[Human 4.0 Dev Blog] Part 6: The Royal Palace

[Senda 472]

Dev Blog 6: The Royal Palace

 

Hello, and welcome to the sixth 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 final 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.

 

 

And today.. we shall lift the veil on the last visible part of the Capitol that has, so far, gone unmentioned: The Royal Palace.

 

 

 

With that bombshell, let us all sit back a moment and try to figure out the one question that is likely to pass through the mind of quite a few among you:

 

"What the <censored> Senda, I thought you were going to downsize things?!"

 

 

The answer to that question would be: "I did. Let me write a Dev Blog about it."

 

And here we are.

 

So, let us begin by taking a look back at the model of the city, as viewable in the Visitor Centre of the city:

 

 

This section of the model is technically the entire Royal Palace. It encompasses a rough one-third of the defence of the city, simply by its size and bulk. The remaining two-thirds of the city is protected by the city wall and gate.

 

In this, the purple sections are uninhabitable defensive sections, which we can remove from the model to properly view the actual components that make up the Royal Palace.. and further to explain exactly why it was built in this shape.. and size.

 

 

 

In this, four colours remain:

 

• Black: Prison Tower
• Orange: Administrative Section
• Cyan: Museum of Oren
• Red: Throneroom (and above it, the Royal Quarters)

 

When we sat down to design the city, we took into account the lessons learned from previous Capitol cities, as prevalent on the maps we have called home. Including, but not limited to, cities such as Al'Khazar, Arethor and (New) Abresi, each has seen landmarks and sections, districts and homes, taverns and gardens.. and each part has seen its own share of succes.. or lack of it.

 

With this, the 4.0 Capitol, it became essential to take on board all the lessons learned thus far.

From this, a plan emerged, leading to the segmentation of the structure today.

 

For if anything.. the Royal Palace is a combination of various structures, all stacked upon each other.. and coated in the walls that make it look like a palace.

 

Let us take our first step inside..

 

 

 

Immediately, one will enter the Administrative Section, home to the Tax Office and the Office of the Imperial Steward.

Here, the inhabitants of the Capitol can pay the tax on the various plots they call home, while from his office, the Imperial Steward works to better the Infrastructural harmony within the Realm.

 

The Tax Office, for those of you familiar with New Abresi, will come as no surprise:

 

 

 

While the taxation system itself (buy items from shop for x value, then put in box associated with your plot) needed little alteration, we learned from two things from New Abresi.. that needed improvement:

• First off, the location.

In New Abresi, the Tax Office was placed as more of an afterthought then anything else. Consequently, it was in a bad location, out of the way.. and many people had problems finding it easily.

We fixed this by putting it inside the Royal Palace, along the path many (if not all) people take as they tour the city.

• Secondly, the act of finding "your box".

To pay the taxes, one must find the box associated with one's plot. In a small system, this is not too hard.. but when faced with 60 odd chests, each labelled with their own sign.. well.

Let us just say "people are inherently lazy" and when designing a system to work with people.. you should take that into account.

So, we fixed this by colour-coding the four different streets we will end up having in the Capitol.

Now, the act of finding your chest becomes a whole lot easier, as it is very easy to visually distinguish between the four main clusters of chests at a glance. From there, finding a specific chest is easy.

 

 

 

Beyond the Administrative Section, we find the Oren Museum:

 

 

 

If one thing should be painfully obvious by now, it is that we plan the 4.0 Capitol to be a place where new players can be given a proper introduction into "humanity" (Oren).

 

Echoing my personal desire to see more players get to grips with the scale of our Empire, how things work together, what the difference is between places.. and where "I" can go if I <insert preferred activity>.. I firmly believe that one should not be forced to browse the forums/wiki to find your answers.. one should be able to find the answers in-game.

 

(Disclaimer: I have nothing against the forums/wiki. I just realize that most players will not realize where or how to search for information like seasoned players do, so we should do what we can, as designers of the new Capitol, to help with this.. and put the info into the game for them to find.)

 

In regards to what makes Oren.. well.. Oren, we need new and old players alike to understand our collective history as a nation, then an Empire.

 

This, the Museum of Oren takes upon itself.

Inside its walls and rooms, people can learn about the various events that dictated the rise and fall of Oren through the ages, learn about the houses, both noble and common, that aided during its time of need.. or acted to further its downfall.

 

As a sneak-peek, we shall take a look at the very first room:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Throughout various rooms, we use signs, paintings and the occasional piece of cobble wall (as small statues) to give a visual tour of "Oren throughout the Ages" – the main and permanent exhibition of the Museum of Oren.

 

Apart from this, there is room for a smaller exhibition that we can change every year or so (two weeks, to coincide with the taxation periods and the corresponding financial reports) to highlight specific parts of the past, such as the rise and fall of a particular noble house.. or the way in which one of the smaller battles of the past was fought.

 

Ultimately, it is something anyone within Oren can appreciate and add to over time.

