Tuesday, January 19th, 2016 – “Real World” Photo of the Day” from archives.
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Just to remind us that we aren’t always freezing our bums off up here in Canada – This is a sundown photo taken in Robert Simpson Park (sp?) a few years back. We saw some unusual colours looking out into ‘Chats Lake’ – the Ottawa River from the parking lot at the beach. Which was a favourite spot to sit and enjoy ice cream from the Ice Shack- I wonder if that venue is still there? ~~~TaleRocker~~~
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“Real World” Photo of the Day – January 18, 2016
Arnprior, Ontario – This was one frosty morning before the town blocked access to what had been a parking lot near the Mouth of the Madawaska River- Fog near the weir & Hoar Frost often visited the trees there, along a walking trail past the boat yard to the park and the beach on Chats Lake. This is probably either 2007 or 2008. The dark nearly horizontal line near the vertical centre pf the photo is the weir.
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November 07, 2015 – Sunset On Utility Wires on Gibson Street
Sunlight illuminating utility cables on Gibson Street – DreamCat, the artist, saw this and gasped, “I want to paint this!” I had my camera with me and captured almost a dozen shots, including a few we went around the block back up and around to capture farther up Gibson Street. Some came out blurry, even with the camera set on “Sports’ capture – I have a couple I like best, this is one of them ~~~ TaleRocker
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Screen Shot – Moe The Cat Person Checking the Cave in the Faer Kingdoms.
Here’s my colourful pirate Cat Person “Moe” checking out the massive cave in the Faer Kingdoms – with, I think, a bit of precious gem quality rock behind him. ~~~ Jim
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Screen Shot “Faer Kingdoms” Stream Before Adding the Waterfalls –
-A series of cascading waterfalls will dazzle anyone who stumbles into this area. I almost deleted this whole area – Where I made a lot of early mistakes and hadn’t learned how to do anything the ‘easy way’ – This would be an area in the ‘Faer Kingdoms’ – the Newbie Friendly parallel world where creatures related to the tiny flying Healer-Sprites and other creatures from Earthly Fairy Tales pop in and out and ‘originally came from’ We made things more colourful and bright there and don’t allow player versus player attacks anywhere in this ‘dimension’. ~~~ TaleRocker
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Screen Shot – Very Early Development – Carving Ravines and plotting the Road, looking back toward the Port City.
— More Very Early development here – Stretching this area as far as we could – Then connecting two areas, one much higher than the other, we began to pull deep ravines down out of the ‘mountains’ that would be a lot more like the Younger Rockies than the Older Appalachians – The dark blue in the upper right hand corner would be the ocean. The sea port area looks really tiny from here. But I think we made a pretty good transition between the two areas. We’ll know later – And I hope we don’t have to do a lot of ‘tweaking’ to smooth out slopes that look great from one angle and then don’t quite connect from another. ~~~ TaleRocker
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Game Screen Shot – Very Early Development of the Road from Birken to the Capital City of Aerendel –
Early development of the road north from the port city of Birken to the Capital City of Aerendel with its castle and secret entrances to the ‘The Anomaly’ – a series of tunnels and portals that can link to other worlds, other times, completely different realities – Some dangerous, some silly – & even some where ‘adventurers’ can have homes built and expanded over time. The hills will be modified as buildings, forests and forts will be added. ~~~ TaleRocker
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Screen Shot – Birken, The Port City – Before Adding the Docks and Buildings
Basic Beginning View of Where the Docks will be in Birken, with Megrory’s Pub just out of the scene to the left. There will be sailing ships and Customs Agents and thugs who will knock newcomers unconscious and rob them blind and Travelers’ Aid Society People who will give basic newbie weapons and armor and advice and directions – and Constables who will arrest anybody who doesn’t have a Bounty Hunter’s License or Bribe Money. and opportunistic thieves in the lock up who will escape and set locked up newbies free to divert the constables as they make good their own escapes.
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Flower Pot Rocks and Shadows of 2014
This was another photo I shot at Flower Pot Rocks in Hopewell in August of 2014 – late in the day, almost closing time. At ‘Dead Low Tide’ with people showing up as silhouettes. At Almost the North-Eastern End of Fundy Bay — Actually a ‘Still’ from an HD video – ~~~ TaleRocker
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Game Development – Sunset in a parallel world
“Sunset in North Shamrock Island, in the Parallel World” – This is a second parallel dimension inside the game world. It’s a dimension that is under attack by ‘unknown adversaries’ that previous quest winners are invited to visit to learn who or what may be attacking – and why, and what ‘they’ want and if they might gain access to either the Faer Kingdoms or the ‘Real World’ of the game. Here, in this screen shot, the setting sun hits moisture in the atmosphere and creates a yellow glow in the west. The first questors to find this dimension will choose a name or some kind of designation to identify the whole dimension. ~~~ TaleRocker
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Photo – One Whole Lotta Snow on the second week of March in 2008.
