oblivion - will there be a generate button?

Hi!

As many others i am already waiting for the release. A friend of mine made a site for it: http://oblivion.melian.cc


But that's not why i started the post. I was thinking while looking at the screenshots, that the trees and nature are completely generated by the computer. So when i start the game it will generate my version of oblivion. But will it remember it or will it generate it new every time i enter the game or dungeon or.. i don't know, like diablo 2 the map.

I thought of running through the forest in circles becouse everything is generated over and over again and you have no point of reference (except of a map) where you have to go..

Playing Gothic 2 we started to memorize which plants we find on which sites.. like a specific tree... now what? The tree is there but the plant not... the tree and the plant are moved 50 meters to the west.. the plant is there but the tree not..
That's a new way of playing scottland yard.

The other way would be that the forest is generated only one time after creating a new character, specific to the hardware you have installed. But then, what if you change it to a better one, will you still see the old version. Will there be a generate button to recreate the forest?

Let the question enter yourself and think of it as activity for the break until the game is in your hands.

googlemaps api

As i was thinking the other day why shouldn't somebody try to use the googlemaps engine, or sort of it for fantasy worlds, it just happen to be me one week later ;-)

My first approach was to try to understand the engine just by examing their code and the dominspector... but after a while of searching i found something great. You can use the googlemaps api from google themselves. Just create your onw code and voila everything is working..

http://www.google.com/apis/maps/

Also there are a mass of tutorials and helps how to work with the api and how to add custom maps, although they only think of adding just parts of the map and not a completely new map.

http://www.mapki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

http://www.econym.demon.co.uk/googlemaps/index.htm

I would also recommend looking into the Google Group for the Api for help. There is always something you can work with.

Happy mapping!

Honeymoon

Now something intechnical.. since i wrote most times something about php, css or mysql ;-)

I just got back this week from my honeymoon at Buenos Aires and i have to say, it was really lovely there. Living in the City, talking to people and dancing was really helping shutting down the normally technical problems ..

I should add i did not speak spanish, so i had to learn some words to make my way through, although they all speak english and there is always a way to comunicate, even without words...

Finally i managed to ask how much something costs in spanish, but the problem was, i did not understand what they were answering.. *lol*.. so i had to learn some new techniques to find it out without using english and without looking like someone who is not able to speak spanish...

But i managed and now i am going to take some lessons so i may do more than just ask a few questions.. I think this is one reason to travel to a foreign country, to learn about their culture, their language, their life... it's not always different then ours, but it's definetly fun!

Of course i also had some Troubles to realize that i am married now.. i mean nothing changed except now i have a wife... i mean a real Wife... well, let's take one step after another.. tomorrow i will realize that we will have to get some childrens some day.. ;-))