Suggestions for new Environment and Underground Art Sets

Grim Dawn Development Updates
101

medierra, any chance, if the “big battlefield” idea gets implemented, we could see stuff going on away from where our char is? Like in TQ, the battlefield outside Hades’ palace, you could see explosions just as you were running onto that part of the screen, etc. Really made it that much cooler :cool::smiley:

Also, if the battlefield idea was chosen, would we be able to see it in different parts? So you may have a half broken-down human fort with the invaders attacking, bomb shelters (or is this too modern?), craters with the toxic stuff in it (mentioned earlier)… some of these seem really cool :smiley: And you transition from area to area, but its all on this one battlefield. Would be nice to see. :wink:

102

I don’t have any pictures to represent my thoughts, but something along the lines of a land ripped apart by the Warp, free-floating, yet with mutated beasts and plants. Living plants, with a bloodlust.

I imagine glowing fruit, and weird looking vines with blood-like colors.

The land turned black by the warp, and its inhabitants mutated and now aggressive.

I don’t mean to say the entire ground is just black either though, but darkness and strange as a major theme.

In such a place the imagination can run wild…

103

I like the railroad and shipyard ideas discussed earlier; but I would like to see them tied in with industrial areas. After all, the trains and boats need things to move around.

Iron works, stone and brickworks, munitions factories, textile mills, tanneries etc.

EDIT: I see this has been suggested earlier. In that case, I’ll just add to what’s been said with a few more pics:

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This can of course be expanded into mines and pits to extract iron ore and clay/sand for making bricks, woodlands tied into logging areas and lumber mills, tenement housing for miners and factory workers etc.

Of course, in GD, everything is essentially abandoned or destroyed, so all that remain are the soot-covered ruins of a once proud industrial society.

104

I was about to reïntroduce my Wine/Cognac/Burwitch Brew caves, but I see they have not been forgotten :stuck_out_tongue:

I agree with Medierra though that it would be a bit too limited for an entire UG theme set, or rather I think it would be perfectly possible to create one huge location base on this theme, but then it would not make any sense to have any others both in terms of variation and in terms of lore (vintage wine and liquor ought to be rare). That taken into consideration, creating an entire UG theme just for one dungeon would just be inefficient. Unless ofcourse GD has/had a region devoted to wine/liquor production.

In general, I think there are three particularly noteworthy great ideas about UG worlds: Verne’s, H.G. Wells’ artilleryman’s dreams from the War of the Worlds (see image above), and Tolkien’s Moria. The latter does not in any way apply to GD’s setting, so that leaves Verne’s and Wells’. Wells’ thematically would be dead on, but Verne’s mainly consists of flora and primitive fauna. However, it has something in common with Wells’, which I think is precisely what makes these ideas so captivating. Rather than a network of tunnels or caves, they picture a large open domelike underground envirnonment where buildings and/or objects are placed in whole as they would be above ground, though often some of these objects are partially integrated in the subterran surroundings. For a more contemporary example : think Gundam Universal Century Federation HQ at Jaburo. This is what I think distinguishes a well designed UG environment from a truly great one, and personally I would like to see an UG theme in GD based on this concept as well.

I really like the railroads idea in particular too. Moreover, apart from forming an immensely atmospheric UG theme and fitting the game’s setting perfectly (above: an image of the Moscow Metro Komsomolskaya station), it could be used as thé solution for tying in future expansions. In the main game a large abandonned UG station could be “unlocked” which is then used to fast travel to the new areas of future expansions, similar to the Athens-to-Crete ferry in TQ, but perhaps with a nice cutscene this time. An old railway network would lorewise be ideal to connect even several different regions like the main game are, a northern winterland, and a southern dessert. Especially for the winter themed expansion it would provide a magnificent entry. Just think of the Syberia series if you want to get an impression of what I mean.

Alternatively, I had got this crazy idea from a comic about a submerged airship accessed from underground. It might sound a bit odd to keep an airship underground or under the surface waterlevel, but it would be the ideal way to hide it. If it floats on air, it floats on water, so if you tie it down underwater you’d only have to release it for it to immediately surface and airborne, given that the craft’s structure is sturdy enough to resist the waterpressure while submerged.

Below is an extract from the ridiculous yet ridiculously beautiful comic my little brother bought as a toddler, simply because even then he could see that it was ridiculously beautiful. The craft in the comic is actually not an airship at all, but it is huge, and hidden underwater.

