Navigation through New Britannia

N0, not the only one.

A few people are concerned with what the map's deeper issues and what the map 'will be' a long long way down the road.

Some are quite willing to choose the art style and support and the rest seem to just be posting various types of preference in some small way without really concerning themselves with deeper issues and trying to figure out what kind of real problems there might be with the whole map - nothing wrong with that.

I just hope to convey the message that cloth or 3D, either way there is lots else to talk about and art things are usually what is done last.

 

I'm really not seeing this....I'm pretty sure this was never going to be a dodge around FF map system you want....

 

Something like in Storm of Zehir would be great, but we will see how movement will be handled on the map. If it will be hex by hex I would be ok with that, too.

 

Maybe not, but it definitely had free movement in the earlier videos, you could see by the way the avatar walked and changed direction, so WASD movement is not off the menu.

 

3D Avatar animating and walking around in the overworld.
I think it would be ok to keep the simply avatar that's carrying his coat of arms. will be easier to identify other people that way.

Roving encounters that you can see moving around the overworld. If you intersect with them you are pulled into a scene.
it's enough if the animation keeps to individual hexes hinting what you may meet in that place. If you see deer's prancing around, you suspect can be good hunting grounds for skinning.

Would be practical with a option 'follow leader on hexmap' to make Party's move more coherent but let the command to enter a hex/city be your own.

 

Depending on the scale the coat of arms could either be displayed on a cloak the Avatar is wearing as well as a shield that always faces the "camera" - similar to how the ears of Mickey Mouse always face the viewer.

If the Avatar is displayed rather small to fit more with the rest of the environment then he could carry a standard with the coat of arms on it - but you should be able to toggle showing the standard as in single player mode having such a standard wouldn't make much sense.

And I hope that animals and monsters roam around more freely on the map and not just on one hex...

 

It would be quite easy to do. You just map the actual player's position to a specific point rather than a 3D or 2D object. The trouble, though, becomes that it can be difficult for a player who is on the border of a hex to tell what hex he or she is in. If they choose to allow WASD movement on the map, which I do think is a good idea, I would also like to see a hotkey that works on the map that would force your character to walk to the center of whatever hex you are in. That way you can be sure you're entering the right hex when you click to enter.

 

A hotkey toggling the hexes would work, too. You press the key and the hexes are displayed so that you know where you are and where you have to go to to enter the hex you want.

 

Suggestions are welcome of course, but we should always keep in mind, SotA isn't a game commissioned by the community. The game should implemented the visions of Richard Garriott and his team instead. The return of the 3D map could be owed to a legal uncertainity because the map was shown in the KS campaign. Just to prevent Portalarium for a possible claim to recourse.

 

I sincerely doubt that is the case AT ALL. Portalarium has a long history of listening to it's backers and modifying the game accordingly. Just because one extreme jerk threatened to sue, doesn't mean the decision revolved around that in any way.

People are blowing that part of the original post way out of proportion and applying where it doesn't belong, imo.

 

Why can't it be both? It was obviously the original vision of the developers to have a 3D map. I say this is obvious because they chose to show that as their prototype in the Kickstarter. Now Cir is right on one hand because crowd-funded projects that begin with Kickstarter are obligated to fulfill their promises or risk losing their Kickstarter money. However, those standards were set in the first place because that was what the developers wanted to achieve. When the 3D map vanished in R4, lots of people were upset because they felt the art direction had changed in a way that they did not like, and there was an outcry. Later we learned that the change was made for technical reasons, and now Starr tells us that the ultimate goal is to return to a 3D map. This seems to be both well in line with Kickstarter "promises" and with player feedback. I'm not sure you can (or should) separate the two, as in reality they both derive their consequences from the same source, which is player feedback.

But Cir, the fact that the game isn't commissioned by the players doesn't mean that players should avoid giving feedback. The game's success will hinge on the players' opinion of it, and it's part of the trick of designing a good game to balance those opinions with the developers' internal ideas of what makes a good game. Of course, feedback is valuable to that process of estimation.

As for the idiot that threatened to sue, that's just plain stupid. There is no legal justification for suit, and anyway you don't burn a ship because it has a bad sail. Most of us are here because we believe there is a great opportunity for a great game to be made, and all of us to a certain extent have put our trust in Portalarium to make that game. As backers, we're all on the same team. We should be working together to offer opportunities to improve the game, not threatening its creators. I believe most of the people here understand that, and I've seen a lot of great discussions come of it. Just, you know, along the way--mind the gap.

 

Please remember that at least initially, coats of arms are limited to Royal Founder and Founder backers of the Virtual Collector tier and above.

 

Radar? ..... a magical thing that somehow sends a hovering sky-cam to scout what's ahead of me?
Knowing where my friends are? ... how would I ever get any privacy?
Law suits about a cartoon animation? ... this makes me wonder if I can still sue Tom and Jerry for having taught me how to hit my big brother over the head with a frying pan because my mom spanked me because of it...
Can the Darkstarr Moon Dial ever save us from anything or tell me where to go or how to get there? .... wait,
Maps ... oh yea maps; the digital age sure did changed things.....



Then there was a guy just like this at summer camp who took far too long to explain himself but did demonstrate where there's a will, there is a way;


As a spectator who has read all the posts here in this thread; I can say that I'm comfortable with whatever comes out of all this. I'm happy that others like me are also happy with whatever Portalarium decides on, "whatever that turns out to be" because I'm sure they have played with anything long before I have. But I also hope that those that do have better ideas that don't break the bank or delay the release of the game, have some ideas that were important enough to have caused me to have to renew my eye glass prescription from reading it all.

We used to have a joke when I was a young cross country map reading navigator that went like this; "If you can't find your way by using all the common methods of navigation, then just look at your map while shaking a tree to see which one moves on it"...
Anyway, I do hope that all I've read here means that, we are making progress, "together"


Because there's so much more to talk about...
(sorry about all the videos, but you really didn't want to read anymore of my rants, did you? )
~Time Lord~

 

Therefore I mentioned

 

Off topic (sorry). If I lived in a time zone that is a day ahead of the average poster here, could I register a "Like" before a post was even made?

 

One thing no one has mentioned is that a programmer left shortly after kickstarter...who was that and why??

 

Not without a time machine.

 

It was the guy who was in charge of the map! (Not joking.) I don't remember his name.

I haven't seen an explanation for why (it's not any of our business anyway), but RG and Starr both did say around the time that it happened that it was a friendly parting.

 

I so don't remember that...weird. They seemed all so close during the campaign.

 

I'm guessing it was Loren. He wrote a great article about his work on the overland map during the Kickstarter: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?p=9441