View Poll Results: Yes or No

Voters
18. You may not vote on this poll
  • Yes

    11 61.11%
  • No

    7 38.89%
Results 1 to 9 of 9

Thread: A whole new meaning to Organic Mapping.

  1. #1
    Guild Novice
    Join Date
    Feb 2009
    Location
    Devon, studying in Swansea
    Posts
    14

    Post A whole new meaning to Organic Mapping.

    Adzy here,

    Here's the biggest challenge I can think of for any level designer to come up with. The insides of a giant creature.

    Maybe the adventurers have been eaten by a 5 mile long worm, maybe a druidic order has a temple on the back of a giant desert lizard or it could even be a sub-aquatic city inside some titanic underwater beast. The only rules would be thus:

    1. At least 75% of the map must be biological in some way.
    2. Artificial structures must be justified.
    3. The creature's biology must play by the rules of nature. It has to be able to stay alive in its environment.
    4. If you decide to put a civilisation in there you must come up with at least a paragraph of backstory/reason for being there.
    5. Whilst the map doesn't need to concern itself with every single part, it must give some idea of the enormous scale of the creature itself.

    The best idea will most likely get itself written into a D&D campaign in the near future (which I will post up here for you guys to read/play with)

    Have fun

  2. #2
    Professional Artist Nomadic's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2008
    Location
    The great northwest
    Posts
    355

    Default

    This sounds more like something you should do privately as it has a bit too many restrictions for a standard mapping challenge. Perhaps you could throw it out in the general forums and see if anyone is interested.
    My Map Portfolio
    -----
    Unless otherwise stated, all my work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

  3. #3
    Community Leader Facebook Connected Ascension's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2008
    Location
    St. Charles, Missouri, United States
    Posts
    8,392

    Post

    Always wanted to try something like this just never got around to it.
    If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
    -J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)


    My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps

  4. #4
    Community Leader Facebook Connected Steel General's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2008
    Location
    Ft. Wayne, IN
    Posts
    9,530

    Default

    It's a neat idea, but might be a bit restrictive if you know nothing of biology *shrugs*
    My Finished Maps | My Challenge Maps | Still poking around occasionally...

    Unless otherwise stated by me in the post, all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.



  5. #5
    Administrator Redrobes's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2007
    Location
    England
    Posts
    7,193
    Blog Entries
    8

    Post

    This is a good idea but it might be better to combine it with another challenge idea too. So for example you could do a vertical map with an organic creature as its basis. Maybe this should be something that we can opt to do as part of another map too. But I like the idea generally.

    A problem with this map is that its a hard one to do. The last time I did something like this was the hideout based inside the skull of a god/titan type creature. It turned out so hard that I made the rooms approx square in the end. Still have better tools this time around but its still a hard option.

    We had another challenge idea for an underwater map where these two might go together well.

  6. #6
    Guild Novice
    Join Date
    Feb 2009
    Location
    Devon, studying in Swansea
    Posts
    14

    Default

    By rules of nature I meant that it has to have a heart, lungs, stomach etc.

    Maybe I should doodle up an example.

  7. #7
    Professional Artist Nomadic's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2008
    Location
    The great northwest
    Posts
    355

    Post

    Quote Originally Posted by Wellsy89 View Post
    By rules of nature I meant that it has to have a heart, lungs, stomach etc.

    Maybe I should doodle up an example.
    Yes but that leaves out those of us who would like to make more fanciful creatures. The CG after all is a site with a great deal of fantasy mapping. And fantasy doesn't have to follow reality.
    My Map Portfolio
    -----
    Unless otherwise stated, all my work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

  8. #8
    Publisher Facebook Connected bartmoss's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    Berlin, Germany
    Posts
    904
    Blog Entries
    1

    Default

    Hmmm I am undecided on this one. On the one hand, it sounds like a great original idea; on the other hand mapping out "organics" sounds... exceedingly hard to pull off so that it actually looks like some living creature. I think most maps would likely just end up being normal structures "On the back of a giant turtle", and then the biological aspect becomes an art feature more than anything else. I'll observe the discussion a bit before voting.

  9. #9

    Post

    The first thing I thought of was a map of the interior of the whale that swallowed Pinnochio. Followed immediately by RR's skull hideout.

    I think it's not an awful idea, and I can think of several possibilities for it, but it is a bit limiting. I don't forsee myself ever running such an adventure, so I'd probably not participate. That wouldn't affect the number of participants at all, though, since I only really hit one in five challenges, anyway. And I only finish half of those, unfortunately.

    Anyway, I'm for it.
    Bryan Ray, visual effects artist
    http://www.bryanray.name

Tags for this Thread

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •