Guild City

[J.Edward]

Just playing with ideas...
So, if we leave Guild city where it is right now, that has it way inland and not near any rivers, lakes, seas, or oceans.
But... maybe it is some sort of weird karst environment and there are all sorts of nice underground lakes and rivers and such.
And maybe in the midst of the city is a giant sink hole down to a big lake

[Mouse]

Oh WOW! Now you're talking!

I love this original stuff. Lets be different to everyone else and do the unexpected

[J.Edward]

I just noticed that the city of Guild is awfully close to the border with the orc regions of Chor'Tah to the east.
So...orcs and war and stuff might be a bit bigger of a part of life in Guild City... maybe.

[Mouse]

That means walls and proper defences. Jo will be pleased to hear about that - a chance to put his award winning siege wall drawing skills to practice

EDIT: Its also the perfect excuse to have a proper castle in town - 'Robbie's Pad'

[Straf]

So if I'm understanding this right, there are potentially four spacial dimensions, of sorts, to map: The obvious 2Ds of W-E and N-S, the level dimension which shows individual 'floors', and the zoom dimension as in elevation which is a coded feature. So let's say the ground level is 0, we could have a range of -4 to +4 if we wanted. Whatever level you choose as your 4th (spacial) dimension level 0 is always visible, unless the level is less than 0. For anything below ground only the current level is visible, for anything above you can always see the ground. A single bit will sort that out. Using only 8 bits we could have 128 locations, approximately an 11 x 11 grid, with each location given a particular land mask based on a certain resolution and a level using the level bit. The whole location of a map could be encoded in a number from 0 to 255.

[Josiah VE]

We should put our heads together as mappers and try to come up with the coolest city design possible. We could make a thread dedicated to collecting the ideas of guildmembers and put them in a pot, boil for ten minutes, take it out, and mash and stir together to create the coolest-est (maybe another 'est') and unique-est city map ever design (now my words are getting all mixed up). After all, between all the amazing cartographers on here, we must be able to make something awesome together.

[kacey]

This has definitely peaked my interest so I hope I'm understanding things correctly...Someone will map out the main city structure with basic elevation information, main roads, and rivers? and if I understand correctly specific locations like city hall, taverns, and such which Mouse has started a list for will be allocated to different sections by who ever is planning the main layout?...So we will be givin a chunk of city to work on with main roads, and maybe a few key locations which we need to incorporate into our section? and then other buildings, and smaller roads, and alleys, and houses, and such will be up to us?

And if the main level map is top down, but there will be hot links to specific building, and indoor maps can we do these side maps in different perspectives? Sort of like if someone is browsing around the zoomable map they will be able to click on different buildings, and get linked to a different map just detailing those areas, and if they find a hatch in the basement, and they click on that they may be able to view maps of the underground, and sewer system? If I'm understanding it right, it all sounds very complicated for who ever is putting it all together.

Also I think for such a big project the time limit would have to be very long or not at all. I think it would be cool if it was ongoing, continually growing, continually getting more detailed, on all the levels, street view to inside of buildings to underground.

I really like the idea of being able to do separate hot linked maps to the indoor areas.

I also like the idea of it being more organic then square grid like J.Edward suggested.

I've never done a city map before, but always wanted to, so if it's ok, I'm understanding it right, and there isn't a strict time constraint then I'd like to reserve a spot if I could.

[J.Edward]

You are pretty much correct in your assumption Kacey.

I think we will try to start with the main top-down stuff and try to get the broader city layout done and then try to work in to the buildings and floors and sewers and stuff.
But yes - I do hope that we can do hyperlinked stuff where you could go to, say, a perspective of a building and a floor map for it.
Maybe even to a room and/or items in a room. This all depends on the desire of Redrobes to do all the linking.

As for me, I really want to do that sort of level of detail. I think there is a lot of fun potential there.
We have plenty of time, but I do know that energy and interest wains as time goes by.
It is just how it plays out. Some will remain interested. Others will burn out some.

There is also potential for little villages outside of the city proper. Though, we would need to know the cities limits first, to know what was outside the city.

[Redrobes]

So if I'm understanding this right, there are potentially four spacial dimensions, of sorts, to map: The obvious 2Ds of W-E and N-S, the level dimension which shows individual 'floors', and the zoom dimension as in elevation which is a coded feature.

