Towns and characters

In places, our maps still reveal how they were built: a road surface meets a garden, a bridge landing does not fit the bank, a square looks like leftover ground. More and more rule packages patched these spots individually. The next rule could paint over the previous one.

That is why we are working on tile ownership. Each ground tile gets a clear responsibility, such as road, square, yard or field. Surfaces and edges are derived together from that assignment. When claims collide, the workshop should expose the conflict. For players, the result should be a coherent place: paths lead to doors, fences have openings and bridges meet the bank sensibly.

Settlements should also become easier to tell apart. A hamlet gets dirt lanes and a green common, a village a paved centre with a village square. A post is recognisable by its practical yard and enclosure, a city by stone paving, gatehouses and built banks. This is the intended direction of the rework. The workshop state exists for all three places, but map checks still report conflicts and visual acceptance is pending, so none of it is on the live maps yet.

Signposts belong in that streetscape. The implemented reading flow shows destinations and directions with an approximate walking time. “Set waypoint” lets you mark a destination. A sign becomes a choice at the roadside. Server and window for them are already in the game; the signs themselves arrive with the revised maps.

For characters, we are working at 1.5 times the detail scale. Hands, clothing and equipment are drawn on the finer grid. This takes more than enlarging an image: outlines and material details must hold together in motion. On the website (classes, peoples, home page) the new characters are already visible. In the game they still run on the test server, because the world has to grow with them: doors, houses and fences get the same new scale, and both go live together.

In the game as of today: the character window shows a rotatable preview of your own character, and “Inspect” (Shift+I or right-click on the frame) lets you look at another visible player character nearby. The window shows the visible character and, where shared, item names and icons. It shows no comparison score or played time.

In the “Privacy” tab, “Show this character's equipment” controls per character whether others may read its equipment when inspecting. With it off, equipment slots stay hidden; the character visible in the world remains visible. Changes wait for server confirmation. This does not promise to make the character invisible.

The friends list changed too: offline friends now show “last seen”, online friends show character, class, level, realm and area, with a switch for whether your own area is visible. Workshop progress is ahead of what the live maps show today. We are sharing it with its open issues, without turning it into a completion date.

Saltwarden Online is inspired by classic MMORPGs and is not affiliated with or endorsed by any other game or its publisher.