Grid system

[boomhaeur]

I will enlarge the grid, though, by multiplying all locations by a certain number. Probably 10 or 15, but this can easily be adjusted.

You will be able to walk freely over grass, hills, desert, beach, etc., but you will not be able to go outside existing locations or paths in forests, mountains, swamps, etc.

I want existing paths and their improvements to stay, but I also want to make it possible to create new ones. How to implement those exactly, I haven't really worked out. I think paths should have the same travelling speed as walking freely on the grid, while improved paths should increase speed, like now. Travelling would have the same speed as it has now, also with a grid. So, once you move further away from your anchor point, moving the anchor point will be at exactly the same speeds as currently in the game.

These points lead to my questions comments:

1) You talk about expanding the grid but then say travelling spped will stay the same. Do you mean proportionately the same (ie however much bigger you make the map we'll be able to travel?) A uncompensated multiple of 10 or 15 will make travelling pretty brutal.

2) Not being able to free roam the forests mountains would be a bit dissapointing. Have you thought about just adding an "impedence" factor to each type of land. Paths, roads and highways could limit or eliminate that impedence factor. Then for any given land type you could increase or decrease the impedence factor. Grassy fields would be 0 or very very low, Woods you could actually increase the factor as you got deeper and deeper into the woods. Mountains could be almost impossible to navigate.

The impedence factor could also be calculated into path/road construction - Higher impedence locations should take longer to cut through and build on than low impedence factors.

Lastly - an "organic" path system might be interesting, probably a bit too extreem for now but I'll throw it out anyways. Thinking about real life, if people continually walk the same patch of flattened land/path will gradually form. If the system could in essence "log" traffic over the grid when certain areas reach a threshold (within a period of time) then a path could start to form naturally. It might be a major processor hog but just a suggestion.

Overall I like it though :: smiles ::

Edited to add: Thought of one more thing:

VEHICLES - I'm guessing they'll take up some space too. Will their non-turn travel distance be slightly bigger than a persons? When towns grow larger it would be interesting to see people use their bikes / vehicles as a mode of transport within the town.

Also - any chance we can get vehicles into buildings in this next rev - especially if they start to take up space? Maybe a garage door addition to buildings or something?

[Jos Elkink]

1) You talk about expanding the grid but then say travelling spped will stay the same. Do you mean proportionately the same (ie however much bigger you make the map we'll be able to travel?) A uncompensated multiple of 10 or 15 will make travelling pretty brutal.

Of course, proportionally ... The travelling speed from one town to another - where those towns are located in current locations - should not change when going from 1.0 to 2.0.

2) Not being able to free roam the forests mountains would be a bit dissapointing. Have you thought about just adding an "impedence" factor to each type of land. Paths, roads and highways could limit or eliminate that impedence factor. Then for any given land type you could increase or decrease the impedence factor. Grassy fields would be 0 or very very low, Woods you could actually increase the factor as you got deeper and deeper into the woods. Mountains could be almost impossible to navigate.

The impedence factor could also be calculated into path/road construction - Higher impedence locations should take longer to cut through and build on than low impedence factors.

How deep you are in a forest will be a very difficult thing to measure, and I won't bother. There are also other reasons for these travelling limit; there are two main ones: (1) I really don't want to stimulate large cities in forests or mountains. It is just weird. Since nice resources can be found in mountains and forests, if we create no such limit, large numbers of people will start living there instead of in the countryside, where there is more space. (2) Sometimes when I put mountains somewhere, I made some areas hard to reach on purpose. So, I put mountains with only a few places where there are paths onto the mountains (sort of, the only places where the mountains are not too steep to climb), which form a barrier in the landscape. If I would allow free movement, this effect would be lost.

I must add one thing, though, that I forgot. It should be possible to remove trees, of course, and thus change forest into something else. So you can create new routes through the forests, or bigger open spots for buildings, but it will take more time than in grass areas. And that way, a city in the forest will not be so unrealistic, since you have to make space first.

We have to create some downside effects to this, though, otherwise forests will simply disappear ...

Lastly - an "organic" path system might be interesting, probably a bit too extreem for now but I'll throw it out anyways. Thinking about real life, if people continually walk the same patch of flattened land/path will gradually form. If the system could in essence "log" traffic over the grid when certain areas reach a threshold (within a period of time) then a path could start to form naturally. It might be a major processor hog but just a suggestion.

