Variety in the City Districts

A community Age for Uru.

Moderator: Aloys

Postby J'anim Paedet » Sat Mar 11, 2006 4:26 pm

Aloys:

(I was going to put this in the 'City Age discussion' topic but I thought it deserved its own thread)

As this Age is progressing on the modeling front, I start to realize it might be a bit repetitive, especially in the beginning, since 80% of it will be made of shells that will all be identical at first. And with all these similar walls and similar streets and similar shells, it could be monotonous to walk around the Age, I think we need to make something about this and add some variety in there.
There are a couple things I can think of right now:

Districts
We toyed with the idea of different districts. The first thing it would bring us is that it would allow to break up the City, both on a physical level (building walls higher than shell would nicely block view and optimise performance) , and on an organisationnal level (it would allow for a numbering system of shells based on districts)
So far I have broken up the city in 4 districts according to the plan dustin made here. It has 4 districts: White (central one where the hub is), Red, Green and Blue.
By having various disctricts we could differentiate them, have their walls and grounds different colors, and have them follow a certain theme. Blue could be about water: more canals, a waterfall, lakes in the courtyards, even some shells that can be accessed only by the canals, the whole Venezian theme. Green district could be more about vegetation: grass on the ground, trees, gardens in the courtyards etc. And red could be more about rocks and sand. The central one (white) will be dominated by the hub so it could be more generalistic. Just ideas.

Courtyards & Decorations
The way the city is layed out there is a large & 3 smaller courtyards in each district, they could all be decorated in a unique way at least the larger ones.

Water
So we have the rivers and the canals. The canal is circular and goes through all districts, but there could be some more canals placed in various areas to add some variety. Also some bridges would be useful.

Heights
The idea to have the Age be shaped as a bowl is nice but difficult to execute well. However I agree that some changes in the height of the shells or the district would be nice. The hub will be the highest point of the city, but some shells could be on hills, even the rivers/canals could follow that and have canal locks (I like that idea).

Lights
If the Age is to be underground and we have to light it up, lampposts or lanterns are needed. since we already have tons of lamps in Uru what about glowing plants? or mushrooms? They could be different depending on districts..

These are just ideas.


-- To somehow illustrate this, I made this plan (158kb).

J'anim Paedet:

Very nice. I like the idea of the courtyards especially.

One thing to note about the water:
The canals, rocks, bridges, etc. that will be interacting the with the transparent water areas should probably be tested behind a transparency before fully modeling, so that we know they will not turn out invisible!

About the lighting -- I don't think (let me emphasize the I in this sentence) that this should be a particularly dark Age, at least not as dark as is Ae'gura. Glowing plants and fungi all sound good, but I think we should probably have some sort of inherent ambient light at the start.

Aloys:

About the transparency: I am now in the following frame of mind: Cyan is trying to support custom Ages, they are tying to get tools released at some point, and they will not let us release Ages before that. So we might as well think that whenever they will let us release Ages again we will have better tools, and issues such as transparency won't be issues anymore.Maybe I am wrong though. And if I am, water will indeed be a big issue ph34r.gif

About the lighting, yes I'd like to see the Age with some real light beside the 'artificial' light. An idea I had posted in the 'city environment' thread was that shrooms/plants would emmit luminous spores that would spread in the atmosphere so we would have a diffuse light comming from above (think the spores in teledahn, but floating toward the 'sky'). Just an idea.

J'anim Paedet:

The only problem with that, beautiful as it would surely be, is that I don't think Uru's engine supports atmoshperic light distribution. Which puts a limiting factor on just how creative we can get with ambient lighting, because to my knowledge, we will not be able to implement areas of darkness or light in our Age.

Which reminds me -- did we ever agree on where this city is going to be?

Aloys:

If we're going down the plants/shrooms road, and if Cyan release tools we would use regular vertex lighting for the lighting, and we could use particles for the plants that fly up in the air (kind of like in teledahn).

Also, I agree we need to discuss some more about the environment of the Age.

Robert The Rebuilder:

QUOTE (J'anim Paedet @ Mar 6 2006, 10:02 PM)
  The only problem with that, beautiful as it would surely be, is that I don't think Uru's    engine supports atmoshperic light distribution. Which puts a limiting factor on just  how creative we can get with ambient lighting, because to my knowledge, we will not be able to implement areas of darkness or light in our Age.

J'anim, I believe it does support some form of localized lighting. For example, look at Teledahn. There is different ambient lighting depending on whether you are in the shroom, outside, in the slave cave, in Sharper's office with the blinds open/closed, etc. It might be a matter of scripting, not sure at this point.

