Sunday, July 8, 2012

Timesink part 12: Something H found

After writing some basic text introducing the player to H and their notes, and ending by saying that H was going through the gates, I needed to find someplace interesting for H to set up shop.

This is complicated slightly because the server is "live" in that there are players on it. They have figured out how to use the gates in a simple fashion and go on trips, which meant anyplace I found had to be somewhat isolated. I chose a location that is a few gate trips away from the spawn gate in the thought that the further away, the less chance of being visited. I also scouted the area looking for evidence that people had been visiting. It was a nice area: hilly, but with lots of water, which meant the architectural style is patterned after the Maya, but it also has sort of stilt houses built on water. I found a temple not too far from the gate with a house, which meant H could have a home near what he found in the temple.

 So, what did H find? A sort of map room showing a global view of where cities are in the world. The interior of the temple was hollow, which gave me lots of floor space, so I started by making a series of concentric circles. From the top of the temple I took a screenshot and overlaid it with a spiral plot of city locations (discussed inpost 10).
Concentric circles with the city-spiral map overlay
It is hard to tell in the above image, but the actual city locations are small blue circles. In each of these locations I placed a redstone lamp and started wiring each spiral arm up. The end result, as seen from the top, is pretty darned good.

Map as seen from above.
The map isn't really meant to be seen from straight above, though. It's meant to be viewed from a special area where the player steps on pressure plates. Each plate lights up a different spiral arm and plays a different musical note. Hopefully the players will start to figure out the musical connection to the gate addresses. If not, H will lay it all out in one of his notes.

Since the map is really meant to be seen in action, how about a video? 


Maybe more notes from H next time.


No comments:

Post a Comment