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[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

The great temple at Jaiutmeer, seen across the waters of the sacred river...

Jaiutmeer is the oldest (surviving) of the main temples of Maldrapur and plays host to all the most important ceremonies of the year... It took quite a lot of hitting with bricks to build - and then rebuild 'cause my first attempt had a Killer Mutant Ultimate Death Apocalypse Poly Count that caused NWN to emit a strident wail of terror and flee at top speed. But, I'm still reasonably happy with this nice low poly(ish) version... First version was nicer, but requires a Cray mainframe to use...

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

Further to the above post, it occurs to me that you can't really see the textures on Jaiutmeer Temple from way across the river... Now, obviously, all this detail should be geometry but as I don't have six months to work on every Placeable and as NWN would EXPLODE if all this was geometry, textures have to suffice.

All the carvings I've used in the textures (though somewhat rearranged here and there) are from actual temple sites in India. The DharmaChakra looks rather dark here 'cause that bit of the building was in shadow as I walked around it.

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

Hm... I haven't shown a Big Nasty Horrible Violent Rubbery Spleen so far on this page...

So here's Rakshasa, the Corruption, the Devil God of Maldrapur...

Once a Devatha, fallen from grace, Rakshasa is a mutant god, a warped parody of its former self consumed by the need to obliterate all before it. As it sinks ever further into an alternate reality it increasingly becomes anathema to this reality (and vice versa), leaving it raging insanely, tormented and decidedly irritable. As it decays into a different type of matter entirely, ever less able to coexist with what we understand as "real", it must destroy the reality around it to maintain itself.

Does it occur to the filthy Spleen to just shift into a different dimension where its warped flesh can be stable and thus leave the cosmos alone? No; it has to keep jumping up and down on everyone and crushing them to pastes and pushing buildings over and absorbing worlds because, being a Spleen and thus possessing the morality of a supremely diseased pig, it is, for want of a better word, EEEEEEEEEEVIL. Wilfully and persistently eeeeeevil. Both Lucirath and Kali have pushed what passes for its face in on several occasions yet, disgustingly, it keeps slimily oozing back out of the nether gulfs and attacking again by diverse and sundry methods, all of them horrible.

In short, it's huge, hideous, hostile and the only sure defence against it for mere mortals is to be on a completely different planet.

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

Sorry, got distracted by hospitalized mothers... well, mother, singular, I've only got one - and she tries to pretend she doesn't know me half the time...

Anyway, sorry for delays. Had hoped to have piles of Hinduesque Maldrapuri stuff on the Vault by now. I am now dealing with it, it WILL be soon... Meanwhile, here's some more rubbishly pointless screenshots.

I've been using the standard BioWare Lizardmen (who bear provokingly little resemblance to lizards of any kind) for the Asuras, though I painted the green ones red. However, for their Tyrant King, Hiranyakashipu, I needed a bigger one. With three heads. And more armour. So, having thumped it repeatedly with a gargantuan concrete okapi (just to give the old bricks a rest), this is the result.

Apart from being a whopping, tricephalic weirdo, he's otherwise much like the standard model. The BioWare ghouls, with a bit of tweaking work well for the Vetala (Hindu vampires) and there are a few other useful things already extant. However, for the next Maldrapur Module I need piles of Makara and the Timingila so I'll be some time creating huge, debilitatingly weird sea monsters.

FIRST, however, I'll be getting a Big Bag onto the Vault containing the stuff I've already done. It can be updated with MORE humongous Indian monsters and additional piles of sumptuous silks and cushions later... and those saris I keep trying to make; robe models, hate robe models, damn skinmesh, horrible tacky stuff that keeps sticking to itself if you let it... but I do want to finish the sari, 'cause then I can hit all those nice silks with a big PLT brick...

But that'll have to wait for an update. If I waited to feel I'd finished something before posting it, I'd never post anything.

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

Had some time to start throwing stuff in a large crate marked "Made in India". Got all the Creatures sorted out - those finished so far anyway - and heaved in some assorted architectural rubbish, mostly some of the older, more primitive temples that are usually to be found mouldering away in Maldrapur's jungles... I hit these with bricks, somewhat hurriedly, back when I first did Kali herself and they're somewhat less than clever but they're good enough for stuffing in dark, overgrown corners...

