[PRE-ALPHA] Tales of Middle-Earth - Development Thread

[Tenzhiro]

Oh, so.
I see. me & the team are not the only ones who work on LOTR-based OTS, haha
The funny thing is that we're working on similar solutions even tho i didn't see your thread earlier. i.e.
crafting, new skills, walking npcs - basically everything that we could think of to make the game more RPG.

We're planning to do some more races than you -
basic ones: Elves, Dwarfs, Hobbits, Man
special ones(unlockable races through the gameplay / quests): ent/istari/beorning

and possibility to choose a 'specialisation' from each race, for example, if you pick a man, you can choose your origin from Dunedain, Eriador, Gondor, Rohan.

We don't plan to lunch this year tbh.. We all have lives, partners, work, so, the progress is going on slowly.
Also, we've got middle-earth map which is 20k x 20k tiles & weights... a lot! There will be 'empty' spaces without any content but this is due to the lore, not due to the mapping issues / lack of ideas / low skills (for example, pelennor fields. in the books/movie it was just empty field - we'll keep it this way. Empty field between Minas Tirith & Osgiliath)

and there's still lots to do. I guess we'll need server with lots of ram...

btw. I wish we could steal your sprites

Hah! Over the years many have tried but failed to create an actual server based on Middle-Earth.
Most often you see real maps with locations named after locations from ME but doesnt have any resemblance to any of it.
But that is not Middle-Earth. It is time for a real Middle-Earth server to launch!

I love to hear you are also going for the real RPG experience, something that Middle Earth deserves with all it's stories.

I have chosen to only include an additional Orc race, Istari are too powerful to be created by a player, I also found it very unimmersive to have a hundred Istari walking around.
Regarding Magic I was thinking about the abilities of Aragorn or the Elves, mostly very passive, although haven't worked this out a lot.

As I am replicating the stories of Arda I want to stay as canon as possible regarding lore but also gameplay. Beornings was something that I had in my mind aswell, but that comes at a later stage if at all, it was only after the destruction of the One Ring that the Beornings were getting their own lands back again. They did play a huge role in overtaking Dol Goldur at some point if my memory serves me right.

It is also a slow process, but I make it fun for myself by listening to the many audiobooks while mapping and creating.
Very interested in seeing your progress in the map!

I noticed at first there are regions that should be "barren" but the more I read, the more it becomes clear that EVERY area has its own story, even if it's just a passing through of a company, it can create locations for you. For example the Pelennor Fields are not as empty as you think, there is an additional wall between Minas Tirith and Osgiliath, it's not completely barren, these fields were fertile farmland, protected by the great wall of Rammas Echor, you could perhaps think of the outside area's of Whiterun from Skyrim, with farms, fields and mills. Peter Jackson did an awful job on portraying the region outside of Minas Tirith.


My map currently loads within 5 seconds so I am very happy, but every week new content gets added, the seconds are getting more and more
My current local machine has no trouble running it, but eventually I probably have to rent a high-end vps to run the server on, since we both probably need atleast 8 cores to our insane projects on, but that is a headache for later, currently just having fun creating the project.


I think we could have very promising discussions together on both our projects so if you need any help or information just give me a message!
I've read all 20 books and probably all letters by Tolkien so I can kind of call myself a Loremaster like Saruman did haha

-------------

To my knowledge, this was the ONLY server regarding Middle-Earth that was actually Middle-Earth

Middle Earth Adventures

Explore Middle Earth on a tibian way.

middleserver.blogspot.com

 

[Dercas]

Hah! Over the years many have tried but failed to create an actual server based on Middle-Earth.
Most often you see real maps with locations named after locations from ME but doesnt have any resemblance to any of it.
But that is not Middle-Earth. It is time for a real Middle-Earth server to launch!

I love to hear you are also going for the real RPG experience, something that Middle Earth deserves with all it's stories.

I have chosen to only include an additional Orc race, Istari are too powerful to be created by a player, I also found it very unimmersive to have a hundred Istari walking around.
Regarding Magic I was thinking about the abilities of Aragorn or the Elves, mostly very passive, although haven't worked this out a lot.

