Guild City

[dvg94]

I would love to participate as well!

[Mouse]

You're more than welcome, Voolf EDIT: Ninjad by dvg94! You are just as welcome

I will add you to the list and see how you feel closer to the time. After all, there might be quite a considerable delay if all the Community Leaders are a bit tied up for the next couple of weeks (I don't want to be the 'project leader' - I'm too badly flawed to do the leadership thing very well, so I'm just keeping the seat warm while Robbie and the CLs are busy - hoping that J.Edward will take up the reins )

...

In the meantime I'm thinking it would be a good idea for everyone to start suggesting different parts of the city, so that we can come up with a list of things to be included, like a market place, or an arena. There should be enough ideas for everyone to have at least one central focal point to their individual map, or it would be boring just mapping a whole load of samey houses all over the place.

Here are a few to get started on the list. We will need at least 15 I think (preferably more like twice that number) so that people can choose the best ones. I will edit this list to add to it as people continue to suggest new inclusions.

I'm really sorry if this seems a bit too structured and dictatorial, but its the only way I can think of making sure we don't have 6 of something where one or two would be better for the city as a whole

• Market place (possibly representing the Commission Forum)
• Arena (where gladiatorial contests take place, and the mapping gets mean and dirty!)
• Palace/government buildings
• Boogie's Hideaway (one of the most terrible seedy places in the City of Guild!) sort of 'bagsied' already by thomrey, but subject of course to Bogie's approval! LOL!
• Red Map District (I believe most cities have one of these )
• Temple of Cartography
• Main shopping Mall (providing all the software and drawing tools we use)
• Inspiration Park
• (wailing) Wall of Despair
• Cartographer's Block
• Forum Square (a centrepiece that could alternatively be a grand hall where we all come to meet)
• Central Library (might be part of the University of Mapping below)
• University of Mapping (representing the vast collection of knowledge we have at the Guild)
• The Inkwell (another tavern - possibly a rival to Bogie's Hideaway)
• Mapper's Corner (our equivalent to Speaker's Corner, where the depiction of trees and mountains are the most frequent topics)
• Community Leaders' Parade
• Robbie's Pad (this could be a castle)
• Administrators' Row
• Here Be Dragons (another tavern?)
• The Endless Bog (Tavern... I mean, there are so many of us we're going to need a few, aren't we?)
• Cartographer's Choice (a very prestigious hotel - a bit like The Plaza, or the Ritz)
• The Ruins (remnants of an older city uncovered by contemporary building works)
• Aspiration Tower
• Writers' enclave
• Publisher's enclave
• The Shady Map (yes... another tavern!)
• The Crooked Tree (and another)
• Orphanage (for all the projects started and never finished... unless that was the intent of the ruins)
• The Slums (for those poor newbies like myself)
• Blacksmith shop (for those who work hard on the forum itself making adding features, and creating those nice award Icons and such)
• City walls
• Barracks
• City gates/gatehouses (at least two sets of these I should think)
• The Compass and Rose (tavern)
• Kacian Observatory
• University of Astronomy
• Chamber of the most astounding and very ancient but secret knowledge (most likely in the ruins or at least very close by?)
• Individually named watch towers - at least 4, to cover all possible military approaches of the Orcs.
• Parade and combat practice area - somewhere near the castle.
  

I've only been here a few months, so I'm not as familiar with the Guild as some of you are, so any more enlightened choices to add to (or replace/rename) existing things on the list, and which better reflect the Guild as if it were a virtual city with a very real history, are greatly hoped for!

...

Looking ahead...

I think we may also need to set up a sort of complicated multiple choice poll to find out whether the majority want to do this as ISO, or top down, and whether we should have both a river (most cities have a pretty big river or famously important road going through them) and a coastline possibly with sandy bays and docks.

[Mouse]

Regarding the age of the city...

It would be fun to do this as medieval, or another favoured time period, but Bogie is right - we need to choose a time period and social setting (ie human, dwarf, elven)

Or maybe all three humanoids living together - especially if the city is dark ages or medieval.

Please comment your thoughts...

[Mouse]

More thoughts...

Since this is a virtual city, we could have it floating in space just as easily as on the ground - even if its basically medieval. What do you feel about that?

How does everyone feel about regular grid design?

