My Ashen Empires (formerly Dransik) Map

Welcome back. Today I'll tell you about when I created a map for a mmorpg map making contest.

The year was 2003. Angelo's first year at the university. Of course, being at the first year, Angelo was looking for all sorts of distractions to excuse himself from studying. So instead of going out in the sun and play with the other kids, he decided to stay on his pc and do something that really matters. That's right, he started playing an MMORPG. The game was called Dransik back then. It was pretty addictive, and it wasn't long before Angelo forgot what color the sky is.

A couple of months after he started playing, the developers of the game, a company called Asylumsoft, decided to organize a map making contest. The deal was this: whoever created the best map, by using the official map editor of the game, would have his map implemented into the game world. Thrilled about the idea of having his own piece of work inside an MMORPG forever, Angelo downloaded the 35mb map editor with his 56k internet connection, converted his room to a fallout shelter (complete with canned food and water), switched off his cell phone, and started mapping.

Being a huge fan of house and city building games, such as The Sims and SimCity, and having a pretty solid idea of decoration and making the most out of empty spaces, he was determined that he had enough skill and patience, to flirt with the first position of the contest.

1. Landmass - At first he crafted the landmass, using the editor's pre-made chunks of beaches, forests, mountains, rivers and open grass. It was a tri-island area. A huge main island, and 2 smaller ones.
2. City Planning - The first part was quickly over, and it was time for the fun. He designated where each city would be built, and started planning each city's buildings by laying down dirt tiles. Each city should have some standar accomodations, like a bank, a general store, a blacksmith, etc, and some special structures depending on each city's purpose, for example a prison at the "evil" city. After that, he enclosed each building with walls, and upgraded their dirt floors with more appropriate floor tiles. That was a pretty lengthy procedure, as the walls and floors had to be placed one tile at a time.
3. Decorating - At the time there were 5 cities. 3 on the main island, and 1 on each of the smaller 2 islands. All with empty buildings. It was time to convert those empty buildings to something meaningful. Chair by chair, cupboard by cupboard, the proccess was lengthier than the previous one, but it was the most fun. Also, the outside areas of the cities had to be decorated too. Trees, bushes, flowers, fences, statues... There wasn't a single spot at any city that felt empty. The mindset was to make the cities so beautiful, that even players who grinded for xp and gold all day long, would want to spend time hanging around chatting in the cities, while admiring the scenery.
   
4. Points of Interest - After every city was fully decorated, it was time to add some special points of interest outside the cities. The points of interest should have a purpose, and not be there just for the sake of being there. They should also offer the explorer an enhanced experience when discovering them. For example, while approaching the hidden "evil" outpost, the explorer would see skeletons and corpses (of other supposed unfortunate explorers) tossed on the ground behind bushes, and puddles of blood. This would excite the explorer by making him believe he is about to discover something, but also disturbing him with the thought that it might be dangerous.
5. Scripting - Fortunately, the contest didn't require scripting NPCs and quests, otherwise the time required for finishing the map would skyrocket to several months instead of the 2 weeks it took.

So that was it, the map was ready in 2 weeks of non-stop editing. Angelo submitted the map, and when the results came, he was the winner (archived page of the contest results announcement - scroll down to find it). Unfortunately, his map didn't make it into the game because at that period Asylumsoft had some problems with their publisher, and some main developers left the company. Only a tiny portion of the map made it into the game; a small island with a castle, named "Valinor Island", which serves as a tutorial area for new players. Angelo of course got furious, realizing he lost 2 weeks of his life for nothing, so he decided to develop his own MMORPG, which he later sold to Blizzard. But more of this story on a future post. Anyway, a statue that existed in this castle took the name of Angelo's in-game character "Lorkos", in honor of his efforts. Since then, the game has changed its name to Ashen Empires, and is currently developed and published by Iron Will Games, a group of the original developers as well as some new ones.


Downloads:

• Dransik Map Editor - Download the Dransik Map Editor here, to be able to view my map.
• My Dransik Map - Download, extract, and open it using the Dransik Map Editor. (File > Load package)
  

Relevant links:

• Ashen Empires - The current form of the game. It's going pretty well, and soon a second expansion pack will be released.
• Ashen Empires Developments - Official Ashen Empires developers blog.
• AEWiki - An Ashen Empires public documentation wiki.
  
• Iron Will Games - The developer group currently working on Ashen Empires.
• Lothgar.com - Lothgar was the original designer of Dransik. After he left the game's developing group, he started working on some projects of his own.
• Stygian Worlds - Lothgar's upcoming big project, a new 2d isometric mmorpg.

Coming soon...