PlaneShift
Gameplay => Wish list => Topic started by: frumbert on December 07, 2003, 01:26:13 am
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I\'d like to see a small compass on the interface (could be a part of the action buttons at the top left). I\'ve seen suggestions for maps and radars etc, but never mentioned of a simple direction. This would at least assist when I\'m lost in a dungeon knowing that I\'d seen a staircase somewhere.. I\'d be able to say \'somewhere to the north of here\' if someone were to ask me.
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Hmm...or a compass item. I remember in EQ there was the \"sense heading\" ability, and a compass spell too. Maybe the devs can make it so you can buy a compass to aid in your travels?
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i like the idea of a compass/compass item, but it would be anoying to have to go to your inventory all the time so i would like to see a compass integrated in the gui.
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But only if you buy the item. ;)
Maybe a draggable window, or a window that if you have a compass you can toggle it with F3 or something?
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buying the compass would be pretty smart. you could make it cheap - say 10 rubies, so that it becomes a \"first quest\" kind of item.
The compass is small - no need to take a slot in the inventory. Maybe we need a new inventory slot for \'pockets\', where items on the interface are kept; e.g. a compass, a watch, a simple world map.. There wouldn\'t be that many pocketable items.
Maybe have compass upgradable at vast cost, so that it contains a coordinate system?
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we wont have rubies as currency anymore...and what do you mean by \"first quest item?\"
But whatever i like your idea that you could upgrade the compass...
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I mean when a new user first joins and logs in, they find a NPC standing next to where they started . They click on him, say hello, and he might say back something like:
\"Oh, friend traveller. I seem to have lost my way around. I had a compass but I must have dropped it. How will I find my way home now? Can you please go to Trogg\'s Emporium on the far side of town next to the great temple and buy me a new one? Here\'s $10 for it and your troubles.\"
Then, you go and buy the compass and return. The NPC then says:
\"Oh thank you friend, but I found my compass. It was in my pocket all the time. I\'ll forget my own head next time! Why don\'t you keep that one? Perhaps we\'ll talk again in the future.\"
So you\'re introduced to talking to the NPC\'s in order to get information - a quest, information about how to get around, where to look for things, etc. Plus you get your compass.
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Me too. I agree with the above.
There\'s just my analitical part again. Where does the compas point? We\'re in a stalagmite near the center of the planet....south is down, north is up...so east and west are only 2 of the 4 ways in the plain. Pretty useless then.
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A compass would point to the center and the big crystal, obviously. Not sure what good that is, but that\'s what it would do.
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Well no. It would point to just one of those 2 points. And then there would be this problem...you could stand anywhere on the \"coat\" of an imaginary cone with the top in the pole and a circle for the base....and you\'d get the same output from the compass.
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ok we make a imginery set of points up like this
-----------------------------------C
--------------------a----------------------------b--------------------
-----------------------------------D
C being the crystal so the compass always faces the crystall that way a ,b and d dont need to be north or anyt hing they could stand for any thing and why dont jsut have it so the crystal is some how interfereing with the magnetic properites of the ground so it is ignored :P
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Interference sounds fine, but still the plane of the compass is vertical not horizontal.
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hehe i always wondered why we dont have a compas already and now that i think about it, it makes sense. lol. maybe at different angles the crystal at the top would have a different shade
EX: say your at one side of the stalagtite, it shines red but as you go to the center of the stalagtite it gets lighter and lighter untill white again. same as for the 3 other sides. maybe blue yellow and green :)
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Oh no! That would mean all colors would change...a scary aspect, especially when moving through the \"borders\".
I like my wood green at all times...I don\'t want to adapt to the colors for 10mins everytime I move for more than 100m.
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im not talking about a huge diference in light but just a small glow from the crystal you barely even notice. anyways i would like to hear if you have any better ideas.... :O
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Well, is the crystal seeable from all levels? If not, this way is usable only from level1 which is hellishly hot and unpleasant AFAIK.
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tell me how do you get light if the crystal is only seeable on level 1?
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Refraction(reflection).
And the crystal should then be only 4/8 sided or you couldn\'t tell where you are. And it wouldn\'t work at night!
And even if you know that seeing green means that you\'re on the horizontal \"west\", you can\'t tell where you are...the stalagmite is round-ly...so you could only say in which quarter/8-er part of the level you are.
trouble, trouble, trouble.
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well i dont have anyother ideas except a big map you can always see and without any N, S, E, W it would be very confusing ....
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True, but the only fixed point we have so far is The Crystal...which is upward, so essentially we\'re left with none.
Hm...troublesome.
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Why can\'t we arbitarily choose a direction to be north? Rather than it being a magnetic reading, just say that way back in the \"old days\" (in the history of the planet) someone (a wizened old sorcerer, etc) decided that a compass was a good idea to help people get around and decided that north should be the direction that his workroom window was facing (or a line between the tower and the main statue, etc). He realised that many ways of measuring direction were possible, but they all did the same thing: measured direction, and so chose one of the many, which over time had become the standard directions used by everyone.
