Well I don't think the transportation network would be totally useless if your going on a "if you don't like it, don't use it" option for fast travel. I would hate to have fast travel in Hyrule if it wasn't even explained properly, as just being just a game mechanic that comes with oblivion. In my opinion I think the best way to do it would be to include fast travel after a certain point in a quest. Some point that explains why link (or the character) can just fly anywhere around the map that he's been to whenever he wants. Very much like it was introduced in Twilight Princess would be somewhat similar to what I'm talking about.

I just edited my last post to mention some things about the inaccuracies in the map-particularly time line-wise. I'd at least like our two stories to share the same continuity and I kind of like the idea of one being a expansion or sequel to the other. I'd probably have to rework a bunch of my ideas for the post-OoT history but that'd be okay since I'm not exactly all that attached to it currently anyway and I've been wanting to kind of redo it in any case because it adheres to a very unusual timeline "theory" wherein there are actually three different Hyrule Timelines, one in which the two possibilities-that of Link traveling into the future to defeat Ganondorf and that of Link being sent back to grow up by Zelda, attempt to reconcile each other. It was really an excuse to make my original Hyrule Isle for Morrowind (which is now pretty much canceled) a separate continuity from Twilight Future which is no longer necessary.

I can't remember but I think Twilight Princess is supposed to be in the timeline where Link was sent back so it could work with some of the ideas I have it's just that those ideas would have to lead in to TP and then into Tuah's story.

As far as the map goes, it needs A LOT of work to get it scaled down to how I personally think it should be given the theory I linked to in an edit of my previous post. I might post my own map concept soon as well. Right now again I'd like to do a bit of work on the website.

As far as fast travel-yeah it would be interesting to have an explanation for it-perhaps it's from some special device/magical item that Mudora gives the player-perhaps early on although maybe the player can choose to refuse the offer to be given the item-hence creating a "choice" for whether you want to use Fast Travel or not. I'm not sure how that would work in terms of the game engine, however, as I'm not sure how possible it is to completely disable fast travel without something like OBSE (which we might need to use any way for certain common Zelda game mechanics so it might end up as a non-issue).

Our approach would best be the same as Nintendo's. Keep the big important things intact, but layout and geography is an unimportant detail. Nintendo has no canon to their geography, so we don't necessarily need any either.

As far as additional things not exactly in canon, I think it'd be pefectly fine to add them as other non-major details. "Link went to this town to get the Hookshot." Whether it was Kakariko Village, Castle Town, or the city of Townsville is really unimportant. The important thing is that Link got the Hookshot.

So perhaps we should base our cartography on what we'll need for the game, and what will definitely be in it due to canon.

The absolutely necessary locations are Lake Hylia, Hyrule Castle & Town, Kakariko Village, Death Mountain (with the Goron city), Zora's Domain, the Lost Woods, and Gerudo Desert.
(These areas may include additional, smaller areas.)


DJ, what other places or settlements do you require for your story?


I personally don't need to add much, but I do wish to include both Lon Lon Ranch and Ordon Village as part of a larger area of farming land, Snowpeak, and Kokiri Forest just south of the Lost Woods.

Well, again my own idea for the geography is heavily based on the aforementioned fan theory and actually the map I post may include the entire area this time just to better illustrate things. So far a couple of key locations are Mudora's Tower/Observatory which is located roughly where the Lakeside Laboratory should be in OoT. Then there's the "Western Lost Woods" which is a location of historical significance in my time line since it houses the original "Hirule Village" settlement and further in a statue of Ruzantaze Hirule (rooh-zahn-TAH-zay he-ROO-lay) next to the cave system (now caved-in but probably with a little bit of an area for the player to explore) that led the people to what became known as Hyrule. For anyone who's curious I'll be regularly posting articles on the website once I have it up regarding the history I've created.

The only thing that I suppose is a BIT geographically strange is Snowhead/Snowpeak since one would presume that it exists in an arctic region however that does not appear to be the case in my particular location so the only other assumption one might make is that it's either arranged a bit differently than I currently have it worked out or it's at such a high altitude that the climate becomes arctic.

