[crossfire] House sizes

[Alex Schultz]

Mark Wedel wrote:
>   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 say ranges certainly do make sense. Personally, I'm not sure 10x10
would be so bad however. To me it seems that outdoor buildings with a
scale matching the 10x10 scale would be more immersive. Despite that
though, I think it would be best to see some mockups of each scale to
get an idea of how it would feel to play with.

>> - 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.
>   
Well, IMHO it could be a good thing, provided it was well done. So long
as it's just as (or more :)) visually interesting, and it doesn't impair
navigation of the city much, then it'd have the effect of making things
feel more immersive.
>   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.
Well, one could target re-doing of existing towns at 2.0, we could
create true "bound-exits" where one exit refers to another's location
regardless of if they move, or thirdly there is the option of just
designing the redid town specifically so the old perm apartment exit was
to the right place. Any of those three options would fix the issue IMHO.

Alex Schultz