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Greetings Lumia Island survivors.
The focus of our first Dev Journal will be on the transformation of Lumia Island. Other games may feature a few different maps which keeps things fresh and fun. However, Eternal Return only has one map, and while the map and terrain are very important elements, they haven't been changed very much since we first released the game almost 2 1/2 years ago. During that time, we improved the background art a bit and added some objectives, but that was it. Now we've really focused on doing large-scale changes for official launch in July.
There are quite a few areas on Lumia where you move for a while without any action. There are many buildings currently on the island that you cannot enter, and by going around these areas, your walking distance becomes even further, which means some game variables will occur even less. So to make it like a real Battle Royale map, we wanted to expand the inside of the map a bit and open up the blocked spaces to make an even wider area of play.
We've added interiors to a lot of the previously unenterable buildings. These new additions were added to a total of 3 different areas. Routes between the areas have also been improved, and accessibility to previously unutilized areas has increased. In addition, we've also divided some areas into two to make the area of play even wider. There will now be a total of 20 areas to explore.
(Yellow areas: Additional areas that will be available to play)
New Areas to Explore:
Dock: Dock and Warehouse
Pond: Pond and Stream
Alley: Alley and Gas Station
Avenue: Police Station and Fire Station
Here's an example of the future change of terrain.
First, you can now enter the bookstore in Alley and the area to the right of the bookstore will offer more movement flow.
The area with the most significant change is Avenue within the line of Construction Site and Police Station. The new, expanded area is much wider and offers more varied routes, which almost makes it feel brand new! The inside area of Construction Site is very large, and now offers an important connection to Alley-Temple, which was once a long, oneway path.
If you look at the left side of the screen, we added a path to the back of Construction Site in the house where the two wolves spawn.
The inside of Police Station has been expanded and the parking lot to the back of the building now directly connects with the well of Temple.
If you zoom in to the back of Police Station,
buildings within Gas Station (previously Alley) and Fire Station (previously Avenue) now have interiors as well. The previous route between Alley and Avenue was very long, but by subdividing it into new areas and opening new buildings, play area has become much larger and the direct route between the areas has become much shorter.
Next is Dock. The Dock area has been split into Dock and Warehouse and lots of new terrain has been added.
In Warehouse, you can enter the lower building and the left of the bear's nest.
The Dock area has expanded near the ocean and a small building has been added. You can also now enter previously locked buildings. However, movement to the dock itself is still blocked.
The large factory in the center of the Factory area can now be entered. This will make play more diverse as you can now move up and down within the factory itself!
One house in Uptown is now open as well, and just like in Factory, you can now move up and down, which provides a connection to other paths.
So far, you've seen about half the map changes that we've made to Lumia Island. When we first started the engineering process, we were worried that opening up buildings would cause a huge headache. In some cases, expanding some areas by 15% didn't seem to make much of a difference.
However, internal play tests showed more than we could have ever imagined. Of course the areas grew wider, but the terrain became much more varied, which means modes of attack also became much more diverse compared to the previous. Depending on the character, previous tactics were more straightforward. Now you can use vision to get around, go for more surprise attacks and jump over walls, or even break through walls to sneak attack!
Today's Dev Journal focused on the more engineering side of map expansion. Of course we want to make the playable area even larger, but our main goal is to improve the play movement and flow. There have been many changes to the connecting routes between areas. These will be covered in more detail in “Lumia Island - 2nd Update”.
See you next Dev Journal!
Thank you!
Eternal Return Team
You can get WP from the Dev Journals on our web event page. Web Points(WP) are event points that can be obtained and used throughout the Season 9 web events
The focus of our first Dev Journal will be on the transformation of Lumia Island. Other games may feature a few different maps which keeps things fresh and fun. However, Eternal Return only has one map, and while the map and terrain are very important elements, they haven't been changed very much since we first released the game almost 2 1/2 years ago. During that time, we improved the background art a bit and added some objectives, but that was it. Now we've really focused on doing large-scale changes for official launch in July.
There are quite a few areas on Lumia where you move for a while without any action. There are many buildings currently on the island that you cannot enter, and by going around these areas, your walking distance becomes even further, which means some game variables will occur even less. So to make it like a real Battle Royale map, we wanted to expand the inside of the map a bit and open up the blocked spaces to make an even wider area of play.
We've added interiors to a lot of the previously unenterable buildings. These new additions were added to a total of 3 different areas. Routes between the areas have also been improved, and accessibility to previously unutilized areas has increased. In addition, we've also divided some areas into two to make the area of play even wider. There will now be a total of 20 areas to explore.
(Yellow areas: Additional areas that will be available to play)
New Areas to Explore:
Dock: Dock and Warehouse
Pond: Pond and Stream
Alley: Alley and Gas Station
Avenue: Police Station and Fire Station
Here's an example of the future change of terrain.
First, you can now enter the bookstore in Alley and the area to the right of the bookstore will offer more movement flow.
The area with the most significant change is Avenue within the line of Construction Site and Police Station. The new, expanded area is much wider and offers more varied routes, which almost makes it feel brand new! The inside area of Construction Site is very large, and now offers an important connection to Alley-Temple, which was once a long, oneway path.
If you look at the left side of the screen, we added a path to the back of Construction Site in the house where the two wolves spawn.
The inside of Police Station has been expanded and the parking lot to the back of the building now directly connects with the well of Temple.
If you zoom in to the back of Police Station,
buildings within Gas Station (previously Alley) and Fire Station (previously Avenue) now have interiors as well. The previous route between Alley and Avenue was very long, but by subdividing it into new areas and opening new buildings, play area has become much larger and the direct route between the areas has become much shorter.
Next is Dock. The Dock area has been split into Dock and Warehouse and lots of new terrain has been added.
In Warehouse, you can enter the lower building and the left of the bear's nest.
The Dock area has expanded near the ocean and a small building has been added. You can also now enter previously locked buildings. However, movement to the dock itself is still blocked.
The large factory in the center of the Factory area can now be entered. This will make play more diverse as you can now move up and down within the factory itself!
One house in Uptown is now open as well, and just like in Factory, you can now move up and down, which provides a connection to other paths.
So far, you've seen about half the map changes that we've made to Lumia Island. When we first started the engineering process, we were worried that opening up buildings would cause a huge headache. In some cases, expanding some areas by 15% didn't seem to make much of a difference.
However, internal play tests showed more than we could have ever imagined. Of course the areas grew wider, but the terrain became much more varied, which means modes of attack also became much more diverse compared to the previous. Depending on the character, previous tactics were more straightforward. Now you can use vision to get around, go for more surprise attacks and jump over walls, or even break through walls to sneak attack!
Today's Dev Journal focused on the more engineering side of map expansion. Of course we want to make the playable area even larger, but our main goal is to improve the play movement and flow. There have been many changes to the connecting routes between areas. These will be covered in more detail in “Lumia Island - 2nd Update”.
See you next Dev Journal!
Thank you!
Eternal Return Team
You can get WP from the Dev Journals on our web event page. Web Points(WP) are event points that can be obtained and used throughout the Season 9 web events