One of the things that I wanted to be able to do with the framework was to be able to re-implement games like Crono Trigger and The Secret of Mana. But in contemplating how the various “levels” of the game would interact I decided to rule out the possibility of an “over-world”. The over-world in Crono Trigger is where you’re running around in miniature form to the various points of interest on the world map. The over-world in The Secret of Mana is where you’re flying around on Flamie the dragon. The over-world in Crono Trigger is just lame. It looks retarded. The over-world in The Secret of Mana is actually pretty cool, but to generalize it to make it work, not on a particular map but on any map the game designer decided to create, would introduce a level of complexity that is unwarranted for a project of this type. In addition not all games will use a flying dragon for traveling around on the over-world. Seiken Densetsu 3 (aka. Secret of Mana 2), for example, uses a giant sea turtle (in addition to Flamie). So it’s just not possible to do this in a way that would apply to all games. Instead the over-world in ARF will be more like the over-world in “Zelda, A Link to the Past”. In this game, the over-world operates exactly like any other level except that while most of the “level” levels have only one exit / entrance, the over-world has many exit / entrances. It’s sort of an in-between level that connects all the other levels together. This doesn’t rule out things like canon travel (Secret of Mana) or teleportation, but the cut-scene that shows the characters flying through the air would not be handled by the framework.
Tags: world
