u/chadlorg

I finally thought of a name for my game: "In the Land of Antiaf". I'm not 100% sold on it, but it's growing on me. I think it is broad enough to encompass the possibilities of the game, while also specific to the thing that makes the game unique amongst other, similar, roguelikes - the setting.

Here we can see the player entering some ruins, and finding stairs down to a dungeon. The dungeon is to tombs what mines are to caves (if you've been following). The tomb is a single level, and dungeons can be several levels deep. I eventually intend to have a few different types of dungeons in various settings. But that's down the road a bit still.

This does conclude my environmental/world-traversal work for the time being. At this point, I have:

- Movement

- Boat and airship movement

- FOV

- Overworld traversal

- Day/night cycle

- Time passing and season-specific color palettes

- Entering, traversing, and leaving local tiles

- Caves and mines

- Tombs and dungeons

From here I think I'll move on to items and basic inventory. This will be harder to show off in the beginning, but I think it's the logical next step.

I finally thought of a name for my game: "In the Land of Antiaf". I'm not 100% sold on it, but it's growing on me. I think it is broad enough to encompass the possibilities of the game, while also specific to the thing that makes the game unique amongst other, similar, roguelikes - the setting.

Here we can see the player entering some ruins, and finding stairs down to a dungeon. The dungeon is to tombs what mines are to caves (if you've been following). The tomb is a single level, and dungeons can be several levels deep. I eventually intend to have a few different types of dungeons in various settings. But that's down the road a bit still.

This does conclude my environmental/world-traversal work for the time being. At this point, I have:

- Movement

- Boat and airship movement

- FOV

- Overworld traversal

- Day/night cycle

- Time passing and season-specific color palettes

- Entering, traversing, and leaving local tiles

- Caves and mines

- Tombs and dungeons

From here I think I'll move on to items and basic inventory. This will be harder to show off in the beginning, but I think it's the logical next step.

I finally thought of a name for my game: "In the Land of Antiaf". I'm not 100% sold on it, but it's growing on me. I think it is broad enough to encompass the possibilities of the game, while also specific to the thing that makes the game unique amongst other, similar, roguelikes - the setting.

Here we can see the player entering some ruins, and finding stairs down to a dungeon. The dungeon is to tombs what mines are to caves (if you've been following). The tomb is a single level, and dungeons can be several levels deep. I eventually intend to have a few different types of dungeons in various settings. But that's down the road a bit still.

This does conclude my environmental/world-traversal work for the time being. At this point, I have:

- Movement

- Boat and airship movement

- FOV

- Overworld traversal

- Day/night cycle

- Time passing and season-specific color palettes

- Entering, traversing, and leaving local tiles

- Caves and mines

- Tombs and dungeons

From here I think I'll move on to items and basic inventory. This will be harder to show off in the beginning, but I think it's the logical next step.

I finally thought of a name for my game: "In the Land of Antiaf". I'm not 100% sold on it, but it's growing on me. I think it is broad enough to encompass the possibilities of the game, while also specific to the thing that makes the game unique amongst other, similar, roguelikes - the setting.

Here we can see the player entering some ruins, and finding stairs down to a dungeon. The dungeon is to tombs what mines are to caves (if you've been following). The tomb is a single level, and dungeons can be several levels deep. I eventually intend to have a few different types of dungeons in various settings. But that's down the road a bit still.

This does conclude my environmental/world-traversal work for the time being. At this point, I have:

- Movement

- Boat and airship movement

- FOV

- Overworld traversal

- Day/night cycle

- Time passing and season-specific color palettes

- Entering, traversing, and leaving local tiles

- Caves and mines

- Tombs and dungeons

From here I think I'll move on to items and basic inventory. This will be harder to show off in the beginning, but I think it's the logical next step.

I finally thought of a name for my game: "In the Land of Antiaf". I'm not 100% sold on it, but it's growing on me. I think it is broad enough to encompass the possibilities of the game, while also specific to the thing that makes the game unique amongst other, similar, roguelikes - the setting.

Here we can see the player entering some ruins, and finding stairs down to a dungeon. The dungeon is to tombs what mines are to caves (if you've been following). The tomb is a single level, and dungeons can be several levels deep. I eventually intend to have a few different types of dungeons in various settings. But that's down the road a bit still.

