Just chucking out some POI ideas

FramFramson

FramFramson

Survivor
Was going through the current POIs to check out all the new signage (god, what a huge improvement that's been) and happened to observe some spaces for new POIs which haven't been covered or haven't been covered well.

I stress this isn't a request list! Just barfing ideas out there!

Residental, but with a home businesses (new signs make this WAY easier to implement), so house with one distinct room (addition or not) for the business, or alternately a finished shed in the backyard.
- Tutor's house(s). Residential home with a sign offering tutoring music lessons or academic tutoring.
- Hairdresser's house. One room converted to salon.
- Therapist/psychiatrist/marriage counsellor.
- CPA or clerical services with home office.
- Photography studio.
- Pet grooming.
- Psychic.
- Woodcarver/local artist.
- Naturopath/Acupuncture/Other woo health home business.

Other home
- House with multiple cop cars outside - hostage or lone loony situation which ended poorly.
- Completely cratered house remnant.
- House having a second story being added.

Countrytown additions
- Countrytown elementary school, small, single story, maybe with portables? May or may not have been taken over by ERA as a community monitoring HQ.
- Combination lawyer and bail bonds (can be two separate businessess in one building, or maybe a single really hilarious business)
- Sleazy PI's office, following cheating spouses a specialty. I used to see these all over rural towns in PA! Could also be home business as above.
- Farm Co-Op building/Farm machinery dealer.
- Countrytown outlet of chain dollar store.
- Local county office.
- Land office/surveyors.
- Septic servicing!
- Classic proudly confused restaurant: Lee's Tacos & Wings & Chinese, or anything along those lines. Bonus points if it clearly used to be a different business (scrubbed out previous signs, obvious shape of an ex-chain building (for example ex-Pizza Huts), signage doesn't quite fit the signpost, etc.)

Nonspecifc
- ADOT license renewal office - either smalltown standalone or a unit in a multibusiness building. DMV misery!
- Musical instruments store.
- Vape shop.
- Maid service agency/housekeepers for hire.
- Substance Rehab (clinic or support group).
- Landscapers.
- Dentist.
- Cell phone service/cheap gadgets shop - suprised by the lack of this, did I miss one?
- Branded telco store selling phones and plans.
- Pit BBQ joint!
- Toys & Games.
- Nerd store/comic shop.
- Church outreach as a city kiosk prefab (rack of pamphlets etc. - like Jehova's Witnesses)
- Paint & decorating store.
- Frou-frou home furnishings. Think B,B,&B
- Bulk foods store.
- Some kind of "hunks of roast meat on a spit" restaurant. Greek gyros, shwarma, kebobs, whatever.
- Steakhouse; could make it "fancy" (castle/manor facade?) or go chintzy (a tray self-serve like Bonanza)
- Supplements store (change of pace from another pharmacy).
- Motorbike/ATV/small watercraft dealership.
- Big Chinese buffet.
- Totally Not Mongolian Grill (any place with multiple big slab grills where customers sit around the cook).
- Big Box Store (with a tiny Meltdowns and 1-2 other shops inside a la Wal Mart, like an optometrist or medical hardware store). Kind of amazed we don't have this???
- Water park.
- 7 Flags Over Navezgane.
- Derelict asylum. Large, creepy antique building already abandoned long before the apocalypse. Overgrown, poorly-marked cemetery outside. Really flexible because you could genuinely put it anywhere - big city, small town, outskirts, even in the middle of ■■■-nowhere.
 
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Interesting list I’ll add a few more

- Nuclear power plant: with radiation zones in certain areas, similar to how radioactive drums work.

- Ski resort: in the snowy mountain biome, with chairlifts, restaurants, and a small hotel.

- Race track: can be a standard track or an oval, with cars piled up on the track, pit lanes, and garages containing vehicle-themed loot.
 
FramFramson said:
Was going through the current POIs to check out all the new signage (god, what a huge improvement that's been) and happened to observe some spaces for new POIs which haven't been covered or haven't been covered well.

I stress this isn't a request list! Just barfing ideas out there!

