Geography on Designing Virtual Worlds

Geographical Consistency

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Throwing paint at a blank canvas does not create the geography of a virtual world. To be immersive, everything should be where it is for a reason. Much as a designer might relish the prospect of creating their planned Magic Shoppe that’s bigger inside than it is outside ¹, at this stage it’s only ever going to serve as a prototype to demonstrate the principles involved. Although not a bad thing in itself (actually, it’s quite a good thing—I usually recommend it to newbie developers), piecemeal development of individual structures is not the way to get a whole world. For that, you have to take a more top-down approach, through various levels of abstraction.

Levels of Geographic Abstraction

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Geographers have many different ways to look at this and other real worlds. They’re experts, after all. Most players of virtual worlds are not geographers, however, and they’re only going to notice more obvious errors. A degree of knowledge beyond that of the average player is always a good thing for a designer to have, of course, but as soon as players stop noticing what you’re doing you can stop. Immersion is about not busting players into reality; it isn’t about teaching them erosion patterns for sedimentary rocks ¹. From this point of view, the levels of abstraction listed in the previous section are sufficient to give a virtual world all the geographic consistency it needs. Let’s look at them in more detail.

Terrain

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Terrain is what geography is made of. It also has levels of abstraction, matching the needs of the thematic levels. Someone designing a region might decide to place a forest; someone designing an area might decide to place a wood; someone designing a wood might decide to place a tree. Terrain is the paint that depicts the image a designer wants to convey.

The different types of terrain that are available to a virtual world depend on that world, of course. Swampland isn’t necessary for a virtual world set entirely indoors, for example. Tempting though it is to go straight to an atlas and look at the symbols it uses, there are more scientific ways of determining terrain that allow for more realistic tangible effects. For a generic, outdoors, continent-scale kind of virtual world, the following dimensions are likely to be more useful:

Movement

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Movement in virtual worlds is, strictly speaking, merely a specific form of object state transition. Because it’s the tool that players use to construct their cognitive map of the environment, however, it has enhanced significance—at least in the minds of players (which is what designers are designing for). The geography of virtual worlds must account for how players will build it in their heads, which depends not only on what they see but also on how they see it. Because virtual world geographies are too big to experience in a single event, movement heavily influences both.

Settlements

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Many virtual worlds contain virtual buildings. Although some of these may be isolated (farmhouses, cottages, wizards’ towers), worlds created to a bigger scale will want settlements.

Settlements in this context are collections of buildings (or one huge building with lots of rooms—a castle, say, or a space station). Most of the time they will be occupied, but ruined settlements are also possible.

It should go without saying that settlements are positioned where they are for a reason. Virtual worlds are more believable if their settlements are built in locations that make sense. A town with no access to fresh water or no trade routes to other settlements will cause anyone who gives them a moment’s thought to raise an eyebrow. Unfortunately, many designers are oblivious to such formalities. They’re quite happy to put a ruined city on the side of a mountain and say it’s the site of a massacre of humans by dwarfs, but they’re less concerned about what the humans who lived there would have eaten.