"The Lowlands", Swadian-themed RP map!

[Knüppel]

great little vacationing spot for the lords and ladies but not the greatest map for large faction rp.

You are stuck in Oasis as everyone was the first days, admit it
Vornnestone is a wonderful military castle, I really enjoy the visits at the Ostpravener Infantry.
Praven and Laszloburg have indeed less fancy keeps to hang out for a whole faction, but offer either a great yard and woods and tourney field or a whole town to spread in and settle down

As for Oasis, its best use besides huge feasts is indeed to simply relax in the bath or the park in privacy, only a few guards at the gate and patrolling inside the estate and some slaves feeding and massaging you (rp'd almost nothing else 16 hours a day after the map release for over a week).


If you want to be ready for war from Oasis or the Outposts, and don't aim to capture a big castle quickly to supply our forces, you better bring in a lot ow smelted iron bars, as Oasis has no forge and you cant produce weapons if you do not refine raw iron elsewhere. With a little preparation and a few people's work this is easily possible though (We held Oasis for hours on the public server against huge forces, with it's single entrance it is better defendable then most think when looking at it from a far, and if you have seriously prepared, the enemy will run out of weapons in the long terms if you carefully store the loot in the locked chest in the kitchen)

Oh and yeah buy a box in old Port, fill it with armor somewhere. You'll need it, if you dont want to be an army of....Nobleman on vacation

 

[CalenLoki]

Finally found some time to fly around in edit mode...

FPS compared with other maps (dx7, overwiew)
Lowlands = 20 FPS
Default scene = 25 FPS
and some unfinished maps:
Nov's map = 30 FPS
My map = 36 FPS
I'll probably check and compare all most used maps and add FPS info to v4KD.

Now bugs. Only minor ones:

Spoiler

1. Small beach in the wall. Most players probably wouldn't notice, but I'm perfectionist.

2. Those are nice stairs... but quite high poly - I'd call it little abuse to use them for three steps. you did it thrice (and another thrice for ~10 steps)

3. Did you placed that fire there, or is it somehow mod-placed? Same for doors in the sky.

4. I might be wrong, but placing some overscaled rock above all interiors could positively change shadows inside

5. I still think that castles could be 25-50% smaller...
6. Work some more at mountain textures, with stone on more step slopes and grass on shelves. Combine it with some gradual changes from grass to steppe as you climb up, and you'll get quite sexy hills.

Cheers

 

[Eragon91]

I'll give a more through answer when i come back from school, but what version are you using? That version is before Vornneston got it's moat, which is, i think, 2 patches ago. The map have been qutie streamlined since that.

Allrighty, let's see here:

1: I'll take a look at it. But nobody seems to have noticed it before, so i might already have corrected it.

2:Fair enough. I'll see if i can find something smoother.

3: I believe that fire is placed directly under a Pw_Wood_Heap_Burn thingy, and that is simply where the fire is located until it is lit. I have seen it before.

4: I considered placing a huge Wood barrier over the interiors. Never got to it though. I'll see if it gets any better.

5: Reducing castle size is extremely difficult. Secondly, the castles are quite crammed as it is. Don't forget that on this map there are only 2 major castle, and therefor their population tends to be quite the bit higher to compensate for their size.

6: Yeah, sure. I never paid much attention to the hills. They looked good pretty much from the start, so i focused on other things.

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[The Lich]

Hmm I see our new tavern is a great job. But there have been a problem yesterday. Since that tavern is a place for commoners, that no one owns it. There has been a total chaos that two groups wanted to operate that tavern. I don't know how did this actually happen, but a fight occured when somehow around 20 people was in tavern; it caused a total mayhem and mass randoming.

My question is;
Who owns the tavern as a property?

 

[Dark_Hamlet]

Hmm I see our new tavern is a great job. But there have been a problem yesterday. Since that tavern is a place for commoners, that no one owns it. There has been a total chaos that two groups wanted to operate that tavern. I don't know how did this actually happen, but a fight occured when somehow around 20 people was in tavern; it caused a total mayhem and mass randoming.

My question is;
Who owns the tavern as a property?

I think no one owns it. If it's a neutral place, anyone can operate in it. The two groups had two options: find a way to work together or chaos :p

 

[Eragon91]

I made it as a central location for roleplayers and all kinds of players to gather in. Apparently, it became a bit "too" popular.

It is not owned by anyone. It merely fills the role of a peaceful gathering place.

 

[The Lich]

I am talking thru experience, it was not peaceful at all

Hmm I see our new tavern is a great job. But there have been a problem yesterday. Since that tavern is a place for commoners, that no one owns it. There has been a total chaos that two groups wanted to operate that tavern. I don't know how did this actually happen, but a fight occured when somehow around 20 people was in tavern; it caused a total mayhem and mass randoming.

My question is;
Who owns the tavern as a property?

I think no one owns it. If it's a neutral place, anyone can operate in it. The two groups had two options: find a way to work together or chaos :p

they choosed the second option
You got to see it, it was a total mayhem. Everyone slaughtering each other and new people eventually keep coming including people being randommed. Do you know what happened then? Server crashed

 

[Ninja_Pirate]

Just wanted to comment and say awesome job with the secrets. [Cookies from me sent!]

