Author Topic: Town Wards  (Read 61491 times)

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Offline DocClox

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Re: Town Wards
« Reply #30 on: July 11, 2010, 06:29:01 AM »
The only problem there is that I don't think the engine is up to detecting mouseover events on irregular shapes. They'd need to be rectanguar, and that would spoil the flavour of the map. But we can put differently shaded PNGs over map segments without any trouble.

I like the idea of having different layers for the map. We could have a filter box down the side so you could toggle certain types of elements on the map.

Hmm... I'm going to have to think about how to make the map extensible.

Offline d31r3x

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Re: Town Wards
« Reply #31 on: July 11, 2010, 07:47:04 AM »
It's a pity mousehoover doesn't work well on non-rectangular shapes, Doc, it could have been cool. On the other hand, if you can handle filters coding I can save separate png images with different elements (and that would restore coolness, indeed  ;D )

Meanwhile, I went on messing with wards diagram. I couldn't make it fit in the city plan, so I tried a 'compromise'. I changed some city locations and rearranged wards on the three levels scheme, changing some communications. The "levels" connection idea is to negate access to the next upper level if player haven't unlocked every single location on current level. Besides that, controlling a whole level could grant a "title" (level1: Businessman -> level2: Nobleman -> level3: Ruler of Crossgate) wich means some sort of social progression (coupled with fame and disposition: I'm some sort of "town hero evil businessman" hahaha). Well, that's just an idea.

Take a look at the proposed ward diagram and city map and point out any changes you've got in mind (I know, I know, have to move Pentagle Square drawing where it is supposed to be -it's only a sketch, right?)





Offline DocClox

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Re: Town Wards
« Reply #32 on: July 11, 2010, 11:14:56 AM »
It's a pity mousehoover doesn't work well on non-rectangular shapes, Doc, it could have been cool. On the other hand, if you can handle filters coding I can save separate png images with different elements (and that would restore coolness, indeed  ;D )

We could make it work. set a rectangle bounding box, and then have an undisplayed image with each ward a different colour. Then we test the bounding box for the basic mouseover, and use the co-ords within that box to lookup the pixel colour in our image map and take it from there. Very cool, but a ton of work, so probably not as a priority.

Meanwhile, I went on messing with wards diagram. I couldn't make it fit in the city plan, so I tried a 'compromise'. I changed some city locations and rearranged wards on the three levels scheme, changing some communications. The "levels" connection idea is to negate access to the next upper level if player haven't unlocked every single location on current level. Besides that, controlling a whole level could grant a "title" (level1: Businessman -> level2: Nobleman -> level3: Ruler of Crossgate) wich means some sort of social progression (coupled with fame and disposition: I'm some sort of "town hero evil businessman" hahaha). Well, that's just an idea.
 
The layout could work, certainly. Sleaze Street looks like it would support two gangs, so I'll probably need a couple more names for Sleaze Street East and Sleaze Street West. Spark End is bigger than I was expecting, especially if it's separate from the artificers quarter. Based on that map,we could probably have Spark End and the artificers with their own separate wards and unlocking requirements. And if I were a noble in as magically unstable a place as Crossgate, I'd probably want the mages at the far end of the ward, rather than right next door.

Apart from that, I think it's shaping up nicely :)



Offline megamanx

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Re: Town Wards
« Reply #33 on: July 11, 2010, 11:38:17 AM »
looks nice a few touch ups and it wold be great. thumbs up
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Offline DocClox

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Re: Town Wards
« Reply #34 on: July 11, 2010, 12:06:09 PM »
I promised some thoughts on Crossgate History and the Temple District.

Crossgate History

Basically, I want to try and explain why I think Crossgate has to be a minor provincial town. The logic is like this:

The gangs control Crossgate, but they don't rule. There's a mayor and a city guard not under the control of the gangs. Now, if crossgate were an independent city state or the capital of a nation, I think the gangs would have used their dominance to seize power, and the gang leaders would all be the heads of noble houses. So I think there has to be some massively powerful external force that keeps the gangs from getting over-ambitious. So I think the city is part of a kingdom or empire. Let's say Empire.

