I wonder if there is a good way to make an entire continuous planet. I know for DMing purposes I sometimes start with one of those attempted equalized globe maps and generate general topography then ill do some random partial transparency layers of different colors to indicate different terrain types. Then I start adding rivers and cities and roads to the area my players are in. I only print out smaller maps for the game sessions as the total map is partially a secret often.
In theory you could do something like that but with other color layers be spawns of different creature tables for general wondering mobs. The areas you have specifically built up will be the civilized area and the semi procedural driven area will be the wilderness. When you add in content you just over write an area of wilderness as you go.
As others have said, there's not really any way to objectively measure the size in square miles or anything. And since the world is still being built, it's hard to give any estimates as things may change. But you can clearly tell based on their philosophies from day 1 that Content is King in Pantheon. So they will definitely make sure that the world "feels" very big. Especially since there won't be any maps and very limited fast travel, which would make the world feel smaller. Zones will vary in shape and size, but most of them will overall be much larger than you are probably used to. And when looking at the atlas, remember that there are a lot of zones that exist in the world that just aren't labeled yet. So when you take all that into consideration, yeah, it'll take a very long time to explore everything.
Check out these threads:
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/5071/content-at-release
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/5111/pantheons-size
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/5999/putting-zone-size-into-perspective
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/5364/world-size
>yeah, it'll take a very long time to explore everything.<
Especially if they throw in barriers - logical barriers not invisible walls. Such as language. Even a level-cap with Godslike gear won't be able to dance in, learn everything and do everything in an hour if it takes a few weeks to learn the local language.
The game world for the races we are aware of us supposed to be 3 continents. We've only seen 1 continent, even then, less than half of it. And their old world builder Monty is no longer on the team, they had to hire someone else, so who knows how much work was thrown out with that change.
It's very possible the game ships with only 2 continents, which based on what we know would be around 35-40 zones. I think that is still a very healthy number of zones if that ends up happening.
bigdogchris said:The game world for the races we are aware of us supposed to be 3 continents. We've only seen 1 continent, even then, less than half of it. And their old world builder Monty is no longer on the team, they had to hire someone else, so who knows how much work was thrown out with that change.
It's very possible the game ships with only 2 continents, which based on what we know would be around 35-40 zones. I think that is still a very healthy number of zones if that ends up happening.
I'm not sure why they would throw out any work when someone leaves. It would probably just slow progress until they can find a replacement. Monty will be missed, but Jimmy Lane the new world builder seems passionate and proficient.
I personally highly doubt they will release with only 2 continents. That would require either launching with only 6 races (which won't happen since they promised 9) or completely changing to lore to say that the Dwarf, Archai, and Gnome actually landed on the other two continents. And that would be no easy task since all the stories of Terminus are interwoven. Pantheon is not bound to a release date. They have always said they will simply take however long is needed to get the game where it needs to be.
I think it's important to remember that just because we haven't seen a zone doesn't mean they haven't even started working on it. There could theoretically be a ton of zones that are ~70-80% done, but they lack the polish to be ready to show off. And I'd also think that once they complete their reference zone of Faerthale, that should increase the productivity of their workflow as they will then have a standardized template for how to build the rest of the zones. I'd also expect the world building team to continue to grow, which would allow content to be produced at an increasingly faster rate than it is now.
"I'm not sure why they would throw out any work when someone leaves."
@Bazgrim
I'm not sure if it was monty's job or not, but the old city of thronefast was replaced with a new version, so it wouldn't be a the first time a zone or part of a zone is redone from the ground up.
I personally preffered the old thronefast, it look more grandiose and it had a "cameloty" vibe to it with the dark stone, pointy towers, multiple bridges, columns archways, the new thronefast city looks a bit blander, just a big thick wall around a city, it's defenitly larger, but doens't look as appealing to me as the older one did. I'm still holding out my full judjement until the city gets finished because right now it's in the early stages, although I'm still sad that old thronefast got scraped :(
Bazgrim said:I'm not sure why they would throw out any work when someone leaves. It would probably just slow progress until they can find a replacement.
I may be mistaken, but hasn't some work already been replaced? John designed the exterior to Throne Fast (saw in the Unity dev demo a few years ago) and that is no longer in the game as far as I am aware.
*EDIT* Blah! I see @jpedrote already said this. Sorry JP.
Bazgrim said:I personally highly doubt they will release with only 2 continents. That would require either launching with only 6 races (which won't happen since they promised 9) or completely changing to lore to say that the Dwarf, Archai, and Gnome actually landed on the other two continents. And that would be no easy task since all the stories of Terminus are interwoven. Pantheon is not bound to a release date. They have always said they will simply take however long is needed to get the game where it needs to be.
