I was inspired by the cool temple wall art by MrTedders and wanted to make my own. His was done by hand, but I wanted to make something similar using the computer. I have a lot of interest in computer generated content and this case seemed like a perfect opportunity to use it.

I want to use these techniques to generate some interesting patterns for game development. Maybe not this particular pattern, but something.

I made this pattern with a bunch of what I called Crawlers. Basically a crawler is a little bug that leaves a trail behind it as it walks around and keeps track of where it has been. My crawlers follow a set of very simple rules to make their patterns:

1. If the space in front of the crawler hasn't been covered before, move into it.
2. If the space has been covered turn left.
3. If the crawler has turned in a complete circle, it is stuck. It should then go back to the last space it was on.
4. If the crawler gets all the way back to the space it started at, it dies.

1. There is a small chance that a crawler will randomly turn left that grows the longer the crawler has traveled in a straight line.
2. A crawler may randomly spawn another crawler at its own location facing to the right.

Those 6 simple rules generate random patterns that look like this:

Im trying to do a game a week to work on my polishing and acutally finishing games skill so should be done this soon

When I started this project the game was going to be very en media res. It took place during a wedding in the castle, with very little in the way of backstory, and was inspired from fantasy books that do well at depicting court intrigue, especially Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb. I thought it was a pretty uncommon place to start the story, and it felt original (at least to me) But I kept wanting to tell how Erik got there, and moving the start of the story back.

First I moved it back to beginning with a market scene, where the orphaned Erik is taken in by the castle staff as an escape to a taskmaster who has been exploiting him. I feel I struggled with this scene a lot, having trouble finding the right gameplay - while getting hung up on ai pathfinding issues involved in the large market setting I wanted to depict.

Then I moved it further back to a scene showing Erik with his family as they flee the people who invaded their town. They are in the wilderness trying to survive. I was playing a lot of Don't Starve, and I think it influenced a lot of my ideas here. Still a pretty unique way to start the story for a game. But I just think that I am missing the start to the story, and the tasks Erik is given here just don't feel suitable for a tutorial to start the game. The wilderness does not well represent most of my core gameplay ideas (eavesdropping on conversations, sneaking around, and interfering with npc behaviors). I managed to design some decent scenarios for the scene, and the scene may remain in the game, but it's a bad place to start. Both from a creator and a player standpoint. So let's go back even further...

A little town, it's a quiet village. Every day, like the one before....

Yes. We are starting what looks like a JRPG with the main character waking up in his little backwater town, where he will do some dumb starter quests to get familiar with how the game works, before a tragedy occurs and the town is destroyed forcing him out into the wide world beyond. But I've arrived here not because it's a cliche and the first thing I thought of. I've arrived here because it's a cliche for a reason! It's the best way I know of to start this story.