Also adding some more Hindu tapestries and carpets and am trying to hunt out some of the statuary which seems to have got rather scattered between Haks over the last year or so, probably due to gelatinously incompetent cretinism on behalf of the Shabby Hyena Object who would blame it all on Nuclear Locusts only nobody'd believe him...

Anyway, when I've found the statues and added them, it should all be ready for nailing to the Vault with Locusts... NAILS, I mean, damn, sorry... May also faff with the furniture a bit more... and maybe... NO! Must... not... look... at... Indian... fabric... catalogues... any... more...

[werelynx]

I have only now noticed that in some screenshots Kali is short of 4 arms o.O

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

Naturally.

She's the PC in the Maldrapur Chronicles and so she has to do all sorts of things - like just reading books, talking to people, sorting out strange puzzles in mouldy old temples, etc, etc, and she hardly wants all those extra arms floating about, poking herself in the ear with all those scimitars all the time... Thus she only manifests the additional arms when she needs them - when filthy evilists seethe up in obvious need of being annihilated.

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

Been a few delays - sorry, out of my hands - but I should have a big pile of Faux Indian Whassnames on the Vault inside a week, hopefully less but I'm playing it safe and not tempting fate by saying it'll be precisely twelve hours from now and then finding Atropos hits me with my own sodding brick. She's like that.

 

Which brings us to Geography... Here you can see a map of the island continent of Maldrapur...

Maldrapur, sometimes known as the Land of Temples, is a remote landmass, largely covered in dense tropical jungles. It also completely fails to have any material veracity beyond the murky confines of the Shabby Hyena Loony's warped mental architecture. In other words, there's no such thing as it. Despite the fact that it has a suspicious amount in common with ancient India...

It was therefore with some alarm and chagrin that the Idiot Hyena Object noticed a texture called "phod_maldramap" in amongst all the vast piles of rubbish he's stuffing in the Big Bag for the Vault. Well, actually Fifi noticed it and pointed it out as she is wont to do with sociopathic zeal every time she spots anything that makes the Hyena Weirdo look a bit silly. (She gets a lot of practice). As I had not included the Maldrapur Map Placeable, on the grounds that a map of a place there's no such place as and is known only to Fifi and I would prove spectacularly not at all useful to anyone else, I wondered what the texture was doing there.

Fifi was only too pleased to elucidate by means of scrawling a stupendously overstated and unnecessarily colossal arrow on this screenshot with outrageous vehemence... Yes, the Shambolic Hyena had somehow completely failed to consciously notice the gigantic maps of Maldrapur conspicuously slapped on top of some of the Maldrapuri furniture. (There are completely "clean" versions of the tables as well, but the "cluttered" one has a map of a place irrelevant to everyone but me). "Nnnnnuuurrrrrgghh!" he cried with delusional inability to be normal for more then fifteen seconds at a time...

So, yet another small delay in pulling the models back out of the Big Bag and replacing the map with some vague Indian tapestry or a Hindu mantra or something more generic...

But I'm getting there... I'm dealing with it...

[rjshae]

Naturally.

She's the PC in the Maldrapur Chronicles and so she has to do all sorts of things - like just reading books, talking to people, sorting out strange puzzles in mouldy old temples, etc, etc, and she hardly wants all those extra arms floating about, poking herself in the ear with all those scimitars all the time... Thus she only manifests the additional arms when she needs them - when filthy evilists seethe up in obvious need of being annihilated.

 

Wait... you mean they're not there for giving big hugs to all the kiddies?

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

With those scimitars?

That's an awful lot of diced kiddies she'd be leaving around the place. Very messy.

[Tarot Redhand]

As "the map guy", I'd have been happy to have those maps.

 

TR

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

Hm... I just wanted to provide Placeables anybody can use for any setting they feel suits them, in terms of a Vault sub, rather than leave specific bits of my own lore lying around.

It'd be a bit daft to have a character saying "And here we are in Faerun and, oh look, I've got a map of a completely different place on my table..."

I've done maps of all the main realms in the Demoness Tales world, of which Maldrapur is a part, even detailed ones of some of the recurring cities - even a 3d map built in gmax of the Labyrinth of Tain'Akhven and THAT took some serious building. Damn thing just sits on a BIG tabletop but it's got a poly count like an Epic Monster Spleen. I never imagined they'd be of interest to anyone though, since aside from myself, Fifi and a few associated loonies, nobody knows anything about the places on the maps, after all... Not like, say, a chart of the Underdark or something which piles of D&D fans would potentially find of use due to having some idea of what it was.

