The Entry Room is somewhat unique in that the Entry Portal is not placed on the floor. Instead, it has been positioned on top of an Arcane Floor Seal which is accessed by stairs and wall balconies which run along the perimeter of the walls of the room. I was told once that the result looked somewhat like a Stargate tipped over on its side.
By raising up the Entry Portal, a great deal of additional usable floor space was created underneath, which in turn became a somewhat typical lobby/reception area. You can see here that one of the major design elements is already taking hold ... that of using trees as a means to obscure from immediate view some of the necessary kludges which make 3D work at least passably coherent. This also helps focus attention inwards into the room and away from the walls, helping to add to the sense of vast open spaces. Also, do you "get" the joke with the bathrooms?
This arrangement of safety equipment, waste disposal and library distribution you see here under the stairs became a defacto standard for every room in the base. It's one of those things which is easy to overlook, but which you are subconsciously aware of.
It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...
Transporter Room 1 became a major factor in defining the aesthetic of the Spring Knights base. It's also the reason why an Arcane theme predominates everywhere except in the Tech Workshop. It also happens to be one of the few rooms in the base least affected by the Raid Pathing changes, as you can see by comparing it to the original room shown in the City Scoop Base Showcase from yesteryear ... in which I REALLY had to kludge things together in order to make a stairway to the upper teleporter pad ...
Thankfully, Raid Pathing has been turned off and consequently I was able to exploit that to great advantage. The room layout has hardly changed at all, except for having changed position in the overall layout of rooms on the base plot, which in turn brought about a rotation/repositioning of elements in the room.
As you can see, without the restrictions of Raid Pathing, and being able to place objects inside of other objects, I was able to dramatically improve the lighting situation by imbedding my shouji floor lamps into the Medium Tree planter and complete their concealment using Small Bookshelves. I could also place a floor lamp into the back corner behind the Corner Couch without having to put it into a position where the floor trim would be eliminated. This resulted in an overall "smoother" look to the area. Also the "leftover" space under the stairs here pretty much defined the arrangement of firehose, extinguisher, wall phone, recycling bin and shelving cart which became somewhat standardized throughout the entire base. The pattern for this sort of thing was essentially set right here.
It was also because of this room that I decided to put "wood paneling" into many of the rooms. This often took the form of yet more Small Bookcases.
The stairs and balconies leading up to the upper pad are now all wood, thanks to the removal of Raid Pathing restrictions. I've noticed that on more than one tour, visitors were somewhat surprised to "find" this path to the upper pad. The layout of the stairs and balconies here also set the pattern for what was done later in the larger Teleporter Rooms 2 and 3, which added bridges into the mix simply because there was space for them in those rooms.
The Transporter Pads themselves are Arcane simply because the Tech variety are "too tall" cannot be stacked on top of each other like this. They are also the reason why the entire base became a Lights Out construction. This is because it is only in the darkness that you can see the beautiful purple glow that the Arcane Transporters have, which I wanted to emphasize. With room lighting ON that beautiful glow just gets completely overwhelmed and washed out. The same thing can happen if you place your Lighting lamps too close to the Pads, so it was very important to be able to control the lighting blooms from the lamps I was placing elsewhere in the room.
The Spring Knights base uses geography, rather than alphabetizing, to organize its Transporter Beacons. We also use a helpful mnemonic of high/low to assist with remembering which pads go to which zones. Teleporter Room 1 here is the "main hub" room for getting around to city services, such as vendor NPCs, PTA Trams, Pocket D, and Wentworth's auction houses.
Low Zones:
- King's Row and Striga Island
- Talos Island and Dark Astoria
The "light bar" you see in between the Beacons here was actually a discovery/innovation. Only the top and bottom shouji wall lamps are "on" while the middle two are "off" here (and I know they don't look like they're off, but they are actually "off"). If they were all turned on, the resulting light bloom would be "too much" and would wash out the Beacons entirely. This is merely yet one more example of using lighting control to your advantage as a Base Designer.
It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...
The Infirmary in the Spring Knights has a somewhat unique atmosphere to it since there are some elements to the design which break the trends seen and followed in other rooms. The biggest factor is that the primary lighting source in this room doesn't come from lamps like in other rooms. Instead, it comes from a Bonfire ... which gives the room its relatively unique warm firey glow. There's also the Rez Rings, situated on top of "The Planet" which are the only location in the entire base to which it is impossible to Walk to.
Underneath "The Planet" is the base Inspiration Storage, which was lifted 1 ft off the ground into the position you see here. This adds a smoke effect around the animated rainbow rings of the Inspiration Storage, thanks to the Bonfire underneath. Ironically, the fire animation of the Bonfire is almost totally concealed, with only the occasional lick of flame rising high enough to actually be seen. We have just the one Inspiration Storage bin, and we pretty much only put Tier 3 Inspirations and Essence of the Earth into it, with overflow Tier 3 Inspirations getting sold on the open market.
The Tree of Wonders can also be seen here, incorporated into yet another Medium Tree. A happy coincidence is that the rocking animation of the Tree of Wonders is almost (but not quite!) perfectly synchronized with the swaying animation of the "leaves" on trees. This means that by floating the Tree of Wonders and rotating it into position, it is possible to make this item appear to be part of a green leafy tree (as you see here). Ironically, the most common use for the Tree of Wonders is as an NPC vendor to whom unwanted Inspirations (usually Tiers 1 and 2) can be sold, along with unwanted Invention (Set) Recipies for same (best) price as you'd get from Freedom Corps, which can save unwanted trips around town.
