Before DS1

yes i have. a prequel like that should actually be a good idea for ds3 but apparently some game companies have lousier ideas than i do. such is the way when they have a name ending with nub.

however, such a huge undertaking wud be a whole entire complete game to itself. since we are talking about worldwide domination. an empire that conquered the world like genghis khan and his mongolian hordes.

There are already several maps for maps that where never completed by their authors that we could possibly use. The story line exists see game resources "Dungeon Siege History"
I agree that the whole story could not be told in one map but it could be broken down into sections. Let me do a little thinking about what already existing maps could be used and what the various quests and chapters might be.

I think I would start here at the point where the Utraean Empire and the Empire of Stars first met and the creation of Ehb. We could follow this story line. Learning how Commander of the Second Imperial Legion Lord Hovart and the Utraean Commander in the peninsula, a female named Ashish, became romantically involved. How this created the Hovart and his folly that we know from later on and how Ashish was punished by the Utraeans and turned into the lost queen. Show why the Seck once an important part of the Empire of Stars and its legions rebelled and became the enemy we know. The humans, elves and dwarves speak poorly of the Utraeans but the empire of stars was just as bad in how they treated their subject races and countries as the Utraeans. One must remember that history is always written by the victorious and since we see the world through the decendents of the Empire of Stars...

We could also redo Ehb from the point of view of the Utraeans, the Seck, or one of the other races.

There are a many stories and we would not have to make a giant map to tell them. we could make several smaller maps that cover sections of the story or retelling of the story from the point of view of another empire or group.
The story line
The first encounter between the Utraean Empire and the Empire of Stars was violent. A cartography group of imperials were viciously attacked by the Utraeans near the western shores of Aranna, what is now Ehb. While most of imperials in this group were killed, several escaped to warn the empire of the coming danger. Utraeans also began landing on the island of Greilyn, and the eastern shores of Aranna that are located far above Ehb, known as Iliara.

By this point, most of the southwestern parts of Aranna had been mapped by the two explorers Fedwyrr and Klars. Their cartography was responsible for a great deal of the Empire of Stars’ expansion. In the years that followed, dozens of small towns and trading posts appeared in the new territory known as Ehb.

Imperial scouts searching Mount Frostspire found a lone statue of a Human warrior with a nameplate saying "Glacern". It emanated magical warding that Krug and Droog would not go near, so a town was built around it. The statue remains, an object of great scrutiny and curiosity. Its origins are still unknown. After mining and trade was established, a stone tower was built as a way station for couriers and messengers. Walls were built to keep Yeti from wandering into town in search of food. Soon after, the 2nd Legion was sent into Ehb to defend its borders from the Utraeans.

The Droog are original inhabitants of Ehb, believing they are descended from the Heavens, where they were banished because of the misdeeds of their forefathers. The Droog live in villages in the Cliffs of Fire, but are now traveling to foreign lands, and living more spread out in Ehb. They traded with Humans and Goblins, often choosing to stay neutral in combat. The Droog are led by a council called the Circle of the First. In the early years of Ehb, the Droog disliked the demands made by Human traders, 2nd Legionaries, and Goblins. They orchestrated a scheme causing all sides to fight against each other for more exclusive trade. This fighting is known as the Green Range Conflict. These events also convinced the Seck corps within the 2nd Legion to rebel from the Empire and take Ehb over. The Droog constantly act to atone for their sins.

The other race that is native to Ehb are the Krug. Krug lived in Ehb before it was colonized. They were once thought to be unintelligent, not understanding simple concepts like fire. Their culture is a hodgepodge of other cultures they come in contact with. They communicate in their own language based on grunts and hand gestures. Krug were often used for labor and were easily exploited. In today’s world, they are treated much more fairly.

The Seck began building Castle Ehb as a fortress to defend from the Utraeans pushing from the Utraean Peninsula. In order to do so, they cleared several thousand Droog from their construction site and relocated them elsewhere. This was known as the Great Relocation. The Droog town was leveled. This caused much aggression from the Droog. Castle Ehb would not be complete for years, so the 2nd Legion built fortress Kroth. The Droog moved their society to the nearby Cliffs of Fire.

