It didn’t take long for me to go off the tutorial rails. Once I added some water to the scene (it started with a lake) I soon surrounded my entire terrain layer with water and started modifying the edges of the terrain so it was less of a square and more of an island.
I got totally lost in sculpting this thing. It was fun, but perhaps more so, it was mesmerizing. We all work hard, right? Somehow I found the massaging of this gentle virtual island extremely relaxing; it took me to another place where I was just totally chilled and nothing mattered more than what I was doing at that moment.
The first MMORPG I played for any significant length of time was Asheron’s Call. (I have screenshots somewhere; I’ll dig them out and share them here.) The low-poly assets in this environment remind me of those heady (and also somewhat crappy) days when we pioneers were braving persistent virtual worlds for the first time.
Enough reminiscing; the somewhat unexciting video below is the result of my second day on this project.