Ryandor.com

My map is going to be alot different then most.

For starters many dungeons will be below peoples feet and on occasion above there heads. In other words in the natural place in where they would be on the map instead of being teleported to a dungeon surrounded by nothing. In spots this may be 3 or 4 layers. Oceans will also have ocean floors and even perhaps underwater kingdoms.

Names above heads with people above or below you wont be a problem because shards can just let there players know to turn off the name thing. Perhaps even programming concerning line of sight and stuff. And just make sure not to put too many monsters in one spot.

I may make two maps one for shards that use emulators that just cant handle this/haven't been scripted for this.

Anyways ok now that i've explained what my plans are this is my problem. How do I work this in with dragon or any of the other emulators? Could I just instruct it not to remove the previous layers? Anyone with any other advice on how I might do this?

Oh, I'm sure everyone is going to do it.

Anyway, you can't make two or more "layers" using Dragon, but you can teleport to -20 z (or however low you wanna go) and put in statics for the dungeons. You'll need to make the first tiles at the entrance -20 in map0.mul, not static, so the grass doesn't block entrance.

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The fastest way to a woman's heart is through her ribcage.

Unfortunetly, not only can Dragon not do "layers", it's not even supported by the client. The "landscape" consists of one layer and one layer only. That's the map. There's only one plane (so to speak) that you can create. Granted you can create it at an altitude (-127 to 127) but there's only one tile of landscape per coordinate.

This limitation is, in a sence, overcome by the statics. You can place pretty much as many static items per tile as you want. That's why you'll find most of the landscape tiles also exist as static tiles. This gives you your basements, underground areas, etc. With statics, you can do your "4 levels", but that's the only way.

From a practical approach, it's not really realistic to build 4 levels of statics all over the map, if that's what you are wanting to do. The static item count would be very high and the static files would grow to be even bigger than the map. This, along with the fact that player names being seen across levels, and line of sight issues, is why you want to use the dungeon area.

Don't get me wrong, a few multi-level areas in places are ok, as a decent example, the Yew crypts are built entirely of statics, "under" the map. But building whole cities would be a bit overkill. The map is plenty big enough not to have to do this.

All this considered, I don't think it would be worth pursuing this idea, just to prevent players from being teleported.

-Ryandor

Was that first comment meant to be sarcastic?

Anyways placing that many items and putting them in static piece by piece would be too time consuming. Not to mention I want them in map.

Are you saying its impossible for map items to exist under each other?




Well i want to put them in map.(goes back to previous asked question) Static items are still frozen in and loaded from files on the players computer not the server right? So why would that be a problem?


Easily fixed by having players turn off there name pop up.
They would want this too because otherwise it would be confusing. Anyways the target shards would be more mature RPing shard not immature "313t" shards.

Quicksilver tells me it would be very easy to do a little customizing of the client so that names don't show without direct line of sight.




Thats hardly the reason. The reason is because it opens up doors for cool affects like being able to walk a narrow ledge with a dangerious fall below you.

Floors that collapse under you. Being able to see stuff below you. Like your walking across a bridge and below is a hord of monsters from the other floor(which with a bit of programming could be set to only chase those in line of sight)

Everything would match up too. And you would be able to have a bigger map/more places to put stuff. Other reasons as well. Basically by using Z more I would be turning a 2d world into a bit 3d like living in a pop up book instead of a piece of paper.

Yes. Plain and simple. Only static items can be place Under/over a single map tile.


Not as bad as sending from the client, but there is an issue of computer lag as well. The more items on the screen, the more the comptuer has to work. I even notice this on the OSI map with the 3d client on my half way decent computer (AMD 1.7GHz, 1GB Ram). The 2d client isn't really too bad though.


Then you run into the issue of restricting what client the player uses, and enforcing it. I've yet to see any shard where something isn't taken advantage of. Granted, catering to a specific type of player (RP in this case) helps a lot, but how do you keep everyone conpletely honest? As far as forcing name popup off, I, personally would hate that. I relied on it too much, and would never turn it off by choice. But then that's just me.



All this is possible using statics. But you just can't do it with more "map".
The "world" is "3d" as it is. It consists of 6144 x 4096 x 256 (x,y,z) spaces. In each x/y there can be one, and only one map tile at any z. In each x/y there can be as many static items as you want at any z (I don't think there is a technical limit). That's what you have to work with. I'm just worried about the practical aspects of this.

I don't question your wanting to do this. I question how much of the map you are going to cover doing this. That's the issue I see. All your points are valid (except for multiple map tiles), and you can work around them all to an extent, but just how much effort is this worth?

I'll finish with this:
You can have one "map" tile per corrdinate. Period. There's no way around that short of reprogramming the client AND creating a new file format for the map*.mul.

And finally, all versions of the client (unless you modify that part of it too) have the unwalkable black line between the "world" and the "dungeons", so you might as well use it to your advantage.

-Ryandor

Hmm, you've given me some serious things to think about. Still rather keen on doing it. Least I want to give it a try on a test map to see how well it works.



Plenty of shards use custom clients. Clients you need to get on. Odds are anyone willing to do custom in this area will do custom in other areas too so that you need that client to get on and its self enforcing.

And the thing is complete honesty doesnt really matter. Its all about player experience. Players who would have it on and tolorate there screen filling with the names of monsters that they dont even know if are above or below them just so they might spy a player name for to find someway to meet up with them for rping would be just shooting themselves in the foot ruining there own experience but not really anyone elses.(if they were doing it for PK most serious RPing shards arent keen on PK anyways)

Anyways like I said. A few simple tweaks with the client and names only appear with line of sight.





