Oysters Entry [Map]

[TheOysterHippopotami]

My mapping entry is Underkeep, but I don't want to post the source material publicly so I have PM'ed it to Thothie. I will post screenshots later.

 

[Monika's_BFFEx0256]

A quaint little bakery with fresh bread baked daily!

The steps leading up to the Great Hall, practically the center of the city.

The Great Hall, where debates are made and mead is drunk.

The upper-class housing.

A sketchy alleyway.

The boisterous tavern with live bands, wonderful food, and even better drink!

What would a Dwarven city be without a temple to their god, Urdual?

An old water-wheel by the slums.

The shop of a crazed mage, one of my favorite pictures!

Could there be a ghost in Underkeep?

 

[Regorty]

Man, how do you get the brightness of those pictures so good? I take screenshots and they are always darker than in-game.

Also wooo!! Underkeep I cannot wait til it comes out!!!

 

[Monika's_BFFEx0256]

It's my computer's settings, I can see in pitch-black video games

 

[Regorty]

I hope that ghost stays, I've grown attached to the Ghastly.

 

[Monika's_BFFEx0256]

Let's just hope he returns

 

[Regorty]

Let's just hope he returns

*hugs the sad Ghastly* I hope he does too.

 

[ceriux]

this map looks really cool =3

 

[Monika's_BFFEx0256]

this map looks really cool =3

It really is, arguably one of the best maps in a decade. Only town map (aside from Sorc Villa) in that amount of time, too.

A shame it probably wont get put in-game because it requires too much work. :roll:

 

[Borya]

this map looks really cool =3

It really is, arguably the best map in a decade.

All aboard the ms_HYPETRAIN!

 

[Crow]

Awesome work! I love it. Thanks for bringing one of my old pieces to life : )

I will offer one tiny piece of criticism because I am a stickler for details , but really I always try to leave someone who is learning with something, and it says something that this nit picky thing was the best I could find.

That pick inside the tavern, you've got a lamp hanging from the ceiling by a chain. Instead of making it a box with the chain texture on four sides (looks kind of weird) make it 2d by having 2 separate brushes that touch on one face in the center of the lamp, where the plane would split the lamp in half, and apply the chain texture two the two faces that are touching. If that makes sense . Of course, then viewed at certain angles it looks paper thin, but I prefer that to what you have now. You could I suppose just take your brush and make it 1 unit thick, and then mess with the thin sides so that they line up with the texture, but that is a pain.

Anywho, it looks awesome and I wish I still had hammer set up, sometimes I still get in the mood to make maps : )

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

thanks for the feedback! I can help you set up hammer any time you like, if you don't remember how.

 

[Sataniac]

This map looks really beasty!
Keep it up my good sir!

 

[Everquest]

A shame it probably wont get put in-game because it requires too much work. :roll:

That is a mighty fine looking map! Has this been implemented into the game yet and if not why not? And why would it be too much work to add to the game? I mean isn't the mapper responsible for all content in said map and possibly the exits leading to other locations, at least until some thing else needs to be changed to fit the game play? Or is it because it is based on dwarves (Or so I gather.) and they are not set up properly and thus their city wont be in the game yet?

 

[Thothie]

The main dwarven city (Gatecity) is already in game, and has been since MSC's inception. There's plenty of dwarven NPCs running about, including Forsuth, one of the few recurring characters (and the only one fully voiced - although I guess Maldora is too now).

Plot goes that Underkeep has been cut off... It'll get in, eventually, at the moment there's tons o scripting and related decisions to be done and Oyster is still setting up some of the related connected maps. Getting to Underkeep, more or less, requires a rather nasty journey through several extremely nasty underground maps. Oyster wants all his maps cut off from the world and non-votable, so in the end, getting there will require cutting through the lot of them. (At least the first time.)

 

[Everquest]

The main dwarven city (Gatecity) is already in game, and has been since MSC's inception. There's plenty of dwarven NPCs running about, including Forsuth, one of the few recurring characters (and the only one fully voiced - although I guess Maldora is too now).

