Chapter 1.5: Charting the Course
Last week we told you the next update was built and waiting, and that next week, things would change. That next week is now, so here is a straight answer: it has moved one more week.
The reason is a good one. And it is not the only news.
The Short Version
- One more week - the update we promised for this week moves to next week, so it can land alongside combat. There is a very good chance it all arrives together next week.
- Combat is getting its world - we are still building the experience combat launches with, and expanding a few of combat's features to give it what it needs.
- The wait has been doubly well spent - alongside combat, next week brings a fully working, multi-level 3D world map.
- 3D, and in layers - the map is a model of the world you can pan, zoom and tilt, with the surface, the floors of a building and the levels underground each in their place.
- Fog of war - everything you have not found sits under cloud that rolls back as you explore. The map never names a place you have not discovered.
- Fast travel for the price of a single step - pick anywhere you have been and go there in one move, narrated as one journey through every place you pass on the way.
- In every world you can play today but one - the map has been added to all of them, bar one that does not need it.
- Ready for worlds that grow - the map is drawn from the world itself, so it is built to keep up with worlds that grow as you play.
One More Week
Last week we said the rest of the update was ready to go. It still is. What is not finished yet is the experience combat launches with.
A combat system needs a world worth fighting in, and that world is still being built. Building it has also had us expanding a few of combat's features, to give it what it needs. We would rather hold everything one more week and ship it together than send it out in pieces.
So next week, there is a very good chance it all lands at once: combat, the world built to show it off, everything we told you about last week, and one thing we have not told you about yet.
Doubly Well Spent
Here it is. Alongside combat, next week brings a fully working, multi-level 3D world map.
It is one of the oldest ideas on Fable Forge. In our early days we built a dynamic world map, and then we set it aside. Getting the game playable mattered more, and a map could wait.
Waiting turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to it. The tools we have now are far better than the ones we had then, and the map we have built with them is far better than the one we put down. It is also built for where the platform is going, not just for where it was.
What the Map Is
It is 3D. The map is a lit tabletop model of the world, drawn live in your browser from the world itself. Places sit on terrain shaped around them, paths run along the valleys, rivers wind between towns and hills rise where the land does. No picture is generated to show it. It is the world's own shape, and you can move across it, zoom in and tilt it.
It has layers. A world is rarely flat, and the map is not either: the surface, the floors of a building and the levels underground each have their place. Stairs on one level meet stairs on the next at the same spot. Open the map below ground and it opens on your level, centred on where you are standing.
It has fog of war. Everything you have not found sits under cloud, and the cloud rolls back as you explore. Inside a building it is darkness instead. The map never names a place you have not discovered, never shows you a picture of somewhere you have not been, and never spoils what is waiting further on. Find every corner of a world and the cloud lifts entirely.
And every world is drawn in its own style. Remand is a court town of buildings you can walk into, one of them entirely below ground. The Prime Drift is a set of regions, each a map of its own. Duskmile is a road town with a river through it and buildings you can step inside. Marrowgate sits inside its three rings of walls. The Academy Above & Below lays its heavens out in lapis and its hells in crimson. New in Newfield is a modern town with its lakes. Rooms are furnished from their own descriptions, so the inside of a place looks like the place you have been reading about.
Opening the map and looking around costs nothing. It picks a level of detail to suit your computer, and if your browser cannot draw 3D, the map tells you how to get it working - and everything else in the game works without it.
A Map You Can Use
Until now, the shape of a world lived in your head. You were reading about places one at a time and building the map yourself as you went, and honestly, in a world of any size, that was close to impossible. Now you can see it: where everything is, how it all connects, and how far you have come.
But the map is not just something to look at. It is something to use.
Pick anywhere you have already been, and you can fast travel there in a single move - from one end of the world to the other, without clicking through every place in between. The whole journey costs the same as a single step, so the long walk back across a town no longer costs you a handful of Embers for travel you never wanted to do one place at a time. You can also step straight to a neighbouring place you have spotted but not yet visited.
And you still get the story of the journey. Fast travel is narrated in full, as one passage that takes you through every place you pass on the way. Time moves on for each stretch of road. Your companions come with you. Doors you hold the key for open as you go, and the map will never spend one of your items without asking.
The road can still surprise you. If something happens on the way - a quest stirs, something turns up to be found, or someone is lying in wait - the journey stops right there, and the story picks up from that moment. Fast travel skips the clicking. It never skips the world.
Everywhere, and Ready for What Comes Next
The map has been added to every world you can play today but one, and that one does not need it.
It has also been built with one eye on the future. In an AI RPG, a world does not have to stop where its author stopped writing, and we are working towards worlds that grow as you play. The map is ready for them. It is drawn from the world's own data rather than from a fixed picture, every place keeps its position, and a new place settles in among its neighbours without the rest of the map moving. When a world grows, its map can grow with it.
Back to the Anvil
One more week. When it lands, it brings combat, the world built for it, everything we told you about last week - and a map of everywhere you have been, with the rest still under cloud, waiting to be found.
It is the kind of feature an AI RPG has needed for a long time, and the kind we are glad we waited to build properly.
More soon - and next time, with a map.