[WaifuApple]

So, I've been wanting to give Dormeho a little bit of an upgrade in terms of it's visual appeal, and now that I'm finally operational again, I figured I would go ahead and give it a try. I don't have a complete map - at least, not by my standards, but I spent a whole day on it as a project, because I don't like making requests without knowing that I can actually put what I'm going to into visual.

So, I'm providing screenshots of what I've got so far (mainly just a good amount of exterior stuff) and making an official request to be able to continue on with this project! I'm still waiting on the old Dormeho map to be released, too - it'll be useful going forward, especially for the interior and seeing what needs to be done there.

Let me know if I have your blessing to keep working on this!

   
   

   

[Neus]

You have my blessing.

[WaifuApple]

With the blessing given to go ahead and map this out, I spent all of today putting together the interior and seriously sprucing up the exterior. I noticed that I hadn't added too many more houses with this, which, considering Dormeho is a hotspot at times, seemed like a bit of a waste of an opportunity!

The suggestion led me to map a district to the left of the main map, extending Dormeho's house capacity by 11 through that alone (though there are more houses than were on the original on the main map too, so there should be a lot to go around.)

These district houses consist of 5 more unique ones: 3 warehouse buildings and 2 houses set on actual boats. I imagine them to be the most sought after, in the end, since they're different.

I used the autotile function, so if anything looks off in the previews shown (houses looking odd / peculiar walls), it's likely because of that. These will be connected together in game, so don't worry about that!

Things I've done:

- Added spirituality markers scattered across Dormeho. From what I assume these are what make spirits spawn on a specific tile, and I wanted to make sure Dormeho still had some when it came to the update.

- Exit and Entrance Warp. I've given those a name and set every exit tile up, so it shouldn't be as much hassle as with the Tannis map to set it up for the overworld, I'd hope.

- A bunch of shop stalls. Honestly, Dormeho was usually popular for it, so I added a bunch of them in a central "square" location, where they're easily accessible.

Things I haven't done:

- Any settings related stuff for houses. I just placed a door, a banner, and a sign for all plots of land, as I still do not know how to connect them (if I even can).

- Guard NPCs. I didn't have access to the existing NPCs for Dormeho to add in, so I'd perhaps like to request those get transferred over to the new map.

- Mirrors. The blacksmith store usually has appearance changing mirrors, but I imagine those are not things I can place, so I'd have to ask for them to be added back in their proper locations.

- New crafting furniture. The crafting furniture that came with the crafting interface update was not available to me, so I couldn't add it back in. I figure that'll come as part of the release, though.

- Barricades. Since Dormeho is a town that gets attacked by beasts, it usually gets barricaded when an attack happens. I couldn't figure out how to do that on my end though, so I left it alone, too.

- Furniture Salesmen spots. I didn't want to touch this or break anything so I left that up to Dev.

Well, with that out of the way, here are the previews and the map file!

Main Area




Side District



Interior



I hope you all enjoy the map!

  DormehoRemap.zip (Size: 138.23 KB / Downloads: 282)

[MakeshiftWalrus]

So, I have a lot of criticism for this one, in particular because I'm extremely passionate about naval stuff. I want Dormeho to look the best it possibly can, while stille giving it charm, and a unique feel. I do like the map, but I personally don't think it suits Dormeho.

First, and this is my major point of criticism: The harbor doesn't follow the land.

It's a block going out into the ocean as of the current pictures showcased, and that isn't how ports function, nor is is a very good example of the scale, or nature of the port. Let me provide you an example:

The spoiler contains a look at one of the bigger industrial ports of Denmark. Notice how the port is effectively carved into the land, and though it does look a little box-y, it still very much is built around the concept of necessity, instead of everything being nice, and rectangular.

But this is a cool fantasy world, and we don't have access to industrial amounts of cement, so rather, we could perhaps look to more fantasy-esque inspiration such as this:

These are just a couple of examples of D&D maps I ripped from online, which all fill like fluid cities. Note how chaotic the  layout of each city is. That's a little phenomenon known as building by necessity. A port brings huge amount of works, which means that people flock to them in hopes of making it, meaning these countless people need places to stay, and this doesn't feel very inspired towards neither the rich, nor the poor aspects of immigrants. Not to the extent that it probably should.

The Marketplace
The market place could do with its own entire section. We're talking about one of the biggest trading ports in the entire world, and this certainly doesn't reflect that.

Just look at, for example, this, a random picture I snagged off the internet. Probably doesn't even have anything to do with a port, but look how packed it is. I'm under no illusion that one could get it this tightly knit in the map-creater, therefor we must get creative. Make it circular instead with a plaza-like middle, leave enough room for people to sneak past the gaps of stalls, fill voids with large stacks of barrels, and crates, and whatever have you. This would be the place to plonk down as much junk as you possibly could, because the merchants here would genuinely be selling them.

There aren't even any player stalls in the marketplace section according to what's shown.

The Housing


This is eight squares that would have been perfectly symmetric had it not been for a couple of randomly scattered flowerbeds. Rather than having dedicated sections to housing, housing should be cluttered. It should be chaotic. Because it rises out of need, not because of leisurely want. Parts of the city should also reflect the class difference of the workers, and those who manage them. My final point to this is also that there's plainly too much air between everything.

