Dawn's Keep: Please change orientation.

Please rotate Dawn's Keep 90 degrees widdershins to this orientation:



Addendum: The location names in the Grasslands template are, in many cases, tied to the map orientation. E.G. Northern Lake, Eastern Lake, Western Marsh, etc..

Will these be corrected when the map is rotated? If not, might I request that Mr. Hutchison change the names to something like Hidden Lake, Large Lake, Marshland, etc..

 

@Rufus D`Asperdi The current compass orientation of the scene is correct. We are unable to honor requests for individual scene customization. Many of these changes occur at a high level that would affect every scene that uses the shared biome. Thank you for reporting.

 

That is inconsistent with what has been done before... And Starr and Mike Hutchison expressed no concern over the request when I talked with them about it on Wednesday.

 

I am sharing current policy which I have verified with Starr.

It's true that in the past we may have accommodated this. But then many players began requesting any number of individual scene customizations for their towns. Moving teleporters, spawns, banks, etc. Within the last couple releases we have taken upon the policy of no longer supporting every request for customized scenes. Issues we can still address include changes to scene interconnection, upgrades, biomes, overworld placement, governorship, and any bugs that result from these. You, yourself, have brought up several issues that arise with unique customizations, like requiring developers to spend their time changing more than just compass orientation, but also adjusting every single Discovery point in the scene to reflect the changes.

We have plans in the future to give POT owners more autonomy through customization tools, which is slated for a later release.

 

So, the policy changed since late Wednesday afternoon?

 

The policy is what it's been for the last couple months. I have no more answers for you and can not speak for what conversations you had with our team on Wednesday, only what I know and have confirmed this morning. You are welcome to bring this up with them directly.

I trust you can appreciate our studio's dedication to forward-facing development and polish of new content that would be difficult to accomplish if we had to stop and revisit every change requested for individual scenes without reasonable limitation.

 

Until your response to this request, I had believed that this request was within reasonable limitation. My suggestion on the naming of the points of interest within the scene was not meant to be unique for me, but make remove the directional bias from the template, making it more generic, so that it might more easily be used in any orientation without further request for change being submitted by others who wished their template to be in other orientations. It was a suggestion intended to Decrease support workload in the future... Isn't that something we, as patrons of your employment, are supposed to be doing? Especially those of us with early access?

 

My response was a clarification of situations that commonly arise with respect to customized scene requests, not that your suggestion was inherently bad. In the event that we do at some point start allowing the granular level of scene alteration, your suggestion would almost certainly be the direction that we go with our naming conventions! I only meant to provide it as an example that often times changes require more work than originally envisioned, which can quickly get out of hand (and at one point did) if we keep the door open for every individual desire. Many would and had abused the system in the past. In an ideal situation, we would love to provide every request and more. I mentioned previously that we have plans in the future to provide customization tools for POT owners to provide greater autonomy and less reliance on us. While not originally part of that plan, I think the possibility of adding a component to adjust the compass orientation of a town would be a well-liked feature.

I apologize if my responses have been curt. Fluff doesn't complement bad news well. It seems as though the great offense here is that somewhere along the line there was a miscommunication about what is/is no longer allowed when you were speaking with us... Which is understandable considering the relative recency of this policy's implementation. I will personally speak with the team to make certain the change is more public and transparent to avoid any future confusion on both sides.

Thank you for your continued support and feedback as we all strive to make this game great. If there's anything more I can do, please do not hesitate to let me know.

 

Thanks you very much, @Attenwood. Yes, there appears to have been a miscommunication. It happens.

It would be good if there were some public documentation not only on what is and is not acceptable and possible with Dynamic templates, but the larger question is what are the bounds of what is possible or acceptable with Static templates. I've already mentioned this to Starr, but without some idea of what the limits of the customization we're able to request for Static templates are, we POT Owners are working in the dark, without enough information with which to make an informed decision about which path is right and appropriate for our towns.

People are forced to make assumptions... and that is one of the root causes of our current (Now put to rest) kerfuffle.

Anything you might be able to push forward with regards to documenting the bounds and limitation of both the Dynamic and Static template process would be greatly appreciate by me, and, I'm sure, the community at large.

 

Happily!

 

I'd like to throw in my 2 cents here as well - being a POT owner that's using the Grasslands template also.
- As part of these tools to make dynamic POTs more customizable, I would absolutely like to be able to change the compass orientation and the Entrance/Spawn point.
- As @Rufus D`Asperdi pointed out, changing the compass orientation would absolutely mess things up.

For instance, I would like for Bloodstone's compass to be rotated 180°, and for the entrance to be at the [currently] Southeast Exit. However, those POI and exit names would not be appropriate if the compass orientation changed. Therefore, I'd also like the ability to customize (add/delete/rename) the POIs in a scene. I feel that giving the owners such a tool to do all this would take less time to program than it would be for the Devs to honor everyone's requests right before launch.

@Attenwood would you kindly bring this feedback to the team?

Summary: "As part of the dynamic POT tools, we'd like to be able to change compass orientation, change the entrance/spawn location, and be able to add/delete/rename the Points of Interest."

 

An interesting thread here.

Can we get a description of the POT tool please? I would love to know what the Devs have in mind.

 

@The Cult Leader, @DarkStarr has indicated that more information should be forthcoming next week in this thread.

 

Thanks for pointing that post out - I missed it entirely. After all the excitement this week, I was beginning to fear that next week was going to be boring. Now I have something to look forward to! ^_^

 

@Rufus D`Asperdi @Kytail @The Cult Leader I've brought up to the team my desires for public clarification and your feedback for additional features. As you saw, Starr will be creating a thread next week to address the topic.

 

Thank you, @Attenwood. I appreciate your diligence.