Reason for asking is that it would make life a bit easier for whoever has to put this city together. Each grid square would be a single city block and a set number of pixels in size, so that we all draw maps that end up the exact same resolution. Larger focal points could be two or more adjacent grid squares, such as the arena, or the beautiful castle I envisage as Robbie's Pad. These larger maps would break up the grid a bit without throwing it into disarray. The component parts would also be relatively easy to rearrange to make sense of the placement of amenities.

Using this 'modular' method the city could be as big or as small as the number of mappers we have, and be far less of a headache for the CL's to work out

C&C welcome

EDIT: I'll stop for a bit now - I'm filling up the Activity Stream!

[Matthew VE]

Great idea Mouse! I would definitely want to take part in this.

[Mouse]

To add to your list Mouse:

• Orphanage (for all the projects started and never finished... unless that was the intent of the ruins)
• The Slums (for those poor newbies like myself)
• Blacksmith shop (for those who work hard on the forum itself making adding features, and creating those nice award Icons and such)

As for period, I'm down with a fantasy medieval style. a good majority of the maps I have seen here so far tend to lean that direction. Along with the time period, we should probably think about the general location as well, is it in a grassy area with farms all around, up in the snowy mountains, or on an island in a tropical zone? (are we getting to far into the details yet...)

As for a regular grid design, here is a thought have an octagonal design, palace in the center and main roads leading out north, south, east, and west like a compass (that is either cool or cheesy, I can't decide) In this case the blocks wouldn't be exactly square/rectangular, more trapezoidal. But still of a regular pattern.

Is this going to be a walled city?

As far as the diversity of the city, I think it should be a melting pot, as diverse as this community. So include all the fantasy races. Just a thought.

Nice additions - though I'm not sure who's going to want to do the slums - or even if Robbie would allow the city to get into such a state! I'll add them to the list. Details are good, even if they don't come into play straight away they are useful as mood generators - even if it is only to spur someone else to say 'bad idea'

I'm leaning towards fantasy medieval period myself, but we may yet be surprised by the eventual consensus of opinion. Walls sound good don't they. I think I'll leave that idea hanging - see if anyone else has anything to say on the matter.

I'm not really getting you on the structure there. Would you be able to do a quick sketch to show us what you mean?

Great idea Mouse! I would definitely want to take part in this.

Welcome on board, Matthew Please feel free to contribute ideas at will


Edit: ninja'd by Jo! Hi buddy

[DarkInfinity]

I'm not really getting you on the structure there. Would you be able to do a quick sketch to show us what you mean?

Very rough sketch, hope it answers your question.

2017-01-05 14.03.14.jpg

[- JO -]

It's going to be EPIC !!!!
I'm in for anything, but prefer medieval cities...
And put me in for anything with walls and towers (castle ? barracks ? one of the city gate ?)

[Mouse]

It's going to be EPIC !!!!
I'm in for anything, but prefer medieval cities...
And put me in for anything with walls and towers (castle ? barracks ? one of the city gate ?)

Hey Jo

Funnily enough you were the first person I thought of when DarkInfinity mentioned walls! LOL!

I'll add it to the list along with the barracks

[J.Edward]

I'm still sort of waiting to hear back from Robbie about a thumbnail scraper issue, but I think we are going to try to go ahead with this.
I do still need to find out about where I am going to be housing this. My thought is to have it in the area where Guildworld is,
but it needs a separate area so we can have a thumbnail scraper for it and that requires Robbie to move things or create a separate space.

As to the layout and the nature of the city...
We can do it a number of different ways, depending on total number of participants.
I tend to like more organic layouts rather than grids, but grids do allow easier additions and changes.
I'll also add - maybe if we did a grid just right.. maybe it could work out really well. Who knows.
We can discuss the merits and decide what people would prefer. A good discussion of people's opinions on this would be appreciated.

I also like melting pots and can easily see how many types of beings could live in a large city with many styles of architecture.
I can also appreciate Bogie's point too. Here again, I am ok with going with the group opinion.

If a non-flat city is desired, then we would need to really plan that out well in advance.
It's doable, but just has to be sort of planned early on I think.

Edit - and I sort of figured that we would be doing this as top-down, otherwise everyone would need to be able to do perspective, which is a lot harder.
However.. if there is a particular building you want to do a perspec view of, we can always do some call-outs for soecific spots maybe.
There are a lot of options and potential for all sorts of cool things here.