October 2024 Update – Getting Lost on Purpose

Hey! Sorry I'm a little late here, and unfortunately that's not the only complication that's occurred this month. First is that I took close to two weeks to visit family out of state; and second is that I'm in the process of moving. All of this is to say that we're gonna be looking at a pretty short update this month! But, even so, I do have more details to share about my "weird" plans for the map I discussed last month, so let's dive into that...

As a reminder, subscribing as a premium patron will not charge you until the release of the first playable milestone build, which is still at least a few months out. An announcement will be made when a release date has been selected.

"Good" and "Bad" Maps

I've done a lot of driving in my life, both for work, and for pleasure. Recently, I was driving to a park not a short distance from me, and had noticed that I'd forgotten my charger. With my phone's battery pretty low, I started making every effort to conserve power, lowering screen brightness and enabling the battery saver, etc.. It was about at that moment I was reminded just how far navigation has come for us, and just how difficult it is to get lost in the age of smartphones.

Boot up almost any modern video game, and you'll see much of the same "progression". Once flowery prose about an innkeeper's grief of their lost son and the woods they'd last had the privilege of seeing them has been all but truncated down to a single button press and an automatically marked location on your map. Often times, the straight walk there is then even optional.

You get where I'm going with this; I'll spare you the drawn out whining of all the trend-chasing, overexplained, dopamine farming practices used today in games. And to be perfectly clear, I'm not saying I think there should never be fast traveling or quest markers in any game ever. There are plenty of games where traveling and discovery are not at all important to the gameplay when compared to the action or strategy. My gripe is with games wearing the "adventure" label, and then treating actual adventuring like it's a nuisance to be optimized out.

And with that VERY dramatic preamble out of the way, let me introduce you to an early prototype of Tales From the Herd's map:

I think the basic concept here is pretty obvious: you can draw on it. You can draw on your map.

Your map generates just like your village does, and is unique to the seed you use. When you first open it, you'll notice many of the main landmarks already depicted on it, but otherwise it's missing a lot of smaller details. But you'll be free to make it as detailed as you like!

With this drawing ability, it's possible to not only give yourself a more detailed lay of the land, but also to plan routes for yourself while completing favors or tasks. And remember: conversation is an essential and flexible mechanic in Tales From the Herd; if another pony is explaining where they lost their kite or whatever, you will be free to have this discussion with them while simultaneously taking notes on your map.

The feature is in a rudimentary phase currently, but I want to mess with a few additions in the future like drawing layers, brush sizes, and perhaps even a pin system for when you're not feeling particularly artistic. We'll see.

With that being said, I'm aware this may seem like a bit of an odd call to make in place of a more traditional game map, and I'd love to hear any points you might have for or against it. Like I've said previously, the initial early access launch phase of the game (Milestone Build 1) will likely be one of its most experimental, and I don't want to make any drastic changes until it's being played by other people and I can see the discussion surrounding it.

So... yeah, unfortunately with everything that was going on last month, that's pretty much all I had time to develop. And I still have a ton of stuff from my last apartment to go through, so I wouldn't get too excited for big updates in November, either.

But in the meantime – what are some of your favorite map mechanics in games? I remember initially struggling with the minimalist, landmark approach of Darkwood's map, but coming to appreciate how it felt like I was learning the layout of the world myself because of it. The immersive use of Sea of Thieves' and even Minecraft's maps both left an impression on me, too.