Petition tochange the dual-scale map in Shroud of the Avatar to a monoscale map

I started an online petition to convince Portalarium to change the dual-scale map in Shroud of the Avatar to a monoscale map open world.

Please sign and spread the word

https://www.change.org/petitions/portalarium-change-the-dual-scale-map-in-the-rpg-sota-to-a-mono-scale-map-open-world

 

I won't register on yet another site just to sign a petition but I absolutely support your request and agree.

 

Not gonna register but i totaly agree with this idea

 

Same here.

 

Agreed.

 

I like the idea of the dual-scale map -- worked wonderfully well for the original games, and other classics like Fallout. This is not Skyrim.

 

Sure, but this should be Ultima and Ultima 6-9 as well as UO had a monoscale map which added a lot to the immersion and exploration aspects of the game world.

 

Id like to see a full open 3D world too, in the way MortalOnline or Darkfall are.

 

The biggest problem I have always found with any single scale map game over dual scale is that while things feel reasonable when inside of towns or cities, when going across the countryside at the same scale, I find it lacking in the sense of distance that you are actually traveling. Mountain ranges that should be hundreds of miles in size, for instance, end up feeling like they are no more than a few blocks across simply by being shown at the exact same scale as a city.

A reduced scale for cross-country traveling makes sense to me in that when not near any kind of settlement simply because the amount of graphical detail that is actually required to convey what environment the character happens to be in is simply not as great. It's nothing more complicated than the fact that when traveling across country, there's just not as much interesting stuff to see as when you're in a town. That's not to say there's not going to be anything interesting.... just that the distance between interesting things is going to generally be a lot further, so its rather difficult to justify using the same level of detail.

While I suppose that a game could, at least theoretically, all be done at a single scale anyways, having just as much detail when traveling cross country as there is when in a town or village, to create the vast sense of scale that can easily be found using a dual-scale game, you would end up requiring VASTLY larger amounts of storage for to encompass all of the geography that you could probably have gotten away with simply using a lower level of detail with. Owing to the fact that most of us here probably don't have several thousand terabytes of storage space on our hard drives on which to store all the detail that would be required to encompass a world of any real appreciable size, a reduced level of detail for cross-country travel just makes a whole lot more sense to me.

 

I agree with the 1st paragraph but "thousand terabytes " ?
Come on, probably just a few GBytes...

 

Next link leads to a video where Garriot explains quite well the two scale world system and why they decided to use it.


And here is another one .

 

Also: change.org?

Isn't that the site where if a petition gets more than X replies, the White House has pledged to issue a response to it?

Do we really need the White House opining on game design...more than it already has in recent weeks?

 

Agreed, but i would like to see something that keeps both scales, so if I want to explore and enjoy the vast nothingness, which I loved about UO because you never knew what you could stumble upon(animals, monsters, ruins, ect), then you can, or if your not in the mood to explore that day, but want to see what another part of the world has to offer, you can do so more effectively.

My main concern with the forcing of a duel scale world is that it makes alternate land travel pointless if I can walk to a location just as fast as I can ride a horse or lama.

It would also make certain skills, that were useful to have in the beginning days of UO (tracking skills), pointless if I can see everything on a world map that I have removed the fog of war from. Such as knowing a town that is at the edge of my world map screen is under siege, when realistically there could be hills or forest blocking the view of me knowing what is going on that far away.

 

Only a few gigabytes? No if you do the math.

I mean, just considering something as simple as the terrain, never mind the detail of it, just the basic shape of the terrain itself, using just a single 4-byte floating point value for, say, a whole square meter of land, then a country the size of, for example, England, would require over 500 gigabytes of storage to represent... and that's JUST to represent the shape of the terrain, never mind any of the detail about what was actually placed on it, which would require much more storage. For something of about the size of Europe (which is about how big I used to imagine Britannia to be when I first played U4), you'd be looking at about another a hundred times that storage space again.

And then, as Mr. Garriot points out in the video linked to above, you still end up having to take a lot of extra time for artists to fill in detail for things that in the end, don't actually contribute to better gameplay, when you want them really only spending time on places that are actual points of interest, such as towns, villages, or other places where there will be things for the player to really interact with.

 

I agree that in games like Skyrin, traveling to the distant mountains should take in game weeks not hours. While I like the mono scale idea I can see advantages to both modes.

 

Signed. Please add a monoscale map!

Come on guys. You don't have to register to sign the petition.

 

markt "say, a whole square meter of land, then a country the size of, for example, England, would require over 500 gigabytes of storage to represent"

That's not true, ever heard of Procedural Generation? Entire planets and Galaxies can be procedurally generated see Elite: Dangerous.

 

Galaxies almost entirely of empty space that you don't have to have any detail for whatsoever. This isn't the case for cross-country a landscape, which actually would necessitate having a tessellated model to represent the terrain. Even though it might be largely uninteresting, that would be the whole reason for using a reduced level of detail while traveling that way in the first place, and thus using a dual-scale map.

As for procedural generation, in practice, it is exceptionally difficult to tune to produce specifically tailored results at points that you may have already intended to be specific points of interest.

 

The nice thing about dual scale is that it's much easier to add new towns/encounters/etc. It gives them the opportunity to add some roguelike elements if they choose, or something along the lines of the random encounters from the original Fallout.

 

markt "Galaxies almost entirely of empty space that you don?t have to have any detail for whatsoever. This isn?t the case for cross-country a landscape,"

Lol no, you can procedurally generate detailed planets, solar systems, milkyways etc.

Watch this:

<strong>Infinity The Quest For Earth: Pre Alpha Tech Demo HD (in game</strong>) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43eIjvoYfos

Elite: Dangerous will also use procedural generation.

@Lord_Darkmoon, I think this thread isn't getting enough attention for signatures, cause the forum is quite basic.