This update changes things quite a bit -- I do have more to code unfortunately but it's entirely geared around the story and lore and it remodels the skill tree a lot better as well.
For some reason (glossing over this for the moment), magic has been completely removed from this world, turning the land gray, crystallizing all magic into biological potion ingredients and rendering humans polymorphed statues. As well as creating big barriers in the world in general as they bleed off magic, destroying cities, sterilizing the terrain, etc.
Throughout the course of the game, you're fixing these issues piece by piece by crafting unique Potions which are fed into fixtures at the Last Outpost in the personal realm. The world and some of the gameplay changes as you do so, and you also unlock more Lore.
While the different regions are infinite in all senses of the word, the Civilized areas definitely aren't -- there's a limited amount of Hub that's accessible in its current form with the rest of the regions outside its walls in more haphazard configurations. Additionally, towns and cities will start appearing at some point in game progression but there's a limited amount of them, and they're likely handcrafted and sort of connected together.
While I'm not sure exactly how the game progression goes yet, I do know the different elements of the world that change over time.
Starting Conditions
Worlds are entirely grayscale and pull from a very very limited set of terrain -- probably a lot of straight 0% mix or close and maybe some blocky ones for some. Resources are also grayscale, though different grays at least and maybe some low-sat color.
You're limited to the 8 worlds within the first Hub area. 0,0 and 1,1 should trade places just so it's a little more aesthetic. This area should be surrounded by gray chimera or something similar.
These worlds have world borders which are also chimera. Not sure how big they are.
Tercos aren't in effect -- there's 5 resources per region that run on the standard ruleset. The starting 8 should therefore cost less Wisdom to unlock.
Changes over time
The world gains color. This unlocks color scanning.
The terrain becomes more interesting -- this should unlock the ability to alter the personal realm.
Tercos come into play -- this also unlocks the terrain modification tools (though you still have to spend elements on them).
World size becomes unlimited again
The full hub is available (though it's surrounded by chimera)
The wild part of the hub becomes available and is infinite. I'm thinking the terrain out here uses the full wilds algorithm + wind + snakes + other stuff. Lots of crazy stuff. These new terrain types are maybe scannable at which point they can alter the personal realm. Considering you can get lost out here, there should be some kind of option to go back to the Hub. Also wisdom costs should be a lot higher.
Civilization starts to appear, maybe in stages.
Resources turn back into animals and plants in some areas and the life sim thing begins + the spellbook unlocks (more on that in that section).
I'm not sure what the order of these changes are, or which unlocks they activate. Various parts of gameplay should unlock alongside them as well (compounds, elements, farming, etc).
What I do know is that crafting different potion types is what actually causes world changes, and they should tie into the overall lore / world progression better accordingly. Additionally though the potions you can actually craft should be based on the state of the world and areas that have been recently unlocked, so there's a more solid progression there.
While you're still very definitely creating Potions repeatedly, there's a certain stage at which point you can't restore the world further without advancing the Story some more.
At this point you have to find the Megapolis -- a large city (with probably a different name) hidden somewhere in the Wilds portion of the Hub. Clues are scattered around the rest of Civilization.
The lore of the Megapolis is that it's what caused the Magic of the world to dwindle in the first place because the people there were tapping into it to prevent aging, and all the Lore that goes into that. As things got worse and worse though the city fell into more and more ruin and its people polymorphed into statues so there's a lot of lore to unlock here as you traverse that big handcrafted region.
Your overall goal here is finding the Last Survivor -- the lore borrows heavily from the Minds thing about that last city falling apart. The Last Survivor has also turned into a statue but there's a journal that documents her story and also has the Beacon and Gigawarp technologies you need to finish the game.
Basically the big reveal at this point is that this entire world was constructed from a single grayscale dimension -- there's a gigantic central Pylon called an Aleph or something that's granting magic to the entire world and all the different dimensions were created as offshoots of the central one. Also earth fauna were scattered throughout the infinite expanse from a pretty limited initial stock.
