Map Update

[Cyrus Tegyr]

Global Changes:
- Removed all carpets from all purchasable houses
- Removed more statics from all purchasable houses
- Fixed many holes in the ocean that allowed the client user to see the the lower layer of the map.
- Fixed shoreline around most of the land masses where I could giving a less jagged appearance for the user.
- Fixed a few holes in roofs (many may still be in place, didn't go too perfectionist on this one.)
- Removed chimneys/fireplaces from all purchasable houses
- Fixed many random terrain tiles that appeared to be out of place.
- Completely redid many buildings and dungeon foundations or floors, this had a good effect of cutting the total size of the statics0 file by close to 7000kb
- Added a few new tree types to the map as well as placed a few more of the fruit trees around the map, not a ton but a few more in different areas.

Dungeons and Caves:
A goal of mine in terms of new dungeons I will or have added is to make them shorter than some of the other ones that have been added or are part of the original game, it became apparent to me from many discussions with a few players that one of the annoyances with hunting in dungeons is their length, this I completely agree with, without disturbing the balance of the old dungeons, I feel making tighter, less laborious dungeons with new and different mechanics might be a fresh way forward where it is not always about just hack n slash waves of mobs. In terms of cutting back and adding unique dungeon mechanics, this comes on scripting side, but I feel it is something to reach for at some point instead of just adding three or four level dungeons all the time, make them short, challenging and rewarding but something memorable. My problem is, dungeons are not memorable usually for me in Ultima Online, I can not identify a dungeon floor by just looking at it save for the terribly decorated Khaldun, the experience of most dungeons is the same, I think design wise and ultimately scripting wise we can reach for something better than same old same old dungeon and mob mechanics.

- Removed the entrance to Khaldun from the main map.
- Redesigned Khaldun to have a more primitive and less psychedelic color scheme. (Not begun yet, will spend a couple to a few days on this one alone.)
- Added a few dungeon entrances around the map for future reference
- Added a dark cave appearance for many cave entrances around the map.
- Added a triangular dungeon which is going to be decorated with a quasi Egyptian them, a single floored dungeon with its entrance located in the desert above cross roads. A single screenshot of what I plan to theme it in is in the link below, it is about as close to Egyptian as I can get with the graphics I have available, I'd like this to be as previously mentioned a single floor dungeon with minimal trash mobs but with mini boss type mobs which must be defeated to spawn the final mob at the end.
- Updated the map to it's latest current size on OSI shards, this gives current and future staff more dungeon space should they wish to utilize it.
- Created a small three floor mining dungeon, using some existing floors from other maps.
- Going to copy a dungeon from Malas to Felucca at the request of Argon.
- Lost Lands have now been added back to the map in its entirety, well mostly, I shaved a bit of mountain off three sides to have it fit, should not affect players at all as this was all non accessible area.

Britain:
- Changed the shipwright’s shop to something more unique.
- Cleared statics from and added two additional floors to the building between the blacksmithy shop and Britain library in northern Britain.

Moonglow:
- The bank of Moonglow has been changed to a multipurpose building, right now it is a two story building with the bank on the first floor and a scribe on the second floor.
- The T shaped house located at the southwestern end of the island has been replaced with a two story Tudor style home, this is my personal favorite style of building design so players will notice many new buildings with that style.
- Pentagrams and abattoirs removed from purchasable buildings.
- L shaped sandstone house on the mid east side of the island has had a spiral staircase added to access the room instead of the teleporter located on the aforementioned removed abattoir .
- City streets have been retouched to add a little wear and tear on the edges of the cobblestone roads, probably won't be noticeable but time was spent doing this I assume you.

New Haven:
- New Haven has been replaced, completely. It has been replaced with a market town with a few shops and a couple farmhouses for sale. To offset this loss somewhat I have added to the map a new town, no details on this town will be leaked by me as there are somethings I will keep secret and only the staff have seen screenshots of it, well at least one of them has.
- With the destruction of New Haven it was suggested that I add some ruins and I might add a single floor dungeon with a theme of undead (I know snooze fest, more undead?) that broke through the ground and destroyed New Haven from an ancient crypt unknown to its settlers.
- Note the area with an orc fort looking wall around it with thatched roofed buildings is what New Haven has been replaced with, it is located within the same general area just not as huge, I am not 100% happy with the thickness of the walls but it was the first project I began and completed so I may revisit it before I hand over the map changes to the staff. Note, none of the buildings inside this area will be for sale, these are purely merchant shops for use by players who need to use them as this is the replacement of the mushroom market, which I hope to god gets a new name, Mushroom Market sounds as if I am going to go there and meet Mario and Luigi and then I'll be roped into helping them save the Princess.

