<-- Archived --> (Battle Engine and Combat)

[Xela]

Because if you need to go through 30 screens of the forest maze every time you want to go to another city, or some cave for example, you'll think twice before even trying? And then another 30 screens to return home...

Come on... don't tell me that you cannot come up with a good way to mitigate that in 5 secs

You explore once, than you can skip to important locations you've already been at. We've discussed all of that.

[DarkTl]

Yup, a global map is a good way to mitigate it. It is pretty, it is intuitive, it even can have random encounters (both mobs and events with npcs).

Like, after you find an elven city while exploring the forest, the icon of the city appears on the map.

[Xipomus]

You can always use the BE you have now when you travel through the map, instead of adding a new one.. only with a background that is logical for the space in the forest you are occuping

That way when the battle happens, players see the same stuff as in the arena only with a difference background and different nmi.

Just a thought

[DarkTl]

Nope, I mean using that BE as a EE. Renpy has one BE that looks very close to my screenshot, I think we can use it (or make our own, with less options, but less complex as well) to travel between various locations.
Of course when you encounter an enemy, it should use the same BE with appropriate background for combat, that goes without saying.

I'll see if I can find a decent global map tomorrow. I doubt we need a whole world map, a continent or maybe a big enough island should be sufficient.
If you can render it, it would be great btw.

[Xipomus]

Had to go search for a low poly high quality texture 3d model for a map.

Found one that i'm still not completly happy with but rendered for show.
Included in this post is the rendering with an unbiased render and a lot of tuning of the texture.

Did some after work in photoshop to hide edges because the mesh was missing some parts.

Let me know what you think and what direction I should take with the render. (Examples would help).

[DarkTl]

Yup, that looks promising. Though water seems a bit unnatural along the shore, but maybe it's just me.

What ideally should have a global map:
* Various types of terrain, as many as possible. The city is standing on the river (we even have a beach), and we already have a forest. Plains, mountains, wastelands, volcanoes, some roads like on this map would be useful too.
* Probably no objects, like cities, caves and so on. Maybe except the main city, where our events take place. We will add additional objects on the map, but they should be hidden at first.
* If Xela and Cherry have any requests for a global map, it's a good time to mention them 

[Xipomus]

Or instead of a global map you could make an "adventure" guild/office in the city that offers ways to the caves, dungeons, haunted castles/villages or dark forests.

The dungeon part I suggest was something that you could place under the castle in the main city view.

I'll start to experiment with a global map anyways, but think about it and get back to me.

[DarkTl]

There will be more than one city anyway. It would be strange to travel between cities only via guild, I think, so some kind of global map is needed anyway.

[Xipomus]

I've been playing around with the map yesterday and today.
And gathering the stuff to make it. (Not as easy as it sounds unfortunately)

Question to all is. Do you want to make the global map random like with tiles (coz I have to build is tile wise/ part of map wise anyways) or just a one time map. (Then i do the tiling one in photoshop).

Let me know and i'll start building small parts or bigger parts.

[Xela]

I've been playing around with the map yesterday and today.
And gathering the stuff to make it. (Not as easy as it sounds unfortunately)

Question to all is. Do you want to make the global map random like with tiles (coz I have to build is tile wise/ part of map wise anyways) or just a one time map. (Then i do the tiling one in photoshop).

Let me know and i'll start building small parts or bigger parts.

Would Cartographer work? It should have everything required?

[Xipomus]

Would Cartographer work? It should have everything required?

If DarkTi agrees i'll check it out. Looks promising... https://secure.profantasy.com/products/cc3_gallery.asp

[Xela]

If DarkTi agrees i'll check it out. Looks promising... https://secure.profantasy.com/products/cc3_gallery.asp

I've worked with it some time before, it's quite good for large scale maps. Plenty of youtube guides as well.

[DarkTl]

Yup, looks interesting.

[Xipomus]

Only question is do you want the global map to be one map... or parts of map that you can randomize...

[DarkTl]

I don't understand what do you mean by randomized parts of map here.