Map Update

[Johnny Walac]

Cyrus for president

[Cyrus Tegyr]

Cyrus for president

Only problem with this is Constitutionally I'm too young but more importantly I'm very very conservative so I suspect I'd have a tough time winning as the Liberal Praetorian Guard Media would try to rip me to shreds. Plus while I can write very well if I must say so myself, my public speaking and debate skills are a lot to be desired.

I really am glad you like the work JW, if you've got any design ideas for a more primitive Shabooli themed Khaldun I'm slowly working on that to get lvl 2 complete.

Last night I spent about an hour populating some more fruit trees around the map, specifically Britain.

I must apologize, I get sidetracked with smaller things that niggle me or pique my interest, I'll get back to my main task at hand tomorrow night or Thursday night which is Khaldun and building a ruined building where New Haven was which will lead into a single floored crypt, maybe might be worth connecting it to the Yew Crypts at the end, will look at that tonight.

[Cyrus Tegyr]

Worked on Buc's Den:
- Added a new dungeon entrance
- Fixed the entrances to the tunnel system

Worked on the area formerly known as New Haven, adding a new entrance to a dungeon to give some RP to New Haven's destruction.

Misc updates:
- Discovered a house in Trinsic that had a second floor but no way to access it, this has been remedied
- Added more fruit trees around the map, some in Britain, others elsewhere.

Mucking about ended, will get back to Khaldun second floor tonight.

[LacedUp]

please take over dev for shard?

[blckfire]

please take over dev for shard?

He's working on it

[Cyrus Tegyr]

please take over dev for shard?

He's working on it

Long way off if I can even get comfortable, i appreciate the call out and the kind confidence for sure.

So, what have I been up to low these last two days you may ask? Some of you may not like it, again, little things niggle me and get the better of me, I do not know what to do about that, i see something wrong and I want to fix things though tedious and annoying it maybe to have to wait you all have my deepest apologies for this, it adds nothing to the game really but just niggles me when I see things missing or holes that really do not make much of a difference in terms of game play or indeed matter much to the look of the map as they are usually in the ocean and well, let's be honest how many treacherous brigrands or lowly fisherman traverse the map in a boat?

As an example of one of the things I have been spending a lot of time on, when i say coast line fixes, while I am in no way making them perfect (I have a program that MIGHT do this but I do not want to run the map through it really for fear of it perhaps screwing up boat placement) so I have been doing all of it by hand.
Example of coastline annoyances I have spent a few hours or more fixing. I know not noticeable in game really but it....just...annoys...me to see holes or missing tiles!

Ok, so the coast line was not the only thing I did, another minor thing I did aside from some more goodies I shan't mention, I had this building laying around built but has no place to put it so figured, it is in a style I like, tudor style, why not rethink the Britain stables, so, ya, done!:
Britain's Stables

One of the things I will be doing is fixing some of the items in terms of name and animations, for instance some of the waterfall graphics are not animated as they ought to be so I will remedy this when I push out a new installer if I remember to fix it that is, and in the stables screen shot, that statue in there of a horse is called something weird like "a horse statue EX" so I will change that to just "a horse statue". Also, I have collected about 50 different graphics that a guy spent time fixing, I had to scour the interwebs to find them again but there are some items that have pinprick holes in them so I will also be fixing these. I would love to add some custom graphics but alas, that is beyond the scope of anything I want to do at this point, in particular, wearables are a nightmare to add which is a real shame.

Also as a side note, as a minor hint, I need to do a little photoshop work on the map file used by the cartography skill to draw those maps. I am not very good with photoshop but as those famous last words go, it should not be too hard to do what i need to do, which is just adding a couple land masses to that file...

[Johnny Walac]

Cyrus for president

I really am glad you like the work JW, if you've got any design ideas for a more primitive Shabooli themed Khaldun I'm slowly working on that to get lvl 2 complete.

I ain't no architect, ain't got the intellect.

Nah but y'all seems to do a good job on the design part. For real, Cyrus for president.

[Cyrus Tegyr]

Update:

Not much done on the map itself these past couple days. I spent sometime trying to decide the best way to edit the facet-multimap that is used for treasure map creation.

