Chiara, our background artist, has finished painting the world map.
It’s almost taller than her.

We’re not joking.

In Selling Sunlight you’re not an adventurer, but a merchant: exploration is not focused on discovering new places, but on deepening your knowledge of the routes you spend your life traversing.

Final result. Look at the cute cart Lucy made for us!

Some of the random events that happens while you travel are about discovering new locations, like a lake, a cave full of crystals or a small village. By putting a mark on the map, you will be able to revisit that place, slowly filling your usual travel routes with interesting spots only you know about.

Scanning the word map was also a good occasion to finish a dreadful task we’ve been putting off for too long: post-processing all the other backgrounds.
All our backgrounds are drawn on individual pieces of paper, so transforming them into actual maps you can walk on requires a fair bit of Photoshop wizardry.
First we make the collision maps, which are pictures that tell our engine where the characters can walk. To make one, we simply need to paint all the impassable areas red.

You shall not pass on the red stuff.

Then we cut all the elements you can walk behind, like columns, tables etc. and save them in a separate level.
By mixing those three layers together (base layer, collision map, overlay level) we get a playable map you can explore.

Last but not least, a small news: we’ll be showing our game during the Milan Games Week this September! If you’re in Italy, come say hi!
We’re also in process to applying for other conventions like EGX and AdventureX. Fingers crossed!