Purple Dream: Map (Early look)

Placeholder galore! I warned you...

Purple Dream takes place in a big city. So, rather than there being an overworld city you walk through, the method of travel here is instead this map system. Here you can simply select a point of interest, and travel to it.

Aside from traveling, the map system also serves as a hub of various features. It's a hub used for objective tracking of both, main objectives, which are the ones needed to level up and progress the game (More on that on a future post about progression), and POI objectives, which are ones that progress the POI and open more content in them. Main objectives are found in the tab on the left, and POI objectives are found on a menu when you select a POI, though both of them are still a bit too ugly and WIP to show.

Another feature of the map system is the ability to switch between MCs. With a simple click at the bottom right, or pressing the tab key, you can immediately switch between Aika and Shizumi. Also working on a character page with various details when clicking on the character portrait, which is mainly to keep track of all stats and status conditions, but also to check up on trait progress and what-not for when.

There is a lot of other functionality and systems in place, such as a day cycle system, which has all kinds of effects on gameplay, such as POI availability, NPC availability, lighting, etc. Then of course the NPC system, which is a whole thing of its own that deserves its own post once I work out some unfinished elements and define more the limitations of the system. Weather, that is also something being worked on.

There is a lot going on in here. The main functionality of the system is there. It may be full of placeholders and not very be pretty at moment, but the system at the base level works. There are some basic UI things that are implemented in the system, but I haven't added to the UI, and then some other more complicated parts of the system that I still need to finish defining and implementing, such as the NPC system.

A lot going on. I think back to Blooming Flower, and remember how simple the beginning was. It was creating the 3D areas, movement system, dialogue and CG system, and that was it for the initial release. There wasn't even a main menu or any UI in the earlier releases.

For Purple Dream though, I am trying to work on implementing everything simultaneously from the get go, such as this example which is the map travel system, with all of the related UI and mechanics, as well as other systems I have mentioned before, such as traits, stats, status conditions, the various kinds of different event gameplay mechanics. A lot going on, and I'm trying to do it all properly from the get go.

Side note, the POIs you see on the screenshots are only the ones I am working and testing at the moment. There are more POIs in the works. Also, a couple of the POIs on screen aren't even POIs themselves, but sub-maps that when clicked take you to a secondary map which displays more POIs. A bunch of POIs are hidden behind those sub-maps. Can't wait to make more progress and share more!

Let me know what you think of seeing these kinds of early looks of the game.

Thank you for supporting the development of Purple Dream!