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Devlog 9

A world that wraps, and a map that comes first

No new code in the game today. Today was about the shape of the world itself: what it is, why it ends, and a first try at how it could be made.

A world that wraps

The world is a cylinder. Walk east long enough and you come back from the west, with no seam and no edge. North and south are different: the land grows colder and wilder the further you go, ice fields, frozen sea and mountains too high to climb, until it can't be crossed. There is never a wall, just a world that gets too harsh to go on.

This is decided, not built yet: the world in the game today still goes on in every direction.

Why a finite world

An endless world is the usual choice for a game like this, and it doesn't fit what this RPG is meant to be:

  • The world is meant to be alive everywhere at once: people trading, travelling and raising families whether you're near them or not. That only works if there is a whole world to run.
  • The economy is meant to be real, with prices from actual trades. Distance is what makes a good worth more somewhere else, and that needs places that are truly far apart.
  • Travel should cost something, time and risk, and a finite world makes every trip a real choice.
  • Secrets can be placed on purpose, somewhere in a world that is known to exist, not generated only once someone walks up to them.
  • And there can be a map of the whole world.

Finite doesn't mean small. Walking straight around it takes hours, and most players will never see all of it.

The map first

Up to now the land has been made from the ground up: each spot decides its own height from nearby noise. That gives good hills, but seen from far above it is just noise, with no continents, no ranges, no reason for a river to run anywhere.

So the plan turns it around: make the map of the whole world first, then make the ground under your feet from the map, plus local detail. A first try at that is working, and it is a first try, not the final world:

  • One fractal land shape that makes every size of land in one world, a big continent and scattered islands together.
  • Rivers that run downhill to the sea.
  • Towns, and roads between them.
  • The whole map, all the way round, made in moments.

Here are two worlds from the first try. They are work in progress, and the final world will look different.

A world map seen from above: a big green continent across the middle with snowy peaks, lakes and thin blue rivers, smaller lands and scattered islands in a dark blue sea, and pale ice along the top and bottom. Another world from a different seed: several mid-sized lands and small islands across a dark blue sea, with pale ice along the top and bottom.

None of it is in the game yet. The next step is turning the map into the ground you walk on.