Now if Crossgate was close to the center of government, I think someone would have sent in the military by now. Having an ongoing font of civil disorder at the heart of the empire is a political liability. And if it was distant but still important, I think someone would have send a legion by now, if only to stop the city falling into enemy hands. So I think it has to be distant and considered to be of low importance for the gangs to be tolerated.

I don't think this was alway the case, however. Someone went to the trouble to build a fortress there, so I suspect that at one time someone was concerned about the possibility of invasion. Possibly by some extra-dimensional force. Whatever the case though, I don't think anyone gives much creedence to that idea these days.

The Temple District

My idea of Crossgate's religion is that it's similar to ancient Rome in that they worship whatever gods are going and tend to pick up new ones the way the English language picks up new words.

If so, what about temple prostitution?

There's two basic scenarios I can see. One of them is that whores are so rife in Crossgate that temple prostitution never caught on in the city. That's the simplest explanation.

The other one is that it exists, but that it's sufficiently stuffy and well ... religious, that its offputting to most of the city, and they tend to prefer the secular whores instead. I think this is the more interesting option. However, it raises the question: how does the temple fit in to the ongoing gang warfare in the city?

I'm tempted to have the Temple of Lurrve (better name needed)  as an independant operator. Which is to say that they weren't involved in the death of the player's father and can be ignored. They'll act to keep prices down a little, but apart from that have no impact on the game. Alternatively the player can try and take control of the temple either by force (very hard) or by politics, and I need to think about that a bit more.

Anyway, just some musings.

Oh, and I meant to say earlier: @d31r3x: I like the artist's impression a lot!
« Last Edit: July 11, 2010, 01:32:47 PM by DocClox »

Offline d31r3x

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Re: Town Wards
« Reply #35 on: July 11, 2010, 12:46:41 PM »
We could make it work. set a rectangle bounding box, and then have an undisplayed image with each ward a different colour. Then we test the bounding box for the basic mouseover, and use the co-ords within that box to lookup the pixel colour in our image map and take it from there. Very cool, but a ton of work, so probably not as a priority.

Agree. I'd rather have a working (and good looking) version first, then add more features (given we were smart enough to foresee some of them and left "room" for later development).

The   layout could work, certainly. Sleaze Street looks like it would support   two gangs, so I'll probably need a couple more names for Sleaze Street   East and Sleaze Street West. Spark End is bigger than I was expecting,   especially if it's separate from the artificers quarter. Based on that   map,we could probably have Spark End and the artificers with their own   separate wards and unlocking requirements. And if I were a noble in as   magically unstable a place as Crossgate, I'd probably want the mages at   the far end of the ward, rather than right next door.

I see. What about moving Pentagle Square (mages) to the pink quarter between Spark End (artificiers included) and Pinchpenny Lane? That leaves Spark End in a similar situation as Crossgate Quays, yet more isolated. Dangerous magic users locate themselves far away from those poosh nobbs. Moreover, that leaves all the dangerous exploding / melting / summoning stuff in the north section of the city -enter here at your own risk. Besides that, the Pinchpenny Ward will be located south of Pinchpenny Lane (the street, I mean), wich acts as a frontier between this ward and the mage's (Pentagle Square). To balance the city structure a new wealthy merchants / famed artists / artifact traders ward should be located where mages were supposed to be (the cyan+green quarter). Now I see it, maybe I mistook mages as part of the city 'beautiful people' instead of that bearded, freaky and crazy dangerous folks of the Discworld series (If you ask me, I'd rather prefer the later ones).


In addition to that, I think splitting Sleaze Street ward into West and East will make it look even more gangish: East vs. West gangwars, goons with different hats and clothes colour watching each other at both sides of street, irrational hate and tension between east and west neighbours, menacing graffiti marking boundaries...



Offline d31r3x

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Re: Town Wards
« Reply #36 on: July 11, 2010, 01:24:27 PM »
Resembles early renaissance Venetian and Milanese Republics mixed with Roman periferic provinces (late empire). Could be the city of Amn from D&D tabletop / PC games, too.

