Hello,
in my second post about my project Stay on the Track I want to tell you the Story and the Gameplay idea behind the map.
After I decided to use the Western setting for the map, the question was, why is the map placed there, and what is the story behind that?
My luck is, that it´s not really one of my problems to find ideas, so I found really fast a few possible ideas for the story of the map and a gameplay use for that.
First I couldn´t decide what would maybe a better solution, a fight for precious metals or oil or maybe a war with Indians? But the base theme for the application was "track".
Okay, Oil? Yeah, the railroad is the main supply line to get the oil from the oil field to the refineries. So maybe a competing company is trying to sabotage your railroad and you have to protect them? Remembers me a bit of "There will be blood".
Yeah, what would be a nice story but oil was discovered real late in the wild west times and I wanted to create a really cool Western-style map with steam trains and cowboys. And so I thought a bit more about the story. So if you think about the Wild West, what are you imagine?
Cowboys, horses, freedom, bandits, Indians. Right?
So that I finally come to this story:
Stay on the Track (2) Story and Gameplay
The map puts the player in a fictional town called "Last Sun" in the Midwestern United States around 1880.
This is close to the "frontier", the border of Indian Territory. It has only a few hundred inhabitants, which either try their luck as a rancher or employees of the railroad company which route leads through the village. The city lies on erstwhile Indian Territory, from where the natives were expelled by the settlers behind the "frontier". The proximity to the Indian Territory and the associated hunting areas have settled some hunters, fur traders, Interpreters, and trackers, and a few shady characters in and around the city.
The railroad is used by the inhabitants to transport the goods, so that the railroad soon become the stream of life for the city, and also brings more money and people in the city. In order to increase their wealth, the settlers ordered to continue the construction of the route over the border into Indian territory, whereupon the Indians respond with attacks on the trains.
This breaks out a bitter battle over the railway line.
To formulate this text was much harder than the idea itself :D
And what's with the gameplay? Yeah, the basic gameplay idea you should have already identified in the story about the map. Your goal as the player is to defend the trains at all costs to prevent the goods of the ranchers and settlers. Source is mainly an Engine for shooters and small maps, with wide-open areas the engine got its troubles, so how I could realize this game mode. To defend trains you need open wide areas. To realize this and to finish my project soon enough for the application I decided to create just the city Last Sun from which trains start over the frontier. This was feasible and would also give me some more opportunities for the gameplay at all.
The basic idea of the level is to place the player in a part of an open-world RPG in which the level the center for the missions is. But the main goal for the player is to protect a train until he reaches his goal, Stay on the Track.
For this are a few special places in the city where the player can get special things and so on. The train station for example is the starting point for a lot of missions. Further, the church is because of its height a good landmark from which the player can find from every place of the level back to the city. In the manor house in the back part of the city there the probably richest rancher of the region lives who has triggered the conflict between the settlers and Indians in Last Sun. In the sheriff's office, the player has the opportunity to take up missions in the name of law and order, or leave the prisoners in jail.
In the bank, the player can save his hard-earned money. And in the shop, he has the opportunity to get all the new stuff he needs to survive in the outback from supplies to weapons up to ammunition. The Saloon is like the train station the starting point for many missions. There is also the right place to talk to other settlers to get the newest information, to consume the drinks inventories of the owner, or to instigate a real bar fight.
Why I made all the work to write down such a background story? That is easy, if you want to win someone for your project (and that was more or less my goal with this application) you have to show him in an easy and understandable way what you try to achieve with your work, and why it is also interesting for him. If you have a background story it is much easier to explain your map to others. And also it is much easier for yourself if you write something down on what you can be focused on later.
I hope it's readable because I think in German this was a bit better to read :D
So that's enough text for now, in the next part I will show you the different stages of the development, which means less text and more pictures :)