Mad King's Lair: Tome of Destruction (03s.08)

So the work on Librus continues well. With movement, quests, compass, maps, UI, Inventory, and Camera controls out of the way (and having one of two roads for AI and Combat chosen) it's really about completing the world at this point.

CREATING PORTALS & CHESTS

The process of creating Portals and Chests is a fairly large deal in the game. We're using Magic Cubes which are Orange Holograms when the game first begins. There will be hundreds of these things in each of the game's 20 Core Zones. 

In short when the player wakes up, after choosing a Race and Class (which others will perceive them as) they are given a tiny little sliver of the starting zone, and told that the world is about to end. They're also told that everyone mysteriously disappeared, and these weird Orange Cubes have appeared in their place. The player will then complete the starting dungeon, and find one of those Cubes locked in a room. When they return to the Orange Cube, they'll be able to restore it to a green cube, open it, and the world will populate with the Starting Inn which is a hub for the first few game hours.

As the game progresses, the player will Unlock Portal Towers which lead to the new areas of the game, and the larger worlds to explore. Most zones are about the Size of Hyrule Field in Ocarina of Time, with some of the smaller ones being the size Zora's Domain.

As they progress, weapons, quests, items, and in fact entire systems for the player will be locked in these cubes. They'll have to explore the whole of the world to find these collections of lost people and buildings. It's a completionist's themepark.

The main story will provide any cubes which are required to complete the game. Any additional ones will lead to Side Quests, Rare Skills, Stat Upgrades, and general access to things like the Crafting Systems.

Basically, it's the Town System from Dark Cloud on a game-wide level. However, because you're mixing it with Majora's Mask's time system, you're going to be racing the clock to complete all three segments of an event chain, and they may not be in linear order. 

Fortunately, the Quest Book will help you to not get lost in the process. We'll do tours of other systems as we progress. But I wanted to start keeping a rolling journal of the game here for its eventual Steam Launch.

Thanks for reading!