Worldmap features

[red-kangaroo]

@fejoa IDK how many changes you want to make on the worldmap, but two things I always missed on the IVAN worldmap are rivers and mountains.

Rivers could be just some extra fancy overlay over the map tile with no special effect, but it would be IMHO fun if we generated impassable mountain ranges, so the player would sometimes need to take a detour instead of always going in the straightest possible way over the continent.

Though this should probably be a separate issue...

rivers would require some graphics, simple may be, just make one and rotate on gimp to create these:

• horizontal,
• vertical,
• diagonal slash,
• diagonal backslash,
  and one for each connection between them :)

the mountain would allow only levitate walkability (or increase hunger x2 for every step on it).

Originally posted by @AquariusPower in #584 (comment)

[red-kangaroo]

Split from the other issue because this is more about new features than the size of the map. :)

the mountain would allow only levitate walkability (or increase hunger x2 for every step on it).

I think I'd prefer only levitate walkability, because double hunger doesn't really hamper the player that much.

Another idea: swamps. I've recently happened upon a nice series on the Ultima games, so swamps could be a rare terrain that has a chance to poison/disease the player if they cross it.

[AquariusPower]

Related to wilderness, I was thinking also about random encounters, mainly with wild beasts like bear, it could be a small fixed size square map filled with trees and rock boulders and even a river passing thru (these would be based on the worldmap current square characteristics), and would work like the starting village that you can leave it thru it's edges.

We could calc this random encounter map size based on how much hunger is increased on walking on the world map VS walking on dungeon, but dont make it too small if the calc results in that, may be at least 25x25.

Droping things there would initially make them be lost (unless a map marker is created for that encounter and it is also saved as dungeons are, but it could be in a later moment).

It could have huts and friendly NPCs too.

If it happens on swamps it could have any kind of monsters related to swamps :>

[AquariusPower]

If I am not wrong, I think the river should be an OWTerrain (like dungeons/town markers are?), so it can be placed over any other kind of terrain be it sand, desert, forest etc. It should also be animated like sea water is :>

[red-kangaroo]

There was recently some discussion about wilderness encounters here: https://attnam.com/posts/30309

[AquariusPower]

After generating, it could be saved like PlayerName.Wx12y08 W for wilderness, and after is the square position on the world map.

Descending anywhere (least undiscovered pre-configured squares like Xinroch's tomb, denying it with some nice message as suggested there), would have a small encounter chance, be it friendly or foe.

Randomly pre-configured ambush squares would trigger an auto descend (that could even surround the player, worst case) with one or more wild animals based on player power (danger level), so low power would spawn mutant bunnies, higher power large cats, bears, lions etc in that order +-.

But also, we could have hints, like in the wilderness we would see a NPC or a bear moving slowly from one square to another, and we could reach them to talk, trade or fight. In the same way they could try to reach us too and that could be quite fun in case we need to flee lol. But it would only show the stronger NPC/Foe on the world wilderness map, the encounter could spawn more than that one.

[red-kangaroo]

What about some more islands, like the one where NA is? It's all bit continents now, it might be nice to add a few small islands or even archipelagos to the generation.

We would need to make sure that dungeons don't inadvertently generate there, though. Maybe there could be a flag for dungeon placement, like CanBePlacedOnIsland? Defaulting to false, so GC, TX, Aslona etc. would appear on the continent(s), but new dungeons could also be made to appear on an island.

[ryfactor]

That's interesting. A control flag for generating on the main continent sounds good. I'll try to take it into account when I do some more work on the generator.