The Ever Approaching Hour of Discontent

Greetings all. As it turns out, this Sunday marks the day that I became a wizard in 2003. So I will be doing a special blog tomorrow in honor of the day that began my prison sentence. There will a backstory regarding how I became a wizard for you to read, a look at what I submitted to get promoted in all its awful glory, what was going through my mind as I was making those garbage maps, and similarly boring content to look forward to...or similarly exciting content, depending on what kind of meds you've been taking.

As part of an early preview, I posted a map I once made of Oaken Village before its fall. It was made in the months following my promotion as part of a bad idea that will never come to pass. You see, I wanted it so you can go through the ruins in the middle of the lake and find a rift in time (and space) that lead to the Oaken Village of old. It was to take place in the days leading up to the attack so you could explore the island and find the Orc hoards surrounding the village while life within was tense, but went on as preparations were made.

The reason it never came about was because creating two versions of the same area, set in different periods of time, is impossible to do. I, of course, realized back then that Forgotten Oak wasn't the best set of maps and one day I would find a way to improve upon them. But if I created the Oaken Village maps based on the then current Forgotten Oak version I would end up having to redo nearly 200 maps rather than just 100. Then, if I ever ended up redoing them again, I would be in that same boat. So I scrapped the idea and with the plans I have in my head for Forgotten Oak now, trust me when I say it was a smart move.

That said, I would still like to have a way to let players see the glory that was Oaken village (my poorly designed 2003 map doesn't do it justice) and I think the way to handle that is simply to take the one map that exists for the village right now and make a second version of that which shows how it looked before the fall. Then, allow players to view it via a magical orb which made a viewable record of that one place 200 years prior. That way if I ever redo that section of Forgotten Oak, yet again, I won't have hundreds of maps to redo which are set in the past. Instead I'd have just one. The thing that prevents me from doing it is that it requires new graphics as I need a good looking magical oak, I need a version of the castle which doesn't look so spooky, etc, etc. Plus I don't want to do anything until I have all of the village done and decided if I am going to make any further changes to that one map. So it's just one of those things that is a lot of work for something so minor and can't be done for awhile anyway.

But I digress. As you can see, tomorrow's blog entry will be something to look forward to as if I can go off on this much a tangent regarding one map, all that I have to cover tomorrow should send me over the edge. Maybe I'll even begin to foam at the mouth as local kids poke me with sticks... yet again.