At last, I have unleashed my unholy atmospheres upon the unsuspecting masses!
Seriously, though, this is a project I've spent a great deal of time on over the last few years, with much support and enthusiasm from friends and onlookers in the community. Many thanks to all of you, you know who you are, and many apologies for the long delay. This is only a portion of what I had originally intended, but after too many real life and computer-related obstacles, I decided it was best to share what I have, as-is, while some of those same friends are still around.
First, most of the images are high res, at 2048x2048. It was necessary for some of the more detailed images. Also, I've made my skybox.2da CSP 2.1 compatible, for ease of use. Just place this hak in your module's custom content above CSP, and you're good to go. If you don't use CSP, no problem. I've prefixed all the CSP entries as such, so just don't select them when building your areas.
I've included almost all of my experiments that were in a useable state, including some odd interior attempts, and a reference sky I had hoped to use in a tutorial someday. It's quite handy for laying out skybox textures, showing compass directions and optimal viewing areas.
I've also included a short demo module, so you can check out some of the skies in-game, and get a feel for how they look with different areas.
These are my gift to all you module and PW builders in the community, to use as you see fit. I'd prefer they didn't end up in any non-module specific combo haks without my knowledge, but otherwise, pillage away, I realize there may only be one or two that may interest some of you, and this is a large hak, so take what you need. I'd love to hear about it, though, so drop me a line.
I have to give special thanks to Chaos_Theocrat for the initial inspiration and encouragement, and many thanks to Mask, Lord Rosenkrantz, Tybae, and the rest of the gang at rpgmodding.com for the help and support while I was working on these. And a huge thanks to Estelindis, who is too kind for words. Something she said last year stuck with me enough to make me finally release these now, along with a recent e-mail from another member of the community inquiring about them. So here they are. Enjoy!
Many thanks for the kind words, Killmonger! Hope you enjoy them. _________________________ Silent Hill-ish Hak | Skybox Experiments | Creature/NPC Reskins Vol 1 | Works In Progress
Posted by Killmonger at on08/29/10
Just Fantastic !!! And the demo's atmospherics were cool too!! Your work is excellent. Thanks for sharing. From one throw back of the 80's, to another, Excelsior !!!
Posted by Izk at 2010-08-2817:48:38
@Jez, thank you for sharing yours, too! @Jack, the same goes for you. What's for dinner tonight? Skinmesh fish fried in a makeshift skillet! ;) _________________________ Silent Hill-ish Hak | Skybox Experiments | Creature/NPC Reskins Vol 1 | Works In Progress
Posted by JackTaylor at on08/27/10
DD has always been a vehicle for the imagination more than any other sense. Thus, any 'visual' imagery is possible, with no special effects budget to hold us back. These skyboxes are a perfect example of imaginative imagery, and I love 'em! Hey, if someone's going to have a nightmare, hallucination, or message from a god, I'd like to be able to have a sky like that eye! There are uncounted uses for such work, as long as imagination is an ingredient. Thanks, Izk, for the hard work that goes in to this stuff, and for releasing 'em for everyone to play with them. Great work! JFK _________________________ My other sword is a +5 Holy Avenger JFK Swimming Skinmesh Fish Link JFK Makeshift Weapons Link
Posted by Jezira at on08/27/10
Excellent work, very useful for unusual settings. I agree with the others. Thanks a bunch for sharing your work Izk =) _________________________ 800 sci-fi placeables! *Patch 02* | Modern Secret Base | SW Heads | SW Weapons! | Whitefall Exotic flowers * Updated 1.1! * | Whitefall Heads | Modern Inventory Icons | Mass Effect gun - NEW versions! | Bloody notes! | Horse statue
Posted by Izk at 2010-08-2619:09:03
Many, many thanks for the kind words, Pstemarie and Este! You and my other old friends at rpgmodding helped make my madness possible! ;) PS: I keep looking at the download counters wondering why they're one off. Perhaps I should've mentioned it's a two part .rar, and you need to download both halves to make it work. Oh well, nobody's complained yet! _________________________ Silent Hill-ish Hak | Skybox Experiments | Creature/NPC Reskins Vol 1 | Works In Progress
Posted by Estelindis at on08/26/10
Magnificent - incredibly imaginative work! Thanks for creating and sharing these amazing skyboxes. They really help us to escape into other worlds in our building and playing. :-) _________________________ KotOR Heads FR Deity and Faction Cloaks Fall-from-Grace Soundset
Posted by Pstemarie at on08/26/10
For some reason my vote didn't get logged. _________________________ -- Pstemarie - Project Q Team Artist
Posted by Pstemarie at on08/26/10
Izk these skyboxes are truly works of art. You should be proud of such a fine achievement. _________________________ -- Pstemarie - Project Q Team Artist
Posted by Izk at 2010-08-2421:47:03
Thanks for the votes, all of you! It means a lot. The interior skies were experiments, and I have to agree, their usefulness is probably limited. I do like the way the brick one turned out though. Check out the Steamworks in the demo to see what I mean. I was rather surprised with the way it looks there, as I'd never bothered to test it with that tileset. Has anyone played with the demo, btw? Be sure to turn your sound on. While I do have a real module I've been working on for quite some time, it was fun to make that simple little demo, just to exercise a little of the "atmospheric" design I've learned over the years. It was even a bit of a challenge, just because I was limited to using the default tilesets, which aren't exactly "cosmic". It may be the only module I'll ever get to finish, who knows. :) As far as classic DD goes, I have nothing against it, really. It's part of my heritage. I go back to ADD in the early 80's. I just find it's so much more fun to step outside of the stereotypes of the genre once in a while. NWN itself has the potential to be so much more, WWII, sci-fi, etc. I don't know if it still exists, but GURPS comes to mind, which IIRC, was a universal role playing system that allowed for play in all kinds of different scenarios and worlds. That's the way I think NWN should be. _________________________ Silent Hill-ish Hak | Skybox Experiments | Creature/NPC Reskins Vol 1 | Works In Progress
Site
