Return to The North

The North was a region I first started working on about a year ago, back when Asciilands was still in its infancy. I wrote some code for some tiles and sprites and diligently typed the maps, character by character, into blank text documents.

Shortly afterwards, Jared completely revamped the engine and the map became completely broken. Some elements of the map - like the more muted colour palette and the approach to incorporating caves - went on to influence our approach to Asciilands generally. The map itself, however, was abandoned.

Until now.

I've included some screenshots of my latest attempt at making a snowy region. Some things I'm happy with (the overall feel, the colour scheme), and some things I'm not so sure about (my attempts to soften the border between snow and grass in the bottom screenshot).

In other news, Jared and I have started roughly mapping out the main continent of Asciilands, complete with snowy plains, ragged coastlines, deserts both arid and cold, open fields, forested swamps, waterlogged mountains, and strange hidden red-tinged forests of decaying wood and rotting cloth. One of our primary aims is to make exploration feel rewarding; with any luck the variety of environments will help us achieve this.