Hey everyone, the last few weeks we've been very busy. Wazau and The_Observer went to GDC Europe and Gamescom and now we're working through some paperwork and taking a more feature and testing-focused approuch to our development.
It's time we explained what we've been up to with the game lately.
To make the concept of a "
moving village" work, we've stumbled upon a few problems.
In order to do this we need the village to be one
entity. That entity moves alongside ocean currents and is pushed by wind directions.
Now, to keep it as one entity, we limit the player by only letting him build adjacent to walkways. The buildings will snap to the walkways to aid him. This makes sure he can’t build something a mile away that would float away and be lost instantly.
Now, unfortunately, that doesn't fix everything. There's a plethora of environmental dangers and these could heavily impact the town’s structure. Buildings and walkways can be destroyed and as such the town can still
split in two.
This brought up another question.
What part is still considered the town? Therefore, we introduce the
Town Heart.
The Town heart is the central point of your village in Flotsam.
You start the game with a liferaft, which you can "
unpack". (There's a bit on the previous page but more on this, later.)
This initiates builders to build walkways around the liferaft and as such, it becomes the Town Heart. (raft in the pictures above)
Now, the player can start building adjacent to it.
When the town splits in two,
the part containing the Town Heart will be considered as the town.
We want the player to be able to retrieve broken off parts, however, this is a stretch goal. We have features with higher priority to test for now. Until then, players will have to reconnect the broken town pieces by building walkways between them.
The Town Heart has more applications, such as a limited sight radius, but that's for later.
So, thoughts?
Community
