For rapid prototyping and creating maps, I have been a machine. While there are still quite a few small things to work out and dungeons to make. Most of the main maps for the game have at least been laid out and a lot of work done on them.
Swamp
This map was going to start having quite a different feeling than the other maps I’ve made so far in 001 Game Creator. One of the bigger things was playing around with the game's environmental menu seeing if I could get the effect I wanted.
The map itself was also going to be quite a heavy water map. There are just lots of large and little bodies of water. Almost river like but not exactly steams running around everywhere.
While not all the trees placed on this map are dead or tree stumps. There is quite a heavy mix of them. I still wanted some alive trees as this is an earlier map for the player to explore in the game. It’s not going to be the hardest so I wanted some feeling of life in it.
The map is covered in snakes. I still have some swamp creatures I need to work on getting their sprites in for this map. That will be something I take care of before the weekend.
There will also be 1 or 2 dungeons. I plan on doing a massive dungeon-making season at some point. I’m still working out the finer details of how many actual maps I want in the game. Along with having a reason such as quests for the player to find and venture off into them.
The map environment settings are not that complex and make it easy to add things like fog into a map. The biggest thing that needed to be done was to change the white color of the sun to a different color otherwise effects would not take effect.
I played around a little bit with fog distance and color grade for the fog and the sun itself. In the end, I got a darker vibe I was going and parts of the map as the player explore around it are foggy like I wanted. It was quite easy to do and make quick changes to.
It was nice not having to sit around forever compiling lighting just to see the changes. While there are a lot of benefits to using more complex game engines. It was also nice being able to see changes in real-time and not worry about them changing on me later on once full light was done.
This is also one of the rare maps that lack any kind of road giving the player direction. While I could have tried weaving a path, making bridges, and so forth across all the water. I wanted that feeling that humans tend to stay away from this area and for good reason.
Dense Forest
This map has quite a few winding little paths that take the player to different points of interest. To keep up with the theme of the name there are a lot of trees with some of them trying to obstruct somewhat the player's view.
This is also when I started adding in more elements of things I’ve learned so far from using 001 Game Engine for a couple of days now. You have things like fog. I started to play around a little more with the timer system for monsters. Along with some other things, I won’t spoil them here.
Like a lot of the maps I’ve been working on there is a good chance I’ll come in and make some final changes. I will more than likely make it a lot denser with trees. For now, there are a few things I’m still working out the details before I start eating up map space with a lot of trees.
I have plans for this map to have a single dungeon.
I also want to make sure the map runs decent. One thing I have not looked too much into yet is performance. There are a couple of things I’ve picked up from in warnings or documentation while using this engine. There is still a lot I just don’t know yet.
Wastelands
This map is quite a dead zombie-infested wasteland. There is not much left growing on the map. Many paths lead to nothing. Thankfully the main road still exists to get the player across these lands mostly intact.
Not much more will be talked about this map other than death was inevitable for some. It also lives up to its name as it is a wasteland of nothing.
Town
The only main map I have yet to fully work on. Since this will have quite a few NPCs for questing, vendors, and who knows what else. It is something I’m holding off on doing too much in till I have a better understanding of scripting and other features in this game.
For now, it is still the “default” inn map that came as starting content. I have expanded it and added the main road going from one map to another. Before I gut the map I wanted to take a look at a few things such as trigger, NPC scripting, and some other interesting things going on with this starting content. Then I’ll make it my own and redo things.
In the next few days, I am going to start diving into making quests using the game engine's scripting system. There are quite a few different kinds of requirements you can have from the looks of things. The goal is to have a kill, collection, resource, and some other things. I however won’t fully know till I start getting into the part of the game engine.
I also may or may not move where this map will be in this world. My thought process was having a few minor towns in some of the lower maps till you get to this one. Those minor towns for the most part still need to be built out as well after I get some working NPCs for the player to engage with.
There will also be reasons for the player once they reach this town to go back to the older towns in the lower maps. Not all the best things that the vendor will sell have to be on the main town map. There are other possibilities like quests in those other towns that will lure the player back and forth.
The River
Between some of the doom and gloom maps the player explored before getting to the main town. The map after entering into the later parts of the game is a bit more tranquil with a massive river flowing through it and a bunch of branching steams.
There are quite a few bridges for the player to cross over. Each little section is usually going to have some point of interest to find off the beaten main path. Monsters to fight have not been populated yet.
Despite the more sunny feeling of this map what lurks underneath in the dungeons is a whole other story for this map. Those have yet to be built out yet but I have some interesting plans I won’t be spoiling just yet.
