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?
) 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. Hi
story
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