Hello everyone!
Today we’re going to talk a little bit about the first update of TFM; Ways of Life. And what we’ve been working on for the last couple of months.
This update’s main purpose was to provide us with editing tools that we call “Makers”. These makers will be implemented in and designed for the game application itself inside a scene called TFM Builder. This is done for the purpose of easier modding by our community. Our content designers will also use these in-game Makers for the game’s “Base” mod.
Let’s begin with the; Map Maker.
It allows us and modders to design maps, using our biome brushes and other helpful tools. Including our main scenario map, all maps will be painted with this maker. It is specifically designed to be able to work around the concept of “regions”. A new map with a specified width and length will be loaded with a single Ocean region. The user will be able to create new regions on top of this ocean by using the brush tool, slowly turning the world setting into an original TFM map.
We already had a Map Editor in our published Vision Demo, but we’ve decided to code everything from scratch in order to have a solid foundation for multiplayer and modding/editing tools since the whole thing was a bit of a mess because of all the iterations we’ve done attempting to perfect the game over the last years.
In all strategy games like The First Men, the terrain is an important game pillar.
The player will be able to control a settlement, create parties of trained warriors, explore the world and engage in strategic and tactical battles in uncharted regions.
Our objective is to have a detailed and stylized world that has various types of biomes; mountains, forests, rivers, and most of the aspects we see in the real world that makes sense. To make our world coherent with the real one and still hold a sense of fantasy, we want to give the players a strong shape of the world, divided into different kinds of regions. To make it more visually appealing and strategically interesting, we also added various constructions, like caves, caverns, and various other landmarks. Players and AI will be able to explore these constructions, exploit the precious loot inside them, and claim them as their home to fuel their economic as well as military strengths.
So this is our way of creating opportunities and challenges for exploration, diplomacy, and war. We want the terrain and regions to inform the players.
Our expectation from the unexplored terrains and regions of TFM is to create a spark of excitement in the player's heart and mind, to deliver a clear message that every piece of aesthetic detail they encounter can hint of what might be explored and who might be interacted with from distance, without even setting foot on its soil. Objects like handcrafted trees, environmental objects, critters, constructions, alternative biome brush heavily to support our regions to reinforce this feeling of mysterious exploration.
The regions will have special names and our tools have the strength to organize each one of them in case of a huge worldbuilding scenario. Keep in mind that the quantity and the quality of the content you see here is just to test the tools we’re making, nothing is finalized.
Next up is the; Map Objects.
These are Constructions and Doodads. They are considered tile-based objects unlike characters and items, which are not restricted to fit within a tile, or a tile group, but they’re part of future updates so let’s not get into them.
By using the specific “Makers”, the user will be able to create new map objects or edit existing ones by duplicating them to make their own versions of the Base game’s assets, thus creating new mods. We, of course, will be able to create new content for the Base database and consider it as our Mother Mod non-stop.
Through our organized and filterable tools, the content creator will have an easy time navigating through objects, but the biggest companion will be the “Database Maker”. From doodads to constructions or items to character traits, every inch of functioning data inside the game will be edited through what we aim to produce as our Database Makers. These will have a similar feel of a spreadsheet and will make seeing the huge amount of content much easier to handle, with their own field filters and search functionalities.
That’s it for now. Share your thoughts now below in the comments section!
See you on the next update.