Shattered Kingdoms

I also agree.

way to derail the only thread that actually promises good works in sk, kids

personally, Mira, I'd like to suggest making a wiki for the new area. That way everyone can contribute as much as they'd like without you having to manage everyone's submissions. if your front page is a right proper image map with internal links, it also would work very effectively at organizing the information. If you wanted to control how many people could access the information, you could make it a private wiki and just add people to the list when they apply.

I for one am discouraged from "applying" to any additional bureaucratic building projects; there are plenty floating around as is.

I love that idea Grep. I wish there was more translucency in SK's areas. For instance I wish there were guides to the game much like there are for other games.

It seems to me unless you know someone who knows someone acquiring info on secrets in the game is damn near impossible.

I think grep was referring to a Wiki for the actual building of the area. We're quite familiar with Wikis on the staff, but this area is relatively small. It's not really worth putting one up for this one. Zip files work just as well.

I don't mind area guides, as long as they're IC. Information gained through OOC mediums doesn't help the game, it just takes away from the interaction required. Feel free to write some and we can stuff them in a big area library.

In fact, you could create a character concept around it. Play a Zavijahn whose mission is to explore areas, map them and reveal their secrets by publishing books. You get to step on the toes of Mirans as a bonus. Takers?

Last time Wert did one of these, the task was managed with a private SK forum, suitable for group discussions and passing out assignments. Hard to see what a Wiki would add except complexity.

As for not being able to get into areas without OOC knowledge, I'd argue those are building errors. The idea is to avoid them, not set up websites to encourage OOC information flow.

I agree then. Make there a way to discover all areas in an IC manner or else the only way info will flow is OOC.

[edit: link removed]

Eehhhhh... I tried that, Mira, I really did.

But every single area I tried did not map well. Overlapping rooms, void rooms... to say nothing of one-way exits and recursive rooms, it's a royal mess in many areas. There's not very many ways to actually efficiently convey areas because of this. It takes a lot of work to make a quality map of an SK area, work that's harder to do with certain race/class combinations than others, and the resulting maps do not readily import into SK itself. The maps I have made of places like the underdark and Menegroth use unicode characters to delineate shops and such, and SK's string editor just doesn't allow for that.

That's part of why I like the wiki idea. Your front page could be a table that literally forces the design to conform to a grid layout. But, like you say, a small project might be better off using traditional methods.

Have you had a good turnout so far in interest?

Yep.

Grep, I think you're overestimating how much information has to be recorded. You just need to know an exploration area exists and what sort of things to look for. You don't need a full quest solution, far less a full area map.

The pirate's ship is a good example of clues. It told my newbie sorc roughly where Tlaxcala was. I had already traveled there, but I couldn't get past the first challenge. Without understanding what the site was supposed to be, I might as well have tried guessing random numbers. After I understood, it took me maybe 5 minutes.

Meh. When I hear "map an area," I think of, you know, the giant poster of the Link to the Past worlds that you'd whip out of Nintendo Power... not a riddle of a clue. But that's really not the point of this thread. I'm happy people are interested; the timing, right as I have to grade a bunch of finals, is depressing. Hopefully these initiatives will continue.