Hi there!
Last week I talked about the general design idea and this week I’ll talk about some general stuff in relation to the second zone.
The area is split into two main paths. In contrast to Albion, around the middle of the zone, there are links to cross the zone to the other path. This part of the map introduced an interesting challenge to our one-direction clause of the links. Ivan wanted to have two nodes point to each other, which initially caused some problems with calculating the distance from a node to the end of the zone (the infinite loop type). This wasn’t hard to fix and has given us the ability to have two-directional links between nodes where applicable. This won’t be used in very many places, but it’s good to know we’re stable in these cases.
As you progress through the game, new monsters will be gradually introduced in each zone. Our game designer Mat was pitching an idea for monsters having dire versions - bigger monsters with additional abilities. This allows us to increase the challenge of the same monsters by giving them more power or a new ability, changing how individual fights against them work. As you pass through zones, the state of the world escalates, having more and more sightings of the monsters and their presence being seen on the world map. Some world locations will have monsters present there as an encounter with a fight, and this should be presented with a special node symbol and some environmental change around the location. This should make it very clear where these tough fights are! We want to replace the flag models for the world locations because they have some readability issues when located at the bottom of the screen. We've made an initial concept pass over them, but haven's settled on the final design just yet. What do you think about them? Post a comment!
Thanks for reading! If you want to get in contact, we're on Discord and I check my Twitter a few times a day, so join us there!
MarkoP