Nujel'm:
- Added a few more palm and yucca trees
- Removed dock from the city and replaced it with something more befitting a city of its stature.
- Retiled the huge palace with white marble tiles as well as redesigning some of the palace slightly.
- One house with a small upstairs room has had that room redesigned to be exactly one third of the size of the bottom floor. The bottom floor of this building has also been retiled from wood to a dark sandstone as well as the exterior walkways specifically for this building.

Yew:
- Added a fisherman’s shack to the western coast of Yew.
- Added a basement to the winery building near the Empath Abbey
- Replaced one of the houses in northern Yew with a two story log cabin.

End of changes, will post below if anything new comes but for now this is pretty much the list of things I have done, I have begun or I have yet to do, most of this is done.

Now one of the most asked questions I suspect will occur is why remove New Haven? For me this is one thing I have been talking about for awhile, this was not a personal choice for me but one I completely agree with as New Haven was designed poorly in my opinion everything building wise was cramped and just did not feel like a well designed city. I hope that my changes will be liked just as much or better but time will tell on this, note that only a fraction of the houses removed with the destruction of new haven were added back into the map at other locations.

I believe this is all the changes I put in, for purchasable house changes I will grab screenshots of the buildings, below is a link for many many screenshots, I have added specifically one new area I will not post screenshots of as I'd like to keep a somethings mysterious.

In terms of completion, barring any unforeseen issues, I plan to be done mid December, most of what I have to do left is dungeon stuff, including a redesign of Khaldun.

Note: Some of the stuff I posted that sounds as if it is completed is not, this is just the way I phrased it to keep a change log of well, changes. I will post coordinates for any house changes I made tomorrow or Friday, but I believe as of about three weeks ago those houses were not yet owned by anyone so should not affect anyone, I will make these coordinates known to staff first so that if they wish they can pull the house signs from them so that there are no opportunists out there, specifically on houses I may have made bigger which will need to be redeeded anyway.

As a side note, I am hoping the staff will allow me to update the install files to a more up to date version, I discussed it with one of them possibly two of them, they thought it was a good idea.

There is a minor detail with an updates map size, we will all need to update to a newer version of UOAM, luckily for us all, I have a copy of it I will repackage with the Pangaea install exe when/if I am allowed to do so, this is minor as you can keep your custom markers by backing them up and dropping them in the new install folder for UOAM. This was an unforeseen development that I only became aware of after I had put in about a month's worth of work on the map after updating its size which is the first thing I did.

Map Updates as of 2016-11-16

[Boern]

Cool! I had no idea you were working on this.

All changes seem logical and those reworked houses look sweeeeeet. Can't wait for the shorter dungeons also. Good job.

Would be nice to have craftable carpets as the statics ones will be removed but I don't know if that's possible.

[Cyrus Tegyr]

Would be nice to have craftable carpets as the statics ones will be removed but I don't know if that's possible.

Possible and already found what Pangaea needs, should be as easy as dropping in the package I have but might need a few tweaks.

I will take a look at the package and see what is missing carpet wise and maybe i can expand its list before i zip it up and send it to blckfire. Id like carpets to act similar to how they do on osi and not count toward the lockdown count or at worst a single carpet in its entirety only counted at one lockdown as it should only be considered a single item instead of say 20 individual items.

[Malron]

padhfposwirt[KAESOMNFP;DNJASFPO;LASKNJ[AOSIGJ wow!!! Awesome work!

[Cyrus Tegyr]

Thanks, can't wait to see reactions of parts of the map i didn't post screenshots of.

[yuusou]

Awesome!!

[Cyrus Tegyr]

Thanks.

I'm mulling over a dilemma with regards to Khaldun, but I wiped the statics from it last night.

The theme will be Shabooli but will have a more primitive look. Shabooli being my favorite race of NPCs they have great potential for a very rich history and culture so I will try to explore this inside the dungeon itself as this is their domain. As a side note unrelated to map work I'm working on a history of the Shabooli people no idea when this will be done I had a write up of like a 3 "volume" history where each volume was a few pages long but that was destroyed a year or so ago when a hard drive gave out on me. This new thing I'm working on while in my free time at work will be much condensed I hope covering culture, beliefs and rituals and history of their past and where they are in present Pangaea.

[Thoran]

Thank you Cyrus. I'm really exited for these fixes. Also I want to thank the staff for allowing someone from the playerbase to work on this.

[Glarundis]

The theme will be Shabooli but will have a more primitive look.

So we're to expect a new dungeon based on trolls/giants while khaldun becomes about shaboolies even in later levels and we'll see some new shabooli boss mobs?

[Maximilian Lhoth]

Thank you Cyrus. I'm really exited for these fixes. Also I want to thank the staff for allowing someone from the playerbase to work on this.

Definite agreement. A trustworthy long term player volunteer with a flawless history should be harnessed for these jobs.