On top of "The Planet" you can see the Rez Rings. However when building "The Planet" using two small domes (floor and ceiling) I noticed that a fall from the height of the Rez Rings to the floor would cause a Hero without a Leaping power a token amount of damage. This led to the creation of a "Ring" around "The Planet" which is placed at a height from which there is no falling damage, regardless of powers taken. The "Ring" itself is actually an Arcane Floor Seal of the same type as the one used in the Entry Room under the Entry Portal, this time wedged into the dividing line between upper and lower Domes which form "The Planet" you see here. However, the Arcane Floor Seal, like a number of other available objects, has no underside skin texture to it ... presumably because when it was being made the Dev(s) responsible never imagined that items like this could be floated up into the air (and stay there). This means that the "Ring" around "The Planet" is only visible from a very limited number of angles from below, and that due to the small 2x2 size of the room and the placement and height of items, the "Ring" is hardly ever seen when standing on the floor under "The Planet" above. The "Ring" is of course plainly visible from above, as you can see.
This is the view that greets you upon actually using the Arcane Rez Rings. On the wall opposite you can see the first glimpse of my use of the Pointilist Painting as, what amounts to, stained glass windows. This also gives you a sense of scale (up here) which may not be quite so apparent in the other screenshots.
It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...
The Power Room, with its secondary function as a Hangar and Launch Bay for a group of Longbow Chasers, incorporates its own share of discoveries. One of the first of which was that the SG Floor Plates, like the Arcane Floor Seals, has no underside skin texture ... making them fully transparent from below. This then allows for better viewing of the "ready to launch" Longbow Chasers on their flightlines up above when standing at ground level.
The next three innovations involved the placement of the Arcane Power Crystal, the construction of the floor torches and the construction of the cargo and hangar bay doors you see on the walls.
As you can see, the Arcane Power Crystal "hangs" from a massive Ceiling Dome which is itself ringed with Ceiling Spikes. The very tips of the Power Crystal manage to clip less than 1 ft into to Ceiling Dome, giving the Power Crystal an appearance of being suspended. Unfortunately, the underside of the Power Crystal which touches the floor is yet another item with no underside skin texture to it. So in order to minimize the "obviousness" of this art error, I had to use trees strategically placed to once again conceal and obscure the 3D trickery that I was getting up at this point.
The flaming torches you see here are really 3 superimposed items ... a Floor Torch, a Desk Crystal Ball (floated) and a Wastebasket ... and are exceptionally easy to make, once you've mastered techniques for floating objects. Curiously, the Crystal Balls have visual properties which result in some refractive distortion of objects seen through the Crystal Balls, while at the same time "negating" the rendering of any particle effects within the bounds of the Crystal Ball. And since open flames are a particle effect, it appears that the Crystal Balls at the tops of these Floor Torches are wreathed by, but not engulfed within, open flames. It's as if the glass of the balls themselves was on fire, but only on the outside. The wastebasket on the floor is there to catch any falling cinders and because the bottom of the Floor Torch is somewhat lackluster and boring.
On the back wall you can see the (almost) ground level cargo door access to the base. Just back up an 18-wheeler on the other side and roll up the loading dock access door. The "door" itself is simply made up of Wall Vents, and Large Shouji Wall Lamps are used to create the appearance of a "boundary" around the "door" in the wall. Up above, the same principles are used on the flight lines at either end of the room on both sides.
You can also see (admittedly, not well) the spiral staircases in the back of the room which lead up to the middle level where Launch Control is situated. Due to the layout of the rest of the room, I had to use a spiral staircase construction, simply for lack of anywhere else for the stairs to go.
Launch Control for the Longbow Chasers is located on the mid level where an operator can have a minimally obstructed view of the flight lines on both sides. It is also placed low enough so as to take advantage of the invisible undersides of the SG Floor Plates. As can be seen here, even a minimal adjustment in height at the right level makes the upper sides of the SG Floor Plates visible ... and they are (of course) structural elements which can be walked on. You can even see one of the levers used to open the hangar doors through which the Longbow Chasers are launched. There's even fire prevention and suppression equipment readily at hand on the upper flight lines.
It was also up here, along the walls beside the flightlines, that I first toyed with using Pointilist Paintings as "windows" to the outside. You can see the results here, where due to the "cutoff" of the floor level of the flightlines, the paintings when placed in close together series like this create a partially successful illusion of being stained glass windows looking outside.
Also note that the stairs up to the flight lines offer yet another good vantage point for seeing the Arcane Power Crystal (improbably) suspended underneath the massive Ceiling Dome.
Each of the two flight lines has four Longbow Chasers parked on the flightline tramway, which makes for a rapid Team-8 launch when the Supergroup needs to deploy. There are doors at either end of the flightlines, and the doors behind the last aircraft lead to the elevator that goes to the base hangar where the Longbow Chasers are stored for maintenance.