There there is one temple for each Goddess-they may have somehow "came to ruin" before OoT/TP or are there but not included or not reachable by the player. I'm not sure where these are going to be located yet as I'm still working things out geographically. I kinda like the map that's been posted but again I think a lot of things need to be reworked on it. Again, I believe the area known as "Old Hyrule" on the map is actually the exact same place as ACTUAL Hyurle in OoT/TP/ALttP/Etc. and even if it isn't it wouldn't be "Old Hyrule" since it's generally accepted that Loz and AoL come after all the other games in terms of the time line. It could work as the area the Hylians migrated from but overall I still don't really like the idea of including it because as I said I really like that map theory and think it is the correct approach to go with.

Also, reading the description of the map, it's quite obvious that the author did not discover the article I mentioned, which actually does a pretty nice job at explaining the descrepencies between the maps of ALttP and OoT. Basically, the idea is that ALttP is not laid out in such a way that north is up, south is down, left is west and right is east-the same can also be said of the map from LoZ. When you rotate the ALttP map at a certain angle, most of the key Hyrule Landmarks line up remarkably well. http://www.zeldalegends.net/index.php?n=article_18_p3. I'm thinking of also creating a comparison map of my own with a bit more detail.

Progress on skinning the site is coming along nicely. I think that if we divide our story lines but preserve continuity between them we should keep both projects under the "Hyrule Isle" banner.

For instance, a little I'm considering for my storyline would be Hyrule Isle: Fierce Twilight.

An possible title for yours if it includes Termina could be Hyrule Isle: Twilight's Terminus (yeah, that does sound a bit corny, doesn't it? lol).

Edit: Got the website up and running. Note that the forums require a separate login from the main site-so if you want to use the forums sign up on the forums (part of deejaygamer.com) and not on the main site.

http://hyruleisle.deejaygamer.com/

I'll be working on a custom skin for the forums some time probably tomorrow-I've done enough work on the website for today.

Here's the outline of my story from the site:

Fierce Twilight

Four years ago a Demi-Goddess named Gerudus entered the court of King Derik Wedsil Hyrule and used her unworldly persuasive abilities to convince him to take the Triforce, which for generations the royal family had been sworn to protect, for himself-an act forbidden by the Gods. He hoped that in doing this he could gain the power to better govern his people and bring them prosperity. Instead, because he was not balanced in the elements of Wisdom, Courage and Power which the Triforce represented, its power began to drive him to madness. Instead of using it to help his people, he followed Gerudus' suggestion and wished for the powers of a God. Thus began a dark age for the Kingdom of Hyrule, ruled with great negligence by the Fierce Deity King and his new Queen Gerudus.

In the present time you are a slave, forced regularly to fight as a gladiator in the arena. Today you're to face a particularly difficult battle at the request of the King's half-blood nephew Gustaf Hyrule. Shortly after your victory you discover he's looking for a champion to call for the Goddess' aid to help end the reign of his uncle and put a stop to his plans involving a certain mirror...

I'm starting to like the "Hyrule Isle" name a bit more, since we always have the option of adding Labrynna and Holodrum after everything.

That does bring me to an important detail we should include. Seasons! We must make sure to have dynamic seasons. I bet I could make a really sweet Subrosian Ring, too... An entire Subrosian outfit that equips to the Ring slot.

Don't forget everyone to check out our new website!: http://hyruleisle.deejaygamer.com

Content is a bit spare at the moment but I'll be using the articles section to post numerous bits of information about the various ideas I've come up with regarding the lore and back story. I think the fist one is going to explain Gerdus' identity and how she is connected to the Gerudo tribe since I'm sure a lot of people are curious about that after reading the description on the website.

I'll also again be getting to work on skinning the forums and doing a bit of work to better integrate them with the main website.