I think it's important to remember that just because we haven't seen a zone doesn't mean they haven't even started working on it. There could theoretically be a ton of zones that are ~70-80% done, but they lack the polish to be ready to show off. And I'd also think that once they complete their reference zone of Faerthale, that should increase the productivity of their workflow as they will then have a standardized template for how to build the rest of the zones. I'd also expect the world building team to continue to grow, which would allow content to be produced at an increasingly faster rate than it is now.
Very fair assessment. However, I'm just going based on the fact that they have shown us very early work-in-progress on many zones before. Unless you think they may be showing some very early work, but not other very early work. And the fact that the 'template' zone happens to also be on the same continent of all of the other zones we have seen, I just think the evidence shows they are still working on that continent and not much if at all on the others. I'm not suggesting it's good or bad, just it is what it is.
But I do agree with you that it would be very hard to launch with only 6 races. Moving the other 3 onto the 2 existing continents may require a lore rewrite and some zone tweaks, I still think that's possible.
jpedrote said:"I'm not sure why they would throw out any work when someone leaves."
@Bazgrim
I'm not sure if it was monty's job or not, but the old city of thronefast was replaced with a new version, so it wouldn't be a the first time a zone or part of a zone is redone from the ground up.
I personally preffered the old thronefast, it look more grandiose and it had a "cameloty" vibe to it with the dark stone, pointy towers, multiple bridges, columns archways, the new thronefast city looks a bit blander, just a big thick wall around a city, it's defenitly larger, but doens't look as appealing to me as the older one did. I'm still holding out my full judjement until the city gets finished because right now it's in the early stages, although I'm still sad that old thronefast got scraped :(
I definitely can see why you like the old Thronefast. But zones are getting revamped often as they replace the placeholder Unity art with their own custom art. Thronefast, Avendyr's Pass, and a few others were made a long time ago using mostly placeholders to quickly serve as a demo for the game for the sake of having something to show for crowdfunding. But now they have in-house concept artists that can help create assets that better fit the lore. As the team discovers new technology, techniques, etc. that also might cause them to go back and redo an area to bring it up to their new higher standards. That sort of thing will happen regardless of whether or not someone leaves, even if it is a world builder. But it's actually a sign of moving forward, not backward :)
Bazgrim said:I definitely can see why you like the old Thronefast. But zones are getting revamped often as they replace the placeholder Unity art with their own custom art. Thronefast, Avendyr's Pass, and a few others were made a long time ago using mostly placeholders to quickly serve as a demo for the game for the sake of having something to show for crowdfunding. As they discover new technology, techniques, etc. that also might cause them to go back and redo an area to bring it up to their new higher standards. That sort of thing will happen regardless of whether or not someone leaves, even if it is a world builder. But it's actually a sign of moving forward, not backward :)
I wouldn't call the change a 'revamp' of placeholder art. It was a complete gut job of the existing content. It's completely different.
I'm not, by any means, against those level of changes. If they think someone else can do better or make improvements it should be done.
Well just know that when Brad McQuaid says massive world he means it. At least he did with Vanguard. Took a couple hours to run across one of the continents at a dead sprint with run speed buff when the game first released. And Vanguard had 3 continents. One was smaller. But the other two were very large.
jpedrote said:
I personally preffered the old thronefast, it look more grandiose and it had a "cameloty" vibe to it with the dark stone, pointy towers, multiple bridges, columns archways, the new thronefast city looks a bit blander, just a big thick wall around a city, it's defenitly larger, but doens't look as appealing to me as the older one did. I'm still holding out my full judjement until the city gets finished because right now it's in the early stages, although I'm still sad that old thronefast got scraped :(
I agree . The Old Monty's Thronefast looked like should look the most important stronghold of the continent and center of human race . This neeeds some majesty and definitely a super fortified castle like look . It must impress, be KOLOSSAL and put the fear of God in those who would dare to attack it . The old one had those features even if it was not finished .
In contrast the new one from what we've seen looks just like a city with a few buildings and a wall around it . If I was a wannabe conqueror, I wouldn't be really impressed . OK this is all still work in progress so everything and anything may change .
Now there is something I really do not understand . VR has such a giant task to not only model a few dozens of zones but especially to fill them with content - populate it with NPCs , quests , lore . This task seems huge with little time left if it should release in a reasonable time (say in 2020) . So why did VR redo the only zone that was almost finished e.g Thronefast ? Seems like a big waste of time to me especially as I said above, I belong to those who liked "old" Thronefast better .
