Edoras

[eag_inc]

Another dissertation post coming right up. Okay so there’s been some work with planning going on in Edoras the past week. I’ll explain the methodology in regards to the planning of the city and onwards.

Firstly, the order of events for the planning-stages of the city.

1. Create overhead maps of the city for rough estimations of where things will be (primary roads, markets, points of interest etc).
2. Plan out the individual houses, gardens, roads etc in game inside the city itself using color-coded blocks, marking out everything that makes sense and that needs to be figured out ahead of time.
3. Possibly create some post in-game planning maps of the city for further referencing.
4. Develop concepts of the houses (can be done at any point in time really, but at this stage those concepts should be fully fleshed out and researched as to have a solid idea of how everything will look like). Creating house-guides and what not is also a part of this stage.
5. Mass-produce the housing templates for every reasonable dimension that will be used inside the city (aside from tiny storage sheds). Create variants for the block palette and apply those to the dimensioned house-grid.
6. Final touch ups before the templates are pasted in. This may include finishing the walls, gates, terrain etc.
7. Paste the templates into the city following the pre-existing plan. Adjust houses that will inevitably not fit perfectly to a sensible degree.
8. Final preparations before building begins for the server.
9. Building itself, houses are to be detailed and personalized by their claimants. Interiors are the big majority of the work that will take place outside of gardening or whatever stuff is planned.
10. Final city touchups. Further details to complete the city and pull the whole thing together in a coherent aesthetic.

Now as to the in-game planning which will arguably be the most important step to seeing a good city (see step 2. above). I’ve developed a system that will ultimately be rather different to how we planned stuff in the past, for big or small projects. Obviously the city we’re making using the new (and very much in trial) template system for large-scale settlements is completely new to all of us here, and thus there needs to be a different approach to how that template system is ultimately brought to fruition by the builders.

Below is a screenshot of some early-planning using new methodology. Not really that drastically different in all honesty, but different enough that I should clarify.

What you see there is the in-game planning, so far only in a little corner of the city used as more or less a test-zone. Firstly there’s the actual markings themselves on the ground. Light gray are the houses or ‘living halls’, purple is smaller houses more or less used as profession-huts where the work takes place in (ie. Bakehouse, weaving house etc), more about that stuff will be in the guides. Cyan is gardens, allotments, personal space etc. Then finally the light blue is little sheds for tools or wood and what not.

Onto what you see floating above it. The white and black glass you see are planned references of the owners land and his private property. Usually a family would own multiple buildings for each use in rural areas of Anglo Saxon England, however in towns it obviously becomes more cramped so they merge everything into smaller areas, if they had need of it. Hence why there are the purple ground-markings of profession based buildings, for those with the money or space to separate them. The white-black allotments or ‘plots of land’ - just POL for short as seen in-game also act as a larger portion of work for builders to claim and work on. Since we’re using the template system using regular houses as claimable stuff to work on will simply be ineffective and too small of portions, which is partly why we’ve created these POL’s to give builders more authority and creative freedom to work on their respective land. This will also help to illeviate the constant pest that every city-leader despises, which is filling in the gaps of the houses with details.

Onto the uppermost layer of planning is just a border marker separating all the classic ‘sections’ of the city.

That’s it so far, please feel free to leave suggestions on just about anything related to this project.

[MrBanana]

I like the idea of the templates, but I think this is getting a bit out of hand. Having them as reference and insipiration is good, but pasting them in and leaving to the builders only some details and the interior, seems a bit too much. Personally, I wouldn’t be that interested in the project if all I can do are just boring interiors and little details on the outside of the houses. I think all of the builders here like to leave a visible trace of their work on the map, especially in Edoras, which will be by far the most visitated place in Rohan, in this is what makes the server so unique. This system doesn’t seem to give a lot of satisfaction to those who will be building/detailing here. If the point of this sytem is to make everything faster, you risk to have the opposite effect, cause people will probably lose interest, endimg up in a Burneburg-like situation, where you litterally had to force people to come and detail the stuff you planned.

I think that the project can esily start like any other, with builders claiming and actually building their houses and then start to paste the templates in to give the final rush towards the end, maybe with a couple of build days. Or at least you can leave some sections of the city to be done in the normal way, (maybe the upper class part, which will realistically have some more personalisation of the buildings by the owners) and others with the templates system.

This is just a parsonal point of view, I don’t know what making such a big city means, so I may be totally wrong.
Everything else looks great anyway.

[eag_inc]

Thanks for your thoughts. I do agree with your viewpoint in that it can certainly go sideways in regards to the templates. Apologies if I hadn’t made it clear, but the templates are nothing more than just a rough outline of what the houses for the claimants are to look like. Walls and roofs of the houses usually take up a big amount of the time it takes to make them (thatching roofs for diagonal houses for example is super tedious work that takes quite a while and is generally a pain in the ass to do, especially for less experienced builders) and having that out the way (for the most part) I think will definitely speed things up. The people building their houses are also free to change the house in any sensible way if they have something in mind or simply if they want to personalize their houses beyond detailing/adjusting and interiors. Gradients, windows, doors and all of those things are ultimately also still up to the builders to do.

But yeah we’ll have to see how it goes. The idea was originally suggested for cities in Gondor that will have hundreds upon hundreds of houses that with our current amount of builders would be simply impossible to do without burning a load of people out or worse. Bit like the burnt out feelings we have with TH, simply because of the size and workload of the project, except 100x worse. So we decided to try a new approach and trial it in Edoras to see if it works I suppose.

Do agree and definitely understand your concerns though. We for sure will take it into account and approach the new system with a sense of caution. Ultimately it’s just a ‘trial’ more or less anyway so if it doesn’t work out as well as we hope then we’ll go back to how we’ve done large-scale stuff in the past with no issue. Your idea for the richer areas is a good thought though, will def work something out for the richer areas to get more creative freedom there.

[MrBanana]

This sounds much better, I’m curious to see how it goes

[Hearthseeker]

Wholesome.

[Fornad]

How do you plan to ensure that the population will be roughly as stated in the Build Status document?

[eag_inc]

My idea was to break the population up into a rough house family size and then work into the details with that by writing down the number of beds for each POL. It’s kinda hard to measure it exactly so a lot of it will come down to our planning which makes it a bit tedious to do but I don’t have another solution atm. A good start would be to roughly measure how many people are living in the small corner of the city we’ve planned is far and then judge the rest of the city off of that population count.

[wheellee]

Resurrecting dead threads here, I suppose.
Use /warp Foldeguide for examples on what to do. The style is different to Aldburg so I’d make sure you thoroughly read this before building in edoras.
/warp EdorasSection1

Black and White glass outlines designate rough ownership, and what each builder would have control over for their plot. However, you can expand this if need be to add more essentials.

Grey buildings are houses.

Light blue stained glass are allotment layouts. You do not have to follow these; in fact, I would suggest making any changes necessary to them. Regarding template shapes, it is strictly a base; lengthen them or widen them or whatever if need be for more space.

Brown buildings/structures can be: Weavehouses, larders, bakehouses, workshops (for small repair stuff, carts, fodder storage, if your house has a lot of allotments). Firewood storage would be built separately, as would smokehouses (with attached slaughteryards), buildings that wouldn’t be that big to get the job done.
We are currently going through and placing signs on the brown buildings, so you should have markers on what to do when you get to it!

Depending on the space you have available, a lot of poorer houses would have screens sectioned off with animals living inside the house. This is visible in one of the two houses already built in /warp EdorasSection1, and was quite common at the time. However, this entirely depends on the space you have available, so I in no way recommend doing this everywhere. Generally, I’d suggest doing it in the 4-5 bed houses, and/or avoiding it on the super diagonal houses as it can be quite space-consuming and look ugly.

Workshops can have the full basement feature described at /warp foldeguide. Generally, due to the wealth of this section, I’d prefer you avoid basement features or sunken features, as that is reserved for middle class alone.

Happy building, I know people have been waiting for something to do!
Peace out.

[philippetora]

i would make the streets more “dirty”, so more rats etc.

[Guan]

Quite sure cats and dogs have been hanging around humans since farming was introduced, you wouldn’t just find rats everywhere i think.

[wheellee]

OK boys, here’s round 2.

Section 2 is now open! There’ll be a marker constructed designating it tonight most likely, but for reference it’s south of Section 1 and involves all the marked POL’s in the southeast corner.

There are new wool colors introduced here, so here we go:

As a Refresher:
-Grey = lower class houses (if they have no assigned profession like the rowhouses by Deohr’s Gate, you can have an animal pen like the houses in section 1)
-Brown = weavehouses, bakehouses, sheds, barns - these will be marked with a sign most likely today by Ahorn and I. If they aren’t, feel free to shoot us a PM or ask us ingame before building!