Canadians grow tired of explaining that their country is not buried under several feet of snow year round and we do not all live in igloos. I haven’t seen a single igloo in the 13 & 1/2 years I’ve been visiting and then living here – This, however, was a common sight in the Ottawa area of Ontario in the winter of 2007 – 2008. There’s between four and six inches of newly fallen snow on the ground and about a four foot high bank of snow looking like a castle wall around the front yart of this house. This photo was taken at about 5:45 am on March 8th, 2008. ~~~TaleRocker
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Screen Shot – North Coast Cliffs and site of a future flowing waterfall
Cliffs and the site of a future waterfall on the north coast of Shamrock Island in the ‘Faer Kingdoms’ parallel dimension. The building in ruins is a place-holder. It was an example of an asset that came with the Hero Cloud. ~~~ TaleRocker
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Photo – Down Inside a Gorge in Ithaca, New York.
This is a Gorge in Ithaca, New York. The Cornell University campus is all around this gorge. There’s a bridge just out of sight around the corner to the right and there’s a wooden stair case down into this gorge not far behind where this shot was taken. The water is only about an inch deep in spots. I took a photo of a woman walking where the water did not cover her sandals. A friend commented, “What? Is she walking on water?” — Well, sort of. ~~~TaleRocker
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Screen Shot – Shaping Mountains and putting in a road.
Here we are zoomed way out to get a look at how the world building is progressing. We were shaping steep hills to put in a road from a coastal city – Birken – to the Capital city with its castle at – Aerendel – in the hills at the base of a mountain. & Here you can see the brown fog as night is falling. ~~~ TaleRocker
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Photo – March Snow on trees photographed at night –
Snow on trees’ branches caught at night with a flash – This was taken on March 8th, 2008 in Arnprior, Ontario, Canada. The bright green light near the top of this photo is a street light. ~~~TaleRocker
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Screen Shot – Just before sunrise in Absentia – in the ‘Real World’ dimension of the game world.
Absentia Pass in the game’s ‘Real World’. The yellow glow is supposed to be the pre-dawn sun lighting up a morning fog. This was when we were first experimenting with the colour sliders. We had no idea what colour the fogs would be. Here, early morning fogs were yellow, and at the same setting – late evening fogs were brown. ~~~TaleRocker
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“Real World” Photo of the Day – Fog on a River on a very cold day –
Winter fog on the Madawaska River just south of the bridge above the Weir. This was probably taken in December of 2007. ~~~ TaleRocker
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Game Development Screen Shot of the Day – A Young Faer Elf –
This would be a young, fully grown Faer Elf. Faer Elves are natives of the Faer Kingdoms. Their average life span would be about 5,000 ‘earth-human’ years. When they’re older they generally appear more ‘spindly’, less ‘healthy’, and not very friendly. They have been described as being extremely peevish, cranky, able to change their looks to appear creepy, unfriendly, dangerous, and just plain weird. No one knows why, but as they get older, they often turn to exploring the world beyond the Faer Kingdoms – possibly out of boredom – and find students they feel an afinity for. They will teach their students spells and practices from the school of ‘Faeromancy’ – a generally non-lethal form of ‘Nuisance Magick’ like the spell that will leave everyone within fifty meters stuck about three feet deep in a rancid, sticky pool of something that smells so bad many victims throw up and cannot fight, can barely breathe. The sticky liquid looks like ‘chicken soup’ but the noodles act more like electric eels that shock and bite. Most Faer Elves can also ‘morph’ into cats. Not big cats, ‘domestic’ sized cats. These cats can look like they died several years ago and nobody told them about that yet. But most of them look very ‘average’ and not at all remarkable. I would suggest you never kick or throw anything at any cats anywhere in this game. You never know what kind of spell it might hurl at you. ~~~~~ TaleRocker
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“Real World” Photo of the Day – Railroad Bridge with no tracks.
