Mythruna

(This is a planned feature slated for a near-term upcoming release.  Though some of the RP elements will come later.)

In a multiplayer game, there is a lot of freedom to build or modify where ever in the world one chooses.  Human nature is such that some people will use this as an opportunity to create great things while others will use it to randomly destroy.

The property system adds a layer of control to allow players to limit what can be done in certain parts of the world.

Claim Flags

The most fundamental element of the property system is the claim flag.  All players will start with a flag that they can plant anywhere in the world to mark their territory.  A claim flag gives the player exclusive edit rights over a small portion of the world.  The current default size will be a 32x32 area with unlimited elevation.

When a claim flag is placed, no other player can edit in that area without being issued a "builder's badge" by the owning player.  No blocks can be added or removed and no objects can be placed or deleted.  Non-static objects can be moved, e.g.: sliding chairs around, etc.

A player can place the claim flag anywhere not already claimed and can move it at any time if they want to relocate the protection to somewhere else.

There will be in-game opportunities to earn additional claims.

Cities and Towns

Certain areas of the world will be designated as towns or cities.  Similar to claimed property, players will not normally be allowed to build in these areas.  Unlike normal world-level claims, players can place objects and remove objects that were created by them.

A town is created by a player who has been granted a town charter.  This is a plaque that they can place to claim a larger portion of the world than is provided by normal claim flags.  In the full game, this also gives them the ability to manage the town's construction and resources.  A player can grant portions of the town to other players or non-player characters in the game.

Depending on server settings, towns may have a limit to the elevation range they support but will nearly always extend all the way into the ground.  For example, a town may not be able to protect building outside of a certain height above its average elevation.

The size, restrictions, and requirements for obtaining the charters will be different for towns and cities.  This is a settable option on the server but the defaults will probably be 200x200 for a town and 600x600 for a city.

To obtain a town charter, a player must gather signatures on a petition and show it to any governing seat.  The petition may be signed by other players or by non-player characters that the player convinces to sign the petition.  These levels can be set as part of the server settings.

To obtain a city charter, the player must have already built a certain number of towns as configured on the server.  The default will be five.

Being granted a town or city charter will generally come with additional benefits.  For example, towns and cities may provide additional monetary and resource income.  In addition, the server may configure additional grants given the player such as extra world-level claim flags or town plots in existing game-generated cities.

Town Plots

The owner of a town or city may grant a player town plots to allow them to build in a small area of the city.  This is the only way for a normal player to be able to build in a town without a special builder's badge for that town.

A town plot is generally a much smaller area than a normal claim flag.  The defaults may be closer to 8x8 or 10x10.  Since these can be bought or rented in some cases, it's possible to have more than one for a particular town.

A town plot will have elevation restrictions that are likely a sub-portion of the surrounding town's restriction.  For example, town plots will be depth limited and may have additional height restrictions depending on the local town ordinances.

Once a player has built in a town plot, it cannot be moved without permission from the town owner.

Builder Badges

Players that own any type of property as described above, can give builder badges to other players as they choose.  A builder badge for a property allows a player to edit the property just as if they owned it.  Through this mechanism, players can still help each other build even while protecting their portion of the world.

Builders badges will be issued from the Property tab.  Each property will have a button that when clicked will equip a new badge as the player's active item.  Once given to another player that player will show up on the description page for that property in the list of builders.

A player that has given away a builder badge can revoke it at any time by going to that property's info page and clicking the revoke button for the specific badge.

Very interesting, I like the direction this is going.  Sort of like an MMO, I like it.  What would be really cool in this system would be to eventually have a portal, say some block you could place inside your property that could teleport your party or just you back to your own personal server/world.  An example: "hey come check out my world, I have a cool blueprint you can clone."

Server to server portals are something I want to support.  Though that kind of thing would have to be arranged between the server admins.

Maybe when you place it, you could set the server ip and then only the player that placed it would be able to use it, anyone else would need permission. 

The issue with cross server portaling is that you may have hacked your server to give yourself a ton of super items that cannot otherwise be achieved on the source server.  So if there is any real portaling then it has to be coordinate between two servers as far as what they share and what they don't.

It could be done if it's little more than a hot link that reloads your game for a different server, ie: you'd login as a different user/character and none of the stuff would transfer back and forth.  That functionality would be a subset of the more complicated portaling that I want to support where you really can bring your stuff around.

