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Asharren: Fan-Made Map Design


Xarkly
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its really easy to see the amount of thought and planning that went into this, would love to see this being used in the future 

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Neat concept, do hope mapdevs look at this and draw some inspiration. 

Also, from what I found in a recent your view thread is Alamaris is 7.5k by 7.5k and they had a 4k x 4k swuare in the middle is pretty much half the size so, I think a map size around 5-6k(Give or take) would be best.

 

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very cool, would definitely do a halfling colonization of the autumn forest

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Xarkleys posts about map development has by far been the most insightful pieces of feedback for the server as a whole. A vast list of needs for the map which I feel like nearly all of the server has agreed on so far.

 

This as well is one of the best map concepts I have seen in awhile; a world which feels alive and open with an incredible road design which has shown to work in the past. By god do I hope @squakhawk and the other admins and developers on the map team listens to this (for real when are you just hiring Xarkly to help with the work). 

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i can't wait for this proposal to be ignored and staff go with something only seen/critiqued by the playerbase through random unintentional leaks

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So my initial thoughts on the design of the map is that it's a really solid core and while I think that it's more focused on keeping areas core to the spawn, I feel that it's lacking areas outside of the main area for nations. For arcas, when we did the ring-road the core of the world was essentailly the road around CT which worked fantastic and i see you aspire to represent here in Asharren. However, I'd like to see something like this with zones expanded past the ring-road which this instead seems to do inversely with having 4 initial zones essentially outside of CT as spacers for nation areas. The contention comes with the fact that areas potentially created past the nation plots just draw away RP from the main area and lack detail or attention but I feel that it's a conversation worth having because land cannot be easily added once the map is in play. 

 

When designing Arcas, you're right in thinking that some zones were indeed made just to be interesting zones however I did make areas with specific nations in mind. With that in mind though there wasn't really a lot of support or idea generation going around when it came to map design in the first place. It was really ok Kilgrim, you're the WorldPainter here's a base shape make the world now. Having a more detailed plan like this would be really useful for development because it just didn't exist. I had labeled rough ideas I had in mind for what biomes were gong where but there was little feedback it was more of a yes man situation. 

 

Another important thing to consider with the complexity of some of these zones is the limitations of WorldPainter and the need for in-game tools to create more complex terrains. WorldPainter works on a 2D plane and while there are tricks to shape areas in the 3rd dimension it's largely impractical in WorldPainter and so the need for WorldEdit and VoxelSniper comes in. I'm not saying these tools aren't great but the time it takes to create zones with these tools in comparison to WorldPainter is vastly different. In-game tools just take longer to make zones. That being said this is really just a matter of work force for the next map. 

 

Overall, the design of the map is pretty cool and I'm certainly in agreeance that a ring-road is the way to go. I also think that more fantasy looking zones that are tasteful is a good idea but it is more complex than you might think to create in WorldPainter unless it's just swapping a block palette for something like the nether biomes such as the warped forest. Anything can be done with enough work put into it though I suppose.

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@Xarkly one final suggestion for this design of yours: add more caves.

 

The Scars and some caves mentioned in Raedwulf's frontier is not a whole lot for a map that will be on 1.18 with new Y levels to explore and lush cavern vegetation literally designed for caves. An entire underdark or whatever might be too much work for the 9.0 builders to pull off, but some extra mentions and lore for notable caves systems could be useful and provide additional space for lairs. Assuming that tile-ownership doesn't automatically extend to all caves underneath a tile, such caverns could make for interesting narratives of spooks, bandits, settlement startups, etc. trying their luck living right under the nose of powerful empires (literally!). It's another way to make people live closer to one another without feeling too cramped and provide a feeling of exploration and danger even in fully settled tiles.

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You had me sold at ring road

 

This post is stunning, the map looks amazing, and it's all very well thought out.

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making me smile to see many others reacting positively to this, xarkly puts 100% of his creative thinking into everything he works on - and he spent a lot of time contemplating the layout of this map and ensuring his concept had both a lot of flavor and broader areas to encourage others to make their own thing - making the perfect canvas for the rest of us to work on, even if it's only a concept still

 

 

 

but now imagine if this shorty got accepted onto staff 

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entire map isn't a desert or winter wasteland? no thanks

 

in reality this probably has more thought put into it than the past 4 lotc maps and if map devs were smart they'd work smarter not harder and just snipe this so we aren't stuck on the cancer of almaris for another year. 

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On 9/24/2022 at 2:48 PM, NotEvilAtAll said:

This map concept needs an active, devoted Story Team to work at 100% efficiency.

 

Heavy disagree. If the ST team is open about environmental story, we players can make better themed player events. 

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Like a lot of the concepts such as adding a ring road, definitely no fast travel hubs and even keeping CT flying above the world is worthwhile. My only issue comes with as others have brought up and I have brought up to you in private about some of these more fastasy-esque areas. This last map was riddled with unusable terrain that I think badly damaged the sustainability and usage of this map. You can see that with how we both as Haense kings have snaked around usable terrain to avoid ice mountains that are unusable. I’m aware it’s also something current map development is going for, but it also seems like a theme park.

 

It took ages for some aspects of this map to be used for events, and if it’s built in mind for a singular person who leaves the team it will go unused. Some of these terrains just seem unusable, but that doesn’t take away the fact that a lot of the concepts for map development and how it works in practice aren’t bad ideas.

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I have not read into detail for the particular regions too much, but I did focus on your central bulletpoints. One thing you address is dead space. Whilst I agree that dead space should be taken care of, we must be wary of how much dead space we cull. What nobody wants is another Athera, where everything is packed together tightly. The King's Road does not work (not speaking against the Ring Road, that is actually a good idea). Size is important, yes, too big is bad, but too small is even worse. What I'd strongly promote is to establish a distinct visual distance. Visual and perceived distance between notable locations such as cities, outposts, holds, event sites, etc. can go a long way before it becomes apparent that things are too close to eachother. And it should be noted that dead space is not always dead space, but can be interpreted as "canvas" to grow and develop in.

 

 

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