Castle Ehb is considered the only impregnable castle other than the Palace of Night. Designed by craftsmen brought in by the Empire, and largely built and overseen by the 2nd Legion, the castle stands on a hill of granite, once where a Droog town stood. The castle can see ahead for miles. The castle now is where the rulers of Ehb reside. It also acts as a location of the Chamber of Stars, where magical weapons the 10th Legion took from the Empire in its dying days are stored.

Several years after the creation of Fortress Kroth, the Seck soldiers engaged in a rebellion, killing all of the 2nd Legion Human and Elven soldiers stationed at the fortress, including the 2nd Legion Commander, Lord Hovart. The remainder of the 2nd Legion was stationed throughout the Utraean Peninsula.

When word of the Seck Rebellion in Ehb reached Veransk II in Iliyara, he ordered the 10th Legion to leave Lescanza and to travel to Ehb to destroy the Seck threat. The 10th Legion had just successfully defeated the enemy forces in Lescanza, finally uniting it with the Empire of Stars. Fighting would occur throughout the forests of Ehb for many weeks until the Seck were pushed back to their fortress. The 10th and 2nd Legions surrounded Fortress Kroth. In the final days of the Seck rebellion, remaining Seck hardliners made a final stand in Fortress Kroth. The Seck responded to terms of surrender by launching the heads of slain legionnaires over the walls. The 10th Legion took the fortress and executed the surviving Seck leaders for treason to the Empire of Stars.

Their task fulfilled, the 10th Legion returned to the Plain of Tears, leaving the 2nd Legion in control of Ehb once again. The Emperor deployed over three thousand more soldiers to reinforce the 2nd Legion. Ehb was designated an official military protectorate and province under the empire. Lord Hovart’s body was moved and buried in his fortress in the Utraean Peninsula.

I'd seriously doubt that another Dungeon Siege will ever be made, let alone a prequel. Considering what a backwards step DSIII was, would we want another game in the Dungeon Siege series from Square-Enix?

I also seriously doubt that anyone in the community would be prepared in making such a map, especially as very few maps were ever made for DS2 in the first place.

The best chance of something like that happening would be to reuse existing map regions in a different order, with different textures and different objects. For example replacing the jungle textures with snow textures and the objects with snow objects, and vice versa.

They could also be connected in different ways to make a non-linear map like the Utraean Peninsula. Possible regions from DS1 could also be used as well as third party and art pack models to add variety.

I have thought about creating such a conglomeration of regions in order to make a new map in the past but have been put off by the sheer amount of work involved. Putting all the regions together would be relatively easy but populating the new map with objects and then conversations and quests, etc, is just too much for any individual or even a small team.

Still for interest I may put together a few regions to see how it comes out and could always plonk it into the unfinished projects sections of the downloads here at Siegethday, which has zilch at the moment. Such an endeavour will have to wait for a while as I'm very busy at present.

the document u have linked doesnt appear to contain much of the events prior to the formation of the empire stars which is great... this gives me more flexibility/leeway/creativity to make up my own storyline as i had an idea to make a "dungeon siege: rise of stars" or "rise of the stars" or some such.

Yes Notepad is a very useful tool, probably even better than the more advanced "Notepad" clones as it's so simple and uncluttered.

When I created the extended regions for LOA and DS2BW Adepts, the editor would paint the new terrain with default textures. Before I discovered the trick to applying them properly in the Editor I used to open nodes.gas and find/copy/paste the texture in texsetabbr for the new nodes. As you say this would still be the easiest way to mass replace all the textures in a region.

There are limitations to this method but at a glance there's up to 15 texture sets that could be used for DS1 nodes. I'm not sure how many there would be for DS2 but it looks like around 26 texture sets.

I briefly tested making a new region and populated it with the starting regions from the Utraean Peninsula (all blank with no objects). I haven't gone any further yet or attempted to stitch them together.

Following on some of the suggestions in this thread I present this bare bones tech demo;
http://www.siegetheday.org/~iryan/files/Dungeon_Siege_Origins_Test.ds2res

Please note that this is a tech demo and while you can play on it, it has no monsters to fight and nothing much to do. Its purpose is to demonstrate a couple of techniques and ideas. Pure and Simple.

