DINODRIFTERS Dev Diary #24: Maps

Hello and welcome to another DINODRIFTERS dev diary!

Throughout prehistory, the world has changed as the continents and climate shifted. Various locations throughout the fossil record are particularly well understood enough to obtain a good view into how animals lived. This information is the background to which the worlds of DINODRIFTERS were created.

So today, I shall talk about the maps in DINODRIFTERS.

The time periods featured include the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, Paleogene and the Quaternary

A bit of context first: the variety of life exploded during a time period called the Cambrian, around 540 Mya (million years ago). Before then, life was dominated by sponges, jellyfish and other simple lifeforms. The earliest fish evolved during this time, too. For this reason, the Cambrian will be the earliest time period visited during DINODRIFTERS. For now.

The maps go forward in time from the Cambrian to the present time period, the Quaternary. In addition, there are maps further than this, in the future, featuring fictional creatures and landscapes.

All others though, are based on real-life fossil sites. Or several.

There are over twenty regions to explore, here are the full maps to just a few

Maps are in most cases 30x30 grids (excluding skies, undersea regions and caves). This means that each map has 900 tiles in total. This is big enough to allow all animals in the game to has breathing room to run, have territory and, in general, live, yet not too large as to become needlessly empty.

Next diary, I will talk about the animations in the Story Mode of DINODRIFTERS!

Until next time!