PaxLair Player Owned Town Scene Design and Test

We did not use Unity it was a regular drawing done to scale showing elevations, etc.

 

Hail everyone -- Winfield here for PaxLair,

I am working hard to roll out the design approach we used for the PaxLair Metropolis and connections to four other adjacent/local PoTs (they will be hopefully accessed through PaxLair).

First a bit of Thanks:

I must thank the following people in PaxLair who made this PaxLair design possible:

• Ashlynn - our Cartographer who painstakingly took my MS Paint map and turned it into artwork so we could visualize what was in our minds. She put up with all our changes too!
• Sean Silverfoot - our City Manager who worked with our PaxLair veterans and new residents; and also owns a PoT.
• NANOC - our Captain of the Guard who interacts daily with all our PaxLair veterans and figures out our combat strategies; and will run one of the PoTs.
• Themo Lock - our new-found friend and leader of Pax et Veritas who is so vibrant and active everywhere; also owns 2 PoTs.
• Pindar - an officer of Pax et Veritas kindling a lot of great spirit in our community; also owns one of the PoTs.
• Oh and me? - Winfield - I just wanted a scene with a fishing pond (with fish in it) -- well worth the investment I say. "Bait my hook, cast my line! Fishing is my way of life!"

Scheduled Events and Discussions:

I have scheduled the following events April 1 - 30, 2015 (through the beginning of Release 17) to be able to talk about the PaxLair PoT test and how things are going. See the usual Calendars or come back here.

PaxLair Working Hours (PoT Test Ideas) - host Sean Silverfoot​

When: Wed, 2pm - 6pm Central US Time​

Where: PaxLair, Valemark​

Description:​

Special Topic - Come one and all to PaxLair in Valemark. This is an in-game opportunity to talk about the PaxLair PoT Test for R17 and more things about Player Towns and PaxLair too. /zone Sean Silverfoot​

See: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...paxlair-player-owned-town-test-for-r17.23963/​

PaxLair town and community "working hours" are for anyone interested in PaxLair. We will be in New Britannia doing things as a town when many people can work together. Sean Silverfoot hosts this working period. / zone Sean Silverfoot​

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PaxLair PoT Test Chat​

When: Wed, 7pm – 8pm Central US Time​

Where: #PlayerOwnedTowns, SotA IRC Chat (map)​

Description:​

irc.ultimacodex.com:6667​

#PlayerOwnedTowns​

We will discuss the PaxLair PoT Test for R17 and more things about Player Towns. See the SotA Forum thread of discussion here:​

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...paxlair-player-owned-town-test-for-r17.23963/​

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PaxLair PoT Test Chat​

When: Thu, 6am – 7am Central US Time​

Where: #PlayerOwnedTowns, SotA IRC Chat (map)​

Description:​

irc.ultimacodex.com:6667​

#PlayerOwnedTowns​

We will discuss the PaxLair PoT Test for R17 and more things about Player Towns. See the SotA Forum thread of discussion here:​

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...paxlair-player-owned-town-test-for-r17.23963/​

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PaxLair Working Hours (PoT Test Ideas) - host Winfield​

When: Sat, 9:30am – 11:00am Central US Time​

Where: PaxLair, Valemark (map)​

Description:​

Special Topic - Come one and all to PaxLair in Valemark. This is an in-game opportunity to talk about the PaxLair PoT Test for R17 and more things about Player Towns and PaxLair too. /zone Winfield​

See: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...paxlair-player-owned-town-test-for-r17.23963/​

PaxLair town and community "working hours" are for anyone interested in PaxLair. We will be in New Britannia doing things as a town when many people can work together. Winfield hosts this working period. /zone Winfield​

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All Player Towns Gathering R17 - host Winfield in PaxLair, Novia​

When: Sat, May 2, 2015, 4pm – 6pm Central US Time​

Where: PaxLair, Novia​

Description:​

The All Player Towns Gathering will take place in the PaxLair Metropolis in Novia. /zone Winfield​

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PaxLair PoT Design:

Now I wish to give you a quick impression of how our PaxLair town design went from start to finish, but I am leaping over all the intermediate steps today. There is a lot we will tell you over the next few days. Sean Silverfoot, my City Manager, has worked with me hand-in-hand during this process, so he knows a lot. Talk to him too when you see him.

Our total scenes will include at least:

• PaxLair City (Metropolis) - non-PVP - connected to overland map
• Lockbrier (Crossroads Village) - non-PVP
• Golden Cove (Hamlet) - non-PVP
• Tenakill (Holdfast) - non-PVP
• Dragons Watch (Holdfast) - PVP

On/about April 9, 2014, I sent the following MS Paint image to Richard Garriott (Lord British) when he asked if PaxLair was planning to build it's town in Novia (PaxLair exists in Old Britannia [Ultima Online] too and continues to thrive there for the past 17+ years). I had no idea what journey this simple little MS Paint drawing created in an hour would become. You will see some "ruins" in our PaxLair Scene, which will be from our specific PaxLair history (we hope).

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April 9, 2014 - PaxLair Initial Town Concept in MS Paint​

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... skip ... a ... few ... steps ... to ... be ... covered ... in ... more ... detail ... soon!​

Fast forward now to March 30, 2015 at Portalarium HQs in Austin Texas. I came prepared for a PoT ingest session with the designers (a bit nervous). Ashlynn took the MS Paint vision we had and turned it, and churned it, through many variations, into a great drawing before I brought it to Portalarium.

Powered with my laptop, I sat with developers and they showed me how they design things, create things, and make our dreams come true. Of course, then they showed me practical limits on their time, approaches, and customization. I get it ... I have worked in factories, on assembly lines, in design shops, engineered solutions of my own, and more over the years. So my laptop and I got busy, and my phone connected to Sean Silverfoot.