In any case you have to track down this Pylon -- it's literally *in* the hub dimension but way way far out. Getting there requires placing Beacons out in the Wild that'll narrow it down (they say where the Pylon is in some direction (orth or secondary)). You then use the Gigawarp tool to warp out in those directions an arbitrary amount of screens, place more beacons, rinse repeat until you've narrowed it down.
The Central Pylon is a pretty big handcrafted structure and still has a lot of technology in place (and therefore Lore) from the Old World. You have to get in here and deactivate the pull from it to the Megapolis so you can continue the game progression with those last set of Potions.
Every town or city in Civilization is fully handcrafted. When that stage unlocks, those areas will populate. They're scattered throughout the Hub's worlds fairly randomly.
Some fixture on one of the screens of the Hub will allow you to go into a Civilized region in an adjacent world easily so you can at least get things started. Maybe there's more than one. I'm not sure how this works exactly except that you shouldn't be forced to find Civilization purely by wandering around (although that can also happen).
Bits of Civilization are connected together in various ways with Portals that you have to feed Triads or something to reactivate. They should be cross-world as well, activating that world instead of you using Wisdom and teleporting you over there to where that endpoint is. This changes your position in that world, but that's acceptable.
Civilization offers a few things:
Lots and lots of Lore. I want to fully construct this world and really beef up the lore of any particular city the way I did with Saepes Mundi (granted the magic system is a lot simpler generally). The Lore should tie into the handcrafted regions and even some of the statued denizens.
Clues about the location of the Megapolis. I'm thinking one of the cities will go to a fixture out in the wilds near it, and then another clue(s) will tell you where to actually go. One says the world, another says the location -- it's close to origin but this at least prevents you from just systematically hunting every single close region.
Crystals, which are used to unlock Spells in the Spellbook.
Resources which are easier to collect, particularly with Farm Plots that have a large amount of tercoed resources. You can find raw elements and compounds as well, maybe mana or wisdom batteries, etc.
At some stage, some areas will have Live resources. This happens in the core regions as a percentage chance or something based on overall world development or something, and exclusively happens in Wild regions.
These areas function as a life simulator, where instead of resources you have entities that move around and make changes to the world. When the sim starts they'll take on the colors and type of what they've been tercoed into being.
They can move off screen, in which case the current area will lose an instance of them and the region they've entered will gain one.
If the amount of some animal type falls, they'll come in from offscreen where possible (if there's no water on the edge fish won't come in for example, and same deal with things stuck on land).
If an animal type becomes too large a number, Carnivory will start to bring levels back to normal. Same deal with plants and Herbivory.
Animal Behavior
Insects will move randomly. If they hit a solid they'll burrow through it, turning it into floor.
Insects on rocks will burrow into it and begin burrowing behavior if they have solids around them.
Trees will spread onto floor or water, with old trees turning into rocks. Same deal if it's eaten.
Grass reproduces by flinging seeds if there aren't seeds in that direction and they're fully grown. Grass on water will die and turn to floor. Same deal if it's eaten.
Fish on land will seek out water at top speed.
Fish in water will lazily move around and occasionally duck down, becoming invisible. When they're adjacent to a floor there's a chance the floor will become water.
Birds fly in straight lines until they find a solid to roost on. Then they'll get bored and fly in straight lines again.
Animals move around randomly but they don't climb solids.
Eating
Birds eat Insects and Fish.
Mammals eat Birds and Plants.
Fish will eat Animals that step into their pools of water, assuming there's too many of them.
Eating behavior basically changes the animal's behavior so it seeks out and eats food, rinse, repeat until the levels are normalized.
Gameplay Basis
The live animals feature is an easier way to gather a bunch of resources because Spells do various things to attack them, speed up their cycles, etc.
Additionally though, there are specific potion effects that can only be found in the wilds part of the hub where the animals are all always live, so you *have to* interact with this mechanic at some point.
When animals can start being Live (and this presumably is when the Wilds unlock as well), you can unlock the Spellbook.
If you don't unlock it, you can attack entities by touching them. This can be quite difficult if they move around a lot. Spells give you a lot more you can do.
In any case, the Spellbook is basically the magic system of the life simulator. There are presumably spells that affect dead resources as well (including Farmed ones). The Spellbook is an infotab where you can bind spells to custom keys.
