StendhalRefactoringAtlas

Atlas

My (miguel) idea for world is as follows:

http://arianne.sourceforge.net/wiki_images/atlas/THM_stendhal_world_1.00.jpg
Image: Hand draw World map

100% scaled map

The yellow box represents the current world status.

Currently done world

Current world status is as follows (CVS tiled files as of 2005/10/29)

http://arianne.sourceforge.net/wiki_images/atlas/stendhal_world_0.40.jpg
Image: World map

I have found several points that need attention as they should be fixex:

1. In the north there is nothing.
   Let's be original and let's place mountains, a very big mountains, that hold something to illuminate world (just joking). We need to do some world expansion to north, so that player can explore there too.
2. We need to continue plains below the city road map, and mix that area a bit with forest.
3. This area could contain a dark forest, with lots of narrow passages between trees.
4. We need to continue forest to the effect is a continuos world.
5. A small peacefull forest
6. We need to continue forest to the effect is a continuos world.
   We need a hole on the forest in order to allow players to reach there.
7. This area is suitable for a dark forest too, but bigger and dangerous because habitants needed a castle to defend themselves.
8. Castle road should lead to somewhere.
   Perhaps we need to create an imperial lane that linked all the cities of the empire. There are parts of that lane at forest, so we perhaps can simply make valley to consider it.
9. We need to continue valley to the effect is a continuos world.
10. River there.

We also need interiors, perhaps has several default interiors for houses, instead of creating an interior for each one.

I have done a world expansion working on Steve's world map that is around 100-300 times bigger than actual world map. I will scan it and upload as soon as possible.

Naming

The actual naming scheme is simply not scalable. We need to adopt a naming scheme that allows proper single identification of the zone we are talking ( village is a bad example, semos_village is a better idea ).

Also we need the zone name to give hints about its position on the map.
For example 000000_000000_semos_village. It would mean that semos village zone starts at 000000,000000

This way we could automate the map creation and zone change feature.

Size

Currently the biggest map is 256x256 and it is the rat_dungeon_001. Maps can have any size, but big maps use many bandwidth on Sync perception, so we prefer smaller maps as 128x64 or 64x128, that are big enough for the player to move on them and it doesn't are a bandwidth waster.

On the other hand, if a map is not very visited we can use a big one like 256x256 or even 512x512, but keep in mind that if the zone gets crowded it will affect server bandwidth usage badly.