In most modern games, mapping - including orientation and minimaps - is a given. However, in StormTorn, I want the player to work for this, so they feel an achievement when they are finally able to see the map in a normal format.
So, the plan is to provide 3 different kind of information to the player based on their equipment:
- Compass will enable directions (North based map instead of one based on your current orientation)
- Clock&Sextant will enable the player to see coordinates
- Telescopes will enable the player to have a minimap
There are a few challenges with this, of course.
First of all, the players might get disheartened if they think these features are not implemented. It must be readily apparent that the player will have a minimap or a north based map later on. I will probably solve this by adding small placeholder UI elements, which will tell the player the this is indeed something that exists. Also, I plan to include these in screenshots and videos, so that at least some players will see them.
Also, it is important to balance the appearance of these items well. If the player can buy them in the first town they come across, there is no reason to implement this whatsoever, because it is literally just a way to make the first five minutes harder, which is not my goal. What I want is to make this a doable challenge, that will motivate the player to work for getting the items, and - hopefully - they will feel rewarded seeing the result. It is also important that being able to see the map will also enable the player to create maps, which will have several effects in the game. So, with carefully controlling the availability, the price and the prerequisites of these items, this becomes one of the motivating factors.
From the implementation perspective, there is only one thing I will need to carefully approach: The player ship direction based maps are somewhat tricky to render. Far from impossible, but - based on the model one uses for storing the map - might be somewhat challenging without a good plan. In my case, the map is stored as two dimensional array, so it is actually fairly easy to write a simple method that determines the array coordinates of the map from the visual map coordinates. Naturally, drawing a static map and just hide some of the areas is not a good solution here.
That's about it for today's musings about the game mechanics.