Edit: Turns out I still have my the theme from the original Hyrule Isle forums so I'm applying that and all I'll probably need to change is the site logo. That and I think the background color which for some reason turns out white and I'm not sure why that's happening. :/


Here's my first Hyrule History article: http://hyruleisle.deejaygamer.com/phpf/articles.php?article_id=1

A second article regarding Gerudus' continued involvement with the tribe will be posted tomorrow.

Hm, I can't seem to log into the forums, though I did activate my account. The main site works fine though.

That's strange-I recently put you into the Hyrule Isle Team group on the forums I'm not sure how that may have affected your account at all - except maybe I need to set permissions for the group or something perhaps.

I changed the logo for the "Hyrule Fantasy" theme, but for some reason the background still turns out white bellow a certain point...I'll try experimenting around with things and there are some text colors I need to fix which is really a pain when I'm working with phpBB because I can't really see the changes instantly on there although I think there might be a way to edit the CSS directly through the Admin Panel.

Edit: Try now-I had to apply a set of permissions to the Hyrule Isle Team group.

phpBB Skin Update: Finally figured out what was wrong-apparently one of the background color properties was set wrong and all I had to do was find it and change it. lol

I think I've changed most of the colors to how I want them, hopefully I didn't miss anything: http://www.deejaygamer.com/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=4

What's left is making some alterations to the image set, mainly to make things more closely match the main website.

I'm using the forum rules as a navigation panel since I don't currently know of any other way to implement the feature right now.

Got my account working, and I'll put up a topic about the plan. I'll also edit this topic's opening post for an easier read. I'm terrible at elaborating, but I'm good at abbreviation. I'd explain why, but it'd defeat the purpose.

Added a general discussion forum for that purpose if you end up posting it in Fierce Twilight I'll go ahead and move it to general for you.

I've also added a Book of Mudora section which contains the same information as the History of Hyrule articles only you can also comment on them.

Edit: Here's my latest version of the map of Hyrule-it's based on a fan-created map, but that map comes very close to replicating the general idea of the theory I mentioned earlier. I made numerous changes to the map rearranging and adding various things to get it to how I wanted it to look.

http://hyruleisle.deejaygamer.com/hyrulemap_v02.jpg

The red line and desaturated/darkened area represents parts of the landmass that are outside the area included in the game. Also, everything might not be exactly to scale and a few details are still missing.

I've had a storyline in mind for a while that could possibly resolve some conflicting problems. Basically it sets up the story in a way that provides some artistic freedom without affecting the already know time spans of Hyrule's history. I don't really want to post it here though so drop me a pm if you are interested. Not trying to say it's better than any other storyline, I've just held onto the idea for awhile since well before I played oblivion but I always thought it might fit well into oblivions system. The idea may be atleast worth noting, you may want to incorporate it into your own ideas who knows.

It would probably work better with Tuah's story-or at least possibly it would. My story needs perhaps a little elaboration but the basic premise is pretty much fixed in place atm.

In other news, I've created version 3 of the Hyrule Map: http://hyruleisle.deejaygamer.com/hyrulemap_v03.jpg

If it's not the final version of my concept for the map, it's near-final.

I think I've devised a good way to put all our maps together, so we're very close to creating the basic landmasses. I'll start reading up on how to do it. I just hope there's a free heightmap program out there that's actually good. xP

http://hyruleisle.deejaygamer.com/phpf/articles.php?article_id=2

I plan to update the "Book of Mudora" on a daily basis (the article section's name has been changed to match the forums) until all aspects of the history leading up to the events of the main storyline are covered, which might actually be by the end of this week. From this point forward I believe I'll be covering things more or less in chronological order starting with the founding of Hyrule (probably back-tracking somewhat in one of the articles). Here's my rough schedule for the article releases:

5/12/10 - Pre-Hyrule History/King Ruzantaze and the Exodus from the Northern Lands
5/13/10 - The Discovery of the Triforce and Attack of the Dark Interlopers
5/14/10 - The Arrival of the Humans and the Crusader War
5/15/10 - The Evolution of the Hylian Language
5/16/10 - About the Book of Mudora

And that should pretty much cover everything in terms of my version of the storyline unless I'm forgetting something. I think I might go back and add in the year in which the events of the current article take place because I believe I forgot to do that. lol

