Dungeon development diary entry 12

12. 18th October 2007

These pillars were created accidentially in Prince of Persia look, and now I suddenly have a PoP prison in my use! More eye candy and this will be just great. I seem to be quite far away from my plannings. Dungeon looks pretty good now but it does not remind me at all about my concept drawings, those papers I started with. This is much more solid, and I think would not prefer it that way. To comfort myself I can say that I believe I could not draw a tileset like that in the papers. They show (at least to me) kind of Agama style approach to the tileset, and I have never done anything like that. Maybe there could be some kind of developments in the drawing style in the 14th tileset? Despite of everything, I do not throw my hope away. Dungeon will get better as soon as I start working with the eye candy, background graphics and the dirt land I have planned.

Fortress of Forgotten Souls (featuring Dungeon development diary entry 11)

Dungeon is finished.

Let's use that Header 2 font for once :) Yes, this is reality. The 1010 tiles tileset is now finished, and it will not see any major changes after this. Quite an intensive time of wrestling with Paint Shop Pro and other devices have led to this point. The first concept drawing done under codename Castle of Cadavers was made in December 2006. That was originally intended to be a picture of an actual coming tileset, as usual when I am working with something, the final result is something else. A long time of nothing happening ensued the conception, but Dungeon finally got into the development phase in August 2007. The base of everything was done during this time and everything else (aka meat on the bones) was done in October 2007 to January 2008. I will get to this as the diary progresses further. At this point I can say, that the Dungeon development diary has a total of 41 entries with the last one being a gigantic entry looking into the year 2007 and making of Dungeon. The diary is accompanied with 37 screenshots, and they will be seen here later, of course.

Now it really is not long time to the release in Jazz2Online. Watch that space :) And oh yes, let me tell you the real name of my 14th tileset. That's The Fortress of Forgotten Souls and the abbreviation being simply "Fortress". See you soon at J2O!

11. 17th October 2007

A long pause! My new school (that actually started only a day after the entry before this) dragged me to the real life for this two months recess. Many, many nice events kept me away from development of Dungeon, but in the end I think I have now refueled my inspiration to craft the tileset further.

I don't have that big updates today. The biggest is that one of the four differently decayed brick sets (the one that was intact) was deleted. This way I save a lot of space and the image of a decaying castle is seen clearer. The walls have now cracks. It is way better this way and I can't believe I didn't come up with this before.

The next step in the process is creating cracks for the walking tiles and making of some kind of pillars. Now Dungeon looks a lot like the original Prince of Persia :D Maybe later this will start to look something I made, not only copied.

Dungeon development diary entry 7

7. 18th August 2007



Now I feel, that I have passed my point of no return. I will not scrap this idea from this point on. The two different walking platforms work and look pretty good. Not the same as in the concept drawings, but I have never worked the same way as the admirable Agama. I feel the concept drawings had Agama-feel to them. The work I've now done don't show crearly that it's me behind all this. The closeness to the nature I've had in my previous tilsets is still missing from this one, as everything is still quite monochromatic. I have the feeling that this is not a pretty good way to start to build a tileset, but what choice do I have now? :) I have big plans for this Dungeon tileset and I have strong beliefs that the quality remains what I've had before since I do not hurry much with my tilesets. In addition, I would not dare release anything, if I was not satisfied with it.


Today I made the first background test. To a more detailed version I will concentrate much much later (although Twilight Park had its own quite fast...). I made the regular brickwalls borders, so that the seamless brick tile doesn't stop to the floor/ceiling/walls so abruptly.

More Cadaver concepts

Hello once again dear readers.

I now know I have had at least eight readers since I have started writing this blog :) That is a start, yes, but I encourage everybody who visits my blog to comment anything you might come up with concerning this blog, my Jazz Jackrabbit 2 works or something else. What question would you like me to answer you? What would you like to read about in this blog? I am open for suggestions to make this blog more enjoyable!

Today I am back here to tell you more about the Castle of Cadavers project. There are two concept drawings I have made about the subject. I have already introduced the first one (see this post http://blade-of-finland.blogspot.com/2007/04/first-corpse-creation.html), and the second one, the one to your left, will work greatly as source material for the coming tileset drawing process.

