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!
Breath-taking beautiful work here. Glad you're back to the community, mad one.
Posted by Aeryn at on08/23/10
Very nice, especially useful for space stuff. _________________________ Dark Horizon
Posted by Graymaster at on08/23/10
Cannot go so far as to agree with "the hell with classical DD" but will say that adventure is what you make of it, and your offerings allow for endless imaginings. Well done, though I must agree that the Interior boxes are a bit beyond most commonplace scenarios. Even still, that is much too minor a point to influence my vote.
Posted by ValynDyral at on08/23/10
Gorgeous. To hell with "classical DD", it's 2010, we can (And in Izk's case, have) done better. _________________________ Arcadia City Tileset
Posted by Ben at on08/23/10
Taking into account planar travel, DD allows players to go anywhere and see pretty much anything, so spectacular skies certainly fit that theme. Even without taking into account that many NWN worlds aren't DD (or one of its campaign settings) at all... The interior wall skies' texture details are at an odd scale (ie, immense), but perhaps that's the idea. I can picture them being really useful in a "giant's castle" type of scenario. Very nice work, Izk. _________________________ [Blog] [Mods]
Posted by BigfootNZ at on08/22/10
These are great, I made an Ethereal Plane skybox years back but these are better, I especially like the Earth Sky and Fountain sky, horse head nebula, would work great for a Spelljammer excursion onto an asteroid. The Burning eye would be great in a Far Realm campaign, or as a layer from the Abyss... Id say if people cant seem to see these skybox's potential its more an issue with the user than the maker. Hmm those wood and brick ones could be used for a trip into a miniature world inside a magic box, although they would be harder to incorporate.
Posted by Izk at 2010-08-2218:58:14
@Ioinne, thanks for the vote, and forgive me if I sound defensive. I often encounter the idea of "classical" DD around this community, and what people say it should be, and it does bother me sometimes. Mr Gygax himself said all those rules were just a guideline, and we're only limited by our own imaginations. I'm an unconventional artist who makes unconventional stuff for unconventional worlds, what can I say? :) _________________________ Silent Hill-ish Hak | Skybox Experiments | Creature/NPC Reskins Vol 1 | Works In Progress
Posted by Izk at 2010-08-2218:47:33
There's already skies for that in CSP. These are for planar travel, communing with deities and demons, voyaging to the bottom of the sea, etc... which actually are frequent staples of classic DD, if I remember right. _________________________ Silent Hill-ish Hak | Skybox Experiments | Creature/NPC Reskins Vol 1 | Works In Progress
Posted by loinne at on08/22/10
Epic, but it's hard to make it useful in classical DnD adventure.
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