Feature Specification: Travel System

[White Warlock]

The former was my intent. As i said, i'm still trying to learn it. I also figured each group would prefer to do their own thing, but hey... can't hurt to try.

[AcadiusLost]

If you're working with the visual end of things, I'd recommend making a subcategory of minituarized trees and placeables to make life easier- if the idea catches on, you can export it to speed things along for any other teams who give it a try- in my limited experiments I found 1/20th scale a bit too small (0.05), but that was mostly in reference to PC size as compared to the available camera angles. If nothing else, I suppose having some examples of rescaled exteriors would help people decide if that mode of game interaction is too jarring/immursion-breaking to bother with.

The heavier end of things, IMHO, is the scripting/technical side: resizing/cutscene mode-ing parties, altering their movement rate, visual range (so you can't see other parties coming from 100 miles away), disabling spellcasting, resting, maybe even locking the party into whisper mode if possible (so you don't "hear" other parties from 100 miles away)- then ability to reverse all of this when porting to an area of interest or random encounter- potentially with some accounting for presence of scouts/wilderness skills.

Though, I suppose the look of it will be the deciding factor for a majority of our users, so the time may be well spent.

[White Warlock]

If nothing else, I suppose having some examples of rescaled exteriors would help people decide if that mode of game interaction is too jarring/immursion-breaking to bother with.

Aye, that was my thought as well.

The heavier end of things, IMHO, is the scripting/technical side:

As i understand it, the miniaturized terrain FF-type map will need to be locked of being able to participate in spell-casting or otherwise, and that any combat incidents will need to be dropped to an 'encounter' scene, as experienced in the OC. As i understand it, this is mostly already scripted, by Obsidian, and we will need to include modifiers for terrain, a timer to periodically check for encounters, multiple 'encounter' scenes, and scripting to ensure two seperate parties receiving two seperate encounters do not end up in the same 'encounter' scene. In my opinion, that will be the biggest challenge, possibly unresolveable.

Though, I suppose the look of it will be the deciding factor for a majority of our users, so the time may be well spent.

That is my hope as well. I'm still trying to find successfully presented FF-style mods.

[White Warlock]

Hi AL,

After reviewing our discussion, i'm not sure you understood what i'm considering.

I'm thinking of an encompassing Travel Mod, borrowing examples from Sandermann's Heart of Winter project ---

http://heartofwinter.jconserv.net/viewtopic.php?t=20

http://img409.imageshack.us/img409/3218 ... p01ik9.png

In which the 'entire' Faerun Map will be recreated. This FF-style map will be a standalone mod, with the purpose of linking ALFA mods together, via this travel mod. It could, as well, be a utility to connect to various 'parts' of one mod, if for instance one of the mods has disconnected parts requiring extensive travel to get from one to the other, and the mod builders don't want to clutter up their limited workspace with long linear treks. This would allow for more effort made to provide quality content on their mods, and put the work of travel between distant regions in the hands of the FF-style map (travel mod).

The thought here is, it's always been an immersive disconnect to travel from one mod to another in ALFA1. You just didn't feel like you were actually travelling from place to place, especially when the distances travelled were so friggin' immense (areas inbetween being non-existent or not hosted). The travel mod would fit the bill of providing a visual aid to the immensity of the world they are in, the distances travelled, and the scope of the project as a whole.

So, basically, the longterm goal of the travel map is to recreate this entire map --- http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/wd_ma ... rge_72.jpg

The more realistic, more immediate, goal is to recreate the areas encompassing any approved mods. I.e., it's expandable, just like any of the other mods.

[darrenhfx]

That travel mod idea (with new wrinkle via world map) is the best thing I've heard in awhile.

[AcadiusLost]

The concept of an ALFA 00: Travel server comes up periodically here, and in theory I find the idea an attractive one: however, thinking practically, I'm not sure it would be a satisfying endeavor for NWN2, for a few reasons:

Starting with practicality: who would host the travel server? We've had many generous hosts during our NWN1 phase who have been willing to host servers they don't DM/run plots on, but the curve is a good deal steeper with NWN2: a normal broadband connection, and an outdated computer will no longer be sufficient. I daresay most of our servers will be hosted by very interested and involved folks, who I'd expect would want to gain some DM-satisfaction from running plots and such- though I'm unclear on how that could happen on a travel server, which only has overland and encounter screens. Maybe it would appeal to some folks, lower commitment and all, but it makes for a pretty disjointed server story-wise. DMs for such a server may be reduced to some equivalent of "traffic police" dropping "random" encounters on any party that's travelling (by their reckoning) too far, too often.

Guess I'm getting into the playing side already- on the flip side, folks who do spend a lot of time on a 00 travel server are basically going to have a combat-based game; the only opportunities for any RP at all would be before, during, and after random encounters ( inside the "encounter area")- while some may enjoy this, I worry that it threatens to dilute the immursive ALFA experience into a combat-loot-xp grind. If we make travel times slow, any travelling PC is going to be looking at spending a significant amount of time in this mode, rather than meaningfully interacting with others PCs, in a context where a DM can be observing and weaving lines of a story.