This does conclude my environmental/world-traversal work for the time being. At this point, I have:

- Movement

- Boat and airship movement

- FOV

- Overworld traversal

- Day/night cycle

- Time passing and season-specific color palettes

- Entering, traversing, and leaving local tiles

- Caves and mines

- Tombs and dungeons

From here I think I'll move on to items and basic inventory. This will be harder to show off in the beginning, but I think it's the logical next step.

Structurally, mines are very similar to the caves (that I showcased yesterday). The primary difference is that mines have multiple levels or "floors".

Those floors are procedurally generated, but then the mine is persistent within one game/save. The way that I achieve persistence is that each mine holds a "FloorRecord" that stores data about the floor: index, generation seed, whether or not it's been visited by the player, which tiles have been "discovered".

When changing floors, the process is:

1. My LevelManager instantiates a fresh mine scene

2. It looks up the appropriate floor_record (or creates it, if it doesn't exist)

3. The generator (re)builds that floor using its (stored) generation_seed

4. Because generation is deterministic, the same floor layout and stairs are recreated based on the seed

5. If the floor has any discovered_tiles, then the saved discovered_tiles are loaded

6. The previous scene instance is discarded

Later on, the FloorRecord will also include references to enemies, npcs, chests, items, etc. that are present. This will allow the player to do things like, drop a sword on floor 2, leave the mine and do a bunch of quests, come back later and find that the sword is still on floor 2.

Something, later on down the line, that I may implement is "temperary permenance". I.e. if the player is gone for a day, the sword will still be there. But if they're gone for a month, the sword is gone - perhaps picked up by a Goblin or Kobold.

Just like the caves, I based my generation algorithm off of the one shared here: https://gameidea.org/2025/01/20/procedural-cave-generation-in-godot-2d/

Caves are dynamically created using a composite seed - combining a random world-seed, and the coordinates of the cave on the overworld. I'll be doing mines next, and the structural difference between a cave and a mine is that a cave has only one level, and a mine has multiple levels.

I based my generation algorithm off of the one shared here: https://gameidea.org/2025/01/20/procedural-cave-generation-in-godot-2d/

(I apologize for the janky camera movement)

Entering local tiles is done using the same tile-based semantic_ids used to change colors for seasons.

Whenever the player attempts to enter a local tile, the semantic_id is read, and matched to a tile "type" (e.g. "forest", "grass", "river", "settlement", etc). Then random map, of that type, is selected and loaded.

Also, an entry is added to a world-state dictionary that basically holds the data as `{ overworld_tile_coordinates : specific_map_loaded }` so that once the player enters a tile, the same map will be loaded if the player enters the tile again. Otherwise, they can enter a tile over and over again and it may look different every time, which would break immersion.

I also enabled local-to-local movement by caching the world-coordinates of the current local tile, and then querying the world-map data for whichever adjacent tile the player is trying to enter (top, bottom, left, or right).

When the player leaves a local tile, and goes back to the overworld, they are placed on the current overworld tile - i.e. the one that corresponds to the local map they were just on.

Despite looking like a relatively simple mechanic, it took me a bit of trial and error to figure it out.

These images show the changing seasons throughout the year: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. In the first set of screenshots, I've removed the lighting so that the changes are all the more obvious. The second set shows what it actually looks like in-game.

I accomplish this almost completely through code. I add a semantic_id (custom data field) to the tiles that have dynamic color assignment, and then I use a dictionary to map the semantic_id to an array of colors I want it to have.

In the case of static colors (like water) there is only one color defined, as in:

var tile_to_color_map: Dictionary = {

"water": \[Palette.ColorId.BLUE\],

}

Cases where the color changes with the seasons, there are multiple colors in the array, such as:

var tile_to_color_map: Dictionary = {  
  "grass": [
    Palette.ColorId.GREEN, 
    Palette.ColorId.YELLOW, 
    Palette.ColorId.PEACH, 
    Palette.ColorId.WHITE
  ],
}

I've sped this up quite a bit but the 24-hour day cycle includes day and night. It's part of the larger time tracking and progression system that includes visible changes to the environment across the seasons.

On the over-world, I've defined 3 types of movement. The first is just standard movement of the player as an individual (@). If the player has a boat, then they will be able to traverse the oceans in a boat (≥). Finally, if they have access to an airship (⊙-ish), they will be able to fly around the map - across oceans, over mountains, etc.

In the external environments, I'm kind of faking field of view (right now it's just a shader centered on the player)

In the dungeons, however, I use tile-based visibility calculations. It's "good enough" for now, but I still have some tinkering I want to do with it.

I've made a few other game prototypes, but this will be my first proper roguelike