[MUD-Dev] Re: BUILDERS: Ferries

[Ling]

On Mon, 8 Dec 1997, Adam Wiggins wrote:

> In this context the map becomes more of a visual tool for brainstorming
> than an actual piece of geography.  (Indeed, fantasy maps are renowned
> for being completely unlike real geography..)  You draw up a rough map,
> imagine impressive geographical features (mountain ranges, waterfalls,
> large bodies of water, swamps, plains, forests, caves..), and plunk down
> your civilizations-in-the-rough.  From there it becomes easy to imagine
> the titanic battles that occured as borders got pushed forth and back,
> alliances and neutralities that formed due to position (think Switzerland),
> locations for important religious or magical structures, and so on...

Yep, this is my usual method of creating a new world.  Splat some ink on
paper and randomly dot some starting villages.  The rest, as they say, is
history. ;)

A more refined version involves feeding it all into a computer to simulate
geography, warts and all.  But really, I think it is quite an overkill
going through all that coding effort to evolve a single map.  Then,
opinions differ.

A starting map is also useful when recruiting builders to extend the mud.
A unified picture helps maintain consistancy, rather than letting builders
grow your world, the builders flesh out what is already in the mud.

The bit I think is iffy is making up in theme reasons why a particular
route is blocked.  Gonna have to refer to DartMUD. :)  DartMUD uses two
scales to represent its world.  The normal room doodahs and a big hex
system for the wilderness (each hex is so large that you can walk through
a hex and miss a city).  This system would be quite a cool way of having
future expansions.  There is no need to hide the fact that a dungeon
hasn't been coded yet.  When it has been coded, just plonk it in a hex and
give it a concealment rating.

  |    Ling Lo, freshwater fish (cod variant)
_O_O_  EEE, Loughborough University, England          Another 'Screemer!