(2020-04-19) Sloan Overworld Week3 Oblique

Robin Sloan: OverWorld Week 3, oblique. Here’s one of my key references for the look of the map in Perils of the Overworld—and the game’s whole visual approach, really:

That’s Oblique Drawing: A History of Anti-Perspective (!) by Massimo Scolari, which I picked up many years ago because, no kidding, I thought I might someday do a project like this! And here we are. I’m glad I kept it around.

Here’s one of my key references for the look of the map in Perils of the Overworld—and the game’s whole visual approach, really

Here’s one of my key references for the look of the map in Perils of the Overworld

I love Scolari’s introduction to the history of oblique “anti”-perspective and its uses in architecture and war—a way of drawing that does not distort scale, and can therefore serve as a model, a source of truth, a tool

One of my first lines of code summons not a PerspectiveCamera() but an OrthographicCamera().

For me, the appeal of oblique perspective is that it makes even an epic assembly like Cape Blanco look as though it could fit in the palm of your hand; like a model, even a toy.

The graphics framework I’m using for the map, THREE.js, connects, through a few intermediate steps, to the GPU in your phone or laptop.

This strategy is breathtakingly efficient, but/and it raises a persistent question: how do you translate a qualitative aesthetic goal like “I want this spaceship to shimmer like a drop of mercury,” or...

There is no floating virtual pen. There are only individual pixels, and each one has to follow its own recipe in isolation, blind to its neighbors. It’s really quite strange.

After getting the map to the point depicted above, I decided my excitement had sneakily morphed into procrastination.


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