I need to think about that one. I really like the idea, though ... Those paths would be like the other paths - they don't really increase speed, but they help with navigation.

VEHICLES - I'm guessing they'll take up some space too. Will their non-turn travel distance be slightly bigger than a persons? When towns grow larger it would be interesting to see people use their bikes / vehicles as a mode of transport within the town.

Good idea, too.

Also - any chance we can get vehicles into buildings in this next rev - especially if they start to take up space? Maybe a garage door addition to buildings or something?

Yes, that will be much easier to implement in this system than in the current one. Or no, it could be easy now too, I think ... But just never got to it. But in the new version it will be a smaller thing to add than in the current one.

[Jos Elkink]

I should add that I haven't really worked on vehicles yet, and haven't thought that part through well enough. Everything that's bigger than 1m2 is gonna be somewhat complicated and I need to think more about how to handle that in principle ...

[Meh]

Meh, I don't think that time delay is needed when roaming the streets of a town. The ones who know the town well, will find the buildings faster. That's OK. I don't see any real gaming relevance of a time delay.

There was a discussion about chasing a thief.

Whether you are the thief or not if one person has broadband and the other does not the person with broadband wins.

That is if streets were like rooms.

In this system that Jos desribes if you move too far from your "anchor point" there is a delay. I think that solves the issue.

For chases in addition to following a path you should be able to follow a person. That way it is more of a chase and less of a trial of logging in and changing direction.

[Siphersh]

Jos,

You need external source of food in dense populated areas? OK. Realistic, and promotes cooperation. But that does not need a grid system: you can have a limited "field" with a limited # of slots for "farms", or simply a max # of people working on it at one time, and that's it. All you need is a location alongside some of the roads, just by the town, with entrances to the different fields there, or the mines, or the mining areas (plus entrances back to town, and onto the road itself). "Field" is a location like a building, and a limited # of "farms" can be created on it. Great. And simple to code, compared to your ideas (I think).That's the point of it, and a grid system would not add to this anything CantrII-relevant. Powerhungry pople wanting to control land, or people building city walls, or building watchtowers, or limited farming: all this you don't need a grid system for. You could build watchtowers "alongside" a road entrance, and that's it.

You suggest, that a grid-system may increase social flexibility by not restricting the locations to live. I think, The world would be full of "points of ambiguity" very soon. Many players just would not be able to resist the temptation of having some characters, who do nothing else, but create paths. And that is a one-man job, and it is not about communication. These chars will not really take part in social business. So, at the end, pople will use paths, that were created by others, without considering the most actual social needs for transport. That means: not much organic connection between extending the land and social processes.

No grid system is needed for building a city wall for protection against human or animal incursions. It's the grid that would force the city in one direction: within the walls. If the wall doestn't have a location other than "around the town", then it's not restrictive. The wall is between the town and the forelocations with the fields and mining places. And that would be very Cantr-like: simple, and sketchy. That's one of the reasons Cantr works so well: you cannot bother with editable geometrical details of things, so you don't bother about them. You bother with other people, and so you are _aware_ of them. Constant personal awareness of other people is THE most outstanding uniqueness of Cantr, in my opinion.

You say that land becomes scarce. You know, that with time most probably fast vehicles will increase in number. _This_ will make the world smaller. And if the world becomes smaller, globalization will boom. That means great empires, homogenous social and political systems, and a gradual global decrease in cultural diversity. I think, that would be THE catastrophy for Cantr. The point is, that I don't have any idea about Krif, when I live in Kishnakotis. Technological improvement could be limited, to maintain this. But another solution is, that land would be extended _not_ within the premises of already present regions, but the whole map would grow larger. This way, cultural diversity can be maintained even though cars get more everyday items. Far away lands are simply far far away. Increasing land within the current regions, either by a grid, or by a more dense path-network between predefined low-resource locations is not a real solution of scarcity of land. Still, I"d like to see the later non-grid solution for "discovering" those areas that are without major paths and major locations.

You don't like that animals only walk along roads and major paths? Well, create something like my idea of a minor-path-system, and make some wild animals prefer those minor paths to major paths and roads between major locations. One more advantage of this is that you can experiment with it within the on-line cantr world. Jos, graduality in changes assures that no major loss of Cantr-ness will occur.

