When Veridia is first injected, two things immediately jump out: the place is gorgeous, and the place is very empty.
I'll comment on the presentation first. Veridia, graphically, is very beautiful. Apart from some smudging around the walkways taken from C2, it's one of those places you can stare at for hours and not get bored. I wouldn't say it's as atmospheric as Aquamind or the Oasis, but if you're looking for beauty you'll certainly be satisfied here.
The graphics have the bonus of making the task of finding appropriate agents for the room a little easier. At the very least, there's plenty of background flora to put patch plants on.
Now onto the emptiness. Soliloquy had the intention of making Veridia a large, customizable expanse not unlike the Biodome. For the most part, it was a success. Veridia's one of the best rooms to use with the Garden Box, due to all the background flora for patch plants and wide expanse for other plants.
However, my main criticism with this room ties into to the fact that there's nothing in there to begin with (besides CA emitters, elevators, etc.).
These walkways are certainly pretty and help fill up what would otherwise be empty space, but for practical purposes they might as well not be there. The only level in the room that is actually fertile is the lowest level. Couple this with the fact that the Garden Box patch plants and a ton of third-party potted plants tend to just fall past the walkways, and creatures in here have absolutely no reason to go up into the canopy. Sure, you could cover the walkways with vendors and toys, but why should a creature go up a floor to use a vendor when it could stay on the ground level and find food without any extra effort? It doesn't help that the elevators are derived from the C2toDS elevators and therefore lack pull scripts (and therefore tend to confuse the heck out of creatures), and that there's no CA links to start with (though that's rectified with Amai's Magic Words Room Edits).
As a result of all this, I really don't find myself enjoying Veridia as much as other people. I do like the place, don't get me wrong, but having only one level that's really open to customization is a bit of a turn-off.
Summary: Veridia is a great metaroom. It's beautiful, creature-friendly (despite the elevators), and goes hand-in-hand with the Garden Box and Magic Words Room Edits. However, its attempt to be a customizable metaroom really falls flat when you consider the fact that it has one fertile level. Your creatures will enjoy being in here, but don't expect them to want to go up to the upper levels anytime soon.
Final score: 7/10
I used Veridia on the recent wolfling run, and couldn't understand why the norns just wouldn't use the upper levels, even when the walkways were tweaked to stop stuff falling through - though I suspect the problem with the lifts could explain it. I wonder if deleting the lifts and replacing them with elevines would help?
ReplyDeleteYou should have some success if you both replace the default lifts with elevines and use the Magic Words Room Edits to link up the levels.
DeleteDo note that the problem with the elevators also carries over to the Biodome (it also has C2toDS-style lifts), though you shouldn't have to link the levels there.
That's strange - the norns seem happier in the Biodome, though I use elevines by default in the lower levels because I've never seen a creature get the hang of that 4-level lift - and there appear to be no call buttons! But I think a lot of the lift-riding is due to them having an instinct to push buttons when bored, rather than going in search of something less boring to do instead...
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