Monday 30 January 2012

Behind the Scenes Part 2: Castle of Jumping and Falling

Hai there, Salmaras here to talk through the production process of the Castle of Jumping and Falling, this time I'm here to talk about the Quarters, aka the Nether Wing.

Didn't play Castle? Don't know what it is? Find out and download it here on the Minecraft Forums

The Great Hall

Oh the poor great hall...

This room used to be filled with tables and chairs and all sorts of wooden accessories. Then I put the lava in and the whole thing caught fire apart from a small bit at the back. I suppose the smart thing to do would have been to remove the lava, but I figured that would have made things a little too uninteresting.

Alot of people have asked why there is lava in the Great Hall, and my personal theory is that it's leaking from the Nether Room, but honestly it could just be an innovative yet ultimately incredibly dangerous form of underfloor heating.

The Kitchen

The Kitchen really did not turn out that great (in my opinion) and the main reason for that was because I decided to build the walls first and the parkour second... I certainly didn't repeat that mistake again.

So the main issue was the lack of space I'd set for myself so I decided to just create confusion as to where you were supposed to jump, meaning you'd have to stop and see where you could go from where you were. It probably didn't turn out so great but it was good to see no one actually got confused.

Also two things, firstly the wood you can see left is what used to be counters, and secondly I apologise to those of you who enjoy looking for secrets for leaving all those furnaces lying around (they were all empty, sorry D: )

The Throne Room/Portal Experimentation Room

Why do they test the Portals in the Throne Room? Because they couldn't fit them in the Mage's tower silly.

So this was one of my favourite rooms to build since I was able to go with an entirely different aesthetic whilst sticking to the same rules  (Netherrack instead of cobble for the ground, still having the walls be bricks) so I got to play around with the Nether stuff to make it look like a realistic conversion. (To explain, the Nether is leaking out of the Portals and converting the land around it, something you'll see alot of in Kingdom)

The dripping lava from the roof was there to stop you being able to make the easier looking jumps (Though that didn't stop some people) and the glowstone on the floor was there to highlight the way back as I had to make it so that no matter where you fell in that room (presuming it wasn't into lava) you could always make your way back to the beginning, and these did a great job of lighting the whole place up too.

You may also notice the glowstone growths on the walls providing a bit of lighting too (I tried to make the look similar to the natural formations in the Nether, I hope it came across like that).

The Nether Tunnel

What's important about the tunnel? Well since it led back to the beginning I had to create a realistic looking transition from Nether back to Reality, so that you could see that it was having that effect on the whole castle (Again, this'll come into place in Kingdom)


That's all for now, return later and I'll speak about the last wing, and the number of changes we'd made to the map's ending over time, leading up to the current one which leads into Kingdom's beginning.

If you'd like to hear more from me or say hello, you can find me on Twitter @SeriousSalmaras

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