You'd like to like to set up guards? Well, set it up at the entrance-locations, that I suggest. The ones from which the fields, the mines, and the town itself opens. Noone can enter the town or the fields from that direction, without passing through that forelocation.

You know what? From one such a forelocation, not only one path can open. One major path, plus up to two or three minor paths leading to resourceless locations outside the town. OK, this means, that you can leave a town in two steps. But in the long run, I think this solution would mean _less_ locations than the grid system, thus sparing server-resources. You only need this fore-location at locations with resources, and even there only at one or two road-entrances. If you have a location in the woods, where only mushrooms grow, you dont need a main location, only a single "forelocation", from which the paths and the mushroom-field opens. If you want it to be specially defendable, a char can "build" a main location "behind" the forelocation, and build buildings there. At the forelocation only watchtowers and similar can be built. OK, I'm going too far in planning for you But the point is: all this or other non-grid solutions can be introduced _gradually_!

You'd like people to design houses in greater detail? Well, introduce stories, halls, corridors, staircases if needed, but you don't need a grid system for that. You don't really want people to spend there times navigating in 2d within houses, and designing things square-by square. That would be another game. That's not something about personal interaction. The awareness of people would be averted from personal and social issues. Cantr works this amazingly well (among other factors), _because_ there is not much emphasis on editable physical details.

The _need_ for cooperation may not be fatally impaired with this grid system, but people would spend much-much more time creating geometrical patterns of routes and buildings, and they would spend less time interacting with each other, I think. The grid system could turn this game into a common on-line RPG, resembling to the hack-and-slash RPGs already present on-line. That's how it would decrease social interaction, and not the _need_ for cooperation.

Why limiting the # of buildings in a town in 1.0? Limit the # of buildings at the center of town (which may include harbours, so that you don't have to move the harbours from their present location), and introduce streets. And limit the # of buildings in a street, but make it possible to open a street from another street.

I love the idea, that the most accurate map provided is like it is. Map-making is a very rich cultural phenomenon, and With a grid-system it would turn into an inhumane engineering-job. I want to feel appropriate to write on a map these words: "Monsters be thar", and not tons of digitally-smelling data. The present atmosphere of map-making would be gone. I don't want the computer that Fishmarket-street runs in 30 degrees with Main Street. That should have no coded relevance, and the mapmakers shold feel free to introduce there fantasy about the exact town-images. That's Cantr-like. And would be wonderful to have. (Streets)

And the grid-system brings up so many programming and practical playing problems. Maybe in a couple of years it may enter 2.0alpha, but it would be never so playable again, as it is now. I'm sure about that.

All in one: Making a downloadable software may be a good idea in my opinion, if that can really manage to make use of the client processor-time. But I am very definately against any new grid system.

Anchor point -- yes, that sounds good, but I think Cantr does not really need that feature. Do you want to take it more time to get to the outskirts to a town? That just won't give anything to playability. The only kind of walk that needs time is wlaking roads and paths. It is perfect this way. If I were you, I wouldn't change this if I had all the servers of the West Coast, and all the programmers of Germany at hand. This is the best way for promoting social activity instead of lonely walking-around.

Broken buildings? If you have time to implement damaging buildings, all you have to introduce is: a lifetime after which it crumbles, a strength, repair, and the info with which weapons they are damagable. Strength should increase with the # of rooms. Cantr buildings should grow like baloons. And when a house crumbles, it simply disappears, or gives out some of the resources used for building it.

Don't let the towns to get closer to each other at the premises! Do you wanna make distances even shorter _now_, that the menace of fast vehicles is threatening the social differentiation anyway? There is _nothing_ along the road, and for heaven's sake, this should stay this way!

[Siphersh]

The Hunter, ... territorialism... It's not something bad, I think. I think, with the minor-path-system, and fore-locations that I have been promoting here, you should have all relevant features of a grid system, concerning territorialism. All fields and mines would open to a fore-location, and a field would be a location as well. Of course that wouldn't mean that there's a field for all plants. And minor locations between the towns, in the forest, for example, can also have one or two kinds of resources.