Maybe nobody truly rules Crossgate because some sort of dynamic balance of power taking place. In absence of a strong leader or a greater power, the Empire's officers and bureaucrats (mayor and watch garrison included), the old nobility (knights included), the wealthy merchants (enriched by artifact and exotic slaves trade), the gang leaders (maybe others rule the city, but those do control the lower city) and, of course, the religious party, seem to struggle endlessly to seize complete hegemony (luckily without significant breakouts). It seems no one cares, as long as comerce goods and gold keep flowing smoothly.

The religious issue could be fit by means of the mentioned politheysm approach, but also by the border city / trader city multicultural balance: no one wants to piss off potential customers... I mean, in the begining, maybe the whole city cared little about religion, but having a temple of a certain god seemed to please traders from that particular confession. Eventually, multiple religions settled and were forced not to piss off each other (same customer principle as above). Then they realized that all of them were "in the same boat", allied together against agnosticism and atheism (secretly, against the other main powers), and settled in the Temple Distric -were they are strong since then.

Hope this could be of some help.


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Offline Thought Crime

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Re: Town Wards
« Reply #37 on: July 11, 2010, 06:52:31 PM »
I have only good things to say about the ideas and designs of the wards and the new city map!! Watching both of you (DocClox and d31r3x) bouncing ideas off of each other makes me excited to see the end results. So i'll stay out of the creative magic you two have going on.

One thing i did want to comment on was in regards to the crossgate history, On the temple topic:


The Temple District

If so, what about temple prostitution?

There's two basic scenarios I can see. One of them is that whores are so rife in Crossgate that temple prostitution never caught on in the city. That's the simplest explanation.

The other one is that it exists, but that it's sufficiently stuffy and well ... religious, that its off putting to most of the city, and they tend to prefer the secular whores instead. I think this is the more interesting option. However, it raises the question: how does the temple fit in to the ongoing gang warfare in the city?

I'm tempted to have the Temple of Lurrve (better name needed)  as an independant operator. Which is to say that they weren't involved in the death of the player's father and can be ignored. They'll act to keep prices down a little, but apart from that have no impact on the game. Alternatively the player can try and take control of the temple either by force (very hard) or by politics, and I need to think about that a bit more.


Just by looking at the current city diagram. In order for the player to move up into the "level 2/Nobelman" position, the player has only one option, through the temple. From the looks of the current diagram, the temple looks like both a pivotal and critical part of the game/story.

From your quote, you're saying that the temple will have little impact on the game. Maybe instead, play up it's importance. I think this would be a great opportunity to offer up a serious chunk of story or at least replay value.
A few thoughts:

When the player unlocks the temple. The player has to choose one of the available religions. The player doesn't have to like it, or even follow the rules. But this would be something of a "necessary evil" if the player wants to move up higher in nobility. Historically, religion has always been tied to politics. One religion fights another religion or alliances are made based on what religions two groups of people subscribe too.

When the player pics one of lets say 3-4 religions, this will "open doors" to some nobility and simultaneously "close doors" to other nobles. Which would give the game replay value.

The stipulation to being a part of a religion would mean having to give up some of your slaves from time to time. The trade off would of course be, that you have access to higher nobility. Meeting important people and such. The temple would be to powerful for the player to forcefully "take over" at first. But if the player is patient and "plays the political game, with pomp and circumstance" an opportunity to take over the temple could present itself. Once the player overthrows the temple, it would then become a new brothel for the player, with a few slaves already inside.

As for the religions:
One of the religions could be the old pagan/norse religions where virgin sacrifice is common. If you subscribe to this, then periodically you would need to "donate" one of your virgin slaves in order to appease those in power of the temple.

Another religion could be the Ephors like from the movie "300" where "oracals" would need to be donated by the player. These slaves would need to be high in magic or intelligence.