A bit of lighting trickery up here involves imbedding Shouji Wall Lamps inside the Longbow Chasers. This has the effect of lighting up their surroundings, while keeping the exterior surfaces of the Longbow Chasers themselves relatively dark. This heightened contrast of light and dark helps bring out the metallic sheen of their appearance, making them look more impressive.
It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...
The Arcane Workshop, by virtue of its abundance of space, became the first triple purpose room (as far as decorating was concerned). The main function of the room is as the nexus point for Inventing, and correspondingly, the Invention Table and Vault are both placed in a position of maximum convenience with regards to work flows and easy access. As a matter of fact, I've found putting the Invention Table and Vault adjacent to each other like this to be so convenient that I've made it a standard feature in any base I'm working on editing. It just makes usability so much simpler, I find.
Immediately "behind" the Invention Table and Vault is the triple level workshop, which I have previously posted on in this forum. The lowest level is simply a "library" styled area in which to conduct research or relax. The height of the ceiling down here in this lowest level is only 8 ft high, which can have the tallest characters in the game brushing their hair against the "ceiling" when walking around down under here.
You can kinda sorta tell where I embedded lighting within objects by seeing the light blooms on the "ceiling" above. In this case I put Shouji Wall Lamps into the big curvy Ottomans and also into the Globe in the center of the round table. This Lamp in Globe would then inspire me to repeat the combination elsewhere in the room in the Cantina area.
On the ground floor here, you can also see a single solitary Arcane Salvage Rack. This particular salvage rack is actually the Arcane Salvage Transfer Rack and is used to handle overflows from the racks on the upper floors as well as to facilitate transfers between SG Members (especially alts!) and as such is intended to be kept empty most of the time.
On the far side of the room, at ground level, is the Cantina ... complete with kitchen area and an overhanging mezzanine of balconies. This is where the SG gathers for meals and socializing. There's even a bar with barstools around the kitchen.
On the Mezzanine level, I tried using the Pointilist Paintings again as a substitute for (stained glass) windows, although I don't think the effect works quite so well at such close range. However, looking outwards from the balcony roundtables, you get a rather nice Treehouse Effect(tm) which makes the view rather refreshing.
A couple of things to note from this vantage point here on the steps up to the Mezzanine. For the four Medium Trees that you see, I embedded a Shouji Floor Lamp directly under the tree trunk. This is what gives each of them their highly distinctive lighting effect without betraying the origin of the lighting itself. You can also see what the Shouji Wall Lamp embedded in Globes inside Round Tables looks like a bit more clearly from this angle than you could in the "library" area earlier.
Back over by the door now, with the Invention Table and Vault behind us again, you can see the stairs which lead up to the second and third floors where the primary Arcane Salvage Racks are located. The second floor racks hold Common Salvage, while the third floor racks hold Uncommon and Rare Salvage. There are three racks on each floor so as to keep salvage somewhat self-sorted, as you can see by the banners located beside each rack.
1 = Levels 10-25
2 = Levels 30-40
3 = Levels 45-50
This way, all you need to know is the Level of the IO Recipie you're making and from that you'll know exactly which salvage racks to go to in order to find if the SG has that kind of salvage on hand. Saves a LOT of time searching through racks where everything is just all thrown together, since this system does a very good job of self-sorting. You just need to "know" which types and tiers all of the bits of salvage are in order to store them correctly in the first place.
Since this is the Arcane Workshop, only Arcane Salvage is stored in this room. There is a counterpart construction in the Tech Workshop for Tech Salvage which follows the same arrangement to make things easy to remember.
Up here on the third floor, I found perhaps the most dramatic demonstration of the visual trickery involved with the Flaming Crystal Ball Torches which I'd discovered in the Power Room. You can also see from up here the Invention Table and Vault down below on the ground floor, as well as the Tier 3 Empowerment Station up here on the third floor. I like having the Empowerment Station up here where it's both "out of the way" but also closely adjacent to the salvage racks containing the salvage needed to fuel the Empowerment Station to acquire Temporary Powers.
I'm also rather proud of this "curly bridge" construction I was able to fit in here at the end of the third floor. It gives you a nice view of the adjacent Infirmary Room and leads into a "night light" lit quiet reading area which is actually rather private.
Beyond the "night lit" library area and across the bridge, there are the crash space dorm rooms for SG members to catch some sack time. Each room features meaningful soundproofing (in the form of plenty of books on bookshelves) and comes with its own hide-a-bed couch. There's even a lamp provided for those who like to read in bed, although these are usually kept turned off as a courtesy to anyone else who might be sleeping in an adjacent room.
Along the far back wall, there is a "secret" passage between two of the rooms ... which leads out onto a balcony overlooking the Arcane Workshop area.
All the way back around along the wall, the Dorm Rooms continue over to another bridge which leads back to the stairs that come up to the third floor. Standing on the bridge, you have a very good view into the next room ... the Tech Workshop.
It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...
about time you got some screenies up. Though the screenies do not give this base justice, a personal tour is the best way to see. Happy to see this post though.
The Tech Workshop is laid out much like the Arcane Workshop, except that the space of the Tech Workshop is almost completely dominated by the Arachnos Flyer we managed to capture. We're still in the process of hacking its control systems though, which is why we've got it hoisted up on a crane.