I've figured out the best way I think, I took a tif of the current map, removed the dungeon bit of it then changed it's size to match a tif of the facet -multimap. Then, this gave me essentially a colored version of the treasure map map with landmasses correctly proportioned but, where's the fun in a colored treasure map? So next I took the new land masses I added and segregated them with a pink border for ease of finding and to allow me to place them exactly where they ought to be when I copy them over to the facet-multimap tif.

Now I still have an issue, these would be in color, so I began on the smallest land mass first, I zoomed in to x16 on the land mass and using the two shades of Blckfire and white began pixel by pixel drawing a black border on the edge of the land mass, once complete I colored the green and grey pixels white that were in this newly drawn border again pixel by pixel to ensure as little mistakes as possible and was left with a shape of the land mass with a black border and white center, a misshapen York peppermint patty. Now because there is some detail to land masses like mountain ranges, I had to randomly draw black pixels to represent trees and the lone mountain that is on this island, once that was complete this specific island is surrounded by a bunch of tiny islands so I cheated, as there is little chance of being able to land on one of these tiny island I just shared them all black. Then using the paint bucket icon I colored the blue representing water white, too the north west corner of the pink outer border and colored that lone pixel red and colored the rest of the pink border white, copied it over to the facet-multimap and placed it at exactly the same pixel Coors's it was in its original colored map and done! I think it turned out okay.

Whew, two more islands to go but,with that said I'm looking for someone who wants to help me do the other two islands in this fashion, I will provide the bmps of these two islands and a copy of the facet map so you get an idea of what it ought to look like based on any structures or mountain ranges that may or may not be present. Preferably someone who is better using Photoshop or a program of similar ilk than I which is not hard to achieve as I'm not even an amateur at artistic programs like PS I am what would be defined as a neophyte or in more modern terms, a noob or what I prefer, a Noobasaurous Rex.

Let me know if you'd like to help me with this otherwise I'll persevere and do it myself in my neophyte fashion.

[Cyrus Tegyr]

Update:
I have been working on the map honest!

Skara Brae will receive thanks to it's local inhabitants and townsfolk a new bridge that will look similar to the one pictured below:
Tower Bridge, Skara Brae

It appears, the old bridge was a bit, well dilapidated and no one was keeping good care of it. Thanks to the miners of Minoc and the generous stone artisans of Vesper with the woodworkers guild of Yew along with the Plasterers of Britain, the community will again be able to sleep at ease knowing full well their town will be connected to the mainland with a proper grand bridge to denote the grandeur of this noble town. Replete with 8 guard towers that reach skyward and two guard houses for guards just coming on and off shift, this bridge will speak volumes to any unsuspecting brigand or plunderer who dare step onto it. Many thanks to those who gave so generous toward it's development, the plans are still being drawn up but hopefully soon, it will be constructed and Skara Brae will once again be a shining jewel in the crown of Lord British.

On a more less RPish note, Khaldun entrances added to lost lands.

Fixed some possible holes around the map in Lost Lands

Added a tavern to Moonglow, under the inn, that's right, you heard me, under the inn!

fixed a house in Skara Brae hopefully, will need to test this if I can get my server to allow outside access

finished drawing out the pixels islands for the treasure map file

Papua and Delucia, completely static free in an effort to make them 100% player owned with no npc vendors to add to a real wild and untamed landscape where lawlessness is king. (my idea, I have been left it feels to interpret how I view things without staff approval since I can not seem to get in contact with them currently)

todo:
Copy over Khaldun level 2
Copy over other dungeon that will be entered through a crypt type thing I built where new haven once was
finish adding walls but not decorating the triangle dungeon (will be completed at a later date to try to hurry the map push out)
stop finding things to do to hurry out the map release
repackage the client, new uoam version which will consist of the new map files and any other updated files I have made including animation fixes and possibly taller tree graphic updates...(not sure about this one) and also some custom goodies I spent good money on as a gift to the player base for being well so patient and understanding with my IRL stuff and my weird foibles to find other things to work on.

Once this is done, try to get in contact with staff to proceed accordingly, and hope to God that all my work will not be in vein!

[Emirien]

Cyrus, awesome update, cant wait to see this happen! Bridge looks awesome, cant wait to see the pub under the inn