[Siphersh]

Jos, it would be nice to be able to build a yard around a building. Like in the case of my proposal concerning city walls: You can build a yard _around_ an existing building, and thus, you have the building _within_ the yard. What you see from the street is the yard, but the <cantr descr> of the yard [I'm already thinking in dynamic descr. ] can depend on the building inside: "a building surrounded by a yard" But this is the description of the yard, and you can enter it by "enter yard". OK, this is just an example, and may present some kind of programming chellenge (I don't know). The point is: I don't think you'd need a grid system for this.

And you don't have to go this far: you open a new street, place a single building on it, you say that it is _your_ street, and there you have a building with supposedly much open area. Of course, you can't build that in the city center, if the max. # of streets opening from the town center has been reached. You wanna build a little outbuilding to your new mansion? You just have to build a street from your street, and place it there. Or if you're not _that_ rich, you build it on your street. And you can call your street "Johnny's Mansion". No grid system needed.

You have to have chop forests? Make locations that are nothing else, but forests. This possibility could be one more advantage of a minor-path-minor-locations-system. You wanna have forest disappear due to chopping wood? You can have a number, which is the timber-capacity of the local stretch of wood, and make it reproduce in a slow way. But thats distant future, I believe.

[Siphersh]

Meh. I see your point very well. I didn't ralize that factor. Chasing someone around in a town.

Yes. that's a problem, but not as severe, as many problems that would arise with the grid system. If it takes time to move within a town, that will just simply make it take longer to attend to one's everyday business. The game will slow down to the extremes. People will simply have no time for social life. They are walking from market to the fields, then to the city hall, and back,... That is a bad idea.

Well, a thief can get away easily within a town. Streets are like rooms? Actually, why not? _If_ you can get away within a building, why not on the streets? Slowing down the whole game just to be able to chase thiefs more directly, is not a good idea.

I have an idea there: and this may be useful for other things as well: How about having a town bell or bell tower? A bell, that can be sound in the town center, where it is built, and can be heard even on the fields. It can have several diffrent sound patterns: for example there are three buttons for different ways of ringing the bell. And so you can assign meanings to it, as locally agreed upon. Thus, chasing a thief will have to be a community-thing, not a one-person business. That promotes community -- again, in contrast to the grid-system-solution.

[Jos Elkink]

Whow, that's a really extensive and in some sense harsh criticism of the idea ... Let me try to reply to you to some extent, even though I only have about fifteen minutes before I have to go to a meeting.

First of all, please note that I said that a grid system is one solution, but not the only solution, to introduce land scarcity. So I fully agree with you, that there are other solutions. One of them I had quite seriously developed in my mind and could have been implemented as well, and would also have allowed for land scarcity, city walls, etc. albeit within the current system of locations (simply by setting a fixed 'size' variable for a location and have every building or farming take land away, etc.). It would have been less flexible in some sense - e.g. building a city wall around *existing* buildings would have been difficult - but it would allow many things that a grid allows. So I won't argue with you about the fact that there are other solutions. And you seem to have thought quite extensively about one such option which indeed does not sound bad. However, I am not at all convinced yet that a grid is so bad I should not work in that direction ...

I can see your point about social interaction and people just building and building. That's a very good point, actually, that I do have to think about. You can already do too many things just by having patience and using one character, and that should not become even worse. A road should indeed show some social activity, not just one active person, and roads should not be build simply *everywhere* just because everywhere there are some people interested in building their own little world. It is really hard to predict the extent to which this would happen. You are right, but at the same time you would expect some groups to attempt to strictly control where one builds and where one doesn't, limiting this problem. People will get annoyed with too many crossroads, for example (because it slows down travelling since you have to manually intervene too often), and decide to break down those roads again, so that in the end land will more reflect those that were powerful. So, yes it's true, but I think there are counter-balancing forces as well.

No grid system is needed for building a city wall for protection against human or animal incursions. It's the grid that would force the city in one direction: within the walls.

I really don't see why this would be the case. Going within walls might be one solution; having more hunting activity another; building walls around the animals instead of around the town yet another - there are many solutions, not just one.

Constant personal awareness of other people is THE most outstanding uniqueness of Cantr, in my opinion.

Would people not group in a grid, you think, in existing areas? Besides, the spawning system will still make people spawn near others. Plus you get babies introduced at some point ... I am not sure we will really only get those people lonely strawling around. Not that much more than is currently the case, and only by those players who prefer doing so. You still have to deal with people.

