Much of this week has been spent migrating over ideas and plans into the Trello board, cleaning up this this blog, and other such housecleaning duties. So instead, allow me to ramble for a bit about concepts and features. Many ideas I have had for the project lay on the chopping block, a few have already been stricken. Often times it’s easy to get lost in the “what might be”s of any such endeavor. I know what I’d like, but each and every one of us learns through life that it will never be so. Our eyes are too hungry, our imaginations too ungrounded, or worst of all, what we assume we want is not actually the case. Weeding out these oft-too-lofty desires is vital to completing any sizeable project.

A feature that I have discussed with many has been the glaring one: scale. The project world’s size is comparitively massive. The world’s boundaries are over 88 times larger than Red Dead Redemption 2, 95 times larger than GTA5, 463 times larger than Skyrim, 613 times larger than Halo: Infinite, 723 times larger than Breath of the Wild, and almost one whole tenth the size of Daggerfall. The entire engine being its own creation came from the necessity of reaching that scale, but it comes with obvious questions.

• Why aim for a larger size in the first place?
• How are players going to feel about traveling for thirty minutes just to complete a fetch quest?
• Won’t travel be a tedious chore of “hold forward”?
• Wouldn’t detail be lacking at that scale?
• How is it more fun?

One reason for a massive world space sounds simple: micro/macro scaling is jarring and experience-breaking. I dare not invoke the term “immersion” as it is both overused and a patented meme. Many open world games, I would say most, have an experience of an amusement park. They have clearly defined themed zones and areas that butt up against each other, with either terrain walls, invisible walls, death walls, or no walls at all between them. It reminds you of how limited the experience is when the spooky mansion/graveyard area is visibly squeezed between the ice mountain zone and the Arabian desert zone. The limitations of real estate also limit quest and world design, as whatever ideas you could have had planned obviously have to play together with all the other ones squeezed within that same footprint. Massive world sizes also allow for an experience that many cling to: surviving in a wilderness, leagues from civilization. Many games cater directly to this style of play, even if comparitively niche. Bringing a hostile-camping sim into an open world RPG system seems complimentary and natural, and with enough space it can exist alongside without the need of seperate loaded areas, or the obvious “walk two minutes back to town”.

The problem of a quest dictating that the player travel a long distance just to walk all the way back has a simple solution. In fact, it has two complimentary solutions that when paired together should fix a majority of frustrations regarding the problem. All video game quests really boil down to a single mechanic: go, press button, receive reward. The loop sounds simple, but by adding rewarding content in terms of feedback, loot, and story, it can be a memorable experience. The problem is that when the scale betwen the effort to press button and the reward is too imbalanced, it doesn’t feel enjoyable. The counter is that “go there, come back” quests should simply be avoided to begin with. This can be achieved through having an additional step to have the player move in a triangle, or by rewarding them directly upon completion. The distance traveled to a quest objective should be calculated into the effort required to achieve those rewards. Not every quest will be, needs to be, or should be deep introspective look at the human condition that also grants a sword of instakill. Many open world designs have locations equidistant across the world map, utilizing as much of the limited land as possible. This can place simpler “clear area” or “find item(s)” quests far enough out that they will be ignored. Ignore that, and more will stack up. Then you are looking at a quest log of dozens of objectives that a player doesn’t want to do, meaning an experience they don’t want to play. The solution is making the objectives to smaller and lighter quests closer to the player. To this end Points of Interest will be in clusters around central focal points, be they cities, dungeons, or natural formations.

Travel times will obviously be long. Being that locational areas will be scaled apropriately, the “wow” factor is lessened with the more subtle transition between biomes. A certain surprise is a lack of point to point fast travel. Certain faster travel methods will be present, hiring carts, mounts, and more will be tested and experimented. A focus of the engine is for rapid travel for the purpose of mounts and seafaring vessels that move faster than a slight jog. “Resting/waiting” on these modes of transit will obviously act similar to a conventional fast-travel, but will allow for interruptions and the ability to stop part-way. Very few quests should require distant travel to accomplish a goal, and local areas should offer enough services and content to satisfy the player for a good while. Certain locations, such as inns, will act as rest stops and be placed strategically to break up the monotany of the long roads.

Detail is an interesting point. So long as I’m to the sole developer, it means that any bits and baubles placed to make a scene feel more lived-in will be on me to create and implement. The level of detail being aimed for is also not yet defined. I have noticed that with an increase in visual clutter, so too is there an increase in difficulty noticing important details. Distinctness, I feel, is what will matter most. Each space feeling distinct is still an issue with a limited pallette of items, but further research into shader-driven mesh variation and texture overlays could solve much of this. As time progresses an answer will most certainly be found.

And lastly, the matter of fun. I don’t think it will make the game more fun on its own. If you just slammed a massive world into existing game designs it absolutley wouldn’t be. I can define in what ways the gameplay within can be unique and engaging, how it can be fun, but only time and effort will prove it to be true or false. I clearly have an attachment to the concept, and it’s my hope that some other people will enjoy the experience as well. Ultimately it will come down to the execution of it all, how well everything works together. I believe it can and will make for a more fun, engaging, and memorable experience - and it’s on me to prove it.