 

 

Moving on through the main passageway, up the elaborate staircase.. we enter the Throneroom:

 

 

 

The Throneroom is /the/ iconic room in any palace. It is where the Emperor (or any King, no matter your nation) will hold court, recieve foreign dignitaries.. and sits down on his throne, to rule his lands.

 

So obviously, we built a throne.

 

But.. we decided the throneroom needed to be more then "just a throneroom".

 

As one might remember from my many ramblings in these Dev Blogs, there is a certain plan to all of this. One red line that connects all the various little reasons we build things in a specific shape, order or size.

 

And that reason is: "Build stuff that promotes more roleplay."

 

Whether you condense housing into a single district by stacking.. or merge two buildings into one to make them easier to find.. ultimately all the reasons we do things and the various methods by which we enforce them.. all lead to the notion that we, as builders, have the responsibility to design the floorplan for the roleplay of tomorrow.

 

With the Throneroom, we took note of what Thronerooms are like, usually: Empty, unless the ruler is present.

 

And this "being empty" is unacceptable. We want all places to recieve near-continious traffic at all times of the day, not just when the Emperor is online and sitting in his fancy chair.

So, much like with the Church (Dev blog #5), needed to incorporate other elements to "enrich" an existing structure and give characters from all walks of life a reason to visit it, apart from the classical one: visiting the ruler.

 

For the Throneroom, we added two distinct things.

• Library
• Scale map of the Empire

The Library is a terrific place to "add" to the Throneroom. Not only is it a structure that you can easily "wrap around" a room, in the shape of row upon row of bookcases, it is also great because people, both high and low, have an excuse to visit the collected knowledge of the Empire.

 

The Scale map of the Empire is another thing that works both ways in a splendid manner, as it is a visual representation of what Oren truly is. On a scale model (much like the city-model in the Visitor Centre, just.. bigger) people can come to grips with the lands our Empire encompasses.. the various towns and castles we have.. and how it all works together to form our Realm.

As for placement.. we put it in the floor leading up to the Throne, then covered it over with a glass ceiling. This way, people can walk up to the throne without having to climb across a 3d model, while giving the Emperor a constant view (and reminder) of the vastness of his lands and responsibility.

 

Both of these sections are interesting components of the city in their own rights, but by adding them to another room in this fashion, we condense more roleplay into smaller spaces, thereby making the city more active.

 

 

Lastly, we shall take a very brief look at the last part of the Palace: The Prison Tower

 

 

 

Standing apart from the Royal Palace in a very psychical way, the Prison Tower is the last example of a building that did not work well on its own in the past, leading to us incorporating it into a larger structure, to add to it.

 

The only difference here is that we made the entrance to the prison take the shape of a tower.

This is an interesting development, as it is obviously a part of the structure of the Palace at the base.. while also standing apart from it as you reach the top. 

 

While, sadly, we shall not go into much more detail about this particular part (for it is a great secret what specifically resides within) .. we will disclose that it will feature a prison-themed adventure dungeon.

 

 

 

And with this, we have reached the end of the sixth and final Dev Blog on the 4.0 Human Capitol.

 

Throughout these blogs, we have lifted some of the veils that normally shroud the efforts that take place before a new map is launched for the server.

 

Hopefully, we have made you, the readers, enthousiastic about the prospects that await you all in the new city we have been working on.

 

We also hope that by lifting a part of this veil, we have shown the various processes that went into its construction. With any luck, you yourself can use some of these methods for your own projects, that we may share some of the knowledge.. and as a community, work towards a better floorplan for the roleplay of tomorrow.

 

 

On behalf of the Human Build Crew, we thank you!

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Snoop 365]

FIRST!

 

Also this looks great. I am very excited for 4.0's release now.

[Praetor 1550]

This is pretty damn epic. I like it.

[Reckless Banzai Screamer 15456]

Hothothothothot. +1

[Ford 1996]

*heavy breathing*

[susitsu 871]

[2:59:51 PM] Alex (susitsu): do
[2:59:51 PM] Alex (susitsu): i
[2:59:52 PM] Alex (susitsu): see
[2:59:52 PM] Alex (susitsu): neo
[2:59:54 PM] Alex (susitsu): al
[2:59:55 PM] Alex (susitsu): '
[2:59:58 PM] Alex (susitsu): khazar?

[Galendar 631]

It's been a lot of fun working w/ you Senda :)

[Kaiser 2347]

I kept telling myself if I saw the humans make a big castle I'd explode

 

I aint even mad tho, this is really good

[Hiebe 2493]

Might actually play a human if dwarves arnt good in 4.0

[Rassidic 470]

...Resisting the urge to make a human.

[Kim 1328]

Looks awesome :'D

[John Ivory 4547]

Well done!

[DrakeHaze. 2524]

Make a human to stare at a palace? Yes.

[SirSnowMan 318]

Can't wait! Nice work Senda!

[Gunner 775]

Beautiful