Forest Looping Path 01: TREES

zbkolde

This is the map that was covered in like thousands of trees after the Feywild patch. They "fixed" it by removing the trees... except that now the terrain is entirely different. There is very little vegetation. As pictured, there are trees in the corn field. All of the "extra things" in my quest are now seriously hidden as the terrain has totally changed around them. Aside from the graphic quality of the trees being quite drab and ugly now, the whole map is just different. I don't think i can salvage my quest line from this.



Oh, by the way, this is the map itself. The corn and fences are part of the map, not something i can move or edit.

agentjaspor

Sad news. It's a little strange and unfortunate that they cannot totally restore the map to its previous form.

zbkolde

agentjaspor wrote: »

Sad news. It's a little strange and unfortunate that they cannot totally restore the map to its previous form.

It's as if they rebuilt it from scratch. More of the map is flat now, there are less hills, but then there are hills in different places than they were before. There are hardly any bushes at all, and since my budget is already maxed, i can't just add them. All the little extras in my quest are now broken, like the hidden mushrooms and the patrolling animals. I think a mountain has grown around my cave entrance. It doesn't look like the same map.

zbkolde

In spirit, building up to these fixes, i tried convincing myself i would just start over from scratch. But now, facing the actual task, what happened to this map, i'm wondering if i put in the time to rebuild, then what happens with the next big update? This was just a reality check: our work is not permanent.

zbkolde

Here is a comparison. I could post more, but it's making me a little sick to my stomach to even go in and look around.

This is before Feywild. See how lush and green and pretty it looks? The trees are a rich brown, and everything is green and pretty.



This is how it looks now. Drab. Bare. Ugly.



My budget is at 1500/1500. I cannot add vegetation.

eldarth

Wow. Sad. It sounded like all the excess trees were procedurally generated off of one tree and that if they restored that one seeding, all the other trees would be back to normal. It even looks like the completely wrong tree type.

They sure "optimized" any beauty out of that map.

I'll bet authors will think long and hard before using any Cryptic pre-"generated" maps.

Hopefully they haven't completed their "fixing" of it.

zbkolde

eldarth wrote: »

...

I'll bet authors will think long and hard before using any Cryptic pre-"generated" maps.

...

My thoughts exactly. Was thinking if i'm going to take the time to rebuild, i'm using a blank map. The actual map terrain may not have been affected, it was the added rocks and boulders that are different. So, from now on, i guess i will stick with flat or non-detailed maps.

zbkolde

Okay, crying over. Thanks to the support and friendship from the members of Scribes' Enclave, i'm moving forward. My characters' home was destroyed, along with their neighbors'... so they are moving. The farmers have already found a new piece of land to rebuild Kolde Acres and continue helping the Neverwinter Guard to protect and care for the citizens of Neverwinter.

Kolde Acres: Counting Chickens is no more, but it will be forever remembered in a journal inside the new farm house.

And yes, lesson learned... only empty maps from here on out.

trishani

If I might make a suggestion:

Make a list of all the things that are different.

For example: Post the map coordinates of the trees that break the map, much like your photo above.
List all the types of bushes and grasses that are missing and where they need to go.

Try to reconstruct it in a line by line post, like a map for the dev's.

There is no reason that we can't ASK the dev's to fix the map a 2nd time.

My Foundry is really hurt by the lack of ground vegetation and some of the missing trees and roots as well. It feels so empty and less lifelike. I too have detail caps I'm pushing against as well.

In the end, nothing is permanent. Lots of detailed maps were NOT effected, and one day.... the servers will shut down, and all of this will go away. Until then I will just roll the dice and let them fall where they may.

zbkolde

Way too much is different, especially for all of the extra little things i had all over the map that cannot be found now. And even if i did spend several days to make them a list, and even if by some miracle they replaced every single bush, tree, and rock to the exact place it was before, it still doesn't change how drab the trees are now. It's best for the farmers of Kolde Acres to just move on.