Just because I did all this stuff for a specific reason of my own, I don't want to stop anyone else from using it for whatever other things they might want it for... That said, (correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not that familiar with D&D lore) I don't think there is an "Indian" type realm in D&D, so how much use this stuff will be to the average Module builder in NWN, I don't know...

Anyway, adding a few last minute Hindu tapestries and - ooh, just discovered another quite perfectly adorable Indian carpet that I simply have to have...

[kamal_]

That said, (correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not that familiar with D&D lore) I don't think there is an "Indian" type realm in D&D, so how much use this stuff will be to the average Module builder in NWN, I don't know...

 

Faerun has The Shining Lands, which are "indian". My understanding is mostly the religion is "Buddhism" though, not hinduism.

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

And statues... did I mention statues?

Kali's own idols are quite high poly, but for the majority of Maldrapur's statuary I've kept the poly count down so's I can use piles of them without having to worry about causing freakish lag on Area load times. This is why the statue of Durga riding her tiger looks a bit simplistic. Originally she had all sorts of clothing details but these made the poly count hideous to behold and, even more distressingly, after all the work of doing them, ended up making her look like a bit sort of... half woman, half sack of potatoes... Not dignified... So I gave up and just plonked her on a big fake Smilodon and pretended that's what I'd planned all along.

The basic Tantric statue, which I did back in whatever CCC it was when I got round to doing Kali herself, is now available in original and rubbishly overstated gold versions and is also also available "intact" and "damaged" with bits knocked off by passing Spleen Monsters. Also silver and gold squitty tabletop versions available for going on - wait for it - tops of tables and so forth.

Note also Ganesha, whose elephant head, at this precise angle, looks a bit weird... and yes, I know he has a broken tusk which has spiritual significance in Hinduism and yes I also know that my lumpy statue version fails to have a broken tusk. I did push the verts in on the tusk but somehow it just looked wrong, so I stuck it back... Not sure about the stupidly busty Apsara dancer statue lurking at the back. She needs to be completely redone really, preferably when I'm not half asleep like last time.

[Tarot Redhand]

It was July last Year and the theme was "Deities and Demigods".

 

Looking forward to this.

 

TR

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

The Rakshasi - Twisted splinters of Rakshasa, warped lesser reflections of its own corrupted being. Smaller and without the vast power of Rakshasa's fleshblight, these putrefacted servants of the mutated Devil God are still highly dangerous adversaries, especially given that they have an unpleasant tendency to just spontaneously generate from their vile primogenitor without warning, sometimes in immense swarms. Also, they're borderline Undead Animal.

Presumably vertebrate, though what bones they possess appear to be falling out, they are essentially mindless, obeying the will of Rakshasa given that they're all technically still part of it, a sort of disassociated gestalt with a severe lack of social skills. As with a number of Maldrapuri monsters, they're dimension-riders, able to shift through the Planes and dimensions as easily as they can run down a corridor. Which means they can just appear from thin air right on top of you. Which is cheating, but being creatures of very low moral fibre, they fail to care.

Spleens.

Anyway, everything has now been stuffed into an overcrowded box and I've done the new 2das for it. Just giving it some last minute tests to ensure I haven't missed a texture or a PWK or anything silly... Next post will be to announce it's been nailed to the Vault.

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

http://neverwinterva...akpak/phod-kali

She's up... with a vast accumulation of Indianesque stuff... I'm going to turn upside-down now, stick all four paws in the air in a faintly ridiculous posture and get some sleep before I forget what it is...

[LastBard]

Wow...your works are amazing. What kind of monsters are, against Kalì, in these screenshots?

Do you have realize some - new or old - boss models, in addition to those of the vault?

Anyway, thanks again for every single project that you have shared.

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

LastBard:- MANY more Horrible Rubbery Spleen Monsters are on their way to the Vault very soon...

