Building Standards

PROJECTS FOR BUILDERS

Areas to Describe

District 1

- The Commerce Hub

- City Hall

- ACC Station

District 2

- Pawn Alley

- Refinery Row

- Catwalk System

District 3

- Street of Lights

- Mall

- Trade Alley

District 4

- University

- Hospital

- Pleasure Garden

Tailoring

- Needs additional recipes beyond shirt and pants to cover wearlocs (note items can only be assigned to one wearloc)

- Needs additional bolts of fabric. Lean heavily into sci-fi ideas like interesting synthetics, but you can certainly include fabrics woven from Artemis native plants as well.

BASIC STANDARDS

Desc Length:

3-5 sentences - you can go longer for a very complicated or unusual room, but if it's too long, consider putting some details on items instead so people can look at them separately.

Desc Style:

Person: Third person (so don't use 'you').

Spelling: Uniform American spelling throughout - use color, theater, center, etc. The one exception is "grey" because that just sounds way better than "gray".

Tense: Write all descriptions in present tense (i.e., "Slate tiles stretch across the plaza", not "Slate tiles stretched across the plaza.")

Contents: Focus on giving a general feeling of the area, the most obvious features, and adding some details to make it lively and interesting. You CAN include items in the descs in the same way you can in Untold Dawn right now.

Desc Examples:

D1 Pedestrian Airlock (#140)

A graceful glass dome rises about ten meters in height here, the light of Artemis's sun dimmed by smoky grey hexagonal panes overhead.  Foot traffic flows smoothly in two separate directions, black-tiled floors ringing with the constant footsteps of those exiting east toward Callysto Crater or west into the great domed City itself. The two streams of humanity are neatly divided by a great cylindrical column of clear glass, serving as the centerpiece of this space. Within it, an ancient fossil towers nearly all the way to the ceiling: blackened ribs protruding from a jagged nest of obsidian flakes, as if caught mid-eruption from volcanic earth.

M.E.R.L.I.N. Corporation - Craft Hall (#216)

   This vast hall is the heart of tailoring on Artemis. Rows of MERLIN workbenches line the floor, each paired with a cloth dispenser that whirs softly as fabric slides through mechanical arms. The air carries the faint scent of ozone and synthetic dye, the ambient chatter of tailors weaving through the mechanical drone. Above it all, the company's emblem - a sharp cyan sigil etched in chrome - casts a cold, white light across the room, glinting off mannequins half-dressed in prototypes of workwear and urban uniforms. Representatives of the MERLIN Corporation move between stations, clipboards in hand, observing and advising those who come here to rent their devices.

SETTING THE MOOD

We want things to have a cyberpunk-esque feel - technology embedded heavily in daily life, neon lights, colorful graffiti, profound contrasts between the rich and the poor.

But we also want to make them reflect the reality of life on Artemis. The city is multicultural, with a melting pot of different Earth influences. When you name NPCs or create restaurants, for example, consider looking all across the world for inspiration.

And Artemis itself has its own specific influences. For example, you can think about how people might use abundant local resources like obsidian or quoraja wood to decorate. You can create novel local resources too - but be sure to run them by the staff!

Living in a domed city is also very different from living in an open one. Space is at a premium, so people are very good at maximizing their use of vertical space as well (i.e., rooftop and window gardening, Murphy beds, etc.) Feel free to build UP rather than OUT, as long as it makes sense with the map.

NOTE: You'll see rooms with little notes jotted down in their descs. These are ideas or suggestions - use them if you can, but feel free to go in a different direction!

Sample Building Materials

You're not limited to this list, but it'll hopefully be helpful guidance.

Limestone bricks - Most of D1 and D4's buildings are probably made with these. D1 because it was easy with all the dug-up limestone - D4 because it was classy.

Concrete - Likely a lot of cheaper buildings, especially in D2 and some parts of D3, use concrete instead of limestone.

Slate tiles - The default pedestrian outdoor flooring when nothing too fancy is called for.

MolecuFlex - A self-healing dark flexible material used for making highways.

Chromex - An alloy of primarily steel combined with multiple other metals, tempered to be lightweight, flexible, and strong. The Hab/Expeditor was largely made of this, it seems like, so panels from that might have been repurposed for makeshift structures (especially in D2). Prettier versions of this might be used alongside glass for cutting-edge, corporate buildings.

Area-Specific Details

D1:

The oldest part of the city. Built to be comfortable, pleasant, and somewhat utilitarian. The central plaza is floored in slate tiles, and most buildings are made from limestone bricks. However, some buildings (like City Hall) are on the much fancier side, while others may be a bit humbler. The vast majority of the city lives here in some nebulous middle-class state

D2:

Built explicitly for holding industrial facilities and the waste treatment plant, D2 is not pretty. People were not originally intended to live here, so the infrastructure for them is poorly supported. Think rusty catwalks, lean-tos and shanties, and even spaces carved out of the rock. Kinda go wild with grease, smog, and nooks and crannies. Note that the existing area carved out of the rock (beginning at #522 and going north/east/up) is a generally criminal area.

D3:

Built as the civic heart of the city, it has huge variability between its zones. The Street of Lights is full of tech and futuristic things - think Akihabara, Tokyo, Japan for inspiration. But the more explicitly Civic Alley (please rename this for me) is a lot more low-key with a focus on culture, and then the Trade Alley area (also please rename this) is more industrial.

D4:

D4 was built for the rich elites who were awoken at the end, so it should be absolutely gorgeous. Hearken back to classical Earth architecture and snobbery, but feel free to add some wild sci-fi inspiration too. The theme is luxury for the elite.

City Layout Notes

The city is made of four huge domes, interconnected by a network of tunnels, subways, and roads.

Each dome consists of one gigantic central plaza, which is four rooms in game - so D1 Northeast, D1 Northwest, etc. From these plazas, there are side streets and alleyways arching off in different directions.

D1, D3, and D4 are free-standing domes, while D2 is more like a half-dome, sloping down from the top of the cliff. This means D2 has some rooms built into the rock itself, and more verticality, especially at that back wall.