This sounds great. It will create much more interaction that what is normal in "some other crafting games". ;)
I really believe that Mythruna can have a brilliant future.

Anyway, about the feature itself. I'm wondering if it will be some kind of in-game currency, which means that we could buy some plots in towns and cities. The cities could have separate zones, the center zones would be more expensive that the periferic zones. :)

Yes, for the game-generated towns and cities plots will have to be purchased or granted.  For the player built towns and cities it is entirely up to that player.

A money system would be SO amazing! Mythruna is going really good... Paul Speed > Notch.... only cause you will listen to most of our ideas and Agree and have fun with them :D

Thanks
St.Scott

I think this is a really good idea!
I agree with Salsaar, that Mythruna is going really good.

its nice but I want more exact area protection setup than a flag, I want to see what area I have and what area is not mine, but I like the idea of infinite altitude.

Idea to use system like world edit:
http://www.youtube.com/v/yl1hTctucOc?version=3&autohide=1
Yes, i am talking about the red lines shown in the video.  ;)

It will be nice idea to give a flag to make personal spawn points...  :)

It will show up on the map... and when people cross into your area they will get a message most likely.  The map is the key indicator on where protected areas are.

It's hard to do differently because with towns and cities areas can nest.

but my house is very near of the road and I need to specific my area!, maximum 35x35 yes but have a wand to select the 2 points plz ;)

We'll see how it works out.  Maybe you will place the flags for the corners... though that does complicate things quite a bit. 

The single flag as center was so easy. :)  It may be what I implement first and we can see how rough it is in practice.  After all, if it's in the wrong place you can always pick it up and move it a little.

...though, in towns/cities, strange lot sizes may be more of a requirement.  I'll have to think about it some.  I'm already starting to have some ideas.

aaah yes... had to read your post different times before I understood what you mean ;)

Now a little brainstorm, hope you can use it:

What about builder levels? So lets say a noob-lvl1 builder can claim a ... dunno 10x10 area. Placing blocks adds builder-XP. Lvl 2 is 15x15 and so on.
To claim a area you have to get these 'claimflags'. These are quite expensive to get (e.g. by rare matierals etc.) After claiming 3 different areas and leveling up to builder lvl 10 e.g. you can claim quite big areas and invite others to build with you, so you can found a village. If your village has some specs (inhabitants, farms whatever) you can claim an additional district to your village, so its a town. After growing again you can claim district nr3 and the town becomes a city.
I would love to see some transport systems. Like if your village/town/city is connected to a street it gets bonuses, same for the sea and so on. You should be able to give certain buildings certain roles. Like a store, city hall, dock etc. These buildings have to fulfill certain specs, too. A dock has to be partly in the water and at least 5x10 blocks or whatever. Having more and more buildings with these roles you get bonuses again.

Now let the tourists come! What about a 'LikeBox' for a town? Every player gets one Award Coin every week or so. So the player can put that coin into a LikeBox of a settlement if he likes it, but NOT at his own village! So you ensure to get not only funktional but good looking and innovative settlements cause these coins give bonuses, too. And usually people do not like ugly stuff.

Settlements bigger then 3 districts, a metropolis, have to be unlocked by a admin of the server. That prevents the huge stuff being build without admin permission and spamming his server. These can have like 5 districts and have some special bonuses (inner-city transportation system or anything else whats cool :D )

.... thats it for now, do what you want with my ideas ;)

These are good ideas but the net result is not too different than what I'm already implementing as described above.  The difference is that having to get a petition signed before you can have a town means that there is more opportunity for adventure, etc. as you try to get all of the signatures that you need.  Besides, requiring a vote of confidence from the players is not a bad thing and if you instead travel the world enough to get enough NPC signatures well then I don't mind giving you a town of your own either. :)

Once you have a town you can place sites down for specific types of buildings and NPCs will come and build that or move into whatever you've already built.  But if you've built it or placed it in a bad site for it (like a dock in the middle of a field) then no NPC would ever want to go there.

