Geographical location (response to Kylor's misinterpretation)

[Belsambar]

Clarification for Toku: Kylor (on the bug/idea for the muditor) brought up something about re-writing southern continent.

He was writing in response to something I mentioned on the 'Next great Idea' section as a response to a post about areas someone wanted to see written (Whistler I believe).

What Kylor missed, was that there is no alteration that needs doing, as if you account for a planetary tilt, the geographics line up just fine.

-I- was pointing that out so prospective area writers keep such things in mind, as Madman initially already went through an extreme amount of consideration in developing 3.x with Tynian to make sure that such things WERE accounted for. That said, perhaps we have closer to the whole map of the world than I'm giving us credit for...maybe the oceans aren't 'stretched' enough on 'graphical versions' of the maps to give proper scale and spectrum of what's going on with what IS written...but quite frankly, none of it needs to be rewritten.

It just needs to be kept in mind when writing new zones.

[Kylor]

Actually what you are saying is not actually relevent because it's as tynian said. You cannot assume that all rooms are the same size. which mean you can take any sphere (and the damn angle that it tilts at doesn't change it fricking shape bels) then take the map of TFC, place the northern frozen area over the top of the "north pole" and the frozen southern area over the "south pole" and yes of course it fits because you don't have to make anything else fit. You can simply account for the indifferences by saying "yeah those rooms aren't the same size" or "the ocean rooms are way bigger" so speaking from Tynians point of view it doesn't have to "fit" at all. Man I can't even believe you would accuse me of not understanding this then use "tilt" as an account for why thing don't fit a certain shape. What I am saying is that if you lay the map down in a fashion that it fits and makes sense, it doesn't leave much room for growth. All of this assumes that TFC is round, which I don't even care if it is, I was just offering to help patch it so that it makes sense if we had to make a perfect world.

[Kylor]

One thing you have to remember is that we're typing directions to move around. Which means the north pole has to be farther north then any thing else, and the south pole has to be farther south then anything else or else you might be typing "south" and actually moving north on the other side of the "pole". When you take that into consideration it changes how you have to lay the maps down. It actuallys means you can't lay the frozen area on SC as the south pole cause we have areas farther south.

[Tynian]

I'm more concerned that areas that are close to each other make sense. For instance, we wouldn't necessarily want a desert area next to tundra.

From a world view, we want things to loosely make sense, but one advantage a MUD has is that we don't have to be obsessed with scale.

[Kylor]

Well if that's the case how would you justify the frozen drift and great glacier being between the jungle area of skull top and the plain of lineoth valley?

[Tynian]

I don't feel the need to "justify" anything. I simply stated that I'm more concerned about adjacent areas making sense, as opposed to world geography lining up in more than a general sense.

[Gwyrdain]

I personally believe there is a supernatural explanation for the climate of this area of the map that is yet to be revealed in an as yet unwritten area... *cue cliffhanger music*

[Kylor]

OOoOoOO perhaps a magical ICE PALACE!! deep under the glacier!!! yeeees........ Perhaps a arch mage white dragon tried to take a white dragon orb under his control and during the battle of will power a massive pulse of magical energy froze both the dragon and orb in a block of solid ice that continually radiates a coldness so strong that it created a glacier out of what was once a palace!! This explains why you have to go up a few times to get on the glacier because it is a big block of ice sitting unnaturally where the palace used to be and the palace is still in there waiting for a group of brave adventurers to unlock it's ancient mysteries, preserved for all these years in a timeless crystaline prison!! I love it!

[Gwyrdain]

Sheesh, you already have half of my idea. I'll never speak up again. :P

[Belsambar]

On the note of scaling: I recently followed the SC coast and altered my mental scale on 'connecting' zones (as travel along the general landscape seems to be -generally- the same scale....vs an area, where this one room might be a tiny house, maybe 10' x 10', but s e s d s and you're in a 'large house' ....stand in the living room, as one room, and read the desc carefully and realize the other house would fit IN the one room you're in. Likewise, city streets are often narrower or wider, as traffic flow dictates, in Fantasy worlds than in, say, New York City. Big roads have to support caravans and carriages, small roads only have to support foot traffic.

That said, playing with scaling some and scaling the general landscape rooms in my head away from a 'room' size and more to a 'area of space you're passing through' size, had two affects. One, Gla'shorn's the coast goes a LOT farther south than Gytar's map ever gave it credit for (and goes back to my giving Madman credit for attention to little details like geographical build), up to an including the idea that you might have wrapped around the edge of the continent more than we realize.

The second thing I noticed...is that when you up the scale, the ability to run from Hovelton to MG in less than a tick is a hell of a Heroic run. I certainly couldn't do it RL, that's at LEAST a couple miles, and if you count a tick as an hour, speedy people can 'run' several miles (if not several HUNDRED) in an hour or so :P

The last thing, is for people who are trying to deduce scale on other zones as they wander for mapping purposes: Look at the moves it costs to move from room to room. Yes, it's technically based on 'terrain' but some of that terrain generally comes with a higher scale to it (IE, ocean) and if the scale is lessened, that means that it's THAT difficult to travel through those rooms (tight scaled caverns or mountain trails being a good example). Though, I wouldn't be opposed to the creation of one more room flag to work with so you could have a move drain on an given area to signify that it is both large scale AND incredibly difficult.