Also, I find Mssangols’ pictures from Norway really appealing too. They exhale a grey harsh yet striking beauty that breathes cold, yet the scenery shows no signs of actual frost. It would fit well with GD I think and it reminds me of when I went off-track in the Bré mountains in co. Dublin.

It shows how a railway track can blend in nicely too. The picture is in black and white because the weather was so grey, I actually didn’t notice my crappy phone camera (notice the dead pixel in the middle) was still set on B&W filter. In retrospective it probably was a bad idea going out hiking at all, let alone in my classic outfit wearing flat-sole shoes and woolen cloths :cool:

Finally, let me apologize for this disturbingly chaotic post. I didn’t have time to reply earlier, thoughts piled up, and I figured this thread was for brainstorming anyway :wink:

105

Hello,
A few ideas here. I took a quick look through the existing posts, and i did not see these (hope i did not miss them):

  1. Crystal garden. A place where a experimental weapon was used. The weapon was supposed to solidify (turn to crystal) the water in targets (aka the blood), but it had devastating side-effects. since it was fired in a marsh-like environment, ALL the water was affected. Even more, because of the great concentration of crystals, mingled with living material, it gained some sort of sentience. So, we have a devastated plant environment with crystal columns sprouting from plants and trees - in some cases the effect was lethal - the tree is only a stump, with a massive crystal growing from it - in other cases, the crystals are like leaves on regular plants. Also the animal life was affected. All sorts of animals and humanoids, but with crystal appendixes / growths, or crystal-related abilities (shoot shards, crystal shield, shard vortex, etc).

  2. House of the jester (trickster). This could be combined with the fairgrounds idea i saw. have a house/mansion with a lot of rooms. But the rooms are maddening : some are new, some are decrepit, some are with all the colors inverted, some are upside-down; Small touches: the chairs move, lockers open and laugh, but these are not enemies. only for the feel of it. But not only the rooms are maddening, the whole place is: impossible spaces: say you have 9 rooms in a 3x3 setting. if you go in all the exterior ones, all of them are small, tiny. but enter in the central one, and it’s a ball room. or the rooms rearrange: go through a linear series of rooms all connecting only to the next. and reaching the last one, proves to be a dead end. but when coming back, even if you should return to the previous room, you end-up somewhere else. So go 1,2,3,4,dead-end, retrace:4,3,Bam - different room. And enemies (or boss) must include a twister version of the character. with same items, he must look the same as the character at the moment, but with tentacles erupting from his back or something like this. For instance the character enters a room, a giant mirror awaits. as he advances, and sees his reflection, at one point, the reflection stops following and sprouts tentacles / claws / pincers (or all of the above) and attacks.

106

I like the idea, I believe it has been mentioned earlier, of a bunch of different sized islands linked by bridges and river shallows, some of which can be natrual defensive points held by the humans, and others that are the nesting sites of wierd and warped birds and fish. I rekon that you could link into Scryer’s post with instead of having river islands (or on the coast) have the islands floating over the void.

Also I like the idea of a Wasteland\Battlefield and a Volcano, my only request is don’t combine them, far to often you get vast flat vocanic wastes that just get boring. If you were to keep them seperate and do a good Volcano map where you can climb to the top and peer intot the boiling magma below, or have a fort built into the side with a magma moat, that would be great. But please don’t make volcanic wastes without something interesting to do and see (like a volcano).

Lastly I would like to see an underground city carved out of the solid rock, similar to Petra, as has been mentioned several times in the thread.

107

I would really like to see a Castlevania-like castle, with monsters inspired by the series. A clockwork tower would be great too!

I would also like underwater combat, like you have in Soul Blazer, just to make Grim Dawn more unique. Are there any ARPGs of newer date with this?

108

So my last suggestion was the half-broken-down poisonous greenhouse, taken over by cultists. Here’s something similar, but this time my own idea. (My last suggestion was someone else’s idea from a while back)

An old, Victorian-era sawmill.

As some of you may (or may not) know, Victorian lumber mills in the countryside where often quite large, and their owners would live nearby. So as Cairn is in a post-apocalyptic state, this building (the owners’ house), as well as the storerooms, etc. would be highly sought-after defensive buildings.

The storyline to this could be to eliminate some outlaws that have taken up residence there, and are using the materials (including lumber) to manufacture guns. (Guns with wooden stocks - I always thought these looked cool :cool:)

The leader of these bandits could be the previous foreman/enforcer at the mill before the apocalypse. He joined up with the bandits to protect the mill (safety in numbers, right?), but a quest-giver at Devil’s Crossing (could be a guard maybe) isn’t too happy with him making weapons from the lumber, when the survivors could be using it to make fortifications (barricades for example), so you, the player, are contracted to terminate the bandits and the foreman.

