WIP Art: The Dungeon Refactor (Patreon)

We're working hard on implementing the forest tiles, a process that is tedious but necessary in that it involves blocking out the walkable areas manually. This process is going to be necessary no matter how we set things up, which is why we can safely add in the tiles without worrying about extending the refactoring by more than a day or two at most.

A big part of the refactoring is to make dungeons far more accessible. All dungeons will be organized around a central pillar (the WIP image of the forest central pillar can be seen here). The central pillar will act to mark the vertical axis running right through the center of the grid that makes up the map, the 0,0 point on the grid as it were. In addition, we'll be making the way that dungeons produce paths far less random and confusing, with a single central path that links the entrance to the exit, and then branches that push out from that point. Objectives of any sort will only be found at the ends of the branches, and intersections will be marked by unique, and large, terrain pieces that make them more obvious and easy to remember, Landmarks by which it will be easier to navigate the map. In addition, to help with navigation, the coordinates of any entrance to any floor of the map will be shared with the coordinates of the exit from the previous floor. This means that when you leave one floor, when you begin the next one, you will still be the same relative distance from the central pillar at the center of the dungeon map as you were.

Finally, there will always be some ability to get to the base of the central pillar on every map. Sometimes this will be at the end of a branch (with the central pillar being the 'objective' other times it will be simply next to the main path. This means that the topmost floors of any dungeon will be more predictable, but deeper dungeons, with their larger numbers of tiles, will sprawl and twist far more. It's important to note that the exit to the dungeon will always require you to pass by at least one of the axis defined by the central pillar's center point, either crossing over the midway point horizontally or vertically. Between this fact, and the fact that your relative position to the central pillar on every floor remains the same regardless of whether you're switching floors in the dungeon, you will find it far harder to get lost!