hi all. one of the things that we've been talking about doing in the future is increasing the number of skylands, and decreasing the number of fuel stations.

however, icarus is pretty busy with work and the other tasks that we're working on (upgrades, plane rebalancing, etc.) and so he doesn't have the time to make new skyland art for a few months.

in the mean time, we are interested to see what you guys can come up with. if any of the submitted skyland art seems to be a good fit we might be able to use it in the game. at the very least we can use it as inspiration for new designs!

here's how: download sketchup and learn to use it. come up with ideas for skylands, and then email them to beta@skyrates.net. after that we will review the submissions as a team. please include both a picture from your preferred angle and the model file itself.

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a little bit of sad, scary legalia: by sending files to beta@skyrates.net for this, you're granting our company (airship studios) a perpetual, transferrable, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to do whatever we want with the files. we can't promise that any submitted skylands will actually be used in the game.

(this is just a summary, i think we'll try to prepare an actual document to sign or something.)

sadly, right now we have no prizes or compensation to offer. if you'd like to pass the downtime during the reset by working on a skyland or two, great! but unfortunately there's not much we can really offer right now except a chance to add to the world.

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skyland dos/dont's:
do think about the climate of the skyland, which helps me make the map feel sensible. in particular, i've wanted to have some in-between skylands for a long time: green with a bit of snow, desert with a bit of vegetation, etc. platforms with icicles on the underside, that sort of thing.
don't try having a waterfall come off the side of the skyland. we've tried that and it doesn't look good in-game
do remember that skytopia is a (sort of) WWII-era (loosely) steampunk world. nuclear power plants are probably not an option yet. there are no helicopters in skytopia. radio is probably cutting-edge electrical technology.
don't get too fancy with the camera angles in your render. we'll probably be taking our own pictures anyway, in order to make sure they're the right size & ratio for the game.
do feel free to think about the history of the skyland, and write up something. sharing & collaborating on ideas in this thread is also great!

Can we have naming rights to our designed skyland if it or a modified version of it is used?

well i sure can't promise anything, but hopefully we could at least work together on a name.

-PL-

<snip>Yes! This!

http://skyrates.net/forum/viewtopic.php ... highlight=

I made a go at it once. Of course, I was a total n00b and broke Phil's first rule of what not to do when creating a skyland: DON'T make a pretty waterfall over the edge... somehow it stops at the edge of the skyland. Still, I had fun making it, and the other side of the model was so filled with trees and holes through it that the rendering engine was slowing down considerably.

Anyway I just put that up to show that it's doable with *very* minimal effort.. I think I spent a day playing with Sketchup to get that. Luckily the model itself is long gone (I wiped my compy some time back), but if I have the time I may give it another shot. I envy the people who are skilled modelers with Sketchup... me, I just push and pull things until it looks like something recognizable. Also this pic was before they implemented clouds over the skylands, so I was trying to pass it off as a real new skyland (hence the editing to make it look in game).


Have fun!


Thorne

Phil - i've been toying with the Sketchup thing, it's pretty nifty. Do you happen to have an email address I can send my creation to? It's in need of a little touch up work and I don't personally possess the skill to do it. I've got a nice story to go along with this particular skyland, I'd be happy to send it all to you so you can put the final magic touch on it and hand it in to the rest of the admins.

Cheers!
-Wai

Edit: Shall we do New Haven?

New haven would be a nice place to land.

Heh, so can it be canon that all skylands are hollow according to sketchup? ^__^

Also, my scale is at a couple miles which I acknowledge is huge, but it's fairly easy to shrink down if necessary. I just needed a lake big enough to lay keels for boats, and have them airlifted via zeppelin. A more complete brief will be forthright.

-Victor

Is this acceptable?

The only responsible use of time travel would be to bring MC Escher back to make video games

MC Escher? Is he some sort of deejay?

I'm pretty sure this should go in the game ASAP.

Woo, First post in a long time. Is Sketchup the only program we can use? I have a copy of 3D Studio Max on my computer that I am learning how to use, and if I could use that, it would be good practice to make a skyland. If so, what 3D format should I save the final draft in?

Its the Arcane Skyland! Diablo tribute?