I'd agree that you should ask them to move those trees out of your cave though, and otherwise help to fix your map. That's too much stuff for you to move, but my characters have already started work on a new farm elsewhere, they'll be fine.

klixan

The problem I have with starting from a blank map is I always run over budget. I wonder if the Devs would consider increasing the detail budget?

Another thing, the stock maps appear to be 'baked' somehow. In other words, once the designer has placed all his trees, rocks and other details, the map becomes 'baked' and fixed, meaning that new details can be added, but the old details are fixed and permanent. I wonder if author's could do the same thing with their maps?

One last thing, it would be great if we could share user created maps with one another!

tilt42

klixan wrote: »

The problem I have with starting from a blank map is I always run over budget. I wonder if the Devs would consider increasing the detail budget?

This has been a popular topic since the beta. The challenge is to realize that less is more in art design for games. Putting tons of detail into maps can be tempting, but it usually doesn't make it look better. It's all about placing the right details. The first two chapters of From the Shadows, my own campaign, aren't anywhere near the detail limits and still look pretty good. Too much detail would make the game bog down for a lot of players, which is why it's not allowed.

The stock maps are indeed baked, which is why they contain more stuff than we can add. I think allowing custom baking might get too complex for most players, so I wouldn't hold my breath for that feature. Would be kind of nice though.

docsc00ter

tilt42 wrote: »

This has been a popular topic since the beta. The challenge is to realize that less is more in art design for games. Putting tons of detail into maps can be tempting, but it usually doesn't make it look better. It's all about placing the right details.

That's absolutely true from a design point. However, when it comes to outdoor maps, every clump of grass, every bush, every tree... basically everything that turns a relatively blank "lawn" of an outdoor map into an interesting terrain, quickly sucks up the map's budget. Throw in a farm, and every one of those crops is taking up budget. Have a village with buildings, fences, trees, a well, laundry hanging from a line, etc.? That's all wonderful, but it's hard to squeeze on an outdoor map whose budget is being depleted by all the foliage.

Yes, less is more. But large outdoor maps need bigger budgets just to create a detailed terrain.

tilt42

You should never put yourself in a situation where you need to fill a large outdoor map with detail objects.

karitr

Hey zbkolde, I wonder if you should ask a mod to add this thread to the feedback thread badbodlimit made in the preview forum (http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?464691-FOTF-Foundry-issues-(the-Authors-list)-dev-s-need-to-investigate). It's the thread he said he would be 'watching' and I worry that bugs will be missed if authors continue to report them in this forum.

I'm sorry your farm map wasn't set back to its original state after the 'fix'; you had done a beautiful job on the detailing.

crypticmapolis

I'm deeply sorry for what happened to this map and your quest. This was 1 of only 2 UGC maps that was generated using some procedural object placement tech we were working on years ago. I originally intended to remove the map before we launched, but we already had some content using it. Some time in the past couple weeks, the procedural placement tech broke in a major way, causing object density to go insane on those two maps. Since the map was so dependent on that tech, the original map was not completely recoverable, and the best we could do was try to recreate it. I'll try to bring it more in line with the original though.

That all being said, it's only the object placement that changed... the terrain should be identical. Only "Forest Looping Path 01" and "Forest Island 01" were using the procedural tech, so the rest of our maps should never have this problem.

raphaeldisanto

klixan wrote: »

The problem I have with starting from a blank map is I always run over budget. I wonder if the Devs would consider increasing the detail budget?

Another thing, the stock maps appear to be 'baked' somehow. In other words, once the designer has placed all his trees, rocks and other details, the map becomes 'baked' and fixed, meaning that new details can be added, but the old details are fixed and permanent. I wonder if author's could do the same thing with their maps?

One last thing, it would be great if we could share user created maps with one another!

This really does depend on how large the maps are that you're trying to fill. Most people who know my maps know that I always start with 100% empty maps and build from there, but my maps are usually very linear, very railroaded and pretty short. But by keeping the area down, I can make the maps themselves highly detailed.

zbkolde

crypticmapolis wrote: »

I'm deeply sorry for what happened to this map and your quest. This was 1 of only 2 UGC maps that was generated using some procedural object placement tech we were working on years ago. I originally intended to remove the map before we launched, but we already had some content using it. Some time in the past couple weeks, the procedural placement tech broke in a major way, causing object density to go insane on those two maps. Since the map was so dependent on that tech, the original map was not completely recoverable, and the best we could do was try to recreate it. I'll try to bring it more in line with the original though.

