Post by Keith Heitmann on Dec 1, 2004 23:30:56 GMT -5
By Matt Zimmitti, Tilted Mill Team Member (QA and Dev. Support)
Ok, in our previous two lessons we carved out a river, raised up some cliffs and painted some textures to make everything look nice. Now we need to go in and add some resources for our citizens to use.
Before we move forward I want to cover a few things regarding flood plain. The reason I’ve saved this bit of chat until now is because flood plain lies somewhere between a texture and a resource. The big question is how much. Generally speaking, the thickest you need to go is 15 tiles (7-8 corner to corner) for straight up gameplay. You might want to refer to the pic below <FP Width.jpg>. This is a little more distance than a barge landing can be built across (10ish tiles) so you don’t want to make your entire flood plain this thick. You can also go thicker if you like, but if you do, understand that there is a law of diminishing returns involved. Farmers have to walk to tend fields and Scribes have to walk to assess them. Just something to keep in mind.
As a rule of thumb, if you line the river with floodplain and evenly distribute the thickness between 5 and 15 tiles the player should have more than enough farmable space to work with. If you want to make the scenario more difficult, consider thinning out the flood plain or making it more irregular (Abu anyone?). Making the flood plain thicker is cool, but does not necessarily make the scenario easier (Shedet is a good example of this).
Now that we’ve gotten the ball rolling with this distance stuff, let’s think about what we will need to place on our map. Heck, let’s make a checklist!
Papyrus
Rushes
Clay
Acacia
Myrrh
Henna
Oil Trees
Flowers
Villager Hovels
Flax
Kohl
Quartz
Tacos
Mines
Quarries
Date Palms
Pomegranate Trees
I’ll lay out some starting amounts below, but keep in mind that we are going to end up tweaking resource amounts once we test (yipe!) the scenario. Let’s get down to bizniss…
1) Papyrus and Rushes
-Select Terrain and check Randomness. This will auto rotate, rescale and nudge the sprites you place, making them look a bit more organic.
-Select Units->Resources->World Level (most craft resources are in this list)
-Method: Basically I paint down paps/rushes in thin swaths at elevations somewhere near the transition between high flood and no flood. I generally place around 15-20 papyrus and 10-15 rushes per clump. I’ll trim back some if I’m trying to conserve barge landing space.
-Amount: Well, here’s how I do choose to do it. I pull the camera all the way back (mousewheel) and face it straight down (tilde and mouse). I try to keep my clusters about one screen distance from one another. That gives the player enough space to build close to the flood plain, allows for barge landings and ensures that the furthest a unit will have to walk is about a screenlength to get to either resource.
2) Clay
Remember the bands of red mud texture we painted in Lesson 2? I cover these areas with the clay deposit sprite. Keep in mind that these sprites are invisible. You can see where you have placed them by drag-boxing over an area. The rings without sprites in them are where you have placed clay. See the pic below for an example of this <Clay.jpg>.
3) Trees and Such
-I use Randomness for these as well
-Acacia, Henna, Flowers, Oil Trees, Myrrh Trees
-Method: I clump all of these up for a couple of reasons <Resource Clump.jpg>. For starters, it is much easier to keep track of how many you have placed when you have them clustered. Second, if you find that you need more resources later on it’s easy to decide between adding a couple of this or that to each cluster (general lack of resources) or adding a new cluster (deficient resources in a specific area of the map). Finally, you always want to keep the player in mind when you place things that cannot be demolished. Shooting a buckshot spray of resources over the map can quickly eat up build space, making it difficult to find places for pyramids, cult temples etc.
-Amount: I start out with 5ish of each of the above resources in each clump. I tend to add a couple extra Acacia trees because they get used for military as well as private crafting. I also add in a few Pomegranate trees because they look nice.
<Lesson 3.5>
4) Kohl & Quartz/Faience
-I just drop a few of these around cliff areas. These will always be the longest walk for your crafters (or their kids). Cosmeticians and Jewelers have it kind of rough until you start importing or mining raw materials for them.
