A Compass

[frumbert]

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.

[Jessyn]

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

[lynx_lupo]

For easier thinking we assumed that the stalagmite is in the pole.

[Jessyn]

but doesn\'t that just complicate things?

Jessyn

[zinder]

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.

[Elegrand]

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.

[Kixie]

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... :]

[Kixie]

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... :]

[Elegrand]

Yeah, I know thats not what everyones talking about. It was just an idea.

[Boldstorm]

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.

[Xandria]

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.

[Leander256]

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 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...

[Xandria]

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*



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.

[Leander256]

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

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.

-

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.