Let me start by thanking Ozyman on this one. Without his scripting, there is absolutely no way I could have completed this map. The sheer number of continents is overwhelming (557).

This map was made based around a single mechanic: the moving vision. A lot of compromises on gameplay, rules, layout, and other mechanics were made to make the moving vision work. If I'm perfectly honest with myself, this was a tech demo or proof- of-concept for moving vision so I could test it before I broke some other map trying to use it as a component of something larger. I think it came out pretty cool, anyway, and the board stands on its own, though if the game engine could handle moving vision more natively, I would definitely change a few things.

So how does it work?

Again, thanks to Ozy, the moving vision itself works so well, the odds are good most people won't even wonder how it works. From the perspective of the player, it just does. The light moves around the board without their interaction. In fact, completely isolated from their interaction. Behind the scenes, its a mess.

For an explanation of that mess, we'll start at the top. Literally.

The Sands of Time

Across the top of the map are 24 territories, each associated with an hour of the day. All of those territories are assigned via setup to the players. Each of those territories is also a part of several factories working as a turn timer. Turn timers have been covered before elsewhere, so I won't get deep into it, but the group of 3 territories making up the visual portion of the map for each person moves possession forward one step per turn while clearing out the territory at the back of the group using +1 and -1 factories and abandon-no-retain. The territories have max capacity of 1. This simulates the earth rotating, lighting up a different hour of the day on each turn.

The Light

The "lighting" works because each territory across the top has view-only borders down to all of the map-territories within the associated hour. The view-only borders cut through the fog, set in the rules and not adjustable by the host.

The Illusion

The clock territories at the top of the map do, in fact, show that you have 1 army on them, though you can't see it. Across the very top of the map is a thin strip of black on the image layer. The image layer covers the fill layer. The 'target' of the territory is centered behind that black strip. All of the player colors are set up so that they have black text. The black text on the black strip isn't visible. The fill area then extends down below the black strip where it remains covered by the stripe of alternating colors that makes up the hour-guide / continent key. There is a cutout with gradient blur in those colored squares on the image layer showing through to the fill layer, so that it makes the face of the LED clock glow with the color of the player it belongs to.

The End

The clock territories have placement disabled. There are no borders to them and only view-only borders out of them. They make up their own closed system across the top of the map that the players can't touch. But they still factor into elimination. How to clear them out when a player is wiped off the map-proper? "Easy," you say, "Make all of the territories on the map a capital." Which would be great. It would have saved tons of time and given me a lot more gameplay options. However, you can't make capitals randomly assigned. They have to be given to a player or neutral in setup. I still wanted random start, so making any of the map-territories capitals was out of the question.

But capitals was is still the answer. Completely off map are 6 territories. I call them the kill factories. And, seriously, they are completely off the map. In the designer, I put them outside of the area renedered by the player. Yes, apparently, you can do that. They are each capitals. They, too, have placement disabled. There are no borders at all to or from them. One of the 6 kill-factory territories are given to each of the 6 players in setup. Each of them has max capacity of 1. Each of them is their own, self-directed factory with a bonus of -1. Being as abandon is on, every turn, the kill-factory tries to kill itself with the -1 bonus on its max-cap 1 army. Since it's a capital, if it is successful in killing itself, the owner player is eliminated. Which brings us to:

The Headache

Better known as the "keep alive" function. The kill-factory territories are also part of a series of self-directed factories with a +1 bonus. For every territory on the map, there is a factory with a +1 bonus directed at the kill factory, for each kill factory. (That's where Ozy's automation comes in. For every territory on the map, there are 6 factory continents. That's a lot of continents. Without the script, I'd have had to talk Riskyback into clicking all those territories into existence). So, if you have a territory on the map, its +1 factory counteracts the kill-factories own -1 suicide attempt, and you live. If you lose all of your territories on the map then between turns the kill factory capital cleans itself out with abandon, which wipes your clock territories at the top of the map, and you are out.

The Caveats

No player actually eliminates any other player. The abandoned kill-factory capital finishes everyone off. So there is no way to grant an elimination bonus or card capture. I turned them off in the rules to avoid confusion, but it's actually a side-effect of the mechanics that make the lights go around.

When your last on-map territory is lost, you still have to come back for a 'handshake turn' to complete your defeat. Abandon Immediately is on, but since the kill factory suicides at the start of your next turn following when you lost your last on-map territory, it isn't technically abandoned until the end of that. You still have to click "apply" to place armies on no territories. (You could try to ignore coming back to give your opponents a handshake and lose like a good sport, but then you'd just get booted instead. Be a good sport; finish your turn.) This is probably the biggest compromise of all of them, because it requires action from the players at a somewhat confusing point in the game. I tried to explain it away in the board description, but who knows how many people actually bother to read it.

The Improvement Request

I'm sure it's already on the list, but being able to make territories capitals without assigning them to neutral or a player would have made this map a lot easier to make, and saved me from both of the major caveats.

The Summary

Don't get me wrong. I think this is a complete map of its own merit. It's fun. It's different. It's interesting. It was a test for me to try out some wild ideas, and worked well enough to be published. But I probably wouldn't use the isolated rotating vision again, at least, not as it was used in this map. I wrote this journal hoping everyone could learn from the effort, and I do hope you have fun on Darkness Falls.

Very thorough analysis of the design process, thanks for sharing, Cram!

Thanks for writing this.  I love the idea of Dev Journals, and I think I will do the same for some of my maps. 

Aye very cool!  I think Darkness Falls is probably one of the more in-depth hidden pieces boards so it's cool really reading about all the caveats.  

I like the Dev Journal idea too, as I know I have actually put a lot of thought into the design and gameplay that probably doesn't come through in the final product and I'm sure other Board Designers have the same things with their boards, so would be cool to read more of these types of articles.

Nice job Cram!