Personal Content Development Journal
Symphony
Member, Developer Posts: 142
Hello, I'm Symphony.
Given the rising amount of curiosity about what I do (or don't do), and where I come from in the custom content community, I've been urged to somewhat "tell my story", or offer explanation about some of the ways that the game works, or the things that I have discovered.
I am not a custom content veteran, and I started making things just a few months before the Enhanced Edition appeared on the scene. I am hoping that the blogs I will be making will satisfy a couple of interests.
However, I think some of that is because I am more interested in finding out how things work than putting out. It is often the case that work on one project will solve the riddle that dead-ended another project, and for that reason I often have a low two-digit number of "side projects" in various prototype stages.
This has allowed me to be a source of obscure information about particular subjects I hope to outline in these blogs. While people have not likely been using my work for their servers, I can certainly share the information I have discovered.
I've also never blogged before, and getting the right images and the right text to match to tell the story has been an awkward process that I think is becoming easier.
Here is the link to my first blog post. I believe if you make an account, you can subscribe or sign up for notifications. Meanwhile, I'll try to update folks here when I have new submissions as well.
https://wiki.neverwintervault.org/display/~symphony/2018/02/17/Working+With+Skyboxes
This discussion would also be a good place to talk about the blogs, ask questions, or comment on how they could be changed or "enhanced".
Given the rising amount of curiosity about what I do (or don't do), and where I come from in the custom content community, I've been urged to somewhat "tell my story", or offer explanation about some of the ways that the game works, or the things that I have discovered.
I am not a custom content veteran, and I started making things just a few months before the Enhanced Edition appeared on the scene. I am hoping that the blogs I will be making will satisfy a couple of interests.
- I am new to developing custom content. If you have or do not have experience with the game, and have or do not have experience with making your own custom content, you should not feel deterred. I'm telling you that you can read and you can make stuff, and with practice you will get better.
- I am hoping to simultaneously spill some details on the facets of the mechanics of the game that may be related to what you might be working on, or have had troubles with, even if those things are not related to the work I discuss in the writings, WHILE I am also delivering a somewhat abbreviated (and potentially entertaining) retelling of my work process throughout a particular process or subject.
- The blog is not posted on a personal website I've made for blogging, but rather the wiki section of the well known Neverwinter Vault. The wiki is not well known or used, and I am hoping to transfer from story-telling to hard-facts and how-to's as time goes on, providing the NWN community with a comprehensive collection of uniformly presented knowledge with consistent style and predictable formats.
However, I think some of that is because I am more interested in finding out how things work than putting out. It is often the case that work on one project will solve the riddle that dead-ended another project, and for that reason I often have a low two-digit number of "side projects" in various prototype stages.
This has allowed me to be a source of obscure information about particular subjects I hope to outline in these blogs. While people have not likely been using my work for their servers, I can certainly share the information I have discovered.
I've also never blogged before, and getting the right images and the right text to match to tell the story has been an awkward process that I think is becoming easier.
Here is the link to my first blog post. I believe if you make an account, you can subscribe or sign up for notifications. Meanwhile, I'll try to update folks here when I have new submissions as well.
https://wiki.neverwintervault.org/display/~symphony/2018/02/17/Working+With+Skyboxes
This discussion would also be a good place to talk about the blogs, ask questions, or comment on how they could be changed or "enhanced".
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Comments
It would make sense to have a second version for people with the camera hak to download instead, with "ceilings" on the skybox, but that would also ruin a lot of my distortionless setup or easy-to-texture system, since the transition from the square panels to some kind of circular center would be rough, and difficult to compatibly design for.
I do still think it's a little odd that Bioware included the "sky_005" meshes/textures for the tops of their skies, since you can't see them without 3rd party game hacks. Perhaps it was something they considered for cutscenes or some kind of camera control I haven't thought of.
You must still consider how little time camera hack users end up staring straight up at the sky. It happens sometimes, but the camera still collides with the floor, and the player character's posterior takes up much of the view, and of course there isn't (yet) much to look at for long. Given that it was my first experience in blender, I was more concerned with something that was solid-all-around, so you'll have to forgive me for deciding camera hack users weren't worth it at the time. (Surprisingly relevant, given the lack of camera hack in 1.74)
A future blog, probably not the next, will detail my last week of work, which is a completely new on-going concept for full 360° skies, so, yes, ceilings, and no seams. This new project is a completely different tactic (nearly the opposite!) and has more to do with the 360° screenshots I was making when the MakePano command was implemented. Here's a modest sneak peek. In full the design will be far more complex than my previous work, but will hopefully be much more content and performance friendly.
TR
I did some research into confluence and found out about the blog, then enabled the template in the sandbox, typed the first page, showed Niv, he gave me admin access to change space permissions, I created my own personal space, and added rights to users to add blogs to their own spaces.
Oh and you might find the 1000 metre radius giant bubble placeable in the January 2015 ccc (picture on bottom row of pictures) to be of interest. While not strictly a skybox it might help in your exploration of that subject. As far as I know that is the largest placeable ever created for the game and PCs experience it from the inside.
TR
TR