The New Maps: Unto A Good Land

[jorb]

What we would like to accomplish with the new maps.

1) Higher degree of topological complexity. Ridges, caves, rivers, lakes, swamps and mountains. Waterfalls. Zelda waterfalls with caves hidden behind them.

2) More terrain types. Division of current "grassland" into several types of grassland -- heath, plain, meadow. Division of generic "swamp" into marsh, (peat)bog, mire. Division of generic "dirt" into steppe, path, mudflat. Division of water into two-or three degrees of water depth, other possible tiles as well -- river inlet, fresh water, spring water, muddy water. Infinite possibilities for the further divisions of forest.

3) More specialization of each terrain type in terms of creature spawns, plant and resource availability.

4) New herbs, plants and creatures to aid in 3.

Eagles are nesting birds primarily found in mountains: Beaks (mask), feathers (arrows, clothing), claws (bling-bling, alchemy), meat and eggs. Herbs needing high perception to be found. Herbs usable for healing, food, crafting and alchemy.

5) On demand spawning of new maps. No artificial invisible wall, no map edge.

6) Better map handling. In game world map. Minimap updated with map changes.

7) Mine points that can be found much like wellsprings are right now. Mines only buildable on minepoints. Different kinds of metal. Panning for gold, and ability to extract bog iron, would be neat.

We might not do it all in one go, but hopefully we'll do a lot of it. Graphically I'd like a chance to redo the tile transitions, for example, as a lot of them look like crap right now. New trees.

Weather and seasons would be fun, but I doubt that will happen with this reset. It might not even need one. We'll see. A lot depends on where the moods take us.

[sami1337]

Epic. Also tons of questions answered. Thanks.

[Fcn]

Can I suggest against improving the map to auto-update? At least not without a fog-of-war sort of system that does not show buildings unless you have discovered them personally.

Kind of makes secret hideouts pointless if it's all shown on the map.


Also with on-demand map spawning whats to stop me walking 5 hours north and putting a hearth there?

[Jackard]

All of this sounds great! I kind of prefer not having an ingame world map, though, allowing users to draw their own likely inaccurate maps. A premade map pinpointing your location takes away from world exploration.

Hope #5 comes last, it sounds the most demanding/difficult.

[jorb]

Can I suggest against improving the map to auto-update? At least not without a fog-of-war sort of system that does not show buildings unless you have discovered them personally.

Kind of makes secret hideouts pointless if it's all shown on the map.


Also with on-demand map spawning whats to stop me walking 5 hours north and putting a hearth there?

We absolutely hope to move away from the current world map model (The entire world automagically avaliable to anyone in the forum), for that very reason.

[Fcn]

Can I suggest against improving the map to auto-update? At least not without a fog-of-war sort of system that does not show buildings unless you have discovered them personally.

Kind of makes secret hideouts pointless if it's all shown on the map.


Also with on-demand map spawning whats to stop me walking 5 hours north and putting a hearth there?

We absolutely hope to move away from the current world map model (The entire world automagically avaliable to anyone in the forum), for that very reason.

Never stop being awesome.


Impliment cartography, let players sell maps. Also books. Books with maps in.

[Heuvel]

Hope #5 comes last, it sounds the most demanding/difficult.

Hell, I hope this is top priority, because...

Also with on-demand map spawning whats to stop me walking 5 hours north and putting a hearth there?

...thats exactly what I plan on doing.

[jorb]

Also with on-demand map spawning whats to stop me walking 5 hours north and putting a hearth there?

Bears.

We might decide that new generation should be capped by civilization or some other data point, but the general premise is that they should be expandable per some ingame mechanic. Preferably just by walking, but that might be too easy. We'll see. Crossing a super grid (our own term for one current world map) doth require quite a bit of time and effort as it is.

Edit: But, then again, I have vastly underestimated your persistence in the past.

[Ruggan]

I hate to kick a dead horse, but please reset our characters with the map reset. We need a fresh start along with the major re-balancing that's been done over the last few weeks (and the weeks to come). I've built up enough LP to say I'm getting up there, and I'd give it all up to just have us start from scratch. It's not like a character reset is uncommon in this stage of the game.


Plus, we don't need alts carrying over truckloads of raw materials to perpetuate the stratification of rich:poor and old:new. (And I'd consider myself rich, FYI)

[Delamore]

Also with on-demand map spawning whats to stop me walking 5 hours north and putting a hearth there?

Bears.

We might decide that new generation should be capped by civilization or some other data point, but the general premise is that they should be expandable per some ingame mechanic. Preferably just by walking, but that might be too easy. We'll see. Crossing a super grid (our own term for one current world map) doth require quite a bit of time and effort as it is.

Edit: But, then again, I have vastly underestimated your persistence in the past.

"10 soak will be enough to stop any thief knocking down walls!"

I hate to kick a dead horse, but please reset our characters with the map reset. We need a fresh start along with the major re-balancing that's been done over the last few weeks (and the weeks to come). I've built up enough LP to say I'm getting up there, and I'd give it all up to just have us start from scratch. It's not like a character reset is uncommon in this stage of the game.


Plus, we don't need alts carrying over truckloads of raw materials to perpetuate the stratification of rich:poor and old:new. (And I'd consider myself rich, FYI)

This too, I'm rich to the point where I need nothing in the game a reset would make the game so much more enjoyable to play.
Starting from the beginning as a newbie was great fun and I'd love to do the same once again.