Okay --- here it is! This is the v0.2 alpha tech demo of Cult.
There are quite a lot of new things to play around with, most of them contained in the world generation process. I've made a list below:
New features:
WORLDGEN:
- You may now left-click and drag the world map around during world generation instead of navigating with the directional keys. It's much faster and smoother.
- You may now scale the terrain map down to a miniature view using subcell rendering after terrain generation.
- Name generation now incorporates the new naming module, which produces better-sounding names.
- Creature generation has been implemented (unfinished, obviously).
- History generation (also unfinished) now uses a new civilization expansion algorithm which makes it MUCH faster.
- The world will now save itself to a reloadable file after worldgen finishes.
- The worldgen process now uses clickable buttons for ease of use.
WORLD ATLAS:
- You may now view nations, nation relations, and relation maps in the WA.
- You can view creature entries in the WA. You may also sort the creatures, although some of the sorting options are broken/unimplemented at present.
- You can view some very basic creature stats.
MISC:
- The title screen options are now clickable with the mouse.
- You can back out of the World Atlas/worldgen/etc. using the backspace key, or by right-clicking.
- Various areas have been cleaned up visually. The title screen now uses a subcell-rendered candle graphic instead of the original (much blockier) version.
- Music by Sentientdeth! He has contributed an AWESOME title track and an unfinished worldgen track, both of which I have included on the assumption that he doesn't mind the unfinished track being previewed. If need be I'll retract it, but it's so cool even without the (main) middle segment of the song missing that I feel the need to throw it in for coolness alone.
-
The worldgen process is relatively quick for me, but I'm on a quad-core computer with a gig of dedicated graphics running at ~4ghz/core. It's probably going to take quite a lot longer on older computers. My laptop, which has a 9800GT and two cores running at something like 2.2ghz/core, doesn't take a horrendous amount of time, so it shouldn't be *too* bad if your rig isn't ancient.
To access creature entries and nation information about worlds you generate, you have to go to the World Atlas.
That about does it. Enjoy!
(Oh, and I highly encourage people to post pictures of amusing/freakish creatures or names generated by the program just for fun, if anybody is so inclined.)
Credits:
The excellent music is by Sentientdeth here on the B12 forums.
A NOTE: After history generation finishes, there will be a noticeable pause while the program saves the generated world to a file. Clicking around and spazzing out is not advised here, as it'll probably make the game crash. Wait until it finishes saving and a message will be displayed indicating that you can proceed to the main menu.
LINKY, LINKY: http://www.mediafire.com/?h6cgh261tbumao6