Time Shift?

[ACEem]

How about a simple time shift in the game?

I e., after completing a late mission, say, the Golden Jackal, there's an event that progresses time forward a few years, such as character being attacked and waking up from a coma months or even years later. The world and maps would largely stay the same, but there could could be new characters around, others have moved on or just disappeared. One example, Charwood could be now fully or partially rebuilt along with new missions, npcs, etc. Same with the eastern part of Stoutford. The lumberjack area could be in the process of being built up. And many of the same npcs throughout could simply have New dialogue options, items for sale, or new missions.
This way, it wouldn't require an extensive investment in new maps and the environment otherwise. The game could still be expanded from there, just as is being worked on now, but it would be an easy way to "double up" the current game.

[Nut]

That proposal would indeed double up the game, unfortunately not in an easy way, and not even in a desirable way:

Creating new maps isn't really that time consuming. In fact it would be much more work to add these changes to existing maps. Also a map isn't just the landscape - NPC, actions, items, map changes (e.g. door open/closed) are integral parts.

Even to simply copy all the maps can't be the solution. E.g. many players store items from their inventory anywhere, and these would be lost then.

Anyway the main amount of developing work is for creating new events and quests, realizing new ideas.
Map creation is work too of course, but this 'doubling' wouldn't really save us any work.

Now what about the idea of a time shift?
It contradicts our concept of an open world. Andor's Trail doesn't have a given path or sequence of quest lines. In general you should always be able to go anywhere.
Time shift could be a good idea for a sequel of Andor's Trail, but not as part of this game.

Nevertheless thanks for sharing your idea. Although I don't see it possible, such proposals might lead to other ideas.
I remember a proposal for a ghost world (which had also reusing the maps as goal, but filled with ghosts, zombies etc.)
We didn't follow that idea either. But it brought me to the idea to create a dream world (restricted to only a few maps in Crossglen) - thus Ratdom was born.

[Lam al Adie]

Absolutely unrelated:
dream world… a.k.a. tel'aran'rhiod.
I very much enjoyed reading the wheel of times series.
It made me become curious to this game because of the name Andor. It gave me the inspiration for my Nick.

[ACEem]

OK, thanks for the follow up.

But wouldn't the process of doing this be simpler in the fact that the current coding and such would stay intact, other than, say, the dualogue changes, or just going into the code to remove or even sort of copy/paste a new npc with new dialog and mission options?
There wouldn't actually BE a new world and characters and such. It would simply be the event (coma, time lapse) triggers the new dialog options and missions, etc. In that same way, it would eliminate the problem of lost items you mentioned, since they would still be exactly where they were left. Obviously this would mean that the post-time-lapse world could only be "tweaked", not grossly altered.

Regarding your thoughts on the IDEA of the time shift, this I can completely understand. It WOULD change the "open worldness" of the game, since, at least with thr time lapse idea I provided, you would not be able to go back to the pre-time-lapse part of the game.

My OCD has me clamoring to fill in all those voids on the map.
I am simply not in a position to help with the maps right now, though I would really love to. If my situation changes, I would be glad to help. Thanks for all of your work on the game so far.

[Nut]

I see your points. Reusing all the maps would save some work of course. But it would add much, very much other work with high risk of breaking existing things.

Let's compare it with building up a house of cards.

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You would avoid to change it or building on top of it.
Easier and safer by far is placing more cards next to it.

[tactical371]

Whatever quest that causes the time shift would probably need to have every other quest up to that point as a prerequisite, in order to avoid messing up the timeline.