We got some negative feedback from friends in Hawaii about the game board "always looking like you're fighting on top of a mountain," so we were talking about ways to either break up or obscure those big vertical lines that drop off the edge of the board.
One idea was to have a mist that rolled up to the edge of the viewable board and obscured the drop-off. The tricky part about that though, is what to show for areas you haven't explored yet. I started trying to mock up an underground tomb/cellar/dungeon/whatever, just to get an idea of this.
-You've got a hero, a few monsters he can see, some solid walls* behind him, transparent walls in front** of him, and the map totally disappearing where he can't see yet.
-Also a random archy set piece.
-Set pieces populate the non-board area & extend down into fog/darkness.
-I'm trying nixing the vertical drop-off of the board altogether, to see how that works (if it helps or hurts more).
I'm going to throw down a few other thoughts, and this is all going to be very scattered:
1.) Does having the map disappear completely for unexplored areas looks confusing? As in, would you have trouble figuring out where you could and couldn't explore next?
- Also, what do you get when you move your cursor to an unexplored tile? Nothing's "there," but it may be a valid place for your hero to run.
- Another way to keep the player from seeing the shape of the explored board is put a fog over the whole thing, Civ 5 style. In that case though, assuming the fog extends out beyond the board itself, where does it end? Will our whole lovely environment just be covered by fog most of the time? :(
2.) Fog swirlies around the known board edges: could help add a sense or border, could just make things too busy or get in the way. Not sure, but I like having them there more than not having them
3.) I'm getting a little bit of an OMG-busy vibe, but that's probably due to the fact that this was pretty quick and sketchy. we can also use things like saturation/color/lightness tweaking for things that are closer or further away.
This seems to bring up more questions than it answers, but things may just be that way for a while. We may be better off letting the whole thing take a more stylized/symbolic approach than an at-all-realistic one, if that makes sense.
"Yes, an underground chamber wouldn't really be floating amongst set pieces in a void that suggested the spirit of undergroundyness... but the point is exploration of the board and facing your foes. In your heart."
*- This time I'm trying "solid ceiling-high wall with jaggedy top edge." one could also do things like "chest high walls," "solid walls that fade to transparent on their top edge," or any number of things. I'm fond of the extra texture that the jaggedy top edge adds.
**- I'm assuming we'll do the "walls & set pieces go transparent when your cursor goes to a tile behind them or there's a figure behind them that your heroes can see" thing.
I love seeing this exploration. This is something I can try to mock up in the Scratchpad to see if we a) like interacting with it and b) can build it. I think we can. I agree that the bottom edge feels the most unfinished, and I don't have a clear answer for unrevealed space, maybe we reserve a colored fade, fade style, or fog color specifically to mean "unrevealed edge", and leave it at that? I really don't have a strong vision for it.
ReplyDeleteLove the set piece, how most of it has thickness and then some vines extend from it. We can use that effect elsewhere too. Would you want to add some thickness to the walls as well?
I for one don't mind the abstractness of the underground area. I think it's more appealing than a flat black cut-away of a mountain or something, and doesn't distract from your sense of being underground. Looking forward to pushing these ideas forward :-)