Sorry, I've been editing this post quite a bit. I'm trying to settle on what exactly I'll be doing for my next article and I believe I've more or less settled on it now. lol

Also, the main reason I released the articles on Gerudus first before going on to a more chronological structure is mainly because of Gerudus' involvement in the main plot line (and the fact that she's mentioned in the story summary and I'm sure people are curious about her and the fairly obvious connection she must have to the Gerudo, given her name). I felt it best to explain who she is and what she's done in the past before delving deeper into the more "incidental" elements that for the most part simply add more depth to the setting-although a number of aspects still do tie in to the story line.

Additional articles will likely be released as we start deciding upon what we'll be doing with Tuah's storyline-I've actually got a good deal of history worked out in terms of what follows after Fierce Twilight but since I'd now like to aim for creating a singular continuity it's likely that a number of revisions will be necessary.

Here is my new news post covering the subject: http://hyruleisle.deejaygamer.com/phpf/news.php?readmore=2

On a side note: Why do I keep getting randomly signed out of these forums? It's quite annoying! Does it just not like the way I go and regularly edit my posts?

Here's todays history article:
http://hyruleisle.deejaygamer.com/phpf/articles.php?article_id=3

I'm going to have to go back and change the last two articles a bit to match the new time line designations which go along with http://www.hyrulerealm.net's version of the Hylian Language which I recovered using the Wayback Machine since its new site has yet to add the dictionary section back in and it's been almost a year since its last update.

The language has 1,007 different words and is much more extensive than Kasuto's-although various words from that version of the language are used as well so it'll more or less be a combination. The Hylian language will mainly be used for signs, decorations, and for the Book of Mudora itself (or at least the text that displays when you first look in it)-all other books will probably be in English. Some of Kasuto's curse words might be fun to use as well for certain characters.

Edit: Did a bit of retexturing work and produced this: http://hyruleisle.deejaygamer.com/courtyard-prototype.jpg

It's based on the Anvil Castle Courtyard area and most likely the actual courtyard will be constructed from scratch. I probably need to fiddle around with the normal maps for the new carvings on the well since they seem to turn out too bright in the CS. The banners look pretty good though, I think.

New Article: http://hyruleisle.deejaygamer.com/phpf/articles.php?article_id=4

I recently had an idea for a dungeon which might either be a crashed Oocca airship or perhaps some ruin of their civilization. It would have a somewhat futuristic but probably more steampunk-type look to it-perhaps similar to the http://www.zeldawiki.org/Great_Bay_Temple from Majora's Mask although there should probably also be some elements lifted from the http://www.zeldawiki.org/City_in_the_Sky from Twilight Princess since that's supposed to have been made by the Oocca.

Also looking into how I might change the GUI as well as the dating system. I found a mod that adds "Earth versions" of the months and days next to the Tamrielic ones so that gives me some hope that there's actually a way to change them.

Looked at the mod (well, sort of I looked at what was in the zip file) and it seems it's just an ESP file, leading me to believe that there's some way to change the names of the days and months in the CS itself-the problem now is-just how the heck do I do that? lol

Edit: Okay, so I've looked at the mod-it kinda surprised me that it was an ESP file because I doubted such things could easily be changed. I looked just in the CS first and although I had no idea where the setting was changed the first thing I looked at was Gameplay Settings, which contained stuff like sDayFredas and sMonthFrostFall. I opened the Day and Month mod in the CS and sure enough it seems that these are the things that it changes. So, at least theoretically I can go in and change all the month and day names to the Hylian equivalents that I got from Hyrule Realm (although some of the day names I had to come up with myself for various reasons). So anyway it should be a heck of a lot easier than I thought to change the names of the days-although I still doubt the customization goes far enough to allow me to change the number of days in a month or hours in a day or anything.

I'm in the process of learning external heightmapping.... with free programs...

Oh well, a general outline can be easily edited in the CS.