Another option could be a "Temple of Cybele"  a sort of, "goddess of love" where the player would need to donate experienced slaves (say a minimum of level 5).

different religions could fight each other sort of like gangs. An example would be the Cybele worshipers would despise the pagan worshipers for their sacrifices of virgins.

If you wanted to include a conspiracy theory element into the main story (if you're writing a main story) the player could find out that it was one of the temples that hired the gang that killed your father. Giving the player a justification to overthrow the temples. A little cliche albeit.

Feel free to shoot down all of my suggestions. The point i'm trying to make is that the temples offer up a lot of potential for story, game re-playability and shouldn't be so flippantly dismissed.
« Last Edit: July 11, 2010, 09:59:23 PM by Thought Crime »
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Offline fixet

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Re: Town Wards
« Reply #38 on: July 11, 2010, 09:45:20 PM »
how did you guys imagine crossgate?
because, this seems quite far removed from my interpretation of it (not that it's a bad thing, I'm just curious)
I always thought of it as a cross of amn architecture (as it appeared in baldur's gate, but grittier) and sigil's lack of concern for the freaky stuff going on in it
portals weren't glimmering doors to the unknown, but split-second  tears in reality that went unnoticed by the population that weren't specifically looking for them, so whatever they spat out almost immediately melded with the scene

your presentation seems like a mix of roman culture and high fantasy


also, I got an idea, reading the history of crossgate

if you assume the portals are rare outside of crossgate, relatively common within it, and running rampant beneath, the city could be built like an inverted fortress
rather than sealing the catacombs, and dealing with/loosening their grip on the often dangerous individuals coming from beyond, they decided to enclose the city, building the keep on the hill close to the sea, protected from the city itself by the inner walls, overlooking the city, with another layer of fortifications against outside attackers
the elite, more profitable districts would be inside these inner walls, untainted by corruption at the first glance (this would require relatively little changes to the current map)

treasure hunters and merchants jumped the opportunity to get rich trafficking alien artifacts, and (assuming slavery is accepted throughout the empire) slave traders were soon to follow, attracted by the promise of exotic, and therefore profitable, goods
the fledgling city's appeal attracted other kinds opportunists, however, and the inner city soon erupted in gang wars
seeing the power struggle actually served to increase productivity of the outer city (which is not as prone to planewalking as the inner) by unifying  individual businesses into groups looking to increase their own power, and the fact that their "power" was pathetic at best (and really, before the player takes over, it is), the rulers of the city decided to let them play their games, but restrict them to the outer city (this would work like the current crossgate, with gang wars in broad daylight etc., while the inner would be a more political, behind the scenes power-struggle)

the start game could work like what we have now (hopefully more challenging) with the player working to control as much of the outer city as possible, before he gets enough power to get a shot at the inner city
the "endgame" would mean the player taking political control of the city, which has grown so powerful over the years, even more so being, for the first time ever, entirely in control of a single man, that the empire itself is scared

I probably left something out, but it's almost 4am here

Offline Lorde

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Re: Town Wards
« Reply #39 on: July 11, 2010, 09:59:37 PM »

if you assume the portals are rare outside of crossgate, relatively common within it, and running rampant beneath, the city could be built like an inverted fortress

Or like an inverted underground pyramid. With a gigantic uber portal at the tip (bottom). The further you go from that point to the surface, the wider the area potential portals can form. But they become  smaller, shorter lasting. Crossgate could be built on the base(top) of said pyramid explaining why portals happen there.

Of course all these portals permeate energy into the world, thus smaller less stable portals can appear anywhere in the world. Just not as often as happens in Crossgate.

« Last Edit: July 12, 2010, 01:37:25 AM by Lorde »
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Offline killjoy57us

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Re: Town Wards
« Reply #40 on: July 11, 2010, 11:53:21 PM »
Oh, dear, I seem to have gone cross-eyed. :)

I just wanted to say that I kinda like some of fixet's ideas; however, it seems to me the elite districts probably wouldn't really be able the thrive sitting inside the inner walls, especially in a place as violent as Crossgate. They'd be in the center of a huge kill zone. Just set a fire inside the walls and blockade the gates, and you've got a homebrew Nuremburg fire-storm; and its not like they could escape to the catacombs that they're sitting on...that'd be suicidal.

