Town Wards

[TF]

Been playing around with colors a bit more... here's a scheme that has colors from one area flowing into its neighbors' a bit better. I also liked the idea of an area becoming more and more distinctly colored as you take control (opaqueness of the overlay corresponds directly to percentage owned by player [if it works for whoever's coding it.])

[Bluebeholder]

So is the plan to make the map color coded by zone (clarity for single team) or who is in control (like most strategy games)?  I like the idea of showing who's in control of the zones but it makes it much harder to rationalize the introduction of later high-level gangs.  The biggest issue would be most players really hate having territory arbitrarily taken to make a new rival.

BTW this map keeps getting more awesome!

[Lorde]

Yeah TF is definitely doing a better job at this then me. Kudos!

[DocClox]

I think I like the 25% one best. Subtle, but you can still see what's going on.

I have this vague memory (I really must re-read this thread from the start) of colour coding areas based on access level. Although, I really wouldn't mind just using the colours to more strongly differentiate different areas.

[edit]

The access levels were going to be something like this:

• No access - player can't go here at all
• Access Only - player can operate here, but has no base in this sector.
• Contested - player has a base, but so does one or more rival gangs
• Controlled - player controls all the bases in this sector.

[Mehzerz]

Because the coat of arms bothered me so much (picky I know) I changed it myself.




As for the fog of war I attempted to do something like that, and it turned out poorly... i don't know how else you could do it other than just putting complete blocks of color over each area and saying "inaccessable" or something like that.
I mean isn't there enough fog of war granted you can't go to those places unless there's icons on top of them anyways? I'd just pick a color for the player and color them that color as you take them over. Since the place is sectioned off via a very strict path you'd have to conquer each area before being able to tackle another anyways.

[TF]

I don't actually know the plan at the moment, so I was just throwing out some stuff I'd played around with to give an idea what *can* be done. I could certainly work a couple overlays that would represent a distinct color for whichever gang owns each district at the moment, with a separate color for areas in contention. In that case, I'd use two different degrees of fog for whether an area had no access or limited access (and the fog goes away once it's contested.)

Another possibility is to have each area have it's own distinct color and let the opacity of the color determine what state of ownership it's in (like the four pictures I posted at once [but ignoring the non-colored area of the map... I hadn't bothered creating an actual overlay template using just the colored regions, so the overlay function messed with the rest of the map, too.])

After I get the color scheme sorted, I can change the coat of arms (add color, fade it back, etc.)

So I guess I'll just wait to hear what kind of color scheme the devs want before I do anything else with the color, but in the meantime, I'm playing around with fog-of-war effects to try to get something working there.

[Mehzerz]

did you try 10-15% opacity? You could do that for inaccessible areas. Then knock it up to about 30-40 once the area is unlocked. I really like the look of 25% and 50% is just way too much. So maybe we can get a good balance going and that'd be enough to make which areas are accessible without taking away from the design aspect too much.


Side note:
It looks like instead of making the colors individually brighter you're making the whole map brighter. I wouldn't suggest doing that... taking the long painful route would look much better. (But I assume for color testing sake that was just an example, just sayin')

[TF]

Like I said, ignore the non-colored areas for now. I need to build a template to adjust only the colored areas, and I'm not going to bother until I know what the color scheme is going to be, otherwise I'm just jerking off (in the unproductive metaphorical sense.)

Since people seem to like a subtler blend, here's 10, 20 and 30% to pin down what you like.

[DocClox]

Of those, I think I like the 20% version.

[d31r3x]

Nice work, TF!

I'm a bit busy right now -trying to do too many things at a time. Seeing TF solved paper textures, ward color coding, etc. I think I'll focus on the 'Fog of War' and finishing drawing of remaining wards (Temple district too). I'm puting aside flash stuff for now as well.

P.D. We can use Mehzerz's modified Coat of Arms, or we can just don't use any CoA if you don't like it.

[DocClox]

I like the idea of having a coat of arms. Maybe we do something with it - like click on the CoA for a page of background information about the city.

[TF]

(Assuming the idea is one level of opacity for closed off areas and one for opened) is that 20% for locked or unlocked, Doc?

I suppose locked areas could just be the standard brown, fog-of-war over anything completely inaccessable, which is removed when you open limited access, one standard color for any area that's in contention and then the area's individual color would be set once you take complete control.

Could work it the other way round, though, where the player has their own color and all the map areas are already colored in. Then, as you take each area over, the map color is replaced with the player color.

Also, fog-of-war could work a couple different ways as well; Removed as access is unlocked, as I mentioned above, or removed from any map areas *adjacent* to areas the player fully (or partially) controls.

[Ctwo]

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.

Let me take a stab on giving a possible history that could explan Crossgate. Lets say that this Empire was very magically powerful and has always been fuled by conquest. After conquoring as much of the world as the Empire could reasonably hold (areas outside of the Empire are just too tough to make it worth conquoring) the Empire looked towards magic to provide new lands to conquor.
 
Crossgate has always been a place where the barrier between worlds has been weak. Traditionally, a large number of demon summoners have come from here. Crossgate was origionally founded as a mages collage with the Empire's military having a strong presence. Experiments in breaching other dimensions went on for decades before a process was developed to create a stable portal into other dimensions which was large enough for an entire Legion to invade, or to perform trade.
 
Unfortunately the experiments have rendered the dimensional barrier around Crossgate unstable. The Empire decided to pull the Collage and the portal to the capital where they could keep a closer watch on it and directly benifit from both. The Empire kept a full garrison at Crossgate initially to prevent the unstable portals from becomming a threat to the rest of the Empire. However, after the machinery used by the Collage were removed from Crossgate the unstable portals begain to subside and were reduced to the level of a nuicence. With the Empire committed to invading other dimensions the local garrison has been reduced to little more than a police force.
 
While the unstable portals arn't worth the full attention of the Empire, the items and people that come through them are highly prized in many cities of the Empire. The less savory elements of the Empire were drawn to Crossgate like a moth to a flame. Gangs sprang up with each of them claiming areas of the city as their territory. At first the Govenor tried to keep the illegal activites in check, but soon realized that he wouldn't have the men nesessary to do so. Instead he chose to pit the gangs against each other only using his soliders to raid gangs occasionally when he feels they have lost respect for the Empire or threaten his power.
 
Over time the item trade diminished as larger supplies of cross-dimensional goods were made available through legitimate sources. This lead to the main source of income for the gangs to decline. Instead the gangs started to market exotic slaves. Crossgate itself started to gain a reputation of having excellent brothels with exotic beauties from other dimensions. Nobels and other wealthy merchants and soldiers from other cities come to Crossgate to sample the girls for themselves.
 
Brothels are now an established part of the Crossgate culture. The gangs act as a first line defense against whatever may come through the portals. With the gangs running the brothels and them in turn being dependent on tourists for business they tend to act low key as far as outsiders go. That doesn't stop them from fighting in the streets, but it does stop them from challenging the rulers of the city directly.
 
The catacombs themselves are a byproduct of the last set of magical research. Some of the areas are where the machines that provided the stable portal were housed. Those areas themselves were strengthened and made stable in a sort of between worlds space. The brothel we as players own happens to have access in its basement to one of these rooms. The farther you travel from this room the less stable the underground area becomes. Our father managed to get some of the old research notes and was able to convince a retired wizard to make a few "beacons" that allow someone wandering the catacombs to find their way back.
 
Anyways, hope DocClox finds something in here he can use.

[rukiskanan]

i'm just wondering whats the chances we might see this in the game before august? for i am very interested in expanding areas to use and manipulate to the whim of my whore empire

[Mehzerz]

You will never see this in the game.