Area Size Question

[Legacy_Tonden_Ockay]

               

I'm working on the City of Baldur's Gate and planed on making the out door areas of the city 8x8. However to help get the layout the way I wanted it I started with a 32x32 area that I planed on breaking it down to 8x8 areas once I had it the way I wanted it. 

 

Any way now that I have it for the most part the way I want it to be. I went into the module and took some screenshots. I liked how you could see some of the walls, towers, trees, ships, and so on in the distances. That said as builders/modules makers what size is best to keep your outdoor areas at?

 

I remember reading somewhere years ago that NWN1 was better for building large modules with small areas, while NWN2 was better for smaller modules with large areas. I thought I even seen somewhere saying it was best to keep areas to 6x6 or 8x8 and shouldn't go over 10x10.

 

Its just that I am trying to build really nice looking large prefab cities like Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter, Waterdeep, and so on. So that being said I am looking to you all on what would be the best way to go about building these cities. I would like to upload each city as its own prefab module for others to download and use as they see fit.

 

Thanks for your time.

Tonden Ockay

 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Shadooow]

               

depends on several factors:

 

1) how fast is the used tileset loading overally, vanilla tilesets are loaded very fast up to 16x16, tried 32x32 with vanilla forest and it was still somewhat acceptable, however for me, it made designing areas much harder so I abadoned that idea

2) how much generic the tileset is - meaning how many placeables you need to use to design your area - the more placeables you need to use the slower will area load so...

3) how often will be area visited - its not good to make a city area 32x32 when every house leads into the new area and players are going from one house to another frequently, on the other hand if its a village with no interiors (all vendors outside) with just one entrance/exit, then its not that big issue at all

4) how effective is for you to design an area

 

Also, keep in mind that a smaller areas might look very similar just with few placeables here and there, but if you make one big forest, the repetiveness of the tiles will be very visible to players...

 

in short, vanilla tilesets (except Castle/Rural) (and btw can be a upgraded one with addons) are fine up to 16x16, for custom tilesets its better to build 10x10. If you have a slow tileset such as worm then I wold go even with less size like 8x8 indeed.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               

For some reason the Bioware City tileset is slower for me than a lot of the newer tilesets, so even with that one I wouldn't build anything much bigger than 12x12.

Using the Medieval City I use areas of 10x10 where the city tiles make up 8x8 tiles of the area and the rest is for some nature outside the city walls or some buildings to make a nice transition from one city area to the other because cobble tiles repeated as edge tiles give you a view at a lot of emptiness. '>

As Shadooow already pointed out the Castle/Rural tileset is also slower than the other vanilla tilesets and you should keep the area size to 10x10. I also made the same experience he made with Worm's tilesets, areas built with those shouldn't be bigger than 8x8.

 

If you build big city areas you also get a lot of buildings with doors which you might never need. In that case not placing any doors in the unneeded doorways might shorten the load time of the area, but looks pretty bad. If you simply place doors there they can be opened and lead nowhere which also isn't good. The best way would be the use of a small script on the doors that makes a oneliner dialog pop up which tells the PC that the door is barred from the inside and there are no responds to their knocks or something like that.

Medieval City has windows you can place in the doorways instead of doors.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tonden_Ockay]

               

Thanks I guess I should try and brake it down from the 32x32 area it is into 16 small 8x8 areas like was was going to in the first place.

 

Here are just a few screenshots I took while running around in the city while it's a 32x32 area. 

 

 

Oh and ya and I built this city using Zwerkules Medieval tileset. It does not have doors, NPCs, or any placeables yet, so it still loads fairly quick at them moment. However I am sure that would change once I add all that stuff in. There for I will brake it down to the 8x8 areas before adding that stuff in.

 

 

 

Thanks

Tonden Ockay

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tonden_Ockay]

               

I do have another Question. If this is going to be a prefab Baldur's Gate module should I put in NPC's and shops? 

 

Thanks

Tonden Ockay

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Proleric]

               I imagine most builders will have their own systems for merchants & citizens, in which case it might be best to provide stalls and shops without content?


Just touching back to area size for a moment, possibly SP is more tolerant than PW, but I'm having no problem with areas in excess of 16 x 16.


Often, I make the accessible area much smaller, to reduce player runaround, but it's nice to have a "vista" of landscape / cityscape / seascape that is visible even if it can't be visited; creates the illusion of being somewhere extensive.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Shadooow]

               

I do have another Question. If this is going to be a prefab Baldur's Gate module should I put in NPC's and shops? 

 

Thanks

Tonden Ockay

just do them, easy to replace for those who find their content non-appealing