Sunken Village

 

While demo is in testing I started work on map section 02 ... in the center it features a sunken village with many different buildings covered in moss. However they are lacking weather fx, indoor volumes, night events and furniture + loot right now. So a massive amount of work needs to be done (7 building types total + randomization and assets)

Just some pretty pictures

 

Contemplating Waiting

 

So .... there's one thing that's puzzling to me .... for a very long time I had an "automatic night time damage system" in there. If player's would move outside of a hideout after 18:00 pm they would automatically receive damage and eventually die (similar to Darkwood).

Eventually I removed that system, because it became ridiculous. There was no clear source of damage and it didn't make much sense. A player would see a hideout and finally arrive at his safehouse at 18:01 and die or get lost before reaching it.

And that's where the ravens came in. The monks and tree spirits watch you when they discover your location and transmit that location telepathically to the ravens. The ravens then stay close to your location and eventually track you down. Each time you get discovered by the tree spirits again, the ravens become more aggressive. When they catch you at night time, their "superior" is revealed in the darkness. She will paralyze you and kill you almost instantly, unless you have a lightsource that will last longer than 60 seconds so you can escape. (minor bug happens where she and the ravens suddenly get stuck in the ground if you escape her .... it's not perfect yet)

Something was bothering me though. Reward chests only open if the player is "present" at sunrise. "Present" means he is in the basic vicinity of the hideout. Players can cheese this system by staying outside the hideout, watching the shadows patrolling the hideout from a distance and then taking cover or hiding when the ravens are closeby to escape the siren. 

Now I discovered: They can only cheese it if a tree spirit is not watching, because as soon as he does it and a tree spirit is close by, he will transmit your location to the ravens. They will gradually become more aggressive over night until the player is left to choose between wasting lighter time or finally giving in and running back to the hideout.

So the obvious solution is to place these watchers close to every hideout. But if I do that with every hideout, the entire situation becomes predictable again. And I HATE predictability. Also because it makes testing soooo god damn boring. And playtesting and QA is the heart and soul of the development. Play a perfectly predictable game segment 100 times and experience how the joy of your creation is slowly draining out of you.

The situation would (in theory) still be fair, because watchers and tree spirits can't see the player during weather events. The fog, the rain, the snow, the dharmapalas presence .... it clouds their view of the situation. The same is true for the ravens. A rain event will extinguish a player's candles and campfires if they are located outdoors. So he's left in the dark and forced to leave the hideout. He can wait for the event to pass, but the ravens will eventually track him down once the weather event has ended.

But what I want to avoid is "waiting". And aimless "walking". Those two things are absolute fun killers. They destroy any amount of tension unless the player is suddenly required to interact in order to protect himself (like watching a candle, moving between lights, watching the sky for ravens). During weather events at night, no interaction is required, there is nothing he can do.

I stumble across these moments and they bother me. I wonder how much patience the average player has, when even I myself barely have any patience... and the worst thing about some of those situations is: The game fucking REWARDS you for doing nothing and standing in the dark, while the ravens are aimlessly passing over your head.

Will need to fix that. Maybe they'll change their strategy? Maybe there's someone or something else on the ground during these events that attempts to determine the player's location?

Even though the screenshot above was created after I attempted to cheese a hideout ....

Going to upload the first demo of Map Segment 01 to Patreon soon. 

Just needs to be out there. I don't care if someone crosses over the loading zones. I'm not going to restrict player movement even if the map is not populated yet. Zone 02 is work in progress and Zone 05 is empty. Zone 03 will have grain fields and windmills .... 

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?!!

Of Ravens & Watchers

 

Work In Progress

 

Been working tirelessly on the game for the last 2 years, but didn't find the energy or motivation to post updates. This might soon change.

Developer Diary 137 - Estate