Well There will be tunnels under a castle. About 3-4 layers inside a major mountain. But that just shows how tall they will be. These wont be the flat dungeons you would normally think of though. More like real caves and such with land going up and down with pits and so forth with the layers/levels merging together in many spots in many ways.

Then some minor underground areas (like crypts). And little caves and such. Perhaps a few small city sewers. A underground dwarf type city that might have rock over it as a ceiling to prevent map spying. Perhaps a sea floor under the sea ponds and rivers with some other statics and a town. I wonder if that would affect boats or fishing.

The possible puzzles traps secret passageways etc plus the visual affect hopefully will be worth it. I will of course be testing it on a smaller test map before trying it in a full scale measure.

Do you see some of the potential greatness of what i'm talking about that I see?

understood
I definitely plan to. Dimensional themed worlds that special quest items will give you access to. Like a small little snow world/map. Forest world. Water world. Volcano world etc. Plus one or two dungeons where the 3d affect isnt needed as much.

Yes. No one is going to turn off name showing just because it's in the rules. Why? Because you guys can't detect that. Simple, huh? And you talk about making a client that always has names turned off like it would be a piece of cake. I'm not taking you seriously until you actually do it. You talk about things like they will always be the best of what can happen, and not considering how easily players can manipulate it.

_________________
The fastest way to a woman's heart is through her ribcage.

Something else you might keep in mind is this. Many Emu allow for multiple plains. I know this were true with Sphere and possibly POL. I have not done so with RunUO as of yet, so I am not sure.

Basicly we have similiar thoughts on subterrainian under grounds. I created temples which had a above ground structure which fed into a subterrainian labryinth. However as they entered a stairwell they crossed teleporters which were unseeable by players. (you mark hidden by gamemaster) This would merely teleport them to another plain. That solves your problem with seeing names, as anyone located on plain 1, can not see the name of a player on plain 2. Name problem solved.

Now I have a question... How do you make a script for a player and a boat to travel from one location to the next. As my maps create a contining map. Britannia resembles a temperal land with pine and oak forests... Ilshenar marks the frozen tuandra.... Divided partly on the britannia map side by an non-climbable glacial wall.

The SE map now resembles part tropics and at the very southern edge, a straight which enters a region for ever in shadow... This is the pass into the frozen taundras. Now if you headed east on the Tokuno map, You enter Malas which is a semi tropical city shaped like Atlantis, With a metropolis extending from a mainland to the outer ring of the island.

There will be many locations which will require these lower levels under the map. Such as the royal barrial lands just north of the Atlatean style city... Each tomb will be open for exploration at different times of the shards lifespan.

There will be temples which govern the lands, each of these will be blighted with evil in the shards early days, quests held to cleanse these to restore order... Many are seven levels above ground, and 8 below.

Something that we were able to do on sphere servers was to add additional statics to one plain, and they would not appear on another. this is another way to handle load times for a player on the computer end of the connection. We were able to have seasons for the northern cities. But it was a lot of work. As you had to restrict players to one road in and one road out. Or create a barrier unseen that did not allow people to pass and have a stationary coach standing by to take you to the city which is now nearly impossible to get to by foot. This way these act as ferries on land. Once in that city (on another plain) you can not leave but by coach again. Again this is a pain, and do not recommend it, as we only did this twice and have never re-done it since. To much of a hassle. Great for RP but makes stale gaming and to many headaches.

But if you can get plains to work on RunUO I would suggest using them. What ever you create on plain zero should reappear on all plains. What is added to plain one, or even plain twenty-three will only appear on the plains inwhich they were originaly added too. I believe there were -23 to zero, and 1 to 23 in plains. Or maybe -123, 0 and positive 123 in plains on Sphere. Can't recall.

This way you could create all your above ground regions on the Map, with your buildings above ground statics. Construct your first sub level and the stairs and only what you would see on screen for your second sublevel on the zero plain... Now go to plain +1 and you should still have the add-ons from map zero showing, add to these, create the rest of this level, and part of the third, and then move to plain +2....

I always used the positive plains for dungeons and sub levels, and the negatives for events or quests, like if a city was under quarantine, You only need to place guards and a barracade at the city entrance, do nothing else... Then on another plain add the dead bodies, and the decorations of food shortages, rioting... then when you do this, locate everyone's account that was last in this city, and haven't left... Teleport them there, but do not leave any hidden telepads behind for them to teleport out. Or if you wanted to carry this infestation to global scales. Leave a spot, perhaps a hole in the wall, or a way onto a roof and over the city wall, or across the moat... then follow that player to what ever city they go to, and do the same there, start making others sick. I had every city done like this on one plain.

Back to my question... How do you teleport boats with the player like the serpents pillar and how it acted to teleport players to the lost lands... Because I will need to do the same for the areas where the maps match up... Also to link the atlantis city together, I added bridges that have large doors under them to control ships sailing in... How can I do the same with these so players can double click these doors and have there boat teleported with in the cities external walls and into the cannals.? Would some one be able to summit a script that would work for this?

The "world wrapping" effect is done by the server, so it has to be scripted server-side. The exact method really depends on the emulator you are using, but I would start by looking at the existing scripts your emulator uses for boats and for the serpent pillars.

Also, another suggestion on this thread's "map level" topic - if someone is willing to sacrifice a facet, you could achieve the same basic effect by using one facet as the surface map, and one facet for below ground. This would maintain the x,y,z coordinates while getting rid of the issues with "allnames", etc.

(It might even be possible to do without losing a facet, I have not experimented with actually ADDING a new facet and I'm not sure if the client would support more facets than Trammel & Felucca or not).

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-= HellRazor =-
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