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Custom Static Player Owned Towns: Discontinued

Discussion in 'Announcements' started by DarkStarr, Jun 21, 2018.

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  1. DarkStarr

    DarkStarr Executive Producer SOTA Developer

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    Greetings Avatars,

    When we first created Player Owned Towns we estimated only a few players (30 or less) would be interested in this feature. Accordingly we planned on creating each town as a custom static scene, much like any other scene in the game. Amazingly, and wonderfully, we had ten times the response and over 300 of you wanted to govern your own towns. We quickly realized that the best thing we could do was to create a suite of tools that and a set of town templates that allowed governors to create their own towns and modify them whenever they wanted versus wait on us to create each one by hand. To date we have created nearly 60 different templates based on 8 different biomes (islands, swamps, forests, grasslands, deserts, mountains, snowy mountains, and underground). We have created a set of tools that give governors complete control of lot placement, lot sizes, town decoration, entrance designation, music, blessings, trees, and more.

    Based on the robustness of the tools and the variety of templates we have created we have made the decision to discontinue the option for Custom Static Player Owned Towns. Only Dynamic Player Owned Towns will now be supported.
     
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  2. Brass Knuckles

    Brass Knuckles Avatar

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    Dynamics are great, my only fear is pots all over the map as we expand into esp 2,3, 4 etc. And continue to sell player owned towns.

    And @DarkStarr are we still getting new biomes? Id love a cave that has a nice area in it kinda a hybrid.
     
    Last edited: Jun 21, 2018
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  3. Rufus D`Asperdi

    Rufus D`Asperdi Avatar

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    I don't understand this... There are no more POTs being sold, so the number of them won't be increasing until such time as a new continent opens up.
     
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  4. Fionwyn Wyldemane

    Fionwyn Wyldemane Avatar

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    All I hope for in the next Kickstarter is that Portalarium will use EP 1 for a learning experience and not make promises they can't keep going forward.
     
  5. Bowen Bloodgood

    Bowen Bloodgood Avatar

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    Yeah but continuing to do customs beyond EP1 just wouldn't be feasible. I think though that we can continue to look forward to more tools to make up for not having custom towns.
     
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  6. Brass Knuckles

    Brass Knuckles Avatar

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    I am not a proponent of customes, I think dynamics are great and its better for portal to only do those.

    They did say however the would add new dynamic biomes, I am hoping for those.
     
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  7. Stryker Sparhawk

    Stryker Sparhawk Avatar

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    When an art department reforms - which probably won’t be until Episode 2 - then maybe we will see this happen, but certainly not Soon(tm)
     
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  8. Brass Knuckles

    Brass Knuckles Avatar

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    Im in no rush, I figure ive got ten years or so to invest in sota.
     
  9. Alleine Dragonfyre

    Alleine Dragonfyre Avatar

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    This is fine! Please use your resources for the more important things :)
     
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  10. Winfield

    Winfield Legend of the Hearth

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    Dynamic POTs are perfect for me, and I hope for others too.

    I personally witnessed the tremendous amount of work Hutch had to go through to make one unique town (at that time, it was PaxLair for R17 in 2015). I also remember so many great, unique designs POT owners had envisioned for their towns. Wonderful designs.

    I then saw the developers confronted with design decisions for "amount of effort" for unique designs (weeks of work for each), versus creating templates (and more templates) with dynamic POT capabilities (initially house lot placement in flat spaces). The latter made much better sense, and opened the huge ideas for many more dynamic POT options that we've already seen.

    I can imagine the future may hold more dynamic options (like pick 4 fish spawning points in your scene ... including ice fishing (eventually) - that would all be so grand!).

    For me, all is good. I saw the design process personally, and the design trade-offs. It was quite interesting and educational to be directly involved. Thanks Portalarium and Hutch!


    Interested in 2015 history? PaxLair Player Owned Town Scene Design and Test thread (March 31, 2015 - 18 pages of interesting discussion)

    Here is an interesting excerpt from that design and test thread:

    On/about April 9, 2014, I sent the following MS Paint image to Richard Garriott (Lord British) when he asked if PaxLair was planning to build it's town in Novia (PaxLair exists in Old Britannia [Ultima Online] too and continues to thrive there for the past 17+ years). I had no idea what journey this simple little MS Paint drawing created in an hour would become. You will see some "ruins" in our PaxLair Scene, which will be from our specific PaxLair history (we hope).

    [​IMG]

    April 9, 2014 - PaxLair Initial Town Concept in MS Paint !!


    Does the above sort of look like the infamous "PaxLair template - Forest01" ? Working with Hutch, this became (and still is) a very versatile template POTs use. Now, even more completely different templates have been developed! Thanks!

    This all brings back to me fond memories of those good old Design days. More great Design days to come!!
     
  11. Solstar

    Solstar Avatar

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    Coastal Mountain Template please.
     
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  12. Duke Gréagóir

    Duke Gréagóir Legend of the Hearth

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    Yes, this bring back good memories.

    My Player Owned Town, Dara Brae, was the 4th Static POT introduced into New Britannia. The big difference is I submitted a design and they came back with a finished scene.

    Here is my Dara Brae submission. You can see this as the lower south west part of the original Island template. There is the duke keep island and the docks, the ring of stones area, the giant tree (Yew Tree it became), and the waterfall. The Nature Reserve area in Dara Brae is on the area I designed. Port added the larger area of the northeast on to my design.
    [​IMG]
    * copyright Duke Greagoir Pendragon, done in MS paint with a 27" touchscreen PC. Artwork done by my finger.
     
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  13. Lace

    Lace Avatar

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    I love the dynamic POT's. I can understand any dismay from those that wanted a dynamic one, but if you been governing a POT for any length of time, you have residents that want to live xxxxxx then they want to live at xxxx spot. So you tend to move plots around quite a bit at least on the outskirts of mine where my grids are not laid out. It gives your residents flexibility and I think they rock. Hugs to any disappointed on this.
     
  14. Rufus D`Asperdi

    Rufus D`Asperdi Avatar

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    I know there will be a few, but, from the breadcrumbs of information that've been dropped on the subject I believe there were fewer than a dozen Governors holding out for Static Templates.
     
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  15. hegpetz

    hegpetz Avatar

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    Thanks for being forthcoming and honest about this. It's totally reasonable and sounds like a smart move ultimately.

    Now any improvements to one part of the dynamic system get shared to everyone instead of having to be painstakingly replicated or a difficult and error-prone process designed and implemented for keeping them so.

    It is a shame for those that truly valued the static city as obviously there are some amazing things that could be done, but perhaps eventually the dynamic system will grow full featured enough to allow people to get back parts of what such a custom static template would have given them.
     
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  16. Drocis the Devious

    Drocis the Devious Avatar

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    The only reason I chose a dynamic player owned town was because I understood that Portalarium could not in good faith provide the type of "custom" experience I was looking for. I felt that it was an honest reality that deserved my help as a backer of the game. However, I do not feel the same way about the custom duke heads. Which leads me to believe that perhaps I was wrong for being so understanding of the custom POT.

    That said, it's clear that the custom POT's did have a viable alternative (dynamic POTs), where as the only alternative for custom Duke heads is a piece of paper and a stupid in-game item that LB and DS have literally handed out to people on a casual basis in the past.
     
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