Map: Proposals

[Keikan Hiru]

Dont worry about the mountains, I have bugged Martin about me wanting them some time ago. So there will be mountains someday.

I expect them not to extend over multiple levels, like Estralis said, it apears to be easier to make them as one item (like a cavewall but more mountain-like).
Its also no problem if they are bigger then a single tile, since I can easily put unpassable tiles below them.

To get rid of the flatness is just a matter of time, like everything in Illarion.

[Naybet Grint]

So can you put 'unpassable' tiles under the second halves of bookshelves? I wouldn't bother going through and changing it on the current map, but it might be nice on the new one.

[Keikan Hiru]

Yes, I could, but I wont.

The bookshelves would not cover these special tiles, like a oversized mountain item would maybe, and thus you could see it. And I dont want you to look on a grey tile. This just does not look good on a nicely made parquet or marble floor.

Oh and by the way, better change your location after the release of the new map. You dont want to get wet.

[Arkadia Misella]

Well Keikan, if things go the way they usually do, they will not have to change their location for a long long time still

[Arkadia Misella]

One things I would like to see in the new map, a little seperation of trees and no rocks mingles in. I really hate it when Im awlking in this uber-crowded area of trees, not able to see my charcter, and then she'll stop moving. So then I think it is the server being crappy and I wait. Nothing. so I hit the button again and nothing. So then I try and move back and I can, then I move left....nothing...then right..nothing, and now I've my character. I know it could be like "getting lost in the woods" but to me that is a little cheesy.

[Keikan Hiru]

Well Keikan, if things go the way they usually do, they will not have to change their location for a long long time still

Well I am almost finished.
Currently I am polishing my work and adding the last missing, but necessary for a release, parts (teleporter, matching sublevels with surface, ect.).

I am afraid that I cannot help you with your problem of "getting lost in the woods".
This time we have placed more objects in the woods, not just trees. Some of them just for the matter of looking good, others might prevent your movement.
And if there have been many trees planted, by me or players, you might not see everything.

And beside that, I like it when players, aswell as thier characters, think "Erm ... where am I !?"

[Lennier]

There is no area of monotonously setted trees. The new woods and meadows a filled with a lots of colors by setting of more blossoms and flowers, farns and many other nice items.

The sentence "lost in the woods" could get a really new mind.

[Brendan Mason]

Wow, it really sounds like the new map is coming soon. I presume it won't be implemented until the next client, or am I wrong?

[Misjbar]

Maybe the next client is coming soon too. One can only hope.

[Galim]

1)
i would like a more flexiable underground world. until yet every gm told me it is not possible to dig new rooms in silverbrand because every else is "black", or something like that. that means we have to use the curren't space and can't get more through digging. that is sad. there should be the possibility to spread more under the earth, even after some time. i would like it to have finally personal caves, yes yes. and of course a mine for the dwarves .

2)
to be serious, i liked the way old silverbrand was built more than of the new silverbrand. see, it is hard to hear if someone is at the entrance when you are at the great hall, or even the temple. that makes it really difficult for rolkeplay because you have not the wish to stand where you cant hear if someone searches you or want to visit you. in the old town the entrence was more in the middle, and the town was around it. you was able to hear peoples at the entrance from most part of the town. i want that again.

3)
and i want that it isn't possible anymore to listen through the earth. i mean, someone on z=0 can hear what peoples on z=-1 are saying, that is silly, sorry. if we have a discussion at the silverbrand hall everyone can listen to it, he just have to stand above us in the forrest.

4)
the new jail should be in the middle of town, so that jailtime is no ooc punishment because the player miss all rp.

5)
with a bigger map i would like it when different climate areas have a bigger distance between each. i mean, look the desert. it starts right after the mountain and beneath the forrest before it ends at the ocean. trolls bane is built in the middle of the woods, and the trees even are growing one field beneath the townwall. caves are built near ocean, and reach theoretical UNDER it. the rivers seem to have no real beginning, they just start somewhere.a normal river starts in the mountains.
the docks are damn far away from the town. normally that would be really silly for a town.

that was all until now

[Lennier]

4) I agree, but i don`t know what happens there. Do we really still need a automaticaly jail-system? I like to catch people, jail them and let them free again by my self. And i hope that i never forget to release one any time. But okay, it is not the topic here.
It was also said, that a Guard House with a jail inside the town has to be payed and buildt by the townfolk.

5) I believe we tried our best to get some smooth botanical changes on the map. There are dry areas, plains, swamps and others.
And I hope no one try to cut all my palms!

[Misjbar]

Lennier is building too? *confuzzlement*

[Lennier]

I never said no But only some "little" meadows, woods and some few buildings. Keikan is the most important mapper.

[Keikan Hiru]

Misjbar,
as one of my personal slaves, yes.


