Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Here’s what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:

• Architecture of the Obsidians, Part 3: Desolis Underground!
• Very Large Creatures: Trolls in R20

Architecture of the Obsidians, Part 3: Desolis Underground!

[This is a continuation of A Dev+ Forum Post by Scottie Jones]

Hello all! I’m so glad you’ve been enjoying this work in progress. Having crafted some of the last of my planned Obsidian-Architecture-specific objects, I’m now beginning the actual layout of the areas I’m responsible for building. Lord Tachys asked about level design choices in general, and I’ll be addressing some of that (at least for this specific area) as I show you some of the first area layouts. The last items I wanted to make, before creating the various areas in the Desolis Underground scene, were three different types of magical lighting used by the Obsidian lords.

Two hundred years before our game’s present day, the members of the Obsidian Order saw themselves as the preeminent sorcerers of their time, and forged their empire based on the use of such magics. They derived their power from the energies flowing out of the obsidian shards that fell from the shattered moon, lacing the world with veins of lava which seemed to conduct this energy from the Shardfall areas to a variety of locations, including Fate’s Lake in the subterranean chambers below the ruins of Desolis. It is the location of this lake that inspired the Obsidians to build their seat of power here, including the Chamber of Souls seen in the images above and below.

Since various colors of magical glowing crystals in our world can be harvested for use in sorcery and alchemy, it only made sense to me that the Obsidians would have used such crystals to craft undying sources of light for their more important structures. Above and below you can see examples of the three light-sources I created for general use anywhere abandoned Obsidian ruins might be found.

All of these styles employ glimmering, floating crystal shards in a variety of colors. Currently the colors aren’t meant to represent anything specific, and are simply used for beauty. These earlier images are a bit over-lit to allow the environments to be clearly seen in these examples. In addition to the light-sources, I created a few more elements that helped me build out these areas, including the angled stone supports with the Obsidian Order symbol at the top (behind the burning braziers in the image below, which I’ll eventually replace), the simple bannister design, which I’ll use in several places, as well as the huge carved stone wall panels inscribed with the names of all the individuals responsible for the rise and dominion of the Obsidian Order, as described in the “Blade of the Avatar”. Layout for this area was specifically inspired by the descriptions in that book, and I did my best to insure that the entire Desolis Underground level design was as true to the book’s descriptions as possible.

Below you can see several examples of the various hallways linking the primary rooms of the Obsidian Keep together. I combined different bits of the Obsidian architectural elements I created with the existing dungeon corridor set to make Unity prefabs to be used in areas like this. Though you can still see the more “generic” dungeon style beneath it, the Obsidian elements help to make these hallways seem different from the rest of the world’s dungeons. This, too, is in keeping with the fiction, which describes the Obsidians as having appreciated the older style of ruins they found, though they added their own style of architecture to them as they built the foundations of their empire.

Moving outside the Obsidian Keep, still in the cavernous underground,…you can see the edges of Fate’s Lake as it drains deeper into the earth, and the main gates of the entrance into the keep itself, which is built into the walls of the cavern. The scenes below are still somewhat sparse, since this phase is basic layout. Decoration will come a bit later!

Below is a close-up of the gates of the Obsidian Keep, opened to reveal the interior hall. To the right of this area is a fenced-off region separating the main entrance from a smaller side passage, where unfortunate slaves and captives were once driven into the terrible laboratories of the Re-shapers. Here, using the power of the obsidian shards, dark magic and alchemy were employed to twist these unfortunates into terrible, mutated monstrosities.

Here is the progress so far on the scene layout for the Desolis Underground. It seems like a bit of a mess in a few places, especially to the left in the unfinished cavern that will contain Fate’s Lake, but even as a work in progress you can see it taking shape.

That’s all for now! I’ll share more as I have the chance…

Scottie ^_^

Very Large Creatures: Trolls in R20

In recent Updates, we introduced you to some of Geoff Mellon’s initial work-in-progress on Trolls; our first very large creature. As previously stated, Poralarium intend to make the combat experience with very large creatures different than what will be found with normal sized opponents. For the Troll,  the dev team are working on equally large area of effect attacks that include a ground strike for nearby attackers and thrown boulders for distant enemies. Geoff posted these in-game images of combat with a Troll to the Dev+ forums, which you will be able to experience live in Release 20 next week: