Burning Toad demos the first iteration of the Player Owned Town editor

Wow so cool sorry if I missed the question but is this Dev making POT or is it Player POT as in il get to do?
sooooo much awesomness

 

I love the direction this is going for Player Owned Towns!

I've noticed a lot of opportunities for emergent game play being baked into the SotA experience, and this community is perfect for exploiting every opportunity given to it.

Any POT steward will be able to place lot markers in a dynamic town (assuming the terrain is flat).

 

It is a nice feature for POT owners.

However, it does raise an important question. Is there a scope for the development of POT's? Or will features that were not originally planned keep getting added?

 

I really think that feature will save a lot of time for the Devs. basically the should just give you your desired location (If available) put in your POT property line then put all your extras in the bank (npc stuff and whatnot ) and let us have our way with our POT. Huge for both sides. Of course there might be a few guidelines be that basic idea is amazing and will attract many.

 

They should get more features since this will save 6 months or more of dedicated Dev time.

 

Why do I smell customizable housing for ep2 all of a sudden.

 

what id give
not too much more then the $2500 I put in already I hope lol

 

That estimate would need to be verified. I suspect the majority of time is in creating the biomes for each map size and not lot placement for each individual town. Plus you would need to know the time spent to create this feature, plus the additional future bugs and fix time it will generate.

But this is not my point. The question is whether there is a controlled understanding of the scope. POT's seem like a continually moving target at this point. I am still hoping for release of this game at some point.

 

I have to say, I do agree with you. I understand the need for funding and the extra revenue POTs have generated, but the realization that the project has been delayed because of an unannounced extra feature does burn a bit.

 

Once the templates are completed, then they can be selected. At that point everyone can do there own thing in their own town simultaneously instead of the devs working one by one on how and where people want to place their lots. It will indeed save time on doing over 200 towns one by one individually. This is a great accomplishment and will speed up the process greatly.

 

Really interesting feature.
So we will really see unique PoT created entirely by players

 

So will it be able to make a minimap of the custom designed town?

 

This is very impressive.

 

This is VERY exciting.

When the first PoT was built back in April (PaxLair), I witnessed first-hand the amount of time and pain for a PoT owner (me) to exactly lay out where houses were to fit on the template - I had to make drawings and more drawings and coordinate with my Stewards for the town, etc. Then after submission, I had the privilege to watch the Dev hand-place every one of those houses, check it, ask me about them (some houses blocked views I did not think about, and he had to move them again and re-patch), run it through the QA team, and then bake it all. I can't say exactly how long all that took, but for me as an owner, it took many hours (probably 10 to 20 to make the housing map to submit). I was stressed to think of possibilities for months ahead and what our growing town residents might want for housing, knowing I only had this one design session to get it right.

So the amount of time and effort used in the "static" method involves many people ... owners, players, and Devs. But the worst part for me is I can't change the town as the residents change or our story-line changes.

Now in the "dynamic" method, a town like PaxLair can sketch out some ideas with our Stewards and residents, place a few houses, walk around, tear things down, move lots, and settle on things ourselves at our own pace. Sure that now requires more time from us players, but I can also move things again in a few months as our town grows and changes.

Already, PaxLair needs to be changed due to our community of players/backers changing; and it will change a bit nearly every month before and after Release. We need another city lot to support a newly upgraded backer. We can't do that in "static" mode. But now we can with the "dynamic" mode. In fact, I want to add a Duke Keep lot to PaxLair for a period of time, but possibly not forever, to support some story-line ideas. With the "dynamic" method, I and my stewards make huge changes in just a few minutes.

So this tool can have many, many benefits beyond just physical time spent; it can allow us to grow our towns more organically and change things as our communities change too. It will let us keep our towns "fresh" and even support role-playing wars ("that section of town was destroyed and had to be relocated to the other side of the river!") and other events.

I like it!

 

Aye Winfield, you guys at Paxlair put in a tremendous amount of time doing the maps and lot placements. Paxlair blazed the way for the rest of us. I wish this would have been done sooner for you guys but I think actually you pushed the process to have it made by the work you did. Excellent work!

 

The player town editor is awesome and exactly what is needed. Let the players mark out their own town. Will save a ton of hassle and money. Many hands make light work.

This also means that towns can respond dynamically to player demand: we can supply the type of houses that players want. That's a massive win for pot owners and the community as whole.

 

+1

 

@OP: Fantastic!

Now if only there were a template that I wanted to use for my POT.

 

Messing with it a bit on QA, areas need to be PERFECTLY flat to place the lots which is a little bit of an issue with PaxLair template since it was not made with that in mind but the system is soooo much better than the other way. I love this !

 

I predict Avatars Radios will be adopted as the new navigation reference. You can see them for miles.