Turns out Cyan hired an actual architect (who goes by the name of Mark Engberg, by the way... sounds familiar?) to design the D'ni buildings... and his company's website has many of the sketches created for the game. Check it out:

http://www.colabarchitecture.com/colabstudio-designexplorations-portfolio.html

(Scroll down to "Cyan Virtual Environment Design Sketches")

There are some previously unseen buildings, a map of what could very well be the City Proper (number 8 ), early sketches of well-known places, something that could be the Great Shaft (22/23), and something I simply don't understand (number 3 - what's with the big orange ball?)

Lots of food for the thought, I'm still not done analysing all the tiny details (anyone with a good image editing sofware wants to risk deciphering the tiny writing?)

EDIT
Here's what I can make out:
Pic 2: Writer's Guild
Pic 4: Library, Level 2. Caption: [Book of the month] view point (no too sure about the part in brackets)
Pics 5 and 6: Evolution of the Library concept
Pic 9: Buildings in pink are "Major Landmarks". Check this thread for bigger version of the map
Pics 10, 11 and 12: Palace
Pics 13 and 14: Neighborhood. I can read some of the captions: Private Rooms, Linking, Game room, garden, short bridge to other part of [something], view point, lake, waterfall, wall of [windows?]
Pic 15: Telescope platform. Stone Garden [structures?]. Can't read the other captions
Pic 16: Concert House
Pic 17: Ferry Terminal
Pic 18: [Something] Stair
Pic 19: Palace
Pic 21: It's an early version of Tokotah Courtyard
Pic 22: New [waterline?]. Old waterline. [Subterranean?] station.
Pic 23: At the bottom: Section of [something something]. Too bad it's so difficult to read, cause this place is interesting

Terrific. I always knew there were professionals behind those designs.

Someone should write them to ask for bigger versions or at least for transcription of the text.

Nomber 24 seems to be the palace from the Tokotah Courtyard. The stair on the left is the one leading up to the Hall of Kings.

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As Long as there is MORE, I will explore.
And as long as my Relto shelf is unfilled, I will build.

To bad there not a little bit larger though... but still great sketches to see

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-Atrion Darnay-

Rusty wrote:

Someone should write them to ask for bigger versions or at least for transcription of the text.

I tried emailing them myself, of course; but I guess the more people that write to them, the more likely it is we'll get an answer. If you want to try, the contact adress is info AT colabarchitecture DOT com

Oh my goodness, more concept sketches!!! YES!! It's like discovering gold!!

Some of these I have seen, but some I have not. Very nice.

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I miss my old signature.

I think the thing I like in the concept art (and didn't appear in the game) is the actual feel of city. Doors, windows, balconies, there were barely any in the final game.

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Previously known as "The stranger"

The stranger wrote:

I think the thing I like in the concept art (and didn't appear in the game) is the actual feel of city. Doors, windows, balconies, there were barely any in the final game.

A lot of them were textures. Also keep in mind the technological limits of the time, and the computer power of their customers... Not everyone was going to be able to render every single window and door in the City.

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I miss my old signature.

Engberg's answer:

Quote:

The images on the web site are sized similar to all images on the site. I’m sorry to report that we will not be posting larger images.
However, If you are ever in Portland I would surely show you the originals in person.

Soooo... anyone in the Portland area?

Very cool find. Thanks for posting it, JP.

if someone can get digital pics during a visit to the office that would be GREAT. Maybe we can expand and improve the city afterall

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URU MOUL Lives

Wouldn't it technically be illegal for us to model those design sketches?

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I miss my old signature.

CrisGer wrote:

if someone can get digital pics during a visit to the office that would be GREAT. Maybe we can expand and improve the city afterall

If you talking about D'ni there are tons of possibility,

1) Making the lake swim-able
2) Add the inside to the some of the buildings and rooms for the DRC and the Guilds
3) The stairs and rooftops that are still not accessible, and would make a great place to hang out
4) Expanding the areas you can walk around in and a few more gliches like the tight rope walk near the DRC tent
5) Add rooms behind the doors that will not open
6) Down in the center of the Museum where the pods linking books are, thier are one or two levels and and a door going out side where you can add a balcony.
7)The stairs in the library leading down to somewhere deep into the earth can be opened
8 ) Two places in the Pub by the Great stairs could be opened one behind the rubble you can see as you walk in, and one behind the shelf behind the bar that you can not see a secret room of some sort
9 ) There is a door in the Great Rezero that does not open and one that does you could use one of them for something perhaps an interface to add marker missions
10) Adding weight to the Maintainers suit or use some of the old suits that look like that robot from Lost in Space so you can walk along the bottom of the lake and check out what their is to see

to name a few

you can set them up as patches so everybody can have a D'ni that a bit diffrent and explain it with something like The DRC was messing around with one of the linking stones to D'ni and produced multiple D'ni's after an experiment involving the Multiple worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Uru has never even seen its full/true potential its no wonder it never got off the ground like expected. and their are just as many ideas if not more for all the other ages the only problem it seems is funding, if you fly around and take a good look at D'ni it almost seems they had plans to expand the City, but for some reason they just couldn't seem to make enough money on the project so it was never expanded beyond what we already know

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Quote:

When you eliminate all other possibilities, what remains, no matter how improbable, must be the solution.
Sherlock Holmes

Last edited by Karkadann on Mon Nov 09, 2009 4:38 am; edited 6 times in total

What I'm saying is I don't think it's legal for us to add onto areas that Cyan has not given us permission for, let alone create models from their concept art. I believe that is considered a derivative work and would fall under their copyright.

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I miss my old signature.

well what im saying is that D'ni and the all ages have so much potential for expansion, I personally feel that its never seen its full potential

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Quote:

When you eliminate all other possibilities, what remains, no matter how improbable, must be the solution.
Sherlock Holmes