I don't really see your point about globalization in this context. 'Land becoming scarce' and 'a smaller world' in globalization terms are two completely different things. The world will not become smaller with my grid suggestion (well, suggestion is a weak term for something I'm halfway programming ...), but larger. Land becomes scarce not because there will be so little, but because it is limited in principle, and some areas might be nicer to be etc. etc. It goes from unlimited to limited, not from large to small.

I can see your globalization point, but I have little fears in that area, for now. It will happen, yes, that over time, with technological advancements, the Cantr world will get smaller. But: (1) don't underestimate the current size of Cantr (which will not fundamentally change with the grid), where currently a relatively small proportion of land has been discovered and inhabited. The world is already huge, and most of it not yet found. Parts not even filled with resources, etc., but we'll make sure that happens before anyone arrives ...; (2) if we really get a globalization effect, that would be a cool simulation of the real world, and not necessary a 'problem'; (3) we will get more homogeneity - perhaps, but some say that globalization also leads to stronger emphasis of ones own culture, so this might be the case, might also not be (shit, I'm running out of my 15 minutes ...); (4) your whole story about globalization and homogenization is equally valid for the current version of Cantr as for a grid system. There is really no difference in that respect - the whole world map is already defined and won't change, and travelling times over longer distances will stay exactly the same; (5) a worry about too much technological progress in this respect is really one that might come out in many years from now ... we have only a few cars (1 per 100 chars?) and no airplanes or steamships or ... yet, so really, this will take an enormous time ...

Note, btw, that with a grid, smaller communities have more places to develop themselves, staying away from the homogenizing culture. A grid should lead to less homogenization, not more.

You don't like that animals only walk along roads and major paths? Well, create something like my idea of a minor-path-system, and make some wild animals prefer those minor paths to major paths and roads between major locations.

This really was not a major argument or preference ... It's just a consequence of a grid system, nothing more.

One more advantage of this is that you can experiment with it within the on-line cantr world. Jos, graduality in changes assures that no major loss of Cantr-ness will occur.

Yes, but the current system (webbased database access etc.) is reaching its limit in size and capacity. It is by rewriting the game that we can further extent - to which you seemed to agree later on. When we want larger changes, it is far easier to implement them when rewriting the game, then gradually.

That's not something about personal interaction. The awareness of people would be averted from personal and social issues. Cantr works this amazingly well (among other factors), _because_ there is not much emphasis on editable physical details.

Don't forget that different people have different reasons for playing. Currently, the game is nice for many of those, and I don't see how that would really change with a grid. I think it will increase social interaction, to be honest, and I am not at all convinced yet why it shouldn't. Also, people play *because* of the social interaction, so why do you think they would stop with this?

I also don't see why map-making would suddenly loose its cultural richness. Don't forget that travelling will not be like sailing, with degrees etc, but more 'natural', starting in a certain direction and keep going, or follow a road. Mapping that world will be similarly difficult to current mechanisms. I really don't see the difference. Besides, most graphical maps are, unfortunately, also simply cut/paste usages of the little maps you can see on the site, so equally mechanical.

The anchor point: that really is necessary to a grid, and pointless without, so of course I have no arguments for an anchor point if we have no grid, and the anchor point in itself is not a reason to introduce a grid, but the other way around ...

I don't like damaged buildings being something like '20% damaged' or so, which seems what you suggest. I'd rather see some part gone and the effects that has on its usage. I think broken buildings in a grid-system will be much more realistic than in a descriptive manner. But as I said, many things can be solved without a grid as well, a grid is just one solution.

Don't let the towns to get closer to each other at the premises! Do you wanna make distances even shorter _now_, that the menace of fast vehicles is threatening the social differentiation anyway? There is _nothing_ along the road, and for heaven's sake, this should stay this way!

Distances do not get shorter. But yes, building alongside a road will be possible. Why, again, would this remove diversity? Do we not have differences between the Netherlands and China, even though you could potentially build on every little field in between, and people do?

Now I really have to run!

[rklenseth]

The point of the new grid system that Jos is talking about is really to add more freedom of movement. Instead of having to go to five different place before getting to another place like for example Quillanoi and Siom you can build just one long continous road between the two instead of having to stop at Lake Village then Reniov Mountains... See my point?

This will also add to scarcity of land. At some point the cities will grow so big that they will may take up two or even three grids that are next to each other.

