As some of you know, my new campaign, Treasure Island, Is progressing nicely; the first scenario is done. I began work on the second scenario, entitled 'The Voyage' yesterday, and I've been thinking about it for quite a while. My problem was: "How do you make looking for an island on a giant water map with one ship fun and challenging?" And in my opinion, I have come up with a brilliant new solution.

Here's how it works:

A small corner of the map is turned into a "Navigation Center"

1. The first part is a palisade area representing a close up of the ship, used for unit action.

2. Another part of the Navigation Center is your instruments used for navigation. These instruments include a Sextant (represented by a scorpian, it is a tool used for navigation in the 18th century) that will tell you your longitude and latitude when clicked on, but only when the sky is clear (Thanks Pilot), because it uses heavenly bodies. (Good/Bad weather periods will be represented by another tool in the navigation center.) The triggers for it will be: Cond 1: Object in area (ship in area of a certain longitude and latitude.) Cond 2: object selected (sexant) Cond 3: object in area (Pavillon owned by the "Clear" player) Effect 1: Display Instructions (Your latitude and longitude). The longitude and latitude of the destination is given to the player beforehand.

3. The second instrument is the clear/clouds/storm indicator, with a pavillon that changes from the "clear" player to the "clouds" player and then the "storm" player at regular intervals. These will affect sextant use and maybe the wave and current patterns.

4. The fourth and most important tool is your Ship Steering wheel. Somewhat like a playstation controler, this is a pad with 10 palisades, each representing a direction: North, Northwest, West, etc. and stop. This works simply: when a palisade is selected, the ship is tasked the corresponding corner of the map. For example, If your ship is in the eastern corner of the map, and you select the "North" palisade, the ship won't go due north, but northwest, toward the northern corner of the map. At any time, you can change the ships course by clicking a different palisade, or click the pavillon to drop anchor and stop the ship.

5. The sea will be filled with currents and waves which are looping task object triggers with large 'set area' areas; and rocks and iceburgs that damage the ship.

Those are the basic elements, created with suprisingly few triggers. But to make an effective scenario, you need a good map and working triggers, as well as many additions of your own.

This system will be used in "The Voyage", part 2 of my new campaign, "Treasure Island". You can check out the thread here.

I have posted this so that other people and their campaigns can benefit from it, but if you intend to use this system I ask that you please do two things:

1.) Wait until I release Treasure Island. (Should be sometime in the next few months, It will be cleary made know of in the SD forum when it is released.)

2.) Drop a note somewhere in your work that the navigation system you used was based on King Bob VI's system.

Thanks.

[This message has been edited by King Bob VI (edited 07-19-2004 @ 08:21 AM).]