[WIP] Community Atlas Competition: Dungeon of Ice and Fire
MarkOlsen
🖼️ 6 images Traveler
Got a quick start on my entry just to see if some of my ideas would work at all. I'm planning to add an ice level to the megadungeon.
I made the floor tiles and walls out of assorted shapes right within the map and just copied them around to create my floor and walls; I'd normally have just created a tiling design in Photoshop but the rules don't allow that and this actually gives some neat looking variation to it. I think I may turn down the "reflection" on the tiles a bit since that's on another sheet and I still want to add a little more color variation and some melting ice puddles in spots but I need to figure out what some of these rooms are for first. ?
I'm particularly happy with how the border frame came out (it's three sheets: a base color, a floor tile texture with the tiling turned up and a blend mode applied, and a blurred highlight on top) and may apply some of that look to the walls too.
Here's the full map so far:
And a zoomed in view of the lower right corner:
You can see the floor tile reflections better here - those are just zig-zag shapes drawn with the polygon tool and a blur sheet effect.
I still need to tighten up my walls a bit and figure out where the one entrance and one exit are going to be but I think it's a good start.
Comments
I worked a bit more on my walls and added a crevasse under my broken bridge. The section beyond the broken bridge in the upper left is going to be the exit down eventually and the top of the long room to the upper right will be the location of the exit up. I also added some broken/missing tile sections, a bit of rubble and a couple pools of scary green water.
My pillars don't have shadows at the moment since I won't add lighting effects until near the end.
Here's the crevasse under the broken bridge:
And here's the lower left rooms showing the cracks and puddles:
It's not much so far - I still have to add a lot to all the rooms - but feedback would be appreciated. ?
This is probably my final update for the weekend - it's been a productive morning!
Here's the full map as it stands right now:
Closer view of the pool and the cells on the right side (including SNEKS!):
I won't have time to work on it again for a few days, but next on my to-do list:
OK, I lied. One more!
I couldn't stop thinking about this so I started playing with the lights a little bit. I found some good crystals in the Annual 64 Herwin Wielink style for my halls and just ended up drawing the big ones above the pool.
Here's a quick test render with the lights turned on.
I'll probably set this as my desktop at work next week so I can look at it during meetings and think about what to put in those rooms along the lower left.
Sounds like a great way to utilize the otherwise wasted time in meetings.
Great work so far.
I made a couple more updates during my morning conference call. ?
Here's the entrance/exit areas:
Here's the finished rooms from the lower left:
I imagine that top room was a library at some point and has clearly already been looted by someone. The lower room contains a few deadly ice slimes (that's a thing, right?) and the remains of some prior adventurers, along with their collected loot just waiting for someone else to come along and pick it up.
I particularly like how the treasure under the puddle of water came out.
I think this is pretty much done but I'll let it sit for a few days and then come back to it to see if there are any last minute tweaks I want to make before entering it in the contest thread.
It all looks really great, Mark :)
I do hope that you manage to get some work done sometimes! LOL!
Love this! Really nice work, Mark. I especially like that large pool on the right. Bravo!