Navigation through New Britannia

Greetings Avatars,

As many of you may have noticed, our current version of the map looks different than the videos of prototypes we showed off during the earlier stages of our project. It was also the first time any of you got to interact with it, and the functionality of it was less than what was in the videos of prototypes you had seen.

The combination of art style change and lack of some expected functionality caused some concern, which is completely understandable. A few vocal community members even called for a class action lawsuit against us. Please know that we take any threat of litigation or violence VERY seriously because it requires us to assume those events will happen. Please understand that any posts or chat that mention legal action or violence will be cause for banning. It is the same basic reason jokes about bombs in security lines will get you pulled off of an airplane. There is a more appropriate way to express those types of issues, by contacting us via support@portalarium.com.

With that out of the way, I would like to address some of your concerns and assure you that we have been paying attention. To make that happen I will try to explain how we got where we are today.

Our first attempt at the map was about trying to represent a very zoomed out view of the world with characters scaled up to gigantic size in a nod to the original Ultimas’ dual scale world. We were also attempting to automatically generate the terrain from data. We ran into several big issues.

The first was that the automatically generated terrain just did not look very good and we literally spent a couple of months trying to make it look better. It was not very flexible and the river and road pathways felt very “canned” and constrained, not natural at all. You can’t tell because of the lower resolution of the videos, but it really did not meet the standards we have for our visuals, especially the water. The next issue we ran into was scaling assets like trees, characters, etc. Simply scaling the assets meant for full scenes ended up looking really bad when they were shrunk down, and in most cases, did not work in that perspective.

Another issue we ran into was that the creature AI and pathfinding necessary to make the encounters work had to be completely different than how those systems worked in the main game. This made us very nervous about how much time it was going to take to make two versions of two major systems, so we started considering delaying some of those features until post Episode 1, which we mentioned in a video hangout.

It is also worth noting that the original programmer who worked on the map left soon after the Kickstarter campaign (it was a friendly departure!), and the map work fell on Chris, who’s plate was already quite full as the Tech Director! We got OneandOnly to jump in and work with Stephen Daniele to provide the version you have been playing with. The beauty of this style was that Stephen could create the map assets relatively quickly compared to the 3D assets we had been trying to use, so we are able to tweak and iterate fairly quickly. The team ended up falling in love with the style of the map, as it felt so much like the cloth map.

The experiment with the cloth map solution solved a lot of problems that we ran into (described above) and we hoped it would be a change the community would embrace but that was not the case as we have seen.

We have heard your feedback and we are in the process of trying our best to recreate what was seen in our prototypes but to a higher visual quality. We will need to delay other features and content while we do this work so expect more schedule changes to R7 and beyond.

Here are our goals for the overworld map for Episode 1:

• Zoomed out 3D version of the world
• 3D Avatar animating and walking around in the overworld
• 3D NPCs animating and moving around the overworld
• Roving encounters that you can see moving around the overworld. If you intersect with them you are pulled into a scene.
• Surprise encounters that pull you into a scene.
• Indicators on map of world state including towns under siege, PVP encounters, etc.
• Terrain Types determine movement speed
• Party members visible on overworld (both moving around and indicators of which hex they have entered)
• Obscurance of unexplored areas (i.e. fog of war or something like that)

It is worth noting that there are at least two activities on the overworld that we have never planned for nor do we intend to implement:

• Resource harvesting
• Combat

Post Episode 1 we would like to add things like vehicle/mounted travel.

Here’s a list of the work we need to do to make the overworld meet all these goals:

• Near Term:
  • Research terrain building tools that will work at that scale. Unity’s terrain tools are made for building human scale scenes
  • Create overworld scale versions of any art we want to use for that map including the avatar, creatures, trees, terrain, clouds, etc.
• Long Term:
  • Create new AI and pathfinding systems to support the overworld
  • Encounter System
  • World state indicators

While we would love to get a first pass of this done for R6, realistically you won’t see the 3D overworld until R7 at the earliest. As with everything we are making with the game you are getting to see things much earlier than people usually get to see, including features in very early iterations. This content usually goes through many, many changes before people get to see it whereas you, our backers, are participating at the earliest of stages. Thank you for your patience while we iterate and experiment with systems like this.

Sincerely,
Darkstarr

 

Starr, thank you for addressing this issue! I'm very glad to hear that work is continuing to improve the functionality of the map! I'm sure most of us realize that with the limited number of programmers you have that this will take some time and nasty messages from irate backers will not speed up the process. Keep up the good work

 

Awesome response.

Thank you DarkStarr and the rest of the Portas for making again a turn for the community.

 

Thank you for taking the time to respond. I think at least for me this really helped clear up the reasons for the change in the map style. I actually wasn't totally against the idea of sticking with the paper map. However I am thrilled you are all going to give the 3d map another go. Loving all the features you have planned and especially love that you are bringing back the 3d avatar!

