Let’s move on, though. The next step is getting the local maps up and running. These maps are where the majority of real gameplay takes place. The fact that I’m adding them means we’re getting close to actually being able to do stuff. I’m going to start with making the city because it’s going to serve as sort of quest hub. Everything the player does will revolve around it for the time being. I’ll be using the color to terrain method that we used earlier to make the overworld.

Okay, well, here’s the city! The strange appearance is by design. It’s visually stylized after Favela. Lot’s of buildings are tightly crushed together and there’s little more than claustrophobic alleyways between them for movement. This city style is a real hive of scum and villainy. If you want to buy drugs, fence stolen goods, talk to informants or hide from the law then this is the place to go. They’re not entirely safe, though!

Gangs endanger everyone with their senseless territorial warfare, lurking bounty hunters patiently wait in the shadows for their target, undercover operatives search for rebel collaborators hiding among the poor masses and there’s the ever looming threat of yet another alien uprising triggering a deadly military crackdown. The player might be a rebel but that doesn’t mean everyone else is. The Verge aren’t the only bad guys, either. Criminals or just people in general aren’t guaranteed to be your friend. They all have their own goals in life and the rebels are just one faction among a sea of others.

Here are some videos of me walking around the city. The first video is with just fov enabled and the next is with both fov and explored tile memory. The difference in playability is pretty drastic. The memory lets you see where you’ve already been which makes navigating not only easier but less annoying. It’s not really enough, though, is it?

Exploration sounds cool on paper but in reality it usually sucks. I think it would get old pretty fast having to blindly navigate these mazes. The player is going to be visiting a ton of maps and more often than not it will be a place they haven’t been before.

In our world we have all sorts helpful ways of dealing with these problems so it only makes sense for the future to have some modern conveniences too! The first idea that popped into my head are scout drones. The player can buy and deploy them when needed to explore areas on their behalf. I like this idea because it helps tie the player to the world by giving them meaningful reasons to interact with it. If you want some drones you’re gonna have to go make some money and then find someone that sells them!

That’s enough for today, though. In part 4 we’ll start adding some agents!