The old title sequence was built on a 32x32px tileset of large, chunky landmass objects.

We created a new 16px tileset and followed the contour of our world map to improve it's look.

Our most recent blog post shows our player's method of world travel by ship.

The map features a wind effect that pushes the ship around and shifts at intervals.

// Wind handler: 1=N 2=NE 3=E 4=SE 5=S 6=SW 7=W 8=NW
if wind < 0 { wind = 8 }
if wind > 8 { wind = 1 }
if windcounter >= 10000 { 
    wind = irandom_range(-2,2) 
    windcounter = 0
}
windcounter  = 1 

Then the ship object uses something like this:

        // Wind Speed Boost
           switch (wind) {
                case 1: {hsp_boost=0 vsp_boost=-.2}
                    break;
                case 2: {hsp_boost=lengthdir_x(.2, 45) vsp_boost=lengthdir_y(.2, 45)}
                    break;  
                case 3: {hsp_boost=.2 vsp_boost=0}
                    break; 
                case 4: {hsp_boost=lengthdir_x(.2, 45) vsp_boost=-lengthdir_y(.2, 45)}
                    break; 
                case 5: {hsp_boost=0 vsp_boost=.2}
                    break; 
                case 6: {hsp_boost=-lengthdir_x(.2, 45) vsp_boost=-lengthdir_y(.2, 45)}
                    break;
                case 7: {hsp_boost=-.2 vsp_boost=0} 
                    break;
                case 8: {hsp_boost=-lengthdir_x(.2, 45) vsp_boost=lengthdir_y(.2, 45)}
                    break;
            }

To set up the buffer to push the ship around. Later on, the ship's x and y coordinate are set based on it's hsp/vsp_final which are just an hsp/vsp value hsp/vsp_boost.

lengthdir_x/y is your friend here to get those nice diagonals!

Images:

The old title sequence

New title sequence

Wind Effect