作者：Liam Welton

当我们开始致力于《无光之海》时，还没有多少游戏将在随机游戏空间进行探索与互动故事叙述结合在一起。在创造这款游戏的过程中，我们学到了许多有关我们想创造的游戏体验的内容，当然也有一些我们希望在未来能够避免的情况。

《无光之空》提供给了我们去完善在《无光之海》中所创造的公式的机会。为了确保续集会比最初的游戏有所完善，我们分解了游戏系统并分析了哪些内容更有效，哪些内容是冗余的，同时也测试了一些全新方法。

我们所专注的一个地方便是游戏世界的形状和布局。在《无光之海》中，Neath是一片汪洋大海，两端各有一面岩石。当玩家作为船长开始游戏时，我们将通过挪动tiles并将其置于预先设定好的区域去创造地图。

map(from gamasutra)

有些tiles总是固定于同样的位置上（灰色的那些），但大多数tiles都能在预先设定好的区域移动（游戏邦注：如红色，蓝色，黄色，橘色和紫色tiles）。限制tiles的布局意味着我们可以有效平衡难度。即伦敦附近的区域将存在于前面到中间的游戏，而地图的东部区域则是面向较后面的游戏内容。

《无光之海》的一大核心循环是从南部群岛的已知区域向着未知区域展开。玩家将在这里探索并寻找地图上的全新区域，然后再返回伦敦。

这一旅程主要分为两部分—-向外走向未知，向内通往安全。当我们着手开始分析这一循环的成功之处时，我们意识到探索未知区域比往回走的旅行更吸引人。虽然回程是必要的，并且《无光之海》中的许多紧张感和意外故事都是源自玩家启程返回伦敦时的经历。但是当你玩了20多个小时的游戏后，那些贯穿于整张地图的回程路线将会变得无趣。

对于《无光之空》，我们希望能够保留这一核心循环，不过要减少穿越探索区域的时间。而为了做到这点，你的船长便没办法打电话回家。相反地你将在游戏中找到一些大型港口。你可以升级自己的武器和船只，迎来船员和乘客，并去交易一些有价值的商品（游戏邦注：所有的这一切都可以在这些大型港口做到）。

port(from gamasutra)

而我们便是围绕着这些主要港口去创建整个世界。在每个区域的中心位置都围绕着其它定居处和发现内容。在每个游戏中，中心港口将始终作为固定场所，但其周边区域将以核心点的半径范围内进行随机变化。就像在某次游戏中，两栖动物的小小殖民地可能是在区域的外西北边缘处，但是在下一次游戏时它们可能会接近于东南处，并提供给专属于船长的交易机遇。

玩家想要返回主要港口的紧张感将会出现，而像走得太远或者死于寒冷中，以及像茫茫的浩瀚空间都还是和《无光之海》一样。但玩家的旅程将会变得更多且更多样化，且在港口中还有等着他们的全新机遇。而对于那些足够勇敢的玩家，他们还可以在临近区域中探索其它更棒的文明。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转发，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Generating the world of Sunless Skies

by Liam Welton

When we started working on Sunless Sea, there weren’t many games that attempted to blend exploration of a randomised playspace with interactive storytelling. In the process of making that game, we learned a lot about the sort of experiences we wanted to create, and also a few that we would perhaps want to avoid in future.

Sunless Skies presents an opportunity to refine the formula we created in Sunless Sea. In order to make sure the sequel improves upon the first game, we’re breaking the systems down, analysing what worked well, what worked less well, and testing new approaches.

One area we’ve been focusing on is the shape and layout of the world itself. In Sunless Sea, the Neath is a vast ocean bounded on two sides by a cavern wall. When a player starts a new captain, we generate a map by shuffling collections of tiles and placing them within predefined areas.

Some tiles are always fixed in the same location (the grey ones), but most move within a predefined region (red, blue, yellow, orange & purple). Restricting their placement meant we could balance the difficulty. Anything in the region surrounding London would be for the early to mid-game, whereas the far eastern area of the map would be late-game content.

One of the core loops in Sunless Sea is setting out from the known location of the Southern Archipelago towards unknown and increasingly unusual locations. You set off and explore, discover new areas of the map, and return to London.

There are two halves to that journey – outwards toward the unknown, and homewards towards safety. When we sat down to analyse what was successful about this loop, we realised that the exploration of the unknown was much more enticing than the return journey. Returning was essential, obviously, and much of the tension and emergent storytelling in Sunless Sea comes from those moments when you limp back to London after over-stretching yourself and barely surviving. However, after you’ve been playing the game for 20+ hours, those journeys backwards across the entire map can begin to take their toll.

For Sunless Skies, we want to keep this core loop, but reduce the amount of time spent traversing explored territories. In order to do this, there is no one place your captain can call home. Instead, you will find several large ports throughout the game. Upgrading your weapons and ships, picking up crew and passengers, trading in valuable goods – all of these can be done in any of these large ports.

These major ports act as the points around which we will build the entire world. Each sits in the centre of a region of space, surrounded by other settlements and discoveries. The central ports will remain a fixed location in each game, but the surrounding areas will be randomised within a radius around that central point. In one game, the small colony of amphibian potters might be on the outer north-westerly rim of the region, in the next they are closer in to the south-east, providing a trading opportunity unique to that captain.

The tension created by having to struggle back to a major port will still be there, and the threat of overreaching and dying in the cold, uncaring vastness of space will be just as present as it was in Sunless Sea. But your journeys will be shorter and more varied, and the new opportunities awaiting you in ports even more tantalizing. For those brave enough to leave the safety of their known region, there will be other, perhaps greater, civilisations to explore in adjacent regions.（source：gamasutra）