Guild Meeting Hall (old)

[Lontahv]

Ah yes, I was poking at my guild-meeting-hall model a bit just now and was thinking the best way to block off the visitor's view of the hall if need be, and I was thinking that some kind of cloth thing might be good.

[Lontahv]

Ok, I need your FULL input on this, that means: post ALL your ideas and concerns as often as you can.

I have (in the last week) been working VERY hard on a new place; the link in chambers. It may not seem like this is very important and maybe even unneeded but, they may be the most important room in the whole guild age. Think of when you link into the city, do the places that are less packed ie. palace-alcove seem faster to link in than the more packed link in points ie. ferry-terminal? For me the less crowded the link-in the faster you link in so, if this place is made to handle large crowds than it stands to reason to have a link in in a separate .prp/room, THAT is why the link-in is so important. But, there is more than just that; the link-in-room can serve a few other uses like:

1. as a room to store the logs,
2. a room to show the history of a guild,
3. a lounge,
4. a place to bring visitors to show then what the guild is about and why they may want to join it,
5. the room that can prove that THIS IT NOT IN D'NI(very important if we want cyan to put it into the game).

So, what will the design look like? Well, that's what I've been trying to figure out. Let's see what I've got so far in all of those fields. "As a room to store logs" I have so far a book-stand in a very important place.

"A room to show the history of a guild" I have so far a pile of places for stone busts of important guild people, present and past(our guilds, not the d'ni guilds).

"A lounge" All you need for this is some nice chairs/couches. ; )

"A place to bring visitors to show then what the guild is about and why they may want to join it" Well if you have a soft place to sit and you have some history and some logs, this comes naturally.

"The room that can prove that THIS IT NOT IN D'NI" All you need for this is a lot of daylight, to see the sky and, a modern look(I've built this into the design).

Ok, I have all the bases covered so, now some pics.

But... let me warn you: the writers seal in the middle of the floors is temporary(I'll make my own design), the walls are missing, and a lot of things aren't even there, the only thing that you can count on staying kind of the same is the roof .







Lontahv

[Lontahv]

I just went to nadnerb's tunnel age and, i want him ONBOARD! Paradox, can you contact him.

[Kato]

Done (I went to do it, but someone else already did ).

Also, I like your design there, but maybe each individual group should have their own Imager?

-Kato

[Aloys]

Many things to say, but first of all there's a fundamental problem we must solve.
As I mentionned in my previous posts, we are build this place with the '5 guilds' idea in mind (GoW,GoMa,Gome,GoC,GoG), because that's what Cyan is pushing for. (well, at least that's the idea they pushed when they started this whole guilds thing). But the fact is there are more that 5 guilds, (Archivists and Linguists for instance), and that'll probably increase in the future. And leaving them out wouldn't be nice IMO. We don't want this Age to be elitist, but inclusive, right?
So we need to take a decision about this now, while we still have room for changes, because including more guilds mean changing the room design. (I've been thinking about it and it shouldn't be too problematic). I don't think there'll be many more guilds (at least many "serious" guilds), there are 5 currently, and I'll be very surprised if we get more than 10. So I think at worst we could get away with just doubling the number of sliding walls if needed..

Now about the rest

---

Linking room: That's an interesting idea, although we shouldn't make it too detailed or it will take just as long to link in.
Side note: I don't think we need to prove the Age is not D'ni (but I agree a bit of sky light would look nice). Rather than going 3D right away we should just start listing precisely what we want. Books for Meeting logs sound good. Billboards about each guild sound good to. Guild member statues and such sound a bit excessive to me (not to mention difficult to do).

You mention several chambers, you mean we'd have one for each guild? (that makes sense)
But how do we join the various rooms? Meeting room from the linkin room? I could be nice to have the meeting room be much lower than the linkin room, so you need to go down stairs to get there and have the guild. hmm forget that, I'll make a separate post for that.

About the name: I don't really like the idea of calling this a guild hall. There already is a guild hall at the top of Ae'gura, so we're (just a bit) stepping on Cyan's toes here. I think we must find something different. Amphitheater? (goes well with the shape of the room) just Guild Theater? Guild Assembly Room? Guild Auditorium? Guild Chamber? Guild Center? Stadium? Arena? (lol)

The plan for the spectator's part of the building is to not have benches--have them stand and then have a camera region that looks down at the stage when they go up to the edge of the railing. Does this sound ok to everyone?

Sounds good to me. But I still think the spectator area should be a little lower (not a lot, maybe 5 feet) the banners won't be that big surely?

[Aloys]

So if we are going for more than the meeting room, then we' need to think about the layout.

Re-reading your post I understand that you suggest the guild chambers to be the link in spots; that would work for guild members wearing their shirts, but what about regular explorers? (And even then, guild members could forget their shirts). A common link in area would be usefull.
Assuming you want one chamber for each guild they should be placed all around the meeting room behind each guild's section, and we could have the common link in area above the large meetingroom, with doors in each 'corner' leading to the guild rooms and the spectator area.

I went blender-happy and did this sketch. It's just a sketch to show the overall structure, don't read too much into it. For one thing the corridors & stairs leading to the guild rooms could be shortened.

(note: this is all assuming we go the 5 guild way, see my previous post)

[Pryftan]

I think some sort of Guild variable is set for your avatar once you take a shirt, and even if you aren't wearing it at the time the game knows which you picked last. That's why we can go to our Pub without wearing the Writers shirt. So really the only concern is a particular link-in spot for avatars who have never taken a shirt from Kirel at all.

[Aloys]

Heh, I didn't know that. (BTW anyone know the IC explanation aobut this Tshirt linking thing?)
Still I think a 'common' link in area would be a good thing.

[Lontahv]

I had the idea a while ago to have a very well lit all-guild museum for visitors--this would have a hole in the glass roof and a hole in the floor for the light-shaft to flow down into the guild meeting room. This would have things like logs, letters(in glass cases) etc. The was to have the visitor link-in between the guild museum and the guild meeting room. I later scrapped this idea but, maybe I could bring it back in favor of an all guild museum rather than a single-guild museum. Here's what I have so far it the way of layout:




As you can see I have stairs that go up to the guild link-in so that one can now see it from to far away so, it can turn off so that the guild meeting room and the guild museums never are viewed at once. But, I'm liking the idea of a main guild-museum on top of the hall.

[Lontahv]

I had the idea a while ago to have a very well lit all-guild museum for visitors--this would have a hole in the glass roof and a hole in the floor for the light-shaft to flow down into the guild meeting room. This would have things like logs, letters(in glass cases) etc. The was to have the visitor link-in between the guild museum and the guild meeting room. I later scrapped this idea but, maybe I could bring it back in favor of an all guild museum rather than a single-guild museum. Here's what I have so far it the way of layout:




As you can see I have stairs that go up to the guild link-in so that one can now see it from to far away so, it can turn off so that the guild meeting room and the guild museums never are viewed at once. But, I'm liking the idea of a main guild-museum on top of the hall.