The Rainbow Mounds

[D]

I have started building the Rainbow Mound caves as part of my Apple lane build. and have filmed a short clip of the entrance way. What I've come to realize is that I wouldn't want to be exploring caves with a burning torch with the possibility of fighting, a light spell and lots of magic points for it would be my choice.

https://youtu.be/b8uumRf5tL8

 

[Runeblogger]

Great! Very atmospheric, and useful to make your players realize where they are. I love how shadows move around the surfaces. Usually it is difficult for GMs to make players realize how intimidating darkness is. I'm looking forward to seeing more of the caves this way! 

As an aside, would it be possible for the camera to carry a torch to its side? This way it would better show how PCs would experience walking around the caves.

[David Scott]

That is excellent! I've just completed the Rainbow mounds with my group on Roll20. What was great was only showing the area lit by torch. There were a few instances where it went completely dark. You may find it helpful to look at the new map in the starter set (when it comes out) as the wall colours are shown clearly.

[D]

thank you both.

there's a torch just to the left, out of shot, of the camera. I'll move it forward in to shot when I do more videos. I found that if only the lady had the torch, hardly anything of the rest of the cave was visible, which implies that the group of explorers is going to need a few of them to see. What I haven't included is any smoke, which would cut down the visibility even more.

I've been looking at the posted shots of the starter set with the coloured map in the back ground and I can't wait to get my hands on it

Edited September 4, 2021 by D
spelling

[Snugz]

More please, more more more!

[D]

glad you like it, have you seen the others covering different parts of Apple Lane?

[Snugz]

Yes, very nice. I do love me some caves though!

[ffilz]

Note that even with high tech lights, you really don't see a huge amount of a cave at once. If you've seen pretty pictures of caves, they probably involved a large number of flashes scattered throughout the cave.

[Darius West]

Flaming torches are not exactly brilliant for keeping a healthy air supply either.  Gas build-up in underground spaces is super-dangerous, especially as your first warning is when you discover that you can't breathe, and have to figure out what the problem is and what to do about it while having no air.  Having been in that situation once, I seriously do not recommend it to others.

 

Edited September 7, 2021 by Darius West

[D]

4 hours ago, Darius West said:

Flaming torches are not exactly brilliant for keeping a healthy air supply either.  Gas build-up in underground spaces is super-dangerous, especially as your first warning is when you discover that you can't breathe, and have to figure out what the problem is and what to do about it while having no air.  Having been in that situation once, I seriously do not recommend it to others.

 

that sounds really scary and I hadn't thought how the torch would effect people's air supply.

 

when I film the next bit, I'll do 2 runs through, one with a torch, the other with a light spell.

[Darius West]

14 hours ago, D said:

that sounds really scary and I hadn't thought how the torch would effect people's air supply.

It's hard to climb a staple ladder in a hurry with no air in your lungs.  ⭐/5 Would not try again.

14 hours ago, D said:

when I film the next bit, I'll do 2 runs through, one with a torch, the other with a light spell.

You have done some seriously good work there.  I have a pretty good idea about how time consuming programming an environment on your own can be. 

I'll give you ⭐⭐⭐⭐for encouragement and your last ⭐upon completion. ☺️

[D]

4 hours ago, Darius West said:

  ⭐

You have done some seriously good work there.  I have a pretty good idea about how time consuming programming an environment on your own can be. 

I'll give you ⭐⭐⭐⭐for encouragement and your last ⭐upon completion. ☺️

thank you, I'll do my best to earn that last star 🙂

[EricW]

Absolutely beautiful.

I wish BRP website would let people post 3D models, its straight forward these days to display a 3D model on a web page, and provide basic interaction, so people can move around and explore it. 

The following is a partially built 3D chess game in a web page, which you can interact with, which I am posting as an example of this kind of technology. Click the pieces to move. The game is not fully operational, the main missing bit is if you move a pawn all the way to the other end of the game, it doesn't offer the chance to change the pawn to another piece. But the computer player is backed by stockfish, a brutal open source chess AI, so you probably won't get the chance to do this.

https://chess.desirableapps.com

[Scotty]

1 hour ago, EricW said:

I wish BRP website would let people post 3D models, its straight forward these days to display a 3D model on a web page, and provide basic interaction, so people can move around and explore it. 

The Invision Community software has no support for 3D models and there are no third party plugins that support them either. While embedded external sites are possible, we deliberately block the posting of HTML. I can add to the permissible file types, but it's much easier just to link to you craesitions on external sites.

[EricW]

5 hours ago, Scotty said:

The Invision Community software has no support for 3D models and there are no third party plugins that support them either. While embedded external sites are possible, we deliberately block the posting of HTML. I can add to the permissible file types, but it's much easier just to link to you craesitions on external sites.

