Waterbug

Waterbug

Cobalt

.

.

Waterbug is the captain of the crew Waterbug Drowning, a small shopkeeping crew in the flag Valor on the Cobalt Ocean.

Waterbug was one of the winners of the Design the Oceans Contest in December of 2004. He was the Lead Archipelago designer on the Horse Head archipelago on Hunter Ocean and later was the lead designer on Chameleon Archipelago on Malachite. Waterbug is currently retired from island design work.

Islands Designed

• Admiral Island, on the Emerald and Jade oceans (as well as on the retired/merged Sage ocean)

This was the first island he did pre-colonized.  While Dragon's Nest started out colonized the buildings were added by the ringers after the fact. The feedback Waterbug remembers the best on this island was when he lined up a bunch of trashed barrels.  Nemo informed him that nobody lines up their trash like that, which caused him to look out his office at the perfectly lined up row of trashed computers. The barrels went (so did the computers).

• Albatross Island, on the Emerald and Jade oceans (as well as on the retired/merged Sage ocean)

Not much to say about this one. It was a pretty quick island to throw together.

• Anegada Island, on the Emerald and Opal oceans (as well as on the retired/merged Hunter ocean)

This one didn't quite turn out as he was hoping but time constraints at the end kept him from doing more with it.

• Ashkelon Arch, on the Emerald and Jade oceans (as well as on the retired/merged Sage ocean)

This is one of his personal favorites. It was an effect he didn't know if he could pull off, and the frustrations with the spires was still fresh in his mind, but it came together beautifully. There was a small pathing problem on the backside that got corrected after it went in production.

• Barnard Island, on the Emerald and Opal oceans (as well as on the retired/merged Hunter ocean); and Lyonesse Island, on the Emerald and Opal oceans (as well as on the retired/merged Hunter ocean)

These two islands were put together to cover a couple of other designers who were having trouble finding the time to get them finished. They were both built off the same base and were put together inside a couple of days. His habit of putting fissure under rock to keep it from being built over and destroying an effect also caught up with him here as he got it too close to the main walkway rendering the island unwalkable. This has since been fixed.

• Cabo de Hornos, on the Cerulean and Meridian oceans (as well as on the retired/merged oceans of Cobalt, Crimson, and Viridian)

Apparently one of the most popular islands he has designed. This one was done quickly when another island designer's computer failed, taking the island he or she were working on with it. This island is also a demonstration that an island can indeed be too big for the game. By this point he'd done quite a bit of rock work so his speed was really improving.

• Dragon's Nest, on the Cerulean and Meridian oceans (as well as on the retired/merged oceans of Cobalt, Crimson, and Viridian)

This was the island he did for the design contest. He received lots of feedback during its creation as he learned his way around the editor. This island was designed without the buildings. The buildings were added by Three Rings for the opening of the ocean.

• Escher Island (Ice)

He took a break from reality and the rock work on Napi's with this Escher inspired island: This was fun to build although it was originally designed as an outpost. It was enlarged to a medium as the ocean was short on larger islands.

• Flyaway Island, on the Meridian ocean (as well as on the retired/merged Malachite ocean)

This was the only island Waterbug worked on as a designer on Malachite. This gave him more time to revise and improve the island. His vision and the lead designer's were a little bit different and the island went through a number of revisions before everyone was happy but the end result was worth it.

• Fort Royal (Ice)

This was an attempt to build a fort. Once this island was out in the ocean it was discovered that at certain points mates would overlap the cliff tiles used to build the towers. He learned not to use certain cliff and wall tiles next to walkways.

• Labyrinth Moors, on the Cerulean and Meridian oceans (as well as on the retired/merged oceans of Cobalt, Crimson, and Viridian)

He was worried that his cliff paths would leave the island unbuildable although reports he now hears that he may have gone too far the other way; some of the paths he thought were passable weren't quite as walkable as he believed.

• The Lowland Hundred, on the Emerald and Opal oceans (as well as on the retired/merged Hunter ocean)

For this ocean he was more involved as a archipelago designer than an island designer, but he spent a lot of time on this island. It showed a lot of what he was trying to accomplish in this archipelago.

• Napi Peak, on the Cerulean and Meridian oceans (as well as on the retired/merged oceans of Cobalt, Crimson, and Viridian)

This was his first island after the contest. The cliff tiles weren't available when he started this one. They became available just as he was finishing it and he did a couple of versions trying to incorporate them. Waterbug never completely got the flows the way he wanted and had about half a dozen "finished" versions of this island floating around at one point.

• Penobscot Island, on the Emerald and Jade oceans (as well as on the retired/merged Sage ocean)

First island developed for Sage.  The attempt here was to create an island with rock spires. Waterbug was never entirely happy with the way these came out. There aren't any tilesets in the editor for stacking things on top of each other with the exception of fort walls. This was probably the most frustrating island he worked on.

• Winking Wall Island (Ice)

This island was basically his answer to spending hours going over rock formations trying to detect points where they would flicker. It definitely helped his general mood just to build something where everything is suppose to flicker in and out. Waterbug wasn't sure it would actually get used so he was pleasantly surprised to see it on Ice.

• Wyeth Island (Ice)

This was an island that he played around with on the side while building Dragon's Nest. He pulled it out of the play pile and put it in production when we needed islands for Ice.