CTIN 532 My First World Map

This is a continuation from my last post about Mr. World. Just more in depth and paying particular attention to the boundaries. There is even more awesome sketches!

External Boundaries

Well, the world is a space station in – get this – outer space! Okay, okay. Specifics, right? Going off of my idea from last week, I think a living ship is cool. Buuuut – I’m not sold on it. A hollow moon, or a real moon, or just a standard space station – it doesn’t really matter at this point I suppose. Actually it does matter, as if it was on a moon it is conceivable that the player could go outside.

For the purpose of the world (to play with Alien Culture/Architecture), having it on a moon is pointless. And we don’t want to build a huge place either, we want it contained and manageable. So ignore that odd diversion! It is definitely a space station, in space, surrounded by a whole-lot-of-pretty-nothing (aka, the “space background��?).

But what would create artificial gravity if the station is alive? Hmm… have to think about that. We can always claim it creates a high magnetic field, which can attract water dipoles to fake gravity. That sounds plausible doesn’t it? Or we can just take the sissy-route and say it can make gravitons for some unknown reason.

So what separates it from the “outside��?? The walls of the station. Cell walls if it is a living station :^)

What territory did the PC have to traverse to arrive there? A vast distance of space, quickly traveled with the aide of awesome alien FTL drives. Or a cryo-chamber. But we are definitely not in our solar system. Or a worm-hole. No cryo-chamber – that will imply that a lot of time has been lost and the ‘benevolent’ alien society wouldn’t punish a person before their trial.

Internal Boundaries

Here are some very, very rough maps. I took a stab at the levels of the station, although this may be serious restricted in an attempt to not go crazy with locations. The residential level is also sketched out due to its importance with ‘creating architecture/living conditions for specific aliens’.

The new arrival residences (aka, where the player will have their living quarters) is places near ‘elevators’ that can take them quickly to the Learning Center and the Courts. New Arrivals Rooms would be fairly bare and malleable to whatever is needed to sustain its occupant. The other living areas are organized by atmosphere, so that aliens in those areas can travel easily without having to go through airlocks and breathing masks and all that. Technically, there would be so many atmospheres needed for aliens (even Air breathing ones, depending on the air mixture – we, for example, can’t have too much Oxygen in our air or we will stop breathing but we also can’t have too little or we will die of Oxygen deprivation) that this system hardly makes sense. But we will take artistic license and say that we can create an atmosphere that many species can breathe (let’s say there are aliens that breathe Silicon – one can take a 21-26% mixture, another a 20-23%, and yet another a 19-30% mixture, so a mixture of 21-23% Silicon would allow these aliens to breathe, albeit maybe not comfortably).

This layout, of course, will change with time and as I decide what sort of Aliens I want to create. For now, random deciding factors abound! Argon was chosen just to have a Noble gas, Silicon because it sounds fun, Carbon Monoxide just to have some symbiotic relationship with Earth life-forms (they could even be plant people, breathing out oxygen), and some metal, probably Gallium because it is awesome (I did a high school paper on it).

I would use the heavier elements, like the greatly named Ununpentium, but the half-lives are so short (1 minute for Uup) it doesn’t make sense that it could be used to support an atmosphere. However I will consider Uranium, as it is an element most people are familiar with and know as being radioactive (and has a ridiculously long half-life, which is why Nuclear waste is such a big deal).

There will also be different gravity in different areas of the ship, especially the residential areas.

Well, anyway, you can see it is a work in progress.

As per the other questions, specifically the forbidden zones, there will be several forbidden zones based on the ability of the PC to survive in those conditions. These may or may not be overcome with gear the PC can wear to enter. There would also be the Bridge and other areas that would be restricted, although depending on the direction this takes, we could allow the PC entry at certain points. Also the court house-proper will be restricted until the PC knows the language (the observational part of the court house would always be open). Obviously due to the fact that parts of the station have to be tailored to different aliens will make it hard for the PC to travel around. However, as they accumulate knowledge about these areas and the aliens they will be able to figure out how to explore these areas as well. At least that is the hope.

Mental Map

This is a map with respect to projected usage of the given areas by the player. They will primarily be using the Learning Center and observing other trials in order to find out what is going on and to learn the language. They will also be most likely exploring the other residential areas and the park (the park is most likely to be more accessible and hence more used). The Business area and the government offices (most likely to fill out forms and complain to the Establishment) are probably more boring to the user and so will not be as often frequented.

Anyway, these are just thoughts and sketches as I work out the area. I need to sit down and determine specific races that occupy this world and what they need. Then I can start figuring out what their areas and the common areas look like/need.

EDIT:

Well, apparently 640 x 480 is too big for the blog. But then I realized the tag lets me scale the things. So this should look better :^) Still, right click and view for full-sized (really, it doesn’t make much different for this material).