Well, it's that time again! I will be starting the next major update cycle for Retro-Pixel Castles. Along with the usual improvements and content as I go, I will be introducing a new major concept to the game; The World Map!
If you've been following my twitter, you've probably seen a lot of drafts for various map concepts. I've been slowly working on and planning a new map system while I've been releasing InDev 15 series content updates, and now it's time to go full force into InDev 16.
It'll be a while before InDev 16 Unstable 1 is released, the first step to begin fully implementing the world map is a redesign of the saved game system. The old system was designed to make each save encapsulated per map, the new one will have to be able to cross talk between the various maps and share data. As such, it'll take quite a bit of code to hammer out before I can start work on implementing the world map system itself into the game.
As always, all road maps are subject to change as development progresses and there will probably be a lot of delicious small additions along the way, but here are the current plans!
InDev 16 Road Map
World Map
- Brand new World Map system, when you click on "Play", instead of being taken to the map selection screen, you'll be taken to a full hand drawn world map you can scroll around on.
- Each official map pack will have it's own themed region on the map. As development progresses, more map regions will open up. Currently about a dozen are planned, many of them themes based on Kickstarter's backer rewards. InDev 16 is slated to release about 2 or 3 of these map packs.
- Instead of starting a map with a handful of random villagers, you'll instead have a pool of starting villagers you can select from each time you start a new game. When these villagers die in survival mode, they are sent back to the world map screen to be reused in other maps.
- To get more villagers, and have enough villagers to play on multiple maps at once, you'll have to breed them while playing.
New Save System
- Due to the world map addition, the save system will have to be rewritten nearly from scratch. This will be mostly an internal change, but will dramatically change how the save system functions.
Other Miscellaneous Changes
- The Cullis Gate mechanics will be changed, instead of spawning in a few random villagers from time to time, it'll grab random available villagers from the world map's villager pool.
- A new building or godlike ability will be added, that will allow you to "send" villagers and possibly resources out of the map and into the world map to be used to play on other maps, allowing you to pool resources in one map and send them to another new game in the future.