Looking at Lorde's and fixet's posts, it seems to me that there is one essential issue requiring attention, and that is the EXACT nature of the catacombs. The map thus far is pretty cool in my opinion, but as the surface world of Crossgate becomes more concrete, it may become necessary to finally nail down the details on those catacombs, at least as far as geography and access points go. Don't necessarily need to build up the story of how it came to be; every fantasy game requires the willing suspension of disbelief. But if the hows and whys of the geopolitical situation of Crossgate get explored too far, then we'll rapidly find ourselves naming the ancient mage who summoned some-power-or-another-that-tore-the-earth-asunder.

I guess my point is, do you want it bad enough that you would write it yourself? :)

Offline laverinthe

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Re: Town Wards
« Reply #41 on: July 12, 2010, 01:33:31 AM »
I thought the catacombs were in constant flux and as such, had no concrete layout.
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Offline Mehzerz

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Re: Town Wards
« Reply #42 on: July 12, 2010, 04:05:36 AM »
I thought the catacombs were in constant flux and as such, had no concrete layout.


I suppose that could have been the case at one point... but if we're to expand the catacomb exploration, that may not be AS possible. Perhaps the first level where your brothel is located doesn't change. But the lower floors are less stable, any sort of progression could be done via splits in various portals of space. All connected to the first level. So as you progress these portals begin to open up and you can explore deeper into the catacombs... it may take several visits to find the deeper levels (due to the constant change of layout and design) but doing it enough, defeating a specific monster, finding an item, flipping a switch, replacing a bag of treasure with a bag of stones, whatever it takes. You'll find them eventually.


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Offline DocClox

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Re: Town Wards
« Reply #43 on: July 12, 2010, 05:02:03 AM »
I suppose that could have been the case at one point... but if we're to expand the catacomb exploration, that may not be AS possible.
 
I was thinking a shifting layut with some stable features.  It's a bit like Chaos Theory. there are ways to map out a chaoitic system so you can see where they system is normal and where it descends into chaos. The interesting thing is that you find islands of stability scattered throughout the chaos. I think the catacombs are like that - things shift around, but there are some places within it that don't change.

  Perhaps the first level where your brothel is located doesn't change.
   
I don't see the catacombs as existing in the same space as the rest of Crossgate. I've always thought that the dungeon and catacombs connected to all the player's brothels. The rival gangs have to know that the player has (or his father had) a secret way to move people and   items between establishments.  I think if the catacombs were physically under the city, then one of the other gangs would have figured it out by now.

That said, I did have a notion that Crossgate had a realspace sewer system that had a number of properties in common with the catacombs. I wasn't planning on mapping them out though, just usig them to justify quest mechanics here and there.

    But the lower floors are less stable, any sort of progression could be done via splits in various portals of space. All connected to the first level. So as you progress these portals begin to open up and you can explore deeper into the catacombs... it may take several visits to find the deeper levels (due to the constant change of layout and design) but doing it enough, defeating a specific monster, finding an item, flipping a switch, replacing a bag of treasure with a bag of stones, whatever it takes. You'll find them eventually.

Yeah. I thnk leveled catacombs are a good idea, and we'll need something a bit challenging to unlock the lower levels. Not sure what, as yet. Boss fights, if we can make them more involving than the usual goon/girl missions; fetch-the-great-macguffin quests if we don't overdo them. Maybe have some portals that require the player to sacrifice one of his girls ... although there'd better be an alternative in that case...

[edit]

I've added the catacomb level ideas to my long term todo list on the project wave.
« Last Edit: July 12, 2010, 05:03:36 AM by DocClox »

Offline d31r3x

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Re: Town Wards
« Reply #44 on: July 12, 2010, 05:36:57 AM »
Reminds me of Heroes of Might and Magic dual map system (one map for surface, one map for underground).
Lots of good ideas, little free time to get them real  :'(