As I am replicating the stories of Arda I want to stay as canon as possible regarding lore but also gameplay. Beornings was something that I had in my mind aswell, but that comes at a later stage if at all, it was only after the destruction of the One Ring that the Beornings were getting their own lands back again. They did play a huge role in overtaking Dol Goldur at some point if my memory serves me right.

It is also a slow process, but I make it fun for myself by listening to the many audiobooks while mapping and creating.
Very interested in seeing your progress in the map!

I noticed at first there are regions that should be "barren" but the more I read, the more it becomes clear that EVERY area has its own story, even if it's just a passing through of a company, it can create locations for you. For example the Pelennor Fields are not as empty as you think, there is an additional wall between Minas Tirith and Osgiliath, it's not completely barren, these fields were fertile farmland, protected by the great wall of Rammas Echor, you could perhaps think of the outside area's of Whiterun from Skyrim, with farms, fields and mills. Peter Jackson did an awful job on portraying the region outside of Minas Tirith.


My map currently loads within 5 seconds so I am very happy, but every week new content gets added, the seconds are getting more and more
My current local machine has no trouble running it, but eventually I probably have to rent a high-end vps to run the server on, since we both probably need atleast 8 cores to our insane projects on, but that is a headache for later, currently just having fun creating the project.


I think we could have very promising discussions together on both our projects so if you need any help or information just give me a message!
I've read all 20 books and probably all letters by Tolkien so I can kind of call myself a Loremaster like Saruman did haha

-------------

To my knowledge, this was the ONLY server regarding Middle-Earth that was actually Middle-Earth

Middle Earth Adventures

Explore Middle Earth on a tibian way.

middleserver.blogspot.com

Oh lord, that's quite a response! Where to start

Yeah, I know a lot of people actually failed - i can recall at least 3 or 4 projects that were hyped and then died. I was trying to create such a server years ago (possibly around 2009 or 2010) but we were quite limited with the technical options

We've been thinking about Orcs - we had an idea to create orcs race that would be ignored by monsters - Orcs/Goblins/trolls etc. (unless player attack a monster) and they'd be gaining experience from killing players while 'good' races wouldn't, but well.. It'd be a nightmare to balance the server & it would be nightmare for good faction players. There were lots of variations of this idea but non of them was perfect so we left it behind. We had one good idea but it wouldn't work unless we got 1k players or so.. and this number of players isn't real. Maybe one day we'll figure out something
When it comes to Istari, they'll be pretty much overpowered. We're planning to make a level cap (well, maybe not real level cap but at around 250-300 lv we plan to make it very hard to get lvls) & at around this level there'd be quite a tough and long quest that would reset the player's character with a possibility to get istari as a vocation. The quest must be long, tough, and must demotivate players from doing. The idea is to have istaris but just a few. We've been also thinking to grant Istari to, for example, Senior Tutors.

Well, not sure how you're going to resolve the magic thing but I'm planning to remove the magic almost completely. Istari will be the only magic vocation on the server.
There'll be a huge change in the equipment - the equipment will really matter. Instead of runes as we know, I'm planning to do runes for dwarves as upgrade system to the weapons or armors.
The healing will come from food (cooking is also predicted), perhaps potions crafting (which will be more valuable than we have in the classic tibia & much more rare) and.. artifacts. The artifacts will be as for example Aragorn's Elessar - healing item.

All 20 rings will be in the game and each one of them will be OP but just 1 copy of each ring. Haven't decided how to give them to the players. Perhaps first 20 players will receive a gift... or maybe I'll be giving 1 ring away to a random person within the first 20 days of the server's start. We'll see!

Oh dear, I just remember that Beornings (or just one) were helping Aragorn with Gollum (or smth like that) & i remember they received some piece of land from elves after the war I've read most of the things that Tolkien left related to the middle earth but it's been ages ago.
I've moved like 100 times in my life and sadly all the books that I had are gone and I have no idea where they are.

