Southlands Wildlife Change

Started by Disappointed Hunter, April 06, 2003, 12:23:24 AM

I recently started playing in the south again, after I heard of these new changes and what not to the outside wilderness... but Im a bit disappointed with what I see.

It went from almost a deathtrap to now not seeing anything almost 10-20 rooms out west of the city. Im wondering if something happened unexpected to make there absolutely nothing down there?

I mean there are even rumors going around about spiders and things, but I havent even been that lucky.... any help or comments?

It makes a lot of sense that the area would be cleared and safe considering that there are farms around the close outskirts of Allanak, and people should be able to travel one hundred feet and be a little safe. With all the military might, I'm surprised they haven't rooted out the beasts until the deep desert.

100 feet? One room in the desert is a little under a mile or so, my friend.  The same goes for time, it is all compacted.  10 minutes irl is roughly an hour in the game.

I actually thought that a desert room was a league, and that a league is 5 miles or something... but I have seen some things around, so I cant entirely feel for you.

Well, there is no set distance, 5 miles for one room seems a bit much to me.  People using league (which is 3 miles actually) icly sounds highly ironic seeing as it was a commonly used term for how fast a boat is traveling, hah.

North's hard????........
........
(Sorry I had to give a break because I couldn't stop my crazy laughter.)

North's got the easiest creatures of Zalanthas. Spiders? In Allanak just go southwest for a few (less than five) rooms and you'll see a tarantula, maybe two or three. Got it? OK. Your raptors rock, but it's still too easy considered to Southlands. I'm not playing hunter characters for a little while, but I don't believe that things have changed. So it's a little harder? Good... More conflict and more RP it means.
quote="Ghost"]Despite the fact he is uglier than all of us, and he has a gay look attached to all over himself, and his being chubby (I love this word) Cenghiz still gets most of the girls in town. I have no damn idea how he does that.[/quote]

Just don't expect to find things in the same places, but I've seen things fairly close to 'Nak.  Try just after a reboot.  There is stuff out there, definately.  I won't give any more away, too IC.
Evolution ends when stupidity is no longer fatal."

Quote from: "Cenghiz"North's got the easiest creatures of Zalanthas. Spiders? In Allanak just go southwest for a few (less than five) rooms and you'll see a tarantula, maybe two or three. Got it? OK. Your raptors rock, but it's still too easy considered to Southlands. I'm not playing hunter characters for a little while, but I don't believe that things have changed. So it's a little harder? Good... More conflict and more RP it means.


The North has some bloody hard creatures, I'll say that.  Some hunt in packs up to 7 big, others can take 2 hours for seasoned warriors to take down if they can stand it.  And other creatures yet will tear through good armor and gash your neck open like a hot claw through Vishith.

No, the North isn't easy - it's just that the bodies are usually 7-20 rooms from the city gates, rather than the usual 1-2 for Nak. :P

To tell the truth, I'll begin a hunter character again.. And I'm afraid of starting in Tuluk... I didn't examine any of the creatures, just the birdlike ones and the raptors. But some time ago I could wander in wilderness with ease with (chuckle) an assassin, a behaviour which means death in 'nak. I thought the tracks were a dwarf's, they probably were, but I believe the dwarf was the breakfast of a raptor. Damn... Those are more terrible than silt horrors I think.
But if you scare me off enough, I'll play again in 'nak. So, cheat. Tell me that North's easy and let me start there..

(emote chuckles as he steps backwards, into the shadows.)
quote="Ghost"]Despite the fact he is uglier than all of us, and he has a gay look attached to all over himself, and his being chubby (I love this word) Cenghiz still gets most of the girls in town. I have no damn idea how he does that.[/quote]

Geez, five miles is huge. The staff actually said that they are all five miles?

That means that if I walk by someone in a room, the chances of me actually seeing anyone(even if they are in the room) are little. Hell, we should have to use hunt to even find an animal in a room, then, especially if the landscape isn't flat.

