Almalexia

Post by **Haplo** » Fri Jun 17, 2011 1:57 am

It's actually pretty difficult to successfully build and design a city in the CS at the standard we are expecting, while incorporating a bunch of unrelated ideas from other people.

Theo · Post by **Theo** » Fri Jun 17, 2011 10:09 am

If I understood Adan correctly, it is not like that he proposed that the city maker was obliged to implement any of those random ideas. He should use them for as a source of inspiration quite freely.

blackbird · Post by **blackbird** » Fri Jun 17, 2011 4:56 pm

I agree with Nemon to leave Mournhold almost unremained, except for adding a few gates, but I won't disagree that Mournhold isn't really interesting. The only downside is there won't be distant land.
The design of Almalexia isn't great and is build on rectangular and ordened way. I believe the Indoril like order and law, so I suggest to add a bit of order in the new city. The only way to improve the city of Almalexia is be redoing it. There is already a city with canals, Roa Dyr. I don't know if we need to do another canal-like city. Do you have an idea about the size of Almalexia in cells? I suggest to have at least 4 cells, MH excluded. The maximum could be another 8-9 cells.
What will happen with the over 300 interiors of Almalexia?
When I built Othrensis, I tried to keep every interior from the previous hybrid town and built 2 places near each other and connected them as per request of some modders. I won't stop if you want to redo the indoril section, but I would really like that you keep the velothi section. I can't recall a city with narrow streets.
I don't agree with Adanorcil to wait with a discussion after the relaese of the Sacred East. Almalexia is our next release and we are (re)building it, wasting a lot of time. And I'm not talking about NPC'ing. However modders involved with the sacred east shouldn't do much modding for Almalexia IMO.

Tyrion · Post by **Tyrion** » Fri Jun 17, 2011 7:13 pm

Any work on SE should be in the NPC stage, so those NPCers don't need to concern themselves over working on Almalexia right now.

If we redo the city, I really feel its better to let one or two modders just take it and do it as though it were another claim. We can provide some general input into what we want the city to look like; some concise guidelines that we can agree on so the end product doesn't end up a nasty surprise to some people. Asking that modder to produce a design of the city before work begins could also help. But taking a page from the rebuild of OE, having it be a community project will mean it won't get done. The modder in charge of the rebuild needs to have enough authority to actually get the project done. Basically there's a balance we want to strike between the Necrom rebuild and the Old Ebonheart rebuild.

Theo · Post by **Theo** » Sat Jun 18, 2011 9:51 am

The problem of Almalexia is not its squareness, as is often mentioned as criticism of old TR towns.
It is its LINEARITY. This is a result of its design, where mournohld has been placed into its center (it has to be moved to the edge of the town and perhaps elevated so that it was a hold indeed).

Because Mournhold has 9 cells, there were 16 surrounding cells (Almalexia takes 13, if I remember correctly), so the actual city is everywhere just one cell broad. It is bascially one avenue wrapping around mournhold and the city is practically one dimensional.

There is unfortunately no way not to make the city on other but square grid, becuase there are no other but square buildings in the indoril set.

It would be a grave mistake try to overcome this by rotating the buildings and creating gaps of unused space.

This is ok for smaller towns like Roa Dyr or Othernis. It gives them a rural feeling, which is nice. In a mediaval village the houses were scattered like this, because on the free spaces you could grow potatoes, farm pigs, store tools etc, or it could just lay unused and noone really cared.

Also current Old Ebonheart says: I am a town, but I have been built but recently. There is a castle and city walls, which provides shelter to traders and townsmen, but not enough of them came yet, so that they had to compete for the free space isnide the city walls. Which I thinks is suitable and nice, but not for an ancient capital of Morrowind...

When designing a capital it is important to keep in mind how extremely precious each inch of space is. Each square centimeter of the town is either:
a) built upon
b) street
c) part of a public square/garden (sign of the extreme wealth of the town)
d) part of a private garden (sign of extreme wealth of the owner)

Therefore including canals, I believe, is the ONLY way to make Almalexia look both big, metropolitan and rich and not too linear on the other hand.

The fact that player will have to traverse the canals and search for a way to find proper bridge and not end up in a completely different part of the town will make navigating through the city nontrivial and enjoyable 'adventure'. (See my sketches above in the thread).

As for canals being part of the Roa Dyr. Well, Indoril just love building close to the water. It is a distinguishing mark of most of theirs cities. And theirs capital should stand as a perfect embodiement of those principles.

Katze · Post by **Katze** » Sat Jun 18, 2011 11:23 am

I really like the idea of making the place claustrophobic and mazelike, with lots of water and hidden avenues. The average player is going to have to use travel services (probably gondolas) absolutely loads until they start to learn the routes to the most important locations. It'll be great.

Alternatively we could have a relatively more straightforward under-building tunnel system as part of the canals that allows easy travel through the city for those who don't mind getting their feet wet and occasionally holding their breath.

Myzel · Post by **Myzel** » Sat Jun 18, 2011 12:08 pm

Canals and cramped streets may be nice, but maze-like goes a bit too far imo.

I don't have strong opinions at the moment, but I always got the impression that mournhold as it looks in the expansion was relatively new. At least, that's suggested by the totally different looking 'old mournhold' architecture underneath it. Wasn't the city destroyed at some point?

