Singing Mountain 1.0

[Agent 12]

I have begun work on Singing Mountain I have my patenented Rough Draft that most of you will look at and want to die, but don't worry you've seen what chickenlump and Zeal can do to these things.

Anyways the way I have it the door to the "boss" is right at the beginning of the area, and the party has to run around and find 4 pieces of an instrument.  They then take the instrument to the door and have to "put it together".

Here's where we can have some creativity...how to go about putting it together.  

I had a couple ideas at first

A.  Send them to a webpage where we have drawings of the pieces...they can then decipher how to put it together and then have to input the order from left to right (maybe have them print out the page or something?)

B.  Have the old fashion text adventure
"You have a broad yellow cylinder where do you put it"
A.  Bottom
B.  middle
C.  Top
"Now you have a mouth piece where do you put it"
A.  Bottom
B.  Middle
C.  Top


C.  Finally I asked Zeality and he suggested there be riddles  enscribed on the pieces you can then use the answers to the riddles to decide the order here are the riddles he suggested.

 "From lava comes..." "1. Pahoehoe 2. Shist 3. other crater enemies etc."
 "The sky gives..>" "1. Avian Rex 2. Bellbird 3. Free Lancer"
"The land sees..." "1. Winged Ape 2. Beast 3. Imp"
"Water! Simply water!" "1. Rain Frog 2. Anion 3. Nu"

 so land, sky, lava, water

So there they are.  Any comments/suggestions are welcome.  

--jp

[Chickenlump]

OK, I hope to have a polished version of the open area done in a day or two. 40 x 40 maps are bigger than I thought they would be... O_o
I have most of the visuals done (I'm working from left to right, so the right side is looking pretty sparse and ... bleh ...). After that, I play through it and get the solidity working, which may take just as much time tweaking as the visuals, and after I'm happy with it, anyone may change any of it to suit the story, events, tastes, etc...

So far I have this though...

http://ce.herograw.org/CL/Pictures/ctloc188.png

I'm glad there is no scroll mask to deal with though, it makes for a better mapping experience, not having to deal with boundaries...

[Agent 12]

Broken link???  I actually kinda like the suspense

--jp

[Chickenlump]

It's hosted here at the compendium, it works fine for me.

*cries*

 

[Agent 12]

hm....maybe I was just realllllllllllllllllly tired but it's working for me at work.  It's looking great.  Does the waterfall flow, I know that I made a make shift waterfall and I didn't have to do anything and the water was flowing down.  That was pretty nifty.

--jp

[Chrono'99]

I know mapping is really hard and tedious (I tried it...), but I think you should shape the borders and the cliffs so that they're never huge perfectly vertical or horizontal blocks. More irregularities would add to the realism of the scenery and make it less rectangular. Just my 2 cents of course.

The cliffs on the Dactyl's Nest is a nice example of non blocky cliffs:
http://www.chronocompendium.com/images/wiki/a/ad/Dactyl_Nest.png

[Chickenlump]

I know mapping is really hard and tedious (I tried it...), but I think you should shape the borders and the cliffs so that they're never huge perfectly vertical or horizontal blocks. More irregularities would add to the realism of the scenery and make it less rectangular. Just my 2 cents of course.

The cliffs on the Dactyl's Nest is a nice example of non blocky cliffs:
http://www.chronocompendium.com/images/wiki/a/ad/Dactyl_Nest.png

Yeah, I already noticed things were looking kind of square, and I do plan on fixing it eventually. It looks square-ish right now, but I don't plan on it staying that way, just untill I get all the explorable/open areas better mapped out. I'm trying (will be trying) to come up with ways to fill the space, make it interesting, and make it look more natural.Dactyl's Nest is very nicely mapped out, but a good 50% or more is visuals only, not alof of movement possible in it, just a "Follow the trail" type map.

Heh heh.... I'm tempted to make that solitary tree an enemy and have the party battle it.... A singing tree enemy on Singing Mountain, and maybe a Kilwala that says 'Singing Mountains're nice."

>_>

<_<




The bushes and leaves would be perfect for a tile-copy/ leaf rustling sound combination, and have an enemy jump from them. (the tile-copy would just swap a few leaf tiles repeatedly back and forth, to make them look like they are being moved about from the inside)

[Agent 12]

Sounds awesome.  I really like the kilwala reference ha ha.  And yea making the moving leaves would just be a few trial and error tile copies.  I just want to note that you'll want to either move the scroll screen downone  or keep the upper right corner out of view because I'm using that to copy tiles when you open chests.  we'll want to put a few leaf tiles up there to for the moving bushes

--jp

[Chickenlump]

can do.

I had kind of figured that's what those chests were for in the upper right, in this and other original maps. Another day or two, and I'll upload a finished product.

[ZeaLitY]

I'm digging the bright look compared to the original. It looks more cheery and active; the Prerelease version ( http://www.chronocompendium.com/images/wiki/c/c4/Singing_mountain_3_%28CTP%29.png ) is pretty dull. Can we do layer 3 lava inside the cave?

[Chickenlump]

I'll be busy this weekend, and away from home, so here is what I have so far. I had no time to do solidity, or anything like that (there's so.... much... map.... *openly weeps*). I could do it when I get back, if nobody else wants to give it a try. Even so, it can be used to test out events and battles, and tweak everything etc...

I un-square-ified things as much as I could, and tried to be creative with layers (flowers under and on the leaves?!? IT"S CRAZY!!!11). Anyone feel free to tweak anything.

The Flux File with the map
http://ce.herograw.org/CL/Singing%20Mountain/SingingMountain.Flux

A preview image of it so far
http://ce.herograw.org/CL/Singing%20Mountain/ctloc188.png


Map Properties should look like this picture: