redesigning Vallaki?

[Darktide18]

It's been asked at least a dozen times in the past, and the answer is still the same: no. We might touch it up here and there, but a complete redesign is out of the question.

Thank you!

[dark_majico]

I don't get how anyone can look at our version of Vallaki and declare it a "city." It's nowhere near that large. It's always seemed the right size for 1500+ people to me.

There is so many things about it that give the impression it's a city, by the way the tileset looks and because its separated into different districts, its surrounded by large walls with large gates, and has the rules posted on a sign outside the gates, which are guarded by armed men, it's also got full sized sewers, the laws of the land statue describes vallaki as a city, and on top of all that the fortune teller calls it the city of grey. It surprised me when I saw it being referred to as a town.

I don't see many major problems with vallaki as it is, but I think it needs either a very low key musical score or some more sounds. The tileset makes it look larger than it really should be and we cant really do anything to stop that, so what strikes me is the way it looks like a sprawling city but sounds like a baron wind swept town, and the two don't mix, so if we cant change the way it looks I think sound is the way to go.

[IDreamofDaleks]

To be honest....I've seen servers where places like Yulash was built smaller than Vallaki and Arabel similarly.


and

"Yűlash is a fortress city of around 7,000 people that resides on a strategic plateau at the nexus of several trade routes on the Western edge of the Moonsea. The city, given its strategic and defensible location, has a history of being a vassal state and point of contention between the rival powers of the Moonsea region."

Size   Metropolis
Area   Cormyr
Societal information
Population   30,600

Hell, I think -Sigil- may have had maybe 1-2 areas more than Vallaki and according to planescape sources it has a population of 650,000


I mean there are going to be differences in vision, and in development, and I don't care if this server wants to play Vallaki as if it was a city that's fine. Call it a city. But if you're saying that Vallaki looks like this, but still only has 1.5k people (or it's canon population give or take)....then that population would be spread out so far as to make some of the condensed areas (Like the slums) just utterly ridiculous in concept, because there'd be about 50 people in it.

[EO]

At this point, there are no plans to redesign Vallaki. The time and energy spent redesigning something which works well right now can better be spent elsewhere. As usual with these topics, I encourage you to join the Development team if you feel you can improve the experience.

[Bluebomber4evr]

To be honest....I've seen servers where places like Yulash was built smaller than Vallaki and Arabel similarly.

To be honest, I don't care at all what other servers do.

[Kendaric]

I mean there are going to be differences in vision, and in development, and I don't care if this server wants to play Vallaki as if it was a city that's fine. Call it a city. But if you're saying that Vallaki looks like this, but still only has 1.5k people (or it's canon population give or take)....then that population would be spread out so far as to make some of the condensed areas (Like the slums) just utterly ridiculous in concept, because there'd be about 50 people in it.

Actually, there are plenty of abandoned homes in the slums area.
 
As for redesigning, sure ... some of the newer tilesets would probably look a lot better/more fitting, but you have to consider the sheer amount of triggers/transitions/etc. that would need to be redone. As you can't simply switch out one tileset for another, the whole of Vallaki would need to be rebuilt and condensing it to fewer areas won't likely work due to the nature of how tileset groups and features work. In addition it would require another hak update, unless you build it with the Castle Exterior tileset like the Wachter estate, which might fit Vallaki in regards to looks but would require Vallaki to be larger than it's now due to the lack of a Building terrain (all houses in that set are either features (1x1 tile) or groups (1x2 or even more tiles in size).

[IDreamofDaleks]

To be honest....I've seen servers where places like Yulash was built smaller than Vallaki and Arabel similarly.

To be honest, I don't care at all what other servers do.

Uhm, okay... It's not like I called Vallaki a heaping pile of aesthetically displeasing crap. I said that it looks way too big for it's population in comparison to other things I've witnessed on other servers and in other games.
You don't care.
I get it.
Thanks.
[/End thread?]

As for joining the development team? Sure. I'll whip something up and see what happens. I'm best at interiors and dungeons, but I'll see what I can do. Do we have a build mod or a hak order to work with?


[For the record though,  Personally I like the idea of Vallaki as a city. It means I get to do city RP without having to leave Barovia, since the other cities aren't in. I just wish the actual population was updated to fit it.]

[Bluebomber4evr]

To be honest....I've seen servers where places like Yulash was built smaller than Vallaki and Arabel similarly.

To be honest, I don't care at all what other servers do.

Chill, dude. It's not like I called Vallaki a heaping pile of aesthetically displeasing crap. I said that it looks way too big for it's population in comparison to other things I've witnessed on other servers and in other games.
You don't care.
I get it.
Thanks.
[/End thread?]

Sorry if I seemed snappy. The thing is, after 9 years of running this server, it gets a little tiresome when people bring up the same thing over and over, and being expected to build things the way other servers do is a pet peeve of mine. (but that's my problem, not yours)

Personally, when I have played on other servers, I've found their settlements to be far too small, confined, and limited. We wanted our settlements to be a more believable size. We may have made the individual districts a bit bigger than needed, and probably would have been more effective with 8x8 or 12x12 areas instead of 16x16, but we don't feel it's THAT big a deal that it needs to be redone at this point, both for the reasons Kendaric pointed out and because it would screw up the map and we'd have to resize all of the surrounding areas as well.

As for joining the development team? Sure. I'll whip something up and see what happens. I'm best at interiors and dungeons, but I'll see what I can do. Do we have a build mod or a hak order to work with?

Here's the hak order:


rl_2da_v195b
rl_addons
rl_creatures
rl_mountain
rl_placeables
rl_ruralcity
rl_tilesetaddons
rl_tiletextures
cep2_top_v24
cep2_add_doors
cep2_crp
cep2_custom
cep2_core7
cep2_core6
cep2_core5
cep2_core4
cep2_core3
cep2_core2
cep2_core1
cep2_core0
ctp_common
ctp_loadscreens
ctp_elf_interior
ctp_exp_elf_city
ctp_goth_int
ctp_goth_estate

Under "custom TLK file", make sure it says "ravenloft"

[IDreamofDaleks]

Yupyupyup.
That's totally fine. I've only been here 4 months now, so far be it from me to come in like I know how to run the place! You've obviously godda be doing something right if you can get 50 players online at once 9 years later da? Personally I just don't like big wide open areas in general, but that's preference (And why I stick to building small interiors and dungeons when I build! I actually -can't- do overworld/wide open areas at all.)

Thanks for the order though , *saves* may wanna consider saving it to the developer's app page for when this gets buried inevitably.