 

Meanwhile, if I appear to have gone quiet it's due largely to the stupidly obvious realization that my NWN priorities have gone completely rubbish somewhere down the line... There was a time, many, many years ago in the late Mesozoic, amazed at the possibilities of the staggering new Aurora Toolset I'd discovered, I MADE MODULES! But they all had one thing in common, they were all pants. This was because the characters, creatures and environments didn't look quite the way I wanted them to (also, I kept making daft mistakes as I learnt what the Toolset could and couldn't do... But I came to realize that I spent more time making Modules than playing them, which seemed faintly to reek of disturbingly paradoxical back-to-frontness.

But, inevitably, I discovered the miracle of HITTING STUFF WITH BRICKS! This allowed me to gradually figure out how to have a Demoness who looked like a Demoness and Spleens that looked like the ones I'd drawn and THE ALIEN, no less! And so forth.

And so now I find myself spending far more time making Custom Content for Modules to be built with than I do actually building Modules to tell stories and USE the rubbery CC I can't stop fiddling with... let alone actually playing any of the Modules I'd maybe finish IF I stopped faffing with the CC.

It's just plain daft. And in some way seems a very warped priority arrangement. So I am officially now cutting down on the CC and concentrating more on the Modules so if I vanish for weeks at a time, I'm probably just actually doing what we're SUPPOSED to do with Aurora... But, just to utterly and totally contradict myself, I thought I'd post a couple of images of the current ATLANTIS project I've mumbled vaguely about here and there of late.

It involves creating an entire culture from scratch and so that whole "I'm going to stop doing CC" thing lasted about ten seconds...

Originally planned to do the citadel of Atlantis as a Tileset but then I came to my senses. Far more versatile to build Areas with Placeable buildings. At the moment I'm using a retextured BioWare City which I'm probably going to just strip down to cobble, water and raise-lower and get rid of the non-Atlantean lampposts and things that jut up in unhelpful places... I've got thirty-odd buildings done so far, most of them MASSIVE. Plus a lot of obelisks, small, decorative pyramids, arches, fountains, etc. And a few statues relevant to characters and creatures in the Modules. Also more or less finished the Atlantis Interior Tileset plus a bit of furniture and some weird crystal relays, etc... Still A LOT more to be done with this, but I'm starting on the Modules now as the best way to highlight to myself what I most need to add/change/hit with a big brick.

Along with marine silt retextured (and somewhat brickomized Desert and Underdark Tilesets for the Atlantean Wastes, plus matching Caves and SeaCaves Tilesets with bits on, and an assortment of horrible Underwater Spleens, the whole lot has a nice, distinct feel which, when I've eventually finished jumping up and down on it, shall be put on the Vault in an enormous deep sea box...

But next... THE SPLEENS ARE COMING!

[Tarot Redhand]

So does this mean that we might actually see at least one of the much anticipated Dr. Who modules or maybe an alien one? To be plain, I froth in anticipation at whatever you chose to make.

 

PS have you been watching the old Dr Who episodes on the Horror channel on Freeview (just started on Tom Baker episodes last week)

 

TR

[Empyre65]

PHoD, do what you enjoy most. If you enjoy making models more than making modules and more than playing modules, then doing that is not backwards. I forget where this quote comes from, but time enjoyed is not wasted.

[henesua]

everything i make is pants too, but don't let that stop you, PHoD. I agree with Empyre65: if you are satisfying your creativity, it is time well spent.

[Tchos]

It is agreed that time enjoyed is time well-spent.  If, however, the enjoyment is equal between creating CC and creating modules, and you feel that you've been neglecting that particular pleasure as you say, I would favour the modules.

[LastBard]

Another amazing work.   ...I'm pretty excited for your new creations!

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

Hm, I'm not saying that I don't enjoy making CC or that I consider it nothing but a dreary necessity. It can be great fun messing around with Gmax, and latterly Blender, trying to create something and slowly getting blobs of geometry to suddenly, actually start looking like the thing they're supposed to be portraying - despite the frustration when they just continue to look like blobs no matter how much you poke them with a sharp stick.

It's just that the only point in making CC, so far as I in my selfish, self-obsessed, Shabby Hyena way, am concerned is to USE it in Toolset and Game. Almost everything I've ever done for NWN from the first garbagely useless Undead Animals to the Hindu Goddesses and acid-blooded Xenomorphs I'm doing now has been done for my own Modules because I needed (er, wanted) them. So when the fixation with creating the CC absorbs available NWN time to the point I never get near the Toolset or Game to USE the stuff, it just seems a bit... silly.

But anyway, I promised SPLEENS...