Game Journal #104- Steam Next Fest, Westwood Progress, Overworld Improvements

Hello everyone! Welcome to my game journal series. Today, I've got a bit to cover, so I'll start right away.

First of all, there are two major events coming up for my game. Steam Next Fest, which happens in October, and Steam's Turn Based RPG fest, which happens in Septemeber. Both of these events allow people to easily find your game and play it. For this reason, I'm aiming to complete as much as I can before the deadline for both of those events to have the game as polished as possible. It'll be a challenge, yeah. But I'm really glad for it because now that I have a goal, it makes me want to work more!

Also: the main game will have the full demo 1 released by December. This is a certainty. I don't know if Chapter 1 will be done by that time, but the demo absolutely will be. So get hype!

All right, onto the game stuff... I'll go over the most pressing one first.

You may notice that the UI looks very different now. In that, the minimap that was there is now gone. There's a reason for that. I decided to remove it from the game after I saw a youtube video on game development. It put a showcase on a game called Thief, released in the 90s, and how it was a product of innovation and uniqueness that hasn't been matched since. You can watch it below.

No joke, this video blew my mind. I'd never noticed how homogenized game progression had become in modern times, simply because I was born in the period where it was normal. You had an open world game? It needs a map, quest markers, and things to find that progressed you through the story. I never thought about why that was, or even if it was a fit for my game. And after considering the story, and how you're in medieval times... I decided that it made absolutely no sense to know where you are at all times. So, I ditched the map, and replaced them with noninteractive ones. I think it'll make the gameplay feel more authentic as a result.

Anyway... I did a lot of work on modelling the first level, as well. It's not quite done yet, but by the next journal it should have some pretty good progress on it. So yeah. I'll see you then.