A compass helps people navigate, whichever direction that is. That\'s all it needs to be.
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Hm, but which point/way to choose?
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can\'t we lave that up to the programmer who has to develop it? Maybe there\'s a reason why one direction is easier to make \"north\" than another reason. As *new* players come along, they see that direction x is north and just go with it. They don\'t reason why. If they *do* reason why, they might like to ask the NPC from whom they got the compass and he can tell the story of the wizard and his workroom window...
just make it up!!
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If the world looks like in this (http://www.planeshift3d.com/wbboard/thread.php?threadid=6738&boardid=13) thread, i see no problem with north as the position of the crystal.
That way north means toward the center, south toward the hull, west and east as clockwise and anti-clockwise.
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It\'s still a planet...so north is upward(let\'s asume the crystal is at the pole), south is down... but that isn\'t helpful.
East, west...clockwise? huh? How much clockwise, where.... nonono reread the thread.
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maybe we could use stars! i know you cant see any real stars but there are other crystals in the stalagtite in the \"sky\" so when its night they should reflect some light and act like a star! then we could use a basic naviagtion in the stars.... :D pretty stars :P
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Nice idea. But try to explain it to an average n00b (who can\'t speak English properly...). I don\'t even wanna know how much they understand math and the 3D coordinate system.
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nah just have 4 very recognizable \'star\' formations... :)
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Originally posted by lynx_lupo
It\'s still a planet...so north is upward(let\'s asume the crystal is at the pole), south is down... but that isn\'t helpful.
East, west...clockwise? huh? How much clockwise, where.... nonono reread the thread.
Assume north points to the crystal:
north is upwards if you hold the compass vertical. if you hold it horizontal to the ground, north is to center.
A compass only gives directions, which are always relative to the compass. so clockwise means left around and a how much value simply doesnt make sense
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How much values are only needed if you want to create a worldmap. and need to decide where west becomes east.
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Remember the point of a compass would be indoor use too, and you can\'t see \"stars\" through a celling. Maybe Dev Wizards can construct a big tower in each level, containing a huge \"compassium\" crystal (crappy name), each level having a different \"frequency\" magic poured through it. If you know what level you\'re on you set which level to respond to on your \"compassite\" needled compass. It\'s not science fiction, it\'s fantasy, keep telling yourself that.
Replace those crappy names with anything you want. :P
Complex dungeons or vaults could put compassium in there walls to confuse thieves or something.
-just an idea :)
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If the world looks like the image in the thread linked above, then you need to know which \"quadrant\" of the world you\'re in, and how far away from the crystal you are, which is the same as how far down or what level you\'re on. The compass idea would give you a HORIZONTAL plane of reference; that is, which direction you are facing. I\'m aware that there\'s no real magnetic definition of north. If you imaging a line between the middle of the crystal and the middle of the planet and make that north (or lets call it \"IN\"), then you still need a method of mearing how far turned off \"IN\" you are - e.g. you\'re turned 90 degrees left of IN on the 14th level down.. But this gets mighty confusing, and someone who keeps IN 90 degrees to their right will end up walking in a circle. I felt that imposing a fixed directioning system on the world without neccesarily explaining it would be the most user friendly way. I mean, how many people in the *real world* know why there\'s a different between real and magnetic north, and more importantly - Do they care? I\'m happy to travel north and east without having to know why they exist. They assist me; that\'s all. They don\'t have to be called \"north, south, east, west\", and there might be 6 directions instead of 4.. but you need a fixed set of directions on the horizontal plane that don\'t change no matter which side of the world/game or level you\'re on.
To measure depth (how far down from the top level) you could add a \"depth\" indicator onto the compass (maybe this is a compass upgrade you find/quest the first level down you go), measured in fathoms, metres, cubits or Splinookles - a number that gets bigger the deeper you go.
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just curious(and let me know if this is stupid) but why does the crystal have to be north?
would the planet not have it\'s own magnetic poles, cavern or no cavern? and this, a north? our compasses do not point at the sun, why should ylakium\'s?... of course, one compass pointing north, combined with a magical crystal pointer would make navigation pretty interesting....
Jessyn
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For easier thinking we assumed that the stalagmite is in the pole.
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but doesn\'t that just complicate things?
Jessyn
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Originally posted by frumbert
If you imaging a line between the middle of the crystal and the middle of the planet and make that north (or lets call it \"IN\"), then you still need a method of mearing how far turned off \"IN\" you are - e.g. you\'re turned 90 degrees left of IN on the 14th level down.. But this gets mighty confusing, and someone who keeps IN 90 degrees to their right will end up walking in a circle.
reading this, i have to correct me. lynx_lupo, you are right. to describe a compass you need how much values for east and west.