Spells cost one of the 8 elements, which can be produced by the characterized elements in a one-way transformation. Each element also does a different thing in several different ways.
New spells can be found in Civilization, bypassing the crystal mechanic for efficiency.
Spells deal damage in a terrain way, with different effects corresponding to different terrain patterns. I'm not sure on everything here but it'll be fun to explore how everything works.
The last outpost was sort of a last ditch effort to preserve the civilization and efforts to reverse the magic drain. The handcrafted structure maintains its integrity via some large Pylons around it (maybe three) which also locks the world and allows it and its resources to be changed (see: farming mechanics, color palettes, bricks, etc).
For a while, this also kept the scientists working here from Polymorphing and they did in fact find a lot of solutions, which are the technology that unlocks as you craft potions -- essentially it's technology that only works when the amount of Magic in the world is higher. It takes Elements as a kind of fuel.
However levels dropped even more and they began Polymorphing anyway. This happened at the Megapolis too -- the people there tried to turn off the magic flow to them but couldn't -- it has to be reset at the source. The Last Survivor figured out how to find the Aleph but magic outside it would've instantly polymorphed her so she couldn't make the journey.
In any case, with the scientists slowly Polymorphing, they found another solution -- a means of turning one of their own into an entity that couldn't Polymorph. The downside was a major loss in their memories (not a full one thankfully, and not permanent either) and also this transformation wouldn't happen until the magic level had dropped to 0%.
You're the person that was chosen for this, and you "wake up" and the game begins when magic hits 0%, which is why the world is as messed up as it is in the beginning. You're essentially tied to the Pylons and are immortal / free from mortal concerns like eating and can return to them and the personal realm at any time.
In your old life, you were an Alchemist, and a damn good one at that. You were definitely the one best suited for saving the world now that everything has crystallized into potion ingredients.
This technology is mirrored somewhat in the Megapolis, the central Pylon there is drawing power from the Aleph and the people there were linked to it so they didn't starve / didn't age. The downside was continuous irreversible energy draw, dooming the world.
The Last Outpost was somewhat of an offshoot of the Megapolis and its major technology to study the effect and advance technology further but when the world became doomed it changed its purpose. Nonetheless it does know the Megapolis exists so that's your route into trying to find it once you advance to that level of game progression.
Magic System Basis (or: a primer on why everything is now a Potion Ingredient)
Everything in the world crystallized (or statuifies) based on the amount of Magic it had -- in the absence of background Mana the endogenous Mana can't flow right and the being will crystallize altogether.
Animals and plants were bred for the specific Potion Ingredients in them, which are basically a combination of their element interacting with their Biological compounds and scattered throughout the universe by the precursors. Not sure how much of this is known at the outset since the precursor lore is definitely late-game.
So when World Mana dropped, those compounds and elements caused them to crystallize into potion ingredient forms.
Humans also have Mana which regenerates over time and allows them to use magic, so they polymorphed according to how much mana they had, with the people that survived the longest having the least amount of mana.
Endogenous Mana in this world sustains growth and development, and unfortunately causes aging and eventual death. But not having Mana is basically a death sentence for other reasons.
The way you work is a bit different -- you're tied to the Mana of the Pylons in the personal realm, which gives you life (at the expense of a lot of your memory as mentioned -- you do have memories of *being* a Pylon, weird as that sounds). You have no mana of your own. This lack of personal mana prevents aging and normal metabolic processes.
Various magotechnology requires mana to use, and since you don't have an endogenous source you have to burn items and compounds into it, sort of consuming them and adding to the Mana pool that the Pylons in the personal realm have access to. Not entirely sure how that works just yet, but it does explain why it doesn't regenerate and why you can have 0 Mana when it's essential for life.
In this world, Biomagical Compounds are the building blocks of life. While yeah there are cells or some analogue of them, these compounds function as essential macronutrients/micronutrients and have a storied history and quite a bit of lore behind them. They're not all essential for every living being but they are found endogenously in varying amounts according to the species.