5) Quarries (in this case Limestone and Fine Limestone)
-Quarries are found in Buildings->World Level
-As per our simple design back in the lesson one days, I just dropped these in near the cliffs to the south. Keep in mind that the direction the quarry is facing when you place it. You need to have space in front of the quarry for blocks to pile up and you certainly don’t want to face a quarry into a mountain. I suggest using the direction arrow in this case. Select the quarry from the menu, the click the direction arrow until it indicates the direction you want the quarry to face, then place the quarry. As a tip, make sure the camera is facing north or the directional arrow won’t make too much sense (even though it will still be correct). Press the Home key at any time to reset the camera to facing north. <Quarry Direction.jpg>
6) Mines
-Similar to quarries, be careful about the direction they are facing. I upped the amount of mines from my initial plan. There are now 2 in the NE (copper and tin for military), 3 in the NW (gold and emeralds for trade and jewelry) and 1 in the south (turquoise for trade/jewelry).
<Lesson 3.8>
7) Villagers and Flax (foraged food as well)
-Villager Hovels are found in Buildings->Players
-I tend to build villages of 25ish hovels. Like resource clumps, this accommodates build space and also allows us to keep track of our villager count when we balance things later.
-I also put down Flax near each village. The Flax sprite looks like a little, cultivated farm so line them up near where folks live.
-For each village I place 5ish Pomegranate Trees in the village (Date Palms if the village is further from the river). Generally 5-to-1, Villager Hovels to foraged food, is a good ratio. Space permitting, we’ll probably add more Pomegranate Trees to the shoreline later as well.
-Right now we have 175 villager hovels to start with. My guess is that we’ll bump this up to 200 later, but for now it is ok.
8) Animals
-Found in Units->Land->World Level
-In general, add fewer animals than you would think are appropriate. They reproduce on their own and in most cases will keep up with your society.
-I tend to place cows, fowl and gazelles in herds of 5-10
-Cats, lions, croc and hippos I only place 1-3 of.
-We’ll likely rebalance these numbers once we’ve tested a bit
<Lesson 3.11>
Well, we pretty much have a working city level at this point. There’s no basalt or granite, but we’ll get that from the world level. We also need to gussy up the map with decorative sprites, which we will do in lesson four. After that, we’ll cover fiction, world level, triggers and military.
Related images:
www.tiltedmill.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=4446
www.tiltedmill.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=4447
www.tiltedmill.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=4448
www.tiltedmill.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=4452
Related files:
Lesson_3.5.scn
Lesson_3.8.scn
Lesson_3.11.scn
Ok, in our previous two lessons we carved out a river, raised up some cliffs and painted some textures to make everything look nice. Now we need to go in and add some resources for our citizens to use.
Before we move forward I want to cover a few things regarding flood plain. The reason I’ve saved this bit of chat until now is because flood plain lies somewhere between a texture and a resource. The big question is how much. Generally speaking, the thickest you need to go is 15 tiles (7-8 corner to corner) for straight up gameplay. You might want to refer to the pic below <FP Width.jpg>. This is a little more distance than a barge landing can be built across (10ish tiles) so you don’t want to make your entire flood plain this thick. You can also go thicker if you like, but if you do, understand that there is a law of diminishing returns involved. Farmers have to walk to tend fields and Scribes have to walk to assess them. Just something to keep in mind.
As a rule of thumb, if you line the river with floodplain and evenly distribute the thickness between 5 and 15 tiles the player should have more than enough farmable space to work with. If you want to make the scenario more difficult, consider thinning out the flood plain or making it more irregular (Abu anyone?). Making the flood plain thicker is cool, but does not necessarily make the scenario easier (Shedet is a good example of this).
Now that we’ve gotten the ball rolling with this distance stuff, let’s think about what we will need to place on our map. Heck, let’s make a checklist!
Papyrus
Rushes
Clay
Acacia
Myrrh
Henna
Oil Trees
Flowers
Villager Hovels
Flax
Kohl
Quartz
Tacos
Mines
Quarries
Date Palms
Pomegranate Trees
I’ll lay out some starting amounts below, but keep in mind that we are going to end up tweaking resource amounts once we test (yipe!) the scenario. Let’s get down to bizniss…
1) Papyrus and Rushes
-Select Terrain and check Randomness. This will auto rotate, rescale and nudge the sprites you place, making them look a bit more organic.
-Select Units->Resources->World Level (most craft resources are in this list)
-Method: Basically I paint down paps/rushes in thin swaths at elevations somewhere near the transition between high flood and no flood. I generally place around 15-20 papyrus and 10-15 rushes per clump. I’ll trim back some if I’m trying to conserve barge landing space.
