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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.