The first thing I created for my game is the world.
The idea is a wasteland with some sources of water and acid. Water can turn the dry land into fertile soil. Acid would kill the soil and probably slowly dismantle it.
Water will flow through the level and the dry land would suck the water inside and increase its internal moisture. But the sun will remove the moisture quite rapidly. However if there will be some vegetation on top of the soil, it would decrease the amount of evaporated water and it would increase the travel distance of water from the water source.
This is already a mechanic that I have done, but the whole system of water traveling through the level is not good yet so I’ll post some video on that once the water is fixed.
I want the characters in the game to be able to change the terrain and control where the water is flowing from the beginning of the game (control the environment). So the whole game is a grid of squares – like Minecraft. The grid is in the size of the characters. Here is a sample of a character walking through the map:
But as I was working on the game for a week realized that to have just squares is too limiting for the game. Generally in those kind of games you have two approaches. A grid system like I do, like, for example, Timberborn (if you don’t know this game I do suggest you to try it!) or landscape. Landscape can be imagined like a 2d plane of points where each defines a height and the points are connected between them. For example this great game Factory Town is an example of landscape. Landscape has no sharp edges.
But I want both of these worlds so I added “smoothing” of the grid cells. It’s quite simple and it took me about a day to implement it. Here is the final result.
I do see a few areas how to implement it, but I want to have this “smooth” option only in the editor of the levels. Once the player starts digging in the level he will not be able to smooth the edges back. So you would be able to see the hand of man on the land like we can see in the real world.
So far I’m quite happy how the development is going. It’s been less than two weeks and I’m already expanding my original design.