Preserved Topic: World's Tallest Digital Building (Page 1 of 2)

I don't know if this has been posted here before but I just ran across it so I thought I'd drop a link.

World's Tallest Digital Building

I just wish I would have found it before the construction stopped.

:::11oh1:::

Heh, that's pretty cool. It is too bad they have stopped building. Why not make one of those here at the asylum. Not a tower, but a few floors of cells. Everyone could design their own cells.

Ramasax:

quote:

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Why not make one of those here at the asylum. Not a tower, but a few floors of cells. Everyone could design their own cells.

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Good idea - I'm sure there would be a few people interested in kicking it off.

If people want tips then see:

:FAQ: How do I go about making sprites?

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Emps

The Emperor dot org

That is a good idea.
An actual virtual Asylum,
and you could click on a person's cell
and it would lead you to their profile, or something.


.quotes.

Nifty =)

That would be cool here. I'd be all for the tower concept though. We could do 4 (for the east, west, north and south 'wings' of the asylum.....) if space is an issue....

And it clearly fits in with this:
http://www.ozoneasylum.com/Forum3/HTML/003793.html

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Emps

The Emperor dot org

Someone decide on a grid and I'll be happy to make a little something.

Apart from the tower idea, I seem to remember some kind of village done in the same idea.

Since the tower idea is done, how about a square asylum?
birdsview like:

XXXXXXXXX
X..............X
X..............X
X..............X
X..............X
XXXXXXXXX

That would accomodate for the south,east,north and west wings, and we could easily add new floors when needed (starting out with the corners).

I guess the biggest challenge is figuring out the perspective and the implications that has if we're building both high and wide....

The idea is interresting. As for the perspective we could go for the Zelda: A link to the past style.

The template cells should have some basic walls and doors placed according to the wing in the Asylum, but everything could be remade by the inmates. Or why not simply starting with a 4 doors cell and let the inmates choose to which cell they want to be connect their own one and put a least one door to let others connect to it. ?

We should also decide the resolution of the cells.

Mathieu "POÏ" HENRI

ooo... i think it'd be pretty spiffy. i'd be interested in getting in on this

I guess we could assemble the image in code... That way I could write a grail module that was easily extended with new rooms ;-).

I've never tried this type of "pixel art" before but I'm checking out sprite domain for some ideas now.
I think it would make an interesting project. If needs require I'm sure we could also modify the "Model" to extend underground. to include all the "activities" there too.

I'm down for that...

I'd suggest doing it in 30/30 or 45/45 isometric instead of top down or anything like that...and we really need to decide on one thing, do we go wide, or high...if high we can only stack one on top of the other, and if wide then we can't go up, unless we make it a DHTML or flash page where we can choose to show the various layers or not at the user's discretion.

I would also suggest doing what the above people have done with the 'world's tallest digital building' and provide a template for people to work from, just to everyone's work is the same size and shape and will tesselate properly.

awesome link, thx for sharing
btw i think its a good idead doing some asylum work

Very cool idea!

. . : slicePuzzle

I think it might be quite cool doing it in DHTML/Flash so if we stacked them up into towers you could mouseover one and it would show you the inside as well as the outside.

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Emps

The Emperor dot org

How cool! I can't wait to decorate!


Cell 617

I think just wide would be bad. It would turn out as the worlds longest trailerpark...

One way to allow both high and wide is to choose which side one wants to view (e,w,n,s). That would also allow us to play with a bit of surroundings on groundlevel, like gates, fences main entrance etc. The biggest thing we need to figure out from a "political" view is what to do with those corner offices

The default could be the side with the main entrance.

Or mebbe if you coding geniuses could come up with a way to create some routine that creates smaller images of each side when they're updated and give us a 4-split screen showing all wings at once.

I'd love to be a part of this, if you guys don't mind of course, being a n00beh and all.

I was thinking more of doing it wide, but not 'straight-line' wide. Updates only happen when you have a square number and the flash/script/thingamy would arrange them so they form a square (or a diamond since you're looking at it isometrically).

The corner offices would, of course, be reserved for the mad scientists...

[This message has been edited by Skaarjj (edited 12-18-2003).]

and (sorry for the double post), if we lay it out in the quare arrangement I suggested, some of the better pixel pushers around here could come up with hallway tiles, so that between each of the cells we can lay out the hallways, having it use a base template of a hallway in the appropriate direction, thne pick a random number and type of people to put in there, as ewll at acessories; carts, shock therapy machines, mops, bowls of pears, etc...things that are very distincly Ozone Asylum, all those little things that have come up over the years that we can define as 'ours'.

How about a sprawling complex with no pre-defined order? Why would an asylum built by the occupants have any structural logic? Lay out a basic templete of the core structure along with the functional asylum items mentioned above and it can be built to suit from there.

