Topic

Home Street Networks and Home Street Navigation

So I have a couple of ideas, the first pretty straightfoward but linking into the second, which is a bit more work for TS.

The first is for Home Street Networks. Not cable shopping channels but a formalisation of routes such as the various Housing Resource Routes. Currently these are handled informally by Glitchen organising themselves and sticking other Glitches on certain signposts such that a circuit is formed. While the various route curators do a top job of sorting out problems, managing the routes isn't always straightforward. Further, it's not always easy to know which signpost to follow and if someone messes up their sign ordering you can end up on another route entirely.

The Home Street Networks would act like existing Groups for joining up or leaving. (Curators could even be given authority to approve new applicants before they fully join the network to replicate the current system.) However, in addition to current Group functionality, it would add a special Home Street Network sign to your signpost. So joining the 'Bean Tree Route' network would make 'Bean Tree Route' appear on your signpost rather than the name of the next person on the route. (Ideally the network signs could also be colour-coded so, for example, the bean route might all have green signs and the fruit route red signs.) Thus joining or leaving a network would be handled automagically rather than through manual coordination. Further, it would be much easier to follow a route or switch between routes as you know exactly what sign to choose next.

So far, so similar. However, the big benefit of formalising the system would be to allow better Home Street Navigation. When in Ur, I find the map and GPS to be invaluable for getting around. However, getting around between random Home Streets is an altogether more confusing experience because you never know quite where you are. Even on the HRR routes where you know which signpost to follow, you can't tell how far around the circuit you are without having to cross-reference with the list on the appropriate HRR forum. You end up feeling like a Glitchian Sam Beckett, hoping that each new street will have the signpost home! (And, yes, I know you can zoom straight to your own or another person's Home Street but we are talking workable navigation here.)

What I envisage would be, for whichever Home Street you are currently on, a set of different (automagically generated) subway/underground/metro/whatever style maps/graphs for each network that the street is a part of. Each map/graph would show, as connected nodes, the various members of that network. So, for my Home Street, you could see all the Bean Tree Route members on one graph, then switch to the Sparkly and Metal Route network and see all those. Currently the routes are just large circuits but ideally I'd like them to become more inter-connected to make navigation of subsets of the route easier. For example, a wheel topography with the curator at the centre and spokes going out to Glitchen on the rim circuit. Hovering over a node on a graph would tell you which other networks it connected to if you wanted to transfer. (This map/graph could also be done for standard, that is not Home Street Network, linking of Friends on your signpost although you'd obviously need to limit the depth of connections shown.)

Then, to cap this all off, you would have a search function similar to the Ur map where you could type in either a Glitch or a Home Street Network name and plot a GPS route that takes you to it via the least connections. (The six degrees of kevbob, if you will.)

Posted 6 months ago by Dr Evanzan Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • This would be much too complex to TS to handle, I imagine.
    Posted 6 months ago by AwesomeCardinal2000 Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Providing an inter-connected topography for a network would certainly be complicated, particularly as you would almost certainly need control at a signpost level over where you went next on the network. (That is, multiple signs going in different directions.)

    However, the Home Street Networks themselves would be fairly trivial. If you kept the network confined to a limited size and made it a one-way circuit, as the HRR are currently, basic navigation would be easy. A basic node graph should be do-able and the GPS would probably reuse the existing functionality.
    Posted 6 months ago by Dr Evanzan Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I really like your first idea. Special signposts for routes would be really helpful. I like your colour coding idea as well. I was lost on routes 3 times yesterday. Twice, signs didn't point where they were supposed to so I suddenly found myself on the wrong route. The other time was because I was distracted and followed the wrong sign - obviously my own fault but it would be nice to have an easy way of getting back on the route. I think that routes may become too large a burden for curators and if any parts of the process can be automated it will be a boon to them.
    Posted 6 months ago by Grackle Subscriber! | Permalink
  • On further reflection, the first idea could actually work out okay on its own.

    After reading about Boom and Bust's technique for distributing visitors around routes in this thread, I realise that there is an easier way of tackling the distribution around the network problem than interconnected networks. Just have using the Network Route sign take you to a random Home Street if you aren't part of the network (if you are it would be best to maintain the ordering so people can do complete loops without repetition).