When it comes to the map, we've made so far just a template. We've got 20k/20k map of middle earth:



This picture was processed with the program that I re-posted here on the forum:
BitMapToMap v2.0 by DarkstaR (https://otland.net/threads/bitmaptomap-v2-0-by-darkstar.287924/)

Blue was replaced with water, pink with mountains, green with grass and yellow with sand. I had to remove lots of blue before i processed the picture but you get the point, haha
So the map is... pretty much 1:1 to middle earth. Just a bit smaller than real ME
We've been just checking out so far how big should be for example, Minas Tirith and other locations so we got kind of 'drafts' of each location that will be changed & detailed in the future.
At this stage, we're not really doing great job when it comes to the map. It's due to the fact that we'll add custom sprites.. We don't really want to put a lot of effort & lots of details right now and then do that again in the future once we got custom sprites. We just want to create it so that we have all cities, we've got all locations we want and once sprites are done then we can start working on detail.
Minas Tirith:



We can't show much (and don't really want) but here's a random forge(some details will be edited, not final look):



We're focusing right now on client with sprites 64x64. Once the client is ready, we'll start focusing on custom sprites. Later on we have in plans to work on map


I mean, a single wall on the pelennor fields doesn't make them really full of content haha
its still just a field with a single wall on it.. & i don't think we'll be adding any walls over there.
but i must admit that you got a point by saying that every location, every area has its own story and! lots of possibilities for us to create some content

Oh dear lord, i got 6x 3,9 ghz, 16gb ram, quite good SSD and my map loads in 50~ secs... wish me luck when its all finished. Bah! wish me luck to edit this map in the future...

Haha, if you're a nerd as I am then I am happy for us to have lots of discussions!

 

[Tenzhiro]

Oh lord, that's quite a response! Where to start

Yeah, I know a lot of people actually failed - i can recall at least 3 or 4 projects that were hyped and then died. I was trying to create such a server years ago (possibly around 2009 or 2010) but we were quite limited with the technical options

We've been thinking about Orcs - we had an idea to create orcs race that would be ignored by monsters - Orcs/Goblins/trolls etc. (unless player attack a monster) and they'd be gaining experience from killing players while 'good' races wouldn't, but well.. It'd be a nightmare to balance the server & it would be nightmare for good faction players. There were lots of variations of this idea but non of them was perfect so we left it behind. We had one good idea but it wouldn't work unless we got 1k players or so.. and this number of players isn't real. Maybe one day we'll figure out something
When it comes to Istari, they'll be pretty much overpowered. We're planning to make a level cap (well, maybe not real level cap but at around 250-300 lv we plan to make it very hard to get lvls) & at around this level there'd be quite a tough and long quest that would reset the player's character with a possibility to get istari as a vocation. The quest must be long, tough, and must demotivate players from doing. The idea is to have istaris but just a few. We've been also thinking to grant Istari to, for example, Senior Tutors.

Well, not sure how you're going to resolve the magic thing but I'm planning to remove the magic almost completely. Istari will be the only magic vocation on the server.
There'll be a huge change in the equipment - the equipment will really matter. Instead of runes as we know, I'm planning to do runes for dwarves as upgrade system to the weapons or armors.
The healing will come from food (cooking is also predicted), perhaps potions crafting (which will be more valuable than we have in the classic tibia & much more rare) and.. artifacts. The artifacts will be as for example Aragorn's Elessar - healing item.

All 20 rings will be in the game and each one of them will be OP but just 1 copy of each ring. Haven't decided how to give them to the players. Perhaps first 20 players will receive a gift... or maybe I'll be giving 1 ring away to a random person within the first 20 days of the server's start. We'll see!

Oh dear, I just remember that Beornings (or just one) were helping Aragorn with Gollum (or smth like that) & i remember they received some piece of land from elves after the war I've read most of the things that Tolkien left related to the middle earth but it's been ages ago.
I've moved like 100 times in my life and sadly all the books that I had are gone and I have no idea where they are.

