Hey everyone! Julian here with the latest progress report from OgreWare. This week has shown marked progress, not just in building Calling All Heroes but also in OgreWare’s work process. (Deadlines can be a creator’s best friend, remember?)
I’m proud to report that this week’s goals have been reached, and the results are looking great so far. Most of the work has centered around the Map – you know, the visual map of where you’ve been, where you are, and where all your stuff is. And let me tell you, y’all kids these days…you are luckier than you know, to have maps!
What? There weren’t always maps??
NOPE.
When I was your age (you’re like seven or eight, right?…), I played something known as ADVENT.EXE – aka “Adventure,” a very early computer fantasy RPG. It was entirely text-based, and was sort of a cross between World of Warcraft and D&D, without the MMO element (not multiplayer or online). The readout on the screen was simply text descriptions and, of course, the player’s own commands. For example, typing in “GET STICK” would result in “You pick up the STICK. STICK has been added to your inventory.”
I struggled with ADVENTURE, but it was my first real computer game and certainly my first RPG, so I loved it even though I never got past the Hall of the Mountain King. It paved the way for me to play Dungeons & Dragons, and, later, actual video and computer games.
But the trickiest thing about Adventure, and what most people remember about it, is that it didn’t have a map. No “LOOK AT MAP” command. No “MAP” in your inventory. And no images, remember? So it was difficult, unless you had a very visual, navigation-oriented mind, to keep straight in your mind which way you’d gone and where you’d been five turns ago. I still remember having pads of graph paper beside our old Compy 286, with blocks marked out for rooms, and always a compass in the corner keeping track of N, S, E, and W.
You’d be surprised how hard it is to play a game without a consistent map, but yeah, it’s difficult. That’s why I feel that a good map is so important. I personally love isometric maps, like the one in Calling All Heroes, because it looks more 3-D but doesn’t have the distortion of some 3D effects. Instead, it shows all the tiles (“map squares”) at the same dimensions, but at an angle, so that they look like diamonds instead of squares. Make sense? Here’s some examples of non-isometric maps
And isometric:
And the Calling All Heroes map, updated:
I’m not just saying this because I designed the map tiles…but damn this thing is looking good. OgreWare has also implemented a different animation to indicate that a square is buildable: a glow effect, rather than the bouncing arrow that had so many people (myself included) so confused.
I’m really looking forward to the day that I can reveal an actual online way to PLAY Calling All Heroes, and believe me, I’m leaning on OgreWare on your behalf. They say it shouldn’t be too long before we have a build that’s actually testable, so please continue to bear with us as the development continues.
Never give up, never surrender! Always know where your towel is! Wakanda Forever! And all those good nerdy references.
All the best,
~Julian