When I hit a rut with character design recently I took a new approach after some refresher time with one of my favourite genres of video game: The city/nation builder. It gave me time to reflect on what I was interested in with 3D design. While I am still willing to happily dabble with character design, I've realised that I've been deeply fascinated in architecture.
Going back to those roots I continued a fantasy theme by taking on the design of a castle. These are quite fascinating buildings that entertain a passion I've had for cities. A castle is not simply a structure in and of itself. It is a form of settlement, with the lord's keep as a centrepoint but can host several other separate buildings like kitchens, stables, doctors, places of worship, gathering centres, armouries, barracks, prisons and guest houses.
They were designed as places of power. Centers of control for a local lord and a headquarters for a local garrison. From the first castles of the 11th century to the chateau-forts that followed the dominance of the cannon and the subsequent obsolescence of their ability to protect. Their design varies wildly from location-to-location. Climates and availability of materials can greatly influence their design. But they also have a particular fondness in role-play gaming like the tabletop or computer RPGs as somewhere for players to call home. Not just because of the prestige of the structure and somewhere to receive guests, but the aforementioned fact they contained many facilities from stable to kitchens, putting everything an adventurer (or adventuring group) would need in once place.
In short, nothing seems to make a player feel safer than to be within two or three layers of curtain wall and all the resources they could ever need to keep themselves supplied and prepared.
At present, the only part of the current fort I dub "Castle Ridgewell" near completion is the curtain wall. As I wanted to balance between fantasy and realism (in a Game of Thrones kind of way), I pored through just what kind of tricks were used in the construction of the typical castle, and what architectural features were common as these were primarily fortifications.
I've had to bear in mind the thickness of the walls, the use of machicolations (an afternoon's work by themselves), where any potential enemy might reach the walls. Layers of defence, how to funnel various forces, defensive tricks and the strategic location of various assets. This is still a home, but one that needs to be well protected.
This particular example is imagined as something that has been held by a family for something like four generations. Not obscenely wealthy as the owner is something like a baron or a count, but with a home in a key position on the borders of the kingdom. Not luxurious, but definitely heavily reinforced. So my plan is to not go crazy with curtain walls even though further walls can be made by recycling the assets I have already designed. The towers for instance, can be switched form being enclosed towers to open at the top (though how this is done I should have programmed in before duplicating).
I have considered roadmap for the castle's development giving me an idea of what to do next:
- Redesign the keep's layout.
- Block out outer defenses.
- Block out resource buildings (chapel, blacksmith, granary, armoury).
- Resculpt rock face in Zbrush.
- Block out possible props.
I plan to stream the project's progress for anyone interested in watching this come together. I've got the software for it and it's good to get what I'm working on out there. Star Drake Projects will make a comeback after a long while of inactivity in the near future.
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