I had three other subjective observations though.
1) The new Tavern is dangerous (I've stayed clear mostly due to RDM'ers and poor RP) but a lot of fun if you get a good tavern owner and guards.
2) The area in front of Vornn Castle seems a bit empty and lonely. Not sure what you'd put there, but it does seem empty (maybe a tiny farm??).
3) As a Pirate and a Sailor, I would like a small island to sail to. IMHO ships in this map are for RP/Transport of Armies/Goods, but there isn't really anywhere to go! (Except from Vornn to Praven, Praven to Farm, and vice versa).

I +10 the new changes!

EDIT:
Forgot to mention that the hut (where most players would cut down trees) is gone, but the camp remains (and aesthetically it looks a bit out of place).

 

[Eragon91]

1: Well, it is intended as a gathering place. And that ofcourse brings both pleasant, and unpleasant, visitors. There isn't much i can do to increase the security of it.

2: It's supposed to be quite open area, rolling hills etc. There is a constructible siege camp on the field outside aswell.

3: That have been suggested, but i find neither room nor reason to do so. Islands usually only leads to people getting stuck, spamming the chat, drowning etc. Currently, the ships are primarily used as toys, and possibly assault crafts against Vornneston.

Yes, since i used the same "house" for the tavern, it would look silly to have two identical huts so close to eachother, so i simply made a outdoor camp of it. Possibly not the best of ideas and i wasn't completely satisfied with it, but my creativity was directed elsewhere at the moment.

 

[Ninja_Pirate]

1: Well, it is intended as a gathering place. And that ofcourse brings both pleasant, and unpleasant, visitors. There isn't much i can do to increase the security of it.

2: It's supposed to be quite open area, rolling hills etc. There is a constructible siege camp on the field outside aswell.

3: That have been suggested, but i find neither room nor reason to do so. Islands usually only leads to people getting stuck, spamming the chat, drowning etc. Currently, the ships are primarily used as toys, and possibly assault crafts against Vornneston.

Yes, since i used the same "house" for the tavern, it would look silly to have two identical huts so close to eachother, so i simply made a outdoor camp of it. Possibly not the best of ideas and i wasn't completely satisfied with it, but my creativity was directed elsewhere at the moment.

Thanks for the explanations. Hope you enjoyed your cookies!

 

[Eragon91]

Due to peoples inability to understand that using the tunnels for warfare will undoubtedly get them removed, i have decided to completely remove all tunnels, unless someone can provide a better solution.

 

[Phoenix234]

make tunnels full of doors that only commoner or outlaw can open? and opening one door closes the one behind you? meaning moving an army  would be verrrrry slow and time consuming?

or the other way where you make praven the entrance and the rest exits but thats abit far

 

[Eragon91]

I can chose to make the doors open to all, or to a single faction. Outlaws doesn't work, and neither does "only non-factions".

Opening one, closing one, doesn't work either. I cannot think of a game mechanic that would allow me to do that.

Making only entrances and exits would be neither realistic, nor fair for any of the other castles.

 

[Phoenix234]

I can chose to make the doors open to all, or to a single faction. Outlaws doesn't work, and neither does "only non-factions".

Opening one, closing one, doesn't work either. I cannot think of a game mechanic that would allow me to do that.

Making only entrances and exits would be neither realistic, nor fair for any of the other castles.

it would be realistic... it depends on the exit such as a hole thats to steep to climb back

could always reverse it so praven is the exit?
it would mean pravens town is easier to take and castles have escape tunnels

 

[Ninja_Pirate]

I can chose to make the doors open to all, or to a single faction. Outlaws doesn't work, and neither does "only non-factions".

Opening one, closing one, doesn't work either. I cannot think of a game mechanic that would allow me to do that.

Making only entrances and exits would be neither realistic, nor fair for any of the other castles.

I guess if you are powergaming it wouldn't matter anyway. I just wanted to say that the tunnels are awesome for a skulldaggery (-like?) character such as myself.

It sucks that it gets abused because they really do help for certain types of roleplay.

Would one solution be to place entrances/exits outside of the castles themselves? It would (hypothetically) decrease the amount of people using them for troop movement and opening castle gates. (But it would also decrease the amount of people using the tunnels for trade).

 

[{TLP}Sk1nn3r]

Does the OP have the latest download link?

 

[Eragon91]

If you want it, sure. But i would advice against using it. I cannot guarantee that the map will not crash the server, as we suspected it did with United. The reason is unknown, but we know the crashes stopped after the map change.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?la1v15yubgompb2

scn_scene_6 scene_6 256 none none 0.000000 0.000000 100.000000 100.000000 -100.000000 0x000000033000d1d3000c0b0000002ccb000052b20000195d
  0
  0
sea_outer_terrain_1

 

[{TLP}Sk1nn3r]

Well I am currently running an older version of it. Seems stable to me. Is it only the later versions that have been crashing?

 

[Eragon91]

We're not really sure when it started. It just increased overtime. We never knew if it was DDoS attacks or server crashes etc, so it's impossible to tell. And it's impossible to knwo the reasons for the crashes. All we know is that they have stopped now.

The earliest versions was pretty stable though. But if you would like to go the map a second chance, i's certainly appreciate it.

 

[Dark_Hamlet]

I think the map should run in the United server again, I never liked the fact that some trees can't be cutted (I discovered that fact in the day I impersonated a mad lumberjack who wanted to cut down all trees in the map), but the map is awesome and I can see you spent a lot of time to make it.