    GPS would still be nice for home streets and the map would be nice. However, complicated inter-connections wouldn't be required. And as I've said, Home Street Networks would just be a specialisation of the existing Group functionality so wouldn't be as much work as something from scratch.
    Posted 6 months ago by Dr Evanzan Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I *LIKE* not knowing where I am.  I wander the streets to see where they will take me (one translation of KhaKhonsu is "the Wanderer goes forth").  The home streets are not mapped, because they are all in the realm of imagination.  
    Let go....
    Do not try to impose order on that which is meant to be as free and ephemeral as the butterflies flittering above the herb gardens....
    Ommmmmmmm.......
    Posted 6 months ago by KhaKhonsu Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I'm a Tiientist, by the Giants!
    Must impose order upon chaos!
    Posted 6 months ago by Dr Evanzan Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +1 to both. (If the first suggestion were implemented, the second would become possible.)
    Posted 6 months ago by Janitch Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I really want the HRRs to be formalized, but for different reasons.  Namely, I hate how much of each player's limited "real estate", for lack of a better term, is wasted with HRR stuff.  I can't remember the last time I saw a gnome say something funny or creative or interesting since they've all been commanded to give robotic, boring instructions that I'm sick of reading.  I love knowing who people's friends are and following organic, mindmap-style paths, so I die a little inside whenever I see someone's street signs taken up by yet another list of resource routes organized externally and with no connection to anyone's real relationships.  Even when I deliberately try to avoid routes, I always somehow end up back on them, meaning more boring robotic gnomes and more monochromatic streets filled with jellisac or spice or whatever.

    I realize that Scarlett is working to change this as best she can (by adding the Millionaire's Routes and Fuel Routes and so on), and I have massive respect for her ability to manage such a huge and useful enterprise... but the whole result just makes home streets depressing for me.  I never visit them any more.

    To return to your post, what I guess I'm trying to say is that I have a feeling that if the HRR's were folded into the "official" game, with separate, built-in street signs that I could follow or ignore as I choose, then streets would really belong to us again and people could give gnomes and street signs the personalities they want.
    Posted 6 months ago by Pale Queen Subscriber! | Permalink
  • D: I regret that you're sad and avoid home streets as a result of this.  I'm hoping that butlers mean that gnomes can go back to being gnomic. I have a gnome that lives in a tree because otherwise the lack of whimsy kills me. I also hope that additional features may come someday that can give the signpost destinations more visible annotations or distinctions so it's easier to avoid the routes if you want to do that and so that we can do away with mandating the use of a particular sign or the organization of someone's post.  It's just not possible to do that with the tools we have at the moment.

    I do want to say that although the initial network may be formed of random connections, there are real relationships formed between route members and also regular route users who may be spending their own time and resources on maintaining nodes on people's streets.  It's a form of gameplay that's not so visible unless you're actively engaging in it.  Don't get me wrong - not every member is "actively engaging" in this kind of community-building; it's not a necessary* outcome of route membership, and it's not necessarily even the common one.  However, it excites me when I catch glimpses of it.

    *in the technical sense.
    Posted 6 months ago by Scarlett Bearsdale Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Scarlett, I want you to know that I am not sad!  I mean, I am sad, but that's just because the world is a vale of tears and not because of anything you did.

    I think what you created here is amazing, and useful to big-time grinders (which I'm not -- I'm more of a flâneuse really).  I guess I just wish that it felt more like "the resource routes are available if you're short on bubbles / need a lot of sparkly really fast / are working on a quest" and less like "the entire home street system = a network of resource routes".   Just the other day Humbabella said something about how the gas route has 90 stops on it now (!) and takes two RL hours to walk (!!).  Is it any surprise that someone casually strolling through the homestreets is going to end up trapped in HRR?

    Anyway, thanks for hearing my complaints with such grace.  For the record, I LOVE maintaining nodes on other people's streets and I contribute to restoration projects whenever I find them, be it friend or stranger.  Nothing I say here comes out of a desire to avoid contributing.  Rather, it comes out of a wish to have home streets feel more "organic" and personal, less cookie-cutter and exurban, than they do to me right now.  YMMV, and a lot of people's M obviously does.  That's just fine, since Ur is still out there whenever I want to engage in flânerie.

    Anyway, to return to the point of the OP, I think that formalizing/officializing the HRR would ease both of our concerns -- you'd get whimsy back and wouldn't need to take it upon yourself to mandate what everybody's gnomes say, and I'd get the ability to see a variety of streets.
    Posted 6 months ago by Pale Queen Subscriber! | Permalink