Only two more articles left after this: http://hyruleisle.deejaygamer.com/phpf/articles.php?article_id=5

I maybe should have mentioned before but if you'd like the entirety of all the history and such to be a surprise or to wait and read the books about it in-game then these are something of a spoiler-duh.

That said, I don't think it really gives away that much of the main story although it does occasionally hint at a few things. Most of what I've put up thus far is to help provide a context for the setting and relevant bits of history.

Tomorrow's article will be: The Evolution of Hylian Communication. Originally it was going to be about their language, and it still kind of is-but I think that the language itself is a very narrow portion of what I ended up writing about, and their method of communication is something that ultimately changed or "evolved" more than the actual language itself. I think it will be one of the more interesting articles in the series because it gets a bit more in-depth than usual.

Also-here's another screenshot from the CS: http://hyruleisle.deejaygamer.com/hyruleisle_rupees.jpg

I think I may need to adjust the textures a bit because they show up really dark in the CS (I made adjustments on the screen shot in Photoshop). I'm not sure if it has something to do with the normal maps or if it's just the lighting or something. When I turn the "light bulb" on the textures look just the way I created them but obviously with the light bulb off it should look closer to the way it would be in-game so it's probably a problem. :/

Also, I'm trying to work on creating a new HUD based on the one from OoT/MM, probably using wz_Creator/Builder.

I think rupees might do well with a little bit of glow to them! Quite cute.

I'm learning the ins and outs of worldspace modding now. It's a tad bit more complicated than I thought, but I should have something figured out soon.

They actually have a glow map applied to them. I wonder if the issue lies in the Material Properties in NIFSkope actually, I seem to recall there being something you need to do with that in order to make the glow map show up better.

Yeah, I need to set the "Emissive" property to white, for some strange reason although there were glow maps already created for the rupees the meshes had a totally black Emissive color, which kinda seems to defeat the purpose of having a glow map in the first place. lol

Remember that glow maps are basically exactly what the texture will look like in pitch-darkness if that property is completely white. Any color added to the Emissive property will change what the image looks like in darkness. What I did for Majora's Mask was take the original texture, add a black layer on top and erased the spot where the eyes and spike-tips were, then blended it all together. Then darkened it a bit.
Now the eyes and colored part of the spikes still show up in darkness.

http://hyruleisle.deejaygamer.com/hyruleisle_rupees2.jpg

Might see how much I can adjust the glow maps to make them not quite as bright.

Hm... I'd say lower the brightness, but increase saturation. It'll make them more vivid in the dark, but also work better with darkness.


I think I understand how to work with heightmaps now. I'm going to do some practicing first. I really hope I can find a good, free heightmap program. Doing everything in the CS will be rather bothersome.

First off, today's article: http://hyruleisle.deejaygamer.com/phpf/articles.php?article_id=6

Just one more left, which will discuss the Book of Mudora itself.

As for the height maps, I wonder if it's possible to just whip one up in an image editing program. I did this a couple or so times with Photoshop and The Sims 3 World Creation Tool, although I think they might use a different system-what The Sims 3 uses is simple black and white maps where lighter colors are higher up and darker ones are lower. It involves a bit of trial and error to get it exactly how you want it but it can be fairly effective if you can put it all together the right away-there might even be a tutorial someplace about to create various types of terrain features or whatever-I might try looking something up myself, actually.

Also, I just recently stumbled upon some different artwork for the Book of Mudora so I may make some changes so that it more closely resembles this picture: http://www.zeldawiki.org/images/6/62/Book_of_Mudora.png

-Again, the gamesas forums really don't like people editing their posts. Maybe I should just spam this thread with constant update posts instead. :banghead:

Yeah, it'd technically be possible, but it'd turn out pretty bad. Heightmap programs are designed to give great distinction between sea-level and higher points using color masks. The grayscale image would be almost impossible to differentiate. I could theoretically make one and turn the contrast down a ton, but it'd still turn out badly.

However, I have learned a great deal more about creating a heightmap, and I might be able to do it within the CS itself if I can't find a program. It's rather lucky that we don't have to worry about great specifics in creating the map.