It consists of 7 regions, all cloned as prefabs from DS2, Kingdom of Ehb and Utrean Peninsula regions and placed and stitched together in a new map. There is also my take of an early frontier style rapid transportation system since the map is set well before teleporters were ever constructed (though it still uses the DS2 teleporter effect). So you can walk through all 7 regions and zip quickly between the 2 towns included in the map.

As all regions are from existing maps, it'll be easy to pick where they come from, especially the starting town, though the textures have been changed on several of them. Would have been better except SE2 refused to allow me to do it in the Editor, yet I have been able to do this in the past, so I had to use Notepad to edit nodes.gas. Has anyone any ideas of this?

Making prefabs of existing regions and placing them into new maps is very easy to do. Stitching regions together is also easy once you understand the process.

The title of this map is Dungeon Siege- Origins of Empire. Like bare_elf suggested it would cover the events leading to the creation of the Empire of Stars. My take on it (as I've remarked before) is that the 11 tribes that inhabit Wenanda (Plains of Tears) decide to form a new coalition or republic to better defend themselves against the bandits which plague them and events like the War with the Familiars and Arinth's madness which nearly destroyed the Edhel tribe (Aman'lu).

However the humans of Lescanza refuse to join the coalition and instead decide to prevent it by assassinating the leaders of the 11 tribes when they meet at Iliyara to discuss forming the new republic. The hero discovers the plot and eventually stops it at the last moment. However the result of this event is to convince the leaders of the 11 tribes to instead create an Empire by giving full power to Almar, leader of Iliyara, so that the new nation could better protect itself against the threat from Lescanza. So the deeds of the hero directly creates the Empire of Stars which eventually leads to the events of Dungeon Siege 1 and 2.

My vision of such a map would be that like the Elder Scrolls games, the player could quickly reach each of the 11 towns in the game if they stuck to the main roads which would be free of monsters except for the odd bandits and roaming monsters. This means that like the Elder Scrolls games, the player could, if they wish, finish the main quest relatively quickly and at a relatively low level but probably only have explored a quarter of the map. Instead secondary quests would encourage the player to explore the wilderness areas for gold, loot and ancient artifacts.

I think the experiences of mapping for Dungeon Siege and especially DS2, has shown that it is too complicated and time consuming to construct maps and regions from scratch. Instead if we use existing regions as bases to build on, then the backbone of a map with many regions could be constructed quite quickly which hopefully would then encourage others to contribute by painting this blank canvas with objects and actors. This could be a great community project!

Apologies for the long post but I think there's potential with bare_elf's idea. Imagine being involved in the events leading to the formation of the Empire of Stars, meeting long lost races like the Sea Elves and Water Nymphs. Coming into contact with the Seck before they were enemies, perhaps meeting Agallan Giants and even the Utgards. Sadly no Half-Giants or Dryads but some things change. Talking with Almar I, the first emperor of the Empire of Stars, before he became emperor. Reminiscing with the legendary Isteru about the events of the first war with the Familiars and Arinth's madness.

So I welcome ideas and suggestions about such a project. Good idea or a waste of time. What you would like to see, etc.

So that is what you been doing iryan, I can not look at it right now as this computer does not have DS2 on it but first thing tomorrow i will give it a look and then put my ideas and thoughts into a language that humans can read and post them here.

An interesting discovery - the complete map of Aranna courtesy of rpgfan.com forums. Unfortunately the original post has expired. Apparently it comes from the Deluxe Edition of DS2. Apologies if this has already been posted here at Siegetheday or any of the linked sites, though I could find no references to anything like it.

Iryan, I've been thinking about combining and finish all the various regions I've made in the past for DS2. I like placing nodes. The tricky part for me is that I get picky with game objects (trees, foliage, etc.). I'm into sharing content with other modders as long as they give me credit for what I did. Node placement isn't terribly time consuming for me. I've had practice since DS1, lol. It's easy to give up on a map when you have to do everything (node placement, object placement, lighting, custom content, and quests). I hope you go with this idea. I have a different vision for my map + mod. It's quite the opposite. I'm more into doing a twitch style (super fast monsters and items to increase player speed) map with tons of monsters akin to D2/3 rather than Elder Scrolls. However, different strokes for different folks!

