EQNL

EQNL – Tower of Orthanc – Isengard

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EQNL-Orthanc-01

A dark overlord commanded that a certain tower be constructed… an so it has been done!

At the launch of the new biomes about a week ago I took the opportunity to find a new spot on a Tundra styled zone. I cleared the claims from the last ‘Castle on a Cloud’ project and started in on this one. It took quite a bit longer than I expected but the exterior model is now complete and the project is likely wrapped up for me at this point.

EQNL-Orthanc-Overview

This is mostly based on the Lord of the Rings movie version of the tower model. It’s about 344 voxels high and spans much of two claims high. The base is about 108×108 voxels. With those dimensions it’s technically between a 50% and 80% scale model but still looks scaled reasonably when you walk in, stand on the balcony above the entrance or stand up top.

I built one of the four columns and mostly copied from there to create the rest of the tower. Some of the stitching of the four pieces together and some detail work had to be done separately. Much of the cap was done all at once.

I did have a problem after first building about 80% of one of the towers and then trying to copy, not realizing that the entire column needs to slope toward the center as well as diminish in cross-section as it rose. That forced some rework.

Took about twice as long as I would have expected but I’m pretty happy with the results. Let me know if you have any questions or comments. It’s on Liberation – Tunnel, north east of the hub if you’d like to visit. Enjoy!

EQNL – Castle for Cossette

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EQNL - Cloud Castle 3I wanted to take the next steps in working with stone and some traditional castle type shapes. With cylinders, domes and arches worked out I decided to put together a small castle/keep arrangement and try a few of them together.

I also was looking for a unique location for the castle and after some playing with the “stucco” texture came up with something that looked like a piece of a cloud. Putting the two together I decided to put up a “Castle on a Cloud” (thanks Les Misérables.) The final piece was some sort of connector to the ground and what better way to climb up into the clouds than a beanstalk!

Here’s where it stands, rough structure, all dirt/stone:

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This is probably as far as I’ll take it at this point and will likely be resetting the claim and going after some other brainstorm in the next day or two. If anyone would like a quick tour before demolition or has any questions let me know here or on Twitter. (Claim is on Serenity – Ravine @ 1:00 from hub and 40% of the way toward the rim.)

Keep Calm and Build On

EQN Landmark – Foundations

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EQNL-Founder logoLearning more about the select, smooth and paint tools I decided to reset my claim and start some further experimentation. I was envisioning something more fantastic and the smoothed pillar towers seemed like a fun next step. Here’s the foundation I’m going to start experimenting on. However, I’m pausing here for the moment until I get the line tool to clean up those jagged edges and make the ramps more of what I’m looking for.

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I’m on Serenity – Ravine still, about here:

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EQN Landmark – New Voxel Overlords

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EQNL-Founder logoEverQuest Next Landmark has recently reached “alpha”, an early non-feature complete testing stage, and has opened to player testers that have either been invited to test via sign-up and limited selection, or that have purchased a pre-release game package.

Having done the latter, I spent some time in the past couple days checking it out. I’ll post in the future on my evolving review. For now, I’ll say that despite evolving features and plenty of bugs I got a kick out of getting in and trying out some building. I also wanted to post some pictures of a first building project I used to get acquainted with the tools and environment.

Finding “claim” or area in the landscape that you get to own and build on is a bit of a challenge, since space is limited while they open a limited set of servers and “islands” for testing. I managed to get some space on a mountainside and decided that for my first project I’d experiment with using the landscape rather than flattening the entire plot and building from there (not uncommon from what I’ve seen from players so far.)

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I started at the top and cleared the area for the upper tower and laid the upper floor and surrounding crenellation.

Then, in a strategy I would not recommend necessarily, I went to the base of the mountain and built the lower, two floor crafting area shown here. From there, I carved out into the mountain base and then went back to the top and started carving down into the mountain, hoping that the two would meet in a roughly usable way.

I ended up with a four floor tower carved into the mountain with windows carved out on each floor. This overlooks a two floor crafting terrace, where I can keep my forges and crafting tables for now.

All in all it took a couple hours to craft with the very simple materials I used. I found it pretty compelling, though I don’t know if I’ll actually finish it from here or reset and try out a couple other ideas I have.

Let me know if you have any questions or want to hear more about EQNL!

(Oh… a “voxel” is a 3D pixel or a fancy name for the building block model that EQNL uses.)

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