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[Mephansteras]

Yeah, 2x2 miles sounds good, at least for the first 2 stages. Fits the average size of a medieval village, at least.

[Thes33]

Well once you have a city, food will largely be coming from other your other manors... so you will have to give up farmland for homes and workshops.

According to this site: (a great source for medieval statistics)
http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm

The 4 sq. mi. of my manors fall well in line with a fairly large medieval city.  This should theoretically be able to support a city of 155,400 happy little peasants.  (this would be if your manor was laid out from wall to wall on the borders of the manor.)  With obstacles like swamps, craggy rock heads, and such.  You will be more limited.  But you should be able to get a city going for sure, if not a pretty large one, in the space provided.

I finished my streaming terrain.. working good and I got my trees back.  I am currently able to zip around my 4 sq mi of forest in a streaming environment.  I'll get a video or pics up soon.

Now I'll probably take a few days off, as I've been working none-stop since Thursday.  When I get back to it, it'll be time to create objects and begin resource gathering and management.

Hooray 

[Thes33]

Just added a movie of the streaming forest on the development page.  Check it out:
  http://www.arboreantears.com/fief/     

[ductape]

Just added a movie of the streaming forest on the development page.  Check it out:
  http://www.arboreantears.com/fief/     

Great! next comes, well... everything 

Also, if you have a city on 4 square miles of manor with ~150k....what are they eating? Trust me on this, you are not going to be able to feed that many people and house them on 4 square miles.

From your stats website: A square mile of settled land (including requisite roads, villages and towns, as well as crops and pastureland) will support 180 people.

In the modern world:
meat eater: 100 acres per human per year
vegetarian: 10 acres per human per year
vegan: 1 acre per human per year.

640 acres in a square mile
4 square miles = 2560 acres / 10 acres per person = 256 people you can feed off of 4 square miles
and that is with mechanized agriculture!

assuming a vegetarian diet for the paupers and somehow they are as efficient as modern agriculture:
~150,000 humans will require 2343.75 square miles

[Goron]

Just added a movie of the streaming forest on the development page.  Check it out:
  http://www.arboreantears.com/fief/     

Great! next comes, well... everything 

Also, if you have a city on 4 square miles of manor with ~150k....what are they eating? Trust me on this, you are not going to be able to feed that many people and house them on 4 square miles.

From your stats website: A square mile of settled land (including requisite roads, villages and towns, as well as crops and pastureland) will support 180 people.

In the modern world:
meat eater: 100 acres per human per year
vegetarian: 10 acres per human per year
vegan: 1 acre per human per year.

640 acres in a square mile
4 square miles = 2560 acres / 10 acres per person = 256 people you can feed off of 4 square miles
and that is with mechanized agriculture!

assuming a vegetarian diet for the paupers and somehow they are as efficient as modern agriculture:
~150,000 humans will require 2343.75 square miles

/Good post.

I think the 150k in 4sq miles concept was CITY space, (EDIT)but not (/edit) self supporting space. (Mind you, I have not read the link yet).
So that 4sq mile, 150k city was probably supported by miles of farmland and a bustling fishing industry:-)

[Thes33]

That is correct...   the 4 sq mi is JUST the city.  As I said, your city will have to be supported by many other manors of just farmland to feed your bustling city.  Which is why its impossible to create a city without acquiring more manors first.  I just want the player to be able to create a large city in their home manor.

//EDIT: So being able to feed your own peasants at home limits the population to 720.  Not bad for a little town.  Of course this is assuming you have no obstructions to growth (like swamps, thick forests, or rocky hills).

[Tilla]

Any news? I know the holidays are slow for programmer schedules and all, just curious!

[ChairmanPoo]

I played a multiplayer game simmilar to this.