It is a full A4-sized drawing with somewhat more mature ideas for the Castle of Cadavers. Like the first Cadaver concept, this one was drawn during my days in the military. In fact, these days were in the last of what spent in that institution. That means that I drew this in the end of March 2007. There are many details to this piece of work, as you can see. It will open best for the Finnish people, as the notes in this drawing are in finnish language. I will translate some of them to non-finnish speaking people.

This drawing shows you kind of an extended version of the tileset than that you saw in the first concept. The platforms divide to more tiles, like in the Holiday Hare '98 tilesets. Not like in Castle, where the main standing platform was one simple tile, if you wanted to. This makes the tileset more challenging to me to create. As you may see, I made a perspective mistake even to this drawing. The part in the upper left, the floor bricks should go diagonal right, but they don't. Otherwise this part shows quite much the feel I would like to have in the tileset. Really abandoned, really old, really decaying. The nature has taken over. Just as in my thoughts. If you have ever played the old game Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and The Flame, I am going for the atmosphere in the centuries old castle which had those detached heads floating all over. At least for the atmosphere I have in my memories about the place; I played that game like ten years ago :)

The other parts of the drawing show a small part of dungeon, and a clear outside area. At first, Castle of Cadavers project started as a dungeon project, but evolved to this current state while I was in the army. The dungeon idea had only inside areas to it. The dungeons in the coming Cadaver tileset will not have much stuff. Heck, it is a prison, who would have all that stuff stored in there? Again the inspiration comes from the old Prince of Persia 1, where the dungeons were very ascetic. As the drawing shows, some of the walls will be covered with darkness. This will make the whole place more ominous. The outside area shows the tileset when there are no layer 4 castles around. It may look like the The Secret Files' Haunted House tileset, but I will make it better. At least to my taste :) No see-through ground in Castle of Cadavers, that would be stupid. The background is a slightly rough terrain with those tree carcesses, rocks and gravestones everywhere. A distant castle could be nice to add. If it had one window with light in it, that would be scary, wouldn't it? :) It's fun to have stuff buried in the ground, The Twilight Park showed that. No one buries shovels this time though.

Now, to the texts. The dungeon part says primarily the following. The ground will be like in Twilight Park. Sometimes with lots of details, but when a level builder wants, it will be one-coloured. The dungeon will have small jail cells, but on the other hand it can have dramatic heights, just like those very unpractical prisons in Prince Of Persia 1. I have mentioned that we will probably see some torturing equipment, heaps of bricks and bones. Most probably full skeletons also. Collapse scenery events will be in frequent use.

A lot more notes on the outside area (finnish: ulkoilma). Outside area consists of grass and bricks, basically. There are plants everywhere, as can be the bricks. Nothing has fully survived the time except for the metal, and you will not see much of it. Lots of sturdy constructions like towers and pillars. The tileset will feature a cemetary with feral vegetation all over. A well will provide an access underground, where ever you like.

There is one part of the tileset not visible in this concept drawing. I haven't drawn it, and I believe I won't. It will be a small part of the tileset, and will work better that way. This part is a inside area, that would include a dining table with full meal served and with candles lit up. The wall clothings and other fabrics are in perfect shape, but there are nobody in sight. Eerie-o-meter goes for the maximum :)

Now you have seen all that there is to this tileset so far. The next picture I show you about Castle of Cadavers will be an actual part of the tileset. Until then... watch this space :P

P.S. A point of interest before the real ending for this post. When I was drawing this draft, I stored it in a public place. Well, in a public place for us military police men in our duty. During the two days storage somebody saw this drawing, and couldn't make any sense of it. Really, how could he? To outsiders it must seem that there is no point in this. So, because of this there is the comment in the middle (not written by me): "Kuka vittu sekoo käsiin?!". This literally means "Who the f*** is going mad?!". Well, I must be mad for doing this tileset stuff for almost ten years now. But what can I do, it's something I like very much.

The first corpse creation!

Hello world!

I couldn't resist from adding this second entry to the blog. Then I am going in for the studies (I wish...?)!

