So, after setting up the thirty-odd base origin areas of my mod
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/module/gameworld/time-atlantis
adding in areas like the start area, the player lobby, limbo, and an area for silicone scouts treasure system; and then adding in exterior areas connecting four of my player origin spots as well as a few cave/crypt/dungeons/inns/shops around one of the origin spots, I am at 108 areas.
I read elsewhere that once a PW starts to exceed 50/100 areas, things like the in-game clock are affected. But generally, I am a one-man team who - though he worked on a PW or two back in the day - has never actually managed a PW personally. Im a fast learner - but I also know it helps to have information in advance in order to be logistically efficient.
So, does anyone have any information for me on techniques of making what may be a very large PW in terms of areas - in regards to lag effects and such? I try to script efficiently - my primary tactic is to utilize variables on objects and creatures and I use a undroppable plot item on my PCs to store persistant variables. I do, however - use only custom creatures - even though I have read that increases system lag - I try to minimize custom creature weapons, but there are some already and there will be more. Still, this is the primary indulgence for me. I try to make generic scripts when I can for things that commonly fire, like quest item turn-ins. Im not totally solid on how one chooses their list of cached scripts for the mod. I also try to keep my areas smaller, I dont really have 16x16 areas, though sometimes I will have a 16x10 area for major stretches of road/coast/cliffs. Most areas are 12x12/10x10ish or less.
The structure of the mod is highly open world with a focus on replayability - there are 32 “origin points”, or places 1st level characters can start in - and they share newbie zones with neighboring origin points. For example, the areas Ive expanded on already: Aquitania, the Shadowwood, Dunvale, and Lyonshelm. Lyonshelm is a paladin/good cleric friendly sort of origin zone; Dunvale is a halfling friendly sort of origin, the Shadowwood is for good rangers and druids mainly, and Aquitania is sort of a neutral good cosmopolitan area where all sorts of not that nefarious types of people can come from, including rogues and bards. So, the areas connecting them have a range of monster spawns that go from the lowest to basically, still pretty low level spawns: goblins, fire beetles, wolves, giant frogs, some undead… In connecting these areas, I made around 30 exteriors for the four origins, and there are 32 origins - so you can kinda see where this is going. In addition, more evil/sorcerous origins like drow or evil mages and monks tend to be more isolated from this chain of newbie zones, with mid-level zones separating them from their neighboring origin areas, which will increase the mod size even more than if it was just places like Aquitania and Lyonshelm. Also, the mod will be full-on epic levels. So, its gonna be large.
Which is where my second query comes from: what are the basics to a multi server PW mod? Do you run it as one mod or do you split it into multiple mods? At which point do you make the separations? High level zones vs lowbie zones? Or “evil zones” vs good zones? My world is basically Atlantis and Ostlund (euro), Sessania (middle east/Zakhara), and Mu (africa/australia), Lemuria (the far east of asia), and Aztarra/ (from the 1st ed basic set) Anchorome/Maztica - so would I then want to split it by regions? Like with the evil origins, not all regions are created equally - Ostlund has less epic areas in its core than Shen (Chinese Lemuria) or Mu. Aztarra has more epic danger than the others, etc. Would this be a determinant factor?