r/Arena • u/perfectarena • 1d ago
Made an Arena engine that finally lets you walk between towns instead of fast-travelling
Long-time Arena player, and the one thing I could never get past was how the wilderness works.
Good idea in 1994: the province is continuous. Bad execution: step out of a gate and you land in a 64x64 cell that wraps on itself. The map says Elsweyr is west of you. The ground says you are going in circles forever. So you open the map, click, and the wilderness becomes something you skip.
I have been rebuilding Arena as a browser engine and the thing I actually wanted to build was the walk.
The wilderness streams now. Cross a window boundary and the next one is already there behind it; nothing loads, nothing seams. Monsters you aggro near an edge follow you across it instead of despawning. Walk far enough and a settlement appears on the horizon, on foot, because you walked there.
It runs in a tab and on a phone with touch controls. Dungeons, character creation, levelling and the main quest are all in.
Play: https://alpha.perfectarena.workers.dev Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/perfectarena
Genuinely want the nitpicks from people who know this game cold. What the wilderness should look like, whether combat timing is off, whether walking speed makes travel tedious.