Also, something to remember... in general the property system doesn't keep you from building anywhere you want.  It just grants you protection from others wrecking your stuff.  Assuming there isn't already some bit of property somewhere then you can build whatever you want... it's just that the next guy might come tear it down again.  The property system gives you some assurance that your carefully collected resources don't walk away. :)

I completly agree.
But I also extend the 'property idea'. By travelling some MC-Servers I saw huge good looking cities and directly next to it half grieved ruined ugly stuff. The one who is running the server does surely not want to have this rubble piles everywhere.
So he should be able to protect certain larger areas from being modified and only granted people will be able to build there.
And even the granted builders should have certain limitations so they dont spam the servermap.

I peronaly think it would be a very appreciated feature to be able to protect your server from being building-spamed.

As admin, you could always designate the whole world as a city (or large enough of it as to not matter) then everyone must obtain plots in order to build at all.  Or trusted people could get builder's badges to help clean things up.

I like this idea. It should solve most griefing and finally I don't have to deal with my friends trying to "Help" me build. :D

Right... only if you want them to help and you can revoke that at any time. :)

Then you will just have to deal with them pestering you about why you won't let them help. :)

what about few points? maybe it could be better if people can decide what count of blocks they will need. after selecting region it can be save "name"
later, owner can add people to the region, like this: /region addowner\\\addmember "regionname" "peoplename"

There will be an actual user interface as described.  They won't have to remember odd cryptic commands.

Some players will end up managing multiple towns and many properties.  It's better to have an actual user interface for it.

There has to be a limit on the size or players will just claim the whole world.  The limit has to be big enough to build something cool but small enough that you are willing to go on quests to get more protected space.  And at that point, why wouldn't you want to just use the whole thing?

Some pics of placing property boundaries that I put up on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.259995564022969.60889.204533646235828&type=1

They are public... no facebook account required to view them.

That looks pretty awesome. Can't wait 'til properties are finished. :)

I'm trying to release something soon.  Still a bunch of stuff left to do and I haven't even tackled the property management UI. (the property tab)

Still, if I can get the basic mechanics reliably working of allowing a player to place their own "stronghold" boundary and move it around, then I may release that just to get it out there.  One property per player doesn't really require a UI to manage... and I can always still give myself town properties and stuff as an admin until I get the UI in place.

This is only taking me loner than originally planned because I decided to let the player adjust the shape of the property to be something other than square.  Players will also be able to move and rotate the map marker for how their property label appears on the map.

There may also be a few surprises in the works.

me gusta!

Great you make progress in the property issue, that will safe you tons of time of 'griefer repairs'.
Hmm surprises in work... I'm getting curious =]

regards C

Hi. That looks awsome! I can't wait!!! ;D
About the shape, are you calculating the area of the property or defining a maximum size for each side?

Total area.  So a "player stronghold" can be 1024 max area... which is 32x32 if you make it square.  There will be some minimum width of course and I may make that a ratio.  It makes no sense to make a town claim that is 6x1000 or whatever.  And even in the case where you want to make a stronghold only 6 wide, it seems odd to also make it nearly 150 long.

Thought I'd post this here, too...

This is the photoshop mock-up of the property management UI:
http://www.facebook.com/Mythruna#!/photo.php?fbid=263407133681812&set=a.218418391514020.54331.204533646235828&type=1&theater (http://www.facebook.com/Mythruna#!/photo.php?fbid=263407133681812&set=a.218418391514020.54331.204533646235828&type=1&theater)

Not sure how much will survive when converted to a real user interface but I thought it might be interesting to some of you.

It's AWSOME! Great work on Photoshop, Paul. We all believe you will do it good, even in the game. :) :)

Thanks!  I have the left part of the screen working already and it looks exactly like in that picture... with a few other things (like I added the number of properties to the group name... Strongholds (2) or whatever.)

Tonight I hope to work on the right side of it... but cranking along so far.

Sounds awesome. Will we be able to claim large areas of water too? like entirely water? or will the plots have a "minimum land" requirement? Also will those property boxes on the photoshop facebook pic appear on the regular in-game map or just the "property map?'

You can place property claims anywhere.  A "player stronghold" is default 32x32 area but can be dragged to any size as long as the area does not exceed 1024.  They protect an area from bedrock to sky.

A town is 128x128 by default and can also be stretched as above, obviously with a larger max area.  Cities are the same but larger, I don't remember the number of the top of my head. ;)

The plots that are given out in a town or a city vary in size.  They also limit min/max elevation... and the size and heights are different for cities (smaller and taller).