Port Stairs


This is a smaller gripe, but the city has stairs. Especially stairs leading to the docks. This is murder for the port industry, how are you going to efficiently do trade if you've got to lift your crates, or barrels, or whatever else ultra heavy up two flights of stairs before your trade wagons can collect them? If the city must continue to be elevated in such a manner, it needs ramps to facilitate land-trade as well.

The Beasts
If there's a second word associated with Dormeho that isn't 'Boat', it's 'Beast', and this current map does little to facility the long, long history it has of fending them off. There are outer walls now, sure, but that doesn't stop all of them if they just appear from the ground. Where are the palisades with manned guards at? The watch towers to keep their eyes out for them? The scars no doubts visible from countless repairs? Tannis has the excuse of being mostly natural. Dormeho is a stone-bricks city though, and that makes it impossible to hide everything.


Finally:
My score for the map on its own is 8/10

But my score for it as a functional Dormeho is 4/10, and I personally think it would be much better suited as a new settlement all together. One perhaps of much richer nature than Dormeho would be. Having more port towns wouldn't be a bad thing anyway, in my opinion.

It's a nice map, but I overall think it falls short of 'Being Dormeho' given my current points. Regardless of whether it'll be added or not as Dormeho, I hope you'll consider the criticism for the future.

[JamOfBoy]

-snip-

This is all cool criticism, if you take it out of the context of the game. Apply SL2 to these criticisms and you'll see a lot of what is said here can't really work- we're playing a game made in BYOND. But, to go through some of it:

Do ramp tiles exist? Is there a limit on the size of the map of Dormeho? Would it be easy to navigate a chaotic and sporadic city built by necessity from the perspective we have in SL2? Would it be easy to fight black beasts with the changes proposed? Is it worth adding new tiles to implement these proposed changes? Is it worth expanding the size of Dormeho to accommodate the changes?

Old Dormeho was anchor-shaped. We live in a fantasy world. We can levitate cargo up stairs. There might be parts of the city we can't see. We could repair battle scars with magic of some sort. There are likely alternatives to watchtowers. There might be more battlements outside of our sight.

These are a lot of petty retorts to quite frankly worthwhile points of criticism, but that's more down to the nature of the game and the engine and nothing else. I don't think it's feasible to map or implement all of what Walrus suggests - don't get me wrong, I haven't made a game in BYOND and I've barely mapped things in the past - but, I've been around and seen enough to think it'd be more trouble than it's worth trying to achieve these aspirations.

So, with that context, I like the map. It's an improvement over what we have.

[WaifuApple]

Okay, so after that feedback I took what I could on board, in order to upgrade the map further (though I didn't take on tasks that would change the map size or require a full restart, like making the dock more shaped to the land - the last one was an anchor, and that was fine in lore, so I'd argue that this can't hurt in comparison, anyway. It follows the land a little more than current Dormeho.)

So, without further ado, the changes I've made were:

- The market area was expanded a little. That little tuft of grass and the path that went to the side of it is now gone. The market takes up the entire expanse of that space. It's not a full, dedicated section like desired, but it's a compromise without requiring another map - because, of course, that would make a beast raid here honestly not that great. And after response to Tannis, that's probably best avoided, in a gameplay sense. I did, however, add player stalls in the market, too! Now you can sell things there too.

- The player housing was adjusted. It was given a more cluttered feel, and nothing perfectly lines up anymore. The paths wind through the right side a lot rougher, to give the feeling of a less defined area. Scattering stuff around would have inevitably required a lot of updates to the map, so I stuck to what I had and tried to make that better, instead. I hope that's a suitable enough change in the end.

- The stairs were replaced with ramps in all but two cases. One for the stairs down into the district, and one for the stairs down into the little park area. These were deemed to be areas that would not reasonably see port traffic, since a park area wouldn't have workers hauling carts through it, and the paths are now too winding for it to be a suitable travel route. The ramps might not look as good as they could, because I had to make them myself - but they help suit the needs a bit more.

Not suggested, but adjusted anyway, was the grass. I gave it some tile variation, so it looks a little less same-y. I took inspiration from the coastal cove map in that sense. I think it does make the grass look a little better!

I'll provide a general image that shows the changes in action. These adjustments were made for both the main area and the side district, but the picture of the main area should show the general gist of what has changed.


 
Also added to both maps are markers on walls. They're not meant to be used for anything in game, but it was suggested that you be able to jump down to make beast hunting easier, and those identify spots I think would be great for the jump mechanic, so I'm hoping it's possible to get that for this map.

I've updated the file I gave with all these changes, but just in case I'm uploading it with this post, too.

  DormehoRemap.zip (Size: 138.23 KB / Downloads: 287)

[WaifuApple]

As a compliment to the map itself, I went ahead and created a newer sprite for Dormeho, just as happened with the Arena when it was reworked. I think it fits the port aesthetic more, so I hope it's to people's tastes! This image is a representation of what it looks like, styled over a gap much like the one it would be on when implemented, for reference. I hope people like the way it looks!