My point is that there is some validation for a planned city, perhaps much like [url=http://www.esotericquest.org/egypt/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/map3.jpg]ancient Alexandria[/url]. Very different from a city that has grown 'organically' but also a capital and not necessarily boring to walk through. It's also a possibility to consider.

Adanorcil · Post by **Adanorcil** » Sat Jun 18, 2011 12:16 pm

A kind of collective brainstorm like that sounds like a fun experiment. Maybe a good thing to separate the place to put out ideas from the place to discuss them if we're going to put it in the public forums.

Agreed.

It's actually pretty difficult to successfully build and design a city in the CS at the standard we are expecting, while incorporating a bunch of unrelated ideas from other people.

The idea is obviously not to just churn out unrelated ideas to be crammed into the city. The idea is to come up with some ideas to be worked into a smooth overall plan to be executed by whoever makes the city.

What I suggest we try to prevent for once is first making the city and then deciding what we want to do with it and what we want in it. It's like making a painting and figuring out what it represents afterwards.

Basically there's a balance we want to strike between the Necrom rebuild and the Old Ebonheart rebuild.

That balance, if you ask me, should be absolutely none of either. Twice we didn't really agree on where we wanted to go.

Theo makes some good points (especially about the central position of Mournhold, but I don't have the time to reply in detail.

Tyrion · Post by **Tyrion** » Sat Jun 18, 2011 3:48 pm

The city should be planned/organic. I think really, the city is already very organic, in that its just a haphazard arrangement of buildings around the Mournhold city proper. There is no rhyme or reason to it I feel. I think if you did do a completely gridiron planned city; squared blocks around Mournhold, and separated them with canals and then varied the height between them, you'd have a more pleasing concept overall than what we have now. I like to see organic in that there's variation throughout a planned framework of the city to be built over. The other idea I had, since I think square blocks would be too awkward, would be sickle shaped islands encompassing Mournhold at their center, layered outward, and surrounded by a larger expanse of water.

Post by **Haplo** » Sat Jun 18, 2011 5:30 pm

I agree that "maze-like" is one step too far. I really like the idea of initially depending upon canal-travel because it's so much more convenient, but I think it's important that the player eventually be able to travel by foot through most/all of the city.

When Dexter was working on a concept of Tear, he put the poor part on an island, away from the rich and bustling part of the city. We could include such an idea here, by separating Almalexia from Mournhold in such a drastic way to make it an actual "hold", although maybe not by such a distance.

Sniper4 · Post by **Sniper4** » Sat Jun 18, 2011 7:21 pm

Just as a fun TR history lesson, based on my conversations with Seran and Kothloth long ago (late 2003), the reason we put Mournhold in the center was to give it a sort of "double layer of protection," since it would have the main city walls, as well as its own walls to protect it.

Also, we planned to have Mournhold set up as a sort of "by invitation only" city. IIRC, the idea was that Mournhold was quarantined for its own protection due to the blight, and only people deemed worthy (and healthy) could enter the city. In other words, it was a "hold" to protect the people within, not the city of Almalexia itself

. By our model, Almalexia (the city) was there to protect Mournhold, not vice versa, and it made Mournhold into a rather large "private city" for Almalexia (the person) herself.

Of course, I don't care what you do with the city, personally. I just wanted to make sure that the legend behind the original Almalexia design didn't die with it

.

Why · Post by **Why** » Tue Jun 21, 2011 12:09 am

Work in progress.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/16Br ... t?hl=en_US

Shall we make some threads then?

Post by **Haplo** » Tue Jun 21, 2011 1:00 am

Why wrote:Work in progress.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/16Br ... t?hl=en_US

Shall we make some threads then?

no? I'm more than a little confused by your post

Why · Post by **Why** » Tue Jun 21, 2011 1:15 am

Adanorcil wrote:- Write a short piece of text (100-400 words) in which a denizen of/visitor to Almalexia describes the city (not necessarily in a direct way). Every piece should include at least one open reference. An open reference is a reference to an idea, person, location, event, etc. that a writer knows to be currently meaningless, so that someone else can elaborate upon it later. Above all: make stuff up.

The link above is something I wrote. Not sure if it's good or not but I felt like writing it regardless. So, are we going through with Adan's plan of creating some lore for the city before building a new version of it, and if yes, shouldn't we make a thread for it in the public forums somewhere?

Nemon · Post by **Nemon** » Tue Jun 21, 2011 7:25 am

I support a thread in the private tavern. Also I'm toying with different ways to create canals - concepts I'd enjoy seeing in a new version of Almalexia. Whoever we choose to redo Almalexia will incorporate these ideas (if they're good - which they are) in the final product.

Also - I'd really hate to throw away too many ints from our current city. Many of them are really really good so I hope the int department looks into what we should keep.

Tyrion · Post by **Tyrion** » Tue Jun 21, 2011 3:57 pm

Just to be sure: we are definitely redoing Almalexia now?

Nemon · Post by **Nemon** » Tue Jun 21, 2011 4:49 pm

Just to clarify my post - I'm definitely for implementing canal structures in the city - and have been working on some ideas that easily could be done with the existing layout, but which would look far better with a more thorough redoing.

Nemon · Post by **Nemon** » Wed Jun 22, 2011 1:38 pm

...and I propose a thread in the private forum. Anyone willing to start it off with a bang?

Adanorcil · Post by **Adanorcil** » Wed Jun 22, 2011 4:08 pm

See the private forum.