The plan is to draw stronghold, town, and city names on the big map as well as borders if that layer is toggled on.  Both of those layers can be turned off.  When you are in a town/city, then the sub-plot borders will be drawn.  I haven't decided if there will be a way to turn them on all the time.

In the town view in that pictures, those drawn borders are the sub-plots for the town.  At some point, I hope that selection in the list at the bottom is reflected in that small map, and vice versa.  I don't know if I will have that done for this release.

I have this much working for real in game now:

(http://i.imgur.com/996fj.jpg)



The groups in the tree on the left expand/collapse as they are selected.  So far, the panel on the right I just have the graphics setup but it's important to note that it's already built so that it can animate rolling up and rolling down.  Still at least two more nights of UI work but I think it will be worth it in the long run to have this feature nearly 100% complete.

That's really great looking. Can't wait to see it in action.

what are these "town city plots"? Like Quests from a town? Or some story of the town, like how old, who has founded or stuff or even town rumors with hints where to find quests?

Not that kind of plot... a "plot of land".

People who have cities or towns can give out small plots of land to allow people to build in their town.  It's the only way anyone else can build in a city/town.  This will also be how you get NPCs to move in and start businesses... by offering up plots for certain types of buildings.

That part of the tree lists the plots that you own in various towns and cities (including your own).

I hope that makes things clearer.

For example, I just snapped this "work in progress" screen.  Some parts are undone or still in test mode but hopefully it makes a little more sense:

(http://i.imgur.com/K3rps.jpg)

To get that view, I expanded the "Towns" part of the tree and selected "Spawn Overlook" to get it to appear on the right.  Then I expanded my "Town/City Plots"... it just happens to be that all of my plots come from Spawn Overlook right now so the lists are similar.

oh, ok thanks a buch. Now I get the idea!

Since I posted them to Facebook I shall post them here as well.

Slightly different version of the one before without the town/city plots open.
(http://i.imgur.com/k0gas.jpg)

And how far I've gotten with displaying properties on the map before calling it a night:
(http://i.imgur.com/9dxae.jpg)

Note: the little dots on the map was where I placed water blocks when I was determining what the size of the property areas was when I was initializing figuring out what their max sizes should be.

Very nice, but one suggestion:
It could happen that the text overlaps with anotherone, so is it possible to make flags or pins or stuff and poping up the text while hovering with the mouse over them?

The way things are scaled, it's not really easily possible to overlap unless you have two undersized areas near each other (ie: the property was placed but not expanded to its full size).  Also, the owner can move the label and rotate it within the plot.  So I guess if you move it really far to one edge you might overlap someone else right up next to you.

It will be possible to have pins like the spawn flag but I don't  know when I will do it.  As much as possible, I wanted it to look like a hand-drawn map with the places written on it... which is why I give the owner of a property the option to move and rotate the label as needed.

The town sub-plots will almost certainly be done this way, though... those plots are really quite tiny in comparison.  But I may also see about rendering the text if you are in maximum zoom.

See... the issue... and it was going to be a surprise... is that on the side I'm working on a live mini-map that you can leave open while walking around.  So map pins don't work so well for that.  The more info I can lay right on the map the better.

Fantastic ideas here. I'm really waiting for these to get implemented.

I really like the idea that you get to buy a piece of land, then build a house or farm on it. Sell crops, etc earn cash and buy more land.
Very engaging and fun experience.

Good luck Paul! ;)

Thanks.  As you've seen separately, and to help round out this thread: the bulk of the property system has been implemented or will be finished in the next release.  However, this is just the base system for marking, protecting, and managing sections of the world and/or towns.

The buying/selling/earning of property (ie: the actual 'game' part) will come later as more of the game itself takes shape.

Expanding on the idea of protecting the world, perhaps in a plot you can only destroy grass, rock and what you place, That way the original owner can put stuff in there to designate or whatever, but the player cant take that down. Also, perhaps within a, say, 16 or so block boundary around a town or stronghold noone can build or destroy blocks. This could help maintain the look and feel of the world.

I agree on the buffer zone around towns.  It becomes tricky to manage sometimes when things are butted right up next to each other but I definitely want it in the real game.  It's somewhat less important in a build-only world, I guess.