And as Jos said, the scarce land will lead to battling between groups of people. As well as really allow for some real borders to develop between nations and empires. I see a Great Wall of Ladvicitavoi coming.

And the map wouldn't be made bigger. It would remain the same size, it would just be using all of the unused land between locations.

Also, one thing I really like about a grid system is lets say you are traveling on a road but begin to get tire and hungry you can stop by a roadside inn or tavern. Get some rest and a meal and maybe stock up on needed supplies.

I understand Jos's point about the mountains and forests. But I would argue that let them build in forest. Everytime someone builds, farm, or mine... they lose some trees until said forest no longer exists. Plus the harships of making sure there is enough food. A forest community wouldn't be able to grow to big or die from lack of food or lead to the destruction of the forest.
Mountains should be able to go where one is able to walk but leave the possibility for someone with climbing gear to scale the mountains.

I would also like to point that it isn't that unrealistic to have forest or mountains communites. In North America many of the Native Americans built 'forest communities' and did quite well for themselves until the Europeans came along. In South American, the Incas built most their communities and many of their major cities in the Andes Mountains and the Incas were considered the more advanced of the Native Americans. Plus they were able to devise a way to grow crops on the mountains.

[Meh]

Grid or no grid I think you can have crossroads.

If you consider paths logical instead of physical then from town A you would have the following options:

XXAXX
XXPXX
BPPPC
XXPXX
XXDXX

A,B,C,D the towns
P - paths
X - filler

In town A...
path to B
path to C
path to D

On the trail...
path to A
path to B
path to C
path to D

Instead of turning around on a trail you would just choose another logical destination. The cross road would physically exist you just wouldn't have to interact with it.

You can interact with anyone on any path as long as they are close enough. Being close enough would be established by the game tracking something like these anchor points.

A, B, C, D could still be dynamically named but I think worrying about forking and crossroads physically would not by much.

Today you can walk between two towns without getting lost. You should be able to bypass towns in the middle too. This could be done by offering as a choice of path ever town that is connected to the town or path your on plus everytown that is connected to that set.

While you can bypass a town and not have to stop in it. The town will still be able to see you passing though if they keep thier eyes open. Since they can see you coming, in town, and going for a certain distance away from the town. They have a chance to interact with you while you are logged off walking though (dragging etc.).

You would no longer see the messages about people passing though town. And. You would be able to "drag from a trail".

So that is the part of using the coordinates that I like.

As for in town things. Whether you decide to display the grid of a town or not... Tracking the actual position of travellers following logical not physical is the way to go.

[boomhaeur]

"Instead of turning around on a trail you would just choose another logical destination. The cross road would physically exist you just wouldn't have to interact with it."

See, under the current system though what's missing is the natural town that probably would have developed at those crossroads. Under the grid system where two paths crossed if aperson elected to they could stop and clear some land for a house, make a field and farm for food. Eventually more people would decide to settle at the cross roads as well.

Ideally once the new system is in chars should be able to name their grids, or actually have no names at all. Leave the existing ones as established names but allow undeveloped regions to decide what to call the area in game (but not actually assign that grid a lifelong name). People could declare a name for their settlement, maybe it'll stick, maybe someone will call it something else. I think it would add a neat dimension to the game.

[Meh]

Yeah...

I agree with that too...

I didn't want to mention it. But since you point it out....

Going with either the logical slots or a grid for locations...

There should be a series of side by side locations along every path. The path runs though the middle of them.

Most places along a road would have to be cleared or leveled to build on them. However to stop and build a bow would be allowed. Also exchange of items between people would be possible since you are never out of a location.

But this gets into the tricky thing of navigation.

In this case I would recommend two things.

1) That you can automatically set your destination to anyplace your character has even been. You would then follow the paths you need automatically. All the while being visible in the locations you pass though.

2) The ability to follow another person. Whether this person is a guide or someone being chased down by a vicous band of brigands. This means that a newspawn thief would have to log in frequently to try to get away and enforcement could follow without being logged in (unless they lose site of the person then they would stop). However a well heeled theif could set themselves up to cross a contient and if they outpace enough away the patrol that is sent after them would have to turn back rather than be in exploring mode.

While having umteen more locations does dilute the population, having it hard for the untraveled to travel without a guide would keep most people together in groups of some type. Some people may carry a load of whatever down the road just to be learn from another person how to get there. The learning is automatic.