Plot goes that Underkeep has been cut off... It'll get in, eventually, at the moment there's tons o scripting and related decisions to be done and Oyster is still setting up some of the related connected maps. Getting to Underkeep, more or less, requires a rather nasty journey through several extremely nasty underground maps. Oyster wants all his maps cut off from the world and non-votable, so in the end, getting there will require cutting through the lot of them. (At least the first time.)

That all sounds great. But I would think all maps should be non-voteable anyway unless player testing. Why should anyone be allowed to by pass any of the content just to get to the goods? I would assume that would ruin the game.

Unless you have a server full of people minus one or two that want to go one place and the others to stay. But even then with the server count so small or the option to kick (I would assume...) would negate the need for a map vote anyway. And if it is unfair to kick someone for that reason, it would be unfair to force very low levels to a place they will be massacred time and again and thus would have no other optoon but to leave anyway. (Or high levels forced to stay with no exp advancement at a starting map.)

People should have to traverse the perils of the lands to get to their appointed journey. That is half the fun and was one of the many reasons why EQ got ruined. Not everyone, at least not at first or alone, should be able to see everything.

However having short cuts, either magic portals set up in most towns or transportation like Morrowind with the giant bettles with a harness and carriage should be ok. That would save for a very long journey and still not break the game because you still have to brave the world all around the towns. Maybe that is where all the gold could go to for vets (I believe it was Zeus who mentioned balancing the economy.) who have a surplus, where as the new people would need and should stay in the lower levels anyway because their money should go towards gear and items, unless hitching a ride at their own peril. Just some thoughts...

 

[MS:C community]

Why would people want to vote for maps?
...Maybe it has something to do with the fact that mapchanges sometimes take five (5) minutes.

And then I haven't even mentioned the fact that it's impossible to change map three or more times in a row without your client crashing.

 

[Regorty]

Why would people want to vote for maps?
...Maybe it has something to do with the fact that mapchanges sometimes take five (5) minutes.

And then I haven't even mentioned the fact that it's impossible to change map three or more times in a row without your client crashing.

If only they didn't, then everything would be awesome!! And there would be more hugs to give!!

 

[MS:C community]

However having short cuts, either magic portals set up in most towns or transportation like Morrowind with the giant bettles with a harness and carriage should be ok.

As for adding magic portals or "Morrowind beetles" (silt striders) to every map: You'd need to ask the mappers for permission to modify their maps. So send messages to Rickler, J, P|Barnum, evilsquirrel, Kuroneko, Joe, Thothie, Cat, CSS, Dridje, AmIAnnoyingNow, Furion, The Oyster Hippopotamus, Icewind, Crow, Srgnt Rehab, Lockdown, J-M v2.5.5, Father Brandon, Jon, Cyax, Caluminium, Regorty, LittleFrodo, Jester, Orpheus, Avoozl, L3ft_Turn, Larington, Ewok, Lanethan, dRkILL, replica, Lord Maz, Eirik, Kristoffer, Marctastic, SpiritVII and whoever else I forgot.

And another small addition to the 'players-should-travel-everywhere' thing... even if servers changed maps faster, it'd just turn into a bunnyhop fest. Veterans of the game would just zerg rush from transition to transition. Hell, I know I would. If I want to get from map A to map E I have no desire to waste my time in maps B, C and D...

 

[Thothie]

There's also the problem that map transitions crash maybe 1 in 3 times (each subsequent transition making both the server and client increasingly unstable), the fact that map change process is rough on the servers globally (risking hick-ups with FN when the Chicago servers are involved), and, maybe 1 in 50 times, wipes characters.

Waaay back in the day, we used to force folks to walk maps, and the result was pretty miserable. It repressed multi-player interaction pretty badly, as in order to join a crew on a running map, you had to either find an empty server or make your own, run and battle your character all the way to where they were, and THEN join them - by which time, they'd be done. It was painful even with 1/8th of the maps. (Keeping in mind that memory dealloc crashes during transitions were just as common, and if they happened, you'd get to start the process all over again.)

Additionally, about a third of the current maps are disconnected from the world, thus there's no way to reach them other than to vote.

Currently, a few of the map series, while you can join them in progress regardless of your own character's current location, require at least one member of the party to reach an appropriate transition to launch the next map in the series. The subsequent connections are non-votable, and will banish you to Oblivion if you force-change directly to them without touching the connecting transition. This is usually to provide a gauntlet-style series or secret/hidden map setup, though occasionally, it's just done out of protest (such as with Oyster's newer maps).

