 Dungeons - How Many is Enough? |
Deeza
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Registration Date: 2008.06.03
Posts: 1,066
Location: Procrastination
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| Dungeons - How Many is Enough? |
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This is a general question that I think we should all think about.
Basically, how many ruined castles, caves, mines and so one can we fit into the landscape without making it too crowded?
I'm not saying we should have a strict limit or anything at such an
early stage of development, just that we come up with a general plan of
how many of each dungeon type we can reasonably hope to include.
What does everyone think about this?
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2008.10.15 12:46 |
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Deeza
Editor
Registration Date: 2008.06.03
Posts: 1,066
Location: Procrastination
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I realise that, but unfortunately for me, I can't model or even texture. 
And so at this stage I'm left twiddling my thumbs, collecting lore and
trying to figure out which things will be important further down the
line... 
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2008.10.15 13:26 |
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The Old Ye Bard
Princess
Registration Date: 2006.05.25
Posts: 3,663
Location: Post-Feminism
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| quote: |
Originally posted by Deeza
I realise that, but unfortunately for me, I can't model or even texture.
And so at this stage I'm left twiddling my thumbs, collecting lore and
trying to figure out which things will be important further down the
line...
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What you could do is compile a list of Important Dungeons, and place them on a map 
That way it makes it a lot easier later (when Gyssar finishes the
Height Map, I'll be making an ingame map of that, I'll then put a grid
over that for all the cells in the game, and map the dungeons listed
onto it, ready for claiming
).
A list also helps me to sort out what models need to be made for Dungeons
(either by other modders, or as is most likely, be me myself, as most of the modeling work here is falling to me atm).
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2008.10.15 13:43 |
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Deeza
Editor
Registration Date: 2008.06.03
Posts: 1,066
Location: Procrastination
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Good idea.
I'll make a start on that.
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2008.10.15 14:03 |
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Braggi
Seigneur
Registration Date: 2006.09.23
Posts: 287
Location: B.C. Canada
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Just wanted to drop in on this one gang.
As far as how many dungeons, we may want to keep in mind the size of
the height map as a factor. Once we know, physically (meaning how much
area is there in-game) we have to cover, we can then start designating
how much to inlcude.
In fact... this whole topic ties into a much broader one that we can
look at here - namely: How are we going to start putting everything
together on the height map? I like to be fairly organized in how I do
things, both personally and in a group.
Unfortunately, I have never put a mod this big together before and have
never had a chance to give this sort of thing much thought yet. (The
original mod certainly hadn't gotten as far as we have in terms of
conceptualization for the province - and we have done it in far less
time through a combination of building from the old mixed with much
creativity and good team work!) So, the question I have is: what do we
start placing first?
If we can put together an idea of how to assemble High Rock from all of
the excellent Lore research that everyone has been doing here, we can
then get down to quantities of dungeons, cities and so on.
Roughly, I see it this way:
1. Get the HM done and into the CS.
2. Break the map into sections for development, based on the size.
Now, from here, I am at a bit of a loss. I know the following need to
be done, but not what order, if indeed there is a "right order" to them
in:
- Place the 9 major city locations.
- Place the major towns and villages.
- Add in dungeons.
- Landscaping and unique features.
- Add in quests.
- List and organize the things I've missed here as well.
This also brings up the question of playtesting. I know a bit about
this one from experience - we need to do this to ensure that the mod
doesn't have all sorts of oddities to it. Indeed, I expect a few with
the radiant AI from Oblivion - some of which may be amusing. An example:
When creating the prototype HM this summer past, I didn know about the
"COW" command to get to a new worldspace at first. So, I dropped in a
door from the Imperial city. I also didn't know to mark the door as
"low usage" in the CS to prevent anyone else from using it. Result? An
NPC followed me into High Rock once, then just wandered around. Scared
the gee-wilikers 
right out of me when I bumped into him after wandering around the empty map for about an hour of real time.
Getting back to my point, we'll need to do extensive play testing to
make certain that quests, factions, architecture, magic items and so on
all work right. I think we should be doing multiple tests regularly as
we go along - and the more people we have testing and sharing their
information, the more bugs we're going to catch and fix while they are
still "in the wild" so to speak (i.e. before the mod is released.)
So, I suggest we kick this one around. The mod will benefit from the experiences of all of us. Over to you folks...
Thoughts?
This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by Braggi: 2008.10.15 21:28.
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2008.10.15 21:27 |
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Deeza
Editor
Registration Date: 2008.06.03
Posts: 1,066
Location: Procrastination
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There's a specific reason I brought the dungeons up here, because
unlike the cities, we actually already have pretty much most of the
resources we will need to make them.
Futhermore, dungeons are quite quick and easy to do (relative to
exteriors), and can be done in any order because they are interiors, so
we can have many finished (and playtested) dungeons that just need
linking up via doors once their corresponding location in the map has
been finished.
Similarly, quests can be done at any time in the process, because the
scripting can be done before the objects and NPCs it relies upon are
placed. |
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2008.10.19 12:34 |
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The Old Ye Bard
Princess
Registration Date: 2006.05.25
Posts: 3,663
Location: Post-Feminism
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| quote: |
Originally posted by Deeza
There's a specific reason I brought the dungeons up here, because
unlike the cities, we actually already have pretty much most of the
resources we will need to make them.
Futhermore, dungeons are quite quick and easy to do (relative to
exteriors), and can be done in any order because they are interiors, so
we can have many finished (and playtested) dungeons that just need
linking up via doors once their corresponding location in the map has
been finished.
Similarly, quests can be done at any time in the process, because the
scripting can be done before the objects and NPCs it relies upon are
placed. |
But, we can't really do them before the exteriors, because we don't
know how many we will need -also I would like to have a go at making a
differnt type of cave set, and also some other bits and pieces.
Dungeons can be made later, planned now IMO. We can work out the ratios
of what dungeons we want in High Rock (for example; 20% caves, 10%
mines, 10% ice/glacial caves, 40% abandoned castles, 5% forts, 5% Elven
Ruins, 10% crypts), we can gather the lore for important castles, and
we can also do concept art for dungeons (either the imporant ones
needing new detail models as extensions to pre-existing sets, or for
entirely new dungeon sets).
Misc Quests should be done quite later on, to suit everything already
made, rather than modders having to look back at quests and modding to
their design (which is a lot harder).
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2008.10.19 21:40 |
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Deeza
Editor
Registration Date: 2008.06.03
Posts: 1,066
Location: Procrastination
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This is exactly the kind of discussion I was hoping to start.
Actually, I don't know if you were plucking those numbers out of thin
air or not, but they look pretty much spot on to me, in terms of the
relative proportions. |
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2008.10.19 23:14 |
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