We have the N.S.E.W. ground view map with gardens, walls, roads, roofs and what you would basically see from a drone or hot air balloon. The zoom is for in and out or the resolution so you can get more detail right up to practically the pixel resolution that it was mapped out to the whole city - like google maps. Then I can place down hot links. Those can be links to images or a URL. The URL can be another zoom map. So we can put in hot links on the ground level where there are man hole access hatches and link them all to the sewer zoom map. We can put in hot links at the doors to buildings to the attachment for the single map for inside that building. What I cant do is put in hot links on attachments. So all the hot links need to be on the zoomable layers of which there are going to be about 2 or 3 max (Ground, Sewer, something else). I can link the whole city zoomable map onto the Guildworld zoomable map at the point of "The Guild" in Robbies area - see earlier posts in this thread about that.

Here is a map I did of some nature reserves. If you zoom in you should get up close to the point it adds hot links to the photos.
http://www.hawkandowl-shapwick.org/A...hesMap/Map.htm
(If you go to the "wick" part of Shapwick Moor in bottom left Hawk and Owl region, there is a URL link there to their main website. So if that URL was the guilds other zoomable map then you would see the next zoomable layer there)

I do hope that we can do hyperlinked stuff where you could go to, say, a perspective of a building and a floor map for it.
Maybe even to a room and/or items in a room. This all depends on the desire of Redrobes to do all the linking.

The linking is not too hard to do. I had a script where I put in all the positions and targets and I run it and it generates all the javascript for it. Its a bit of work to initially set it up but once done its easier to keep up to date and I just have to upload the one javascript file. Everyone should note however that whilst its fairly easy to keep a single image view of the whole city up to date, I have to upload tons of files for the zoomable layers. So they will be out of date as the map progresses. This is why my old ViewingDale made that easy and that its hard to do with HTML / Javascript - it was the whole point in why I wrote that app as it could have done those updates in real time as it never baked all of the maps into one giant bitmap to upload and dynamically generated that zoom map on the fly.

I should also add: Perspective view - yes, Room plan - Yes, Items in room - no, as the hot link needs to be on the ground view zoomable map. We used to have a wiki for the old cwbp but it got spammed to high heaven. I dont think anyone is keen on reinstating one for all of the description / text etc. But we could link to another forum thread for it and maybe have the room plan, description and items all in there.

[Straf]

We have the N.S.E.W. ground view map with gardens, walls, roads, roofs and what you would basically see from a drone or hot air balloon. The zoom is for in and out or the resolution so you can get more detail right up to practically the pixel resolution that it was mapped out to the whole city - like google maps. Then I can place down hot links. Those can be links to images or a URL. The URL can be another zoom map. So we can put in hot links on the ground level where there are man hole access hatches and link them all to the sewer zoom map. We can put in hot links at the doors to buildings to the attachment for the single map for inside that building. What I cant do is put in hot links on attachments. So all the hot links need to be on the zoomable layers of which there are going to be about 2 or 3 max (Ground, Sewer, something else). I can link the whole city zoomable map onto the Guildworld zoomable map at the point of "The Guild" in Robbies area - see earlier posts in this thread about that.

Here is a map I did of some nature reserves. If you zoom in you should get up close to the point it adds hot links to the photos.
http://www.hawkandowl-shapwick.org/A...hesMap/Map.htm
(If you go to the "wick" part of Shapwick Moor in bottom left Hawk and Owl region, there is a URL link there to their main website. So if that URL was the guilds other zoomable map then you would see the next zoomable layer there)

I think I get it You could, in theory, have an infinite number of zoomable layers by just clicking on a link to open up a district map, with individual properties linking to attachments that show the detailed plan. The composite map is built on-the-fly using the individual district maps whose positions are defined by some gridding system magic. The more zoomable maps there are the more room for errors to creep in, so keeping it simple is crucial, so the number of zoomable layers needs to be limited. Am I understanding this correctly?

If so then a complex underground labyrinth underneath Soap Distant's house (see Brentford Triangle by Robert Rankin for more information) would be well outside the scope of this project.

I am just sitting and imagining how it can all be done, and speculating more than anything, so don't really mind me