Well, we just wrapped up a two-pitcher lunch at the Sewer Brew Pub with a fan (hi Kris!), so you know that means: time to write a blog post! So Daniel has been cranking through biome stuff and asked- no, let’s start this over.
The sky above Vancouver was the colour of a television tuned to a dead channel. Daniel entered the gently cultivated chaos of the art room and recoiled slightly. The chaos recoiled slightly back at him.
“After Steampunk Colorado, what’s next?” — Oh, well then: we could do a desert. Lots of bones, dust, salt, jagged rocks. No? Really? I thought it’d be pleasant. Then perhaps a swamp, something lovely; Lots of plants, molds, miasma, large insects, fevers. No? Not a swamp? If we must then, let us set our sights on:
Steampunk Central America
White sand beaches, tropical forest, volcanoes, cenotes, deforestation, strange statues buried in the sand at the low elevations and giant, scowling basalt heads at the higher; beetles grazing in tropical meadows before wallowing in warm streams. It’ll be lovely. And we still get those fevers in.
It starts with a palette of colours, the right colour for the right sub-biome from the top of the topology to the bottom. It’s all layered like some kind of terrible cake full of dirt and growing trees. Below is a quick sketch I did to give an overview of what could be going on in a roughly Central American biome set:
Literally the broad strokes. (And with apologies to our Central American readers — this is all about capturing a certain interpretation of a feeling of reality without being much arsed to be real reality. Which is about what CE is doing in general but with more steam engines. Would it help if I said the word “verisimilitude” here and waved my arms around? Good. It made me feel better too.)
I’m erupting with enthusiasm for top-down concept maps for biome generation. (If you enjoyed that, I’ve got more. So many more. Er, to clarify: I’ve got both terrible puns *and* biome concept art.)
