I've been trying to build up a texture library in order to texture map my levels. I brought my digital camera to the park here in Knoxville, and took some shots of the grass, some rocks by the river, the sky. They were nice but I needed a little more variety.

So I logged onto expedia and bought two round airline trip tickets to the Middle East. The first stop was in Mersin in southeastern Turkey, where I did not see another tourist at all. Next we traveled to Goreme in the middle of the country. We ended up in Istanbul. The entire trip took about half a month. While there we went hot air ballooning, horse back riding, trekking, white water rafting, and abseiling. Many oppurtunities to sample some textures.

Here is a small sample of what I was able to collect. I have hundreds more of these that need processing. If anyone is interested in the full collection in high resolution, let me know. I will let you have these to use in a non-commercial game royalty free.






































We made it back more or less intact. My wife suffered from a fractured hand, and several lacerations, cuts, and scrapes. I only had to visit a rural doctor once, where he loaded me up with four unknown prescription drugs. One of our guides was bitten by a scorpion and required hospitalization, another guide engaged in a brutal fistfight for some unknown reason, another fell down a series of stone steps and broke his arm, and yet another stepped on a rusty nail and had to be taken to the hospital.

And for those that are interested, here is a shot from our hotair balloon as we accidently violated the airspace over a maximum security prison. Maybe I will make a Turkish prison level.