Lots of people seem to think that the maps generated by the random generator are somewhat ermmm....suboptimal, and that a human could do a much better job. Of course, making one's own map is no fun, since carefully crafting it makes it too easy to play on, since you obviously know where everything is.
Getting maps made by other people seems like the obvious solution, but this is somewhat of a hit-and-miss affair, since you have no way to tell whether the map is any good or not. Further, most maps made by people are either parts of the real world, or follow some weird or whacky theme ("gold rushes" seem popular, as do weird patterns and symettery); while these are a nice novelty, often I find myself just wanting to play a nice, realistic-looking, but finely crafted human-made map. These are difficult to find however, and one either has to look at it before playing or risk getting half way through the game to find that the map is crap.
As such, I think it would be a good idea to have a collection of maps that are made in the style of the automatically-generated maps (i.e. don't follow any "themes", are just finely crafted maps of worlds), that have been verified for quality; perhaps by some kind of voting system, where people who have already played/seen the map vote for the quality of the map. This way, people could obtain good quality maps which they can play without first having to view the map.
Does anyone know if such a collection already exists? If not, would there be interest in starting one?
Getting maps made by other people seems like the obvious solution, but this is somewhat of a hit-and-miss affair, since you have no way to tell whether the map is any good or not. Further, most maps made by people are either parts of the real world, or follow some weird or whacky theme ("gold rushes" seem popular, as do weird patterns and symettery); while these are a nice novelty, often I find myself just wanting to play a nice, realistic-looking, but finely crafted human-made map. These are difficult to find however, and one either has to look at it before playing or risk getting half way through the game to find that the map is crap.
As such, I think it would be a good idea to have a collection of maps that are made in the style of the automatically-generated maps (i.e. don't follow any "themes", are just finely crafted maps of worlds), that have been verified for quality; perhaps by some kind of voting system, where people who have already played/seen the map vote for the quality of the map. This way, people could obtain good quality maps which they can play without first having to view the map.
Does anyone know if such a collection already exists? If not, would there be interest in starting one?