For the Tech Workshop I wanted to not only change the wall and floor styling which predominates everywhere else in the base, but also wanted to change the quality of the lighting in this room. For that reason, almost none of the lighting types which are seen elsewhere in the base are to be found here in this room, except for rare exceptions (such as the Banker's Lamps). Even though the Room Lighting is still set to "off" here in the Tech Workshop, the change to different types of lamps and lighting sources creates a very different atmosphere within the room, creating a sharp break in styling from the rest of the base.
Right beside the entrance to the Tech Workshop, we have our two (and only two) Enhancement Tables. The near table contains Common Inventions, while the far table holds Invention Sets. Again, this helps keep things somewhat organized.
Much like in the Arcane Workshop, the Tech Workshop has a three floor design layout to it ... although in this case the ground floor is a computer lab for conducting research and exploring ideas using whiteboards. That's because if you're an Engineer, you've simply got to have Whiteboards. There's even a small server farm under the stairs. You can also see the Tech Salvage Transfer Rack here on the ground floor, just like in the Arcane Workshop.
On each side of the room, against the walls, before you get into the Flyer area proper, there is a seating area with leather couches. The idea is to give future passengers a comfortable place to wait prior to boarding the Flyer.
The work areas around the Flyer itself are rather cluttered with diagnostic equipment and spares at the moment. We've even got a fuel farm running since we're going to have to convert the fuel system to something we can supply locally, rather than needing to constantly raid Arachnos Bases for the stuff (which isn't a "problem" per se, but it is a hassle). We have however managed to get the hatches open and can easily access the interior via our Stairmaster(tm) system.
Lin Chiao Feng, our resident Mad Engineer, has given up on trying to hack the control systems of the Flyer using digital means, due to its pre-programmed defensive protocols. Instead, Lin has switched to going decidedly "old school" and set up a completely isolated, purely analog "lash up" system to probe and attack the Flyer's computers with and which should be completely immune to its much more sophisticated and high tech countermeasures. However, from the looks of things, it looks like our Mad Engineer has spent a little bit too much time "camping spawn" here in the hopes of a breakthrough.
At least with this rig though, we don't have to worry about the Flyer's computer viruses infecting the base systems.
As previously mentioned, the Tech Workshop follows the same layout pattern for salvage racks as the Arcane Workshop does. However, I didn't want to use Small Bookcases again for yet another wooden floor in the Tech Workshop. The alternative turned out to be Tech Crates, which when racked and stacked in arrays to form "floors" works quite well. Only problem is that the Tech Salvage Racks are 1ft taller than the Arcane Salvage Racks ... which causes problems in vertical spacing in a three floor design.
The solution turned out to be use of a shorter variant of the Tech Crates, but this in turn created its own problem. That's because the Short Tech Crates aren't 2 ft tall. Nor are they 1 ft tall either. Unhelpfully enough, the Short Tech Crates are actually about 1.5 ft tall (uh, why?) ... which makes them darn annoying when it comes time to use them as a "floor" and put things on top of them. Things like ... Tech Salvage Racks ... "sink into" the Short Tech Crates by a fraction of 1 ft, which while aggravating, is not the end of the world. Fortunately, this is one of those things which is easy to overlook if you don't already know it's there.
The second floor also sports a lab bench underneath the stairs for conducting chemical experiments and using microscopes. There's even a CC TV monitor here for analysis of microscope slides.
This view shows you exactly how the Tech Salvage Racks mimic (as best they can) the layout choices made in the Arcane Workshop. Again, makes things so much easier to find, so long as you know what tier of salvage you need to be looking for. Also, notice the lights embedded into the Tech Salvage Racks. The Tech 2 Lamp blends in so well that on more than one occasion I've had to point it out to visitors touring the base, even though they're right there in plain sight.
Here is where the hangar door and crane for the Captured Flyer are controlled from. Any operator has a far better view from up here than they would down on the ground floor.
Also, up here on the third floor, just as in the Arcane Workshop, is where the Tier 3 Empowerment Station can be found. Again, it's both "out of the way" while also near to the source of salvage needed to fuel the Temp Powers it creates.
It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...
Quote:
And here I thought I was wasting my time doing this ...|
Originally Posted by Sidhe_Blade
about time you got some screenies up.
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Sidhe_Blade
Though the screenies do not give this base justice, a personal tour is the best way to see.
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Tell me about it! I keep wanting to grab the mouse and move the camera when looking at them so that I can see what I know is just out of frame when looking at these screenshots. And there's so many things in a fully 3D environment like this that just can't come through in static screencaps like this simply because if you're not actually *IN* the environment you don't have a good "feel" for where everything is in relation to each other ... which can be a little disorienting. At least when you're walking through it yourself you can not only see where you're going, but can (hopefully!) remember where you've been.
It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...
The overall "pattern" for what Transporter Rooms should look like was pretty much effectively "set" by Transporter Room 1 all those many years ago back in the pre-Issue 13 days. And if I could have kept using 2x2 rooms for Transporters, I would have ... but unfortunately, the 16x12 base plot doesn't allow room for that when there's an 8x8 room on the plot without wasting tremendous amounts of available space. So instead, in order to achieve sufficient "beacon density" with the shape of space I had available I had to make use of 3x4 Transporter Rooms (and not because I wanted to install Defensive Systems into them).
