Mapping out The City.

Solabusca on 5/10/2005 at 04:57

Quote Posted by str8g8

Your map makes districts out of Sunnyfair, Dreckboun, Fendon which is certainly a possibility and worth considering. Wherever they are, though, they are controlled by Ramirez, so they are not in the areas listed above for Webster and Raputo. (The implication has always been that Ramirez controls the Old Quarter, South Quarter, Hightowne, Downtowne, Stonemarket areas.)

str8g8's on the money here, folks... Dreckboun, Fendon and Sunnyfair aren't really neighbourhoods, from everything I've read, they're gambling hells controlled by Bafford, with a tithe paid to Ramirez as warden.

.j.

mol on 5/10/2005 at 05:48

Quote Posted by Logan

Very strange to hear this. You make a map of a game city, but don't want to use original mission file as an evidence...
Also the map of prototype city not interested you... I'm wonder where this project go?

What I mean is, that the scale of the architecture in Dromed is not directly transferrable to the real world. It's not 1:1 obviuously, but I don't think that it's one to anything constant, really. It's all based on getting the gameplay and the proportions in the game to feel right.

Of course we need to use and we do use the general layouts etc. from the actual Dromed maps, but I don't think there's a reliable way to say how long a side of a building in Dromed would be in "real life", and so on. It can give us some general idea, but it's not reliable.

I'm not putting down Rob's efforts. In fact, I applaud them. It's great to see another take on the map.

theBlackman on 5/10/2005 at 06:53

Cosidering that the average MALE has a pace of 32 inches from Heel of rear foot to toe of Leading foot, you can count the normal Walking steps that you hear a guard take, or that Garrett takes.

You can then translate this to relative REAL terms. The average hall in most of the missions is 6 foot wide at these parameters.

The wider thoroughfares come out to about 12 feet in Courier,

Solabusca on 5/10/2005 at 07:33

I have to say that I do find that Rob puts forth some interesting ideas. My only concern is that in geographical parlance, a quarter does not necessarily mean that there are four of them - city quarters tend to add up over time.

.j.

str8g8 on 5/10/2005 at 08:36

Quote:

from everything I've read, they're gambling hells controlled by Bafford, with a tithe paid to Ramirez as warden

That's how we've thought of them up to now, but taking a second look at Bafford's ledger, I found this (my emphasis):

Quote:

3/24/34
2,342 Cash pits: Sunnyfair
734 Interest payments: Sunnyfair
(461) Ramirez: Sunnyfair
(153) Girls' shopping trip: Sunnyfair
1,491 Cash pits and dealer take: Dreckboun
320 Interest payments: Dreckboun
(272) Ramirez: Dreckboun
2,785 Cash pits, liquor net: Fendon
1,852 Interest payments: Fendon
(696) Ramirez: Fendon
7,942

So does this mean a girls shopping trip in Sunnfair, or just that he's using the money from Sunnyfair to fund the trip? If the former then these could be small neighbourhoods, but not so big as Rob's map, maybe a few blocks or so. But my earlier point was that they cannot be positioned where Rob put them (North Quarter) as this would place them under Raputos control. They would all have to fall within Ramirez supposed areas, ie Old Quarter, South Quarter, Hightowne and Downtowne.

Regarding scale, the problem is that you have to set the scale of the actual missions against the other evidence. If you say that the Assassin's map is only 350 ft across, you have to compare that with the Keeper map, which takes in exactly the same area and is clearly intended to cover a much greater area, maybe a square mile or so. Obviously this is an unwinnable situation and cannot be explained away. We just have to live with such inconsistencies. Our current map kind of meets half way so the area covered by Assassins is bigger than 350 ft, but smaller than implied by the Keeper map.

Whether it's 50ft or not, however, I still think the Home Turf notation is a major stumbling block for this new layout, as it was for Sola's earlier map. It simply swaps out one set of problems for another set.

Still, looking forward to seeing what you come up with Rob!

cheers
str8g8

Rob Hicks on 5/10/2005 at 08:43

In my opinion, there is nothing more canon than the actual missions. All the map evidence is secondary to this, surely? Maps could be badly drawn, out of scale, out-of-date, crumpled, coffee-stained. What we see in the game, however, is the whole point!

In case people don't know - the Thief DP/MA editor, Dromed, allows us to see the actual mission architecture and make measurements. One unit in Dromed equals approximately 25cm (if we say an 8-unit door is 200cm in height). We can also use Dromed to determine the flow of rivers and sewers, and, on occasion, little nuggets of 'hidden' information. Did you know that the streets surrounding Bafford's manor are called North Street and South Street? At least, that's what whoever built the mission decided to call them.

Rob

MorbusG on 5/10/2005 at 15:13

Quote Posted by Logan

Somebody can say why it so slow and files are not jpg without compression hosted?

My bad, I'm onto it. I don't know why, but usually Russia <-> Finland connections suck, despite the geographical closeness.

Quote Posted by Rob Hicks

In case people don't know - the Thief DP/MA editor, Dromed, allows us to see the actual mission architecture and make measurements.

I remember seeing a fellow doing just this for all the maps, in a nearby thread. Haven't checked back at how he's doing, though. I once had a look at OM's, and it seemed like a hellova lot of work to me.

Sxerks on 5/10/2005 at 16:19

I agree with Rob about the dromed maps. Ever since kamyk(the guy MorbusG is talking about) said he was going to convert dromed maps, I looked into it myself, and found that there is a good conversion for dromed units to real units. Mine is based off the same "standard door" 80 inches high and 8 dromed units, 1 DU = 10 inches, (1 inch = 2.54 cm) so it's close and easy to convert.

I started doing the same kind of conversion for the Assassins map, and it is a lot of work, I'm about half way done. And the map, including Ramirez, appears to be 550ft wide and 294ft deep, havent look at the height yet but Ramirez' in hightown is a lot higher then the rest of the map.

str8g8 on 5/10/2005 at 16:59

Quote:

In my opinion, there is nothing more canon than the actual missions. All the map evidence is secondary to this, surely?

That's one point of view. But remember that the maps you're talking about are part of the original missions too, and contribute to the picture we get of the City through playing the games.

You could argue the opposite, that the maps (like the Keeper map) offer a glimpse of the City as it was intended to be, without all the limitatons and restrictions of level design. I'm not arguing that mind you, more a kind of middle ground.

If you take a close look at the keeper map ((http://whitecortex.net/citymap/published/AllMaps) wiki link) then you can see the Hammerite temple marked clearly - you can actually see it's outline. If this whole map is only 350 ft across then how can the Temple fit inside that small area? That would make the temple around 10 ft across or something. You see the problem - it wouldn't be a matter of making the keeper map secondary to the Assassin level, it effectively removes the keeper map from the exercise.

So far, we have chosen to compromise in cases like this, and treat both the maps and the levels as primary evidence.

cheers
str8g8

zifnab on 6/10/2005 at 14:14

I'm not sure if these have been addressed or not and I also haven't played the games for a bit, but here's my two cents worth.

Regarding city quarters, more often that not they don’t refer to one forth of the city, but to an area of the city (the word coming from living and working quarters). Also, I don't think that we can so easily jot down a line and say everything to the right is in X. At least from what I've seen, unless there is a major boundary (i.e. river big wall or major road) quarters all have a gray space around the edges. The boundaries are all relative.

A question regarding the wiki, is this for just the maps from the game or do you hope to also include other people’s maps?