Sorry about previous post, it was a moment of tongue in cheek humour about the size of Terminus, a planet. In reality, the world revealed to us upon release will be very vast. The scale of each zone on release will probably amaze and delight you. And there is no reason to go to a new world until this planet is completely adventured. There is literally decades worth of growth that should happen on just this one planet.
To be fair to the Dev's, most all the old stuff was placeholder art until the game became flushed out with the newest updates to Unity and more lore focused art design was pushed through the pipeline. I do think Thronefast needs some sort of towering feature behind the walls, like they are protecting something. We will have to see what happens after Faerthale is completed with all features. I wouldnt be surprised if Wild's End also gets a revamped updated look once Faerthale is done.
@bazgrim
I understand that, and as new concept art is made it need to replace the placeholders, I'm happy with that, I like the new black dagger keep, the older one look like a rubish makeshift fortress the new one looks much better, the interiors look sick, but the front of the keep looked a bit wierd to smooth or something, might have been because of the time of night and the full moon dunno , and the revamp they did of halnir cave was really freaking good.
But thronefast getting canned made me quite sad I really loved that art direction :(, New thronefast as a lot of upsides, the concept art they showed for the building looks amazing, if they implement it close to what they showed in the pictures, and make the city look more lived in, add few living quarters, houses, guard towers, etc, just to make sure the city doesn't fell has empty, or a place with just a few building all spaced out.
World content is also one of those things that tends to accumulate slowly until it reaches critical mass and can expand rapidly. I've done art object creation while part of a failed game company. Topography and basic maps can be made quickly and even a generalized point of interest map can be created. What takes a really long time is creating the individual 3d objects with all the appropriate skinning and light mapping.
A building with basically flat walls and a stock textures is pretty easy to make, but when you put enough of them together it just looks like a town someone built out of Legos. Going through and creating an artistic and architectural style for each culture, each race can have multiple cultures, is the first step to making a city feel real. Once you have a set style then you need to go through and design say 4 small homes, 4 medium homes, 4 mansions, 4 tradesmen buildings, 4 shops, 4 inns and 4 guild halls. Large buildings like castles and Cathedrals usually need to be assembled from sub components and will take more individual time. That being said some basic castles could easily reused in other areas. These buildings will be the core 3D models that will then be skinned and light mapped in various ways.
If you have created your base model correctly it is fairly easy to change the entire look of the building just by rerendering the same house but changing select texture choices. A good world builder tool will have a drop down menu for which base model you want then a selector for each texture that is applied throughout the building and usually with a grunge/age over filter. The assigned building will then be place able on the map free form or grid form.
Now assume that you have at least 20 different cultures between the playable races, ancient races and other sentient races. The number of building art objects that need to be created is quite huge. Next you move onto set dressing or putting smaller object within the buildings, Skyrim did this pretty well with Hearthstone. Each building could then have several different layouts of furniture available to pick from. Those furniture arrangement nodes could then pull from furniture libraries with as much depth as the building libraries.
From a world building perspective having a fully fleshed out object library tool with a few mapped orientations and a fully randomized or partially randomized set dressing would allow a world builder to generate a city a day that could then be edited and fine tuned at a later date. The creation and population of that library though represents tremendous amounts of man hours.
Now tie in a similar set of tools for mapping outdoor blank topography maps grid by grid and you have the beginnings of real mass world building. Once you have created a few villages and hamlets by hand you could semi auto populate and drop them into your world map at appropriate locations. Each time you build something by hand it becomes a complex assembly that can then be used as an art object at a higher tier of world building.
This same select and drop method could be used for populating the world with NPCs and mobs in general. Rather than visual map world building you are data map world building by selecting zones where orcs will spawn and build settlements that can be destroyed, areas that will spawn up to 4 dragon roosts at a time, forests that treants guard or areas with high bandit activity. These zones can then be overlapping as desired with certain consequences in overlapping zones. Add in Pantheons climate system and make it dynamic and you really have a living breathing world.
Each one of these steps require a great deal of background work to fully flesh out so placeholders are used when you need to have at least one complete vertical assembly to showcase the other aspects of the game before you have had time to craft the world itself.
If VR is building the world in assembly mode from the beginning it would be easy to update old areas with increased variation as new art objects become available after launch and will greatly facilitate making new content over time.
Great now I'm really itching to get back in to world building but from the system engineering side rather than from the art object generation side.
bryanleo9 said: Vanguard was massive yet empty. I do not want to see that again.... killed immersion. I want to see other players not feel like I am playing a single player game.
Not sure what version you were in but there was plenty of content, immersion was not affected at all.