Galim,

To 1:
I am a bit more flexible, but I am still bound to fixed mapspace.
When I create a 100x100 map, I cannot extend its boarders afterwards.
The rest you said is a matter of dwarvish payment that works its way into the pokets of a GM.

To 2:
I reworked Silverbrand, but unfortunatly not as you wanted.
Seems like you have to use your human (or dwarven) ressources to keep an eye at the gate.

To 3:
Thats a matter of programming, not mapping.
The only thing I can do is to have 3 levels beetween surface and the first sublevel. This way no voice can be heard on the surface.

To 4:
As said earlier, its done this way.
Bill is in the post.

Looks like you are the first to complain about my dock without even seeing the map.

[Galim]

i am good at complaining, i even complain about things i never saw . thats called "future complaining skill", and i am grandmaster *G*

silverbrand is reworked? um..without the help or friendly advice of active dwarvenplayer who perhaps could have had some ideas? thats sad. i think the dwarves should have a right to say if they like it that way or not, if it is usefull or not. as least you could have asked what we think of it *sniffs*
(by the way, is there the possibility to pay before we have the wipe and to buiold after it? would be damn nice to all the player who worked hard for their own buildings and never got the possibility to build it because gms said "wait for the new map2 and now, the new map comes with a wipe ^^)

you can't extend the boarder, but you are able to start a new map for the down a level deeper, right?

[Keikan Hiru]

I have reworked Silverbrand because of technical difficulties with the old version and my total inability to import the needed old maps into the new one.
There was no actual need to ask a Player with a Dwarf Character for his/her opinion, because what I did what I had to do, there was no way arround without increasing my workload significantly.
On the other hand, if I would have asked you and you would wanted me to change something, I would have asked you for a imidiate payement.

Speaking of payment, I dont know how payment is handled right now and in the future.
Either I make things and let others worry about the needed payment, or I create things after somebody paied.
Time will tell and suprises always happen.

I can create maps everywhere I want, one level deeper, three level deeper, as long there is no other already occuping the area.
But since I am very good at forecasting, I left some "unused" space on the level of Silverbrand.

[Quinasa]

#me claps for Keikan. You're a doll for working on this new map. My thanks to you. :]

[Naybet Grint]

I might be a little late with this, but some decently three dimensional underground areas might be good. By 'decently 3-D' I mean places with as many connections between rooms on the levels above and below as with each other. Underground rivers are always good too, particularly if (when) in the future some characters can swim, and they represent potential weaknesses in an areas defence.

[Lennier]

I like big caves with some more than only 1 floor too.

To get some more rumors. Today i maked a new cave for the Bloodskulls. And it looks great for me. There is lots of free space to add new things to an other time

[Velin]

Did you happen to add a swamp or something to that nature? Like alternating water and grass tiles with ferns and flowers or stuff on them. Just wondering, kinda wanted to see a swamp...which can then be populated with swamp-like creatures by the programmers. Things like rats and snakes and evil crocodile monsters

[Keikan Hiru]

Yes we did add swamps to the map.
Or in other words, there are areas that I consider as swamp, and we hope you will too.

I, and others making maps, will surely try to create the "decent 3-D Maps", I have seen very promising starts.
But right now I am more concerned to get the basic stuff finished in time and have enough left to test everything.
Later we will add these "Advanced Dungeons" and maybe even with Dragons.

[Moirear Sian]

Terrain
Thats basicly what we are trying to do. Increase the diversity of terrain your characters are walking on.
But dont expect wonders here, the map may be bigger but not too large and we are still using the same tileset.
We still have a small number of players, so making the map enormus would maybe cause the characters to get scattered too far from each other. And you do want to meet someone to roleplay with, do you ?

Fearless of the danger of getting bashed for this, I do think the map should be heavily expanded in size, actually despite the small number of players. In fact, the possibility of scattering up players should be much more viable than it is with the late island map.

Personally, I think it should be about 2-5 times as big as it was. The following scenarios would finally be possible:
• Group treks to remote locations (on quests, or purely for roleplaying)
• Criminal groups escaping to remote locations and remaining in game, while lawseekers hunt them
• More necessity for food, comfort luxuries; and in the same stance, scenarios of starvation, or running out of certain resources in dire situations
• Effective isolation of running Quests by straying too far from "hotspots"

To counter-act the people scattering too much, I'd suggest working with "interaction bottlenecks", rather than geographical bottlenecks, i.e., very few depot chests, more concentrated locales for resource-gathering (just for example: town = best for food and marketing, vicinity = best for typical resources, remote locations = best for rare resources).

--

I like the proposals here about certain resources requiring fighters to accompany resource-gatherers/crafters, but it shouldn't be the rule, rather the exception. Likewise it shouldn't necessarily only be "more special resource = more dangerous locale", that leads to too much meta-game thinking, imho.