Residental, but with a home businesses (new signs make this WAY easier to implement), so house with one distinct room (addition or not) for the business, or alternately a finished shed in the backyard.
- Tutor's house(s). Residential home with a sign offering tutoring music lessons or academic tutoring.
- Hairdresser's house. One room converted to salon.
- Therapist/psychiatrist/marriage counsellor.
- CPA or clerical services with home office.
- Photography studio.
- Pet grooming.
- Psychic.
- Woodcarver/local artist.
- Naturopath/Acupuncture/Other woo health home business.

Other home
- House with multiple cop cars outside - hostage or lone loony situation which ended poorly.
- Completely cratered house remnant.
- House having a second story being added.

Countrytown additions
- Countrytown elementary school, small, single story, maybe with portables? May or may not have been taken over by ERA as a community monitoring HQ.
- Combination lawyer and bail bonds (can be two separate businessess in one building, or maybe a single really hilarious business)
- Sleazy PI's office, following cheating spouses a specialty. I used to see these all over rural towns in PA! Could also be home business as above.
- Farm Co-Op building/Farm machinery dealer.
- Countrytown outlet of chain dollar store.
- Local county office.
- Land office/surveyors.
- Septic servicing!
- Classic proudly confused restaurant: Lee's Tacos & Wings & Chinese, or anything along those lines. Bonus points if it clearly used to be a different business (scrubbed out previous signs, obvious shape of an ex-chain building (for example ex-Pizza Huts), signage doesn't quite fit the signpost, etc.)

Nonspecifc
- ADOT license renewal office - either smalltown standalone or a unit in a multibusiness building. DMV misery!
- Musical instruments store.
- Vape shop.
- Maid service agency/housekeepers for hire.
- Substance Rehab (clinic or support group).
- Landscapers.
- Dentist.
- Cell phone service/cheap gadgets shop - suprised by the lack of this, did I miss one?
- Branded telco store selling phones and plans.
- Pit BBQ joint!
- Toys & Games.
- Nerd store/comic shop.
- Church outreach as a city kiosk prefab (rack of pamphlets etc. - like Jehova's Witnesses)
- Paint & decorating store.
- Frou-frou home furnishings. Think B,B,&B
- Bulk foods store.
- Some kind of "hunks of roast meat on a spit" restaurant. Greek gyros, shwarma, kebobs, whatever.
- Steakhouse; could make it "fancy" (castle/manor facade?) or go chintzy (a tray self-serve like Bonanza)
- Supplements store (change of pace from another pharmacy).
- Motorbike/ATV/small watercraft dealership.
- Big Chinese buffet.
- Totally Not Mongolian Grill (any place with multiple big slab grills where customers sit around the cook).
- Big Box Store (with a tiny Meltdowns and 1-2 other shops inside a la Wal Mart, like an optometrist or medical hardware store). Kind of amazed we don't have this???
- Water park.
- 7 Flags Over Navezgane.
- Derelict asylum. Large, creepy antique building already abandoned long before the apocalypse. Overgrown, poorly-marked cemetery outside. Really flexible because you could genuinely put it anywhere - big city, small town, outskirts, even in the middle of ■■■-nowhere.
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Great ideas, but I'd rather not see a vape store or cannabis store or anything like that in the game. Everything else, definitely would be nice.
 
grz__ said:
Interesting list I’ll add a few more

- Nuclear power plant: with radiation zones in certain areas, similar to how radioactive drums work.

- Ski resort: in the snowy mountain biome, with chairlifts, restaurants, and a small hotel.

- Race track: can be a standard track or an oval, with cars piled up on the track, pit lanes, and garages containing vehicle-themed loot.
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I like these, and I've seen a motocross POI from ZZTong that was good. But the ski resort one would be pretty difficult to do without doing it manually on a map. It's certainly something they can manually add to Navesgane, for example. The problem is size. They can't just drop a chair lift on a mountain and add some buildings and stuff. They'd have to include the mountain in the POI. With vanilla POI only going up to 100x100 and most custom POI staying under 150x150 since larger sizes have problems, it's just to really feasible to do a ski resort with the mountain as part of the POI.

