Hills, why are there always hills...

I hate hills. Okay, stop, this has to be the ending. Let's start at the beginning. So, I've been writing a draft, and I've done a few scenes. And then it was time to make the arts for it. The idea is to move the action to a hilly area. But I wasn't worried, because... What's the problem? I guess Campaign Cartographer, the program I make maps in, has an option for hills, right?

Well, it turns out there is one. And it's awful. Well, how awful... it can be used, for those very distant overviews from above. But up close, they look... Ew. Just, ew.

Okay, I said to myself. I'll have to think of something. A little background: Campaign Cartographer works with 2D objects based on the principle of layers. For example, trees are one layer, grass is another, buildings are a third, etc. To give the map a sense of volume, lighting, etc., you need to select special effects for each layer, like blur, shadows, etc. (there are dozens of them, with dozens of settings for each).

And so with that functionality in hand, I set about trying to map the hills. The results of the first day were... terrible. I couldn't get anything to look like hills at all. Okay, I decided, I'll try again tomorrow. But when tomorrow came, by the end of the day I was hysterical. The hills weren't coming out! And what came out... No, you don't want to see that.

But I didn't give up, oh no. Started looking for how to draw hills with a top view in general, and how the program's toolbox would help me do it. Found a lot of stuff... and nothing I could really use.

Almost desperate, I started thinking. And remembered some RPGs and strategies, where uplands are displayed on the principle of tiers. I started to think about how it can be done... And here it is. Something similar to hills (I hope) come out.

You'll see this art first in the next update.

This is the second one. It's a closer look.

It's certainly not perfect... But hopefully, my battle with the hills didn't end in my total defeat.

That wasn't all of my artwork challenges for the next update. Next up was a location to explore. Unlike the general plans from Chapter 2, the arts for this small location are closer to what you saw in Chapter 1. There's a much higher requirement for very specific objects that you can see. That was a challenge as well. But I think I made it through. And no, I'm not going to show them to you. You'll explore them in the update itself. That's the whole point.

Well, that's the news. The text didn't cause any problems. But the art for it unexpectedly kept me busy. Well, let's push the story forward, as always. Only forward. There's still a lot of work ahead.