Building round things with square things
One of the topics Nékromegà deals with is colonialism. The story takes place in two very different countries, one being a small insular matriarchal society, the other a huge proto-capitalist empire. It’s all about contrast.
Above are some screenshots of the map I’m currently working on, set in the archipelago of Suùn. While I’m rather satisfied with the overall aesthetics, this will probably change a lot, because the place depicted here doesn’t quite look like it should.
Both countries have indeed to show very different architectural styles. However, since I’m building the whole thing with 16x16x16 voxel blocks, this leaves few possibilities for complex shapes. Which is a good thing, because it means I may be able to finish this project in my lifetime.
But my official imaginary city design adviser told me he imagined that matriarchal architecture with round shapes. This would totally makes sense, not only because femininity is generally associated with curves, or because the idea of matriarchy reminds him of neolithic settlements, where round shapes were pretty common, but also because it would help defining a sharp contrast with the empire’s fascist-industrial architectural style.
However, voxels are cubic, and creating round shapes with cubic elements isn’t exactly easy. So if I want round shapes, I guess I’m up for a challenge, eh?
Wouldn’t round shapes like this look lovely? (Los Millares)
As if it wasn’t challenging enough, RPG In A Box’s latest update adds nifty ambient occlusion shaders. This looks great on my character models, but not so great on my walls and bigger elements. Why? Because the way I’ve set up my map, and especially my walls, is not really the standard way. That would work at a smaller scale, but in my case, it’s kind of complicated, hence odd shadings in some corners, among other similar problems.
So I’ll have to work on two things: enhancing my models in a way that do justice to these ambient occlusion shaders which I definitely want to use, and adding round shapes all over the place. Because occlusion shaders would indeed look very nice on round shapes. The good thing is the shaders settings are on a per-model basis, so this leaves me with a lot of freedom.
The bad thing is my building blocks are starting to become numerous and highly specific, but that’s a necessary evil to satisfy my lego-god ego.