" This place? This is the Isle Of Abbadon ... I ... make a pilgrimage here every few ... Centuries. I Pay my respects, and drudge out any lost souls that ended up in her Sea." - Misery, Child of Lilith
Who would have thought that making mountains look good was so difficult?
Certainly not I. the programmer, with no eye of art. Surely, setting up the terrain would be a cinch. throw some mountains down here. throw some rivers down there...
After a few days of lovingly crafting the starting area of the game, it occurred to me ... I forgot that the Sea of Abbadon was well ... Abbadon. The sea of abandon is the final resting place of a Fallen Angel, and the sea basin itself is carved by the impression of her body against the earth.
Mind you, the sea of abandon was something that I, myself wrote and coined. So I'm pretty disappointed in myself, that I forgot my OWN lore when I started creating. I have honestly created my own dilemma.
Balancing the coastline between clearly being the impression of some long-dead god-sized entity, and trying to make the coastline natural enough that it doesn't look like... well, like I took a round paintbrush and drew a really crude outline of a sleeping giant, was pretty hard. But eventually, I came upon the consensus that (1) this game will NOT be one large map, I have no idea how to turn this into a dessert for stage two, so we will be doing the classic souls-like structure of multiple realms, and (2), the coastline will begin to come together as I continue to build other areas in abandon, like the various villages and castles.
So, after getting the shape of the sea more or less together, I switched gears to the area in which Livia begins her journey. The Isle of Abbadon, an old settlement with a shrine that is dedicated to the entity, built by her follower, Misery.
So Without Further ADO, here is the shrine (Work in progress. haven't even started on rocks and trees so I know the terrain looks ... stretchy).
and here is the final state, complete with post-processing:
and lastly, a little clip of the water moving because ... why not?
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