GO WILD with the Wilderness System

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Rias
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GO WILD with the Wilderness System

Post by Rias »

Hey look, I'm reversing one of my decisions again: I've implemented a wilderness map system. For anyone familiar with my previous work, this one has undergone some updates and improvements - and the scale is different, so the world will feel a *lot* bigger.

For those not familiar with a wilderness map system, the idea is that the world is split into two kinds of areas: The first are Explorable areas - which is what the game has been up til now - with set specific paths you can take from room to room to explore the area. The second kind of area are Wilderness areas, which are on a large open map that can be more freely traversed. Certain points in the wilderness will lead to other explorable areas. The wilderness essentially serves as the "overworld map" between individual areas of interest, like one might find in various console RPGs.

Some features of the wilderness system:

- Open map, allowing greater freedom of exploration. Follow the road, or take alternative routes off the beaten path. Strike off into the unknown to find out what might be in that remote area no roads lead to. There are little nooks and crannies out in the middle of nowhere to be found and potentially claimed as favorites, though keep in mind there's no law or property enforcement out in the wilds.
- Expanded room compass allows seeing two rooms in all directions on said compass - though terrain can block line of sight.
- Some types of terrain prevent PEERing in that direction. It won't do much trying to peer through dense forest or past high hills, for instance
- Auto-travel along roads: Use the TRAVEL command when standing on a road, and specify a direction the road leads in - the character will automatically follow the road until it gets to a fork or dead-ends. Auto-travel can be stopped at any time with the STOP command.
- Wilderness movement incurs traveltime - a sort of "soft roundtime" that prevents further room movement but not other actions.
- Wilderness movement consumes both energy and nutrition. While not possible to starve to death or die from energy loss simply by moving from room to room in the wilderness, players should keep in mind that when starving, a character does not regenerate energy at all, and a single point of damage is all it takes to die if one is completely out of energy. Always pack some food for the trip! Characters will automatically grab food from their inventory and eat it when getting hungry from traveling the wilderness.
- Move quickly along roads between major points of interest, range fairly quickly along the open plains, or trudge laboriously through more difficult terrain like dense woodlands and rolling hills to find those more remote and secluded out-of-the-way spots.
- Risk getting lost or turned around in some types of difficult terrain such as dense woodland, wetlands, or jungles. Some characters may pick up abilities to avoid this, and be able to lead others surely along otherwise difficult paths.
- Get a mount to reduce the above traveltime and nutrition/energy consumption, zipping across the wilderness far more quickly and efficiently. Keep in mind however that mounts will still have just about as much difficulty traveling through some types of terrain as their riders would on foot, however. A horse would be hard-pressed to gallop through dense woodland, for instance.

Rooms that lead to the wilderness will show the word "wilderness" in the list of obvious exits. One can simply GO WILDERNESS (or "GO WILD" as is popular with some), or use the WANDER command to head out onto the wilderness map. Some natural choke points have been placed (there are lots more high hills/mountains/impassible bodies of water than my previous work) to keep people within the first "zones" for the time being. Expect expansions as more content is ready to be released, but I have a lot yet to place in what zones we've got already.

A note on wilderness exploration: The world is big and vast. Stuff may occasionally be added to wilderness rooms that players have visited in the past. Even if a character has technically visited every wilderness room in the game, the player should not assume that their character has scrutinized every inch of the vast wilderness with a fine-toothed comb. There'll always potentially be something else out there to discover, even in territory a character has passed through before - anything from small hidden caches, to hidden forts tucked away up obscure mountain trails that previously seemed unremarkable and went unnoticed until events led PCs to explore them.

also yes the wilderness is the shadgard wilderness and everyone and their stuff has been moved back over there hey how about that
<Rias> PUT ON PANTS
<Fellborn> NO
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Lexx416
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Re: GO WILD with the Wilderness System

Post by Lexx416 »

Woo! This is exciting! can't wait to gear up and explore.
"You hear the Woses, the Wild Men of the Woods... Remnants of an older time they be, living few and secretly, wild and wary as beasts."
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