But i dont know its \"this gets mighty confusing\".
\"and someone who keeps IN 90 degrees to their right will end up walking in a circle\" actually this happens on our earth too. Its just too big to notice this.
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What about a 3D compass. Think of...... well its a compass that shows vertical and horizantal direction. Or that there are two compasses as someone who will never leave the ground will only nead a basic compass,
while people who will fly on creatures or have wings will use the advanced compass.
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elegrand thats not what we are discussing we are trying to find a way we could have direction in the middle of the earth. also i heard somebody remark that you couldnt see stars inside of the stalagtite. i covered that in the same post! they arent really stars! they are glowing crystals.... my god, nobody hears whats said only what they wanna hear. really i think some sort of physical marker is the only realistic way to make N, W, E, S because anything else just doesnt seem right. we could make magnetic poles but it would seem silly and unfeasable. We also could just say there are magical markers in the earth, we could very well do this but it would seem silly and hastily put toghether. so really our best bet are physical markers of some sort unless any of you can think of some super unique way to find direction in the stalagtite... :]
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elegrand thats not what we are discussing we are trying to find a way we could have direction in the middle of the earth. also i heard somebody remark that you couldnt see stars inside of the stalagtite. i covered that in the same post! they arent really stars! they are glowing crystals.... my god, nobody hears whats said only what they wanna hear. really i think some sort of physical marker is the only realistic way to make N, W, E, S because anything else just doesnt seem right. we could make magnetic poles but it would seem silly and unfeasable. We also could just say there are magical markers in the earth, we could very well do this but it would seem silly and hastily put toghether. so really our best bet are physical markers of some sort unless any of you can think of some super unique way to find direction in the stalagtite... :]
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Yeah, I know thats not what everyones talking about. It was just an idea.
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This is just an idea but how about instead of a compass a map. Make it where you can purchase maps of zones or maybe have a map making skill where you can try and make your own. The map would also be able to show your position and an arrow pointing which direction you are heading.
EDIT: Oops forgot there already is the job of cartographer but you get the basic idea I am suggesting I hope.
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A compass that pointed toward the crystal would work suffiently enough (after pondering the thought for ~10 minutes). It would simply take some getting used to.
We as humans tend to think along the lines of the Cartesian coordinate system. However, the people of Yliakum are used to this conical shaped world, and so whatever navigational system they come up with would seem quite logical to them.
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I\'m sorry for answering late in this thread but I encountered a bug in the forum preventing me from replying, and since monday evening my adsl connection is down (and my emergency rtc connection is overcrowded *sighs*).
Let me introduce you to Leander\'s awesome compass, available for only 200 trias:
http://leander256.free.fr/ps/compass.png
The framework is protected from the imponderables of an adventurer\'s life by a very solid glass. The metal parts are very light so gravity and friction don\'t cause many troubles to the mecanism.
The arrow shows you where is the center of the level, the blue part being attracted by the crystal (and the green one can be repulsed or just neutral, balancing the arrow). Plus the angle gives you an indication about how far from the centre you are (provided you know on which level you are). Maps could probably look like that (sorry for the crappy map):
http://leander256.free.fr/ps/map.png
That\'s the map of the town... The black dotted circles are delimiting zones with different vertical angles of the compass. So you get an idea of where you are, you just have to rotate the map until you find out your position.
Of course this method is not very precise, but remember that dropped in some unknown land with only a map and a compass (in real world), you won\'t be able to find your position easier.
Then we had a long discussion with Lynx_lupo, I\'ll try to sum up (sorry for the late posting Lynx_lupo, and feel free to correct me). May I precise that we don\'t want to create the world instead of the people officially in charge of it, we had to make some assumptions.
First there\'s this problem of the players getting involved in the game. If the players want a coordinates system \"out-of-the-box\", something they can use without even thinking about it, it will be better to keep the Earth coordinates, even if it means producing some artifact to integrate the \"N E S W\" coordinates in the world. On the other hand, if we assume that people will accept spending a few hours getting used to an \"innovative\" (let\'s say non-natural) way of locating themselves, we can keep the crystal as the center of the universe (and add a little something I\'ll describe later).
Second there\'s the problem of \"people vs character\" gameplay: Do we have to consider it\'s up to the player to be able to orientate himself, or does the game have to guide or mislead him depending on some of his character\'s skills? It\'s a very common problem when creating RPGs. In the first case, we create an inequality because somebody who wants to play a ranger will get lost in the forest (not very interesting), in the second case people with a good sense of orientation don\'t need to pick up the adequate skills, so they can take other ones, which also creates an inequality.
