Ancient’s Abyss
Henantir’s Steamcrag is a large-scale expansion to Skyrim currently in development by a Skyrim modding team known as The Arcane University. As part of the team, I contributed to the mod by creating the Ancient’s Abyss, a side quest dungeon in a dark cave of glowing mushrooms. Under time constraints and a team lead’s supervision, I developed The Ancient’s Abyss from concept to completion in about four months.
Building Around a Unique Central Space
When conceptualizing how the interior of the dungeon would look, it was decided early on that the first cell would be built around a spire that would serve as a connector to the rest of the level. The idea was as the player descended deeper into the abyss, they could look up and down while traversing the spire to see how far they’d gone and how much deeper they needed to go. In blocking out this structure, inspiration was taken from early designs of the panopticon, with its tiered floors designed to be viewable from every other part of the prison.
This spire-like area of the dungeon utilizes bridges and routes to connect each room to the central hub.
Designing for Mood
After the initial blockout of the rooms, the mood of the dungeon needed to be established. In the initial notes for the level it was described as mysterious and dark, making lighting a big priority when creating interiors for the cell. However, Skyrim has major limitations in terms of how many shadow-casting lights there can be in a scene. To combat this, a good amount of time was spent building out the lighting, using shadows when it best fit the scene and constantly testing the build to ensure the lighting was perfect.