-Amount: Well, here’s how I do choose to do it. I pull the camera all the way back (mousewheel) and face it straight down (tilde and mouse). I try to keep my clusters about one screen distance from one another. That gives the player enough space to build close to the flood plain, allows for barge landings and ensures that the furthest a unit will have to walk is about a screenlength to get to either resource.
2) Clay
Remember the bands of red mud texture we painted in Lesson 2? I cover these areas with the clay deposit sprite. Keep in mind that these sprites are invisible. You can see where you have placed them by drag-boxing over an area. The rings without sprites in them are where you have placed clay. See the pic below for an example of this <Clay.jpg>.
3) Trees and Such
-I use Randomness for these as well
-Acacia, Henna, Flowers, Oil Trees, Myrrh Trees
-Method: I clump all of these up for a couple of reasons <Resource Clump.jpg>. For starters, it is much easier to keep track of how many you have placed when you have them clustered. Second, if you find that you need more resources later on it’s easy to decide between adding a couple of this or that to each cluster (general lack of resources) or adding a new cluster (deficient resources in a specific area of the map). Finally, you always want to keep the player in mind when you place things that cannot be demolished. Shooting a buckshot spray of resources over the map can quickly eat up build space, making it difficult to find places for pyramids, cult temples etc.
-Amount: I start out with 5ish of each of the above resources in each clump. I tend to add a couple extra Acacia trees because they get used for military as well as private crafting. I also add in a few Pomegranate trees because they look nice.
<Lesson 3.5>
4) Kohl & Quartz/Faience
-I just drop a few of these around cliff areas. These will always be the longest walk for your crafters (or their kids). Cosmeticians and Jewelers have it kind of rough until you start importing or mining raw materials for them.
5) Quarries (in this case Limestone and Fine Limestone)
-Quarries are found in Buildings->World Level
-As per our simple design back in the lesson one days, I just dropped these in near the cliffs to the south. Keep in mind that the direction the quarry is facing when you place it. You need to have space in front of the quarry for blocks to pile up and you certainly don’t want to face a quarry into a mountain. I suggest using the direction arrow in this case. Select the quarry from the menu, the click the direction arrow until it indicates the direction you want the quarry to face, then place the quarry. As a tip, make sure the camera is facing north or the directional arrow won’t make too much sense (even though it will still be correct). Press the Home key at any time to reset the camera to facing north. <Quarry Direction.jpg>
6) Mines
-Similar to quarries, be careful about the direction they are facing. I upped the amount of mines from my initial plan. There are now 2 in the NE (copper and tin for military), 3 in the NW (gold and emeralds for trade and jewelry) and 1 in the south (turquoise for trade/jewelry).
<Lesson 3.8>
7) Villagers and Flax (foraged food as well)
-Villager Hovels are found in Buildings->Players
-I tend to build villages of 25ish hovels. Like resource clumps, this accommodates build space and also allows us to keep track of our villager count when we balance things later.
-I also put down Flax near each village. The Flax sprite looks like a little, cultivated farm so line them up near where folks live.
-For each village I place 5ish Pomegranate Trees in the village (Date Palms if the village is further from the river). Generally 5-to-1, Villager Hovels to foraged food, is a good ratio. Space permitting, we’ll probably add more Pomegranate Trees to the shoreline later as well.
-Right now we have 175 villager hovels to start with. My guess is that we’ll bump this up to 200 later, but for now it is ok.
8) Animals
-Found in Units->Land->World Level
-In general, add fewer animals than you would think are appropriate. They reproduce on their own and in most cases will keep up with your society.
-I tend to place cows, fowl and gazelles in herds of 5-10
-Cats, lions, croc and hippos I only place 1-3 of.
-We’ll likely rebalance these numbers once we’ve tested a bit
<Lesson 3.11>
Well, we pretty much have a working city level at this point. There’s no basalt or granite, but we’ll get that from the world level. We also need to gussy up the map with decorative sprites, which we will do in lesson four. After that, we’ll cover fiction, world level, triggers and military.
Related images:
www.tiltedmill.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=4446
www.tiltedmill.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=4447
www.tiltedmill.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=4448
www.tiltedmill.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=4452
Related files:
Lesson_3.5.scn
Lesson_3.8.scn
Lesson_3.11.scn