J'anim Paedet:

Hmm, you may be right. Not quite sure how it would be implemented though, leastwise through Blender. I think part of the Teledahn effect rests on avatar lighting combined with variable dark/light texturing.
I wonder if we could use RayBaker or something to accomplish this (although I never was able to use RayBaker for anything at all).

Robert The Rebuilder:

Shall we decide on the zoning for each district? This will help determine what type of development occurs in the shells of that district. Once we hash this out, along with a numbering scheme for the shells, we can then get to the good part: selecting shells for development!

So, let me propose the following zoning:

White: Community/Recreational
Red: Commercial
Green: Residential
Blue: Anything goes!

Note: the zoning is independent of the themes that Aloys suggested.
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Postby Aloys » Wed May 03, 2006 6:29 am

As TS Kimball rightfully reminded me in another thread, this particular aspect of the city here has been a bit on the backburner these last weeks. Let's bring it back from the dead.

As I said above, I think it would be a good idea to give the city some variety throughout the 4 districts (read said above post for more details).

What is everyone's opinion on this? Ideally we should decide this before we start the official sign-ups for the shells.
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Postby J'anim Paedet » Wed May 03, 2006 2:26 pm

Yes, I think some zoning is in order. Although I don't think the entire thing should be restrictively zoned -- we do want a level of freedom in designing the shells (at least, I do). But perhaps some specific zoning in each district would encourage certain types of organization we would otherwise lack, not to mention making the map much easier to update!
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Postby Robert The Rebuilder » Thu May 04, 2006 10:34 am

OK - how's this zoning setup:

EDIT: removed obsolete diagram

Are these zoning categories fine with everyone? How about the placement of the zones - any changes? I figured residential would be the most in demand, so there are the most of those. I also figured that community zones should be the first thing that people encounter within each district, so I made the middle of each district be community. [The hub in the center district is a community zone, of course.]
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Postby Aloys » Thu May 04, 2006 3:24 pm

I'm not sure I understand the 'commercial' aspect. It's not like we can sell anything in Uru (not even clothes)
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Postby J'anim Paedet » Thu May 04, 2006 4:36 pm

Yes, perhaps Commercial should be adjusted to Industrial.

And I'm not sure we should put that type of zoning right outside the Hub -- I'm pretty sure it would make a better Residential type, as the Hub would be serving at least partially as a town hall for those living within the city.

But other than that, I think it looks perfectly fine.
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Postby Starfyre » Thu May 04, 2006 5:29 pm

Unrestricted I think should be Industrial. Residential and Community should surround the Hub. And Commercial should be in key areas surrounding Residential. And just cause we can't sell anything doesn't mean anything. Think of Kadish Gallery. It was supposed to be an Art store before the Fall of D'ni. The same thing will be true here.

I think flip Commercial with Community.
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Postby Robert The Rebuilder » Thu May 04, 2006 7:49 pm

And don't forget the Kahlo Pub and the Great Tree Pub! And what about these possibilities:

- T-Shirt and Hat stores: try them on and keep them!

- Home furnishings: browse around for various items to spruce up your home in our spacious show floors. If you like something, contact the proprietor and get their blend file - that heart-shaped jacuzzi could be yours today!

- Ahra Pahts Realty: someone needs to keep track of who is moving in and who is moving out. Property values on the surface are outrageously high; but here in the City every lot is free! Perhaps you've missed out on the initial land rush and all the properties were taken, and someone just abandoned their lot. This is where you'd find that out. Ask for the blend file for the future home of your dreams!

- Antique stores: Think of it - items 10,000 years old and beyond. Browse the shelves and inquire about their history.

- City tours: sign up for the canal tour, the Hub history tour, the ghost walk, and more!

I'll update the map file tomorrow to reflect your suggestions - I left the PSD file at work. One question: if every shell is zoned (either Industrial, Commercial, Community or Residential), then where will the unregulated areas be?
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Postby Tsar Hoikas » Fri May 05, 2006 5:35 am

QUOTE ("Robert The Rebuilder")

- T-Shirt and Hat stores: try them on and keep them!
[/quote]

Just so as long as you don't plan to implement them as clothing items. Keeping everyone's clothing data in sync would be hell. Also, need I mention the stack dumping ;)
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Postby Robert The Rebuilder » Fri May 05, 2006 5:55 am

[quote="AdamJohnso"]Just so as long as you don't plan to implement them as clothing items. Keeping everyone's clothing data in sync would be hell. Also, need I mention the stack dumping ;)

Yeah - that's currently a big problem. But these ideas are looking down the road where we become smart enough to fix these kind of things.

Here's a revised diagram:

EDIT: Removed obsolete diagram

Any other comments?
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