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PostPosted: Tue Jan 15, 2008 5:56 pm 
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Just like the title said, what do you consider before and while building your map and ultimately your world?

Its a huge question I know, but I find myself wondering. Myself, I try my best to make my world as realistc as possible. I've been researching everything from tectonic plates and their effect on mountains to demographics and crop yield. Its amazing what you can learn while doing this! Even more amazing is the huge amounts of interesting and fun websites you stumble upon. Granted ofcause, the UO map is far too small to properly model a "real" world. Its not even large enough to portray a small duchy, let alone a kingdom. The sheer size of land required to sustain a city of say 10000 people is simply too large to allow more than one city of that size on a map0.mul map (granted you make the rather poor estimation that 1 tile is ~1 meter).

In many ways MMORPGs has never been realistic, UO is not the only one. The farms, animalpens and fishing villages in "vanillia" UO could in no way supply the population of Britannia... Althou, other games are even worse. Take World of Warcraft for example! Holy Mother of..! What do they live of?

Which brings me to another point. Games are here for our enjoyment. A totaly realistic map would be rather dull, specialy on a freeshard where you might expect perhaps a hundred people online at the same time if you are very lucky. Having a realistic map in terms of size would mean the population of players would be so low it would be stupid. It all boils down to the fun factor.
How do you handle that? I expect most map designers (or shall I say world designers? :wink: ) spend most of their time pondering this aspect.
How many dungeons do I add?
What loot do I place where?
Whats the theme of this region etc etc

But I suspect most of us loathe irregular use of terrain, such as a desert right next to a swamp or whatnot. Well...


In essence, I have tried to model my project after 3 steping stones:

1. Realism
2. History
3. Fun

I started by researching how a world "should" look like. I asked myself questions like:
"how long is a river, pending terrain, age and elevation?"
"how does mountains form?"
"what is the climate like, and how does this effect flora and fauna?"
"how does the terrain/climate effect living conditions?"
things like that...

Then I worked out my masterplan based on that research. Basicly, I started drawing a crude map, a very crude one, outlining forests, mountains and rivers. Based on this, I began plotting settlements (or rather, places people could live) and their densities.
This was a rather tedious project. It demanded a lot of effort, keeping track of some seemingly unrelated variables.
Once this was done, I began the second phase:

History!
This seemed, at first, less of a fuzz. However, this quickly proved false. I wanted to provide my world with a basic starting point. Sort of like the first few chapters of a book where you meet all the major characters and get your first impressions of the world. The problem was, with the story I wanted to tell, and I know you all agree with me when I say you must have a story to tell in order to create more than just a "stock world", I had to keep going back to change my initial crude map to suit it. This led to a sort of vicious circle, where I changed one thing to fit my needs only to find I had to edit something else.

Allright, I digress....
Back to the questions at hand. What do you consider when/while creating a new World.
I've mentioned realism and research, my basic aims. I want a realistic world. But I also want a fun world, an intriguing world, something my "players" (and I doubt this world will ever be finished) would enjoy exploring.
The idea is to have a world that mimics a small duchy in the dark ages. The safety of home, the thrill of the unknown and all that stuff.

This brings me to yet another question: Buildings.
What do you consider when placing/constructing buildings. Here are some things I ponder while creating mine.
"Theme, as in do I create a village with the same basic art?"
"Size, as in how large can I make a building without it looking wierd in the client?"
"Types, what does a village need to sustain itself?"
"Story, as in what can my players experience when visiting this building?"


This is already too babblish, I know.. One last thing:

Influence!
Something I allways battle with is how much freedom "can I / should I" give my players to influence the world they play in. I've allways thought the OSI style of UO is rather limited. Granted, UO is by far the most usercustomizable MMORPG around, its allways been. Player houses, boats, the ability to drop crap on the ground and have it stay there and so on! The game is amazing considering that aspect. But what I allways hated with the OSI shards was the "wilderness-covered-with-houses" issue.

How do you deal with this?
Or in other words, how do you keep the player influence in your world without ruining it?

I know this has little to do with the actual mapmaking since it is serverbased and often rather hard to customize (RunUO has some very neat scripts for this however). I guess what Im asking is simply, what would you like your players to be able to do? For example:
"Clearing a forested area to use for agriculture"
"Starting a new mine"
"Founding a new city"
"Building roads"
And so on...


In closing, I hope you have enjoyed my rather unstructured babble about world construction. It is rather aimed at the realistic perspective of mapmaking, but that is what I do best so... The reason I posed this is simply I would be delighted to hear what aspects you consider when creating a new world.
Whats your aim with your current project??

Best regards,
Frederick


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PostPosted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 2:02 am 
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Well, though it's really a bit messy story, it have a good points and actually touching reasonable aspects in mapmaking. If you think it around, we could compose a complete theoretical guide about how to make a world. I wonder if you would like to write something like that.