You could have a ski resort type of building that gets placed on a mountain without including any kind of chair lifts (or just having a couple that maybe are collapsed and "pretending" that the rest are just collapsed and buried. That might look okay. But it can be very difficult getting a POI placed on a mountain without a very noticeable square or rectangle outline around the POI edges in the terrain. Think about the number of POI you see in RWG with vertical cliffs on one or two sides because of how they are placed and that's even on much flatter terrain than a mountain.

Still, it would be fun and would be a great option for a hand crafted map.

Even the race track one would have to be a basic oval (1/4 mile style) track because of size, but there's nothing wrong with short track racing.
 
Riamus said:
I like these, and I've seen a motocross POI from ZZTong that was good. But the ski resort one would be pretty difficult to do without doing it manually on a map. It's certainly something they can manually add to Navesgane, for example. The problem is size. They can't just drop a chair lift on a mountain and add some buildings and stuff. They'd have to include the mountain in the POI. With vanilla POI only going up to 100x100 and most custom POI staying under 150x150 since larger sizes have problems, it's just to really feasible to do a ski resort with the mountain as part of the POI.

You could have a ski resort type of building that gets placed on a mountain without including any kind of chair lifts (or just having a couple that maybe are collapsed and "pretending" that the rest are just collapsed and buried. That might look okay. But it can be very difficult getting a POI placed on a mountain without a very noticeable square or rectangle outline around the POI edges in the terrain. Think about the number of POI you see in RWG with vertical cliffs on one or two sides because of how they are placed and that's even on much flatter terrain than a mountain.

Still, it would be fun and would be a great option for a hand crafted map.

Even the race track one would have to be a basic oval (1/4 mile style) track because of size, but there's nothing wrong with short track racing.
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In general, the mountains are really underutilized. I know it’s for the reason you mentioned, and that adding mountain POIs is usually a nightmare, but it would be nice if they included it in Navezgane or generated the mountain as part of the POI. I like mountainous maps, but in the end, it’s just useless terrain. I also suppose that for a chairlift to look good, they’d need new assets—I don’t know if they could make something decent with the current ones.

As for the track, a 1/4-mile oval would be great, or even a stock car-style dirt track or both.
 
grz__ said:
In general, the mountains are really underutilized. I know it’s for the reason you mentioned, and that adding mountain POIs is usually a nightmare, but it would be nice if they included it in Navezgane or generated the mountain as part of the POI. I like mountainous maps, but in the end, it’s just useless terrain. I also suppose that for a chairlift to look good, they’d need new assets—I don’t know if they could make something decent with the current ones.

As for the track, a 1/4-mile oval would be great, or even a stock car-style dirt track or both.
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I think they could do a chairlift easy enough with what we have... as long as you are willing to have the actual "chairs" fallen on the ground instead of hanging from the lift. The stability would be a problem if you wanted them hanging, at least unless you really spend time figuring out how to place things to keep it stable enough.

They do have a POI that has a "mountain" as part of it. I forget what POI it is, but maybe one of the "Camp X" POI. The building is on a "mountain" with a long staircase going up to it. It looks interesting, but doesn't look even remotely realistic. At least not when placed on the normal terrain the game has. I'm sure you could have it placed on terrain that has similarly small and "spiky" "mountains" and it would fit well, but we don't have that in RWG. But it's a good showcase of why adding mountains as part of a POI just doesn't really look right. They just have to be too small.

This doesn't mean there aren't options if TFP is willing to put in the work. From what I've been told here, there used to be a kind of adaptive block that would conform to the terrain around the POI, similar in a way to how adaptive terrain conforms to the terrain type around it. But supposedly they removed it for whatever reason. If they were to add such a block and it functioned in a way that said something like, "If the block touching the outside of the POI next to me is taller than me, increase my elevation. If it is shorter than me (just air), decrease my elevation." And then repeat from the outside toward the inside wherever those blocks are used, you could theoretically place a POI on the side of a mountain and the POI terrain would look like it was part of the mountain rather than being a generally flat surface on a mountain slope that isn't flat. It would open up a lot of options for mountain POI placements. Roads would still need some work, or you might need to mark those "mountain POI" as not having driveways so no roads connect to them. But it would still open up a lot of options.