This picture here is the first Castle of Cadavers illustration there is, and the second JJ2 tileset illustration I have ever made. More about this later on. The most important part of this mess was already released in the JJ2 community forums, but here I present the thing in its full glory :P

Some interesting facts surround this creation. It was drawn in December 2006 in the Defense Forces of Finland (http://www.mil.fi/english/) during my nine-month military service (Blade is a military police man, stand aside!!). The Cadaver part (which, by the way looks much like I'd like to replicate it in digital manner) introduces several types of things you can expect to see in the future set. Chains, some more chains with skeletons, more or less broken bricks, vegetation everywhere to add ancient feel and dark background layers, that are in this drawing:

- Nightsky and moon in the layer 8 (warp background is probably not returning to this set)
- Far away cemetary hills with leafless trees and old tombstones in layer 7
- Dark fortress walls in layer 6
- I'd like to reserve layer 5 for layer-4 related tricks, but if not, we will see more tombstones and cranky trees

The tower you see in the "layer 4" area will be difficult for me to replicate with the computer. I would very much like to make it like the big trees in Agama's outstanding tileset classic Swamp of The Sleeping Jaguar (http://www.jazz2online.com/J2Ov2/user/profile.php?userID=294). This would allow level makers to build exactly as high towers as they wish to. To add variation, some of the bricks from the walls will be missing and have a dark spot in the place. A feel of decaying is achieved with this.

The intended atmosphere will be a mixture of grim and playful. This is, despite of everything, easily done: although the tileset palette will be dark and landscapes with all the tombs won't appear so cheerful, all the skeletons around will be cartoonish. To emphasize the style, there could also be something like the crazy gazes from the windows like in this Cadaver illustration you see here in this entry.

You could be wondering, why did Blade choose this rotten, decaying, disintegrating pile of brick dust to be his next project. There are many castle tilesets made before this, even the original 'Castle'. Does the JJ2 community really need another one? Many great -unique- tileset ideas remain unused. Do I waste my time? I would say that if I pick an idea for a tileset, I have something of my own to say. About the tileset idea thinking process: I simply come up with some nice ideas, and pick the most appealing idea. This doesn't mean I will not get back to my earlier ideas. In fact, right now I have so good ideas for tilesets, I KNOW I will be back for them. Let me list them for you:

• Seven Chasms of Abomination. It's a spectacular underground cave with subterranean lakes and stuff. Ground will be created a bit like in the original 'Hell' tileset.
• Tellus Rising. Moon tileset! No space stations, just like Buzz and Neil left it ;)
• Aztec Reprise. Aztec tileset lifted up to a new glory.
• Winter War. Snowy forest with destroyed military hardware everywhere...

Don't get too excited pals, Castle of Cadavers first :) The Cadaver tileset illustration gets its backbone from several different directions. These clues will be essential when making Cadaver tileset reality. The ideas in this illustration are taken from the original Jazz Jackrabbit 2 tilesets 'Castle' and the The Secret Files 'Haunted House'. The Donald Duck artist Don Rosa influences me as well, as it has been for many years. For example, the tileset Desert wouldn't have been created without one particular Don Rosa Donald Duck (Three Caballeros) series. Through some twisted way of fate, the tower in my illustration gets its base idea from the Moomin house! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moomins). The TV-Show 'Muumit' was around for every single year of my childhood, and haunts me to this day :) Also a mention about Disguise's Corrupted Sanctuary. After seeing this great piece of work I though for the first time of doing a castle tileset of my own.

A word about the other stuff in the paper. The text "Tai R.I.C. = Rest In Chaos = Soukkari tykkäis = No rest for the wicked" (Translated "Or R.I.C. = Rest In Chaos = Soukkari would like it = ...) is a homage to my conscript friend. Soudunsaari was a hard cooked death metal listener and his playlist featured songs like "Dead Human Collection" by Cannibal Corpse and "Drilling For Brains" by Mortician. These were so grotesque names that I found them actually amusing. To pay homage to my friend, you might find texts like this in the tileset if searched properly...

As well, I drew the baby and the text to this paper. It says "Me before the military. The Defence Forces made me a man". That's a parodic observation about the days in the military. Even 20 year old men can be enormously childish under the circumstances in that organisation.

...And that's Soudunsaari who claims that Jose Barroso is evil :D