Kilgrim

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.

So, question here. I did the WorldPainting for Arcas and Atlas (meaning all the terrain for the map) when you say terrain changing every 5 blocks do you mean like it’s small rolling hills and it’s not plains everywhere so that’s a problem? I talked to SoulReapingWolf about this recently in discord but I couldn’t really get a firm grasp on what he meant. Did Arcas have the terrain change you’re talking about every 5 blocks? Also on the notion of “buildability” how much should aesthetics be sacrificed to ensure that someone’s can just plop a house down on a perfectly flat piece of land? I only ask because when you remove the variance in terrain it becomes very flat and boring very quickly. This is especially true when you consider lotc’s very short server render distance it restricts players to.

Hopefully you guys build the next map with 1.18 in mind as the new Minecraft height and depth could really add some awesome verticality where I think LOTC has always lacked. Also I'm not sure if who is doing the world painting or if you're going to pay someone to make the next map but something I always struggled with when map making is taking into account the player's render distance and the limitation that visibility brings into making compelling environments. It's easy to get lost when you're in creative mode looking at the world from above with a render distance of 24 and you're able to see that mountain in the distance when in reality on the server a player won't be able to see anything until they're up close and instead just see an open field in front of them and the mountain isn't even rendered in. A lot of people here talk about having an Athera sized map but don't account the playeybase #'s that existed during Athera. Also the reality of it, is that it's really hard to actually create a compelling world that also feels balanced when it comes to nation positions in the world. 3.0 is a great example of what happens when you place a nation's capital as the first thing you run into on a long road to other nations. New player will simply get snatched up into that one city. If in LOTC there were just 4 cities for each race respectively it'd be simple but the reality isn't like this and so positional balancing becomes a nightmare. I'm not a player anymore but as someone who was heavily part of 7.0 and 8.0 map making process and being the one who did the terrain, forests, biomes, etc. for the map in WorldPainter I just enjoy the process. That being said some of my perspectives might be more removed from the current player experience. Again, It'd be really cool if you guys utilized the new height limits because they bring a lot of potential for verticality that LOTC has never really had. This can be hard to do in WorldPainter but in post with terrain manipulation plugins I think it could really add to the world overall. Also custom assets would be really useful as well for whoever makes the next map in WorldPainter. Things like custom trees and rocks can really add to the overall world. Good luck on the next map!

I did the WorldPainting for Atlas 7.0 and Arcas 8.0 and while I don't play anymore it's always really cool to see what other people do with the map design and how it progresses over the playtime. I like that you guys continued with the having a map that isn't constrained to an island and rather connects the world's border as it really allows you to use more space in the world to create interesting environments. I wasn't really proud of Atlas but I'd like to think that Arcas was a really good map aesthetically at least. Hopefully you guys build the next map with 1.18 in mind as the new Minecraft height and depth could really add some awesome verticality where I think LOTC has always lacked. Also I'm not sure if someone on these respective teams is doing the world painting or if you're going to pay someone to make the next map but something I always struggled with when map making is taking into account the player's render distance and the limitation that visibility brings into making compelling environments. It's easy to get lost when you're in creative mode looking at the world from above with a render distance of 24 and you're able to see that mountain in the distance when in reality on the server a player won't be able to see anything until they're up close and instead just see an open field in front of them and the mountain isn't even rendered in. Anyways, good luck on the next map always cool to see what others can come up with!

#notmycloudtemple

Those maps both looks cool, the picture from imgur looks like the map was made with WorldMachine which is a software that can be used with WorldPainter to make some more realistic looking terrain. Typically with my maps I like to combine more of the fantasy and realistic terrain types. I also never learned how to properly use WorldMachine but it’s a really cool tool!

501’s involement in Atlas was mainly him creating the regions and working on the roads other than that I don’t really remember him do anything else when it came to directly how the map looked besides needing his approval for things to go forward.