Pos. some decisions need to be made or this could end up spinning off at too many angles and ends up coming to nothing (not that that could happen oh no).

Personally I'm in favour of two towers (east and west wing - we don't talk about the north wing) - I doubt it will get too long anyway but two towers could get the abalnce about right.

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Emps

The Emperor dot org

Whats in the north?

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Is this thing on?

A Work In Progress

I've been looking into lots of different isometric goodies as of late, and I had the asylum in mind for some of them, although they were more "chat" based with the ability to build a world/cell using the isometric engine itself. Kinda lke Haboo Hotel meets The Sims. But somehting like this would be much simpler and possibly more fitting for such a talented community.

Anyways, there are actually quite a few projects like this, Roadmaps is one and there?s also a virtual city project that expands in 2 directions.

In creating the "asylum" in isometrics, a lot depends on what we'd want each "block" to be. If we wanted to create the outside walls of the building then the tower concept works fine, but with a little flash trickery it'd be quite easy to create a system where we show the insides of a very large complex. This way the members could create their "cell" and most importantly its contents instead of just two angled outer walls of a tower. Hallways and the outer walls of the asylum could easily be automatically generated and in-between each cell given the tile like nature of isometrics.

Not to mention all the bizarre things we could do when ordering which cells get put where. I'm sure we could also come up with some interesting concepts for expanding in three dimensions (left, right and up!). I mean, if we're going to create a modular graphical representation of the asylum, we does it need to be ordered in a logical manner?

Escher discovered that isometrics was a great tool for creating impossible structures. ? This is the asylum after all.


Just some thoughts.

Although, I echo emps' feelings of this generating a million ideas that manifest into nothing (everyone remember that stor troopers project?). Although, I'd be very keen to help/manage/build the system that peices everything togther as isometrics is something I've been doing a bit of research into as of late.

Can we have a map key like A Link to the Past, also? Like when you were in a bosses castle and you hit select, it would bring you to a floor overview.

I'm not really for an isometric thing. Sorry to preach for my parish but I think some 2D cells would be far more convenient and still allow a lot of creativity ( including impossible perspective effects and what not ). The only imperative would be the resolution of the cell and the position and size of the doors.

If we go in "3D", we could do a map similar to the ones in the castles of Zelda :



But showing in which wing/block/floor of the Asylum we are.

Mathieu "POÏ" HENRI

[This message has been edited by poi (edited 12-19-2003).]

Indeed, although making it isometric would provide for a more graphically rich contributions whilst still maintaining all the same functionality you've mentioned, if not more because we'll have a third dimension to play with rather than just different "levels".

The heart of this project is in the contributions of the artistically inclined members. Yet given it's intrinsic modular nature there do need to be some limitations imposed. Of which I strongly believe that isometrics allow the greatest amount of artistic freedom whilst still providing the capabilities for each contribution to be pieced together through code allowing the display system to be infinitely scalable and possibly even interactive to a certain degree.

I like the pixellated 3d idea you could even use the 'sprites' from that big group picture thingy I saw not too long ago, y'know the one where you hover the mouse over each person to see who they are. IMO the cells should be "bricked over" until you roll the mouse over each cell revealing the person inside making it feel more like an asylum, maybe you could open the doors too and watch people go about their crazy business, ok I just stop with the dreamworld now.

Well drawing in an isometric view is a little more difficult, and I think many isometric-pixel thingy looks the same, I'm not sure it would provide more graphically rich contributions. For sure an isometric view gives a more evident perspertive. The way the cells are stacked in the World's Tallest Digital Building gives little area to the graphists. The Asylum and its inmates deserve more space to express all their inner demons.

Of course we could make map like a tiny tower/corridor with some generic cells labelled with their number and/or inmate's mane that, when clicked, reveal the fullsize cell next to the map.

Whatever we choose I'll push some pixels together and make my cell

Mathieu "POÏ" HENRI

I think the 2 towers idea is cool. then we could have (x) inmates per floor, and one mad scientist with their own quarters and corner office.

I threw this together from one of the Zelda pics to illustrate what I mean:


-Bigger-


Something along those lines, maybe a little more space for everyone though.

Then when you enter a wing, a simple thumnail gallery of the floors could be shown.



[This message has been edited by Ramasax (edited 12-19-2003).]

I don't see any reason why we can't ultimately have two or more representations of the Asylum but we do have to pick one to work on first. I'm still in favour of the isometric view over the 'Zelda' one for now and as Cameron is enthusiastic then he could go point on this one. I would be interested to hear what mahjqa has to say on this though.

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Emps

The Emperor dot org

I like the tower format. Would we be able to make modifications to our cell? Allowing for someone to improve their cell would be a great feature...


[edit] Why dont we talk about the North? Whats there? [/edit]
_____________
Is this thing on?