This is an unused bridge in Arnprior, Ontario, Canada. It used to be a railroad bridge. Between 2010 and 2013 there was some talk about turning this into a footbridge that would be part of a park that I don’t believe became reality. The ‘real’ railroad bridge was elsewhere, up the river a bit. When the last train rolled away with all the railroad tracks and ties the other bridge ceased to be a part of a working railroad. I have no idea what may have happened since then. The Madawaska River flows beneath. The time stamp on this photo says I took it on my father’s birthday, March 18, 2007. ~~~ TaleRocker
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Game Development Screen Shot of the Day – More stuff about that Cave –
After doing extensive work to get the cave to look right we messed around with ‘painting it’ because some of the colours were supposed to indicate the presence of minerals and possible gems, and after all – it was supposed to be part of another world, a parellel dimension inside the game – a place you can get to visit or stay in after you learn how to find and activate the portals – which happens as a result of a quest. A wizard type teaches you how to recognize and activate the portals. — We still did more ‘landscaping’ inside the cave after the colors made a few ‘glitches’ obvious, we worked the ‘erosion tools’ to get rid of most straight up and down cliffs and pulled some stalactites down and pushed others back up when they were blocking the pathways through the cave. ~~~ TaleRocker
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“Real World” Photo of the Day – Christmas Tree Line across the melting ice on Chats Lake
This is a photo of “Chats Lake”/the Ottawa River at Arnprior, Ontario, Canada. In the winter the river is frozen solid to the point where people can drive trucks across the ice here. A lot of snowmobiles regularly shoot all over the river – After Christmas, people take thrown away Christmas Trees and line them up from the end of the road where this ‘Dead End’ sign announces the end of the road. Best Guess? They line the trees up as a navigation aid for anyone who wants to shoot across the river here and probably ends where a similar road dead ends at the north side of the river in Quebec. It may be a popular crossing between Ontario and Quebec. There were announcements that doing this with Christmas trees was against a law. I took this photo in March of 2008, when the weather was warmer and the ice was melting. ~~~ TaleRocker
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Game Development Screen Shot of the Day – Working on the interior of a cave.
This is a bit of the detail inside the huge cave in the “Faer Kingdoms” – We had to make sure the characters could actually get through it. And then we wanted to make it look as realistic as possible while still being as fantastic as possible. ~~~ TaleRocker
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“Real World” Photo of the Day – Indoor Courtyard in Fredericton, New Brunswick September, 2013
This is actually an indoor Courtyard in a Fredericton, New Brunswick Ramada Inn. I thought it ‘felt like’ a scene from New Orleans. ~~~ TaleRocker
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Game Development Screen Shot of the Day – Manipulating bits of landscape.
— This is the old ‘client’s look. This is one or two generations back. What you’re looking at is a piece of an area being ‘created’, stretched, resized, and soon it will be shaped, texturized, maybe painted, and moved into place. That bit of landscape that is hovering in dark space there might end up being an off-shore mountain that you can’t get to from here- Or it might be flipped upside down and manipulted to become the ceiling, the inside of a cave – what you’d see if you look up inside the cave. If anybody playing your game can see the coutside of the cave, as in, a mountain or hill- you have to ‘create’ another piece of landscape, size it, texturize it, shape it and very carefully move it so it is right-side-up on top of the upside down cave interior – And you better fly all around your mountain or hill and go inside your cave and make sure everything did fit together right. These bits are only visible from one side. Your character may be able to walk through a wall it can’t see until it turns around and then it wouldn’t be able to get back. As a developer you can ‘turn off collisions’ and walk through walls and fall into a black void, or a white void, or a grey void, or a pink void- or all kinds of different coloured nothingness, that never looks like anywhere you’d want to stay. And I’ve actually lost a couple builder characters that way. You can now restart them in a safe zone and move them back to the area you fell through – making sure collisions are back ‘on’, or you’re in ‘flying’ mode so you can move up and down and around and in and out and then rise above a spot you’d like your builder character to fly down to and land. But sometimes weird things happen, like part of the character might be invisible, or gone. This can be traumatic. ~~~ TaleRocker
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“Real World” Photo of the Day – ‘Time Travelers’ in Arnprior – 2012 AD
After the 2010 event commemorating The Prince Of Wale’s visit to Arnprior in 1860 was such a smashing success, and seeing as how many of the ‘Enactors’ still had their Period Dresses handy, the committee in charge of celebrating Arnprior’s 150th Birthday thought they coud add to their festivities by encouraging Enactors to walk around during the 150th Celebration ‘In Costume’ again. Here we have several ‘Respectable’ women from ‘way back when’ ordering Ice Cream at a Summer Ice Cream Stand in the summer of 2012. ~~~ TaleRocker
