Maps, More Maps, and Minecraft(?)

So, my computer is half-way fixed now. It will run, but audio doesn't work. Odds are I'm either going to have to tear the entire computer down and find out what's wrong (again), or I'll have to do a clean install of Windows 7. Of the two, I don't know which I'd rather NOT do.

 

Anyways, with little found on how to black out rooms until you enter them (at least with what I'm trying to do and in the engine I'm using), I've moved on to replicating the interior maps (mainly the building you wake up in) through the use of single-room maps. This is (sadly) not as quick as I was hoping it would be, but has allowed me an opportunity to make the maps better. Instead of odd-looking places with little logical sense to their layout, a building will now have some idea of uniformity amongst itself. While the original maps for this building will be used for the forthcoming demo (release TBD), I do not know if they will be accessible in the final build. I may leave it as an Easter Egg found in the developer's room, but I don't know for sure yet.

 

The original map for the basement level.

Some rooms may be locked until certain conditions

are met inside the game.

 

Passages from books can be read inside the game,

offering information, story, or random sayings to

throw off the player.

 

 

In other news, the building of the outdoor area is continuing strong. On the flip-side of the coin, however, the first large outdoor area is proving to be larger than I even originally planned on, with the original grid size of eleven maps by eleven maps showing to be a lot smaller than I originally thought. This could, of course, easily be averted through the use of small markers for large buildings, but doing so for a game such as this would be a cheat not only to myself, but to the player. Maybe in a future RPG that I've had floating around my head and hard drives for a while, I'll consider doing that.

 

Finally, I've also found a fairly decent way to test out how a map would work and look for various angles other than the simple 2D format of the game. Through the Creative Mode of the sandbox game Minecraft, I've started building the maps in 3D using the blocks in the game. This way, not only can I see a top-down view of the maps, but I can also walk through them and decide if they work. I may make the map available after the release of the game.

 

A top-down view of the map with the ceiling removed.