Finalizer has begun. I have all the test scripts and world gen programs completed for the exploration phase of the world. This phase, the Finalizer, is what is going to set in stone the production pipeline for the Sancremath 1.0 world map phase. Finalizer is working out all of the kinks in the production pipeline. The exploration phase was approximately 70 python scripts, from generators to debuggers and renderers. This next stage will take all of that data and scripts to simplify it into a coherent pipeline for the foundation of the world. My concurrent goal with this phase is a coherent Game Design Document.
The GDD will be in two documents. There’s the foundational planetary document, and the player facing document. I’ll explain a little more in depth as time goes on, but the foundation of the game is deep. Sometimes I feel it’s overwhelming at times. This part of the game player’s won’t actually see, but it shapes the entire game at the start and even as time progresses. The second part, the player facing side, is everything the player can do. War, trade, espionage, build; anything the player can actually do in the game is represented in this document.
Once the Finalizer is complete, a new world map will be made. I’m currently working on a world map that I will love. Something that answers all of the basic geological checks that I want. Things like mountain ranges, volcanoes, large oceans, Mediterranean like seas, hot deserts, limited tropical forests, separated continents, and more. I want the game to feature the same layout of Earth, without copying Earth. My goal for this map is possibilities. I want a map where stories can happen. I don’t want the generic fantasy map, with one massive continent or two continents separated by a small ocean or channel. Exploration will play a large role in this game, and I want trade and exploration to also be influenced by large oceans separating large continents.
Oh yea, you’re probably wondering what the hell the deal is with my new map. I can see it now “but I thought you already finalized the map last month?” Well, that’s not quite true. I know last month may seem like I did, but I did some research and realized that map didn’t have the potential for stories like I had hoped. I will explain it later, but my game is a story telling game disguised as a grand strategy game. I don’t want to get into details yet, but I have very large plans for the story telling aspect, so I need a map that will generate the maximum output of stories.
With all of that said, I’ve also started working on the main webpage. My goal is to combine all of Sancremath into one page. This page will be sort of a world page, with links to different eras (games in the same world). This is one of the reasons why I want a perfect world map. This has to be a map that is rarely changed on a large scale. Sure, eons change biomes and other things, as does magic, but the general scale of the world and layout of continents rarely changes in hundreds of thousands of years. Takes millions to really see a shift in continental landmass.
