From: darshan
Date: 2002-02-04 18:48:22
Question 1: Who here wants to see us give readymade maps to players? Readymade maps include exact maps, drawn and scanned maps and everything similar.
Question 2: Who here wants automapping functionality into the game?
From: yorkaturr
Date: 2002-02-04 18:51:58
In-Reply-To: 536
1. Nobody, I hope. It would be trivial to make a screenshot from the client and upload a nice picture into your webpage.
2. - || -
From: raeky
Date: 2002-02-04 18:53:02
In-Reply-To: 536
1: if they exist only a world map later in the game development to shown at the time of character creation to aid in picking which region/race you want, it would be low detail and highly zoomed out. NO specific zoomed in maps (like one of nemen) should be made.
2: NO
From: gxest
Date: 2002-02-04 18:53:32
In-Reply-To: 536
I can't see why the cataclysm would have destroyed all the maps from the libraries, ofcourse players wouldn't automagically have maps on them when they start, but in the library, yes
automapping as a "map making" skill is a good idea imo if done properly, with errors in the maps if the maker isn't too good at it, etc. people would use that to make more detailed maps than what are found in the library. the ones in the library would be very very simplistic so you'd only know about what direction is the next town, playermade maps would show detailed roads and special places etc.
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-02-04 19:14:11
In-Reply-To: 536
1. Not me. As I said, premade pictures like map symbols can be given.. How many.. It may depend on the mapping skill? Err.. A bit simple?
2. Not me. It should be like the character (and player) himself is doing the mapping thing just like IRL, just like..
From: Zugreb
Date: 2002-02-04 21:19:38
In-Reply-To: 536
I'd be against but I wanted automaping skill some time ago
but it actually does not matter how players do it...
info will get out there anyway... sad but true
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-02-04 21:55:47
In-Reply-To: 548
When there is maps that don't really represent anything or have wrong information, you can never be sure where you end using this specific piece of paper.
That's why I want players to be able to draw maps with they own.
From: raeky
Date: 2002-02-04 22:15:53
In-Reply-To: 552
Also if your thinking in size requirements, if maps are created by a player they would have to be made with vector art so the download is minimal, prolly all art that isn't downloaded with the game binary should be vector and small to download.
From: sweatshop
Date: 2002-02-07 04:20:02
In-Reply-To: 552
At the risk of taking on a slightly unpopular position, I would say that I have nothing against a 'mapping' skill, which would make auto-maps, if done correctly. There could be a variety of imperfections programmed in, and other drawbacks as well, for example:
-Very slow walking speed: map making while walking is a painstaking process and would require the map-maker to just about sit down every other step IRL, although this could be sped up slightly in the game.
-Drains endurance: map-making is hard work. It could severly drain your endurance, which automatically limits how much a player can map on any given day.
-Programmed imperfections: as map-making skill improves, people should be able to make increasingly accurate maps, but at low skill-level, it would be almost impossible to follow, with curving paths where they should be straight and landmarks placed in incorrect places on the map. Map-making, as it is such a valuable skill, could be very hard to learn.
As for making screen shots and piecing together some sort of map, couldn't the 'printscreen' and 'alt+printscreen' commands (at least in windows, no clue how screenshots work in linux) be set to do something other than a screen shot?
A possible loop-hole to this, admittedly, is that a person could have a minimized program selected, and screen-shoot from there, still taking a screen shot of the game.
However, this would take a while longer, and would deter some of the would be screenshotters. However, if maps are made a rare commodity (at least, accurate ones), it might prevent people from taking these maps and putting them on some website.
---sweatshop
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-02-07 16:16:08
In-Reply-To: 620
Still, there is a problem, if folk wants to draw false maps..
Let me see.. turn left here to find my treasure, it says..
One solution would be the option that you can put pictures in papers without the mapping skill and claim that it is a map.
And it is a fact, that in medieval times even the most skilled mapmakers were not very accurate. I could say yes to map making skill if the char having 100% (or whatever best/almost best value) skill would still draw maps that have gone wrong somehow in, say, 75 cases of 100.
In other words, even the best mapmaker available jumbles often while making the map, but however he doesn't know which of his maps is most accurate.
