Banjooie
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1645
Registered: 12-12-2004
IP: Logged

Alright, there are like five threads on making holds more aesthetically pleasing. It's pretty clear that we've gotten to a point with hold design where we're really in fact trying to add pizazz. Gone are the days, clearly, where we could make dungeons that look like KDD! (Not that it was a bad hold, obviously! It's just aesthetically dated.)

All in all, though, what I think we're looking for is going to boil down pretty simply into a couple features.

1: Essentially, let us put down a custom image into a room with custom transparency, and decide what layer it's above or below. This would allow the following.

i) Creative use of shadows, for making things that are taller than 10 feet high.

ii) We can have vines that stretch over walls, and then dangle over corridors above Beethro's head. Will it obscure the playing field? Sure, but ideally you're not making them huge, or putting those in complicated parts of the room. (I imagine you could just turn these custom images off for optimization purposes?)

iii) We want to put something underwater. Semitransparent image in water looks like it's at the bottom! Woo!

2) Simple, low-framerate animations that can play while the room is going. This lets us have our weather effects the way we want it, allows for flickering lighting, machinery chugging away in a side room, etc.


I don't know if that would take a ton of time, but it seems to me that all the parts are in play already.