Re-thinking Island layout

[JulyForToday]

First thing I have to say is almost nothing stays exactly the same in the transition from concept to 'reality'. And any project in GoW is that any story that is associated with anything right now, will almost certainly end up out the window.. That being said, I'm not really here in the GoW for story-telling. At least not right now. It's way to early for that. Besides, I don't think anyone knows quite yet how everything will fit together, including Cyan.

But ultimately I'd like to see a substantial something made for now. That's why I like this Yinfara age. It does have some interesting ideas, and I really think if some effort is put in, it could look really incredible. So I drew up a new map based on the original, but engineered to give it a more realistic look.


The biggest changes I made were with the terrain. There is more land, and the addition of a swamp and some mountainous areas for a more realistic landscape.

The 1st Hut is actually an IC attempt at making a hut, but it was a failure. The 2nd hut would be the actual hut. The ? seems like another good spot for a structure. Not sure what though. The construction areas would be evidence of deforesting and tools used to make the hut (nothing big though). The wall would nestle in the valley formed between the two rocky areas. I'm not sure how the tides will actually play into things with the topography (seeing how I've not actually made the topography yet!). The actual layout of the structures is mostly the same though. All of the green areas would be forest with patches of grass and leaves and such.

But of course I would want to consult on such a major change in the overall design of the Age.

[Justintime9]

Hmm... interesting Idea... u know though, the more i've been thinking about this age, the cozier i keep Imagining it... I originally didn't Imagine grass in the forest... now i do... It needs cozy, i dunno, somehow a tribute to MYST Island, a place where you can just relax. When i first started the age, i kinda Imagined it differently. I Imagined it a bigger age, full of swampy areas, but now i realize that I don't want that... the lush forest should be full of mossy forest floor, and the waterfall has a very small area withhout trees, there is a spot in the trees that the sun shines in warmly and cozily. and when the storms come, it's so... different. the sky turns dark, and it's such a huge Contrast to the cozy part. As I said before, i should be a tribute to Myst Island and what has become of it. The storms represent all the trouble we went through, and finnally URU lives... i dunno I may just b babbling on... I'm guessing u guys all Imagined the age differently? anyway, are there any problems with the age layout currently? do we need to reely rethink this?

[Pryftan]

I don't think swamps will detract from coziness. Think Channelwood, or Haven. Little wooden bridges moving all over the place.

As for the tide, I had figured the entire island sloped down towards that one low point they had to build the brick wall for, and eventually as it moves around the outside it tapers off because the island rises back up.. which seems to be the general thing you did there, JFT. However.. it might be cool to make it so that instead of an intentional waterfall, it's just a brick wall right across the low section and the island's been sinking a bit, so water has started flowing over the top of the brick wall, making an unintentional waterfall and an unintentional pond.

I think the ? should be the site of the lighting rod controls. Stuff like that is always at the side of roads and stuff in Myst puzzles ;E

How about a path up the mountain peak with a telescope? Looking into it, you could see in the distance a bunch of storms out at sea, surrounding the whole island. Nearby there could be a journal recording the general movements of the storms, and the author theorizes they may have magnetic properties when interacting with eachother.

[Justintime9]

Hmm... Interesting Idea... ya, i like it, I'll hav to draw a sketch of that perhaps... the brick wall, waterfall Idea sounds very myst like... still not sure though... O, and JFT, i like your Idea adding more stuff, if the swamp is done Mystish enough, it should be good, I think we shouldn't change the map too much though, i think we should just add the swamp north of the linking hut, and then we could change the waterfall... still not sure but, it's worth a try

[Pryftan]

..you know, I'm starting to have an entirely different vision of this place. I'm just going to go with it and see if people approve.

What if there's civilization on this Age, somewhere far from the little island, and the person who has built all this shipwrecked on the island, current whereabouts unknown? He started out building a home (so we link in the first hut, and then you see the second) and then worked on a way to get power (lightning rods) to something he was building to escape (some kind of motorboat). But he realized he can't rely on when the storms will come, so he studied the magnetic properties of the storms and built some sort of massive machine to attract them to the island. (This is also because I don't think we're anywhere near cycling weather effects, and I'd like to make this one of our first Ages.) You could track his progress as he worked on stuff and eventually find a little hidden cove where he has prototypes of what he finally used to escape. I think following a random prisoner's documentation as he builds his way off the island would be an awesome tribute to Myst.. very Atrus-esque, and yet not infriging on Cyan's material.

Any takers?

[Justintime9]

a very Interesting Idea Indeed... well, it would definitly make a good storyline, but lets' try to keep the Island as much like the Original as we can... maybe somewhere on the beach could be the shipwreck... and then... i dunno, maybe the final cave where he finnally excaped is hidden reeeely good, and it would be really hard to find, u know, it would be kind of Intreguing to have something Hidden that good, that you could easilly overlook it. or maybe if u have to unlock the cave by solving the puzzle... I dunno, it has some promising Ideas...