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PostPosted: Sun Feb 03, 2008 6:31 am 
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It really depends on your reasons for building a server. But if it is for the players more than for yourself, I think the priorities SHOULD be in a different order:

1. Fun
2. History
3. Realism

Fun is the most important factor to draw in players. If it isn't fun, no one will care about the realism or the history.

Of course ideally you achieve the perfect balance between all three, where you have a fun world with an engaging history that is realistically put together.

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PostPosted: Sat Feb 09, 2008 1:52 am 
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I used to emphasize realism. Now, I just emphasize challenge and approachability.

Fun is always first with any kind of project that doesn't have need as a priority. That's really all anything boils down to -- needed or fun. Needed in the sense of, "I'll die if it isn't done," and fun as in "amusing, entertaining, interesting, intriguing, exciting, etc."

To me, though, realism is fun insofar as it isn't so close to real life that I ask myself why I don't just play the version with better graphics (that being a bad joke about real life being a game). I can't play the Sims for very long before I ask myself why it is more fun to watch virtual people doing chores than it is to just do them myself and actually clean up the pig sty I live in.

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PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 4:33 pm 
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*grins* I couldnt agree more, why spend hours doing some tedious task in a game when your life is full them anyway. Thats realy why I quit WoW. Id rather get payed for the grind than paying for it.

When you consider fun vs realism, the ageold debate for us roleplayers, its hard to find that balance I agree. I think you are right Sydious, if you build a shard more for the "players" than for yourself, fun needs to be the focus. Atleast if you want an active playerbase.
Ultima Online is in a sticky place today... The days of "need" are by far over Id say. Better games exist, almost no matter what aspect you look at. The one thing that comes to mind when I think of UO however is customization, something no other online game has. The simple fact you can physicaly (well metaphysicaly speaking) influence the actual gameworld is such a rare thing Id say it stands as a reason this game should, and probably will, outlive 90% of the current mmorpg's out there.
Even thou my initial post was rather!! unstructured, that was basicly the point I was trying to get across. Given the fact we such an incredible tool in our hands with emulators, engine and 3rd party progs, I was interested in how you approach a new project.

I do understand how important priority is for any shard. Althou I agree with you Sydious, I cant help but feel the "need" for this game is gone.. Which basicly eliminates a large part the reasons why anyone would use this obsolete engine. The one thing that may save it is small, specialized projects, hence my initial post. What it all boils down to is your aim I guess.


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PostPosted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 2:36 am 
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It's Sydius, not the Star Wars character.

Anyway, I didn't read your original post--no offense, but it is a tad long, heh.

I agree that the need to use the UO engine is long past. I don't use it. I don't think many people do anymore. The fact that this forum has more or less faded into something only rarely added to is testament to this.

Then again, 3D engines and games aren't as easy to work with as good ol' UO.

As for me, well, I'm making a game from scratch.

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PostPosted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 5:59 pm 
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Actually Syd, I have a feeling there are other reasons as to why this is rarely used anymore. The UO emulation community from what I see is still thriving, however it's very much...

How do I put this nicely? Dumbed-down.

Nearly every shard, or new shard now are OSI clones or PVP give-me-everything-now shards.

Very few people put the effort into making something decent, UO Mitterlerde (SP?), Profania, Tragena, etc are the few examples of this I can think of. I myself aimed at this, but I have such a large lazy-bone I never even got started, heh.

Many of the current 3D games are either A. Too hard to work with, or B. Too inflexible. NWN2 was a good example of a full 3D game adding in the ability for persistant worlds, but then you have a very low limit of allowed characters, and it's not a game designed in the MMO sense anyway.

Most Newer MMO's arent worth working with, WoW as an example is quite a good engine/game, but when it comes to working with it emulation-wise, it is extremely inflexible. What you see is what's allowed and that's pretty much it (Not to mention that the emulators themselves are a PITA to get compiled/started let alone usable).

Too many people overlook UO because it is old, and is outdated now. But to be completely honest, UO is still one of the most powerful engines for a sandbox MMO I've ever seen (SWG was coming close, but SOE trashed that pretty good for a more WoW-style game).

Who cares about Graphics (I mean, hey, UO wasnt the best, but its still pretty good, excluding the SE/ML crap) when you can have an absolutely awesome MMO game with a full level of depth other games can't/won't offer.

Jeez, there are still people playing Commodore 64 games regularly. UO will never die while there are still fans who use it. I guess my reason for still liking it, is that the quality and depth of current games is on a severe deline. And at the moment, WoW pretty much has a stranglehold on the whole MMO market.

Just my opinion. If I ever manage to shrink that lazy-bone, I'll be coming back to UO, thats for sure.


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PostPosted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 1:13 am 
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Well, the MMO genre is fragmenting into smaller sub-genres now. Maybe in that atmosphere, UO could thrive, and maybe because of it, it does.

WoW is kind of like the arcade version of an MMO -- easy enough for anybody to play, and not much depth to confuse things. No flexibility, either, though.

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