As a result, Transporter Rooms 2 and 3 became symmetrical and extended duplicate versions of what you see in Transporter Room 1. The main stylistic differences are the inclusion of the large Dual Tree Planters and the use of the 8 ft tall blonde wood Tall Bookshelves, as opposed to the shorter 4 ft tall dark wood Small Bookshelves along the walls. Because of the inclusion of the suspension bridges along the walls for the walkways to the upper pads, a steeper angle of descent was required in order to get down from that height to floor level, which in turn pushed the corner balconies at the turns higher than they were in Transporter Room 1. This in turn allowed for sufficient space to make use of the Tall Bookshelves, rather than the Small Bookshelves along the walls. This turned out to be fortuitous since it made for a better "balance" of heights towards the center where the Beacons and identifying Hero Posters were to be placed. You can also see the "standard kit" under the stairs, the pattern for which was also set by Transporter Room 1.
Of all the rooms in the base, however, Transporter Rooms 2 and 3 are perhaps the most "open and airy" in feel ... with the possible exception of the purely decorative Great Room. They're also among the least densely populated rooms in the base, in terms of object placement. The wide open central corridor leading away and vanishing into the far distance helps support this notion of being within a vast, cathedral-like space. Again, being able to control the lighting through localized lamp sources proved absolutely critical to creating this sense of incredible size and space.
As I mentioned previously, the Beacons in the base are arranged by Geography, rather than in an Alphabetical Arrangement. There's also a hi/low split as a mnemonic aid so as to help remember which zones are assigned to which telepad, with the low level zones on the low pads and the high level zones on the upper pads. To further assist with remembering which telepads have which beacon to which zone, most of the telepads in Transporter Rooms 2 and 3 feature Hero Posters on the wall with their Beacons.
Low Zones:
- Galaxy City and Perez Park (Back Alley Brawler with Manticore poster)
- Atlas Park and The Hollows (Atlas Statue with Freedom Phalanx poster)
- Founders Falls and 'Eden' (no poster)
- Peregrine Island and Rikti War Zone (Dark Watcher poster)
It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...
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Hah! I tried this idea in one of my bases, and was told by several members that it was too confusing! lol|
Originally Posted by Redlynne
... There's also a hi/low split as a mnemonic aid so as to help remember which zones are assigned to which telepad, with the low level zones on the low pads and the high level zones on the upper pads.
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We compromised by re-arranging some of the beacons, 'cause I was NOT going to tear down what I had put up (they are built up on piles of rubble/rock).
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Quote:
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Don�t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. - R.W. Emerson |
YUMMY Low-Hanging Fruit for BASE LUV
It's all a matter of the gap between expectations and results. I've been in bases where the beacons were arranged (more or less) alphabetically ... and I could NEVER remember which beacon(s) belonged to which pad. That's because in my head, I don't have an alphabetical listing of the zones laid out nice and neat for me to compare to. I think of the zones in geographical terms ... what zone is next to what. This is probably because I started playing in Issue 2, when knowing how to navigate quickly required knowing which zones connected to which other zones, and where, and how to move between them. Lots more use of Trams and the Paragon Dance Party back in those days.
I sincerely think though that without the Hero Posters it would be difficult to remember EXACTLY which telepads went to which zones. I find myself relying on the Hero Posters as a clear reminder of which telepad to go to in order to navigate around town most successfully. It's really the Hero Posters that make (or break, if you don't have them) this organization of Beacons and Telepads.
It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...
Since Transporter Room 3 is pretty much a duplicate, in layout and styling, of Transporter Room 2, there isn't a whole lot to explain about it. The only real difference to be seen between the two rooms is that the Hero Posters on the walls are different, and the distance to the Control Room at the end of the long hallway is shorter from here.
The Beacons again follow a mix of hi/low with the Hero Posters acting as a guide to recognize which telepads lead to which zones.
Low Zones:
- Skyway City and Faultline (Synapse poster)
- Steel Canyon and Boomtown (Positron poster)
- Independence Port and Terra Volta (Sister Psyche poster)
- Brickstown and Crey's Folly (Manticore poster)
If memory serves, the only zone we don't have a Beacon for, due to lack of a telepad to attach it to is Pocket D ... and even then, Pocket D is most easily accessible from either Talos Island or King's Row (Transporter Room 1), or with a little bit of travel from Founders Falls (Transporter Room 2) or from Faultline (Transporter Room 3). Because of this, we really don't "miss" not having a telepad for going directly to Pocket D from the SG Base ... especially with things like the Tiki Room Teleport in the power tray, available from anywhere so long as the power has cooled down. Besides, the Ouroboros Portal makes for a much better fast transfer "hub" these days between zones that even Pocket D does, so the lack of a Pocket D Beacon is really a non-issue.
It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...
The Control Room of the Spring Knights base has been my pride and joy, ever since back in the pre-Issue 13 days. You can see this in the old City Scoop article from back then, where I managed to cram three levels of walkable space into a mere 2x2 control room ... complete with suspension bridges and everything. I'm still, to this day, amazed I was able to fit essentially about a 2x5 area of flat walkable space into a 2x2 room by going vertical ... and was able to do it with Raid Pathing making everything extremely difficult. The result was a reversable spiral upwards path. Take a look.