We still had a problem with the compass because a compass alone can\'t give you your coordinates, as you can see on my drawing, you can be everywhere on a circle that can be quite large. That\'s why I thought about adding something else to the compass, based upon a crystal\'s property that doesn\'t exist (yet?). As you can see on the pics, the crystal has 7 faces. Let\'s suppose it\'s put on some altar or anything holding it like that:
http://leander256.free.fr/ps/yliakum_map.jpg
Now let\'s ALSO suppose (makes a lot) that each face can send waves at slightly different frequencies (I know some people already proposed things like that, I don\'t mean to steal anyone\'s idea). Every level is now divided in 7 sectors, and depending on your position in the world, you\'ll ba facing a different face of the crystal. Consider each face as some sort of speaker, a magical device will be able to detect the strongest signal, giving you an angle relative to some predefined origin. Something like that:
http://leander256.free.fr/ps/angle.png
The blue line glows at the angle where you\'re supposed to be. We now have a complete polar coordinates system, which is different (maybe difficult), but also probably unique (and people here like to say that planeshift should be unique).
As a conclusion: I\'m sorry for crappy pics :P and wait for your reactions, counter-proposals, etc... And thanks for reading till the end.
EDIT: I can\'t put pics straight into the post because in this case the bug occurs...
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Leander256,
I think you\'ve got some great ideas.
In our world, we are usually content with a 2-dimensional device. But in the realm of PS, a 3-d compass would probably be a good idea; or at least some way of determining what level you\'re on.
Another thing you mentioned:
We still had a problem with the compass because a compass alone can\'t give you your coordinates
Well this is true IRL as well, and I don\'t see what the problem is. I think giving people a device that tells them right where they are should be a bit more difficult than a simple compass. A compass is a navigational tool, used to give you direction. It\'s not supposed to tell you exactly where you are.
I guess if I\'ve said this much, I should come up with a suggestion of my own.
*Xandria goes off to draw a couple pictures, and will return with his results shortly*
EDIT:
*Xandria returns with a somewhat simple, yet effective compass design*
(http://67.168.113.74/images/compass.jpg)
Ok, this compass has three points. The one designated by the white triangle will point toward the direction of the azure sun. This being the case, lining up the opposite edge of the compass will give you a line tangent to the circle formed with the azure sun at the center and your distance from it (in a lateral direction) as the radius. This means that if you want to walk all the way around the same level, just keep that edge pointing straight forward.
As for vertical measurement, the crystal itself changes color when you move from level to level. My suggestion would be that it corresponds with the different frequencies of light. So at the top level the crystal would be red (as shown). At the next level it would turn orange, then yellow, green, blue, indigo, and finally, violet. And if you went into the stone labryniths, the crystal would turn black and cease to function. That would make the caves be much more difficult to explore, if you can\'t even use a compass ;)
I know it\'s very simple, but I think anything much more complicated than that will make it too difficult to use.
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Good thing you remind me about a way to determine on which level you are. On the picture below:
http://leander256.free.fr/ps/intensity.png (http://leander256.free.fr/ps/intensity.png)
we can see that for the same angle alpha between the ground * and the crystal, the character can be on different levels **. But they aren\'t at the same distance from the crystal. So we can use the intensity of the crystal\'s attraction *** upon the compass to compute an approximate distance from it. And as we also know the angle, we can without any error compute on which level we are.
Note that it can also explain how your triangular compass works. This brings us to another crucial discussion: How precise must the description of the world be? If it\'s not precise at all, magic devices can do everything and anything, they just work and we don\'t know why (computers? ;)), the world then seems \"messy\", anything can happen anytime. On the other hand, in a too much described ad explained world, you can lose a lot of creativity freedom because you\'ll have many rules to apply and avoid conflicts between them (and of course once one is established it\'s very hard to change it). Once again it\'s not up to us.
* actually a plane orthogonal to the line passing through the character and the gravity center of the world.
** I will consider that every level is flat, i.e. the world is a plane and not a sphere, same kind of simplification used when designing small buildings for instance.
*** decreasing proportionnally to the square of the distance, like many (every?) forces.
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We still had a problem with the compass because a compass alone can\'t give you your coordinates
Well this is true IRL as well, and I don\'t see what the problem is.
Lynx_lupo pointed out the fact that newbies get lost even in the dungeon right now, so giving them a tool to be able to find back their home would be a good idea. IMHO, it\'s players\' own problem if they aren\'t prudent and get lost, maybe they could pray some deity to give them help (understand: \"/shout some GM please help me i\'m lost!\"). So we somehow went beyond an idea for a compass and tried to include other devices giving a more precise location. We could even change the definition of the word compass in Yliakum in order to describe perfectly our devices :)
Maybe we can solve the newbie\'s problem by selling a whole set of compasses: The more precise, the more expensive. So the newbies (who are usually poor) could still find their way back to some big city, while experienced adventurers could find a cave\'s small opening in the middle of a virgin forest.