A Work In Progress

[This message has been edited by UnknownComic (edited 12-19-2003).]

Yes, much of the work done by various isometric pixel artists does look very similar, but isometric imagery on a whole is a lot more varied, consider; Diablo, The Sims, Age OF Empires II, Fallout etc...

All of these games used an isometric perspective, some tile based (The Sims = Square Tile, Fallout = Hex Tile) and other being more freeform, but on a whole all were set in an isometric perspective. Indeed all of the imagery for those games was also created and rendered in a 3D program but what's to say someone can't construct an isometric line drawing then paint it up as you would any other digital painting.

Additionally, the abundance of isometric pixel art tutorials give the less graphically inclined something to work from.

The structure in which this is all pieced together is probably the biggest debate though. I see several possible options:

1) Two Towers (Outer Walls):
Pretty much exactly the same as the World's Tallest Digital Building project but x 2. -- Only possible variations in contribution sizes would be the height of each section.

2) Two Towers (Inner Walls):
Similar to the above but depicting the inside of each "floor" individually -- the walls are generated by the display program (Flash/DHTML) or by an additional graphic which the member can provide, a default graphic being used if they choose not to. The walls can be hidden/shown in a number of different ways which can be configures by the viewer using the display system. We could even make each floor slightly modular (four iso square blocks make a floor for example) offering more variations in the possible size of a contributions and they way they piece together (Anyone for a game of Jenga?).

3) Sprawling Complex:
Similar to the 2D top-down ideas, rather than having a vertical scrolling tower, It would also be possible to create a display that scrolled both vertically and horizontally (Like almost any 2D Isometric Strategy Game, or Diablo). This way we could create a display similar to a massive floor plan of a single complex (which could include both the west and east wing). The placement of each "cell" could be static (decided when the contribution is made) or dynamic. Outer Walls, corridors and staircases could be dynamically generated to connect each cell in a number of different ways depending on their location within the asylum complex. Additionally, the size of the contributions wouldn't have many limitations (only those imposed by the size of the hallway tiles and the like).

If I've missed any possibly ways of displaying this then please jump in and offer your suggestion.

Of the three, I like number 2 and 3, the latter being my personal choice because it offers the largest flexibility (and could possibly even be made to display as number 2 if we made the contributions fixed sizes) but number 2 would probably be much more feasible and simpler/quicker to develop. Perhaps we could start simple and build features into the system once we have a basic one up and running. It would be interesting to see cell placement (in both the tower and floor plan format) ordered by post count, name or some other silly demographic.

Edit: Yes, being able to alter you cell after you've added it to the asylum would definatly be an option. I can forsee people re-decorating their cell for various holiday seasons or to match with their current sig or latest web project.

[This message has been edited by Cameron (edited 12-19-2003).]

Shouldn't cell placement be in some sort of cell number order, as opposed to name or post count... (since post count is being tossed in The Grail anyway...)?

This is a heck of a brainstorming session going on...

Only problem there is that leaves a heck of a lot of empty cells. Out of 4256 members, how many will actually create their own distinct cell?

I was saying that the asylum could be magically re-ordered depending on how you wanted to view it.

Given access to the members database, and making the system so that the cells can be placed in any order we want dynamically, then you could select how you wanted it to be built.

Cell order would be easy enough, you'd just have to skip big sections here and there. Although most people got their cell numbers from the way the FAQ Wikki was coded so we'd have to work out a system for allocating them correctly, but that shouldn't be too difficult.

You know, this would be a great opportunity not just to start up another collaborative project here in the Asylum, but to have the masters of this pixel art, mahjqa and so on, to show the less educated people (ie: me) how exactly they go about doing it, in a context and environment conducive to actually getting results out of it

Well...that's all my big words for the day.

If no one has any objections, I'll start building a basic display system for a "two towers" version just after x-mass (am tied up with other projects and family commitments right now).

I'll start up a new thread for this when I begin to draw up the design sketches and the like.

Edit: Oh, yes. Something that will need to be decided on even before I begin thinking about the design is what technology we decide to use for it.

I'd prefer Flash. It's not the best tool for displaying bitmap graphics but I believe it would be better than DHTML. Shockwave would be ideal due to it's robust bitmap capabilties, but it's a sizable plugin with a shrinking user base. Both Shockwave and Flash provide a much more transparent interface to server side scripts than DHTML does and given that flash has an extensive userbase, I think it provides the most benifits with the least ammount of drawbacks.

If anyone has an reasons why we shouldn't use Flash for this project (asside from general, "I don't like flash period" comments), please let me know.

[This message has been edited by Cameron (edited 12-20-2003).]

Well...I personally don't like flash, but I think it would be perfect for this. Given it's ability to interact with PHP means it can be plugged straight into the grail and we can truly intergrate this into the asylum.

So...2 votes for flash...

any more?