We've always weighed the balance of representing travel as something more daunting, versus it being "too easy", but for "adjacent" servers that are geographically widely spread, adding a system like this could be a real show-stopper for low and mid-level PCs, especially if the intent is to set up encounter tables by canon rather than as balanced to party strength.

Further in this line, by canon some areas are vastly more dangerous than others- this isn't going to be apparent just looking at the map as the party moves- any group lacking the canon knowledge to choose the "right" path is likely to end up stumbling into such things with some regularity.

One of my hopes with a single-server overland (FF-style) map, was to allow a party passing through an unmarked area of interest, some chance (via skill check, for example) of "discovering" it, taking them to a detailed area (or areas). These might start off few, and be swapped in and out by the DM team with updates, but they give some reason to explore. However, on the scale a full Travel Server would have to be built to, I'm not sure enough could be represented to be worthwhile.

There is also the continual concern that Travel Server downtime strands all the PCs, all across ALFAdom. While we can fall back on the old validation in Q concept, it does mean inconvenience for every other server, for one that is disabled.

With regard to technical issues, it's not impossible to jump a party to an "unoccupied" encounter area, or even to port them to an OOC waiting room if all encounter areas are "booked" with current encounters. I'd hope that would be a pretty rare event, though. I'd say seamlessness of crosserver portalling would be another priority here, if approaching a random town on the World Travel screen means all the players have to jot down an IP address, log out, and direct connect via gamespy each time, that's not really what we're looking for.

I think rescaled overland terrain maps have some good potential, but I'd rather see them cover a contained, specific area, and be maintained by a crew of builders who know in-depth the canon and current plots of the area- in short, the DM/build team for that specific region. At this point, I'm not seeing how the benefits of an ALFA 00 travel server would outweigh the drawbacks.

[indio]

I wouldn't reckon combat would be all that significant on the 00 server. Fights should happen where DMs can either observe or read logs to determine if anything amiss has befallen.

The focus of the 00 server should be quite simple...travel. If a player wants to RP on another server or get to a DM'd event then they can take the time to do it. That's the issue we need tackled above all else, imo. It's got to take time to get there.

Better that they spend time in a relatively safe environment where at least they can do something (wander around, navigate, search for secrets...there's a bunch of stuff we can add to the 00 server to make it interesting, if not dangerous) rather than:

a: Log off one server and onto another (this kills us most of all)
b: Sit inside a small cabin for a predetermined time

And xp should not be awarded on any server without a DM (unless we adopt the auto xp of TPI), so that6 negates that problem.

I'm in favour of the idea as floated by cipher way back when, and Sand's model seems headed in the right direction.

[White Warlock]

A little update. Sandermann dragged me to be his guinea pig to test various scripted features of his FF-type Travel scene (which i will refer to as Travel Map), and so far it looks very promising. Some highlights of that experience:

• No visually annoying AT. Nothing to indicate an AT exists on the standard terrain, except an object to click on (in this case, the test server had a rock u clicked on).
• The group leader is the 'only' one capable of entering said AT. Or, if u are traveling alone, just your character.
• If the rest of the group is too far away from the AT, then the group leader is not capable of clicking on the AT.
• Once in the Travel Map, the 'only' character seen is the group leader. The only character that can move is the group leader (all other 'not visible' characters tag along... a shadow indicates their presence).
• While passing over different terrain, the group leader's speed is effected. Roads are faster, mountains are dog slow, etc.
• When exiting out of the Travel Map, you basically need to sort of 'bump into' a transition point (no indication one exists). I suppose this can be made more obvious for 'obvious' locations, but i think this is pretty cool if you have some 'hidden' locations.
• When returning to the standard map, everything returns to normal.
• Again, the only one with any control in the Travel Map is either the lone traveller, or the leader in a group.

Still some bugs he noted, but it does look very promising. Excellent work Sandermann.

[AcadiusLost]

Sounds more or less exactly like what we were brainstorming, quite encouraging to hear Sanderman's made some headway on it. I'll keep my eye open for him to ask a few questions about how he's thinking to handle some of the tricky bits.

I'd still say this sort of a system is better handled by individual teams, each for their own server. Can you imagine everyone getting stuck downloading a new pwc every time /any/ server area wanted/needed to adjust some terrain to reflect a new linked area?

[ç i p h é r]

Sand gave me a walkthrough as well last night. It's much like you described, WW.

Settting it up sounds straightforward - nothing complex for builders - and won't take much time. It's just a matter of laying down triggers to define the terrain type and waypoints to define specific points of interest players can explore. A "world tool" item allows players to drop out of the Travel Map into a terrain specific generic area that they can adventure in. However, I think there will be a sizeable time sink in creating the travel map terrain accurately and aesthetically. Getting it all to the correct scale may be a somewhat daunting task.

It's a nifty system for sure and it's great for builders to have the choice. If there's any interest from server teams, we can incorporate it.

[ç i p h é r]

Alright everyone, I checked with Sandermann tonight and the system is essentially ready. Is there any interest on the part of any server team for this sort of travel system? If not, I see no sense in incorporating it, at least at this juncture. If you'd like to have a look at the system firsthand or want some visual aids, perhaps that can be arranged.

Please let me know. Thanks.