And as long as we're talking about changes to make placement of POI that should be placed in specific locations possible, we could really use a way to signal the correct placement of a dock/pier POI so that it is rotated to put the correct side into the water with the land part placed properly on land. This could also make use of that same "adaptive" block I mentioned above to make sure the water edge matches at the edges of the POI.
 
Riamus said:
I think they could do a chairlift easy enough with what we have... as long as you are willing to have the actual "chairs" fallen on the ground instead of hanging from the lift. The stability would be a problem if you wanted them hanging, at least unless you really spend time figuring out how to place things to keep it stable enough.

They do have a POI that has a "mountain" as part of it. I forget what POI it is, but maybe one of the "Camp X" POI. The building is on a "mountain" with a long staircase going up to it. It looks interesting, but doesn't look even remotely realistic. At least not when placed on the normal terrain the game has. I'm sure you could have it placed on terrain that has similarly small and "spiky" "mountains" and it would fit well, but we don't have that in RWG. But it's a good showcase of why adding mountains as part of a POI just doesn't really look right. They just have to be too small.

This doesn't mean there aren't options if TFP is willing to put in the work. From what I've been told here, there used to be a kind of adaptive block that would conform to the terrain around the POI, similar in a way to how adaptive terrain conforms to the terrain type around it. But supposedly they removed it for whatever reason. If they were to add such a block and it functioned in a way that said something like, "If the block touching the outside of the POI next to me is taller than me, increase my elevation. If it is shorter than me (just air), decrease my elevation." And then repeat from the outside toward the inside wherever those blocks are used, you could theoretically place a POI on the side of a mountain and the POI terrain would look like it was part of the mountain rather than being a generally flat surface on a mountain slope that isn't flat. It would open up a lot of options for mountain POI placements. Roads would still need some work, or you might need to mark those "mountain POI" as not having driveways so no roads connect to them. But it would still open up a lot of options.

And as long as we're talking about changes to make placement of POI that should be placed in specific locations possible, we could really use a way to signal the correct placement of a dock/pier POI so that it is rotated to put the correct side into the water with the land part placed properly on land. This could also make use of that same "adaptive" block I mentioned above to make sure the water edge matches at the edges of the POI.
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It sounds complicated I didn't know anything about the adaptive block (I don’t make POIs)

I don’t know if they could do something like that.

But probably a good option—and considering the quality of the POIs—would be for the devs to make a custom map that isn’t Navezgane, maybe an 8K or 10K map, handcrafted by them, including real rivers, mountains with POIs, roads and highways that make sense, lakes, and a canyon. Craters, fissures, etc. so there wouldn’t be empty areas with a single, sad POI you’ll never visit.

In short, a very detailed and rich map with everything mentioned. One that doesn’t rely on the map generator.
 
grz__ said:
It sounds complicated I didn't know anything about the adaptive block (I don’t make POIs)

I don’t know if they could do something like that.

But probably a good option—and considering the quality of the POIs—would be for the devs to make a custom map that isn’t Navezgane, maybe an 8K or 10K map, handcrafted by them, including real rivers, mountains with POIs, roads and highways that make sense, lakes, and a canyon. Craters, fissures, etc. so there wouldn’t be empty areas with a single, sad POI you’ll never visit.

In short, a very detailed and rich map with everything mentioned. One that doesn’t rely on the map generator.
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I think another hand crafted map is a good option, but at the same time, playing the same map multiple times gets old really fast, at least for me. I don't even play Navesgane because of that. I always play a new map. So although I support more hand crafted maps, I'd prefer new features for RWG.
 
