Building a settlement....

...is more than just creating a level or an area.

This new area I am working on is based on the level I submitted for the level-building community contest and it is a huge one! With a huge area, especially that area being a village comes the added task of populating it. Now, I have the plots for this village all written down but it is variable enough that the actual populace placement has to be finalized and additional things like ambient movement, non-critical NPCs, sub-plots, stages set up. What I've started doing nowadays is - as soon as each level is sort-of finalized, I export the minimap and put it into my Dropbox folder. Whenever I have free time at work, I open the level and start jotting down things on the image itself.

Plot-critical populace

Obviously, everything can't be fit into a single image so I use one for NPCs and any ideas I come up with when putting them down, another for quest flow and one for ambient movement. It varies with each area but I've felt a lot more focused when I am back home and open these images to translate the jottings into actual implementation. All the thinking is done during lunch and smoke breaks and once the toolset is opened, the goal is only to get as much of those thoughts implemented and nothing else.

Sometimes, I do get diverted. For example, I've been putting off tinting/recolouring items since the beginning and every now and then, I decide to start on it and go to the wiki. I still haven't managed to get through that tutorial, unfortunately so it just ends up as a wasted few minutes of diversion. I'm trying hard to stick to my plans for October and so far, it's going well. Still, a lot of days to go...

Till later,