I don't work on lengthy or addictive single-player games as a matter of personal principle, so any mechanic that makes it harder for players to get together is doomed to die under my watch (save when it's a bug I canna figure how to murder, damnitall).

 

[Everquest]

Actually when I wrote that last bit in, I was still thinking of it being where every person can go where ever they like, opposed to still being at the whim of the majority.

That being said even if you did map votes it should still only take you to the closest (friendly) town, (Before I knew of the maps/servers crashing) not to any map of your pick and choosing. Otherwise it defeats the purpose of even having exits in them or for some to even exist. People would or "do" just warp anywhere.

As far as maps crashing after every three or so changes, I have had no experience with that so I can not comment on it nor have I ever had to wait for five minutes between transition when I played. However after a certain update from SC, they had a similar problem. I am not sure if it was server, client or player side error, but it would boot people out when they changed maps. They could instantly rejoin, but it was a problem for a while. I believe they fixed it however. Maybe two different things entirely, but perhaps something they did could help with your issue.

And if portals or other modes of transportation were to be added, would that not be a game wide issue? Thus regardless of who asked or got permission, it would still need to be implemented. Other wise if you made a new helm, sword, potion or any other mundane item or replacement texture to make the game run better and decided to place them, unless you only used them or placed them in brand new maps, (Which makes no sense.) you would need permission from Rickler, J, P|Barnum, evilsquirrel, Kuroneko, Joe, Thothie, Cat, CSS, Dridje, AmIAnnoyingNow, Furion, The Oyster Hippopotamus, Icewind, Crow, Srgnt Rehab, Lockdown, J-M v2.5.5, Father Brandon, Jon, Cyax, Caluminium, Regorty, LittleFrodo, Jester, Orpheus, Avoozl, L3ft_Turn, Larington, Ewok, Lanethan, dRkILL, replica, Lord Maz, Eirik, Kristoffer, Marctastic, SpiritVII and whoever else you forgot, otherwise you couldn't add any of it, is that what you are telling me? :| You would not be fundamentally changing their map, only adding an object in it.

And you had to find an empty server, get to the map they were at from another server, get out of your ownserver and then join their server just to play with them Thothie?

And if this is the only way you can get servers/game to work, then you have to do what you have to do.

 

[Thothie]

Well, I could add some little flying chariot or Hyperion fast-travel machine that spawns to next each map transition or some crap, but it'd be adding another model to the precache count for no real reason, as the effect would be the same. (Though a few of these maps dead end in such a way that there's no way to return to said spawn point without suicide.)

The only root towns are all pretty close to each other on the world map, with maybe one or two maps between each, so while there is actually a server-side option to only allow voting for root towns (currently Edana, Helena, Deralia, and Gatecity), it doesn't help the situation any.

Map transitions are just dangerous all around, and I see no reason to risk the servers, characters, and annoy the players, by forcing them to go to places other than where they are going to play, save when its a series of maps leading to a greater end goal, a fairly well hidden map, or one that requires special conditions to access.

 

[Everquest]

Considering the situation with the map/server/game at present I agree. But if it is because some level 30 thinks it is beneath themself or a waste of time to traverse the maps that people made I do not, but that matters not.

If the game worked as it should, I would say go for the root towns only map voting and if the little extra portal /transportation entities did not over whelm the server, do that instead which I would assume would only add to the lore of MSC. But since the game/server can not, do what ever is best, which I am sure you have been doing all along.

But as a mapper, you can request being non-voteable, at least anything but the first map in the series for game play aesthetics?

 

[Thothie]

But as a mapper, you can request being non-voteable, at least anything but the first map in the series for game play aesthetics?

Currently, a few of the map series, while you can join them in progress regardless of your own character's current location, require at least one member of the party to reach an appropriate transition to launch the next map in the series. The subsequent connections are non-votable, and will banish you to Oblivion if you force-change directly to them without touching the connecting transition. This is usually to provide a gauntlet-style series or secret/hidden map setup, though occasionally, it's just done out of protest (such as with Oyster's newer maps).

Yes - though sometimes this gets abused a bit.