[Human 4.0 Dev Blog] Part 1: Downsizing

[Senda 472]

Dev Blog 1: Downsizing

 

Hello, and welcome to the first ever Human 4.0 Capitol Dev Blog! I'm Senda, the person in charge of the Oren construction team, and in today's edition we're going to delve into the first stage of this (somewhat) massive undertaking.

 

On behalf of everyone involved, I can tell you that we are all incredibly excited to finally start lifting a few of the curtains that will, for the most part, continue to block and obscure the full view of 4.0, till the eventual release.

 

To properly set the tone, let's take a quick look at the last human Capitol we left behind in 3.0: (New) Abresi. When ShiftNative opened up the 4.0 Development server to the various prebuilding crews, Knox (at the time King of Oren) assigned me to take charge of the team, then jump into the proverbial deep end, and design and prebuild a city that would define humanity in the new era.

With gleeful abandon, I proceeded to do just that.

First, I took a good look at Abresi to define the various elements that made it work, or made it less agreeable to call home, for whatever reason:

• The downsizing of the city (referring to the reconstruction of Abresi into New Abresi) worked wonders for the city. A more condensed atmosphere furthered to bring more people together to roleplay, instead of wandering the (very large) old city in search of other people.

• The new architecture for the city worked very well. A good and solid modular design by Erlend0501 served to give us a style that truly defined "classic medieval human" without looking either too 'clean' or too 'messy'.

• Defining elements of roleplay, then combining them into the same building, proved more of a challenge. Ultimately, we ended up with a number of buildings that were less effective then planned (City Hall comes to mind), while others had to be added in later stages, leading to akward placement (such as the Taxation Office).

 

Taking these ideas on board, the first thing we did was ponder about one (arguably /the/) most basic buildingblocks of a city: A standard house.

 

In New Abresi, this took the shape of a two-story building, without a basement.

 

 

Over time, we discovered a few drawbacks to this design.

• No basement! This due to various reasons, most prudent of which was the intensely honeycombed substructure of Abresi, where in previous iterations of this place (it had been rebuilt three times before we rebuilt it into the 'final form') every man and their dog had dug their own private cellar-complex, complete with underground super-lair that would put most Bond-villains to shame. As we did not fancy the idea of someone renting a house, only to spend all their time wandering these forgotten underground passages, we sealed the lot off. Obviously, it did not last and soon many people tunneled into it regardless of our best efforts.

• Houses not visible above the City Wall! This is a personal big one for me. I truly detest those "Grand Walls of Protection" most planners seem so downright intent on putting up around a city. Again, for various reasons, but most prominent is that a new person walking up to a city only sees the massive wall.. and nothing else. I would rather have a wall that works, while allowing someone to see the houses it protects. This peaks a person's interest, as well as making it glaringly obvious that you are approaching a City, instead of a Castle.

 

So, with these drawbacks noted, I sat down and pondered how these notions connected to the overarching vision for the new Capitol: "To condense roleplay, making it a vibrant and stunning city for both new and old players alike."

 

In New Abresi, we devided the buildings for shops and residential usage, giving both their own houses and their own district. Come 4.0, we decided to simply put one.. on top of the other.

 

And with that simple notion, the outline for the new "basic house" was set in stone.

 

What we came up with, is this:

 

 

 

 

With this new, 4-story house (if we include the basement), we are able to effectively put two houses' worth of room into the footprint of a single house.

Now, we can devide a house into two plots: The lower one, comprising the ground floor and basement (ideally suited to hosting a shop in).. and the top one, which is the combination of the second and third floors (these lending themselves very well to residential living).

 

Using this design, we now have a house that can be home to more people, which allows us to force back the overall footprint of the new City, making it smaller and easier to navigate, while, due to the increased height of the houses, allows them to be easily seen sticking out over the City Wall.

 

And with that, the first Dev Blog finds an end. Obviously, much more detailed information about houses remains to be revealed (such as connections to the sewer.. how to change a house to make it look like a Guild Hall, how to connect multiple houses into a large Manor.. or something as simple as adding some fancy detailing!).. but we shall leave that for a future edition.

 

Come 4.0, we look forward to new and old players alike walking up to the city and without a shadow of a doubt, register that they are walking towards .. the Capitol.

