Devblog #98

Hey, Wizards!
Shady Character 2 here.

As you know from the previous devblogs, I had to put my practical work on hold for some time, so my last couple of weeks were mostly concentrated on theory. Mainly, I worked on the building of Tír na nÓg and the school grounds. Before this week we only had a general idea and a plan of the complex. That's why the only image of the academy that you have seen was this one.

From the beginning I had quite a lot of design ideas, but the more I realized they don't really correlate with either the landscape or the actual design of the school we wanted to create. Most of my ideas were suitable for a grander castle with cathedral-like qualities standing in a forest-like area, which is just not the case.

You see, the school of Tír na nÓg is actually situated in a real-life location. We specifically chose it when we started to work on the game since it met our requirements - isolation from bigger cities and close proximity to woodland. Of course, since it's still a game in a fantasy world, we are making some changes to the landscape, but we also try to work with the original place as much as possible. The creation of the building complex starts here - so we have to consider that the school is standing on a mountain, that there's barely any vegetation there, that the buildings have to gain more elevation up the hill, and that there are also mountain streams in the area.

Now, I am no architect, but after some research I realized that with how we imagined and planned the school, I can't quite make it fit the local real-life architecture. In the end it's alright - it is an imaginary place. While I will do my research on the local architecture, my mission here is to make a fantasy school after all.

I am still working on the plan and general building locations. On the one hand, I don't really want to do meticulous planning of every classroom. On the other hand, while drawing the plan this week, I completely forgot about the existence of the greenhouse and the abandoned wing, so it is important to have a more or less detailed idea of what goes where.

This one is still just a rough plan, so most things are not to scale or in the wrong places, but at least this is closer to what we have in mind than what I had on my original plan from years back. But having even this level of understanding of what goes where gives me opportunities to try and draw some more finalized versions of the school. Someday you'll see it. SOOOOOOOON... For now, you get another sketchy, almost grey-scale version.

Shady One was doing his writing stuff this week. He mostly focused on the girls' events. I read the event he did for Lily - it was a bit unexpected, since he apparently changed her storyline a bit from what it was when he was first telling me about it. And he also started working on Gwen's date event. Maybe he'll tell you about it in his next devblog.

Ask him about it.

Shady Character 2, out!