[JulyForToday]

I definitely had cozy in mind. I think of Haven's style a lot when I think about Yinfara. I actually really like your idea Pryftan that the fellow who was shipwrecked was a native. And I also like the idea of whatever he built attracting the storms. Maybe he could have intentionally decided to attract the storms so that he could be found (if they were advanced enough to track weather). Although he would have to find better shelter than a hut for all the storms that show up. Maybe we will need a couple of caves. (if that isn't myst, I dunno what is!)

How does he attract the storm though? Maybe the sand has some sort of odd quality to it? Or maybe something in it? (quartz? I dunno..) It would be interesting to see his civilization if they used this material for electricity or whatever. But it would be common knowledge, so he would be like "oo... this sand can do what I need it to". And then he discovers that the birds use the sand in their nests, maybe mixing it with something else. He'd then run experiments to try using the nests, and when he gets more storms to come, they blast all these nests like crazy, making a lot of glass orbs. (you can also have a side story about him getting attacked by birds). Then he builds that funky building. Or maybe the building is used to attract the storm. And he could have made it temple-esque. Maybe his civilization has a religion with gods (greek like?) and he's trying to appease them?

The waterfall area doesn't need to have any real trees around there. But this is a jungle, which implies a variety of trees and plant life amongst the rest of the age. Very colorful plant life. And more animals... but birds are a good place to start!! (notice the lack of birds in Kadish. Drives me nuts!)

Don't let the technical limitations (ie day/night stuff) get in the way of the concept though. Before long we will be able to do anything we really need.

[Owehn]

There is a material (called Berlinite) which is structurally identical to quartz but with larger piezoelectric coefficients. (Piezoelectricity is the phenomenon by which certain materials produce voltage under stress.) Earth sand is primarily composed of quartz - perhaps the sand on Yinfara is primarily composed of Berlinite? That would make it slightly more plausible that an inhabitant of this Age was able to build a lightning-summoning device out of materials found around the island.

Disclaimer: I know little to nothing about piezoelectricity, so take this with a grain of sand...er, salt.

[Jennifer_P]

Well, it's just my opinion, but I find it kind of unrealistic to think that a castaway would be able to summon storms, something that we cannot accomplish easily today with easy access to modern equipment, labor, and materials. How long did this guy live on the island, 3 years, 50 years, 200 years...? I think that if I were stranded on an island I would probably end up making something out of the industrial revolution for power before summoning a thunderstorm to power my machine with lightning. More along the lines of Robinson Crusoe, probably.
I do like the idea of a castaway building up machinery to help himself escape though. I think maybe some simple ways to attract help might be the construction of a tall lighthouse or the building of a boat. These items would have to fit in with Yinfara's cozy theme, of course. The lighthouse might be grown over with flowering vines and sprouting ferns in its crevices, for example. It might have decorative rock carvings on it as well. The lamp at the top could be powered during or after storms by lightning. Or maybe the castaway just kept dry wood up there and used lightning to ignite it to make a great fire. Then we could have some sort of Channelwood-esque elevator puzzle to get to the top too. Or maybe he just set about building himself a lovely carved wooden boat in a hidden place, but was rescued before he had a chance to use it.

[Pryftan]

Well my original idea was that the storms were powerfully magnetic for one reason or another, so he's able to attract it with some giant magnet or something. Something not too complex.

Here's another version.

Our hero shipwrecks on a strange island. His first thought is to build some sort of shelter. He builds the first, original hut, and is just getting comfortable and beginning to generate ideas as to what to do when a horrible storm hits the island and destroys his hut. Realizing he'll need better shelter, and noticing the result of the storm on the sand nests (glass orbs all over the trees that weren't there before) he starts gathering the orbs and building the lightning rod system to take advantage of the power as well.

So he builds his glass orb house out of those newly created and those already there. But after awhile another storm hasn't hit at all, and the native begins to worry about what his presence will do to a small ecosystem like this. (He's been eating stuff from the plants, some sort of fruit? and maybe killing and eating some birds?) So he builds the telescope in order to try and observe when a storm will hit. That's when he notices the magnetic interactions between the storms (far away storms locked in cycles around eachother, repelling eachother, etc.) which gives him the idea to try and attract one.

I'm not sure exactly how he'll do it, I had figured some sort of magnetism thing. Maybe the mountain's made of magnetite or something ridiculously convenient like that. (Or if we tie it into the reason the storms work the way they do, it won't be so convenient and it'll make more sense.) He builds something capable of retaining a charge (not too sure about this part) so he can use it to power his boat-esque thing, then attracts the storm, charges his battery, and is off.

I kinda worked on it as I went along, so it's a skeleton of a story if you want to add some better material.

Also, I wrote this before your post, Jen. I think the way my story works it explains why he'd go for thunderstorm power. Alternatively though, he could build the whole brick wall / waterfall thing with a water wheel in it and use that too. I do like the lightning rods though.

A note about "cozy".. I can see Myst being kinda like that. But above all, to me, Myst was lonely. It was empty and strange and beautiful. I like that feeling even better.