I'll think about the other one.  It may require some additions to the permission system and now is the time to think about that before it's too much further set in stone (pun intended). :)

Well what i have seen so far looks AWESOME.
Im really looking forward to this.
:)

Cool, thanks!  It's funny, I almost pegged your account as a spambot or something but then I was like "A spambot wouldn't be so obvious." :)  (besides I don't spam-ban unless there is actual spam)

Welcome to the forums.

If you claim a town or city you should be able to expand depending on the amount of people that have claimed property in it. For example possibly for every 50 or so people living in the town the town/city could be granted an extra 200x200 piece of land to expand on and as the town/city grows more populated it gets bigger.

We'll have to see how it works out.  Creating a town and city will be complicated and resource intensive.  If I do my job right then there should be a nice balance that keeps them from growing too quickly.  Also as towns and cities get more prosperous hopefully NPCs start to move in near the town.  (Which would make expanding the existing town more difficult.)

One thing is sure, if you already have a thriving town then it should be easy to secure what you need to build a second one.  The number of signatures you need is probably less and you could just get every NPC in the existing town to sign it.  If you are doing a good job then they would have no problem doing that.

Like in real life, trying to manage five towns will be quite tricky.  But if a player manages to set them up properly so that they mostly run themselves and has a real knack for it, then granting a city would be the next logical step.  Cities will be more complicated to manage.  They are larger, denser, and must provide taxes and services to the kingdom. (At least that's the plan.)  So, for example, while a town or village only needs to look out for itself and send a per-capita tax to the local lord, a city will have to provide a local militia, defense for the surrounding countryside, a fortified seat of government, and open access to any important land marks like ports and harbors.  Stuff like that.

...if I can make it all work.

Have you considered a decay system for unclaimed/unused construction?

Think it'd help minimize building spam all over and give you another reason to build a town.

I don't know.  I think on the creative servers most people will protect their stuff and on a "game" server it will be harder to build stuff and so it seems unfair to decay it.

Still, I have a partially implemented algorithm for turning a building into ruins.  Maybe I should use that on more than just NPC structures some day. :)

I just spent hours running around and there are freakin chairs everywhere.

Yeah, I need to mass-delete unprotected chairs... and I need to make the default object tool do nothing so users will at least have to know to ctrl mouse wheel to an object.

The forest of chairs. Every chair represents one soul that died. Or one that turned evil. ~♪…

Sounds amazing. I seriously can't wait to get on this. Griefers wind me up SO MUCH!
Few questions:
1) Will the same system be in place in NPC towns and will it be possible to get a plot in an NPC town or city? (I'd love to live among the NPCs)
2) Would it be possible to put a "For Sale" or "For Rent" sign up in a town or city if you own the plot to make sales easier?
3) What kind of government systems are you thinking of? Will it all be talk between mayors or will there be a built-in system for government.
4) Would you also set up a "key" system? E.G. I want to let someone have a wander in my place but don't want every Tom, Dick and Harry dropping in, could I give that person access without letting them alter my lovely home?
5) How is rent going to be collected? And if someone doesn't make it how's that going to go down?

1) Yes.  This will be the most common thing, I think.
2) Sure.  Any kind of sign will be possible at some point.  I don't know if a "For Sale" sign will have special meaning to the game or not.
3) I believe this has been covered elsewhere in more detail.  Bottom line: the guilds keep every connected free-trading culture relatively standardized.
4) You can already give people badges that let them modify... but yes there will be keys and locks and stuff.
5) I don't know yet.

1,3,4) Yay
2) I was actually thinking about a sign where you allow the house to be sold automatically by putting the price on and having people be able to buy or begin renting a location in your absence.
5) Any ideas?

I'm starting to feel like I'm asking too many questions about this game.... Am I?

No way. You're just enthusiastic. I'm sure Paul enjoys making people happy by answering their questions.

So many different things will happen between now and then that it makes no sense to design yet.  It may just naturally fall out of some other system.  I know you will be able to sell your property eventually and the game will provide some mechanic for doing so.  I'll do whatever makes sense when more of the other systems are in place.

Basically like once you get to making that idea into the game, you have to change up your original idea if it doesn't work with how the game works.