Today, the 2x2 Control Room of old has been replaced by a 3x3 Death Trap (of all things...), which is actually a Security Room capable of holding a single Main Control item within it, and unlimited Aux items attached to it, along with a multitude of Defensive items and unlimited Aux supporting them. This means that if I really wanted to, I could install multiple layers of Slow Fields, creating multiple Water Effects planes at different levels if I really wanted to. Fortunately, I'm not so inclined.
The main feature of the Control Room (which is really an undefended Death Trap) is of course the Orbits of Control, the tier 2 counterpart to the Supercomputer. Most bases won't feature one of these since the Supercomputer is compact enough to fit easily within a 1x2 space in any sized Control Room, which makes the 2x2 and 1x4 Control Rooms very attractive options for bases which feature no defenses (such as ours). The Orbits of Control, by contrast, requires a 1x3 space in a Control Room at the minimum, which pushes room sizes into the 1x4, 2x3 and 3x3 sizes very quickly, which depending on base room layouts might be somewhat inconvenient when it comes times to arranging things for minimum wasted space on the plot. In our case, the Orbits of Control, without any additional +Control auxiliaries is adequate to our needs. We do however have the obligatory Pillar of Ice and Flame for doing Flashback Task Forces.
I still consider the view, upon entering the Control Room one of the most impressive and inspiring within the entire base.
The ground floor area of the Control Room is primarily dominated by a "forest" of trees and shrubberies. Interspersed around these trees and shrubs are tables, chairs and yet more couch seating areas underneath the platform the Orbits of Control rests upon. Some of these arrangements were inspired by my experience with the Globe Tables in the Arcane Workshop. Since the Control Room can also act as another gathering place for SG members, and because the bathrooms in the Entry Room are a long way away, there is another set of bathrooms located in here on the ground floor.
Looking down the central avenue between the trees, access to the upper floors can be seen underneath the platform on which the Orbits of Control rests. The stairs lead upwards along the back wall behind the Orbits of Control and open out onto its platform near the side walls on both sides.
There is walkable space around the forward edge of the Orbits' platform to reach the Pillar of Ice and Flame in the front center, without needing to jump to get there. One thing to notice here about the Orbits of Control is that I've strategically imbedded Shouji Wall Lamps into the structure of the Orbits to illuminate it and to keep the area from disappearing into the darkness. I also like to think that by de-emphasizing the Pillar of Ice and Flame, through a carefully controlled lack of lighting, I've managed to make it "incorporate" itself into the Orbits of Control ... leading one to intuitively think that they're all one single item, rather than two items which just so happen to have been co-located next to each other for convenience. As it turns out, the Pillar of Ice and Flame is the only interactive object in this entire room, and there's never any doubt as to "where" it is if you're trying to reach it.
Still on the mid-level, along the outer edges of the side walls, there are suspension bridges which lead back towards the forward end of the room, make a turn towards the center, and then rise through stairs up to the two loft areas on the higher level at the front end of the room. Getting all of these elements to fit together in 3D, while still leaving enough headroom for the tallest characters possible to move without getting stuck, was quite a challenge ... the most difficult piece of layout in the entire room, in fact.
A very nice side effect of all this work was the view which can be seen on the corner balcony from the top of these stairs. I like to call this the Treehouse Effect(tm). 
Up here is the Home Entertainment Loft. This is where SG members come to relax and watch movies on the Big Screen with their friends in style and comfort. Also note the suspension bridge in the center of the room which leads across to the loft on the other side.
Up here on the upper floor, there's yet another suspension bridge leading back towards the back of the room again. This leads to yet another library loft area which wraps around the upper reaches of the Orbits of Control. Until the latest additions in the Great Room, these areas were the highest walkable spaces within the entire base, and they offer some fantastic views! It's also been a point of pride with me that even though these areas are almost, but not quite, as high as you can get, almost no one I've led up here on tours has ever felt the least bit of acrophobia, despite being some 32-36 ft up off the ground floor.
Even up here on the highest levels, there is fire suppression equipment to be found. With all the wood in the base, you can't be too careful about these sorts of things.
Wrapping back around, the upper library/loft continues forward again across another suspension bridge to reach the Executive Loft, where SG meetings to plan promotions and demotions, organize members for Task Forces and Flashbacks, and all other manner of SG business takes place. We're still a "small" SG and so the one executive table is still plenty for us.
Something else to note, here, where there's plenty of light to see it, is the wood grain pattern in the floor of the Executive Loft here, which is a feature which can be seen throughout the base (except in the Tech Workshop). This particular wood grain pattern emerges when using Small Bookshelves to make up the "floor" of suspended sections in which the Small Bookshelves are placed front-to-front and back-to-back, alternating their orientation on each row. It's only when they've been placed in arrays like this that this particular wood grain pattern on top, and below(!), emerges into view. And best of all ... there's no texture tearing when you do this, since the Small Bookcases don't overlap each other in any way. It's expensive (in prestige) and tedious (in time and effort) to actually do, but I'd like to think that the results make it all worth it. 
This last screenshot was taken while standing on the suspension bridge between the Home Entertainment and Executive Lofts, and is almost directly above the location where the first screenshot showing the interior of this room was taken. Makes for an interesting contrast, no? 
