A Day In Lakini's Woods Map Section 01 V. 0.5.0

 

This is section 01 of the final map. Yes. Final. After 8 years. Fuck my life.

Also the Dharmapalas are a "presence" in the background now, but the elements are no longer ... a massive factor .... the game is about hiding from the eyes of the forest now. Be it in the form of shadows, tree spirits, animals or the king of death himself.

I also removed the other pages on this blog. The old story is no longer accurate and who I am is not relevant to the process. 

Two years ago I got so angry over a steam game I bought, that had good reviews but was crap. It was the usual: "Ohhh you'll get a lighter and have to HIDE! Isn't that crazy?". When I saw the sales numbers of that game I lost my shit. So I used the model of the mansion I had and built a separate mini-game for myself, just to prove to myself that I could do it better. This mansion then turned into something bigger, and bigger and bigger .... and I started merging the different UE4 sessions I had. Then I added smaller houses and used elements of the code in order to make them "haunted" as well. And one thing led to another and the system of the game  ... evolved.

I had big plans over Christmas .... 12 map sections ... 112 hours later I had finished them (foliage, items, hideouts, everything) .... then I realized, that it doesn't work, because there was little orientation for the player ... the game was boring. Running around, aimlessly .... desperately hoping to find a hideout, only to die at sunset .... it was pretty though .... but boring.

So I had to do it again ....

This was the first map design:

Each tile symbolizes a separate blueprint segment with various rotation and foliage. They are like mini-biomes (think of minecraft). At first I built it with procedural foliage spawners for testing. But when the engine couldn't handle the amount of ground cover foliage at runtime I had to rework and eventually settle on a fixed map layout, which is the one above. But because of the sheer size of the landscape there was no way for players to navigate successfully. The map had to become smaller and use a natural order, so it would be easier to navigate.

I pushed the map segments together:

Then I looked for ways to include Lakini's rune into the layout. If it was located on a 4x4 map the center of the rune would always be along a map transition. So it had to be 3x3, because if I want to highlight the rune in any shape or form (through pathways or lights) players need to be able to see it and walk alongside it.

I used gimp to project the rune on top of the map and this was the result. The surrounding map sections are still in the game .... and are accessible at some point later on. They are linear and lead towards a single destination .... Chapter 02.

The petals of the rune now form pathways that lead the player through the woods. It is still possible to get lost, but much easier to find the right direction. Since another weakness of the first version was the lack of overall hideouts (with full night time functionality and events) I created (13 !) new ones.

The youtube video above features the top left corner of the map and the lake in its center. Yama's mansion is located on the map section at the top. even though it is depicted as being of equal size it appears to be much smaller in the game. It appears to be anyway ....

The whole irony of the last two years is: 

In MY game you have a lighter, and you have to hide. Isn't that cool?!!