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loren schmidt

@lorenschmidt.bsky.social

9.1K followers 4.5K following 12K posts

i make art, mostly with computers. currently working on an open world RPG with roguelike roots and an experimental bent. cat mom. she / her or they / them.

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loren schmidt @lorenschmidt.bsky.social · Nov 25

i am making an open world roguelike.

i have been imagining this world for years, and i want to make this game so people can go there and live many lives in it!

the game features whole-cloth, accessible design, deep mysteries, and a meticulous generated living world.

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loren schmidt @lorenschmidt.bsky.social · 1h

i was just thinking specifically about how much i'd love to have characters give you verbal directions like that.

loren schmidt @lorenschmidt.bsky.social · 1h

aah i really have to play morrowind, don't i.

loren schmidt @lorenschmidt.bsky.social · 1h

i promise it's accurate haha

loren schmidt @lorenschmidt.bsky.social · 1h

you're in a town and everyone keeps talking about "the tower in the marshes, visible from the road" and you've never seen it.

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loren schmidt @lorenschmidt.bsky.social · 1h

i think it could be so interesting to either have a bizarre column by column, rasterized in first person text view, or to have descriptions of things your character can see which you can't.

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loren schmidt @lorenschmidt.bsky.social · 2h

"as you crest the hill, the red sky opens before you. the river bends north. the cindercone is to the left of that. it is smoking only slightly today."

and you could follow verbal directions or narrativized directions, etc. by threading landmarks.

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loren schmidt @lorenschmidt.bsky.social · 2h

i was thinking about how one might interact with other map types, and had a thought: what if as you're travelling (this could be within one map, in a village, across the surface) it periodically gives you narrative asides about landmarks or mentions them in passing.

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loren schmidt @lorenschmidt.bsky.social · 2h

oh yes Ammassalik maps are really interesting! it's a very different idea of what a map is shaped like than the encyclopedic data-for-all-points approach.

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loren schmidt @lorenschmidt.bsky.social · 3h

i have a number of skills which let you gather information, so losing bits of your memory of a level might not be very harsh if you can just relearn them.

loren schmidt @lorenschmidt.bsky.social · 3h

like drawing with a pencil when the eraser's degraded!

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loren schmidt @lorenschmidt.bsky.social · 7h

an old retired thief in town has a map of the area you're hired to infiltrate, but it was from a heist years ago and is out of date

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loren schmidt @lorenschmidt.bsky.social · 7h

these are all very in line with my notes on this sort of thing!

see also "finding a map which has illegible regions because of a blood stain"

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loren schmidt @lorenschmidt.bsky.social · 7h

autowalk is nice for situations like this hallway with rubble in it. it can interpret a "go east" or "go west" as routing around the piles of rubble.

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loren schmidt @lorenschmidt.bsky.social · 7h

right, exactly! it seems potentially really interesting for that. i have some conceits that might make that interesting- there is a sort of "spirit being" who isn't exactly the player, who could potentially be doing their own note taking etc.

loren schmidt @lorenschmidt.bsky.social · 7h

glyphs on the map could respond to things around you?

loren schmidt @lorenschmidt.bsky.social · 7h

i'm really into that sort of idea too- for instance finding an out of date map which is missing modern changes, eg, a new passage, a barracks a garrison of soldiers put in.

loren schmidt @lorenschmidt.bsky.social · 7h

i was thinking about that! notes, a legend, etc.. yeah maybe you can even put screen space notes on your own map? i wonder if that's something you can always see or only if you interact with the item.

loren schmidt @lorenschmidt.bsky.social · 7h

yeah it's really well made! i like that they're balancing style and glyph uniqueness so well.

loren schmidt @lorenschmidt.bsky.social · 7h

fuck apple. seriously. if you want to lick boots like this, you're not getting a penny of my income.

Veni Kunche @veni.dev · 7h

"Internal emails show tech giant (Apple) used anti-hate-speech rules meant for minorities to block an app documenting immigration enforcement"

migrantinsider.com/p/scoop-appl...

SCOOP: Apple Quietly Made ICE Agents a Protected Class

Internal emails show tech giant used anti-hate-speech rules meant for minorities to block an app documenting immigration enforcement.

migrantinsider.com

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loren schmidt @lorenschmidt.bsky.social · 7h

ha if just drew documents you looked at on top of the screen without erasing, you could combine map fragments into the complete chart, compare maps... or do overlays?

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loren schmidt @lorenschmidt.bsky.social · 7h

i think there are some approaches possible where it's not incredibly fiddly, but map fragments can be found and some really interesting interactions can occur.

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loren schmidt @lorenschmidt.bsky.social · 7h

there are some really interesting possibilities around partial information

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loren schmidt @lorenschmidt.bsky.social · 7h

you find a cursed mapmaking vellum which is waterproof and you can't write on it.

loren schmidt @lorenschmidt.bsky.social · 7h

it's really appealing!

oh or it could be that you're reusing paper for your map haha

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loren schmidt @lorenschmidt.bsky.social · 7h

there are so many possibilities!

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