Guild City

[Mouse]

More thoughts...

Since this is a virtual city, we could have it floating in space just as easily as on the ground - even if its basically medieval. What do you feel about that?

How does everyone feel about regular grid design?

Reason for asking is that it would make life a bit easier for whoever has to put this city together. Each grid square would be a single city block and a set number of pixels in size, so that we all draw maps that end up the exact same resolution. Larger focal points could be two or more adjacent grid squares, such as the arena, or the beautiful castle I envisage as Robbie's Pad. These larger maps would break up the grid a bit without throwing it into disarray. The component parts would also be relatively easy to rearrange to make sense of the placement of amenities.

Using this 'modular' method the city could be as big or as small as the number of mappers we have, and be far less of a headache for the CL's to work out

C&C welcome

EDIT: I'll stop for a bit now - I'm filling up the Activity Stream!

[DarkInfinity]

To add to your list Mouse:

• Orphanage (for all the projects started and never finished... unless that was the intent of the ruins)
• The Slums (for those poor newbies like myself)
• Blacksmith shop (for those who work hard on the forum itself making adding features, and creating those nice award Icons and such)

As for period, I'm down with a fantasy medieval style. a good majority of the maps I have seen here so far tend to lean that direction. Along with the time period, we should probably think about the general location as well, is it in a grassy area with farms all around, up in the snowy mountains, or on an island in a tropical zone? (are we getting to far into the details yet...)

As for a regular grid design, here is a thought have an octagonal design, palace in the center and main roads leading out north, south, east, and west like a compass (that is either cool or cheesy, I can't decide) In this case the blocks wouldn't be exactly square/rectangular, more trapezoidal. But still of a regular pattern.

Is this going to be a walled city?

As far as the diversity of the city, I think it should be a melting pot, as diverse as this community. So include all the fantasy races. Just a thought.

[Matthew VE]

Great idea Mouse! I would definitely want to take part in this.

[- JO -]

It's going to be EPIC !!!!
I'm in for anything, but prefer medieval cities...
And put me in for anything with walls and towers (castle ? barracks ? one of the city gate ?)

[Mouse]

To add to your list Mouse:

• Orphanage (for all the projects started and never finished... unless that was the intent of the ruins)
• The Slums (for those poor newbies like myself)
• Blacksmith shop (for those who work hard on the forum itself making adding features, and creating those nice award Icons and such)

As for period, I'm down with a fantasy medieval style. a good majority of the maps I have seen here so far tend to lean that direction. Along with the time period, we should probably think about the general location as well, is it in a grassy area with farms all around, up in the snowy mountains, or on an island in a tropical zone? (are we getting to far into the details yet...)

As for a regular grid design, here is a thought have an octagonal design, palace in the center and main roads leading out north, south, east, and west like a compass (that is either cool or cheesy, I can't decide) In this case the blocks wouldn't be exactly square/rectangular, more trapezoidal. But still of a regular pattern.

Is this going to be a walled city?

As far as the diversity of the city, I think it should be a melting pot, as diverse as this community. So include all the fantasy races. Just a thought.

Nice additions - though I'm not sure who's going to want to do the slums - or even if Robbie would allow the city to get into such a state! I'll add them to the list. Details are good, even if they don't come into play straight away they are useful as mood generators - even if it is only to spur someone else to say 'bad idea'

I'm leaning towards fantasy medieval period myself, but we may yet be surprised by the eventual consensus of opinion. Walls sound good don't they. I think I'll leave that idea hanging - see if anyone else has anything to say on the matter.

I'm not really getting you on the structure there. Would you be able to do a quick sketch to show us what you mean?

Great idea Mouse! I would definitely want to take part in this.

Welcome on board, Matthew Please feel free to contribute ideas at will


Edit: ninja'd by Jo! Hi buddy

[Mouse]

It's going to be EPIC !!!!
I'm in for anything, but prefer medieval cities...
And put me in for anything with walls and towers (castle ? barracks ? one of the city gate ?)

Hey Jo

Funnily enough you were the first person I thought of when DarkInfinity mentioned walls! LOL!

I'll add it to the list along with the barracks

[J.Edward]

I'm still sort of waiting to hear back from Robbie about a thumbnail scraper issue, but I think we are going to try to go ahead with this.
I do still need to find out about where I am going to be housing this. My thought is to have it in the area where Guildworld is,
but it needs a separate area so we can have a thumbnail scraper for it and that requires Robbie to move things or create a separate space.

As to the layout and the nature of the city...
We can do it a number of different ways, depending on total number of participants.
I tend to like more organic layouts rather than grids, but grids do allow easier additions and changes.
I'll also add - maybe if we did a grid just right.. maybe it could work out really well. Who knows.
We can discuss the merits and decide what people would prefer. A good discussion of people's opinions on this would be appreciated.

I also like melting pots and can easily see how many types of beings could live in a large city with many styles of architecture.
I can also appreciate Bogie's point too. Here again, I am ok with going with the group opinion.

If a non-flat city is desired, then we would need to really plan that out well in advance.
It's doable, but just has to be sort of planned early on I think.

Edit - and I sort of figured that we would be doing this as top-down, otherwise everyone would need to be able to do perspective, which is a lot harder.
However.. if there is a particular building you want to do a perspec view of, we can always do some call-outs for soecific spots maybe.
There are a lot of options and potential for all sorts of cool things here.

[Mouse]

I'm still sort of waiting to hear back from Robbie about a thumbnail scraper issue, but I think we are going to try to go ahead with this.
I do still need to find out about where I am going to be housing this. My thought is to have it in the area where Guildworld is,
but it needs a separate area so we can have a thumbnail scraper for it and that requires Robbie to move things or create a separate space.

As to the layout and the nature of the city...
We can do it a number of different ways, depending on total number of participants.
I tend to like more organic layouts rather than grids, but grids do allow easier additions and changes.
I'll also add - maybe if we did a grid just right.. maybe it could work out really well. Who knows.
We can discuss the merits and decide what people would prefer. A good discussion of people's opinions on this would be appreciated.

I also like melting pots and can easily see how many types of beings could live in a large city with many styles of architecture.
I can also appreciate Bogie's point too. Here again, I am ok with going with the group opinion.

If a non-flat city is desired, then we would need to really plan that out well in advance.
It's doable, but just has to be sort of planned early on I think.

Its really good of you to work with us on this despite how busy you must be with life and the Annual Awards. I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say we are very grateful for your help and guidance.

I would much prefer you to be the project leader here and make the final decisions, as you are already an acknowledged master in the art of city mapping - though I don't mind bouncing along in the background doing the support work for you if you would be kind enough to take up the leadership role - especially in light of the fact that you already had this idea before me

[Josiah VE]

I would prefer that everyone gets to do their own rendition. Maybe a 2 or 3 month challenge.
If it was everyone doing one part, how would the layout be decided?

[Mouse]

My apologies Josiah!

I got swept away by the community project idea, and forgot to think of people who had voted before the thread went that way.

If we went back to doing this as a drawn out challenge I would say that it might take about 4 months. Merelan City took me 4 months, but I had a couple of major setbacks along the way.

The layout of the group project idea is what we were discussing, and I think that J.Edward (or whoever would be looking at trying to fit the jigsaw together near the end) would be the one to make the final decision.