pack (ACP v4.0) by

Ragnarok_mr4.

 

http://neverwinterva...ns-pack-acp-v40

I liked the archimage animations for my Djinni, but  also I wished that  my creature could hold weapons with his own hands. So I had to edit it, I don't know to much about animations, so probably the result is not the best, however a leats it's working properly, more or less...

 

 

This project have a long history, I have started it some time ago during the Arabian nights challenge; But because of a lack of experience , by my part, with creatures, and others problems I never was able to finished it then.

It have been made from a free model of Goro, from Mortal Kombat 4:

 

http://artist-3d.com...sp.php?uid=1752

[Tarot Redhand]

The sketch at the end of the link could bring a whole new meaning to turtle graphics   as well as further ideas for the plane of water.

 

TR

[Ssythilac]

Mighty djinn!! Well done, Shemsu!

[Carcerian]

Very nice Djinni! (Can't wait to see Efreet, Marids, Doa and Janni!)

 

Other Elemental Denizens:

 

 

 

Magma

 

 

 

Mud

 

 

 

 

Oozes

 

 

 

Air 

 

 

 

Water

[Carcerian]

Elemental Weirds:

 

 

 

 

[Shemsu-Heru]

Very nice Djinni! (Can't wait to see Efreet, Marids, Doa and Janni!)

 

What makes you think that is gonna be more genies?

[Carcerian]

What makes you think that is gonna be more genies?

 

Cuz you do consistently awesome work? (only hoping, not expecting, tho we definitely need a good Efreet if nothing else)

 

(MerricksDad probably has some good elementals coming too, as well as all the other usual suspects...)

 

I do however, demand a flumph!

 

 

(if not for this CCC, than perhaps for an April Fools Silly Creatures Topic )

[MerricksDad]

MerricksDad probably has some good elementals coming too, as well as all the other usual suspects...

 

Working on ash elementals, ash zombies, and thinking to finish and release my updated realistic fire placeables. Not the animesh ones yet though. Not ready.