Humans typically need to eat, and so they'll eat different foods that hit different amounts of these compounds.
Extraction works a bit differently -- it's very lossy. In order to crystallize the compound the rest of it has to be burned away, and a ton of what you're actually extracting is *also* burned away in a secondary process. There is a whole two-step biological process here that the Lore delves into a bit.
Compounds can also be found in Rocks -- this works a bit differently and maybe ties into how the life sym works but it's essentially top soil full of those compounds that has naturally concentrated into specific forms based on the region. Extraction technology builds on this principle.
Each biological entity has an Element associated with it. Interestingly this also includes humans.
Elements are the real building blocks of the world so they're elements in both senses of the word. Whereas Mana is more akin to energy/photons.
In this world when a biological entity forms, some element gets expressed more than the rest and this changes the entity's character. The compounds it's composed of kind of springs up around this and with humans it affects the kinds of magic they're best at performing naturally. (They can get around this with tools that call upon elements in other ways).
When a compound is metabolized for mana to sustain life, it releases elements back into the world. These then crystallize back into forms that make the world work -- earth turns into solids, water into water, wind into air, light into the persistent glow of the world (with shadow tempering it), fire adds heat with ice tempering it, metal turns into metal and wood tempers it. Granted the character here changes different properties of each of these world effects.
Compounds are composed of some balanced combination of different elements and metabolism basically purifies them into gaseous forms that spread out into the world. There are 6561 possible combinations but only 26 are stable. Figuring out which compounds are which (and why) should be a lot of fun. All 24 should be in use however. Transmutation could maybe tie into this so it's less random and there's an explanation for it.
The element that a biological entity has is something that it was kind of born with, with different species having different ones. With humans it has a lot to do with what their mother are while they were in the womb.
These elements epigenetically alter the way the compounds work, leading to differences in a species or with humans different features and obviously magic ability. Elements can't be changed.
There are three "pure compounds", known as alpha, epsilon and sigma, which are composed of a balance of that character in all 8 elements. When fed Mana, they don't metabolize but instead just store the Mana and act as though they have more elemental energy. So they're very very useful for magical technology. Eating them is not recommended -- yes, it's been tried, to pretty disastrous results which I'll go into when I figure out why. Probably the fact that they can't be metabolized and just build up in the body for one thing (and absorb mana around them, leading to fatigue + elemental inflammation).
Conveniently, the list of micronutrients + fat + protein totals 26. So I could probably just match them with their various biological roles. Granted food in this world works completely differently, since they're *all* used both structurally and for energy. Also essential hormones and stuff are built on various compounds irl so idk how that works yet.
Purifying an ingredient is reducing it to its base element form, by burning away everything else. It works a lot like how compound extraction does. You can't just capture background elements released from metabolism because the amounts are much much smaller -- usable elements contain gigantic amounts of them in a crystallized pure-character form.
You also can't extract elements from physical phenomena (like Earth from rocks) because they're composed of a melange of elements of different characters (and maybe limiters). I mean maybe as technology progresses this would become more possible, but it's outside the scope of science at the moment.
Elements no longer compose literally everything in the world -- they're instead just a secondary physical layer.
Same deal with Biomagical Compounds, which goes further to explain why you get so few of them when extracting -- they're spread out heavily throughout an organism and not very concentrated at any given time.
There are a total of 27 stable compounds because that's evidently how the quark system works. The quark system should also tie in better to Transmutation (I think I already have notes to that effect), literally altering quark composition.
In any case 26 of them are named and have biological roles, while the 27th is special. It's metastable the way alpha/sigma/omega are, but it has a special property where it binds to one other stable compound, making it also stable, and this linkage can continue.
So a compound in your inventory contains both the special compound and whatever mg of the compound you've extracted is. It won't randomly get turned back into elements the way it does in the body (this is what produces endogenous Mana? Or something).
In any case, extraction works by sticking the special compound on a surface site of one of the magical compounds, then using the 5 Mana to burn away everything else, pulling all of that compound out in a stable form.
Extraction tools come preloaded with a supply of that special compound, and you can also feed in compounds you've already extracted because of the magnetic effect.
