Voidplane Tower

 

Sharpheart Tower - 1A building designed to independently rest on the Voidplane. There is an area near Sharpheart Island known as The Reef that is home to buildings and small islands like this one. The tower’s look originated from a drawing I made a long time ago, though this 3d model is now far more detailed.Sharpheart Tower - 2

At the building’s dock, with a Voidskimmer craft docked and unloading supply crates.

Sharpheart Tower - 3A far shot of the entire structure. The outer pieces with the crystalline towers provide balance for the main tower, so it won’t sway or tip over. The glowing bubble is a sky projection, used to give the illusion of a being on one of the immigrant races’ worlds.

The New Pi/Tri

After almost a year without programming, I decided to change the type of game I’m going to be working on with the “Pi/Tri Engine”. It will now be a overhead view action-adventure.

Some major changes to the engine and game I’ve made in the last month:

  • Sprite occlusion testing: when two sprites overlap, this determines which should be drawn in front of the other. (Not as easy as you might initially think!)
  • Pseudo-3D capability using altitude and height properties
  • New camera with “slack zone” in middle of screen
  • 8-directional controls
  • Contextual actions based on what the player is facing
  • Game pad input
  • An input configuration screen
  • Pickups and treasure chests
  • Ability to transition between maps
  • Persistent state tracking (for example, an opened treasure chest will remain open after going to another map)
  • Basic status displays (currently for health and equipped items)
  • Start of inventory system with menu (shown below)

And of course, there was a bunch of other changes here and there with the engine to make it easier to work with, but are a bit too technical to mention here.

The packager, which combines multiple files into one, has been converted to a regular Windows application, so it doesn’t need to run the full engine.WorldBuilder, the level editor, has various improvements here and there.

At the moment I’m debating whether to convert portions of the editor’s interface into Windows components instead of in-engine GUI code.

One thing I’m not looking forward to doing: making the daunting amount of sprites for characters. I’ve inserted Raeja from Agwilika Rhe to stand in as the player’s character for now, but it’s only 8 standing frames, so no walking or fighting animations yet.

Kylal Palace Entrance

Last time I updated the front entrance, I made the upper arch rounder, which also made the painting not fit the space as well. Recently I started work on fixing that, and now the Agwils adorning the doorway have a bit bigger and newer look. There’s also a new seven-sided star, symbol of the nation, placed on the floor.

I also came up with a new symbol of the Kylal family, seen in white in the middle of the new picture. It represents the horns of the family, which tend to stand more upright than most Agwilikans. (The symbol on the old picture is messed up due to some mirroring that went on at some point in construction.)

Kylal Palace Courtyard

A view from inside the main courtyard of the Kylal Palace, situated between the ceremony hall and library. The window in the middle looks into the back of the ceremony hall. The dimly lit dome of one of the wings is visible on the left.

There’s a new design for a common type of pillar used on the palace, with a more circular arch and a blue diamond shaped stone inlaid into each one. The double doors got an update to have better defined edges, and most windows now have brass supports built into them.

The painting around the window represents Mibru, a species of rodent-like animals that are very common in the forests of the region.

An earlier view of the courtyard can be seen here.

Kylal Palace Wing

The circle-shaped palace wing is used as the personal residence of the Kylal family. There are two wings to the palace, with the second one being for the Akelikan Kylals, despite the fact that they were killed off before the palace was built. Each wing contains sixteen equally sized rooms in addition to the pictured lobby.

The wings and the library all have a dome at their center of their floor plan. At the very top of the dome’s interior is a seven-pointed star, the national symbol.

Felcae

The Felcae are one of the immigrant races of Sharpheart and one of the races present in Elehura. This particular character is Miryin, an expert archer and user of wind (telekinetic) magic.

This is an updated version of an earlier image (shown below). I used a 3D model to try to get a better grasp on the pose, and used Inkscape instead of Flash to draw it.

The Ayra Katrin

The Ayra Katrin organization is the prestigious home of the best scholars, engineers, sorcerers, and enchanters of the Seven-Star Nation.

Katrin lived during “Mosereka”, the Time of the Five Races, which took place before the First War. He became deeply interested in the hidden powers possessed by the Naryyd and Agwil known as Kaera. After much study and practice, he developed his own Kaera abilities. Others flocked to him and became his pupils. Those that he taught were called “che ayra se katrin”, the Followers of Katrin.
Not only did Katrin pioneer the Agwilikan and Akelikan use of Kaera, he also was the primary discoverer of enchantment, a method of imbuing objects with latent Kaera power. He was also an avid scholar and was a major contributor to the development of the Kaera-assisted printing press and libraries.
The Naryyd and the Kylal decided to create an official entity based around Katrin and his followers. It was named the “Ayra Katrin”. This organization was involved in, among other things, training and managing Kaera users, overseeing enchantment trades, printing and archiving important historical documents and other literary works, maintaining central libraries, and assisting in major public works projects.
When war broke out, Katrin was expected to go into battle. He was the most powerful user of Kaera by a large margin, and many thought he would rain devastation on the invading forces. However, he refused participate in battle, insisting that he stay at his home at the Ayra Katrin Library of Cressacapera. He continued to teach and train others and enchant weapons for the war until his death.

The image above is the sigil of the Ayra Katrin. This particular picture has marks showing how the symbol is constructed.

Agwilcress Residential Block

Originally made for housing military families, the Residential Block now offers the largest amount of living space in Agwilcress. The Block is located just East of the “head” and “neck” of the city’s design. You can see the Grand Pool beach, which takes up the “head”,  in the upper left corner of the picture. Due to their army origin, most buildings in the Block share the same floor plan and arranged in neat rows.