Saturday, June 14, 2014

Game Design Philosophy: Looping World Maps

So, we're currently developing Chapter 3 of our role-playing game Selatria, and after some story events happen, the player gets access to the ship and is able to sail the open seas. However, we soon found out that the space between our easternmost continent and westernmost continent is very small due to the horizontal loop from the eastern edge and westernedge respectively.

Southern Half of World Map (In Development). The red is where the map originally would loop, and it would give the illusion that the Selatria world was really small. I'm hoping this new feature would alleviate this. Forgive my terrible red art!

The world for our game then seems really small, so I wanted to turn this into something a little fun and dynamic. The main Overworld will now run a parallel process event that tracks the X and Y coordinates of the player on the map. If the event notices that they're reaching the edge of the map at any given time, they will be transferred to a new map called "Overworld - Uncharted Waters".

In the Uncharted Waters, there will be stronger enemies than usual where the player can grind if they're underleveled (I'm going to make it dynamic based on the section of the game the player is on.) They can also collect little trinkets and other items that are "lost at sea". The items and enemies are randomly placed and will always reload whenever they enter the map.

I spent most of this morning planning it out and getting things up and running so far, and I think this will give the illusion to the players that Selatria's world isn't finite in terms of the story we're trying to tell.

 Uncharted Waters is going to have a different fog and color tone to emphasize mystery and exploration.

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Whim Independent Studios @ E3

L to R
Matt (Programmer/Designer of Selatria/ANTics)
Ryan (Selatria Writer)
Vee (Voice of Melanie - Selatria)
Paul V. (Business Admin/HR)
Me (Producer/Director of Selatria, Producer of ANTics)
Jen (Main Artist for Selatria, UI for ANTics)
Gerren (Lead Programmer ANTIcs)
Jon (Programmer/Designer of Selatria, Concept of ANTics)
Geno (Studio Logo)
Paul D. (ANTics Model/Art Design)

Monday, June 2, 2014

Python Programming Language

I'm growing fond of Python (the language, not the real-world snake)

I'm currently writing a small simple dungeon crawler to stick in my resume. The eventual goal will be to have a different game that one could play written in a different language when they click the link under relevant skills.

Make a professional activity a little more fun, anyway. (Also keeps me from being rusty!)