Minecraft

[Dragonlady]

Very well done! Made me laugh when the lever was twitch back and forth in the blacksmiths shop.

[CrazyBernie]

That's pretty fricken sweet.

Yeah, Eschalon's scale is closer to 5' per square as opposed to Minecraft's 1 meter. Actually it's more of a variable size for Eschalon, when you consider the fact that some of the terrain you're traveling across should be measured in miles instead of feet. But a more interpretive style would probably be better aesthetically for a conversion.

Re: the bed; I saw people using the signs for chairs and couches, and I figured it'd work on beds too. Gave it more of a "country" style which was good for the beach house. ^_^

[xolotl]

http://www.sendspace.com/file/parg66

There's a zipfile of that Aridell map, btw, if anyone else wanted to have at it. It'll unzip into a "World5" folder, so if you don't want it in the #5 slot, you'd best unzip elsewhere and then rename.

I left a trail of torches to/from the spawn point; I built it pretty far away actually, 'cause I had been looking for some relatively level terrain. On the way you'll see a little version of the house you wake up in, in Book 1, as well, from before I decided that I'd rather build a non-ruined city first.

[BasiliskWrangler]

xolotl: have you hacked the Minecraft map data? I wonder how hard it would be to make a Eschalon-to-Minecraft map importer?

[xolotl]

xolotl: have you hacked the Minecraft map data? I wonder how hard it would be to make a Eschalon-to-Minecraft map importer?

I didn't, no, but that kind of thing's actually already been documented in great detail: http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Development_Resources

There's about a million utilities for dealing with Minecraft maps nowadays; I know that other folks have been working on Dwarf-Fortress-to-Minecraft converters and the like. :) When I get some time I'll see how easy or hard it'd be to write one for Eschalon; I assume it actually wouldn't be too hard at all. There's already a Python library for Minecraft map data, which I'd be able to just use alongside my own stuff for Eschalon.

[xolotl]

When I get some time

Um, and when I say "get some time," I mean of course, "when I'm not staying up all damned night playing bloody Minecraft like there's no tomorrow."

:)

[xolotl]

I wonder how hard it would be to make a Eschalon-to-Minecraft map importer?

So yeah, not really that hard. :)

Still as a tile-for-tile (1:1) conversion, but here's a zipfile (will unpack to "World3") of all (the outdoor bits) of Thaermore: http://www.sendspace.com/file/46fdtw

Enjoy!

Some notes:
1) I didn't do any hand-tweaking on here, so there's bits that are suboptimal, but in general it's quite fun to wander around. Expect some weirdness here and there, though.

2) A few spots require breaking blocks to get through, since Eschalon lets you walk through a diagonal but Minecraft won't. Two examples are the entrance to the North Parish Family Crypt and the hallway to the guest rooms at the inn in Blackwater.

3) The trees are rather odd, as you'll see... Each tree that went through the converter had a 50% chance of actually being imported; if I imported all of them it just looked too blocky and wall-like, rather than like trees. You'll notice that none of the trees have leaves that extend OUT from the trunk, though, so they look pretty weird regardless. I may end up addressing that eventually.

4) I didn't feel like taking the time to write something to figure out what "side" of the square doors should be drawn on, so sometimes you'll see recessed doors which probably shouldn't be. :)

5) Relatedly, none of the building have roofs; that would have taken writing something that'd figure out what's "inside" and what's "outside." Laziness wins!

6) Likewise, figuring out proper Sign orientation wasn't something I felt like trying to figure out, so you'll see some signs facing towards walls and stuff (the Aridell Council House sign in particular is an example of that)

7) There's no way (that I know of) to lay down dirt in Minecraft and have it stay Dirt - it'll always end up getting overrun with grass. The best way I found was to put down Soil instead, and have a layer of water underneath so that it stays hydrated. Given ideal conditions, the soil will never switch back to dirt (and will therefore never get overrun by grass). Unfortunately, walking over unplanted Soil squares will eventually cause them to revert to Dirt as well, so as you walk on those paths, they'll eventually get overrun with grass anyway. Note that mobs walking over the paths can have the same effect. In conclusion: don't get too attached to those dirt paths. :)

8) There are some places where, when there's no tile data in the Eschalon map files, it'd make sense to make them mountains, and others where it'd make sense to make them pits instead. I just opted to make them all pits, so the scenic Thaermore mountain ranges won't be too impressive at the moment unless you fill them in yourself.

9) At least on my machine, I noticed that some of the fences up in the northeast (outside Shadowmirk, near all the Slimes) are invisible for some reason. They're still there and I can break them apart, etc, but they don't actually show up in Minecraft. I wonder if there's some kind of max-fence limit or something? Or some other glitch. Dunno, hadn't noticed it anywhere else.

10) Finally, note that when the import process had to extend the existing Minecraft map (because Minecraft itself hadn't generated that terrain yet), it filled it in with all stone, with a couple layers of dirt at the top. So, an awful lot of the ground underneath Thaermore is very uninteresting and not worth your mining efforts, if you were looking for coal/iron/redstone/diamond/what-have-you. The bits more likely to have Minecraft-generated undergrounds are over by Crakamir. Outside of the imported Eschalon space, of course, Minecraft will pick up the slack of generating those.

We'll see if any of those end up getting fixed at some point. I'll probably do a version which changes one Eschalon square into a Minecraft 3x3 grid, which I think would look better and allow for greater detail; we'll see how it goes from there. I'll post the source for the converter eventually once I've cleaned it up a bit more. Anyway, enjoy!

[CrazyBernie]

That's pretty bamf. The fence problem is a minecraft glitch... has something to do with how far the fences are away from other blocks. If you plop a block of dirt next to the fence, some/all the segments should show up.

I'll check it out later... right now I'm farming in Lord of the Rings Online (damn Turbine for making it free to play!). 0_o

[xolotl]

Will I ever sleep? It seems doubtful!

Anyway, here's a version of South Parish done where each tile in Eschalon is a 3x3 grid in Minecraft: http://www.sendspace.com/file/eqghaz

Many of the caveats from the 1:1 conversion apply here, though the trees are much more nicely populated in this version.

I think that a map of Thaermore done using this kind of algorithm might be more satisfying to build off of (ie: to complete the buildings and whatnot) but everything feels very sparse and empty when it's just got the raw conversion in there. Some buildings feel far too large (though that could possibly be because they're not "realistically" populated with Stuff yet), whereas others feel about right (the Aridell councilhouse and church definitely seem to benefit from the size increase).

Anyway, let me know if anyone's interested in getting a whole Thaermore 3x3 version... I haven't done much to tweak the block conversions, so doubtless there would be better ways of doing many of those.