Creating A Multiplayer Rogue-lite With Endless Open Worlds
We’ve shared extensively about our tech art strategies and proc gen processes in both a recent Heart to Heart with Len White and Christian Sparks as well as on our dev blog. We’ve also discussed our environment art works in progress in a different Heart to Heart with Will Tate and on our blog as well.
That was all months ago; often, a few months can mean a lifetime in game development.
Original Vision
Years ago now, when (Alx) was ideating on the design pillars of the game, the question that came to mind was “what would you do in an open world you’d never seed again if you die?”
With that in mind, we made decisions in the early days of our game to try for a more reasonable approach of this idea as we built our systems, since it seemed insurmountable. So, we created an adjacent version, something that captured parts of this design ideal. We had a large, open biomes, but they were segmented in a stage-by-stage format to make it more feasible for us to build.
Over the course of development, we found that, as we continued to build the technology needed for these smaller open-biomes, that we could actually leverage the tools to make the original vision a reality. Thus, we shifted away from the more limiting and (ironically) more complex version of a stage-to-stage progression, and started on a “Pangaea Shift”.
The Shift
Pangaea is used as a code name, as we were essentially merging all of our stages into one larger map to create an open world.
This shift meant that we would mean that we lose some time up front reconfiguring some parts of the game to function in the ne structure, but gain time on the backend and a much more exciting game format to dive into. We were excited and scared, all at once.
This shift yields us:
- Highly differentiated points of interest on a global scale, resulting in entirely new biomes to explore instead of sub-variations of the same biomes
- Reduced per-level workload for Houdini, focusing on simpler, bolder biome elements since the context of other biomes being present shifted the dynamics of play so significantly
- The ability to generate dynamic, global components that affect the whole run / playthrough, rather than just stage or biome-specific elements, opening up tons of exciting mechanics
- A truly open world, procedurally generated, with biomes juxtaposed seamlessly on the same map
An open world you’ll only see once
It’s a thought that leads to a lot of questions and exciting ideas. How much do I explore this world?
How much time do I invest, knowing I could die at any turn? What are the pressures driving me forward in this world? What’s new, exciting, different this time? What’s coming next?
These are all questions we ask and answer for development, and ones we are excited for you all to see the conclusions of for yourselves in Early Access and beyond!
Wrap Up
What do you think of our process shift? Share your feedback!
See you next time, Breakers!
-The Heart Machine Team