And although I hate to say it ... the screenshots of the Control Room here really don't do it justice. This room, perhaps more than any other in the base, is one which you really need to be *IN* in order to fully appreciate everything within it. I'm reasonably certain that those of you in these forums who have been able to visit on a base tour will agree with me on that sentiment. 
It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...
The Decorative Great Room is really intended to be a sort of "sandbox" for ideas, and also for members of the SG who want to experiment with trying out various notions of base building to see if they'll work (or not) and to gain experience with base editing and the editor itself. At the moment, it is set up as a sort of Night And Day room ... with the outer perimeter of the room being shrouded in the Dark Of Night, while the center area enjoys the only spot of Daylight in the entire base and is "open to the sky" (so to speak). There's even a twilight middle ground in between the two, which is strongly reminiscent of the lighting and atmospherics seen throughout the base.
This room also features the only colonade within the base, because I wanted to have one somewhere. This room also features the only raised floors and lowered ceilings anywhere in the base. Access up onto the successive floor tiers is at the corners, since they're the most convenient locations given that the Doors to access this room are also in the extreme opposite corners.
In the "back corner" which cannot be seen through the Doors from the adjacent Rooms, there is a pair of wall stairs, lighted in the darkness by Shouji Wall Lamps, which leads upwards to a Magic Bridge. The beauty of the Magic Bridge is that it can only be seen from above ... from below it is completely invisible.
Once you get up to the level of the Magic Bridge however, it will appear before your eyes ... and you can walk safely across to the ring of balconies and bridges which hug the high walls which descend from the ceiling on the Night Side.
Up here, at the highest walkable place in the entire base, there are couches and chairs for doing some quiet reading and relaxing, away from all the hustle and bustle of other more frequently used and traveled sections of the base when you would simply like to have some privacy. Rumors that there are "etchings" to be reviewed up here are, sadly, unfounded though. Note that the ceiling trim is still in place up here, and how close it is to the furniture, giving you a good sense of the true height of this location.
Beyond each balcony, there is another suspension bridge and a corner balcony at the turn with additional seating, offering an alternative view of the Night Side of the room.
The pattern of suspension bridges, balconies with bookshelves and sofas, and then onwards to another corner balcony continues all the way around the high wall of the room hanging from the ceiling until reaching the original corner. Cross over the Magic Bridge again and you can take the stairs back down to the ground floor where you first began your journey through the Night Sky.
It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...
For anyone who is still reading by this point, I'd like to thank you for taking this screenshot tour of the Spring Knights base. I know there's a lot of pictures posted in this thread, but I honestly wish I could post more ... or better yet, a walkthrough movie, so as to show just what it's like to MOVE through the spaces I've created in my base. I know it's a cliche to say this, but the screencaps really don't do it justice. But they're the best that I can do, short of giving a guided tour, in-game.
In case anyone would like to take a guided tour of the Spring Knights base, you can send me a PM here on the forums to set up an appointment, preferably a couple days in advance so we can confirm things before the tour date. I can be available to give base tours most any week night between 700p and 1000p Eastern time, if given advance notice (so I can be online and not doing a Task Force at the time).
Spring Knights is a Hero SG located on the Virtue server.
Feel free to take inspiration from my discoveries and use them in your own creations.
It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...
<.<
>.>
-_-
I should have known that I was wasting my time posting this ...
It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...
I think you just got hit by bad timing. With GR just around the corner, an awful lot of us are in the beta and finding out what we can and can't do with bases - and other stuff.
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What makes you say that? You've got over 200 views already. |
Originally Posted by Redlynne
I should have known that I was wasting my time posting this ...
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Don�t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. - R.W. Emerson |
YUMMY Low-Hanging Fruit for BASE LUV
I'd hardly call it a waste; I've gotten some inspiration from looking at your screenshots for my own base!
I have a question though: What did you use in the Arcane Workshop to make the stories? They look a lot more fluid then mine and yours is solid on the bottom as well.
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They are solid. Very solid. There isn't even any texture tearing like you'll often see with other choices for repurposing as flooring, like using Desks or Cabinets. That's because I used Small Bookshelves from the Shelves tab (first item, all the way to the left).|
Originally Posted by Obsidianus
I have a question though: What did you use in the Arcane Workshop to make the stories? They look a lot more fluid then mine and yours is solid on the bottom as well.
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The same Small Bookshelves which you see wrapping around the tree planters on the left at ground level here or wrapped around the tree planter and along the walls here are the exact same item I use (in stacked arrays) to create flooring with like you see in the Power Room (launch tramways and raised floor), the Arcane Workshop (above ground level floors), and in the Control Room (raised floors). It's quite expensive to do though, both in terms of Prestige and in terms of Item Count, since filling a 32ft by 32ft area with them will cost you 25,600 Prestige and 256 Small Bookcases ... and you'll get bored out of your skull placing them all. Heck, just placing enough to cover an 8ft by 8ft square will cost you 1600 Prestige ... when a simple SG logo Floor Plate will only cost you 1000 Prestige instead. So it's "not cheap" to do ... but the results are SO worth it, if you expend a little bit of effort getting it right in the first place.