How I made Arcas/Atlas in WorldPaiter I’m really bored during CoronaVirus and I was looking at all my old map files for Worldpainter and thought it’d be cool to share the process of making a map for LOTC While I don’t play LOTC at all anymore, I have been a member since 2011 way back in Aegis the first map of the server before WorldPainter even existed. A place where the world was just an edited version of a default minecraft. Times have changed now though and all of LOTC’s maps have been either hand built with voxel practically from scratch or done so in-tandem with WorldPainter. I’d like to give you guys some insight on how I went about creating the last two maps for LOTC and if you have any questions afterwards feel free to reply below and I’ll try to answer them! Concept Stage: The first thing the WorldDev team did to figure out how the map was generally going to look was by finding concept art or making some. Here’s the original concept outline art for Atlas for example: This the original concept that I found on google images for Atlas. You can probably tell some of the semblance to the map if you played back then. Here as well you can find the original concept art cooked up by seventh for the current map Arcas. IIRC this was made using a generator for Seventh’s D&D campaign maps. Moving to WorldPainter: Now that the team has officially decided on a proper concept and I’m tasked with converting this imagine into WorldPainter. The easiest way to do this is to use the image as an overlay and conform the image to the size of map we want to make. Overall it’ll come out looking a little like this: Here you can see that the world has pretty much taken shape and I’ve kinda decided where everything is going to be at this point. All the landmasses are made and now it’s time to generate ideas for biomes. You can already see the beginnings of sorting out what biomes will be where and how I’ve somewhat separated the areas with white lines in WorldPainter. Before I go any further I should probably explain how WorldPainter works for those who aren’t familiar with the program. Basically WorldPainter is a program that interprets grey-scale images also known as Height-maps in order to create terrain such as mountains, plateaus, or rolling hills. A height-map is basically read by the program based on how white or black the image is. So the more white an area of an image is, the higher the terrain is, the more black the image is, the deeper it is. Here’s an example of a height-map for one of the mountains I use in WorldPainter. Here’s an example of what that looks like in WorldPainter: WorldPainter is an extremely powerful tool when it comes to creating Minecraft maps and there are many ways to use it that I won’t really be able to cover completely here but there are many amazing tutorials you can find on YouTube that will probably convey more than what I can show here. Finalizing Terrain: Now that we’re deeper into the creations of the map, we’ve decided for the most part what things are going to look like and where their going to be we can start completing the terrain of specific biomes. This includes rivers, savannahs, rolling hills, plains, canyons, mountains, and more. When we’ve finally finished all of that which took a lot of hours over 2-3 weeks we end up with something like this image: Here we can see the map is really starting to come together. I’ve added some colors to the mountains, I’ve begun adding beaches along the coasts, snowy and frost regions are done and there’s even some other things on the map that you might think look weird such as the bright green blotches. Those are what are called custom layers in WorldPainter. Basically there are 6 custom layers but for the sake of simplicity I’m going to cover 3 of them: Object layers, Ground Cover Layers, and Cave Layers. Object layers are what allow me to place hundreds of trees and bushes accross the entire map with ease. The foundation of these layers are schematics that I’ve found after hours and hours of diggins through repositories for trees, rocks, bushes, plants, corals, spikes all crazy kinds of schematics that I’ve hand picked to be used for LOTC’s map. (This process is probably the most pain in the ass of everything here). After finding the trees, rocks, bushes, whatever I need to make a forest feel nice I’m able to compile it all neatly into a brush that I can dot wherever I want on the map. For Arcas I believe I used roughly 200+ unique schematics to populate the world. Ground Cover layers are where I can choose pre-existing minecraft blocks like grass, flowers, leaves etc. to cover the ground. With arcas I can’t remember exactly how it happened but all of the grass from a layer I had got deleted from WorldEdit or the final export I can't remember specifically. Cave Layers are how the crazy caves where the dwarves live were made. WorldPainter has a really great tool to create just these amazing caverns and if you have the patience you can make some elaborate cave labyrinths. A lot of these layers require a lot of trial and error. Usually how it will go is I’ll find the schematics I want for a particular forest after hours of examining them in-game and digging for the correct files and then creating the layer in WorldPainter. Then I’ll place them down where I want them and next I’ll export that specific area to minecraft to look at in-game. Once I’m satisfied then it’s practically finalized until the final export. The amount of time spent into creating these layers is probably my least favorite part of the WorldPainting process but it’s some of the most important because what’s a forest without any trees right? Overall Acras has 103 custom layers that I created each of them containing anywhere from 1-12 schematics. After hand placing all of those 103 layers onto the map you kinda get this mish mash of colors Now at least in WorldPainter the map is finished and this is the actual view of what Arcas looked like on my final export of WorldPainter. (Not scene is all the hand placed biome layers which is ACTUALLY the worst part of WorldPainting because it’s so annoying and boring.) Here’s a 3D Isometric View as well: There’s a lot of nuance and techniques that were glossed over in my explanation but I hope you can get a gist of what goes into making an LOTC map at least on the surface of it all. The overall time it took from my first file creation in WorldPainter for Arcas was on 4/10/2018 and my final save where I did the export was on 7/14/2018 so 3 months of WorldPainting in my spare time. To be honest I put a lot more effort into Arcas than I did Atlas and I learned a lot from creating Atlas which allowed me to improve on Arcas. Moreover, for all it’s faults, I’m really proud of how Arcas turned out visually even if it was plagued with lackluster pathing/gameplay issues at the start. Most of my time with Arcas went into WorldPainting and then hand Voxelling/WorldEditting in game to make the world even better than the WorldPainter stage. There’s a lot of bureaucracy behind the scenes when it comes to making a map for the server that I think leads to a lot of the pitfalls of the last two maps that I made. Communication and drive are one thing that I believe plagued both maps. During Arcas especially there were times where if I had questions about an area I was working on or was looking for feedback from the team there would be no response or just a, “looks great” (insert generic response here) and so I’d just go with it. I felt that this led to some areas of the map either being repetitive or boring for players. Moreover, a lot of the map development is kept hidden behind lock and key rather than exposing the map development to players and the community to get continual feedback on development. Honestly, this is where most of the faults in the map making comes into play. If LOTC was more open about their development when it came to maps maybe people wouldn’t be complaining about shitty systems or nation placement from day 1. Regardless, while I don’t play LOTC anymore and probably never will again aside from popping on just to see what people have changed about Arcas, making maps is a fun passion of mine and I hope you guys enjoyed the past two maps! Here’s an album of high-res images for Arcas world building process: https://imgur.com/a/IvQHtJV Also here’s an album of images for Atlas: https://imgur.com/a/K5ae7Gq Also if you have a chance check out the desert river valley and the sunken mesa I spent a literal month every-day hand voxelling and WorldEditting to make that place it’s my favorite two biomes on the map! If you have any questions feel free to ask below! Hopefully the formatting isn’t borked I never post on the forums!

June 24th

Have you ever been on hypixel or a server where they make use of custom resource packs and they have 3D models? Would that be possible through your resource pack? So named objects could correspond to a specific model and texture? Thanks for the resource pack! Really cool work you're doing.