New stuff:
-Yellow = Middle Class Houses (will have slightly new pallete updates here - including the usage of painted planks by doors and some stronger plaster materials, as will be detailed in an example area ingame.). Generally, these can have the SFB format shown in the folde guide (sunken floor). Keep in mind this does NOT mean a basement - full walk-in basements are not for this part of Edoras. These would just be crawlspaces where they’d dump thatch or hay for warmth.
-Purple Glass = roof-less workyard, can also double for workspace depending on profession or just leaving it an open dirty yard.
-Orange = Open-walled workshops; for professions-based buildings, most of the actual work will be done here regarding a profession (this means the blacksmith would have his workspace here, NOT in his main house).
-Allotment space is implied here - you can have it in the space not taken up by the other color-types. Again, don’t do animal pens in profession-based housing, please.

Have fun gamers…

[wheellee]

The project already begins to weigh on us; Micah, prepare the hemlock!

Anyway, Section 3 is open now, lies between the glowstone guidelines (it’s on 2 different parts of the city so remember that). Pay attention to special markers etc. (they will indicate if a house is under construction or not) Light grey stained glass is normal allotments (except in the one barn place, that’ll be fields or farmland). Orange is open shed like last time.

Regarding places marked with special markers, by the way, ask Ahorn, me, or micah before building there or claiming. Stuff that isn’t marked special is fair game for anyone.

Rules still apply like last time; read through foldeguide before building, etc. etc.

Good luck have fun!

[MicahVanderman]

SECTION 4 IS HERE, REJOICE!
Section 4 is open for the most part, I will be finishing up roads within week for the section. It is located over in Eaglz’ planned section. Pay attention to the markers in the city, it is a bit unorganized in that sense but same rules should be applied from other sections. There are a few under construction houses in the eastern part of the city, labeled with yellow wool. The special marked stuff ask me, Ahorn, or Wheellee and they’ll give you permission (or not) to claim it.

Please still pay attention to the foldeguide and keep in mind this part of the city is slightly older than that rest and will have a different feel overall.

Best of luck and happy building!

[Hearthseeker]

[Fornad]

“It was a beautiful morning. I looked out of the window and I saw the wonderful American sunrise. I blinked in the gleam of the McDonalds across the road…”

[wheellee]

Since there were some mistakes in the last post regarding how things are labeled (partly due to myself being tired as shit while drafting it with micah last night and bloated on McDonalds), I’ve made a warp:
/warp EdorasSection4 ; this should have all the instruction you need on the labeling system on-site, along with an easy warp right to the location you need to build in! Don’t kill yourself before I do…

[MicahVanderman]

SECTION 5!

Section 5 is open, I will be finishing up roads within the week for the section. It is located south of the section 4 and is labeled accordingly. The houses are all also labeled with material types because this section is older than the rest (and more wealthy), so pay attention to that. The houses in this section are overall more crowded and less space for allotments so whe and I marked the allotments and fields for you.

Please still pay attention to the foldeguide and keep in mind Whe’s guide for different color templates, I believe that is still /warp EdorasSection4.

One more section and Meduseld after this. We are nearing the end so don’t kill yourself yet! Best of luck and happy building!

[MicahVanderman]

SECTION 6

The final section is open, and it might be the most crucial section yet. The layout for this is different than what you see in previous sections, so Whe has built an example section directly east of Meduseld. Because of the importance of this section, we want to enforce a rule where if you’re going to build a plot, you ask and check in with either me or Whe before doing so. Some of the POLs are very large and require 2-3 players. If an apprentice needs a job in this section, we ask that he works with another builder. This is the highest classed section in the city, and many buildings are specialized, which makes it fun but also vital that it is done correctly. I will finish up roads, and Whe and I will go through Edoras and edit vegetation outside POLs, so don’t worry about that.
Green glass signifies garden plots, blue houses are upper class, orange middle, brown lower

Upper class houses should have doors at the ends of the houses, and hearths should always be in the middle of the house, with beds in the midsection away from doors. You should try and keep the hall insular, with no windows on ground level. Near doors, you would have workspaces, looms. Add pottery throughout, and avoid barrelspam.

Thanks for all your hard work. Good luck, happy building, and congratulations on getting to the last section of Edoras.

[wheellee]

OK,

Edoras is done, finally. Final check-throughs can commence but I already went through the city and caught most if not all of the errors.
Stuff like the valley behind it is a separate project.
Inhales,
Thank you everyone, especially @Sunwing34 who did over half this city, @Ahorn, who helped significantly with layouts and realism, @eag_inc for Meduseld and advice throughout the process, the various people who entered in the contest, my co-lead @MicahVanderman who in spite of his immensely busy year was a pretty cool co-lead and worked with me throughout, and the numerous builders and apprentices who helped make this vision a reality.
Phew.

Very cool and very good,

See you next time o/

• Micah/Whee