One thing about dedicating myself towards pure game design, I find myself getting into the weeds with the content I'm creating. Having completed, sufficiently for now, a page on type-7 hexes, I considered those pesky red links that appear on the wiki, indicating there's no page to visit yet. Before going ahead with further descriptions of facilities, I should address those. After some thought, I decided the "settlements" page was very sparse, and that the 6-mile Hex Map page could definitely use developing.
With both, the difficulty of those subjects quickly become apparent. Using a blog post about settlements I wrote some months ago, I built this settlements page on the wiki. On the surface, it looks fairly short, but the issue is that to describe what I do, I have to invent a number of terms, and then explain what those terms mean. I'm never completely sure I'm being understood, which makes me anxious. Explaining even very simple arithmetical formulas can easily confuse a reader, so that I find myself becoming desperately pedantic, without knowing if that approach even works.
As such, I hated writing the wikipedia page. I hate the page itself. I know of no simpler way to describe what is, for me, a very easy process ... but that's because I built it to serve myself. Then again, it makes sense to describe my approach as best I can, since others could and probably will benefit from it. Still, it's not nearly as fun as writing a page about gong pits.
With the settlements page behind me, I undertook the 6-mile map page. This was absolute hell. It requires a lot of different pictures showing lots of different bits of information, all of which has been collected and built since twenty years ago, which I haven't had to explain to anyone, ever. There's something exposing about not only explaining what I do, but why it's the right thing to do. I find myself getting defensive and there's no reason for it; yet this is partly the effect that the internet has on all of us. We're doing something that no one else, anywhere, is doing, and yet we feel we have to defend it because we know there are voices out there who are ready to cry out, "Stop doing that! It's bad!" For reasons.
Fitting the various images with the text, to make it look accessible ... well, it looks good on my monitor. I use a zoom of 110%, so that letters appear on my desktop rather small. If I push the view up to 150%, the pictures jump all over the page and it looks like crap. I have no solutions for that. I would have it that wikimedia would let the text be adjusted by the reader without adjusting the size of the pictures; if someone knows how to do format that, let me know.
I have a characteristic that says if I'm going to get into describing something, I should describe it all. This is not always a good thing. It's like describing a fictional character's clothes by getting into how the buttons were sewn into the character's waistcoat. Still, with mapmaking, it feels like skirting over an issue is going to leave the reader going, "Where the fuck did that come from? I don't understand why he decided to do this ..."
There's no winning, I suppose. Chances are, I've forgotten to explain some part of the process along the way and I'm going to get the response anyway. These are, after all, only a first draft. I can make them better. Though I need some distance. I've stopped editing anything I created in the last three months. It's just better if I edit that same content as much as a year later, when like a reader, I have no idea what I meant.
Well. I need to do a post about rivers, but I'm going to kick that can down the road awhile. Two of these explaining technique posts are enough for now. I'll be happy to dig into a page about something as simple as cloth mills.
" There's something exposing about not only explaining what I do, but why it's the right thing to do. "
ReplyDeleteAnd those of us following along are grateful for the exposition. I had the lightbulb moment last week when reading a wiki update that ONE of the (many) things that elevates your work is that it ISN'T just a jumble of random tables - it's construction and purpose is explained. You think enough of us (?) to know that we're NOT just going to traipse along blindly.
"Still, with mapmaking, it feels like skirting over an issue is going to leave the reader going, 'Where the fuck did that come from? I don't understand why he decided to do this ...'"
When I come across one of those points I take a sip of my current beverage of choice and enjoy that feeling. That frisson of anticipation. Because I know that you intend to eventually get around to addressing it. Perhaps next year. Perhaps not. But we know it's coming.
As I've said before, I already know how to do this. The only reason to explain it is so that other people can do what I do, and decide for themselves if the reason I do it this way is a good one.
ReplyDeleteSomething I don't like about the endless how-to videos online is that they either want you to accept their way of doing it totally on faith, or they just say, "I'm doing this today," while they skip all the film bits that detail their method. They certainly DON'T show the scene where they measured wrong, had to rip it all out and start over ... because that scene is humbling and it's easy to feel shame about it. I myself feel a small wave of shame every time I point out that a city I plotted 15 years ago, like Uman, turns out to have been in the wrong place.
When I mapped the Ukraine, I'd been making my 20-mile maps for about 30 months. I'd already made a lot of mistakes and it makes sense that now, so many years later, I'm finding these errors and having to own up, since there's no way of replotting the city in a blog post without that being obvious. Screwing up is normal. But it hurts MUCH more to have to claim your own mistakes, and feel that inescapable bit of shame, than it is to experience some 'tard online chewing you out because the film "Nobody" isn't as good as you think it is.
I like those pages, but I understand how putting the process into words for us can be a pain.
ReplyDeleteStill, thank you for this.
Yes, but it's NECESSARY, Vlad. Otherwise I wouldn't do it.
ReplyDelete