That all being said, it's only the object placement that changed... the terrain should be identical. Only "Forest Looping Path 01" and "Forest Island 01" were using the procedural tech, so the rest of our maps should never have this problem.

Thank you so much for commenting here. It's really appreciated. Please talk to Trishani, author of last week's featured quest, "Answer the Raven's Call," and try to make adjustments to fix her quest. She had a custom built cave and other things on this map, obviously her quest was more complex and detailed. Mainly, she has a couple of trees inside her cave now. My characters, though, have happily packed up and moved to the empty, large, "Path Radial Large" map, along with their neighbors. My first quest was just a learning experience, even though it did pretty well on it's own. I'm happy to branch out.

drogyn1701

I'm glad you said that zbkolde, I played Raven's Call the other night as my first foray into Neverwinter Foundry quests (I'm a 3-year vet of the STO Foundry), and I was quite overwhelmed by the forest. I was wondering whether the author had built it that way or not, but from what you say it sounds like a lot of the trees weren't supposed to be there. I was unable to complete the mission since I couldn't get to a portal that was buried in the trees. I now suspect this is the culprit. Was a very good quest otherwise though.

zbkolde

drogyn1701 wrote: »

I'm glad you said that zbkolde, I played Raven's Call the other night as my first foray into Neverwinter Foundry quests (I'm a 3-year vet of the STO Foundry), and I was quite overwhelmed by the forest. I was wondering whether the author had built it that way or not, but from what you say it sounds like a lot of the trees weren't supposed to be there. I was unable to complete the mission since I couldn't get to a portal that was buried in the trees. I now suspect this is the culprit. Was a very good quest otherwise though.

Yes, those trees were a huge bug. After the Feywild patch, the map she used (same as the one i used) was smothered in trees that weren't there before. The devs removed the excess trees, but now the map is a bit different. Trishani's quest is excellent, all the way though. I hope you'll try it again when all the bugs have been fixed.

drogyn1701

I was actually kind of torn between liking how tangled and dark the forest was and going "this is just waaay too much." I'll definitely finish it, I suspect I was very near the end.

eldarth

crypticmapolis wrote: »

his was 1 of only 2 UGC maps that was generated using some procedural object placement tech we were working on years ago.

Putting on my developer/geek/ai/procedural interest hat...

Can you tell us any more about this procedural object placement -- any online algorithm names/descriptions? Any game developer conference presentations, etc.? Love this kind of stuff and would love to know some more gory details if possible.

trishani

crypticmapolis wrote: »

I'm deeply sorry for what happened to this map and your quest. This was 1 of only 2 UGC maps that was generated using some procedural object placement tech we were working on years ago. I originally intended to remove the map before we launched, but we already had some content using it. Some time in the past couple weeks, the procedural placement tech broke in a major way, causing object density to go insane on those two maps. Since the map was so dependent on that tech, the original map was not completely recoverable, and the best we could do was try to recreate it. I'll try to bring it more in line with the original though.

That all being said, it's only the object placement that changed... the terrain should be identical. Only "Forest Looping Path 01" and "Forest Island 01" were using the procedural tech, so the rest of our maps should never have this problem.

Thank you for the response. If you plan on revising the map further, for my map, I was able to move my custom cave and restore it to 95% of the original look. For me, its the empty spaces that are missing the old trees (just south of the northern road) and ground cover feel that I can't really replicate due to detail limits. The map just doesn't feel alive anymore.

My biggest issue right now is a teleporter bug. My cave teleporter is "floating" above were it should be, yet when I go in 3D mode and target the white box the cave enterance warps the image to the location I had placed in the 3D editor. However when published it goes back to the "floating" non-3D placed location.