I have a far from complete map attached to this post. The node placement is complete in two regions. The dungeon should be easy to stitch to a DS2 region or another region. The monsters in the island beach region are all generated using tuning. Their are custom monster templates, sfx (yellow lightning for a grangerfly), textures (edited gpg ones), and perhaps other things I'm forgetting. I made this map a long time ago and gave up on it. I had a second version I didn't compile to ds2map, so I just did it. If anyone wants to play, it starts off at lvl 24. The monster placement in the dungeon isn't complete, so you may not want to waste your time wandering around in it if you're just playing.

Edit: I can't seem to get the attachment to work. Here is a link to the map and ds2res zip:

http://siegetheday.org/?q=node/2958

My idea is just a suggestion and even then there would be plenty for players to do, it would be just a choice. It just seems odd that in relatively civilized settings, the whole countryside between towns is filled with monsters. How do they trade with each other or travel between towns?

I agree about its very easy giving up on a map due to the sheer volume of things that need to be done to get it looking right. I'm also a perfectionist and continually tweaking things to make them better. So the idea for reusing existing regions but changing the textures and/or object sets, etc. Potentially there's all of DS2, Kingdom of Ehb, Utraean Peninsula and Yesterhaven regions that could be used to create a mega map.

Just a few thoughts on the world prior to the founding of the Empire of Stars. I would think most settlements would be small villages or towns with just the beginnings of palisades. Maybe a town wall that is being constructed of stone but still mostly of wood. If there where a castle or major church in the town it would still be under construction as up until this time there had been very little open warfare since the settlements and the various tribes where still small enough to not cross paths in anger often. Raiding between tribes and others that lived in the land for things like live stock would occur from time to time and would have to be dealt with but for the most part things would be peaceful.
The trade routes would be safe from monsters because they would be protected with magic wards set up by the trading partners treaties. Only routes outside the specific ones established by treaty would be infested with evil creatures. There would also not be monsters located in a town for the same reason.
Now on the other hand bandits and pirates could be found in various locations even if the trade route between towns where protected by magic. However there would be mercenary troops that could be hired to protect a party moving over the trade routes. These troups would not be members of your party but would operate like the town guards that will help you attack things if you bring them within range of the battle. Or like the people at winstone fortress that you have to rescue, and bring to their commanding officer. Now if one did not pay the fee to hire them either because of lack of funds or being cheap, the guards might just revert to their other guise of bandits and attack you as soon as you where out of the range of the city archers.
The “hero” of the tale would be the cause of the creation of the empire of stars as you said Iryan.
I am not exactly sure how the tribes would teleport between locations as they had not met the utraeans formally yet. Most likely via magic. Now I would put a restriction on what could be transported so that the teleport was used only in a dire emergency. No trade goods or personal property only the actual person. Kind of the way it happens when your party is killed and has to resurrect. You have to pay some wizard to get your things back. This would have two benefits the first being that most players would not wish to spend the money on this when they could walk on relatively safe roads from town to town, exploring the nooks and crannies of the map and venturing on side quests. It would also open the story to things like “I wonder who built these buildings, I thought we where the first people to live in this area.”

Benefit 1: more exploring
Benefit 2: merchants would make more money (not something the average player would care about really)
Now stuff put in the storage trunk in one town would be there in all towns just as it would be in DS2. So you could stock duplicates of special weapons, spells and armor for use after transport. I do that in any case just because I like to have a backup plan if I need it.

For rapid transportation between towns I was thinking something along the lines of using horses.

This is a rather crude implementation where you click on the horse and the teleporter menu comes up. When transporting the standard fx plays.

Games like Oblivion and Skyrim allow you to click on a town's name in the map and instantly transport there with the passage of time. This isn't possible in Dungeon Siege so instead I experimented with using horses to represent fast travel.

We have to be careful about alienating players by restricting things too much or they lose the incentive to play.

So only some equipment has been invented? Leather and scale armors yes, for example, but no plate. Plenty of high-level clubs and maces, but good swords rare?

@iryan: I just wandered a little bit around...

It's really a funny idea to have a horse to represent a 'fast travelling' feature. You also could put player's storage vault on/near a cart as 'visual explanation' why/how the tresor automatically moves from one place to another!?

I'm not sure if DS2 ever provided a good explanation where Teleporter stations and Town portal spell really came from. So it could be an advancement of Utraean Hub system, or descend from something completely different.