From: sweatshop
Date: 2002-02-09 02:31:08
In-Reply-To: 625
hmm... false maps? I suppose... that shouldn't be very hard to program into a system with an auto-maping skill, there could simply be a feature where the skill is set to a lower percentage (temporarily).
Then again, maybe that's a stupid idea. I'll let other's be the judge of that.
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-02-09 14:15:03
In-Reply-To: 642
Well, I think there can actually be an option to do that in every skill. If you think that you do not want to be encumbered too much you can do it informal way and therefore you would not overstrain yourself. This would be applied to battle, to creating of items..
But when you want to draw a false.. fake may be better word here.. map you should be able to do it precisely you want. IMHO
This map says there is a town.
Oh, well let's visit it.
Later..
I see only this canyon.
Just walk, maybe it's here somewhere.
Holy Harum! It's an ambush! An outlaw camp!
Just use imagination and there is hundreds of possibilities.. :)
From: hook
Date: 2002-02-09 14:25:25
In-Reply-To: 643
the idea of how hard a map should be or shouldn't be to make might be unimportant. Nothing is stopping a player from climbing a high mountian and just taking a snapshot then posting it on the web with arrows and land marks drawn in. Then we have the problem of characters learning to fly via magic or god's will in which they could take high quailty snapshots and thus making accurate maps. If majik is even a little bit of a "hit" then all this stuff will end up on the web fairly quickly. and short of becomeing policemen with an army of highly paid lawyers (which we can't afford) such notions of contoling map ditribution are irrelivant.
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-02-09 14:43:24
In-Reply-To: 645
Just put clouds there to prevent it. :)
And if someone can make the game engine to disable screens it would prevent some of the cheaters making them.
Same thing was problem in books. We could just have rules that say if such things appear, there will be chastisement.
And for flyers. The sight distance and clouds could be set so, that you really can't see areas far enough to draw a huge map. This prevents major leaks.
The question is, who is going to cheat anyway. An answer: With the threat of PD, there will be some, even many if there is opportunity. That is sad.
And we really can't stop players to do this, so as said earlier, at some point there will be masses of information in free use.
Still, I suggest we keep a mapping skill system of some kind. We should not surrender to them this easy. :)
From: ReSpawner
Date: 2002-07-24 17:28:17
In-Reply-To: 646
yeah i also actualy like the idea of a mapping skill that whould be pretty bad quality and it could actualy prevent some people from cheating... like if there is a way to make maps in the game then i maybe dont want to worry about setting up a page then fix all the screenshots or whatever and then get people to visit it...
couldent we have some kind of paint program; like you buy a piece of paper and some ink and then you could try to paint a map by your self only with the mouse... i am not very good at programming but that dosn't sound very hard to code...
From: raeky
Date: 2002-07-26 07:30:29
In-Reply-To: 1728
hand drawn maps via the mouse and some simple draw program, a yes. automatic mapping that creates perfect detailed maps, a no.
From: Takomtor
Date: 2002-08-03 04:16:15
In-Reply-To: 1750
There has been lot of discussion about books and maps and other sort of player created literature, hmm, stuff...
What would you say, if this hand drawing program would be used to create all player information, so that if they want to write a book, they have to get into this slow and pixel precise effort. That would be very simple way to raise the entry barrier for player created information. This would inevitably lead to a fact that information would be valuable. One could also see, if the creator has put time and effort to the map or is it just another quickfix nonsense... whatever.
This would deviate from blueprint idea, but would be very narrow field also giving new possibilities for roleplaying.
From: raeky
Date: 2002-08-07 00:16:00
In-Reply-To: 1770
Well, on bandwith/diskspace side, haveing everything had drawn could be bad, unless you use some vector type of storage for them.
I think just the price of paper and books (blank ones) should be costly enough to make it difficult to create tons of written information. The users should have the option of drawing on a page, and also adding type to the page. We've discussed haveing multiple different fonts for the different races, or maybe some algo that would warp the fonts to look a bit different for every single player. That would be a nice addition handwritting being identifible to a single player. :P
Also to slow the learning of "blueprints" from written works, just make the learning very slow and very limited. say if the person who wrote the blueprint had a skill level of 25, the most someone could learn from that writting is only 10%. So they could only get 2.5 skill points from reading it.
Reading books isn't the best way to learn, even in real life.