 

 

In the next Dev Blog: Something large looms in the mists..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[LukyLucaz 306]

[AlmondTree 418]

One question, why do you want to make the city smaller? A large area where chat texts do not collide is appealing or else people will be irritated and walk away.

(Refer to the previous ball i hosted where it was impossible to role play when it was more than 20 people within chat range)

Edit: Also the two story house isn't enough for two families. Looks really cramped.

[Zarsies 6795]

[Aislin 4354]

I love the approach you're taking. Keep it up.

[calculusdesola 1658]

Looking good, Senda.

 

Another great example of the Empire learning and adapting from past hiccups.

[bungo 3965]

*grumbles about the 27 months of 4.0 Development for 30% of a city... built in creative...

[bulgaria is white 461]

Excellent overview, looking forward to the next.

[John Ivory 4546]

I enjoy the progress! The wondrous mind of Senda at work.

[Hiebe 2493]

One question, why do you want to make the city smaller? A large area where chat texts do not collide is appealing or else people will be irritated and walk away.

(Refer to the previous ball i hosted where it was impossible to role play when it was more than 20 people within chat range)

Edit: Also the two story house isn't enough for two families. Looks really cramped.

For Oren I could see this working but for others they need smaller.cities.

Good work

[IrishPerson 693]

Looks good Senda.

[LeRenardNoir 413]

Excellent work on this, Senda. Anxiously anticipating the next installment.

[Peter Chivay 2494]

Wonderful, glad we can keep everyone in the loop rather than just me.

 

Keep up the good work Senda.

[Gunner 775]

Gotta be the best Human Capital yet.

[Senda 472]

 

One question, why do you want to make the city smaller? A large area where chat texts do not collide is appealing or else people will be irritated and walk away.

(Refer to the previous ball i hosted where it was impossible to role play when it was more than 20 people within chat range)

Edit: Also the two story house isn't enough for two families. Looks really cramped.

 

 

While both of these questions will be answered in an upcoming blog post in detail.. I can tell you that the planned size of the city is based on the collected data of running New Abresi for a period of 20 consecutive weeks, where we found the merchantile district to be the centre of roleplay, with the residential district not seeying the same level of activity.

 

As we want roughly the same capacity for the new Capitol in terms of housing, the idea was coined to simply make the houses taller and in doing such, "stack the two districts atop one another".

 

When it comes to chat distance, the act of bringing a large amount of people together in a single location will always prove a technical challenge in minecraft, as the basic chat functionality of this game sadly does not lend itself well to a large volume of text being browsed easily. This alone is a limiting factor that, when one takes into account that we pursue a dependable level of activity in the city, means we try our best to plan around the whole "prevent chat spam by range" - but ultimately, it is not something that can be planned for in any way.

 

The altenative being a truly vast city where people can roleplay without worrying about the chatmessages of others filling their screen. Sadly, that same setup means a gigantic city (á la Old Abresi), where new and old players alike stroll through what appears to be a ghost town, even though it might have a fair amount of people inside it, which is the complete opposite of what we aim to achieve.

 

If the above is not a satisfactory answer, please do let me know. This is is topic that will be adressed in more detail in an opcoming blog post, but I appreciate the concern and the manner in which you post it.

 

 

And before I forget.. "the house not being big enough for a family". I will reply to that with a quote from the blog itself:

 

 

Obviously, much more detailed information about houses remains to be revealed (such as connections to the sewer.. how to change a house to make it look like a Guild Hall, how to connect multiple houses into a large Manor.. or something as simple as adding some fancy detailing!).. but we shall leave that for a future edition.

 

 

This particular bit is something I, personally, am rather excited about.

 

In New Abresi, it was possible to get the exterior of your house altered. Basic acts like putting up some banners and decorations happened quite often and really added atmosphere to the city, but one thing never truly happened the way we envisioned it: Altering houses to make them appear as a Manor/Guild Hall/etc.

 

We tried to trial that process with the formation of Lark Smithing Guild, which unfortunately, due to both time constraints and a lack of solid planning, never truly worked out.

 

But.. we learned from that experience. In an upcoming blog post, full details will be given on how to truly personalize plots in the new Capitol. 

Be it a Guild Hall or a family Manor that houses a large group of people, expect there to be an answer to your wishes!