The Mana World Forums

Basically, the focus of this project is to create a new area for TMW. This are will be a small village called Saltern. It will be located at the bottom of a bowl shaped drop in the surroundings so that it can only be reached by going through caves.



This image shows my current interpretation of the idea. As you can see, I started from the Tulimishar inn map, so the warp points for that map still show up.

Eventually I will need to put my own warp points on this map, but as of yet I am not quite sure how to do that.

But from this image you can see the general concept: a small town that can only be reached through caves that lead down to it. The canal running through the city comes from an underground cavern and then continues out the other side. The small farm at the bottom is designed to be an herb garden that will grow herbs. I want to put a farm NPC down there to let you into the garden to harvest herbs for a price.

Central in Saltern is the stage venue. I think this will make Saltern an amusing and interesting place, as the stage can be used for auctions, plays, classes for newbies, general soapbox rants, or club meetings.

The building built into the wall at the top of the open area gives the player entry to the rest of Saltern. I want to create a sort of underground city, with a few streets and buildings and rooms off the streets.

The various caves sprinkled around are how players get to Saltern. The network of caves leading to this area should be about on par with the mines North of Hurnscald, with difficult areas similar to the cave leading to the Jackos. A couple skull rooms would be nice too.

A few screenshots of the area in action:







You can download the current working version of the village of Saltern.

http://sites.google.com/site/madewithbl ... mo-Map.tmx

This is a rather large project so I would welcome any help designing the underground cave portions of the area, or general suggestions about what I should do or change. In addition, I need some guidance as to how to seamlessly patch this into the rest of the world. Basically, I want it to be accessible by cave only, so theoretically, all we need to do is put a cave in somewhere and have it lead to Saltern, but it would nicer if the area had a physical location and fit into the rest of the TMW world.

Looking forward to comments.....

Its very good !
Good work

I'm glad that you think so.

You use a lot of tiles in a way they are not intended to be used. That looks really strange. When you are missing tiles please request them at the graphic development forum (or even better: add them to a tileset yourself) instead of abusing a tile which is supposed to be something completely different.

That is true. I haven't experimented with pixel graphics art yet, but I ought to create my own custom tiles. I'll see what I can come up with. In the meantime, this can serve as a general overview of what I am trying to accomplish.

wahou...

i like the idea

really sounds and looks nice

I'm glad that you like it. I plan to create some custom images for the walls of the canal, and I need some sort of slate/tile roof images. I'll see if I can modify what is already in TMW....

In the meantime, I also need to start on the indoor sections of the area.

As you say that could be the place for newcomers to approach the game what about a place in wich a player could enter in one room alone and be in front of one monster each monster a room. only one to ten tries (in order to avoid botting).

or a place in wich you learn how to deal with status one room for archer and one for warriors (as magic as a school no need to have a room for magic i think)

have fun

J.

p.s. of course just an idea

Jumpy wrote:As you say that could be the place for newcomers to approach the game what about a place in wich a player could enter in one room alone and be in front of one monster each monster a room. only one to ten tries (in order to avoid botting).

or a place in wich you learn how to deal with status one room for archer and one for warriors (as magic as a school no need to have a room for magic i think)

have fun

J.

p.s. of course just an idea

I had actually envisioned the caves around Saltern to be very difficult, about on par with the skull room or the more monster laden rooms of the mines. Basically, the mine parts of Saltern should be very difficult, which wouldn't work well for newbies. That is an interesting idea though, rooms full of a single type of monster. Not very realistic though.

The latest update on my progress:

Following Crush's suggestion about my "abuse" of tile by using them for purposes other than what they were originally intended for I created a few images, my first attempt at pixel art.

I haven't figured out yet how to incorporate them into the updates on my Mac OS X version of TMW, but in the Tiled Editor the new tiles look pretty good, in my own opinion. I really need some help figuring out how to put the new tile images into the zips in my update folder. Currently they just don't show up in game, even though I have put them into the tiles zip file.

This first image shows my new image for a cave entrance, my new wood shingle roof for the buildings, and a modified approach to the canal walls.



This second image shows the new stage. I don't like the results quite as much, and I am very open to suggestions about how to make the stage look better.



@Crush: I would especially like to know your opinion, please. Is this better? Are there any more tiles that you would like changed?

In the meantime I will probably start working on the indoor/underground section of the area.

yep sir

may be we misunderstood or i had a bad presentation of the idea

one room one monster and maximum 10 tries with the monster one against one

go on with your work it is very interesting

J.

Oh, I see. I don't know if that can be done with the level editor. It would probably require programming. That is a good idea though.

Monsters are not edited in the map, but they are spawned by a separate script.
Anyway, about the pit, you shouldn't use straight walls, that looks unnatural.

5t3v3 wrote:Monsters are not edited in the map, but they are spawned by a separate script.
Anyway, about the pit, you shouldn't use straight walls, that looks unnatural.

Monsters can be (and should be) placed on the map in Tiled. That's the format TMWServ uses and I wrote a converter for eAthena.

5t3v3 wrote:Monsters are not edited in the map, but they are spawned by a separate script.
Anyway, about the pit, you shouldn't use straight walls, that looks unnatural.

I agree. I will be making a new version with more realistic walls soon.