Montag, 14. April 2008

Bewitched !

Last week I needed to take a break from the toolset. After some heavy writing and area creation sessions, I was burned out a little bit (I guess this happens to everyone working with the TS from time to time).
I decided to give "The Witcher" another chance, since it was not playable after launch on my machine. The loading times between the area transitions were straight out off hell. So I patched it and started all over from the beginning.

And what should I say... I simply love it ! Great dark and gloomy atmosphere, rememberable characters and a compelling story ! A lot has been written about this game, so I think you know what it is about. If not... go and play it !
Of course my main reason was to get a closer look at all those fantastic looking areas. From screenshots, every view looks like a painting. Perfect use of color pallets and lightning. And I think I can say I have learned a lot about the texturing and lightning techniques the developers used. I have also figured out a neat trick they do with backdrops in the background, faking some great vistas (like in this picture here, all mountains in the distance are just simple painted planes). I will try to do adept this in the TS soon.

Besides that, I have joined a german NWN2 modding group called Feline Fuelled Games (Hi guys!). I love their modules they have previously finished and I will do some areas for the their upcoming stuff. In return, I hope to finish my little project with their help.

Learning from the witcher, I have painted a whole new set of textures for my upcoming areas. I will post some shots of them within the week.

But for now I have to go back to Geralt and solve some mysteries about an old druide tower in the swamps of Wyzima :)

4 Kommentare:

Anonym hat gesagt…

Hi Ayrin

I played through The Witcher twice. I loved it! I am looking forward to the big update in May! Reducing loading times by 80% "thats huge" And more dialog added.

I agree you can get some great ideas for areas in that game.

Congratulations on joining the team. And looking forward to more from your module :)

Liso

Josh hat gesagt…

The witcher is pretty awesome. I've only played it once, only because the second run through, I got tired of the rather poorly constructed dialogues. I dunno how the German version is, so i can't speak for that version.

Maybe I can replay it again soon :)

And if you're looking for ideas, wait till you get to Chapter IV. Talk about a real beauty there. Least the first area that you go to. The entire farm grasslands is kind of "blah".

Josh hat gesagt…

PS: Congrats on the new team. Shame I can't understand what they're saying ;)

Ayrin hat gesagt…

Yes, I´m quit happy with the team. There are some very talented people over there with a lot of experience in making modules (what I´m lacking off). I hope to learn a lot from them and to finish my module within the next months.

Josh, do you mean the first area of the last chapter ? I only took a sneak peak on the ice plains. Really impressiv there!