Basically, there is no reason to build a whole house just to figure out where I will hang a picture when later the house will be built anyway.  90% of the design-thinking would be wasted time.

But it does give you an idea of where the game is heading.

How rent will work isn't the direction the game is going. The game's direction will determine the rent system.

I already explained that.

I must have missed something. Oh well.

What I said:
Basically like once you get to making that idea into the game, you have to change up your original idea if it doesn't work with how the game works.

i can't place the flag anybody know what button

You place it just like you do any other object.

Mouse wheel to "Property".  Hold the ctrl key and then mouse wheel to "Place Stronghold".  Then right click on the ground somewhere not near someone else's property.

Hello, this is the first time that I write something in this forum. I think that your work is amazing, you are realizing something that I desidered from a long time :D

I really like this Property System, but I think that the easier way to avoid "griefing" is like in real life. Why we don't destroy everything that we see?(such as walls etc...)
I think that the answer is : because this is impossible! It requires a lot of time!
Destroy a stone wall is impossible everywhere with bare hands, and with tools (like a pickaxe) it require a lot of time (1 cubic meter of stone in 5 second?XD).
So, my ideas is that destroy blocks should be possible everywhere, with some differences:

1) In any land that isn't yours, you take(for example) 5 minute to destroy a block of stone with a pickaxe(I don't know if you want to put tools in game, I'm assuming a lot of things XD)
2) In cities there may be guards that attack everyone that destroy a block without a permission
3) In your lands the time required to destroy a block is much less that in other place
4) Without the right tool you can't destroy a block (except for some object like tables, straw roofs etc..)

In this way is possible to conquer/attack/destroy enemy cities, that aren't indestructible...

I think you may underestimate the time that a griefer is willing to put in to be a jerk.

Either it takes so long that no one will do it and it's essentially like not being able to do it at all... or it's easy enough that a dedicated griefer will wreck everything.  If you make it hard but not impossible then the griefing will be even worse because now it's a challenge and a badge of "honor".

Mmmh But how to conquer a city? To go through a 4 block depth stone wall you need something like 40 minutes...in 40 minutes an enemy player can kill the griefer, or simply stop the destroing...even more time is settable for destroing...in this way, during a city siege (15 players try to conquer a city defended by other 15 players, for example), defenders try to kill enemies, and attackers try to go through defenders wall...I think that this way discourages single "grifiers"(that destroy without reason), and encourages creation of community and cities...similarly to realty(sorry for the very bad english). Destroying I think is part of game and I hope that will be possible in this way....would bring a lot of strategy in game.

I think once wars can happen in game, there will be some sort of special set of rules for certain situation.
For now, let's just start with getting combat in game =p

If players can do something then griefers will do that same something.  In mutiplayer you might not always be around to defend your town, anyway.

There will be some way to have town->town battles... but this is the cherry on the cake that has no batter yet.

I suspect griefing other's towns will be a hard task. What kind of civilian is going to stand there letting you destroy their town?

The dead ones.

This is making me uncontrollably smile. :)

Agreed. XD

hmmmm I wonder how they would like my underground city XD I dug it soooo deep I hit the base lol had to cover it back up to continue building :P clearing out the cavern was taking to long so I decided on top down construction lol I built a big dining hall next to my port and then 3 lower lvls of hall ways with rooms going off to the sides and another even bigger dining hall on the third floor. still got alot of work to do on it though lol and it is on the server :D

would it be possible for someone to create a giant npc empire then segregate the most of the npc races to parts of uyou think they'll work best in reptilians to docks pantherians to live stock pasters avians to high tower air ship air ports dwarves in under ground mines humans to capitol and simians and elves in forest on either side of the capitol seperated by a great wall (so the elves don't get angry at the simians tree butchering) then have holiday events in certian parts of kingdom ex: summer boiat sailing in reptilian docks

i know this is a convoluted idea so please tell me if its possible

(this may or may no be the plan for my server  :P)

I guess we'll see.  The way I plan it, most the influence over the NPCs will be secondary... so you can post jobs and NPCs will show up that you can hire and stuff... but you don't directly order them around.  They should have their own (simple) motivations and needs.  Perhaps it will be possible to exploit these to get them to do certain things.

Of course, modding could do all kinds of stuff here.