A version with labels for most of the major points of interest:
Overhead view of Agwilcress
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Author Archives: CSD
Residential Block House
The standard Residential Block house was mass produced during later construction of the military base that would become Agwilcress. Each building contains four upstairs bedrooms, two restrooms, a kitchen, a water room (for bathing and laundry), general living space on the first floor, and a basement.
The roof can be accessed with a drop-down stepladder, and is a popular spot for gardening and leisure time.
Above the front double doors is the house address. This one has the address “2-12” making it the 10th house in section 2. (Agwilikans use a base 8 number system.)
Here’s how the sections are arranged in the Block:
An unusual Pi/Tri update
What’s this? Pi/Tri on Linux? Cross platform functionality?
I use Ubuntu Linux as my primary OS at home, and it’s where I have my creative tools: Blender (for 3D modeling), Inkscape (for 2D vector images), and GIMP (for 2D bitmap images). Now joining them is MonoDevelop, allowing me to do my C# programming right along with everything else. No more switching to Windows 7 to run Visual Studio. In a few days I was able to port my rendering code from SlimDX/Direct3D to OpenTK/OpenGL. (The OpenTK library is the OpenGL equivalent of SlimDX for my purposes). Probably some new bugs and tweaks to work out, but so far the game and editor seem to be running all right. I’ll also need to eventually re-port the engine back to Windows, but no rush to do that at the moment…
I tried this porting operation some time ago without success. Luckily MonoDevelop and OpenTK matured a bit since then, and hopefully they will do the job well.
Agwilcress Grain Factory
The Agwilcress Grain Factory (Kel-et-eh-tone) produces products from the seeds of the Kelet plant. The facility has sections for cleaning, storing, and milling the seeds into flour. This all-in-one design was set up when Agwilcress was a military stronghold, and was intended to ensure a reliable supply of food even if the city was besieged.
It’s been a while since the grain factory was worked on. It used to look like this:
It was ridiculously oversized. The new design is a bit more down to earth.
This is the logo for the grain factory, which is stamped on to all products made here. The central three marks represent the purple flower of the Kelet plant. Similar marks are used in Agwilikan culture as a symbol of health and prosperity.
Very very belated Pi/Tri update
Yes, despite not reporting anything since… February? Wow, that’s pretty bad.
So anyway, some updates about the engine’s progress.
Images now have an offset value. This allows the sprite designer to set image positioning with no need for programming.
The editor now uses standard window controls instead of a custom rendered GUI.
GUI layouts can be designed like world maps, using mostly the same program.
Transit Departures and Transit Destinations are used to facilitate movement between world maps. Departures search all known maps for destinations for simple selection.
The cinematic scripting has evolved into a more complex scripting language. Supports conditional logic (if, else if, else, end if) and the ability to run scripts on the universe, dialog boxes, and entities.
Scripts can report errors in syntax or logic.
Solid image resources, a combination of sprite and collision data, allow for the creation of basic map entities without the need to do extra programming.
World maps can be divided into zones. The camera and most entities stay within their current zone. Entities outside of the active zone either go dormant or get destroyed. The player can transition between zones by touching adjacent borders.
Mother Dragon Foundry
Located on the north hill of Agwilcress, the Mother Dragon Foundry (che ya-keen ag-wil bak-e-tone) is the prime facility of the Ayra Katrin Engineers. Its two large furnaces are used to forge metal and the product known as stormstone, the chief construction material used in the Agwilikan and Akelikan cities.
The foundry got its name because it produced almost all of the metal and stormstone that makes up the buildings and infrastucture of Agwilcress (which translates literally to Dragon City), so it came to be thought of as the city’s mother. The molds used to make stormstone pieces even picked up the nickname “eggshells”.
Recently the foundry expanded and added a second furnace higher up on the hill. The two furnaces are connected by a ramped tunnel, which in itself was an over-the-top engineering feat. The tunnel’s lower entrance is located under the arch seen on the left side of the first image.
“The Cube” is located at the foundry entrance, which was created as a test of the furnace’s maximum capacity. After its forging, the engineers weren’t sure where to put the monstrosity. They ultimately wound up dumping it off to the side of the entrance. An artist was commissioned to turn it into the foundry’s official sign. The sign depicts Salmandano, the legendary Prerart that was immune to fire, who also happens to be the foundry’s mascot. It also bears the insigia of the engineers and the words “The Mother Dragon Foundry / Ayra Katrin Engineers”.
The Agwil-Naryn word for engineer is “Otamajale”, which essentially means “machines master”.
Raeja Update
Actually got back around to 3d modeling, and updated Raeja’s look a bit. Made the front of her face a little broader, changed her spots up a bit, tweaked the model’s materials, and added a more intricate design to her breastplate. The previous version is below:
PiTri lives again
After almost a year of neglect, work has resumed on the PiTri game/engine.
Some new sprites and some simple stationary enemies that shoot lightning balls. Please excuse the temporary player sprite.
Dialog boxes for info and conversations.
Packager, now integrated into WorldBuilder, sports a new icon layout for displaying package contents.
Grid Textures now can be created and edited directly in Packager.
A big advance in sprite animation. Images automatically update according to which direction the sprite is facing. Sprite Animation Sets can be edited right in Packager.
Other significant updates:
A Cinematic system that can manipulate the camera, dialog boxes, and entities to create narrative scenes using a basic scripting syntax.
A major issue with the sound system has been fixed, so it’s now officially functional.
Got ramps to behave well.
Text Blocks can be used to easily make multi-line text. Though the dialog box picture above doesn’t show off this functionality, it is capable of being much wordier.
Some window tweaks, like allowing maximize and minimize and remembering window positions for WorldBuilder.
Civic Hill
Sitting just east of the Ayra Katrin Library is this set of buildings known as Civic Hill. Just across the street at the bottom of the image is the related Civic Square. (Haven’t quite got that area set up yet). The two areas contain offices for various civic functions like record-keeping and land management.
Military Square
Military Square is the oldest of the “Squares” (the others being National, Academic, Civic, and Market) and was part of the original construction of Agwilcress. The entire city used to be a military complex, but after the fall of the original capital of Cresselecapera, the area was converted to be the heart of the Seven-Star Nation. This one block of barracks and training spaces was left intact and became the headquarters of the Seven-Star Army. The only other major structures remaining from those early years are the City Walls and the Residential Block. They all share the same reddish coloring scheme.
The design of Military Square evolved from an early version of the Kylal Palace. Over time, the palace changed to the point it no longer resembled its former self. About the only thing the buildings now share is the design of the arched roof and use of arched pillars. Here’s a view of that early version:
Yeah, those are Quake-era graphics.