Overworld Movement Preview

Alright, I think I’ve settled on a mechanic for getting around the overworld.  Here’s a link to a video where I give a brief demo:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/376612622

Basically, leaving a map takes you to the overworld screen.  You then get the choice of any map location on that same continent to which you may travel. You get the same menu of choices no matter which location you leave, as you’ll see on the video.  This will certainly make overworld movement faster and more fluid — however, it comes at the cost of the snazzy map movement animation.  Again, thoughts on this point are welcome.

(I for one love the map movement animation, and would love to find a place for it in the randomizer.  My current thinking is to keep the map animation when moving between continents, but to just warp to a location when you moving to another location within your same continent.)

Here’s how I’ve grouped the continents — I call them by their Terran names for simplicity:

South America

• South Cape
• Edward’s Castle
• Itory Village
• Moon Tribe
• Inca Ruins

Africa

• Freejia
• Diamond Coast
• Neil’s Cottage
• Diamond Mine
• Nazca Painting

Asia

• Watermia
• Angel Village
• Great Wall

Europe

• Euro
• Mt. Temple
• Natives’ Village
• Ankor Wat

North America

• Dao
• Pyramid

Locations not on this list (Seaside Palace, Mu, Babel) will only be accessible through in-game events — for instance, you enter a map and talk to an NPC, and that warps you to the overworld map and ultimately to one of those locations.  I’m thinking, for example, you can get to Babel by talking to Neil in Dao.  He’ll ask you if you want him to take you to Babel Tower, and if you answer yes, you warp to the animation of Neil’s plane taking you to the tower.

This essentially changes the previous concept of overworld movement.  Visually, it would look more like this:

Any locations inside of a boundary (i.e. continent) would be accessible to and from any other within that boundary by simply leaving the map and choosing that location from a menu.  To move to another continent, you would follow the dashed lines in-game by going into the location and triggering an event (defeating a boss, talking to an NPC, etc.).  Often these events are only accessibly with prerequisite items or quests.

Thoughts?