The teleportation effect could be replaced, other colors perhaps, some street/cart noise maybe, in worst case Bonanza music. :P

In practice I imagine there would be stables with a sign indicating that transportation is available there. Quite possibly instead of clicking on a horse the player would just click on the sign or maybe a stablemaster? It would then be nice if there was a fee that had to be payed for using the service as bare_elf suggested earlier. I'm not sure how complicated that would be to implement. If so it could possibly be dialog based like the pet seller as the existing teleporter menu wouldn't be needed and would probably be better without it as the map wouldn't be needed as this is set in times before cartography was known.

If making a dialog based selection service was impractical then invisible portals could be used instead of teleporters but they don't give a choice where to go. Instead a sign would need to be placed before each horse to indicate where it would take you.

Incidentally I've also thought of using boats as well to transport players around the world and they would work the same way.

I like the horses and the boats for transport from sea town to sea town or island. We could also maybe use a trained harpy or large bird as a teleport object. Even those animals that the two morden in broken world where riding as they tried to escape the war and go on vacation. If you did use the horses and had one named for each place you could go could there also be a random horse that would take you where it liked? Ha Ha silly elf a random horse would take you to a random house where they where making books. Sorry its a librarian joke.

was thinking about taming Talon the dragon or some other dragon for my transport around. wouldn't be hard to rig ups since talon already has a video, and with the rider.skrit code just put a sitting anim on talon and boom one bad ass fire breathing dragon flight.

I'm not so sure about sitting on a dragon, but... is there an air cargo container from the DS2 tutorial beach also available as object model/mesh?

Or a (hot-air) balloon possibly could work too!?
For example immagine a huge fury eye as balloon, some robe-like objects, and some kind of basket underneath with sand sacks.
Of course, as wind-dependant as it is, there schould be some chance to finally land at the wrong place.

i would like to express support of the idea of a stable/dock/birdmaster which u wud talk to and pay a fee for using the horse/ship/bird transporter.

after paying the fee, the player is then given a ticket quest object which then allows activation of the horse/ship/bird transporter object.

after selecting a destination in the teleporter destination choice menu and going there, the ticket quest item is then removed from the player's inventory. they wud then have to pay the fee again to get the ticket to use the horse/ship/bird transporter object each time they wish to fast travel between locations.

this is mostly suggested from stuff which already exists a framework for in ds and should not cause a headache to implement in-game.

as for dragon air transport, its going to be prohibitively expensive and difficult to acquire and tame a dragon for such a use. even if it exists, it wud be prohibitively expensive even for the average adventurer to use for their means of transportation. also, it runs the risk of the flight going missing mysteriously if something happens like the dragon breaking free and eating up all the passengers.

something like that happened in our world recently... im guessing aliens ate the passengers... as for those who think how can sumthing as large as a plane or a dragon disappear, im going to say a plane or a dragon is not large compared to the vastness of the oceans which cover 70% of the planet's surface. we must not forget our place in the universe... or our size for that matter compared to the vastness of what's out there... oops... off-topic again hahaha! :mrgreen:

anyway, i think air transport is a little too sophisticated and expensive for a medieval world like ds. shud prolly keep the means of transportation in the world more down to earth and grounded. if air travel is a must, then i wud have to suggest magical flying persian carpets!

paying a fee for flight sounds too much like WoW and I use to go broke paying those fees, as for DS transportation has always been free.

what happened recently to the Malaysia plane is truly saddening, I would be angered too if I was the victims family, my theory is the plane was hijacked, and either landed or crashed on land, I believe they could have been taken captive as hostages... perhaps I seen an episode of "Lost" on tv, but I truly believe they are looking in the wrong places for the plane.

as for the magic carpet, there exist in game carpet, perhaps, a carpet rigged with a hover anim would work, sounds like something out of the movie "Aladdin"

Maybe a nominal fee like a small mana potion or item from from a party member's inventory that is no longer needed. There could even be a token machine somewhere in the town like the automated vender machines that gives you a ticket for free. I was just thinking along the line of a trick to the transport. Like the Transport vender says "You need a ticket" but he will not tell you where to find it. you just have to look around for a logical place.

You could make the ticket a quest item. Call it a lifetime pass or something. The tickets could be a quest so it isn't hard to find.