Weapon Alpha

[Valo]

Well, getting somewhere so it's time i share what it is. A faux 3d world map! I was bored one day and started messing with a PD 3d platformer engine using the WA assets. The group seemed to like the idea but felt it wouldn't be worth while to try and stick with it. But the general comment was that it reminded them of snes era RPG maps. I figured, why not modify that engine into just that then? I was going to have a system of revisiting completed levels anyway.I've also been   trying to think of a way to implement optional levels which was hard to think of a way to get working in a menu based system. With this 3d map you can actually fly around as you please and stumble upon these levels or find clues in the main story levels about hidden areas. These will be represented as coordinate style clues, tho not really realistic as only x and y coordinates will be used. You can then travel to those coordinates within the map using the hud on the left. In the final, both your x and y coordinates will be updated in real time for use in navigation, as well as that green screen displaying multiple compass points. There will be a consistent point that will always point north like a real compass , a story objective point which will point you to the next story level, a sidequest point which will point to a set sidequest that you've unlocked(one of which will involve that big robot from the sprite thread !). The sidequest marker can be swapped out as needed if you want to drop a sidequest and tackle a different one, or turned off completely. And lastly, a player defined point. Some where you can mark on the map yourself if you want to remind yourself to come back there later.


I've mostly gotten the hud working. Having a bit of an issue getting the engine to actually use my all purpose sprite based font, which likely means theres another object defining the font besides the hud object, will work that out soon. As well as figure a way to get the font to render over the hud, since using the draw event makes sprite depth wacky... I have the next few days off so i wanna tackle this as much as I can.


You may notice the land masses pop in oddly at times in the gif, this is due to having the ship set up to 'wrap' to the other side of the room when it reaches the room border. Basically meaning the game teleports your ship to the other side of the map, even if it will spawn you 3 feet from a face full of wall. In the final, we'll have enough buffer water space there to run out most of the draw distance, so when you hit an edge you wont notice any pop in.

Textures are place holder as well. They feel a bit too complex for WA's graphic style in my opinion. The water too, though i'm quite happy with how that turned out unrelated to WA, haha. 

The creator of the original engine will be credited of course! ...I i just need to find their name again. It wasn't listed in the engine proper.