-= Gametoast.com =-

Mistborn: The Final Empire

Well, I cannot deny that this topic has been put off for quite a while, as I wanted to have a sense of accomplishment in providing something that can unequivically showcase what this project is all about. Without further ado, here is backstory to why I've chosen Mistborn series to represent in mod map form:

Helpful links:
Brandon Sanderson's website (it seems to be down right now)
http://www.brandonsanderson.com/
What is Allomancy?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allomancer
Dictionary of terms(from wiki):

Wiki wrote:The Final Empire is the part of earth in which the series takes place. It is ruled by the Lord Ruler and was created when he took Preservation's power at the Well of Ascension. The name came from the Lord Ruler's certainty that since he was immortal, it would be the last empire the world would ever know.
Luthadel is the Capital city in the Final Empire and and in the Central Dominance. Luthadel is originally home to the castle belonging to the Lord Ruler, as he resides in the fortress known as Kredik Shaw. An interesting note is that Luthadel was originally the Terris Mountains, as the Lord Ruler changed the geography of the land when he reached the Well of Ascension, which is hidden beneath his castle.

In Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn: The Final Empire, a new series of fantasy was brought into my world. A place where magic followed scientific principles, where order was maintained by the Lord Ruler, and a heist was planned. Over the course of a year, the protagonists planned to overthrow this tyrant and whether or not they succeede doesn't matter to this map. Read for yourself to find out what happened.. that is what this whole thing is about.

For those who have read this series, you'll find this map to be amazing, and allow you to live out your fantasy of the Mistborn saga. For those who have not heard of mistborn until this topic, drop what your doing and go find the book at your nearest library. You'll find this a lot more intriguing as you read some of it. But regardless of whether or not YOU pick up the book, I am creating a map that is better then any I've constructed previously and for that reason alone it should be worth playing once.

I have attempted to create all of Luthadel, size wise. I am still in development so I don't know if I'll get iconic locations created from the book exactly. So far no buildings can actually be entered. The idea is to create an atmosphere of an overcrowded city known as Luthadel, and let you travel around it.

As far as game modes go, standard conquest is present, as well as at least 1 brand new mode. I won't go into too much detail on those yet, I'm still waiting for Vin's model to be completed before moving on with game modes. But enough chit chat.. you want screens. Videos. First, let me show you what others think Luthadel looks like.
Now see my rendition.



More screens: I have a unique .combo fighting system as well as travel system with this map that uses Allomancy and a system where you cannot regenerate energy on your own. Instead it is 'Metal' vials, which you ingest to regain metals(energy) to use attacks that require it. Mistborn travel in the book by throwing coins against the ground and pushing against the weight of the metal against the ground to throw themselves across distances. This will of course, use metals. You hit the block button to take another vial, which replenishes your metals.

Also, ash constantly falls from the sky because the planet is closer to the sun. The ash clouds act like a barrier against the greater heat levels, and it covers everything. That is why a lot of stuff is dark and black. At night, mist surrounds and envelopes everything, and that is why night and day are different here, as its very important in the books.

Any questions about the series or the map I'll gladly answer. More updates to come, including better sky domes and the removal of the pesky buff effects. Please feel free to ask questions..

Also, I have in fact asked the author if I could do this and he said he loved what I had done and as long as it's free it's fine to do.

-Temp credit section-
Thewulfman for HD textures on buildings, floor so far.
Labj and AgentSmith#38 for creating upcoming Vin model/cape.
Brandon Sanderson for you know, writing the book series..
Naru1305 for the Bow animations
Mithrandir for various models
- Fancy sword used by the swordsmen-
- -=NJO=-Drizzt : original sword model, made for JKA
- Darth_Z13 : converting the model to SWBF2.

--------------------------------------------
Updated: TRAILER!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1EcCmQhM98

And yes, there are bows that fire arrows now. More videos on those later.

looks great

The mist itself doesn't seem fitting, imo. In your reference pic, there is some mist, but not as much as you put in your map; in the ref you can see the color of far-off buildings, whereas in your map they're just a pale grey.

