A simple request: A map

[Laremere]

Hey, would it be possible for one of you wonderful devs to draw a map of what you ultimately want the world of H&H to look like? (including terrain features, and villages and settlements and whatnot. Possibly draw one of just the terrain, and then overlay it with the effect of players inhabiting it.) I think it'd be very nice for people interested in what kinds of land formations and how they all fit together you're wanting. Also, I'd like to see what kind of density and urban/rural dispersement you guys are shooting for.

[Agarrett]

Include Haro Port.

[theTrav]

I would assume that at least loftar plans on intentionally NOT KNOWING what the landmass is going to look like out of some very rough parameters.

Same deal for the effects of inhabitation.

I'm certainly far more interested in emergent patterns/play rather than "the vision"

having said that a few artistic impressions from jorb of what he forsees happening would be nice

[Jfloyd]

having said that a few artistic impressions from jorb of what he forsees happening would be nice

I think that's what he meant, like the picture that had the new trees, charter stones, wood torches, and the big bad ass log cabin.

[Laremere]

I would assume that at least loftar plans on intentionally NOT KNOWING what the landmass is going to look like out of some very rough parameters.

I'm not interested in any shape that will actually be in the game, procedural generation will handle that. I'm just interested in what kind of map they are going for (such as more sea oriented, or land oriented, or something entirely different), and how they would like to see players dispersed in said map.

[loftar]

I'm not interested in any shape that will actually be in the game, procedural generation will handle that. I'm just interested in what kind of map they are going for (such as more sea oriented, or land oriented, or something entirely different), and how they would like to see players dispersed in said map.

I'm actually not sure. The future direction on mapmaking is a bit in flux right now; especially so since we're still debating the gameplay elements that the map generator needs to support, such as the "terrain zones" mentioned here. As for actual terrain generation, I just know a couple of abstract features that I want to support; mainly that

• I want the map to have more varying features (kind of like how certain parts of Peter's maps look) that have little ingame effect but just look nice, to make it more worth exploring the map to find various features here and there; but even more importantly,
• I want the map to be topologically interesting, so that the entire world isn't immediately "connected", but rather that some areas are harder to cross between than others (both at large and small scales) -- the last two revisions of the map generator have been attempts at such things (the last revision added rivers and caves, and the revision before that added ridges), and they have made things better for sure, but there's still lots of room for improvement.

Terrain features I've been playing with in my mind for attaining greater topological variation include mountain passes or valleys, or very large lakes or even seas, but I'm still not sure what is the best way to go. I'm quite a bit opposed to the large-sea-with-many-islands kind of settings, because it doesn't match the slavic/germanic setting of the game very well. Sure, I wouldn't mind regions of archipelago, but those should at least be limited xor unusual.

At least, I think it is safe to say that the current map generator will be scrapped and replaced with something entirely new before the next map reset. We might do another reset with it just to try something out, but I doubt it.