North Lake
This lake map is a bit of a junction between the final two remaining main maps for the game. As such it has two main roads going through it. One leads into an ice-filled area and another a labyrinth.
There are two dungeons planned for this map. Both the entries are in. I however have not started work on the Cave of Sorrow or the Abandoned Mine. I do however have the overall theme and feel I want to go for each one.
Outside of having a very large lake on this map. There are a few different areas of exploration between mountain cliffs and forests with some clearings in the middle for monsters to fight.
Since this map is connecting to three other maps I wanted there to be a few points of interest for the player to find. Some of them you will find just off the main roads on your way to another map. Others are more in the middle of nowhere that you might stumble on if taking a shortcut off the main roads. Perhaps it was quicker to use the main road after all.
Ice Lands
With how different looking this map is from everything else I had some fun creating it. There are a couple of small frozen lakes. Some paths to explore and a mountain to venture on your own on.
There is one thing I have not been able to do just yet that I was hoping for. In the environmental settings, there is a snow option. While I have rain and mist effects. I don’t have anything exactly for snowflakes. I still need to play around with the settings and perhaps a change in opacity range will give me the look I’m more wanting.
This map has two planned dungeons. They will take on the colder vibe the overall Ice Land map has for inspiration.
It is also one of the more end-game maps for the game. So the monsters here are going to be quite tough to deal with. I’m still working on some final details on that front so they are not in yet.
Lands Of The Lost
This map I wanted to be a bit like a labyrinth. With it being a 2D space you can see over walls and stuff. So it’s not going to be hard to get lost in this map and escape. There will however be reasons to take a wrong path just to explore around.
This is yet another map I have not populated with monsters to fight just yet. By the weekend I’ll have added in a few more sprites with some of them I think will be perfect for this map.
There will also be two dungeons for the player to find. Unlike the major of other maps where you have a side road leading you to most of them. On this map, you will have to find them yourself. I have yet to build them out yet, but, I have placed their entrance on the map down.
Quite a few of the maps in the game have to choke points creating areas where the player can and cannot enter into the next map. The connecting map North Lake has very few such barriers. So the player might decide it best to head back into North Lake and move further up the map before reentering this map. The road leading into this map is just a suggestion.
Sprites
In my last post one thing I was struggling with was Sprites. It was nothing I ever had to work with and I had some learning and time spent needed to progress further along.
I now have a much better understanding and even some success at importing in different sprites. I have quite a few more I need to add in but I’m overall rather thrilled to have some knowable on the subject now.
I knew before getting into thins that Sprites usually come in giant sheets. These sheets can come with quite a few rows and columns of frames respecting different actions and the direction that sprite is facing. They can even have quite a few different sprites all on one sheet as well.
While I was hoping you could just import the sprite. Click on each frame and assign it a direction and creature right there and then. That is not exactly how you go about it. It’s more about deleting what you don’t want out of the sheet and having what you want remaining each time for the down, up, and right directions. Making it more labor-intensive than I thought it would be.
As a result, I ended up cutting down some sprite sheets I acquired from a humble bundle by just cropping what I wanted before importing them in. While there is a way to edit the sprites it seems to be more for changing colors and drawing.
After making some changes to ensure the correct row, column, and pixie sizes things have mostly worked out. After that, you need to make a template for the sprite to be in otherwise you can’t place it on a map. That was a step that no one talked about in any tutorials I found for this game engine when trying to better understand what I needed to do.
It is also quite important to properly test each one. I had a bear I worked on getting into the game. After I spawned it into the map it would glitch in and out of view while chasing after the player. After a second attempt, it stopped flickering. I must have had some issues with pixel dimensions when it generated the moving left side of the sprite.
While I have not dived that deeply into NPCs yet. The game does come with an easy enable basic AI, set up damage, health, and damage effect. Once I was able to get a sprite working and moving correctly. It was easy to have them change and kill the player.
I have quite a few more I need to work on getting in. That is in part why quite a few maps still lack monsters. That and I wanted to play around with some more advanced settings. I’d rather get it working than have to redo a bunch of work late on.
Final Thoughts
With most of the main maps now in I’m going to take a short break from working on making maps and dungeons and learn more about the scripting side of things in 001 Game Creator. There are still quite a lot of endless things I need to get in and work on. Things are at least starting to shape up quite quickly into a game.
Over the weekend I have plans to try compiling the game as HTML 5. If it’s not too big I’ll see if I can host it where I put my projects up. It may or may not be compatible with that system. I really won’t know till I try.
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Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar. Screenshots are from 001 Game Creator.