Before dinner with one of the Devs - Scottie Jones [Thanks Scottie!!] (Oh, the Devs are real people -- they eat like us and enjoy many stories and tales!) ...

... where was I?? ... I was able to adapt Ashlynn's map, move our buildings around, adjust the NPC buildings and statues, and understand what it takes to customize an NPC story and script (which we still need to work on!).

The current outcome is the following map image. He rotated our MS Paint version 90 degress counter-clockwise to match where we would like our scene placed in Novia.

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March 30, 2015 - (Thanks Ashlynn!!) PaxLair near Final Concept in Photo Shop / Paint Shop Pro​

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Where will PaxLair Be in Novia?

We requested the NE quadrant. In the draft questionnaire, I submitted a specific location. Based on our biome (forest) we may get placed in or near the location shown below. I realize specific placement can depend on proximity of other towns, biome, features, and many more factors I don't pretend to know or understand. Novia is a BIG place!

So here is an image of where we submitted to be placed on the Novian map (see the BLUE dot, I painted in an overland road for convenience).

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Requested Design Location of PaxLair in Novia​

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And below is our ultimate desire for what PaxLair might look like for Episode One!

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March 30, 2015 - PaxLair Requested Scene​

(Yes -- we desired a cave entrance to Dragons Watch, our PvP zone!)​

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Design Oportunities, Limitations, and Ideas:​

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What you see above was tailored late Monday (March 30) after understanding more about the design opportunities and limitations for our Player Owned Town scenes.​

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NPC buildings need to be clustered except for for guard houses, and hopefully graveyards.​

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Lots will be clustered a bit and placed onto highly-leveled-ground areas around the scene templates. This will help us ask for specific lot sizes and locations. Soon, I will show you how we did this for the PaxLair scene.​

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The PaxLair Scene is intentionally created to also be re-usable for PoT owners, whether Holdfast or Metropolis. We will show you the "template" that may be created from the PaxLair scene and how you might adapt it for your town. This is all part of the test to Release 17.​

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Don't forget to check the events calendars so we can meet in game or in IRC to talk more about these ideas. I am also on TeamSpeak on several servers.​

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My friends,​

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I have very high confidence that our Player Owned Towns will be well worth our investments and satisfy our desires to build the best communities in any online RPG. I saw the Developers pour their hearts into ideas, game development, and efficiencies to make the best game ever for this genre. We will have fun! I'm all in.​

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I am sure you have a lot of questions and we will answer all that we can. Ask as much as you desire on this forum thread and see us in the game and in IRC chat. We will publish more on the template design, NPC stories and scripts, etc. soon!​

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Thanks for listening and please see Sean Silverfoot or me (Winfield) for more details.​

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Cheers!​

 

Wow, the 'limitations' don't show at all to me.. This looks amazing!
Thanks for sharing, I bet many PoT's will appreciate using this template.
Looking forward to more detail.

 

DS and Winfield,

Let me add to Duke Vallas's appreciation. We also have a large community holding their breath over this topic.
So Winfield and Paxlair , thank you very much for sharing your experience to help make this smoother for the rest of us.

Dark Starr thank you for your standard brilliance and most importantly patience.

Stands and Salutes!

Night Fury

 

Winfield Thank you for this in depth insight of the creating of the paxlair pot scene. The outcome is just amazing. You guys have indeed a homey place in novia.

 

Lord British must sure be jealous that your city is in before his.

 

It is really exciting to witness such an ambitious player devised plan, within such an ambitious game project.

Hats off to Portalarium and the PaxLair community for this joint endeavour. It really shows the openness of the development model used by devs.

 

Looks great Winfield! I'm looking forward to talking with you about it, you've brought the design together brilliantly my friend.

 

That's great Winfield. Love the April 9, 2014 map having "Old Ruins" and "Old Orc Fort Ruins"

 

This is really, really awesome. Loving it all! Looking forward to seeing this first hand in R17!

I am however very curious as to how a Metropolis template can be used for everything from Holdfast to Metropolis. Are you saying that we would pick areas of this large map that looks "kind of" what we want and build from there, or take POI sections and puzzle piece them together? Very confused about this whole statement.

 

We'll cover this, as Winfield unfolds this in an organized manner.

 

Winfield, as you know the founding of PaxLair is going to be a significant event in the history of Novia. As will all player owned towns.

I hope PaxLair has commissioned enough bards and scribes to document this properly. I would be interested in seeing a book of non-fiction commemorating what is transpiring here.

 

there will be many many books (fiction and non-fiction) documenting these events

 

As one of our Publisher's (Themo Lock) has said. We plan on documenting everything, doing the things we missed in the early years of PaxLair, when we had NO idea we'd be together 17-18 years later. It's actually a major part of our plan. Also one of the reason's PaxLair will use E1 as a settler period allowing us to RP/build our history here, we want it to be organic, not scripted. We figure , as a city, we should catch up to current times in game, by E2.

It's going to be an interesting ride.

 

Pfhew dang it, lot of work! Lot of info too! Thanks for both.
Any more details on the process coming soon? I am really courious. Got a PoT too.

 

Yes as posted above we're doing everything we can to be transparent and get the info out and ideas back to the team. Winfield will continue to add to the above with everything we have, so it will all be laid out in a readable format.

Winfield is good at that, as for myself, I'll just keep throwing things at ya till your eyes glaze over

 

Hehe, fair enough.
I will keep an eye on it.
Thanks!

 

Winfield (or other PaxLair members), is that a Moon Tower at spot N14?

If yes, why did you decide to use that as your Monument? What's it do? Are there any upkeep costs?

 

I believe there are 3 monuments in that drawing.

 

yes it is a moon tower, there is no new information on blessings as far as i know yet.