Game design talk - the World Map

I will not go in-depth of other aspects of world building just yet, however I have to touch on some mechanics (that will be more explained in future posts) in order to reveal why this map fits the story and the mechanics.

This project started out with the idea of what the basic gameplay should look like and immediately after, I started working on the story. The plot of course demanded certain geographical elements; in particular: a main continent, partially separated across the middle, a remote island and a smaller bit of land at the middle of the map, surrounded by a body of water and I needed the whole map to be circular. I started drawing my own "fantasy" map after going through a lot of tutorials on the subject. However, I was never quite satisfied with my map and kept tinkering with it. Until one day I came across a map of an "ice-less" Antarctica. I realized that it contained all necessary elements, so I scraped all my previous attempts and started world-building on this map.

The white color you see is land and black represents the ocean. The plan is to add even more walkable surfaces. Ice surfaces for example are planned to surround the Antarctic continent and they behave different from land as ice can be broken up or melted. As you probably figured out, I am doing a reverse climate with the ice-less Antarctica surrounded by ice, which should intrigue the player. This climate change ties in with the story, as well.



I previously mentioned that I chose this map because it fits the mechanics of the game as well. The mechanic I had in mind was the death system (more about that next time). In short, you will "respawn" after you die at the middle of the map, which means the further from the center of the map you go, the more risk you feel and that ties in with the apocalyptic frost that is spreading towards the continent, and the sense of danger you are supposed to feel as you move away from the warm center. Again, I am just touching on some mechanic and story elements here, more details about those are coming soon.



As you can see, the size of the world is not exactly small.

If you've been wondering why there were no updates on development, then I might have a pretty good reason.

Sommer is coming and with it the end of the school year and with that of course The final exams. Not just any finals though, but finals which decide whether I can go to my desired college or not. I'd say "wish me luck" at this point of the paragraph, but the written exams are already over anyway. Only the oral exams remain, but those are worth only 20% anyway.

The development of THE RPG PROJECT will continue on June 24th.

Anyhow, in order to not make you bored with just a wall of text, here's some pixel art (done out of procrastination).



And before you ask; yes, this is how I study math. In a dark room, with a skull on my table which answers in whispers to all my math questions, all in flickering candlelight.

What are Sundamations you ask? Well, according to Google it means... nothing. Sundamations gives zero search results (at the time of writing this) and it seems I just invented a word by combining Sundays with animations. Sundays are usually lazy days, so I decided to animate my pixel art on this laid back days, because this usually requires a lot of time, tests and patience.

Animations can really break or make the game, especially with minimal pixel graphics, where each pixel position makes a noticeable difference. That's why I decided to hand-craft the frames for the human walk and attack cycles at least. It might take more time than doing the animations simply in a bone animation program, however the result is quite unique.

(Please note that all animations are Works in Progress and subject of change)

Human walk cycle:


Deer run cycle:


I decided on 6 animation frames eventually - 6 frames result in an unnatural old-school look and feel to it, while still maintaining smoothness.

Now, I also decided on 8-directional sprites, so there is still a lot of work to do around here, but luckily, a Sunday comes at the end of every week.

So, stay tuned! Or you know, not... It's a free country.

Greetings to whomever stumbled upon this site!

The website is dedicated to the development process of "The RPG Project". We also have a forum, so please, don't hesitate to ask any questions or give feedback about what we've shown you so far. And most importantly, we are eager to hear your ideas, which you think should be included in the game.