Echoes of Leonard Nimoy reading a quote something like, “An engineer knows a design is finished, not when there’s nothing left to add, but when there’s nothing left to take away.” (Not sure of the exact wording or who is being quoted…)
The actual building process (Using HeroEngine/HeroCloud software) is amazing. Odd things happen from time to time. This character (who replaced the guy who started running around at like a 15 degree angle, almost horizontal) would have disappeared and fallen through the world if we didn’t click on the ‘Fly’ routine and jump invisibly up about a hundred feet aso she can spread her arms and glide to the ground which will have become nicely solid in less than a minute. The landscaping business in this cloud is quite creatively fulfilling.
I spent over an hour making sure there was a passable trail up and through the mountains to the ‘Training Grounds’ in the north leaf of the island. A new character’s first challenge might be to get from the museum to the training grounds in one piece. This nice open area would probably house several trees and boulders behind which nasty bears and things might be hiding (I really want to give subscribers the option to only be attacked by ‘robots’ that would have been programmed to kill in the future and sent back through wild portals to try to alter the balance in the world. Some of them might almost look like ‘living’ NPCs, but they all have flashing red eyes to signal their evil intent. )
Yes, I like the hilly terrain of this version of Shamrock Island a lot better than the flat (“boring”?) image I had in my head. There have been times when I parked the characters somewhere while I was building, their hyper-kinetic squirming can be distracting. and speaking of distracting. The female characters (avatars?) might be described as, ‘way too gorgeous’ and most of them look like they’re about to have clothing malfunctions at the drop of a hat. I gave this one a more modest outfit than she was ‘born’ with.
—I think I’ve done enough for one day… (clunk… his head hits the keyboard.)
~~~~~Jim