[Avee]

The University - Goals and Challenges

Let’s start with an opener. In a departure from my standard practice of just posting whatever the hell I like with a general header of before and after, I’ve decided that this particularly unique challenge and thusly will have a rather unique creative process attached to it. This can be attributed to the sheer scale of this project in my minds-eye and the need I feel to set a series of goals to achieve with this project. 

Before the question/point is brought up, in a lazy attempt to slander me, of course I’m paying more attention to this than I would with a typical mapping project. Your guild-hall housing update, general  regional remap, house modification doesn’t hold the same value to me as this particular bit of work. This isn’t a statement meant to spite those who ask me to map something for them, but is more in regards to making the general populace aware that this is an entirely unique challenge in which I will fully attempt to make use of the level of knowledge regarding mapping I’ve acquired over the years.

When this project is complete, let it be known that various mappers had a hand in it. Not directly, I’m not sure I’ll be letting anyone casually toy with this file until it’s reached a point near completion, or unless I need to beg Milly for help because I’ve fucked up some extremely esoteric variable somewhere, and can’t seem to fix it. I fully expect to utilize skills and styles I’ve borrowed from the following people; Milly, MissPerson, Ludi, Lindah, Tee, Salmon, Chance, Nadrew, Fru, Malik, and various others I just can’t seem to recall at this moment. Sorry if you’re a legacy mapper and not on this list. Some of you may know or guess at the specific skills I will be pulling from these people, needless to say, the cores of this project will be pulling from MissPerson, Lindah, Milly, and Tee styles of mapping.

All that business out of the way, this isn’t a hype post. This is a post for me to organize my thoughts and an attempt to make folks recognize the unique challenges this project will face, they are below.

• Expand Starfall - Delete Grimmore Manor, all whilst keeping the Shrine on the island whilst simultaneously upgrading it, without allowing it to steal the Universities thunder.
  
• Use Grimmore Manor as a template on how to design the University itself. It’s tilesets will comprise the tileset of the project.
  
• Use the majority of the free space on the expanded island for the University. The unique challenge here will be seeing how much ‘build-up’ I can place on the island without destroying the suspension of disbelief. This will arguably be the most difficult part.
  
• Mini-sewers this will be another area of exploration in and around the academy. Expect it to be labyrinthian to a degree. This will lead to another area which I will not reveal here. There will be no lots. Students will not be living in the sewers.
  
• Seamless event-map integration, without breaking immersion. This will be something unique, but essentially it will allow for DMs to host an event in the academy, whilst allowing players whom are not part of the event to continue their academy RP. This sounds difficult, I suspect it will be exceedingly easy. Hopefully I get some praise for this bit on release.
  
• Various areas specifically designed around the various magics to enhance flavor and immersion, this might prove to be a challenge with the more esoteric trees. I should be able to get the bulk of them at least.
  
• Areas separate from the main academy for the purposes of congregation, shopping, farming, isolated RP for academy arc romance plots. Oh, and a... dorm? I think is what they are called. One of those with several small rentable lots perhaps, though this may not be present. I’m uncertain currently.
  
• A very specific area for the purposes of public announcements, preferably in an area you cannot avoid, so that if you are in transit, you will accidentally dip into an announcement even if you aren’t actively aware one is taking place.
  

Needless to say, it’s a lot. This thread will be regularly updated, though I may keep screenshots to a minimum for the purposes of the “wow factor” perhaps. Some of these may not make it into the final product, but again, the purposes of this specific post was to organize my ideas on the forum. If for no other reason than that I am a show boater at heart, and it I don’t set the expectation right now, few of these goals will be present in the final product.

Thanks for reading.