PlaneShift
Gameplay => General Discussion => Topic started by: Ahanien on October 25, 2009, 11:09:51 pm
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I tried to go between Ojaveda to what is supposedly the largest city in the area. There are mentions of caravans and trade between these two locations, but there are no roads, there are no signs to direct you, I couldn't find any NPC:s that knew the way and most of them had in fact never heard of Ojaveda.
You would think that between two "large" cities there would be road signs and indeed roads. Not only that, you would expect to see traffic along these roads, as well as something between them apart from barren, empty wilderness with random monsters in it.
If I were a merchant I'd be very hesitant to let my goods travel on a caravan through that sort of hostile environment. I'd certainly want it insured! (And I bet the premium would ruin me, too...)
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no there are roads
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There are dirt roads directly connecting hydlaa and ojaveda. You will not see moving trade caravans between the two cities for practical technical reasons. There are a number of stationary npcs along the ways.Wrong forum section as well.
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As long as you are not familiar with the directions, it is very recommendable to travel together with more experienced people.
The roads are often not the most direct connections, and not always without any breaks, but they lead from town to town.
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but they lead from town to town.
*sometimes
And sometimes they lead to random middle of nowheres.
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perhaps they lead to magical towns that you just can't see**
:sorcerer:
**or places to be built in the future versions of the game.
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1. Likely
2. Doubt it. And would make little sense to make roads going to future towns that will not be built for another five years while people get lost and quit because there are no decent roads or signs pointing between towns.
Myself, I just modify the .dds basemap with a red stripe on the path I want to take. Gimp with dds plug in works good.
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/me imagines UtM doing the same IRL ...
:lol:
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UtM naturally has a red carpet automatically sprawling out before them wherever they go. You should know that by now Ligh. :P
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There are dirt roads directly connecting hydlaa and ojaveda. You will not see moving trade caravans between the two cities for practical technical reasons. There are a number of stationary npcs along the ways.Wrong forum section as well.
You mean the stretches of bare soil? I couldn't bring myself to call them "road". ;)
I'm sorry if I posted in the wrong section, but I couldn't find anything more appropriate.
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How else are you going to get to learn about the world unless you wonder around and explore. I don't see " getting lost" as a bad thing since wondering around helps you learn were different things are.
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eh, exploring's not for everyone. and in the current scheme of things, its kinda boring to me anyways. takes forever to get anywhere, you can get stuck with no way to get unstuck other than /die which then forces you to go through the tedious task of the DR and then back to the starting city of your character race type... it gets annoying.
so I can see the point that the major cities should have well defined roads to travel on and whatnot, but at the same time, there should be smaller not so obvious paths and what not people could travel down and of course the open wilderness treks as well.
all in time though. making a map isn't something that can be done at a drop of a hat. like everythign else, it'll get better as the game progresses. :3
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One small point .. There is a setting in the camera settings that adjusts the distance at which you can see ( I forgot what its called ) .. Anyway I find that if you set it to 1000 navigation is far easier than with the default setting. With the default setting not-so-far-away things like mountains, hills and stalactites just disappear and reappear. This makes navigation very difficult if your new to the game. ( When I first started to play I wondered if the appearing and disappearing stuff was due distance buffering or if it was some kind of rendering bug )
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How else are you going to get to learn about the world unless you wonder around and explore. I don't see " getting lost" as a bad thing since wondering around helps you learn were different things are.
This is pretty off topic but interesting nonetheless. If we're assuming our characters didn't just pop into existence as fully formed adults like they are in the game, but instead assume that they were born as infants to some sort of parents, grew up, and then became the fully formed adults they are when we start the game - then it would follow that they would know how to, for example, find their way around the area they grew up in. Put in an in character perspective it'd be pretty damn odd for a person not to be able to find their way around the place where they lived for nineteen years!
Now, if I understand the situation correctly the lack of signs, roads and other infrastructure between the cities isn't an oversight but something that's yet to be implemented. Looking forward to seeing it!
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If we're assuming our characters didn't just pop into existence as fully formed adults like they are in the game, but instead assume that they were born as infants to some sort of parents, grew up, and then became the fully formed adults they are when we start the game - then it would follow that they would know how to, for example, find their way around the area they grew up in.
I may be wrong, but from what I have experienced around here so far, this is all about the PS approach: "Find it out yourself, and do this ingame" - while considering recommendations to stay IC ingame, everything you will have to find out ICly, consequently.
So yes, your chars are only appearing adult after been kicked into the world, mentally every new char would be like an empty vessel, a newborn.
So, for instance: How about listing most important (currently) known animals, beasts.. flora and fauna, publically on the homepage (including main features of each)? And in general: provide the players with a basic knowledge of the ingame world, for they could play appropriately right from the start, to start playing prepared, instead of being forced to do a lot of OOCish researches ingame, thus having so many new players playing chars "from areas far, far away", or "from another level"?
As for the roads, and in the same context, I think it would only be reasonable to change the textures of the main roads, connecting the major settlements, to paved roads. This way a new player had a better chance to play a new char as one not entirely ignorant of the area it was meant to have been grown up in. And for the settings, I would guess it would make more sense if, given trading routes exist, inhabitants already had the idea to establish proper roads ;)
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@ Elady:
I wonder if you are a wonderer (http://cosgan.de/images/smilie/konfus/a015.gif) or a wanderer... (http://cosgan.de/images/smilie/sportlich/a075.gif)
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roads and signs? how can you be complaining about roads and signs when there's a riverlakething blocking the path to ojaveda? we need a bridge! :P
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What "riverlakething"?! -- Ah, the river Irifon, running from the Leaky Rock... well, if you are such a hydrophobic Fenki, then walk around it. Real men walk through as if it was thin air. :P
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Most real men I know can't walk on thin air :D
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Not "on", just "through". And if they need to hold a breath because their head gets below the surface...