Riamus said:
I think another hand crafted map is a good option, but at the same time, playing the same map multiple times gets old really fast, at least for me. I don't even play Navesgane because of that. I always play a new map. So although I support more hand crafted maps, I'd prefer new features for RWG.
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That's true it gets predictable pretty quickly. I hope they can improve the map generator.
 
A ski resort should be pretty easy seeing many of mountain roads lately are 45 degrees or steeper
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An Airport POI would be great
 
OPR357 said:
A ski resort should be pretty easy seeing many of mountain roads lately are 45 degrees or steeper
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An Airport POI would be great
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Airports are similar for problems... you need space. Even the smallest airport doesn't really fit realistically into a 100x100 or even 150x150 POI. At least not without a full runway. But they could make one without a runway, such as only a helicopter port. If you want to see a good airport POI, check on the airport mod from AH64_Jimbo. It requires manually placing the stuff or using one of the maps he has that already have it placed. You can also use it directly with Teragon to place it on a random map. The original was about 1.5km x 2km, and even in the smaller layouts are still close to 1km x 1km. But it is really good.

And the roads aren't the problem for the ski resort. See what I said earlier.
 
OPR357 said:
A ski resort should be pretty easy seeing many of mountain roads lately are 45 degrees or steeper
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An Airport POI would be great
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If the mountain is big enough and has enough flat terrain, I suppose it wouldn't be that complicated—with a small hotel, a lookout point, and a restaurant. The chairlift is another story, I guess.

They just need to make sure the POI is placed in the right spot using the map generator.
 
I like the nuclear power plant idea. Definitely would work in the wasteland. Comic book store is a definite gold mine for magazines and such. I do not know all the current poi’s so just let me know if any of these exist already, but a crashed airplane would be cool. Could be mostly in tact or scattered similar to how the Forrest handles it so you’ll see them generate in sections in burnt Forrest or wasteland and in navasgane in a meaningful debris pattern. Railroad or collapsed subway depending on if they want to involve large track sections or not so collapsed tunnels would solve that. A nuclear bomb test site and it military test sight in general. Maybe something that is a reference to centralia(I know that’s the wrong state but whatever) in that it’s kind of what created the burnt Forrest or at least what perpetuates it. Maybe not necessarily what caused the outbreak but the whole blood moon, undead vultures that can still fly and how blessed metal used to exist suggests the outbreak is supernatural so some sort of poi involving a cult/necromancers or in general apocalypse worshippers.
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Riamus said:
Airports are similar for problems... you need space. Even the smallest airport doesn't really fit realistically into a 100x100 or even 150x150 POI. At least not without a full runway. But they could make one without a runway, such as only a helicopter port. If you want to see a good airport POI, check on the airport mod from AH64_Jimbo. It requires manually placing the stuff or using one of the maps he has that already have it placed. You can also use it directly with Teragon to place it on a random map. The original was about 1.5km x 2km, and even in the smaller layouts are still close to 1km x 1km. But it is really good.

And the roads aren't the problem for the ski resort. See what I said earlier.
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Give it a bombed out runway so just a portion and once again wasteland as the most common location
 
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Hazmat616 said:
Give it a bombed out runway so just a portion and once again wasteland as the most common location
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Like I said, you can do it without a full runway. But it will often (perhaps usually) look wrong when placed by RWG. It could face other POI, which would make it clear the runway wasn't long enough or it could face a mountain or hills or river or whatever that have the same effect. It is still an option, but not really anywhere near as good as an airport that's a good size. Take a look at AH64_Jimbo's airport and you'll see why.
 
How does rwg handle burnt Forrest and wasteland I always thought those biomes force poi’s to be far apart. Thats why I suggested there as the rubble on the ground also suggest something got destroyed or covered by debris
 
The biggest problem with an airport POI isn't the space it requires (though that's not nothing), it's the lack of planes or even blocks suitable for making planes. You can make okaaay-ish boats with the current blocks and they're not too terrible, but I've never seen a plane made with blocks which didn't look horribly out of place.