--

Final note, not to the map-people, but rather to the GMs: Make houses of player characters that are unattended for too long, decay (approx. 4 or 5 months after realizing the player is growing inactive — start removing tiles, replacing floor tiles with dirt tiles, making plants overgrow things and cause movement issues within the forlorn domiciles). That will motivate those old-timers to come back to keep playing (and bring the buildings back to life in game), and will prevent filling the map with numerous buildings that most new players have no clue what they stand for or who they belong to.

[Irania]

I agree with Keikan about the characters getting scattered. It can be difficult to find other players even with the map that we have now. Sure a larger map would make room for many more possibilities with roleplaying but it also can make it very difficult to rp as well if you cannot find anyone to rp with. Of course there are some of us who rp whilst alone and that can get boring after a while.

[Moirear Sian]

I essentially agree with you there Irania, but when I wrote "interaction bottlenecks", I thought of design twists like reducing the number of depot chests in major settlements from 12 to 2, and things like that, if you know what I mean. Also making it impossible to mine ore on every corner, rather concentrating good resource-gathering locations, instead of scattering them out like they were the last time I played. That way, the extra space will be filled by roleplaying only, big wide stretches of landmass with little to no game-technical value, and a few hotspots throughout the entire map that facilitate characters into "classes"—i.e.: townsfolk, prairie farmers, mountain miners, explorer-adventurers.

While everybody is always crying for seperate towns for the five different races, I believe the constant amount of players online does not justify them yet. Once there are 50 players online at a time, we're back in business with the racial-based towns; until then, the segregation should operate under class, not race. Besides, racial conflict is ultimatively conflict, another oppurtunity for roleplaying.

But I guess this is just me speaking.

[Keikan Hiru]

2-5 times as big as it was.

In 1 out of 5 times you are good in guessing with a chance of 50% to success.

very few depot chests

I mentioned this already, that I dont like to find depot chests at every corner too.
But the problem is not the number of them, its the interlink.

I like the proposals here about certain resources requiring fighters to accompany resource-gatherers/crafters

Goldnugget required the assistance of fighters, didn't recive much positive feedback.
On the other hand there are too little different ressources right now, and those who are there are vital for the professions. Cutting the supply by placing strong monsters right next to the ressource spot would cause a huge number of players to be upset and unfairly treated.
As soon there are ressources that are not vital for the professions but useful to create Uber/High-End-Items we will go back to this idea.

Final note, not to the map-people, but rather to the GMs

I think I have my saying there too.

That way, the extra space will be filled by roleplaying only, big wide stretches of landmass with little to no game-technical value

Without declining that there are vast areas without any "technical" value on my map, dont you think that this is already a present situation?
When you look at the north western part of the current map.
There is basicly nothing, no spawns, no ressources (beside the ominpresent wood), and thus there are no players.
I dont think that is a aim I should try to achive. Each location should more or less be attractive on a "technical" way.

[Nikago Fyrstyn]

Personally, I think it should be about 2-5 times as big as it was. The following scenarios would finally be possible:
• Group treks to remote locations (on quests, or purely for roleplaying)
• Criminal groups escaping to remote locations and remaining in game, while lawseekers hunt them

Thats important, cause at the map like it is now, you are just trapped everywhere, do you go to the northwest your enemies wait at the bridge, you walk south , they just guard the sheeps and the south entrance of town, while you are hacked in piece from sceletons.
You head to the northeast, well they cover silverbrand bridge and the forest at the desert and when you run to the southeast trolls get you...

[Keikan Hiru]

Intresstingly you seem to confuse the concept of "escaping" with the concept of "returning to the crime scene".
Your carreer of being a criminal will of course come to an sudden end this way.
On the other hand, living on an island always cause you to be "trapped" somehow.

[Moirear Sian]

Without declining that there are vast areas without any "technical" value on my map, dont you think that this is already a present situation?
When you look at the north western part of the current map.
There is basicly nothing, no spawns, no ressources (beside the ominpresent wood), and thus there are no players.
I dont think that is a aim I should try to achive. Each location should more or less be attractive on a "technical" way.

Well, you're right that this is already the case, and I was thinking that it should be that way. Personally, I liked these areas with no game-technical value, they had roleplaying value.

You see, my point is, to formulate myself as shortly as possible—in music, it's not only the audio that makes the music, it's also the silence in between the music. --> A map overloaded with locations of technical value is just that—overloaded. A map with "blank spots" though, has room for imagination; and in this case, pure roleplaying.

Since I'm a horrible guesser, I don't know how big the map will end up compared to the present one. Thus, I can't at all guess right now how much you'd respect the "silence", so I just thought I'd suggest this.

Bottom line, I liked all those locations with no technical value; private talks, camping-RP, short treks, nice for quests, and so on. The hotspots are just too crowded for some roleplaying, sometimes.

[Josefine da Vince]

Oh, the map is just "a little bit" bigger You need some time to get from one end to one another... Can't wait to run over it with my nice little figure ...

[Misjbar]

*points at Josefine* Another slave Keikan?