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SotAMap Acquisition

Discussion in 'Announcements' started by DarkStarr, Oct 18, 2017.

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  1. DarkStarr

    DarkStarr Executive Producer SOTA Developer

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    Greetings Avatars,

    Our original plan for maps in Shroud of the Avatar was individual hand drawn maps of various quality levels for each scene. These would be found, collected, quested after, etc. by the players and then could be used to navigate the world. We managed to implement a few of them but the scale of production involved in making them prevented us from staying abreast with the pace of the hundreds of scenes we were creating. They also failed to account for scenes with player housing that would dynamically change, sometimes dramatically.

    Then along came the incredible tool, SotAMap, created by community member Jakub White and contributed to by other community members. Using a Google Maps type functionality, this amazing third party external application maps the entire world of Novia and allows POT owners to customize their town maps.

    We liked SotAMap so much that we officially integrated it into the game in Release 40 back in March of this year. We quickly realized that this would be a fantastic solution to our problem of creating maps for every scene. After testing it out in the game for a couple of releases, we decided to approach Jakub about acquiring SotAMap so that we could make it a fully integrated and optimized feature of the game. We are very excited to announce that we have now come to a purchase agreement for SotAMap with Jakub White!

    This means we can now proceed with a large list of changes that will improve the experience of using SotAMap. These will be broken up into two phases. We hope to have Phase 1 complete by the end of the year and Phase 2 by Launch.

    Phase 1: Make what is there work better
    • Server Hosting: We plan to move SotAMap to a faster server with a better internet connection
    • House Data Automation: Right now house ownership data has to be entered by hand. We plan to automate this with the option to “opt out”
    • Map Creation: Get missing maps created (Outskirts, uncloned scenes from last few months, etc.)
    • Community: Restart community submissions of maps and customization of maps (POTs)
    Phase 2: Feature additions
    • Game Play: Quest locations (NPCs, objects), Exit locations, Stores & Services locations, Difficulty, Scene Type
    • Social: Party Members, Friends, Guildmates
    • Linux & Offline Support
    • Optimization: Examine the data and code structure and execute optimizations
    Let us know if you have any questions about us acquiring SotAMap! Stay tuned for more information about how you will eventually be able to contribute to the project. More updates to come soon!

    NOTE: Reordered some of the priorities and changed some of the descriptions of the tasks including adding "Offline Support"
     
    Last edited: Oct 20, 2017
  2. Dirk Hammerstrike

    Dirk Hammerstrike Avatar

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    Thank you Jakob! And very very good acquisition Port!
     
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  3. High Baron O`Sullivan

    High Baron O`Sullivan Avatar

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    Thank the Oracle. I wonder how much Portalarium spent to acquire this add-on? Best purchase so far!
     
    Last edited: Oct 18, 2017
  4. Brass Knuckles

    Brass Knuckles Avatar

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    Love it, hopefully Bladewyke will have sota map support. Ive been very jelous other towns have this feature and im optimistic Bladewyke will get it some point soon in the future.
     
  5. Umuri

    Umuri Avatar

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    Social needs to be opt out as well.

    Since Portalarium will now own SotaMAP, does that mean it's content is now under the same license of re-use that all the Shroud Content for dev+ is under? I.e. Can players now re-use SotaMAP assets as part of that package?

    I can't express how glad I am to see SotaMAP finally come under control of Portalarium, as any built-in-game feature that leaks player data should only leak it to portalarium servers.
     
  6. High Baron O`Sullivan

    High Baron O`Sullivan Avatar

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    • Community: Restart community submissions of maps and customization of maps (POTs)
     
  7. High Baron O`Sullivan

    High Baron O`Sullivan Avatar

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    So should gameplay. Won't be a challenge to find quest items anymore. Why explore and adventure? Just use the map to find that chest!
     
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  8. Dinsoo

    Dinsoo Avatar

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    Awesome! This is great news!!
     
