[Mapping]

So! Unity natively supports 2D tile mapping, as we use in New Eden. However, Unity's base systems are fairly tedious and cumbersome to use. Not to mention it requires that every team member needs to download Unity and utilize the Unity "Collab" feature to be able to contribute.

Instead of wrestling with these hurdles, we moved instead to TileD, an excellent free mapping software developed by a pretty stand-up guy. However, there were still some hurdles with this great new piece of software. Namely lighting and depth. Our Lighting is handled entirely in Unity, and as such, a non-mapper would have to confer with a mapper on where the lights should be in a finished map. Depth, on the other hand, would have been "faked" with the industry standard "Mask and Fringe" layers. While this is decent, and you can get some pretty detailed maps out there with this system, we wanted a bit more polish and power. Let's start with Depth.

In the typical orthogonal 2D environment, 2D depth is achieved by stacking multiple layers of images and rendering them in different orders. That's great for the most part, but it can also lead to problems like this:

As you can see, even with those rendering layers, some actions can cause you to "clip" through the environment. This can take you right out of the game, and as such is obviously something we can't tolerate with New Eden. Our solution is dynamic depth. This can normally be achieved manually with some edits in the Unity tilemap after importing. This faces the same problem as the lighting had, however, where it would require extra steps between mappers and developers.

Instead, we wanted it all wrapped up into TileD. We wanted you to be able to map in full without any extra steps. I'm happy to report that this is now a reality, and the results speak for themselves:

As you can see, depth and rendering order for large objects are now dynamic. This means objects like these pillars will no longer display the clipping that was shown in the first gif. All this is achieved without any extra manual work in Unity. Some custom code handles all of this during the import of the TileD map!

The same can also be said for Lighting. It's all handled in TileD now, allowing mappers to fully customize the lighting of their maps without any extra work:

These improvements should make mapping for New Eden far easier and far more streamlined!

[Lore]

Despite it’s profound impact on the development of Estaria’s culture and civilization, this document has thus far touched only briefly on the far-reaching consequences of its use. This is largely due to the fact that the focus has been on the history of Estaria’s various cultures and has assumed, as a student in Estaria would, that certain realities can be taken for granted. All that said, this section of the appendix will attempt to clarify and elaborate upon the concept of magic in Estaria.

First of all, the pace and direction of the overall development of civilization was affected greatly by the presence of magic. Certain things, like high-speed travel through animal mounts, salvaged tech or a combination of both made the world feel much smaller than it would have to our ancient ancestors. Travelling across a continent might have, for early settlers, taken only slightly longer than it might for us in a 737. This affects both the general sense of distance in the world as well as the speed at which cultures developed and established sophisticated trade and agriculture early on.

To add to this, the monstrous creatures created by the magic fields affecting the world have made large sections of it virtually uninhabitable and have generally kept populations small. This leads isolationist tendencies among cultures, which is why the world government still applies the concept of lords and houses even to the more democratic states that have popped up in the last few centuries. It also leads to very long, drawn out wars – The decimating power of magic is held on both sides, and stalemates usually occur. But these stalemates still usually result in very high casualty rates. This usually leads to long periods of cold-war tactics between instances of outright violence. It also contributes to the general inability to colonize the more dangerous areas of Estaria, colloquially referred to as the “Free Country”, as many beasts out there can do far more damage than any human could.

The use of magic also made certain types of work easier for the populations of certain areas. Where ice magic is strong, the construction of cities and cultivation of food rely heavily on the ability to manipulate solid water. Where time magic is strong, the population is able to endure and study the Wildlands where no other race could. This creates an extreme diversity, and also a ubiquitous xenophobia. Even allied houses usually don’t extend each full trust and acceptance, and there are only a handful of of cities that would be considered anything like a “melting-pot”. The Elitist Church has the largest number of City-States aligned under the same banner in Estaria’s history, and even then, their power structure can be seen to be a bit fractured and disjointed.

Scientifically, magic has been defined under a uniform language, not unlike the way our scientists use Latin or chemical names. The nomenclature for these 12 categories has roots in Estrianism, which originates from Dharmana. The first settlers of Dharmana contained a lot of descendants of people belonging to the Hindu faith, and the earliest words applied to the 12 magical elements were names of Hindu deities. Mind magic is heavily linked to the energies of the other 11 elements – this is all very sacred, so even as the rest of the language evolved those names remained. These names, and the variants used to denote the power of the spell attributed to them, are outlined below:

		
			Mind
Atman --> Atmek --> Atmado --> Atmasaat--> Atmaath

Time
Kali --> Kalek --> Kalido --> Kalisaat --> Kalaath

Power
Kartikeya --> Kartikeyek --> Kartikeydo --> Kartisaat --> Kartaath

Death
Yama --> Yamek --> Yamado --> Yamasaat --> Yamaath

Love
Shakti --> Shaktek --> Shakdo --> Shaktsaat --> Shaktaath

Light
Surya --> Suryek --> Suryado --> Suryasaat --> Suryaath

Fire
Agni --> Agnek --> Agnido --> Agnisaat --> Agnaath

Ice
Shiva --> Shivek --> Shivado --> Shivasaat --> Shivaath

Earth
Bhumi --> Bhumek --> Bhumido --> Bhumisaat --> Bhumaath

Wind
Vayu --> Vayek --> Vayudo --> Vayusaat --> Vayaath

Water

Varuna --> Varunek --> Varundo --> Varunasaat --> Varunaath

Electricity
Indra --> Indrek --> Indrado --> Indrasaat --> Indraath

		
	

Magic has also affected the day-to-day lives of Estaria’s citizens. Most sports are based heavily around the dominant magic of the region. The fields of medicine and most trades are nearly unrecognizable to us. Things like disease and famine are easier to avoid, though times of low food supply have occurred due to climate and the danger of the Free Country, and the people of Qie Zaratka suffered a destabilizing plague that is still active to this day.

Communication over long distances is accomplished with ease even during the development of civilization, and economics seems sometimes alien due to the shift in the concept of value that comes with the prevalence of magic. Labour is measured differently, and the concept of resources, whether you’re talking about the gross GDP of a City State or the personal productivity of a single individual, suddenly has the potential to be energetic rather than purely physical or material. For example, things that would be considered performance art and given a low respect level in our world – think magicians or fortune tellers – are suddenly valuable trades. There are people in Estaria who can control people’s emotions and commune with the souls of the dead – in this world’s it’s hard science and it effects every facet of the lives of those who inhabit it.

As Arthur C. Clark wrote, “Any sufficiently advances technology is indistinguishable from magic.” This means that, whether the magic present in Estaria is the cause of natural forces within the Earth or a symptom of the use of advanced technologies by an ancient civilization, magic is magic, and to experience real, legitimate magic is to see proof of God. Not a monotheistic or even Gnostic God, but God as the idea that there is something more out there that is beyond human understanding. Though there is a lot of atheism present in Estaria, faith is a big part of people’s lives, because they’ve seen energy manipulated and matter manifested before their eyes. These are things taken for granted – religion isn’t a cause for debate or a taboo subject here; it’s pretty much a science. This makes religious wars prevalent and long lasting, as they are technically based on the physical evidence certain regions have seen, rather than faith or dogma.

The concept of “religion-as-science” is actually quite a large one in Estaria. You'll notice that most of the early religions in Estaria have a set of deities – this is because equating character and purpose with natural elements is basically the first step in science. People observe natural systems and try and guess at ways of explaining them. In our world, this process progressed to the point where our tools of observation became more powerful, and sub-systems were discovered within the systems we were observing, and even more sub-systems within those sub-systems. So we go from Zeus or Thor to static electricity to a discharge of electrons, so to speak.

In Estaria, the presence of magic gives more weight to the more esoteric sides of early science, and the evolution of science changes shape. For example, the scientific process is generally more interested in application and outcome than source. Chemistry is big (especially in the form of Alchemy), and while in our world "applied sciences" would require a base of there to build on, in Estaria these sciences are built around creative applications of magical power. The closest thing to Quantum Physics that exists would be something that to us might resemble psychology – since the apparent source of magic is somewhere in the human "soul", the idea of a soul being some kind of intrinsic connection to the world and energies around a human being, then the only way to understand where it comes from is to understand consciousness itself, and of course, with the use of magic Estarians have better tools to tackle this problem than we do. This study is called Quellology, or the study of the source.

[Music]

Earlier I mentioned that I've been ordering several exotic instruments, not only to play, but to utilize in the New Eden OST. One of these instruments has arrived: the Hulusi. This is an ancient Chinese instrument that still sees huge use today. The original design can be traced back approximately 2000 years. It has a very unique sound, and I'm very excited to plug it in to the OST. Here's a quick phone video to showcase the sound:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGsFaYmMrLY&feature=youtu.be

Let us know what you think of this unique instrument!

[Icon and Logo]

Our Logo and Icon has taken a bit of a redesign. While we personally love the old Logo, and will continue to use it on other media (such as the OST Cover, etc) we wanted something that also fit the pixel aesthetic we've got for the rest of the game. This Logo and Icon will undergo various changes with future expansions and updates, all to reflect that particular expansion/update, and we can't wait to show you those as well!

Give us your feedback on these! We want to make New Eden the best it can be!

Thank you all for reading this week's Dev Log! Please leave us your feedback, and thank you all for supporting New Eden!