Also, is the girl's hair an addon mesh?

Fiodis wrote:The mist itself doesn't seem fitting, imo. In your reference pic, there is some mist, but not as much as you put in your map; in the ref you can see the color of far-off buildings, whereas in your map they're just a pale grey.

Yeah , i am totaly agree .
Looks great but i think it is a bit empty (there's lot of buildings) , but there's nothing in the halleys/streets,between the buildings but since that's a WIP , i'll wait to see.

I agree about the mist. However, this map looks very promising! I really like the concept!

Fiodis wrote:The mist itself doesn't seem fitting, imo. In your reference pic, there is some mist, but not as much as you put in your map; in the ref you can see the color of far-off buildings, whereas in your map they're just a pale grey.

Also, is the girl's hair an addon mesh?

No. Why do you ask?

Lephenix wrote:

Fiodis wrote:The mist itself doesn't seem fitting, imo. In your reference pic, there is some mist, but not as much as you put in your map; in the ref you can see the color of far-off buildings, whereas in your map they're just a pale grey.

Yeah , i am totaly agree .
Looks great but i think it is a bit empty (there's lot of buildings) , but there's nothing in the halleys/streets,between the buildings but since that's a WIP , i'll wait to see.

Cerfon Rournes wrote:I agree about the mist. However, this map looks very promising! I really like the concept!

I do agree about the emptyiness, but its early, I would say it just hit the 50% mark.


About the mist. Did Anyone read what he said?

First, let me show you what others think Luthadel looks like....




...Now see my rendition.

Its all guesswork anyway, only the author know exactly what it looks like. Anyone painting their versions of something don't have to affect how he makes his version look like. Its completely artistic and he has a lot of freedom in this being a book.

that sounds like a really original concept!

THEWULFMAN wrote: About the mist. Did Anyone read what he said?

Its all guesswork anyway, only the author know exactly what it looks like. Anyone painting their versions of something don't have to affect how he makes his version look like. Its completely artistic and he has a lot of freedom in this being a book.

since rancor posted these two images here and the screenshots resemble them pretty much, they seemed to be indeed references, even if rancor is building his own rendition.
anyway, i agree on the mist too, it seems to be too extreme because it obscures all color of the buildings already at close range while they sky is perfectly blue. in my humble opinion it would look better if the fogdistance was increased and there was a kind of mistlayer above the buildings like on the first concept.

the whole visual impression seems a bit "uneven" to me right now. especially the dark green bricktexture that dominates the whole map makes it pretty "unbelieveable" because of the varying repetitions. in the 7th picture you the bricks of the larbe building are like 20 times bigger than in the buildings in the foreground. when in the midair the shapes of the buildings are hard to make out because the ground has such a similiar texture. i think the best way to find a balance and nail down a general mood without having to worry about repetition etc. is to make a few textures with various solid colors and apply them to the whole environment. then you can test which mix looks best and how many different hues you need to break up the universal dakr green. right now there would be 3 colors: dark green, dark red and light red.
i think you can achieve better results in the atmosphere when you give the textures the colors they would have under normal light conditions and then change the overal colors through the global lighting. through that you can also make the day/night setting more contrasting.

of course thats all just suggestions/personal preferences...

THEWULFMAN wrote:

Fiodis wrote:Also, is the girl's hair an addon mesh?

No. Why do you ask?

It parts of the nighttime video the top half of her head seems to fade out.

Anyway, the pictures seemed to be presented as references - forgive me for not reading the fine print.

thats the mist
well im not sure but it has probably o do witht eh way the mist is generated. on the walls you can sometimes see where on "card" ends and probably something similiar happens with the head.

i was sure i read something by brandon sanderson, they name seemes familioar and it turned out he wrote the alcatraz series. the books are really original and funny, i think ill have a look at the mistborn books.

