Game Projects

Basic Stuff

Text-based

A large variety of systems

Takes place on an infinite grid of island-based smaller grids (hence the name)

Island Setup

Each island has 9 sections, corresponding to the four cardinal directions, the middle and corners. There's both ocean and land tiles.

Sections have an odd number of tiles, maybe 7x7.

Island sides and corners take half and a quarter of the section size accordingly. Then an algorithm sculpts the land one way or the other to form more of a jagged shoreline.

Land Tiles that face the ocean in some capacity are Beaches.

Middles can be either more of the same as a basic land tile, or mountainous, or some kind of lagoon. These more interesting features generate according to magicsel from the central point and the total being between 0.25-0.75 of the area of the section.

Islands have "types" that determine the types of land tiles that spawn within them, as well as what the interesting central features represent (mesas, mountains, volcanoes, etc).

Towns

Each island is promised a town on one of the cardinal sections which will be coastal. Other than that there's a 1/2 chance for a cardinal section to have a coastal town, a 1/3 chance for a corner to have one, one city anywhere on the island that isn't coastal or on the promised coastal section, and beyond that it's quite random and spawned based on island rules, with each town's actual location being a promise that's spawned via section. Island types and other general randomness influence the properties here.

Towns contain some amount of item type shops based on their size (cities are obviously bigger). They also have residences that can contain simple item fetch or island-local delivery quests. No general stores; it's all very specific.

Islands can be moved between via coastal towns -- it'll go to whichever island is in that direction to whatever the most suitable town is. This isn't necessarily two-way. One is always promised. This is at least free to prevent softlocking.

You can also build a raft or boat or ship and travel around to other islands manually.

Towns are POIs so they're on their own type of branch or gridded generation and are just accessible from whichever world tile hosts them.

POIs

There's a variety of POIs that have their own handcrafted generation standards (but obviously vary in the details), as well as enemy makeup and overall "point". I'll list those out later.

POIs tend to be a source of resources that can't be obtained elsewhere. Their distribution is quite random but island-dictated so you might need to travel around to find suitable ones.

They are again on their own generation system so they're just accessible from whichever tile hosts them.

Resources

Resources are finite, and rarer than you'd expect. They're distributed via island --> section --> tile or POI promise way. This allows for scanning type stuff and Mapping more generally (which works a bit differently).

Resources require the appropriate type of tool to harvest. Tools don't break and have shatterloopian properties depending on the materials used to make them, with the starting tools being called "Basic" and having the worst properties.

Resources vary depending on the type of tile or POI. The categories here are definitely handcrafted, and there's quite a variety -- however there are modifiers that change up their resultant properties. These item types are also pallettized to each island.

Mapping

Mapping is a Base-based (Camp or Ship) mechanism that requires Paper, Ink and a Distillate of whatever it is you're trying to map. Ink just determines the resultant colors of the map, while the Distillate gives you the actual information. Cartographers will also sell maps, but this isn't necessarily useful.

Maps can only be made for something local and known -- so POIs for example can't have their resources listed out unless you've been inside them, however you could find POIs if you've been in the section where they lay. You can however map out surrounding islands a bit by some mechanism (probably requiring a rare resource for use as Distillate).

Ink can be extracted from a wide range of materials, and can also be used to color items and Base Fixtures for organizational purposes.

Seafaring Vessels

There are three:

The raft will just move between sections and cross to other islands the way coastal transport does. It's obviously more flexible. Shoring has a fixed disembarkation point -- whatever the "middle" tile of the coast is.

The Boat lets you move around ocean tiles manually. You can reach ocean POIs as well like this.

The Ship is basically a Boat that also lets you Camp, and also has its own storage space. Very useful for long ocean journeys, and quite good as a mobile base as well.

There's a Wind mechanism -- each day, the wind direction picks one of the right directions. You can't sail into the wind, and the further you are from sailing downwind, the slower it'll be to move one tile in that direction. Sailing is automatic at least so you can just sit there and wait, or if you're in a Ship, do other stuff while your Ship moves on its own.

Sails use the same system as everything else so better sails will cut your travel time down -- however with Boats and especially Ships they require more materials.

Similarly, Boats and especially Ships require more wood than Rafts do.

All three of these can be built on any unoccupied beach tile. They'll hold the resources used to build them until complete so you can ferry back and forth, however you can't retrieve them once placed and can only build one vessel of each type as a time, so they're not good storage solutions.

Camping Basics

You can Camp on any unoccupied world tile. You can't camp *in* POIs, and also can't camp on the ocean unless you're in a Ship.

Camping does several things:

Allows you to sleep to pass to various points in the day/night cycle as well as recover your Tired meter.

Allows you to access larger amounts of storage beyond your personal inventory -- it's infinite with backpacks and cryspacks but quite annoying to manage. Ships give you a much better storage solution.

Allows you to craft stuff with a Campfire, burning either Wood or Charcoal in the process. This system is a bit different.

Allows you to unlock recipes with Totems and your Seabook (more on this in that section). Reading your Seabook will also decrease your Tired stat more slowly.

Camping Setup

Your Camp has to actually be set up manually. Your personal Basic Cryspack that you start with has an Owl Totem, the Seabook, a Tent, Bedroll and Fire Pit within it. These items have to be pulled out and placed on the campsite manually -- though if you don't need all of them you don't have to place all of them. There's also space for another Backpack or Cryspack for additional basic storage.

Cryspacks are on the same system as everything else and you can equip a better one for more initial storage. Equipping a Backpack doesn't make sense because it wouldn't be able to contain more storage within it, so that slot in your inventory screen is just limited to Cryspacks.

Crafting is quite a bit different -- like if you need a kiln, you'll need to build one, and then you won't be able to pick that clay up again for later use. However Pots are obviously going to survive multiple uses.

Totems and the Seabook

Totems are basically the Labs system of this game. It works quite a bit differently, but the basic principles are the same.

The Seabook, meanwhile, is how you actually get new recipes and labs. It's full of stories.

The basic system here is that you read a story in the Seabook on whichever topic you're interested in (there's a table of contents or whatever) and somewhere within there will be "power words". These words are then told to the appropriate type of Totem with the appropriate type of "offering" to make whatever you need. This applies for additional Totems and one-off crafting (like pots or whatever), while crafting that happens continuously is done at a Campfire.

Storage Stuff

You have a limited inventory space controlled by your equipped Backpack -- probably separate from the Cryspack that holds Camping gear / more storage unless I merge the two.

Inventory space involves Weight and makes sense therein -- heavier stuff is going to take up more space.

Backpacks can be crafted, and their weight corresponds to the weight of whatever is inside them. You can put backpacks inside of backpacks but it isn't helpful.

Cryspacks, meanwhile, treat empty and full backpacks/cryspacks identically. So you have infinite storage in a sense, though inventory management can be a huge pain in the ass.

Ships work a bit differently -- the storage containers on them can be crystaled or not but either way they hold a lot more weight than a backpack/Cryspack does. There's a limited amount that you can store per Ship, but you can have multiple Ships.

Backpacks of either type can be Inked so you know what you're looking at.