So some people would choose to go off and build halfway down a road. It would just be difficult. But at least they are not heading ESE for 4 turns to set up a new place.

As far as adding new roads with a possibility of crossroads. That could be up to the new lands dept rather than having a game mechanism to trailblaze. At least at first.

[Siphersh]

Jos, I am glad that you consider my words. I would love to talk about this more, and not at all expect you to throw away the idea of the grid system right at once, of course.

Walls: It would be really awful, if we had zig-zag walls everywhere. (Grid system has something WarCraft-like to it anyway). Let's have a project "building a wall", and that means building a wall around any location you're at. A field, a town (in case you are in the town center), or _anything_. And the location or anything surrounded by the wall can grow on. In case of a grid system, when you reach the walls, you have to destroy it for the town to grow on. We don't need this. That will make many people spend their time designing walls and buildings square by sqare. Not good. What is the wall-making plus of a grid system? Building the "Great Wall of Ladvicitavoi", as Jayne seggests? Well... What is the social difference from fortifying all the locations that lead through...? Well... Nothing. The non-grid solution is even better: you can't build a fortified line, if you don't controll the settlements of the area. Realistic, and promoting personal relations. If you want to have a fortified castle within a town, you just simply build a wall around a building, OR you build a street, call it "Castle", build more buildings on it, and build a wall around the street.

Would people not group in a grid, you think, in existing areas? Besides, the spawning system will still make people spawn near others. Plus you get babies introduced at some point ... I am not sure we will really only get those people lonely strawling around. Not that much more than is currently the case, and only by those players who prefer doing so. You still have to deal with people.

That's not what I meant. I say that even when in one location, people would have less time to attend social issues. Example: "OK, let"s build a house"... "where should we build it:" ... "OK, we build it there. When it's finished, we will think about further improvements to it. And now, let's talk about something else". These were issues of social relevance. In the case of a grid system, a very enormous plus phase is inserted: How big should it be, what will we build within the house in one or two years, that should have its place already, oh, and let's fuss a bit with the consol, etc. These are things that could be discussed later, as the building develops, or ignored entirely by the chars in a non-grid system. And this takes time. If players were wired to the net all the day, one char per player, then this would be great. But actually this would divert attention from the community. A player plays this game n minutes a day, and a certain percentage would go on clicking around on the consol, without any relevant personal interaction. Another example: you wanna build an outpost. Just imagine how much more non-interactive clicking and geometrical planning that would mean, than today. The physical environment should remain nothing more, than the hardware, on which societies are "run". You should not make Cantr a mixture of Cantr II 1.0 and a single-player constuction-game. That would just take away playing-time of the players. "Lonely strawling around" is when you are near other people, but you don't care about them, as well. You say that "different people have different reasons for playing". Yes, I've also pondered on that... There could be designers, who are paid for building different things. That sounds good. But the actual details of such an activity have no social relevance, and everyone has to be an architect to some degree in a grid system. Cantr shouldn't include coded interfaces for actually conducting a certain job. That should be a question of the character's abilities, not those of the player. The same for digging the soil and harvesting. Those details have not much social relevance. Placing a table or a cupboard, or a carpet in a room does have social relevance.

No, the world will not become smaller by the grid. The world will become smaller becouse of the vehicles. All I say is that neither the grid, nor my idea of a minor-path-system would be a good solution for the scarcity of land. This is not about grid vs. My ideas. If you don't worry about globalization, then ignore this issue. There will be more land in between current settlement with my idea of the minor-path system, as well. And you don't have to limit the # of buildings in a town. Only the resources are limited: you cant build more than a certain # of farms on a field, and only a certain # of people can work on the farm, or in the mine, etc. You can put some resources to the minor locations that are in between towns, and can be reached on a minor path, and there you have an extended playing ground for fighting over resources. Either this, or the grid, that doesn't make a difference in terms of my globalization-concerns. My concerns about globalization could be doctored only by adding more land to the map at the edges, as technology develops. Extending the whole Cantr-map. But this is about the far future. If the problem is immanent, you will take care of it. This is not about grid vs. 1.0. You say: "most of it not yet found..."... Great! Forget about globalization. No problem! The problem would be the loss of cultural diversety. If there's plenty of land to discover, we can have empires of 10 cities. OK. Let's forget this problem of towns too close to each other, as well. You have succeeded in assuring me that it's no problem.

travelling times over longer distances will stay exactly the same.