And if you noticed, I even gave a little mini-tutorial on how to achieve the "wood grain" pattern you see in my base in the Control Room post where I covered the Executive Loft, since it was easiest to see in the camera angles there.
It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...
Wow..... I'm simply blown away by what you've done here. I haven't had as much time as I'd like to study every pic in depth but what I've been able to see so far is very, very impressive. You've managed to make a very impressive base here, and I'd love to see it in-game sometime.
Thanks for sharing all of these pics!
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Daemonchilde: ((fluffy thinks he's a tank)) Demon . Hunter: (( I think mine is >.> Daemonchilde: ((Yours is no longer fluffy, it is Obliteron, destroyer of worlds)) |
Send me a PM here in the forums and we can set up a time for a tour. I'm often available for tours weeknights from 8-11 Eastern, especially with advance (day or two) notice so I can clear my schedule.
It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...
Went to go pay rent today, and figured ... hey, why don't I find out what the base actually cost to reach its final state here?
Answer: 5,515,380 Prestige spent
I had a feeling it was going to weigh in around 5.5 million for everything.
It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...
Which answered the question I had - the approximate cost of such a masterpiece. Well, the prestige cost, at least. I won't even start thinking about the number of hours it took you to reach such a level of precision, my head's already blown from the pictures.
I wish I could come and visit, but sadly I play on European servers, so no cigar. But the pictures are already mouth-watering, and I freely admit I'll be shamelessly stealing some ideas for our own SG base.
So all in all, thank you for the inspiration, and for showing us what can be done. After seeing so many bad, ugly and plain boring bases, seeing yours makes me wanna polish ours that much more.
Seeing as how the Spring Knights base has undergone some pretty major revisions since it appeared in the City Scoop a few years back (when Raid Pathing was still a major limitation, and floating objects was absurdly onerous), I figured the time had come for a little bit of an update. Plus there's the fact that every so often the subject of "turn off the lighting" will crop up in conversation around here, and I'd like to think that this is in no small part due to the example I've managed to set with the design of this base. So I guess it would behoove me to do some Pictures=1000 Words sorts of sharing with the other base builders in this forum, since this is the sort of thing you have to SEE in order to understand the full ramifications of.
Spring Knights is a Hero SG on Virtue that boasts a membership of only 3 players, of which I am one. The SG roster is filled with our alts, and numbers under 30.
The base plot is a 16x12, and as you can see in the overview the amount of unusable space has been kept to a minimum.
The base plot contains the following rooms:
- Entry (2x2)
- Transporter Room 1 (2x2)
- Infirmary (2x2)
- Power Room with Hangar/Launch Bay (3x3)
- Arcane Workshop with Cantina and Dormitory Crash Space (3x4)
- Tech Workshop with Captured Flyer (3x4)
- Transporter Room 2 (3x4)
- Transporter Room 3 (3x4)
- Control Room (3x3)
- Decorative Great Room (8x8)
The entire base, with the exception of only a single place in the Infirmary, is "walkable space" ... meaning that there is no jumping required in order to access areas. The sole exception to this rule are the Rez Rings, which due to their nature are a One Way Access item anyway ... so being unable to walk to them is quite unnecessary. Every room in the base has 3D elements within them (some more dramatically and spectacularly than others), which overall gives every room a feeling of being much larger than it actually is when you're walking around within it.There were four major aesthetic choices made early on which helped to shape what you'll be seeing here. One was to "turn the lights off" in the lighting controls and only use locally sourced lighting from lamps and similar items. This allowed for very careful fine tuning of lighting within the base, which in turn allowed for a very important sense of ambiance to emerge. The result is a sort of feeling of the base existing in a sort of twilight shortly after sundown, with the lamps producing "islands of warmth and comfort" in the darkness.
The second major aesthetic choice was to retain, wherever possible, both the ceiling and floor trim. It seems to be the fashion with a lot of base designers to deliberately remove the trims from their ceiling and floors, and I wanted to go against that trend. Fortunately I was able to successfully adhere to this "rule" in every place except one ... and for that one exception is makes sense that it is an exception.
The third major aesthetic choice was to have every room in the base set to have floor height set to lowest and ceiling height set to highest. The result is an almost cathedral-like sense of vast spaces, which I was at pains to NOT fill completely. Instead, I wanted a design aesthetic which skewed towards the "open and airy" sensibility, since that would heighten the feeling of "vastness" you would get simply walking around within the base. So it was rather amusing to me when I was showing City Scoop Editor EnnVee around for the original article, when the base was only 6 rooms on an 8x8 plot, and have EnnVee ask me ... "just how BIG is this place anyway?" It was almost as if EnnVee had never seen 2x2 rooms before that didn't feel small and cramped.
The fourth major aesthetic choice was to have trees in almost every single room. The trees themselves offer a useful screening function for being able to obscure some of the more obvious trickery that has to be involved whenever building your base in 3D. They also serve a very important purpose of drawing your visual focus away from the walls and into the room, which makes everything "feel" larger and more open than it actually might be.
Anyway, enough rambling.
In this screenshot tour, you will occasionally see my Peacebringer, Autumn Turning. I only did this when a first person view simply couldn't give me the best camera angle, or when it was important to have a sense of scale in a screenshot. Autumn Turning stands approximately 5' 7" in the physique editor, which should give an adequate point of reference.