Unless the surface of Zalanthas is drastically different from earth, the Horizon on flat land should be about three miles away (Three rooms in each direction)

If Zalanthas is smaller, then the horizon is closer.

Larger, farther.

I could explain the math behind it, but I'm sure no one want to hear it.

Arrrgh, I gotta do it.

First, a league is a nautical measurement of depth, not speed, the term for speed is a knot.

Second, A league is also an old term of land distance equaling around 3 miles.

Third, though the horizon thing (smaller closer, farther larger) Is correct, last I checked zalanthas was not that much smaller then earth, if it is smaller at all, but it has been said "the known world" is the size of one of the US states (can't remember which one) the key word here being 'known' Remember, at one time the 'known' world here on earth was not much bigger then europe and it was flat and you could fall off.

The known world in zalanthus is likly growing, if slowly I am sure there is an imm or two building onto it...least I hope so.
A gaunt, yellow-skinned gith shrieks in fear, and hauls ass.
Lizzie:
If you -want- me to think that your character is a hybrid of a black kryl and a white push-broom shaped like a penis, then you've done a great job

Quote from: "X-D"First, a league is a nautical measurement of depth, not speed, the term for speed is a knot.

Its not depth, its distance.

20,000 leagues under the sea wasn't a movie about going 60,000 miles below the oceans surface.  A distance that, I think, we have us coming out on the other side and on our way to the moon.

From www.m-w.com the definition of league:

1 : any of various units of distance from about 2.4 to 4.6 statute miles (3.9 to 7.4 kilometers)

It also has nothing to do with whether or not the distance being measured has anything to do with water or land.

well i hope it's not the size of rhode island - because if each room is 25 square miles than the whole state would be about 50 rooms :)


5 miles does seem too big - I mean, think if you run 5 rooms you just did a marathon in under an hour
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." - Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

Quote1 : any of various units of distance from about 2.4 to 4.6 statute miles (3.9 to 7.4 kilometers)


Hhhmm, and what would that average out too?

And though league did not matter water or land, most often heard/read of in land usage...shrug. Point is still the same, The average distance for a league is 3 miles rounded off, so the rough size of an outdoor room is but 9 square miles. Assuming that you are standing in the middle of a room it is 1.5miles to the next one and another 3 to the one after that and another 3 after that, putting the horizon at 7.5 miles, making zalanthus about 30% smaller then earth.   :twisted: (the visual horizon on earth being about 12 miles in a flat open area)

And I knew somebody would actually take the time to look it up if they had to 'prove' somebody wrong, people here tend to be anal that way I've noticed...chuckle.
A gaunt, yellow-skinned gith shrieks in fear, and hauls ass.
Lizzie:
If you -want- me to think that your character is a hybrid of a black kryl and a white push-broom shaped like a penis, then you've done a great job

Quote from: "X-D"And I knew somebody would actually take the time to look it up if they had to 'prove' somebody wrong, people here tend to be anal that way I've noticed...chuckle.

I wasn't arguing about the distance that you gave.  Who cares if you were exactly dead on in the measurement.

I was arguing that it isn't a measure of nautical depth as you had said which would make it completely wrong to use in the game.

At the risk of being too IC, I'd like to see more small wildlife on the dusty plains to the west of Allanak.  From the room description the dusty plains are a little more barren than the scrub plains and scrublands in the north, but they are still considerably more fertile than the sandy dunes, sand flats, salt flats or red desert.  There is still some small amount of vegitation, so small animals that exist off that vegitation are possible.  Things like those little winged serpents, not too dangerous but not very valuable either.  There might be a few scrabs and such out hunting the smaller critters, but in modest numbers.  Some more herbs and plants would be good too.  I picture the farmlands as having been carved out of the dusty plains.

I'm not suggesting that the dusty plains should be as lush as the grasslands up north.  But of the lands around Allanak the dusty plains look more hospitiable to life than the sandy deserts to the north, the windy silt plains to the south or the salt flats to the west.  

