[crossfire] House sizes

[Mark Wedel]

Alex Schultz wrote:
> 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.

  It just seems to me that if 10x10 is chosen that there would be very few to 
none single space houses.  I can't think of many maps that are 10x10.

  Another question on this could be height - if a map is multiple floors, after 
how many floors should the icon depict some height (I'm not thinking about 
basements/dungeons, but second/third/fourth floors).

  With the bigimage support, an object can have height without an enlarged 
footprint - a tower could appear to be 2 spaces high, but still only have a 1x1 
footprint.


> 
>>> - 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.

  Yes - bigger cities would be nice.  Also, cities that have less empty houses 
would be good.  While it may not be realistic for every building in town to be a 
map, from a gameplay perspective, it makes exploring more interesting.  Also, 
the 'xyz is closed' is a misleading message to new players - if I saw this, I'd 
think 'so when does xyz open', thinking there could be time based events, etc.

  If bigger buildings were done, it could also make sense to add more 
'blocksview' spaces to the maps - I shouldn't really be able to see the street 
behind the one I'm in if its full of big buildings.  Individual blocksview type 
arches would be needed, as if you set it on a multipart building, it becomes the 
property of the entire building - more likely, it should be set on just the 
portions of the building away from the street (maybe those should also block 
passage also - don't know).


>>   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.

  True - if redone for 2.0, that would work fine, as we'll probably be making 
enough other incompatible changes that it would be a start over type of scenario.

  At some point, someone actually investigated doing everything in one scale - 
that'd certainly make the towns big, but probably too big relative to the 
current size of the continent.