Let's Talk About Hickory Branch

We can keep that in mind as a possibility, but let's remember that we don't want to change the face of the worldmap too dramatically, so it should be an 'if needed' contingency thing I believe.

Moving the icons around from the points they're at now opens up a whole new can of worms - namely, the worldmap paths. The advantage of keeping the existing locations is that the paths don't have to change.

Apologies if this is already known or documented somewhere, but I've figured out a few more things about this business. First, the Hommlet locations are problematic because they're automatically considered known. So we could change them to whatever we want, but the locations will always be known from the get-go. That's not good. Haven't found anything yet that would seem to control this setting. I hate to always jump to the 'hardcoded' conclusion, but it looks that way right now.

Second, the Hommlet locations are tied to the surrounding temple locations in some sinister way. If for example you delete a Hommlet location, one of the temple locations goes too. So there's more potential for tears there.

Third, the Hommlet locations don't have graphics that appear when they become known (because they're already known, see above), and I can't yet figure out a way to add them. Actually I can figure out a way; it just doesn't work like it should. So we can have clickable buttons for those, but no icons to go with them, unless they sit atop the pre-existing graphics on the map. I think. :dizzy:

I fear some less ambitious alternative will have to suffice in the end (if indeed anything at all), but I'm still looking into it.

Troika, Troika, Troika ... :roll:

 

Behold, an image of the ToEE worldmap with Hickory Branch on it, complete with icon, selectable your-mouse-is-here thingie, and scribbly handwriting:



In this instance, HB has stolen the official worldmap location of the burnt farmhouse (with the well to down below). The burnt farmhouse has in turn stolen the worldmap location of the ruined house. This is because (I think) the burnt farmhouse actually does have its own worldmap paths, whereas the other two temple satellites don't. So this way we can have worldmap paths to HB. The burnt farmhouse doesn't really need them, it being the temple's worldmap neighbor. And the ruined house worldmap location is no more.

The HB location also steals the handwriting from Emridy Meadows, and the burnt farmhouse handwriting goes over there instead. This is mainly so that the Emridy writing gets out of the way of where I hope to put the Verbo stuff (although it does look pretty cool down there at HB).

This is not all fully implemented yet.

Next question: do we or don't we do the same for Verbo and Welkwood? The Hommlet locations are no good to us, and the remaining two temple ones are path-free, so we'd have to rob ... probably Imeryd's Run and the Moathouse cave exit as HK suggested before. They are the only others that are at all ancillary, as they can be gotten to via Nulb and the Moathouse without too much trouble.

The alternative is that Verbo will stay as it always was (presumably with the same attendant player confusion), and Welkwood will become much the same - icon-free and red circle-free.

The only other possibilities I can think of are:

1. draw location art on the main worldmap for Verbo, which would be viewable from the get-go but might at least mitigate the confusion (the Hommlet art is like this).
   
2. use one of the Hommlet buttons for Verbo (it's not outrageous to think that players would know where Verbo is from the outset) and think of some other way of preventing players from going there until we want them to.

Both of these still leave Welkwood out in the cold though, unless anyone can figure out how to turn the auto-known quality of the Hommlet locations off.

 

Thanks for the input and suggestions, guys.

I think I have come up with a reasonable implementation of this whole thing:

1. Make the current HB location the Welkwood location. The surroundings should be suitable for a bog - at least moreso than the hills around Hommlet. It's further away than I'd like, but meh; we have to make compromises somewhere.
   
2. Move HB to the Cave Lair site. The new HB has a distinctly dry look, and the Kron Hills would be better for that than the Gnarley Forest.
   
3. Move the Cave Lair to the Broken Tower location and do away with a worldmap spot for the tower. This will mean that Ranth will have to walk across the Temple outdoor map to get to the broken tower, but after some honest consideration I think the tradeoff - 3 new worldmap areas, professionally implemented - is worth it.
   
4. Use one of the Hommlet locations (south, specifically, since most of the worldmap paths lead to east Hommlet, and since the game automatically thinks you're in North Hommlet when you view the worldmap) for Verbobonc. Yes, Verbobonc will be accessible from the outset, but so what? Let players go there if they want to. It's not like they wouldn't normally know of it's existence. We'll just add story state flags to everything so they can't actually do anything there until we want them to. This way, too, we can add appropriate graphics to the worldmap, so the no-icon Hommlet button factor won't be an issue.

Once again, this seems like a lot of changes, but when it's all said and done the only differences will be that the ruined house and broken tower will no longer have worldmap accessibility, the cave lair will have moved, the burnt farmhouse will have moved slightly, Hommlet will have 2 worldmap locations instead of 3, and our 3 new game areas will be fully functioning and integrated on the world map.

This has actually passed the no-meaningful-reservations phase for me now, so I'm going to start on the broader implementation. Feel free to debate it further here if you like, and if there are any compelling cases made against I'll reconsider.

 

Gaear, I don't know how to change the Hommlet worldmap locations - I mean, how to make them point at different maps - but Allyx assured me it could be done. Please let me know how its done, and i will use that to put the Graveyard on the map in KotB

 

@Basil - the main Hommlet location will still be the one that puts you smack in the middle of town by the signpost.

@Ted - I'll let you know when/if I figure it out.

 

I gave the game a damn good playing last night, and I have to disagree with the south one: thats the centre of town one, right? Ie it drops you right next to the signpost - that combination is far and away the easiest way of getting around Hommlet. It actually made the fedex quests bearable, bordering on feeling like an actual game rather than a chore.

My solution - sorry if this is much frigging around -

- internally swap the north and south ones so the "you are here" thing puts you in the middle of Hommlet not the north.

- make the North one Verbobonc, so its like you are taking the north road out of town and heading there.

 

Turns out this won't be an issue anyway because the associated problems with the Hommlet locations are unresolvable, as near as I can tell. These include the problem of getting the worldmap locations to point to different maps (probably an internal function pointing to a jump point in those cases, since there are no separate maps for 'Hommlet East,' 'Hommlet West,' etc.) Also, I keep forgetting that no matter where you put those, there are no worldmap paths. So we could put one way up north for Verbo, but you'd just teleport there instantly.

What I had planned to do was convert Hommlet North to Hommlet South, because when you're in Hommlet on the worldmap, you're always portrayed as being in North Hommlet (that flashing cursor thingie). So if we used the Hommlet North location for Verbo and moved it up north, when you were in Hommlet, the cursor would still flash in the new Verbo like you were up there.

I'm currently exploring other options for Verbo again. We may have to settle for the old way with perma-graphics added up in that corner.

[edit]

I don't know if there were some misconceptions about the Verbo location, but the plan was never to have the Verbo button situated in Hommlet (wherever); the button was going to be moved up north.

[edit 2 after re-reading]

Yes, that's what I had intended exactly.

 

1. You could send players to worldmap locations via the signpost, but my opinion is that would appear cludgy.

2. For what purpose?

3. I think that's getting carried away with the whole signpost concept.

4. I believe so, but that's not really neccesary for town locations, which are already known automatically.

Thanks for the input nonetheless.