 

Threats over the Nav map? What is this craziness? Personally, I could appreciate what was being done with the direction of the "cloth map" style. Would be nice to see the more finished version of what you had in mind so players give a proper chance to judge. It's not like could you could expect the map to be Civ 5 in detail where the entire game is the Nav map. Remember the sausage making process , remember the sausage making process.

 

Great post, well stated. I like the map as is, so the future improvement you listed are a huge bonus to me.

 

I don't get it either, but I respect people's right to their own opinion. (threats are never a good idea though)

 

This is awesome news. Once again you guys have heard the community's voice and responded to feedback. This is whats going to make the game incredible. Respect.

 

Thank you! I think that some of us were so vocal because we didn't hear much from the devs on this issue. We interpreted that as being ignored.

You're going way beyond what I was hoping for. I think this decision to upgrade the map will be better for attracting more people to the game.

Again, thanks for listening to us!

 

Will have a close Eye on the Guy who writes Articles on the german gamesites.

If he writes one more time that Shroud of the Avatar does not listen to the community i spam the gamesite to hell. grin

 

I think the map is coming along very well, given that this was it's sort of first release and all....
I actually like the style of it and hope that this same sense of style continues onto it's next evolution
Keep the sunny side up... that's all I have to say about using any map
Great Job Portalarium !
~Time Lord~

 

I wish you guys luck on finding a really good tool out there to make the small 3d map building process much easier.

 

This is great news! Thank you DarkStarr...

As I have said multiple times, take your time (within reason, hopefully no more than 9-12 months late) and release a high quality polished product and we will support you.

It's sad that this even had to be written, whoever you are you should be ashamed of yourself and I hope law enforcement is involved, enjoy your ban.

At the end of the day it's a game people...

Once again thanks for listening Portalarium!

 

Thanks Darkstarr for the planned "way ahead" regarding the map. The functionality ideas are awesome. I do not envy your job to balance the budget, capabilities requirements, schedule, and backer feedback to get us to Episode 1. I do envy that you get to work with a GREAT development team and GREAT backers EVERY day. Thanks much!

 

Great update and a peace of mind to the community.

 

Well it sounds runner than the current map

 

A good response that should help quiet a lot of voices for a time. Though I was never an avid representative for or against the current map system, I must admit that I did have my concerns where game immersion was concerned.

It is my hope that with these intended enhancements that this will no longer be an issue and that this will be our first step towards bringing a segregated world together into what will hopefully be one of the best games ever built.

As always my confidence in you and your colleagues is unwavering. Keep up the great work and know that there are many more positive voices than negative ones when it comes to believing in you and your team.


Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Thanks for the update!

On a side note, I was really starting to enjoy the cloth map look, although my preference is still for a 3D overview.

Is there any chance of having both elements in game? IE use the 3D overview map to show an expanded but limited overview of the surrounding areas (say a maximum of 4 hexes), and then if you zoom out more, you engage the cloth map view? This might give us a best of both worlds. Perhaps this could be a post Episode 1 option?

Thanks again for the feedback!

 

I would be happy with 2d portraits and basic icon representions

Makes sense to add PvP groups as possible other icons on the map?

Can encounters also be PvP encounters with 1 or 2 other groups on the map via the internet mode?

Is anyone opposed to having just the party leader in charge of movement on the world map? I don't see the need to have inter-party members with different icons or "3d animations".
Example situation would be to have a party on the world map - just one leader in charge of the location and the other players would somehow just follow. Maybe if non-leader players were somehow 'called' or just giving a message the the leader is on the world map waiting to travel OR maybe just given a timer counter that would give you extra time to stay where you are before being brought to your leader?

Then, if a party leader was in charge, the GUI of the world map could be hooked into the internet server and you maybe could see 1 or 2 other parties there as well. Maybe only specified opponent groups?

Then if 2 or 3 different groups could run around, the leader could even have control of the group and players could cast spells and blink and search or whatever - just have a bunch of commands that could add fun functionality.

Other things the leader could do is Blink, cast spells and move the whole party around the world.

Non-leader players could have chat and maybe to some emotes and generally just fulfill a role of being a party member. Bards for eample play music and have other roleplaying elements like acting.

Did you mean that there just won't be combat there or do you mean that can still start a new instance say if two different parties can intersect?

I would say that sounds good but that everything somehow seems more complex than it should be. I don't think we need 3d animations for the overworld - that doesn't make sense. 3d animation is in the instances themselves and the overworld map is 2d.

Pathfinding should be simple if the map just a straight forward pattern of hexes. Nothing complex but that it's needs to support the 'world' as a living environment with the server controlling everything and having designated 'actors' on the overworld as well as NPC's. I think it's really important to have a ONLINE representation of the world just like you mentioned with certain cities being under seiged or under control of other players.

If the over world can have good 'state' indicators that is great and I think you are on the right track.

I will be happy if you guys just focus on getting the map working well and try to iron out things related to groups and possible enemy groups as well as other NPC encounters and AI on the overworld.