World building

I have always struggled with the RAGs room system. Whilst it serves the purpose of building a world for text based adventures, it's somewhat limiting when we want to really go the extra mile.

I suppose I've been overcomplicated things, but the perfectionist in me wouldn't rest on this one, but I see indoors and outdoors travelling very differently. Indoors you move from room to room, outdoors you follow roads and paths. As such the "room to room" approach of travelling with the RAGs map system feels somewhat limiting.

Let's say you're walking on a busy road which is linked to lots of locations - you have 7 possible directions to choose from (I'm subtracting the direction you came from) excluding up/down and in/out. However at least one of the other exits should really be where your road leads to, leaving you with 6 directions. At crossroads you eliminate two more and are left with just 4 directions to choose from. This is before the confusion of which direction leads where.

In TPoC I adopted the "NSWE" for roads diagonals for buildings, but that means I couldn't create curved roads. So this time round, I'm changing it entirely.

Similar to TPoC, outdoors navigation will follow roads, streets and paths, however buildings will be represented by Objects that you can choose to enter.

Pros:

• No limitation to buildings per location
• You know intuitively what building you're entering by selecting them
• Optimised "accessibility" mechanics by checking accessibility upon entrance instead of changing room exits when accessibility is changed
• Consistent navigation logic throughout game
• New locations can be added easily later on in game

Cons:

• Slows down overall navigation
• Breaks away from typical RAGs game navigation

Unfortunately due to the scale of the game I'm planning, I'm not asking for feedbacks and just going to go ahead with it. Which means it's a "play it like I intended it or don't" policy. I hope if I can push the game out there to the community, it'll give people some more thoughts as to future game developments.

Anyhow, after some brainstorming sessions, I've drawn up roughly half the map so far:

 

I haven't added the university campus, another town, rural area and nature preserve up north, and I'm planning on having a couple of islands to the south.

As you can see, the scale isn't small and I still have some decisions to make, but my plan is to make it a growing exploration map, akin to Zelda, Metroid or even Bodywerks, with some differences. Whilst some areas of the map would be inaccessible to start with, you should have pretty decent access to all the key areas - but start unlocking new locations as you progress.

Finally, day night cycle... Now this is going to be ambitious, but for added "immersion" I'd really like to add day AND night versions of outdoor locations. I've been googling night photography and finding day time photo of same locations, but it'll be hard work. Perhaps I'll start with daytime photos and gradually change the photos over development phases.