I think you'd have to do them like semi-trucks work in the game, where the truck front is one block and you build off that. For large jets, have a cockpit block with a flat, circular surface to build tube segments out from, a tail block to match, and maybe even wing blocks (or at least a couple new blocks to make wings that didn't look like crap). For small planes you'd need landing gear blocks, probably a prop/engine block, a tail block and maybe more besides.

The ground area and runway aren't problems. You could do the ground using a set specific dedicated tiles, the way western towns work, then add a couple POI sockets on one end for hangars, towers, etc. You could have two end sockets, one for a small local airport and another for a full 100x100 airport POI.
 
FramFramson said:
The biggest problem with an airport POI isn't the space it requires (though that's not nothing), it's the lack of planes or even blocks suitable for making planes. You can make okaaay-ish boats with the current blocks and they're not too terrible, but I've never seen a plane made with blocks which didn't look horribly out of place.

I think you'd have to do them like semi-trucks work in the game, where the truck front is one block and you build off that. For large jets, have a cockpit block with a flat, circular surface to build tube segments out from, a tail block to match, and maybe even wing blocks (or at least a couple new blocks to make wings that didn't look like crap). For small planes you'd need landing gear blocks, probably a prop/engine block, a tail block and maybe more besides.

The ground area and runway aren't problems. You could do the ground using a set specific dedicated tiles, the way western towns work, then add a couple POI sockets on one end for hangars, towers, etc. You could have two end sockets, one for a small local airport and another for a full 100x100 airport POI.
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The problem with tiles and RNG is you can't control rotation. There have been multiple people testing all kinds of variations of using tiles for an airport that is generated with RWG and although they can sometimes work, they often don't. There was some success with a few small tests, but it never got any further. If you want to look into the various discussions on it and how things were tested, a search for airports in the forum should give a lot of good results. There are too many different threads for me to start listing them. Teragon does allow placing tiles and POI in a specific layout, which is how AH64_Jimbo's airports can be placed on any generated map that has space for them without more than a small number of clicks. But you need to create the layout first in the game and then you can use the same layout on any map easily. But that doesn't work with RWG other than to place all the tiles and POI by hand with the World Editor after making your map.

As far as planes go, sure... they are a bit blocky, but take a look at AH64_Jimbo's airport mod and see how his planes look, both jumbo jets and small prop planes. They aren't perfect, but they are easily recognizable as planes and I think they look really good for a voxel game that doesn't have special airplane blocks.
 
Ehhhhh, we're gonna have to disagree on the way those planes look. Some of the little cessna-alikes are fine, but most of those planes are actually my go-to example for why current the block library isn't enough.

I'm not saying Jimbo, Panda didn't do the best job he could have, because he did, but the parts just aren't there, and now that we have the new signs and the existing POIs are getting revisions for more detail and distinctive looks, the planes stand out even more. Which is the real problem - not that those planes meet a certain arbitrary standard of realism, just that they're roughly the same as their surroundings.

As for the tiles, I wonder if it would be possible to make a single oversized tile as a remedy instead? Or if there are other means to force face locking the way POIs use gateways to anchor themselves to tiles.
 
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Hm. After looking at the aircraft again for the first time in a while (3.0 breaks his plane prefabs in many ways, sadly), I think I'd actually have to downgrade my opinion to needing more parts to make nice looking aircraft.

I think you'd need to add at least a dozen new blocks to Lego up a halfway-decent-looking full size jet or midsize jet (possible 2-3 dozen more, which I can't imagine anyone at TFP thinks would be worth the effort), though small planes might be built with less.

Might just be less at this point if you go the way cargo containers are currently made, such that the entire fuselage exterior is big modular parts mostly dedicated to that one function. Again, probably not very appealing for TFP.

I mean, this is just my opinion, but I suspect at least some of the official POI makers also think the tools aren't there because we've literally never seen an airplane in the game outside the airdrop flyover. There's even a crashed SATELLITE prefab, but no planes!
 
Okay, after playing with blocks again, I think you could do a large jet POI with as few as 4 new blocks (though some would still have to be large parts). I'll make a separate thread later; I don't want to derail this one that hard.
 
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