A cool feature could be that maybe the next time you visit the lumber mill (after you’ve turned in the quest), there could be sentries there (the guards in uniform) defending the place. That’d be nice to see :smiley:

Also, I could imagine the Foreman, the last enemy in the sawmill (I’d say he’d be in the owners’ house) would have some pretty sweet loot. Something like a Foreman’s Cap, and for weapons, either a gun similar to The Enforcer blunderbuss from Fable 2, or The Foreman from TQ*

*This was (thematically) always one of my favourite weapons. It grants an ability to basically crush the will of the enemy. I would love to see something like this return in GD, an item called the Enforcer, the Foreman, etc. that drains the will of the enemy while granting bonuses to pets/allies. The name fits in very well with the granted ability :smiley:

109

AKA Tiberium XD

That said, it’s a nice idea. Would be nice to have larger vitrified surfaces too.

110

Earlier I posted about abandoned factories.

The following pics really thrilled me:

Seems like a place where band of thugs may hang out.

An assassin or a spy may be concealed in any shadow…

Dark creatures dwell in this hell hole, waiting for a stupid hero to investigate the “legendary weapon” hoax. :rolleyes:

It would be nice if this complex was buried half into the ground, yet accessible via small opennings or broken roof areas. It would be great to battle on a bridge made up of pipes which were once carrying water or gas and now out-of-order.

111

Taking the Carnival idea one step further, I’d like to see an outdoor area set in an abandoned amusement park. This would be crazy because you could make it really large with a ton of variety around every corner, and it would be very creepy. You could even introduce inside/underground areas within.

Dilapidated, first-generation roller coasters; collapsed statues; abandoned funhouses, platforms, theme towns and structures. Creepy winding line areas that lead to coaster platforms and other attractions.

I tried to attach images but I’m too new.

112

Wow, some awesome ideas here. We’ve actually talked about doing some of these things previous but the great photo references people have posted are really inspiring. Especially love the old factories dotted with broken window panes. I think all the industrial stuff would work really well in a bigger city as we get further into the interior of the empire.

A big lumber mill would be very fitting for the type of backwater area around Burrwitch and Devil’s Crossing.

113

Awesome resource, thanks for the link!

114

I really liked the idea of a fungus forest! Love nature! :rolleyes:

115

TL2 kinda overdid it with that in act3. Still, it was fun having act 3 being so dark and mysterious with having a fungus forest.

Would be great to have a fungus forest in GD as well, maybe making it close to a swampy region. Along with the rest of suggestion like old abandoned facotories, volcanic caves, different regions of the world, sewers, even catacombs that you can enter by a secret switch in a church, and etc.

116

Another idea I had and building on the amusement park idea…what about a circus tent. You could turn it into an arena style boss battle, where you have to battle through a number of rounds with increasingly more difficult creatures (clown zombies!!) and odds before meeting the boss for the final battle.

117

How about making sure that thismoutain fort is in :D.
Extra points for whoever guesses where I got the pic from with out looking at the address bar

118

Hah, that is actually a concept from a game we were working on at the end of Iron Lore, which we tried to pitch when we started Crate. It is too primitive a setting for Grim Dawn though.

119

It reminds me of one thing.

Some time ago i was toying with a concept for a game - of course a H&S arpg, but more in the vein of original diablo, i.e. slower paced with more emphasis on tactics. The setting for that game concept was a big prison-dungeon inside a mountain (i don’t remember what game was set in such place, some older RPG, which took place only in dungeons). I had an idea, that deep inside of it, player could encounter a crude, ancient temple, made purely out of carved stone. Nothing fancy or over the top. Just sinister building made out of primitive materials for what they thought was some earth/stone god. Think - opening scene of The Exorcist. It would be awesome to unearth something like that!

Also, i’m glad you liked the site, i’ll ask my architect friend who loves those sites if there aren’t any more on the web.

You might love This (sorry for no english version), not sure how it would fit into the world of Grim Dawn. Russians stored Napalm in that place, but something bad happened and it all ignited… Who know that molten bricks would be so beautiful… yet terrifying - the temperature would evaporate any human being with no problems!

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The place is called “Zverev”, maybe you’ll be able to google some more pics on it, if you find it interesting :slight_smile:

120

Ohh, no, no, no… not clowns…

actually, i know that’s a great idea, but at least give me a special clown-exploding-gun, because clowns freak the hell out of me.