Without peasants, of course. You were a medieval character (knight, priest, barbarian, muslim knight) and could take over lands, and gain money from them, levee peasants, train soldiers, etc. You could also grant land to other players taking them as vassals, and so on. It had lots of options. You could eventually rise to higher ranks (IE: Emperor, Pope, Caliph)

The concept was good, but the game was unbearably slow (as in, do a few things for a day, then dont play until the next day. In hindsight this might be a good idea to prevent getting hooked to it for hours). And my connection sucked too much and half of the time it failed to load. But yeah, good concept.

[Thes33]

Hello all!
   Here's an update on the Fief development:

   The holidays have actually been quite productive for me programming wise (it's a good excuse to ignore school work).  But I recently found out that the creators of jME have been working on a new project Ardor3D to basically reinvent the wheel and redo the Java graphics engine.  At the same time I've been finding 3D programming to be a more tedious input for the return.  And its been a pain testing.  Since my goal for this game includes a 1st person, 3D perspective, I don't want to scrap the 3D graphics altogether.  But I am putting them aside for now.
   I've abstracted out my game engine from the graphics engine (like I had stated in a previous post).  Since these are separate entities (and separate threads for that matter), I decided to create a 2D graphics engine that will be a Rogue-like experience.
   This creates a few question for the implementation of the engine.  Since I intend the 3D graphics engine to be plug-in-play with the game later on, I've kept the grid-like qualities of the 2D engine as an abstraction of the underlying values.  In other words, creatures will be moving on a floating point grid system much like a 3D game where they are not constrained by "tiles" or "grids", even if the view of the 2D graphics tile system will show up in a grid-like format typical of a Rogue-like game.
   I have already created the engine itself.  It seems to run relatively smooth.  The nice thing is with Java's Full-screen Exclusive Mode (FSEM), the game can still take advantage of accelerated graphics and I can control the resolution.  I'll worry about optimization later on.
   So in a nutshell,  3D graphics is on hold.  2D is in development.  Which will make the testing much easier.  Realistically, I'm seeing a playable demo sometime in late Spring/early Summer due to my school load this semester.  But I'll keep you all updated.
    Thanks again!   
   

[Mephansteras]

Nifty. Looking forward to it!

[Thes33]

Update:
    2D Graphics engine finished! Yay! 
 I am now working on the main game mechanics.  In particular I am working on plant growth and implementing seasons and time change. 
   I think I am going to have time stalled in absence of pressing any keys (i.e. moving).  This will give the game a very turn-based like feel.  But I may make each 5 sec of inactivity (only when game not paused) cause a tick in the game world.  But we'll see how this goes as I try to implement the time and season system. 

   There are a few meager screenshots of the new engine at work on the Fief development page:
       www.arboreantears.com/fief
 
  At each tile in the game world (a 5ft square) the game keeps track of the soil type, the plant upon it, and the growth of the plant.  This is what creates the dynamic range of tree sizes (sorry for my half-ass graphics, they are fillers for now) and the soil seen under the trees.  The green between each trees is actually thick underbrush as the manor starts as nothing but a large thick forest.

Next:  Plants and Seasons
Afterwords:  Maybe animals?

[Zangi]

I approve.  (I think I already did before... [I'm not going to check.])

The endless world doesn't look too shabby either.  Maybe you can leave an open programing option for a 'Feif Adventure' mode similar to how DF has Adventure mode...

That would be even more win in the long run.

[Thes33]

A Fief adventure mode would certainly be fun, but my game Endless Worlds fills the RPG role.  I will probably add a lot of Fief-related features to that game when I get back to it. I developed an RPG rule system for Endless Worlds that I'm using pieces of in Fief.  So some of the attributes and skills may overlap in the two games.  But it's all Fief for now

[Thes33]

Here's the update:

   I just got back from a conference and the threat of my school work hangs over my head.  So for the next month or so I'll be putting Fief development on hold in order to keep my head above the threatening waters of grad school.  So in the mean time keep your spirits up and heads held high until the day we are building castles, planting crops, and assassinating peasants who speak ill of your name a little too loudly.  The world of Fief awaits...

    I'll update here as soon as development resumes.  Thanks everyone

[Mephansteras]

We'll be here when you get back to it.