That sound very good, but how about aeroplanes?

Note, btw, that with a grid, smaller communities have more places to develop themselves, staying away from the homogenizing culture.

If they don't have resources, they will be let alone anyway. If not, then not. But I see your point. YOu know, I think that minor locations poor in resources could fulfill that purpose very well. If it has important resources, they cannot seperate from the local power-culture anyway, the grid won't help them. OR, they can travel outside the lands of the power-cultures, and be left alone simply because of the distances. It would be nice to have many independent communities near big cities, but that is not a question of the code. That's determined by social factors.

when we want larger changes, it is far easier to implement them when rewriting the game, then gradually.

OK. If you make big changes at once, you cannot manage the cosequences that well. But that's not the point. If I thought that a grid system could be better than the v1.0, I would think about the risks of big changes. But I think that this present system is (nearly) in every single aspect better then a grid system. And much better alltogether. If you make the client software, which is more efficient in terms of server-resoures, than it would be useful to make this new version so, that you can easily implement improvements to it within the basic 1.0 system. Changes similar to the ideas I am speculating about.

Also, people play *because* of the social interaction, so why do you think they would stop with this?

They won't stop with that. But much of their time would go on other things. Non-multiplayer things. But I don't know how relevant this would be. But I have the feeling that all in all, the grid-system would make this game somewhat less real, less lively: you can see the grid-map on your monitor, so you dont imagine the places and situations that vividly. Having digital 2d maps for buildings and rooms is too much. This game will just simply not work if such things are coded, in my opinion. To be honest, I even was a bit surprised that you have such ideas. The introduction part of www.cantr.net suggests that you are and have been quite aware that Cantr is Cantr because the level of codedness.

But these supposed negative things in the grid system are not what my ideas are based upon. It's rather that I think all the problems, that could be solved with the grid system, could be solved in the current system _at least_ as well as with the grid. The actual examples: discovery, in-town movement, extra features to buildings and towns, city expansion, new settlements, land scarcity, limitations on resources, territorial struggles, fortifying and defending different places or structures, buildings with open land to them, social flexibility, detailed buildings, damaging buildings, or even catching a thief. All the issues we've discussed here, have better solutions within this present system, than in the grid-system, I think. Yes, there are positive features to the grid-solutions of these issues, but let's try to consider all pros and cons. That would be my major point here, Jos.

People will get annoyed with too many crossroads, for example (because it slows down travelling since you have to manually intervene too often), and decide to break down those roads again, so that in the end land will more reflect those that were powerful.

Sure, I also think so. I don't think that we would have a problem with this in a grid system. Actually, it would probably add raw material for RP and social interaction. I agree.

About map-making: I understand, what you say. Yes. I can imagine now, that the Cantr map-making culture wouldn't be much impaired by a grid system.

Damaged buildings, that have some of their parts gone? You call that realistic? You can decide which part of the building to damage? "A wall is missing"? These kinds of things shouldn't be coded in Cantr, I believe. Excuse me, I don't want to be intrusive, but your ideas really seem to shift toward some kind of common hack-and-slash on-line RPG. Cantr is so great, because such things are not coded. Btw, what is your problem with a percentage like "strength" is at persons? I believe, that the only effect of damage to buildings should be that a) people can see that it's at say 78%, and that has many social implications, and b) it takes only 78 points of damage to crush it, and not 100%. Damage to vehicles: obvious: they go slower, damage to tools: decrease of productivity, of course. But breaking out a certain wall of a building... I don't think it's worth the programming-work. That has in-game relevance close to nil. Supposing, of course, that you don't wanna turn Cantr into a first-person-shooter.

[griogal]

I think we should be able to wander into forest and mountains off road.

Perhaps time to introduce the track, smaller than a path it forms as one wanders off road. (if skills are ever introduced, one could use his/her Tracking skill to determine who/what made the tracks as somekind of project). It should disappear after some time if it stays unused. But if if let say 10 people use it....it becomes a path!

Wandering off road into the mountains should be possible only if you have some special gear, like ropes, iceaxe, ...why not...crampons.

I don't know if any of you have seen that picture of Irvine and Mallory who presumably reached the top of the Everest before Hillary....Their equipment is hillarious according to current standards.