I had no idea I had so many maps to draw… It’s definitely taking longer than I thought!
I started on the 2nd disk’s contents, but I’m jumping all over to start the 3rd and 4th as well. In particular, I’m working on designing the world map so I can see “the whole” of the game at a glance.
One advantage of this approach is identifying some bottlenecks. For example, I originally had monster graphics split up among the world disks, each disk having a separate list. This was when I was attempting to keep the game playable on a 180K disk system.
I no longer need to segregate monsters, and I can actually combine the data and graphics files and keep them in one place. This has the following advantages:
- I can load any monster anywhere in the world
- I don’t need to replicate graphics or statistics, which means constantly updating them as I make tweaks and changes to battle balance
- I can consolidate creating monster content in one phase, rather than having to start over each time
Once I get the world map complete, I can return focus to finishing up the 2nd disk’s contents. I’m mostly finished with transactions, but maps and mobs take considerably longer than expected to map out and write up…
ROA is like a house and kids… long hours and never finished…
I like the look of the map !
Thank you! I’ve had a rough design in my head of how it would look for some time. What will be fun is trying to draw a more artistic rendering of it for a tangible map.
Long hours indeed, but it will be finished!
Great to see the whole game map laid out like that!
Yeah! It helps me visualize to see it that way.
At a glance, I think it is roughly the same amount of land area that Ultima IV had, maybe a bit more. And with a lot more utilized space, since 60-70% of the tiles of Britannia were water.
“I had no idea I had so many maps to draw… It’s definitely taking longer than I thought!”
Creating content for a CRPG is a real time killer. Even more daunting than programming the game engine itself. I still recoil about the memories of writing text dialogue for 200 people. I found out that I don’t have a natural knack for such a thing and I was bogged down for several months while working on that portion of the game.
I really like your maps!
Yeah, I have five components of content to do right now:
Maps – Drawn in an editor program. I have a few I’ve drawn on graph paper over the years in a 3-ring binder, I occasionally mine those for ideas.
Map Headers – These define the maps boundaries and what mob set to use. They also have random monsters, character patterns to use, map exits on boundaries, and so forth.
Monsters – Graphics and statistics both. The graphics are daunting at times, but once I get going it’s not too bad. Now that I’ve consolidated monsters into a single set accessible everywhere it will be easier. Statistics can wait until I’m playtesting, it’s more important to know monster names for adding into transactions and mobs.
Transactions – The big one, this is all the scripting for stores, shops, NPC’s, and interactivity. Lots of writing dialogue and text here. Definitely a big time consumer, I have to constantly consult a spreadsheet for quest flag values, old notes for what kind of stuff a shop was going to sell, etc.
Mobs – The other big one, this is the special objects on maps like doors to shops, exits to other maps, traps, chests, and monsters. More time-intensive than I thought because you have to use the map editor to see coordinates to put in, check character data to see what pattern to use, etc.