Just a thought.

AC
Treat the other man's faith gently; it is all he has to believe with."     Henry S. Haskins

I suggested desert mice. Those are always prevalent.
And maybe non-poisonous snakes.

I think it would be great to see a clear sort of food chain in each of the four or five major areas.

It'd be cool, especially, to see hunters after small game having scrab and larger beasts being competition for those game, like fisherman and bears in Alaska or something.

This may already be in place, though, who knows.  I just wish it was more visible.  Rooms of big bugs and nothing else are mostly what I see.

Maybe you need a high scan to see the little critters?   :D

AC
Treat the other man's faith gently; it is all he has to believe with."     Henry S. Haskins

Quote from: "X-D"but it has been said "the known world" is the size of one of the US states

Yeah, I think the size of Michigin or something. I was thinking about including that in my post, but I just figured Zalanthas was around the same size as earth, and that again, we only know about the Known world.

im sure if you dropped a baby and her mother in the middle of the sahara desert, waited for the child to get to be like 16, never speaking of the outside world, they'd assume the world was entirely desert.

maybe we should strap all the whirans together and make a flying machine.

Quote from: "X-D"The average distance for a league is 3 miles rounded off, so the rough size of an outdoor room is but 9 square miles.

Theres a problem... 2.4 - 4.6 ... Take the six off the four, give it to the two, you have 3-4. The middle of this is 3.5. THAT'd be the average. And yes, league is quite more often used as land measurement. Almost all the books I've read refer to a league, rather fantasy or a story based on reality or what not.

Again, I'd like to say people need to RP out where they are. Most the time outdoor MUD rooms ARE large, or there are just a good space between them. Alot of the times they are treated as a smaller location that changes as people use it. These people meet up and that room could be in the grove of trees over there, some other people come along later and they could be meeting right off the road in the same room. In Armageddon, I say the rooms are acctually large. I'd prefer that because you get a better feel for how large everything is. If there are imaginary spaces between rooms you don't know always for sure how big that space is. And it also takes some trouble of how people met up and all that.

Now, I think it just takes alittle RP if coming upon other people. If your on a road and come into the room, probably good chance they are near the road, and such. I think better off RPing things out alittle at least when coming into contact with other things. If people are camped out and you come in on kanks, probably can assume you get up to them, but if people are walking along, or riding along, I'd say moving in and just attacking or something would be alittle odd. This may mean raider characters need to be more careful. Maybe acctually laying ambushes, making use of archers, and maybe even sneak up on people and such. Which I think is more realistic to have them think. Maybe having other people RP catching up with people in the room. Approaching peoples campsites, and so on.

Creeper
21sters Unite!

most times I see people play outdoor rooms as being in the relative center, crossing these outer areas of the room during the movement process.

Personally, I think that talk of how far an outdoor room is, is pointless.  Its distance is close enough to see and close enough to shoot a bow.  So, two rooms away is the near the tail end of your ability to shoot with a bow.  Now, that does not mean that the distance between Tuluk and Allanak is short, as it would imply if rooms were really that small.  

Distances are one of the places where RP comes heavily into play in my mind.  Room distances are relatively short (all within bow range).  The total distances are generally large, taking days to travel.  The two simply don't match up.  This is because for pragmatic reasons the two can't match up.  Rooms need to be small enough to be functional, and the OOC time to travel a distance needs to be quick enough that the MUD is not spread extremely thin and that events that involve travel from one part of the MUD to the other are not impossible.  If it took a couple of IC days for a band of Byn to go from Allanak to Tuluk, the Byn would never make the trip as it would be too hard OOCly to keep that many people together and online for that long.  Further, they would have a bitch of a time getting back together, as everyone would need to log in at the same time and travel together.

I generally just RP the distances as massive.  If I have the time, I RP a long trip.  I take my sweet time and go slowly.  However, if I need to lead a mission from Allanak to Luirs, or some other location, RPing the distance (which is large) takes a backseat to RPing the event.