When it comes to the map, we've made so far just a template. We've got 20k/20k map of middle earth:

View attachment 82845

This picture was processed with the program that I re-posted here on the forum:
BitMapToMap v2.0 by DarkstaR (https://otland.net/threads/bitmaptomap-v2-0-by-darkstar.287924/)

Blue was replaced with water, pink with mountains, green with grass and yellow with sand. I had to remove lots of blue before i processed the picture but you get the point, haha
So the map is... pretty much 1:1 to middle earth. Just a bit smaller than real ME
We've been just checking out so far how big should be for example, Minas Tirith and other locations so we got kind of 'drafts' of each location that will be changed & detailed in the future.
At this stage, we're not really doing great job when it comes to the map. It's due to the fact that we'll add custom sprites.. We don't really want to put a lot of effort & lots of details right now and then do that again in the future once we got custom sprites. We just want to create it so that we have all cities, we've got all locations we want and once sprites are done then we can start working on detail.
Minas Tirith:

View attachment 82846

We can't show much (and don't really want) but here's a random forge(some details will be edited, not final look):
View attachment 82847


We're focusing right now on client with sprites 64x64. Once the client is ready, we'll start focusing on custom sprites. Later on we have in plans to work on map


I mean, a single wall on the pelennor fields doesn't make them really full of content haha
its still just a field with a single wall on it.. & i don't think we'll be adding any walls over there.
but i must admit that you got a point by saying that every location, every area has its own story and! lots of possibilities for us to create some content

Oh dear lord, i got 6x 3,9 ghz, 16gb ram, quite good SSD and my map loads in 50~ secs... wish me luck when its all finished. Bah! wish me luck to edit this map in the future...

Haha, if you're a nerd as I am then I am happy for us to have lots of discussions!

I went the same route regarding generating the same shape as you did! As the images I input were to big, I eventually had to just settle for the absolute edges of the map and have them like 5 pixels, hand-filling everything myself, you do have the exact river layout which I have not! I only have the big river outlines but not the very little brooks and small rivers. That was a headache already

The idea of having a vocation like the Orc and have it like a natural enemy for some vocations is something i've been dreaming of, and I do believe a lot of people who play OTS also, to play an Orc and be an actual "enemy". Now I must say a wise man (@Michael Orsino ) once said to me that anything is possible, and when building Middle-Earth I already had a few problems regarding quests that I had to solve in a out of the box way, eventually you must also go on your own strengths and perhaps eventually think of such systems to be done by someone else on a paid request, you will know it will be done right. (@Xikini could do this for you)

Development must always be as cheap as possible and most of us are beginner devs that are having lots of learning curves, and making mistakes in systems like these can be a gamebreaking in the long run. Also many things you find on OTLand or any other OT platform are very helpful, you can change systems very easily to suit your purposes!
I've turned a Cursed Chest into a Quest Wall that upon use spawns waves of monsters, I've turned the well known War of Emperium into a Guild Fortress System that allows for cities controlled by Guilds. If you see the systems in it's very basic essentials you can create a lot of things that would make your Middle-Earth immersive.

I still use the BitMap Generator to generate Key Layouts like these:

Lothlorien!
Lots of huge trees with the biggest one in the middle, I notice converting these maps and building upon this works really well in a Tibia game.

----------------------------

Regarding the Rings of Power I also decided to make all 20 rings unique, but there are other, lesser rings as well, but they may or may not have any effects.
Currently, our One Ring has True Invisibility meaning they are invisible to any player, but it does damage over time while wearing it to balance being invisible.
It's still unknown to what I want to do with the other rings, as they are very unique, I want to give thought on each of them individually, but not all 20 rings have survived all the ages and I will have to play around with the lesser rings to keep things a bit interesting.

--------------------------

Lots of things to think about really, it's a never ending process, even talking about it can be endless
If you add me on Discord, I can give you some PDFs containing detailed maps and also all the books
From Valinor, Beleriand, Numenor, Middle-Earth, even the Dark Lands.