For those who like Programming

Hey Everyone,

For those more interested in the Programming side :)

I've Decided to post about what I've been working on in my spare time, Similarly to my Myst Island being a form of artistic exercise to improve my art skills I decided to work on a game in my spare time to exercise my programming skills.

I wanted to make a game that would incorporate all the fun aspects of RPG's and combine them with open world sandbox type games similar to Minecraft or Haven and Hearth. The engine's foundation has been long in development as I've been improving and expanding it ever since I started programming. I love the Diablo series how it used a 2.5D isometric projection for its artwork so I decided to begin working on my own isometric engine. It's very basic so far but I'm very happy with how it's turning out; I'm using a noise engine combining Perlin, Fractal and Ridged-Multifractal noise patterns overlayed on each other in respect to a height map to generate biomes for my isometric map generator that are built as chunks in real time. The beauty of incorporating noise into a game is that it looks natural, extends to almost infinity, generates thousands of unique patterns with seeds and you don't need to build a map editor on the side.

I'm currently working on the isometric mouse to tile selection system and finalizing the generator so that it's efficient. After those are in place I plan to design and draw some trees, shrubs, rocks and distribute them in respect to their biomes using another form of noise; perhaps Gaussian.

The sandbox aspect of the game will incorporate a fully interactive and dynamic environment that the player explores and collects resources in; you'll be able to chop trees for wood, examine plants and flowers for medicines, food etc. After the basic exploration you can set up shelter from the rain and the wildlife that might attack you. Eventually you will build tools and equipment that will help you obtain a foothold of the land; build walls to keep out bears, build a home with a fireplace to keep you warm and even start a farm for food and materials. During this sandbox game play there will be RPG elements mixed in similar to Diablo where you can go around and attack monsters and gain experience for leveling your character, though I have yet to decide how that system will work. After collecting resources, you'll be able to smith your own armour out of different materials, reinforce it, build weapons to defend yourself and even make potions and enchant your equipment.

Eventually I'll incorporate different weather effects as well as a complete day / night system which is actually almost finished. The map is very rough at the moment since it's all drawn as isometric tiles without any auto tiling to smooth the transitions between the biomes but I've uploaded an image for those who are curious of what it looks like so far:


The engine is founded on the C++ language and is being rendered with OpenGL through the Simple Direct-Media Layer API. I've learned a lot in a small amount of time already and I look forward to developing this game into something I enjoy and hopefully something others enjoy too :)

Thanks for your time,
Ashton.