[crossfire] House sizes

[Mark Wedel]

Nicolas Weeger wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> What would everyone think of:
> - deciding that eg one outside square translates to eg 20x20 squares inside. 
> There may already be such a measurement, but I'm not sure it's that formal

  IIRC, there was some measure, like each outside space is 1 chain.  A chain is 
somewhere between 60-100 feet.

  If one wanted to try and unify scales, one could use that as a base.  If each 
indoor space is 10', then for each tile outside, it would correspond to 10 tiles 
inside.

  But I think that is a bit low - there would never be use for any 1 space 
buildings.

  a 20x20 seems reasonable.  I think to be clear, you need a range, like 
15-30/space.  In that way, it becomes pretty clear how big an object should be - 
if 31, that is 2 spaces.  Otherwise, if you just say the scale is 20:1, does 
that mean a building that is 30x30 should be 2 spaces by 2 spaces?  What about a 
building that is 21x21, etc.

  I'd personally like some more buildings, simply because some buildings are 
getting re-used for different things (the guild building is used for guilds, but 
also the bank and some other buildings).  But some could also just get changed 
with existing images - to me, the building currently used for the zoo could be a 
good bank building (it looks like a fortified building, which would make sense).

  Could even be interesting to have different guild buildings for the different 
guilds.  And unique buildings for more of the religions (some of the ones in 
scorn are just re-using generic house images, etc).


> - doing more multisquare (4x3? 6x4?) buildings. This would mean making towns 
> bigger in the bigworld, but at the same time it would make the whole scale 
> more coherent i think

  I think we need to be careful here - based on the map size (and past 
discussions which says 25x25 may in fact be too large), you don't want to make 
buildings too big.  Otherwise, the player only ends up seeing 2-3 buildings. 
But maybe that isn't a bad thing - then at least towns could get big enough to 
start to be interesting and/or confusing.

  I'd be wary of actually re-doing existing towns - moving apartments and other 
permanent maps about starts to get messy.  However, no towns could use the new 
scale.  And for some towns, a bunch of small empty houses could get replaced by 
fewer buildings that actually have stuff in them.

  There also isn't any reason that the world has to be static - one could 
certain envision various buildings showing up outside the town walls (town no 
longer big enough), or a new section of town built with a new section of wall, etc.