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[Clownmite]

Would it make sense to create a new class representing a (frequency, onset) pair, and store a list of those instead of including frequency information in the onsets themselves? Mapping between onset objects and their corresponding frequency data might take some work, but if you never need to do that, it doesn't matter.

Yeah, or even just a list of tuples or something. The current way the script is set up, is due to me originally creating it for a different purpose (English pseudowords, so just 1 language was ever created originally) and me still being new to coding two years ago when I wrote it. I kind of shoehorned it into what it is now, and, as Skyrunner is experiencing, it's a bit of a mess.


In other news, I finally got buttons attached to GUI panels working, which involved a bit of a rewrite that is only partially complete. It's amazing how much work something as simple as a button is, for someone like me who is not formally trained and is figuring things out on their own. This kind of stalled progress for a while, but now it should be pretty easy for me to add in buttons to the interface and make things more user-friendly.

You can now "take control" of an existing economy agent, and adjust bid or sell prices and amounts using these fancy newfangled buttons. This is not "fun" at all currently, but it will be extremely helpful to be able to take on this perspective in testing the economy and being able to give slightly more complex behavior to economy agents.

[Nienhaus]

So how is this going?

[Clownmite]

So how is this going?

I've been bogged down with work so not a huge amount of progress. I finished the first rewrite of GUI buttons. Each of them can be attached to functions that occur on a click, rather than the awkward way I had done it before. I used this to add a graphical menu for picking up items which is terribly structured right now. Then I realized I could create a generic "button menu" function so I moved some code over to that.

I had to do some reworking of the physics system to allow hollow objects, and objects stored inside those objects. I also added clothes, which correctly add the cloth (or whatever) layer on top of the skin layer. I stalled when I wrote this, because there's a weird disconnect between wearable items - clothes are worn but cover the entire body and so act as a "layer", but then things like backpacks are also worn, but don't act the same way. Nevertheless, you can wear a backpack now and try to fit items inside. The physics component will need to be further rewritten so both volume and dimensions of the object are taken into account here. This whole thing is much more complicated that it first seems, so I'm expecting tons of weird bugs all around.

Once this gets sorted out, entities can have actual inventory systems. That's an important step. I'm still trying to figure out some simple things I can add into the world to make a demo worth releasing. I'm going to need things for players to do and reasons to do them.

[Zireael]

Posting to watch. Sounds like a great idea, the dev's still going at it judging by reddit, and I'm a major linguistics nerd.

[Skyrunner]

The dev's still going at it according to the post right above you

Edit: oh snap the date

[MaximumZero]

Way to necro, guys.

[Nienhaus]

You guys made me sad, I thought this was back.

[Tiruin]

Mmh >_>
Just hope he's bogged down by work but is still working on it there, at least. This is a pretty awesome idea.

[Clownmite]

Hey guys, sorry I missed a little bit of the discussion here. The project is not abandoned, but it is moving along more slowly than I'd hoped. Part of the reason is design-oriented - I have a few goals for how I'd like combat to work, but at the moment it's all really boring and there's not much strategy, or fun, involved at all. And a really awesome AI priority / pathing system I wrote may not be feasible performance-wise if I break down combat into the timescale I'd want.

But in terms of progress, I've done a lot of refactoring with my code. I had next to no programming experience before this project, so as you might imagine a lot of the code is badly written or difficult to extend. For example, the way I generate buildings in cities, for example, is different from a more general approach that I'd want to take. And I'm having a hard time figuring out how to get factions to work smoothly, given that some will have sites and some won't; some will be governing large populations and others will be limited to just a few members, some will have leaders and others won't, etc.

With all that being said, I do have factions set up correctly in terms of combat. Each faction has a relationship with each other, and those who are hostile will recognize each other as enemies. I've also made the first pass at procedurally-generated weapons. Each faction gets unique weapons with unique names right now, even though mechanically they aren't different yet. There's also some procedural generation of civilized species, so you start as some random creature (although again, they aren't mechanically different yet).

Cities now connect to each other through roads, which merchants will travel on. And at least at the beginning of the game, bandits will arise around cities and look for a nearby empty site to occupy, or build their own hideout if there are none. There's even some really basic framework for capturing prisoners. The local-scale maps are much better now, with trees, some vegetation, rocks, and water showing up. Also, caves are generated that you can enter into - currently bandits may hang out here sometimes.


So in terms of combat, I really need to figure out how to make it more fun - but I think this can be solved with just some more dedicated thought on my side. But more importantly, I need to start adding more meaningful activity to the world, so that there is something engaging to be a part of. Right now it's kind of a chicken and egg problem, because there's nothing really going on to start with, so there's no way to meaningfully expand the existing interactions. I have some ideas on this, but I can also use some ideas from others. 

So seriously - if you have ideas for types of general interaction that you'd like to see arise in the world, or more specific types of "quests" or "adventures" you'd like to be able to go on, I'm all ears. But do keep in mind that it will still probably be slow going on this project, and I have my own vision for how it's going to turn out.

And here's some screenshots, in their debug glory:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[mastahcheese]

Oh, this looks great.
I can't think of sugggestions right now, but I'll try to think of some later.
I really can't wait to try this.

[Nienhaus]

YAY! I'm happy now.

[Lord_lemonpie]

Ptw

[mastahcheese]

Query: have you read Sun Tzu's Art of War?
If you want better ideas on how the AI should be moving in war, and divisions of units, I'd highly suggest reading some of it. Particuraly on the section of "unorthadox" and "orthadox" tactics, so that the ingame intellegence of commanders actually takes effect, and allows more use to things such as spies.
On non-combat, it wouldn't really help, but I'll post more suggestions later.

[Clownmite]

Query: have you read Sun Tzu's Art of War?
If you want better ideas on how the AI should be moving in war, and divisions of units, I'd highly suggest reading some of it. Particuraly on the section of "unorthadox" and "orthadox" tactics, so that the ingame intellegence of commanders actually takes effect, and allows more use to things such as spies.

I have not read it.

One big problem that I face is that the game is written in Python - usually fast enough for roguelikes, but definitely not a performance-optimized language. So when it comes to army battles, I'm not sure how much depth I'll be able to go into regarding AI decision-making. The goal would be to make something as solid as possible, of course, but pathfinding alone eats up a lot of time.

[Tiruin]

Query: have you read Sun Tzu's Art of War?
If you want better ideas on how the AI should be moving in war, and divisions of units, I'd highly suggest reading some of it. Particuraly on the section of "unorthadox" and "orthadox" tactics, so that the ingame intellegence of commanders actually takes effect, and allows more use to things such as spies.

I have not read it.

Ho hooo, read it! It's a very nice book, stretching from military tactics to strategizing individualls and covert planning to keeping your troops or other allies in line and orderly, as well as minor other things like body language discernment and terrain mapping ideas, including formation and troop identification--their status, fatigue, or demeanor by their stance or behavior. . .

And a lot more. From spies to country and culture factors.