Well, the books state very heavily that the entire world is consumed in mist. From the atmosphere to the ground, and it is incredibly important to every bit of the plot. To explain something, Mistborn are able to use all allomantic properties, burning Tin for example increases all senses of the Body at once. Sight is increased drastically, making the mist very easy to see through. I will take recommendations to tone it down, but I feel at the moment that it is the proper amount of mist to adequetly give the feel. Part of what makes Night so fun is you can't see as far as day. Places are harder to find, albiet lights will ease this process as I introduce them.

The current vin model is not made by us, and is a place holder.

Both Dark D.U.C.K and Wulfman are correct at the same time, the deviant art pictures are both a comparison of different interpretations, as well as what I used to base my rendition off of. It's incredibly hard to find good artwork of Mistborn so I used what I had to aid the visual recreations. There are more buildings planned, as soon as I get down the art of making high res textures myself I'll be adding more variety. But the colour pallete is intentionally drab and dreary. The picture painted in the books is one of a run-down, incredibly dirty city that is constantly being rained on by Ash, piles of ash, mounds of ash accumulate each day. Slaves(skaa) are constantly sweeping and cleaning streets. Roofs are left to become ash piles. Trees.. plants.. few live and none are green. In fact when the colour green is mentioned as being once the norm, people can't believe it. Tree leaves have always been brownish or red.

It'd be great if you could keep the current mist (which does look nice clogging the streets) but let the color of far-off buildings come through, so they wouldn't stand in such sharp contrast against the sky.

Also, missing textures on my machine show up as grey, so I get this (untrue, I know) impulse that your buildings aren't textured. That's probably not the case with most people; the way I understand it, missing textures sometimes show up as black rather than grey.

Fiodis wrote:the way I understand it, missing textures sometimes show up as black rather than grey.

ATI graphics -> black
NVIDIA graphis -> grey/white
i think

2 new videos, showcasing the new sky domes I've designed.
Some things to note: Lighting has been added, different ones for day/night.
Vin has Koloss blades, they are a work in progress.





Rough drawing of a Koloss My interpretation of the Koloss. Still early, planning to rig the gammorean to be bigger and more muscular to match the design.

Koloss will be a major part of one of the game modes, when I get it to work I'll be showcasing it more, but basically it will be about taking control of the Koloss themselves, using Rioting and Soothing allomancy as in the books.

The textures seem a bit uniform. Also, I won't argue if the character actually has those blades in the books, but it seems as if five-foot long blades are only used by ten-foot tall orc soldiers, not five-foot tall human girls (and even then - did the Koloss really wield two at once? It seems a bit unnecessary).

There are few if no accounts of Koloss wielding two, they will only have one. Vin however did, as you may or may not know, the Koloss had numbered 50,000 or more during a particular fight and Vin had in fact dual-wielded their own swords against them. But this did not take place in the Final Empire Time line. I am going with a combination of various elements throughout the 3 books, with a Luthadel that is during the Final Empire itself.

EDIT
Well, my first attempt at making a better Koloss. Rethinking how to approach it, as my skeleton rigging efforts sunk.



Just thought you'd like to know that I did try

I suggest a custom skeleton for the big blue guy, as he would look a little wonky with the stock human skeleton

I've updated Kredik Shaw.

As you can see in this art piece, Luthadel is covered in a blanket of mist.
The end product of kredik shaw (the gathered towers in the distance) will look similiar. The Spiral towers will be resized down and in varients.

Details coming on the Koloss soon enough, still working it all out with some help from Darth D.U.C.K

Looking good, I think my textures actually made something look better

Fiodis wrote:The mist itself doesn't seem fitting, imo. In your reference pic, there is some mist, but not as much as you put in your map; in the ref you can see the color of far-off buildings, whereas in your map they're just a pale grey.

I have now finally come up with some fog that will satisfy everyone for the most part. Also, better quality videos are now being taken, at the expense of my hard drive space.

Some images.

Looks pretty good, but I think it can be a better. How about darkening the fog a bit?