  9. Curt

    Curt Avatar

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    How will this affect the pledge reward object 'Atlas'?`
    I would suggest it make it easier to check maps of other scenes than the one you is in.
     
  10. Drocis the Devious

    Drocis the Devious Avatar

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    I first heard about this watching a video from Sota-Con and I was very happy with the news.

    I think moving this internally, having Portalarium ownership, and supporting it with more features is going to be great for the game!

    I want to echo that having sensible opt-out features is something that is very important to PVP. If this game is ever going to have meaningful PVP then we need to always consider what the impact of social GPS-like functionality is. It's also very important to have the ability to opt out of the entire thing, for personal social reasons but also to support player backstory and player roleplaying. I hope that POT owners have a variety of options that allow them to customize what works best for their towns.
     
  11. Astor Cerberus

    Astor Cerberus Avatar

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    This implies that community submissions will be stopped at some point... As a POT owner, will I continue to be able to update my map? If not, when will my map be 'locked'? And, how long to you expect ti to remain that way?

    @DarkStarr
     
  12. Arcanoxer

    Arcanoxer Avatar

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    • Woohoo!
     
  13. oplek

    oplek Avatar

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    I knew I didn't make up the acquisition in some drunken stupor.
     
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  14. Drocis the Devious

    Drocis the Devious Avatar

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    In the future it might be good to have SOTA Map requirements as part of the POT form.
     
  15. smack

    smack Avatar

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    A few questions:

    What will be the solution for the offline mode?
    Will SotA Map be installed completely to the local client?
    Will there still be an in-game paper map of the world map (Novia, Hidden Vale)?
     
  16. Sheamus McGuinness

    Sheamus McGuinness Avatar

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    HUZZAH! Congrats to EVL member Jakub White on all his hard work on SotA Map!

    He worked so damn hard on that thing guys you have no idea. Jakub has been a long time member of EVL and we helped and support him in his endeavors where we could. I can't be more thrilled that the MASSIVE amount of work he put into this has paid off for everyone. Great job team!
     
  17. majoria70

    majoria70 Avatar

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    I am really happy about this too. Yay!!!! Since this game is a combination of a lot of rpg elements and multi-player elements there is always that to be considered. For the multi-player aspect the fact is people are getting lost and confused about what is where so I think this will help in that so much. The opt out for showing different things will have to do in this case. There cannot be an either or for a game that offers something for everyone or a little of something for everyone at least. ;) I had hoped for scenes on the map to show what is in them even if it is a mouse over. Like we have the devotionals showing. I know there are plans for more on this so we should stay tuned and give our feedback as we go. ;)

    As someone who got the maps and map holder as a pledge item I don't have a problem with this new decision at all. I hated not having a mapping system to help with the divided huge world. It was frustrating to me and I heard to many others.

    We need the tools to connect this world in meaningful ways as well, but I harp on that a lot. *hint* *hint* lots of fish and fishing updates, perhaps show on the over-world map fishing is in that scene, and even better ice fishing in Wizards Rest and snowy biomes, treasure hunting x marks the spot ;), trade routes, in game achievements and tasks ;) Sorry I could not resist. But I'm sure lots more is coming. I look forward to it and yay for not releasing this year.
     
  18. Daevin Aruth

    Daevin Aruth Avatar

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    Thanks for letting me know that Launch 'WILL NOT' be this year :cool:
     
  19. bloodydragon

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    Great news! I think this will be very helpful for casual players like myself!
     
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  20. DarkStarr

    DarkStarr Executive Producer SOTA Developer

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    We will be posting an update on expired rewards and their replacements later this month (2 week skill headstart, last name, map atlas) but in the meantime here's a sneak peak on this one:

    Players eligible for the Atlas reward will still receive the decorative Map Atlas object and even the few maps we made. However in addition we will be making a unique Globe home decoration that shows all of Novia and rotates when you use it.
     
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