Layered castle

As I had mentioned earlier, the closest example that came to mind for me of this was Valkyrie Profile 2:


Not saying I'm entirely for or against this...it could be neat if deemed necessary.

well, just because a map is 2d doesnt mean the environment has to be, theres been evidence in many iga games that while youre moving on a 2d plane from your perspective, things in the background will sometimes rotate or move to show that you are actually moving in a curved area, or youll be in one place and see one side of a building far off, and in another place youll see a different side of the same building closer up, and mana said in one of her recent posts that inti is already looking at having the interior and exterior mesh so that likely means they are planning the overall castle based in a 3d space and using that as reference as they place the areas in the 2d map

as for valkyrie, thats an interesting setup, i think they couldve done a little better with the vertical spacing so that you dont have to look at it from such a steep angle to see the detail on the larger areas but i suppose that wouldve broken the ability to easily navigate the thin, windy areas like the cave system later in that vid, i like that it follows the terrain to give you an idea of what each are youve been in looks like though

interactivity is very important though, i loved that you could sit in chairs in sotn and if you sat too long alucard would fall asleep >P

Eh, this in itself is a 2D concept. VP1 did it before 2, which was a fully 2D game. The same thing as Indivisible, basically. Just moving a room into the fore/background wouldn't necessitate a copy and pasted design any more than walking left/right to a room.

More than that, I think the problem with this in a 'vania game would be the necessary break in action to make it possible. Valkyrie Profile is a platformer RPG with some Mega Man style jumps and using of some skills to get around, but the fighting is a separate system and generally initiated fairly deliberately. In a 'vania game, you're comparatively more constantly surrounded by enemies and perform many more actions with the controls.

If the "go to room behind/in front" actions are mapped to up and crouch, you would very well have accidental transitions somewhat frequently or have to consciously avoid standing near them when you're doing actual gameplay. You may be forced to crouch a fireball at a certain spot of the screen that will trigger moving into the foreground just as you were trying to finish off a tough enemy, and so you lose all of your progress and go somewhere you didn't intend to go. That's kind of a...bad design thing. You could instead use a button for actions like this (opening things), but then you open up a different kind of awkwardness: when there's a fore and background choice, how then? -Two- action buttons? A toggle and then selection? That would be more annoying that the original up/down...

So, I think that would be the main case against it, but like I said before...it -could- work if used in certain areas, and I'm a big fan of the VP games so there's that. All in all, probably just not necessary. The 2D view can "wrap" around a location without visibly doing so as you're running, for depth, or just cut a flat/straight path through all of the castle like the rest of the games have done.

Hahahaha Astaroth, I thought about bringing up Platoon but figured nobody would know what I was talking about...

And that would be a good thing. That game, ugh...

There are 2 things that come to mind here. First I remember the intro to Super Castevania IV had something that sounds like this, where Simon could go through a gate into the background behind an iron fence. Cool effect for the time.

The other is the Assassin's Creed Chronicles games, which while not the most amazing things ever, I do love the navigation between background and foreground in those games. Especially when you move along a wall or something, and when you shimmy around the corner to the next wall the camera swings around to reposition the 2D plane with a new Background. With all the beautiful Gothic scenery I'd love this game to have effects like that on occasion.

Well, bloodytears is talking about something separate...like what dragonkd mentioned in the first post with Oddworld (haven't played those games, but they look like ones that would have this).

We're not really going that direction with the conversation, i.e. two "lanes" of gameplay, but rather like the other examples stated: one 2D plane at a time, but you can traverse the background to another area instead of only left/right screen transitions.

I see that what he meant is different than how I first interpreted it, actually...he's just saying you go into a door that's north of you and you're continuing to go north down a separate hallway, but the screen uses the same left/right camera. Mega Man Zero does this, or Zelda 2...or really any 2D game that has background doors/rooms. In a 'vania, it would just have to be mapped out much differently than what we're used to...maybe something overhead instead of the side view map we always have, or like he says, angles you can toggle or something.

In VP, it's more...a series of parallel hallways. He's talking about just perpendicular paths.

Actually though, something just occurred to me that makes this almost an impossibility for new areas: the map has to be a printable 2D image for the Architect's Secret Map $500 tier. So...that means we pretty much have to have just the standard side view map. These doors could only lead to save/teleport rooms or small item areas, really.

I can go either way but I could have sworn this came up in an Ask IGA and he was against it. I'm at work so I can't check it at the moment.

one way to do parellel maps that is very well tested would be to take a page from loz and order them like floors, with a marker to denote which layer and place in a room you are actually on and if you moved the view to another layer the section or gridsquare (depending on how rooms are set up) is highlighted a different color or flashes so you can instantly place where you are in the overall map without having to flip between layers constantly (and if you are in a section that x layer either doesnt have a discovered room or no room at all you could go with the collapsing flashing circle)

the idea that they could use a cv4 style foreground/background paths is appealing to be honest, ive been bandying that possibility about ever since i saw the first shader mockup, it would open up some interesting platforming paths and could allow for more varied branching paths (like getting to enter a church from the background plane and you get to see more of the church than just the door, but if you are on the foreground path you actually walk around the side of the church and go down a hill toward another area)

but yeah, since the architects map is of an unknown-but-not-human-flesh flat substance and other info given points to a finalized 2d map you can rest largely easy dan, the final map will be in 2d... unless its a papercraft or foam style 3d puzzle you can put together >P (takes cover behind her pillow)

Since the engine is functionally a 3D engine, even with the 2D gameplay (sometimes referred to as a 2.5D style game), could the game potentially have a 3D map?

What I mean is for example, a branch of the castle that instead of going up or down, goes through a door in the background or even foreground (transparent door border would be enough to show a path), and upon entering the door the camera could pivot 90 degrees to give the proper perspective for the newly entered hallway.  The map could thus be represented in 3 dimensions and make the overall architecture feel much more 'real' instead of the traditional 2D "cardboard cut-out castle" we've always played with before.