Design Analysis: Area and Local Maps

With Area and Local Maps, we get into the real meat of the map and exploration systems. While the World Map is essentially a reference tool, the other two types of maps have extensive gameplay mechanics associated with them.

An Area Map looks, at first, very similar to the Areas depicted on the World Map. It'll display geographical features in more detail, but an Area should be easily recognizable whether you're looking at the World Map or the Area Map. There are two important graphical differences, however. First, Adventure Sites (dungeons and the like) and Towns show up on the Area Map as icons once you've located them. Second, exploration status in Area Maps is shown per-pixel, rather than across the Area as a whole. like the World Map shows. Parts of an Area Map that you havn't explored thoroughly are displayed in washed out colors, and parts you havn't explored at all are shown in greyscale. This gives the player immediate and obvious feedback on where he might find new Adventure Sites, which is important because Adventure Sites are the real meat and potatos of the game.

Unlike Attributes and the World Map, this is the original design for Area Maps. The design goal is to provide the player with a sense of the scale of the world, while putting their adventuring entirely in their own hands. There's nothing stopping a player from taking his initial party and heading right out for places unknown to make their fortune -- in fact, it's encouraged. The two biggest influences in this section (meaning Area and Local Maps and their interactions) are Ogre Battle and Wizardry. Ogre Battle is the inspiration behind both the multiple-party system and the Area Map exploration system; in Ogre Battle, the player has access to (potentially) dozens of parties of characters and has to send them out to conquer each region. In the process of moving around the map, parties can discover hidden cities, temples, items, and teleportation gates. The process of exploration is a very big part of Ogre Battle, and it was the first game I ever played where that type of gameplay was presented in a manner that was both intuitive and rewarding. Wizardry, on the other hand, is the inspiration behind the dungeon crawling Local Map segments. Actually, in point of fact, when I originally wrote up what would eventually become the Fate of the Mullen project 5 years ago, it was more or less a straight-up Wizardry clone, with a single dungeon.

That's a nice lead-in to Local Maps. Local Maps, while no longer in the Wizardry first-person corridor style, still are heavily influenced by that game. Exploration of Adventure Sites is intended to be the part of the game the player spends the most time with. Sites are intended to appeal to players who like pitting their hand-picked adventuring teams against unknown, uncharted lairs, ruins, dungeons, and caves. They're the best source of experience (and thus character advancement) as well as being involved in the vast majority of quests and being the source (directly, from treasure chests laying around, or indirectly from the spoils of combat) of most of the treasure in the game. In this way, Adventure Sites (and thus Local Maps, because they're really the same thing) should appeal to explorers, perfectionists, completionists, treasure hunters, and questers. Socialites have to look to the party systems to get their fix.

I mentioned before that the original design of Fate (back when it was called "Sorcery" -- yes, it really was a Wizardry knock-off) was as a first-person dungeon crawl. Why, then, did I decide to change to a tile-based system? Two reasons: firstly because it's easier to design a 2D tile engine (and acquire 2D tile art) than a 3D one, which is what Wizardry really used. Secondly, because I intend to have enemy encounters actually move around on the map and allow players, or rather their characters, to detect them -- visually and audibly -- before they actually make contact with the party. That kind of thing is much simpler from a UI point of view when an entire group of 6 people isn't limited to a single person's viewpoint. Another, secondary, consideration is that Wizardry's approach works great for room-and-corridor games, but I wanted some more wide-open levels as well, and in my opinion an overhead perspective is much more functional for that kind of thing.

That about wraps it up for Part 2 of Maps and Explorations. Part 3, the final part, is next, in which I'll cover Exploration in an official capacity and give information on Towns.