Final Form – 2,124 Unique Tiles with ~600 Variations Each?! | Devlog #6

Welcome to Devlog #6. I skipped the last one to focus on a major system overhaul — and now I finally have something exciting to show you!

But today I can finally share with you the new tile system! And it’s really huge!

Let me hit you with some quick stats to show how big this system really is:

• 28 biomes  

• 64 features  
• 159 terrain combos (biome + feature)  
• 814 geometry-based tile variants  
• 2124 tiles, including rotations  
• Up to 40 million decorative variations per tile

So what’s all that about?

• First of all, we switched to an isometric view. It looks more tactical and gives that 'isometric' feel - even without true perspective. It tricks your brain just enough to feel like it has depth, which is surprisingly effective. Not sure why it works, but it clearly does.Pretty sure there is some psychological research on this.
• Biomes are tile “bases” -  such as forest, farmland, mountain and so on. Now we have 28 biomes, which are combinations of 6 possible elements.
• Each biome has “decorations,” which are 9 sub-tiles that have things native to the biome. Like trees in a forest, cliffs in a mountain, or farm patches in a farmland.
• Features are “alien” 'add-ons' to the base biomes — like rivers, grooves, cliffs, and so on. Features look the same across some biomes (e.g. rivers in grasslands and farmlands), but alternate between others, like lily pads instead of grooves in aquatic biomes. So each element has 5-7 features that represent it in a given biome.

• So the biome+feature combinations make a total of 159 unique terrains! And I even think of introducing a bit of “collectible” dynamic to the game - find all terrains (but you don’t have to).
• And now the major thing - a geometry in play: nearby features connect! So, two ponds in the neighbouring squares connect and make a river! And the same applies to all 64 features.
• Geometry is not just a visual feature - it is a driver of terraforming! Here’s where it gets fun - connected features actually transform the world. If a tile is surrounded on all 4 sides by the same feature, it ‘evolves’ into a new biome: a wasteland with 4-way “nature” feature turns into grassland, a grassland with 4-way “groove” turns into a forest, a forest with 4-way river turns into swamp, a swamp with a 4-way “terra” cliff feature - turns either into a fjordland or elderwild (moutnain + nature), depending on which element is dominant nearby. This might sound too much, but it is actually quite visually intuitive - if an element surrounds the tile, the tile gets terraformed into a different one. 
  • On a nerdy side - I imagine it as nice topology: each element is a kinda “surface” and when you elevate some element in the place, it elevates tiles around as well. As if you pinched and pulled up a piece of cloth - it doesn’t just lift the spot you pinched, but also the spots around.
• So if we account for all the geometry - single features, rays, lines, 3-way and 4-way intersections - 159 terrains turn into 814 meaningfully unique tiles.
• And that’s if we don’t count for rotations (e.g. there are 4 directions a 4-way feature can go). If we count rotations, that makes 2124 unique tiles, which are technically and functionally different in the game.
• And where do those “10 million” variations come from? Each tile is subdivided into 9 subtitles. Each subtitle has up to 5 variations (e.g. 5 different groups of trees), and it can also be empty. So in those cases it’s 6^9, which is 10 million :) And if we multiply by up to 4 different biome “bases” - this makes it 40 million.

But of course, we don’t draw all of them - we just use a 2-layer tilemap for all that, and use procedural generation with data-like structures. But for most tiles (except deep waters that have close to no decorations), you basically will never encounter the same tile :)

I plan to make a separate video, maybe a tutorial, about how we made composite tiles, but after we make pretty art and I add shaders.

And there is a whole new “element” - a “human element,” which I’ve already mentioned last time. It represents its own pure biomes (campground and settlement), as well as mixed appropriated biomes - farmland (human + nature), fishery (human + water), quarry (human + terra) and redmarch (human + fire). And they build their own features on other terrain, like roads, camps, or buoys in the water. It’s all up and working in the game already!

So that’s the major thing - the new tile system! The other updates are:

• More musical variation - now each element has an extra musical layer on top of the main tune.
• I’ve embedded most of the HUD in the game engine. Looks nice!
• I’ve almost done creating factions (not in code, in game design sense for now) - with buildings, economics, military and diplomatic features, as well as faith and mana relations with you. This is the last major gameplay system in terms of design — it’s almost fully fleshed out and ready to implement!

I hope you’ll like these updates and stay tuned for the news in 2 weeks!