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Adding a sign with the word North on it and oriented in a fixed direction would help players. We don't have a compass yet and its hard to make one work. With one sign in each major zone; people can then give others directions and make better maps.
O--)
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there is no north just like there are no cardinal directions. East is the name of a person and "north hydlaa" / "north tower" are player given nicknames which have nothing to do with the setting
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The compass directions are rather OOC, based on the directions of the map models. IC art is still very vague. It is not even certain where e.g. Hydlaa and Ojaveda are located exactly on the ring of the 1st level, the Dome. But because the Eagle Bronze Doors seem to be in the north (based on OOC coordinates) and Ojaveda in the east, I would expect Hydlaa in the southwest of the ring.
@ weltall: Even if there is no compass, no magnetic field to use -- directional terms may still exist, and may be based on any arbitrary reference point. Why not expecting e.g. the Eagle Bronze Doors (or another one) as the "North of the level ring"? In this case, "East passage" can be a directional term without settings issues. Someone will have cartographed the whole dome already. A map of the whole dome will exist. Maybe not in Jayose's library, but somewhere else. And I hope that the Settings will prepare one in time before finishing all the maps, not afterwards.
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About the road signs:
I already wished that more signs would exist -- several months ago. They may not need to point towards generic directions, but should point to major locations, like cities, as this would be the most expectable and logical use. I was told that many more little details are much more important ... at least one of those already exists near the clacker valley, in the middle of BDRoad1.
I'll grant the developers all the time they need to handle the more important issues first. Road treks support the community between new and experienced players much better than road signs, anyway...
:-X
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there is no north just like there are no cardinal directions. East is the name of a person and "north hydlaa" / "north tower" are player given nicknames
Next someone will claim that prime numbers do not exist in Yliakum, or that there are no phrases for "up" and "down" as those directions don't exist either.
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um... verden only reason there ain't no north, south, east and west is becuase yliakum is in a bloody big round stalagtite
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can someone please invent some kind of directions?
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Weast sorth nouth eest, there problem solved.
But really I think this issue can be completely solved by the settings team. Just a paragraph on the directions of a world, or at least tell us the directions referring to different places. E.g. Oja is weast of Hydlaa, or something like that. The directions don't have to be well thought out or anything, as far as I know the cardinal directions don't have a specific origin, so the team could just throw some random letter together.
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um... verden only reason there ain't no north, south, east and west is becuase yliakum is in a bloody big round stalagtite
And we live on one bloody big round planet. Directions will exist, no matter what labels are put to them. Just as mathematics will exist, no matter what you call it. The use of cardinal nomenclature in game is simply confusing. This part of settings is not well thought through.
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Given that it is in a big round cave with no magnetic field, it would not be hard to figure out where you were by a few things.
1. What level you are on. If you don't know that, you are pretty much screwed anyways.
2. Angle of the Crystal. You would need a sextant. The greater the angle, the further you are from the Rim (being the place the level ends.
3. Cave roof structure orientation. In other words, look up. The roof has (will have) a distinct pattern to look at, like stars.
To get your directions, all you would need is a sextant with a thing used to orient it with the cave roof. Line up the base with the roof, then line up the sextant view arm with the crystal. Done, instant exact-ish coordinates. Of course, you still need a map to look at to know where those coords are.
Directions would be similar to ringworld. Looking at the crystal would be Crystalside or Rimways or something meaning 'In'. Looking away from the Crystal would be Wallward or other, meaning 'Out'. Don't know what you would call left and right, but it would likely be dealing with facing the crystal and either rotating aroung the rim to the right or left.
People have used the stars for navigation in this manner for far far longer than compasses have existed, so it would be easy to conceive that Yliakum would use a similar.
What about being in a cave where you can't see the sun? Well, lads and lasses, you best bring a good map and a ball of string.
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It's all good and well being able to tell where you are, but it's a different story giving someone directions to get to where you are, or where you need to go.
For this, I think a system similar to the Halo game's directional bearing would be best. In Halo, directions would be given out as direction "upspin" and "downspin" based on the ring's movement, with a metric value. You would often hear their characters say "We need to get XX clicks upspin" etc. So Yliakum would have that measurement, but unlike Halo, it would need to be measured in degrees rather than kilometres.
As the other directional value would be distance from the point at which you are directly beneath the Crystal, I would assume.
However, that is not the only way of approaching it. N,S,W,E is still valid as the planet Yliakum is inside would still have an electromagnetic polarity field like any other planet, and as such measurements could always be done that way, allowing for more accurate, grid-based mapping and directions.
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As already mentioned -- there are several locations which would be useful to declare them as point of reference, like a central and major Bronze Door as entrance to the Stone Labyrinths...
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I don't see what prevents Ylian scientists from inventing the magnetic compass just as was done in real life.
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No matter if it is magnetic, magical, or based on whatever effect.
Eventually, it is the developers' decision. We already have some technical issues with "Local vs. World coordinate systems" in OpenGL and the CrystalSpace engine -- you may have seen already some slanted labels above some characters' heads while passing the jade gates (a.k.a. Korogan) through the huge stalagmites in the middle of the roads.
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Not all planets have magnetic fields. Also, the stalactite could be situated at the north or south pole, once again making a compass useless.
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Underthemoon was right the edgeward and wallward language was publicly posted before he did it.
Everything else I said I stand by however.