While this week wasn’t necessarily the most productive, I did manage to go deep into a new feature: time travel. We’re now officially hopping between eras, discovering new locations, architecture, technology, dungeons, and more. I’m really excited about this update. I wasn’t sure at first if I wanted to implement time travel in the game, but I’m glad I did, it’s made me feel more motivated to push forward with the rest of the development.
How time traveling works
Time travel in Solivium revolves around time gates spread across the world.
Here’s how the system works right now:
- Time gates exist in fixed locations across the overworld
- At the start of the game, all of them are dormant and hidden
- The player learns about their locations by: (still pending implementation)
- Talking to NPCs
- Completing quests
- Finding items in dungeons
- Other discoveries
- To activate a gate, the player needs a Time Crystal
- Once activated, a gate transports the player to a specific period in time
We are officially in the 1980s
The first new time period is now in the game.
I’ve added a new city: Rustford (1980s).
This is Moonshade (1400s) for comparison
The main structure of the city is done, but there’s still plenty of work ahead for this era:
- New tiles specific to the time period
- NPCs and population
- Vehicles like cars and airplanes
- Time-appropriate details and interactions
Still, being able to walk into a city that clearly belongs to a different era is a huge step forward.
Visual effects
I created a new shader that inverts the screen colors for special effects. This will be used in situations where the game needs to feel wrong or disorienting, for example when an enemy paralyzes the player, or when entering a portal.
Gameplay
What’s next
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be focusing on mechanics introduced by this new time period and how they interact with the rest of the world.
After that, I’m planning to revisit the dialogue system and potentially rework it to be closer to Ultima IV, more hint-driven, less verbose, and more adventure-game-like.
Thank you for following the development, I hope to get back to my previous weekly updates on the develoment of the game.