Screenshot Design Competition Round 3 - Lost City of X
 

Hey all! I apologize for the long delay between rounds. Some stuff came up that pulled me away from work, but we're ready to go, and I hope you all had an excellent holiday season. :)

The winner of the last round, GPS51, has picked the new theme for Round 3: The Lost City of X. GPS has specified that all entries must take place in one of five outlying Dawn of Fantasy regions:

Sssilistra

Terrain Type: Mountains with open volacanos and dead trees
Major Strongholds: None – this is not a player region

Sssilistra is dragon territory. Its landscape is the stuff of childhood fantasies, though few ever set foot in that wild and powerful place. Amidst the blackened trees, fires spew from the volcanoes, which rumble ever angrily. Once every few decades, an elf is drawn to this violent land, hearing a music so raw and intense it cannot be ignored. Not many return, but one who did is the elf named Allios, a nhoblio older than most trees. It is from his rambling accounts that most knowledge of Sssilistra has been gleaned.

Dwarven Marches

Terrain Type: Wet caves untouched by the Dwarves
Major Strongholds: None – this is not a player region

The origins of The Dwarven Marches' name are lost to time. The Dwarven Marches are marked by an abundance of deep, damp caves, none of which show evidence of dwarf habitation, past or present. When questioned on the name, the well known half-dwarf Sir Morin suggested that dwarfs had “marched straight past that gleet manky hole”, but while it is an appealing theory, Sir Morin's etymological expertise is not highly regarded by scholars.

Dunn Ergast

Terrain Type: Caves – full of dwarf mining operations
Major Strongholds: None – this is not a player region

Dunn Ergast, so humans say, is a place where you either lose your hearing or your sanity, so loud and incessant are the bangings and clangings of dwarf mining operations. Dunn Ergast is the center of the dwarf realm. Above ground, the landscape is bleak, desolate and unforgiving. Below ground, it is worse. In the unstable tunnels, dwarfs work ceaselessly, hacking and burrowing. Their labyrinthine abode contains many riches, but only dwarfs possess the skill to navigate that treacherous subterranean dimension. Thus, dwarfs have maintained a contented existence in this unfriendly domain.

Bal Rattha

Terrain Type: Desert – Wasteland, with some empty lakes and lots of dying trees
Major Strongholds: None – this is not a player region

Beyond the realm of Gokkholm lies the barren land of Bal Rattha. where desert stretches into every direction, glittering with a million salt lakes from which no creature can drink. This is the home of ogres, who live here in such numbers that their morning bellows shake the desert sand with a sound like the world ending. Orcs have never sent their armies here, perhaps because there is neither a civilization to destroy nor riches to plunder. Thus Bal Rattha is left to ogres and exiles, and the latter rarely survive for long.

The Desolate Hills

Terrain Type: empty wasteland with hills and swamp
Major Strongholds: None – this is not a player region

It is unknown why The Desolate Hills are quite so desolate. In the Older Times, humans attempted to settle in the region, but their crops failed and their animals died. Some believe magic corrupts the earth, for the Order of the Deep is said to work their spells here, far from prying eyes. Perhaps the wizards have always worked to keep humans away, and perhaps it is partly due to their influence that goblins also populate these hills, a menace to any who travel through.

For inspiration, you can visit these regions in Dawn of Fantasy's Online Kingdom mode to view the surrounding terrain, but most of the pieces are just placeholders until we expand the playable world, so you are free to deviate from these designs. A design document is also available for more information on the unique lore of each region. And, you may have noticed that there are two other regions on the map, Deathlands in the southeast and the Tattered Islands/Isles of the Corsairs in the north, but we ask that you refrain from picking either of these regions as they're currently inaccessible to players.

Not only is this a great choice of theme, but it's also something that Reverie devs are very interested in keeping an eye on as we have yet to design, in detail, these locations. So who knows, we may even use this round to scan potential level design hires. ;) These are regions that have yet to be properly flushed out, so feel free to depict them in whatever way you imagine them!

We have two small change and one announcement before we begin:

• For this one round only, fellow designer andreicde has chosen to contribute to the prize pool with 70 influence points of his own. These points will not be distributed based on the voting at the end; but rather, andreicde and the Reverie devs will make an executive decision on which entry deserves these bonus points - so they may or may not go to one of the winning entries.
• Because this round calls for the creation of a city (it doesn't have to be big though!), let's not even worry about deadlines right now. Just work on a design and we'll do a progress check later on before announcing a deadline. Likewise, due to the scope of this round, better prizes may be added to the pool in the near future - possibly including getting your town featured in-game!
• We realize that there are a lot of elements to our editor, some of which can be tricky to grasp for newcomers. So, we will now be doing mini tutorials based on request. Want to know more about waterfalls or perhaps you're confused about scripting animations? Make a request in this thread, and we'll help you out!

Rules, tips, and information on voting and prizes can be found here. We will likely add to the prize pool for this round, but that will be announced later on.

I present you the Lost City of Bal Rattha!

very nice ark :)

ty. i know it's not great,but don't have epic design skills here hehe

That would not be a fun maze to get lost in. :p Great work!

ty lol.it was quite annoying to do,had to make part by part. It's cool when you can make your design,but boy it takes forever to turn the parts and make it look decent specially when you have to rotate every single wall/palisade/

A screenshot,and the dofscn with a small cinematic,still working on it.

Right now cinematic just does a circle of the town,and town has production buildings,they didnt want to keep their scale when i was testing it.Gonna be working on getting the fx better,scaling some of the stuff a bit better,and figure out how to script unit movement during a cinematic.

This is supposed to be Dunn Ergast fotress,sadly have no clue how to open the model files to change em,so used human buildings.

If anyone has some advice on lighting without using ambeint or sun(supposed to be cave) would appreciate,I havent found anything yet that acts as a light source :<

Excellent design! Can't wait to see the cinematic.

Perhaps have some torches glowing eerily in the mist? :D

I have a map now in progress that will be sure to amaze everyone!....spent 6 hours making a custom water fall =/....but damn does it look cool :p

anyone know what I press to screen shot during the editor?

Look forward to seeing your map, Gongora.

To take a screenshot in the Editor, just use the Prnt Scrn button and paste into an image editing program or Play the scenario and use the F1 key.

If you play the scenario to take a screenshot, I recommend setting up a camera in Cinematic mode first (View->Cinematic mode). Use WASD and arrow keys to position the camera, press M to place the camera and enter a name e.g. Cam1

You will need to add in some scripting to switch the view to the camera and hide the GUI.

This is the code I use for when I want to take a screenshot from a scenario:
The code starts the scenario in cinematic mode, hides the GUI and switches to the camera set up earlier. Sometimes I use multiple cameras and loop through them using the code that is commented out. The code is also set up so that if you press space, Enter or Esc it will exit the cinematic and show the GUI again.

If you have units from multiple players and you don't want them to fight when you play the scenario, you'll need to set diplomacy.

Here's the code I use for diplomacy:
To add in the code, in the Editor while in Edit mode (View->Edit mode, if you're in Cinematic mode), click on the Script button on the tool bar (looks like a cog). Create a new globals page (icon with a G), double-click on the new page in the list to it and paste in the code.

Hope this helps.