I completely understand blocking foreign HTML, but the raw 3D models themselves are not HTML, they are effectively a kind of image file. But just allowing uploads unfortunately would not be enough, you need to add a few javascript files to the page template to make it work.

I'm not familiar with Invision plugin system, I mostly use Wordpress as the CMS when I do plugins, though I could figure Invision out pretty quickly, its what I do. There seems to be quite a demand for an invision 3D plugin, but probably not enough demand on this site for you to commission a bespoke plugin. Let me have a think about it.

 

 

[D]

17 hours ago, EricW said:

Absolutely beautiful.

I wish BRP website would let people post 3D models, its straight forward these days to display a 3D model on a web page, and provide basic interaction, so people can move around and explore it. 

The following is a partially built 3D chess game in a web page, which you can interact with, which I am posting as an example of this kind of technology. Click the pieces to move. The game is not fully operational, the main missing bit is if you move a pawn all the way to the other end of the game, it doesn't offer the chance to change the pawn to another piece. But the computer player is backed by stockfish, a brutal open source chess AI, so you probably won't get the chance to do this.

https://chess.desirableapps.com

thank you.

that looks really good. I think I'd have to redo the caves to post as a 3d image as it is just moulded landscape, not imported models. The whole build, apple lane area, so far is over 19gb and covers an area 5km by 7km. Unfortunately it's too big to do as an android app so at the moment it only runs in Windows, which means i have to plug my VR headset into my pc instead of running it on the headset.

[EricW]

4 hours ago, D said:

thank you.

that looks really good. I think I'd have to redo the caves to post as a 3d image as it is just moulded landscape, not imported models. The whole build, apple lane area, so far is over 19gb and covers an area 5km by 7km. Unfortunately it's too big to do as an android app so at the moment it only runs in Windows, which means i have to plug my VR headset into my pc instead of running it on the headset.

9GB is immense, must have taken you ages! Agree not something you could easily post on a website. But you might be able to post interesting pieces. I wrote a 3D model explorer, just a move forward, back, side to side, rotate, with the model hanging in black space. It was fun to navigate through models on a web page. Unfortunately the code is long lost, and this wouldn't by itself solve Scotty's problem of how to add this capability to BRP.

[D]

i started it last year, June I think, and it's just kept growing. I wanted to learn how to use Unreal Engine and Apple Lane seemed the ideal starting project. Most of the size is down to textures, when I get nearer to completing it, I'll go through and try to slim it down.

[D]

just a quick update, I've tried filming a longer sequence with a torch and a light spell, but both have issues with light reflecting off of damp surfaces and generally looking rubbish. Neither are good enough to post, so I'll have to film the caves a different way, probably fixed and panning like CCTV. I'll do this once I've built all the caves. 

[svensson]

I used the Rainbow Mounds map for my faux-Atlantis game.

I'm not using the whole thing, but rather sort of doing a 'ring'... the mushroom cave at the entrance, the legendary 'Flat Cave', and then I'll circle them over to the newtling caves.

And yes, my players are now looking for a source for a Light spell 😆

Edited September 14, 2021 by svensson

[D]

2 hours ago, svensson said:

I used the Rainbow Mounds map for my faux-Atlantis game.

I'm not using the whole thing, bur rather sort of doing a 'ring'... the mushroom cave at the entrance, the legendary 'Flat Cave', and then I'll circle them over to the newtling caves.

And yes, my players are now looking for a source for a Light spell 😆

that sounds interesting.

i'm guessing they're also looking for magic point stores 🙂

[svensson]

2 hours ago, D said:

that sounds interesting.

i'm guessing they're also looking for magic point stores 🙂

Well, they're in the market for crystals, that's for sure!

[D]

I've been working on the zigzag tunnel and it's been quite challenging, I had to bite the bullet and learn the basics of blender, 3d modelling software. Here are 2 images of 2 different bends, the first one is from a standing POV the other is from a low crouch.

[David Scott]

53 minutes ago, D said:

I've been working on the zigzag tunnel and it's been quite challenging, I had to bite the bullet and learn the basics of blender, 3d modelling software. Here are 2 images of 2 different bends, the first one is from a standing POV the other is from a low crouch.

That looks very tight! You've really brought the 60º lean to life. Could you render the walls as smooth as glass (per description) ?

[Psullie]

40 minutes ago, D said:

I had to bite the bullet and learn the basics of blender

Blender is a truly awesome bit of open source software, I used it a lot when I was working on 3D vitalisations of Skara Brae and Abu Simbel. The latter by the way had geometry and textures pulled from stereoscopic photos of the temple taken before it was moved.

You are capturing the claustrophobic vibe of cave systems very well!