Ara: History Untold Devs Shared How They Created Game's Map
The in-game regions are irregularly shaped, making the map resemble the real world rather than a board game.
Oxide Games
The upcoming grand strategy Ara: History Untold by Oxide Games offers players to build a nation and lead it throughout history while developing its culture and art, exploring new territories, and building diplomatic relations. The game has some unique features, which its developers, Gabriela Leskur, Narrative and Experience Lead, and Matt Turnbull, Executive Producer in publishing at Xbox Game Studios, covered in a recent interview.
The most distinctive feature is that the game's map is divided into regions with irregular shapes rather than a regular grid. Gabriela Leskur said that they were trying to simulate what we see in real life. "One thing that's unique is that we have these dynamically generated regions. So, they're not hexes, they are irregularly-shaped based on things that you see in nature. They're along rivers, along coastlines. They're these unusual shapes that reflect how we see cartographers have done things in our history, and also the actual natural world itself."
Oxide Games
These regions are divided into zones. Gabriela Leskur compared the in-game regions with pizzas. If a player moves troops, it happens across the entire map (or pizza), but land modifications are built in each zone separately as if it were a pizza slice.
The number of regions' edges also influences strategic decisions inside the game, as it defines how units can move. Matt Turnbull explained that Ara's regions have two, four, or seven tiles, depending on the size and the natural features, such as sea, river, or coastal area.
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