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Author Topic: Dwarf Fortress meets The Outer Wilds? "Ultima Ratio Regum", v0.10.1 out Feb 2023  (Read 632497 times)

Ultima Ratio Regum

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Like something that makes people more honest when near it or something to that effect? That'd be neat whether it's right or not.

Now that's an interesting idea. Something that prevents someone it is used on from lying? Or that lets you detect lies? Or something similar? For the NPC aspects of the game, something like that (with limited usages or whatever) could be really good...

maybe stuff that affects your luck, with hidden stats so you never know if it's working as intended

Also a definite possibility. However, I think I want things which the player has much more of a choice over where/when/how to use, not so much background stuff. If there are passive effects, I do want it to be a visible one. I think. Maybe. However, if there just a few very specific RNG aspects an item altered (like only a few contexts), then I think something like that might be viable. I've had a few ideas already, but they're all very much in the pondering stage...

Now this week's update, which you can also read at http://www.ultimaratioregum.co.uk/game/2013/07/02/permadeath-and-world-generation/

First, 0.3 update, second, general URR discussion. This week I’ve been focusing on finishing off everything except bugs and small features, and that’s going well. All the secrets and the basic inventory are fully implemented, ziggurats work perfectly, and I’ve done a lot of work on generating some rather nice door graphics. For example:



(I am aware there should be vines trailing inwards – working on it). This coming fortnight I’m rushing around the country like a mad person gathering data for my PhD thesis and giving a talk about roguelikes at an academic conference (which I will try and either record of convert to some form viewable here), but by the end of this fortnight I’d like all graphics finished off, one slight movement issue with blocks, walls and the player character fixed, then I can move onto bug fixing. The requirements for the next release are really coalescing in my mind now as well, so I’ll probably post about those in the near future. Whilst this is all going on, the body of today’s entry is about longer-term plans, specifically about permadeath.

Permadeath provides many of the things I love in roguelikes and roguelike-likes (I’ll just call them all “RLs” for this discussion, so that’s everything from Nethack to FTL). A high level of challenge; a huge amount of tension at risky moments that few non-permadeath games can emulate; and a genuine feeling of progress and accomplishment when you reach new areas you’ve never reached before (particularly when they actually look aesthetically different – I am looking at you disapprovingly, Nethack, and you approvingly, Crawl). An additional factor I think shouldn’t be overlooked is game balance. Which is to say, game balance in something like Dungeon Crawl is very carefully designed around permadeath. If you remove permadeath from Crawl the game becomes almost trivial. If you could reload and thereby reroll every floor, you’d never have to deal with any nasty unique; you could reload before consuming mutagenic corpses to farm every positive mutation in the game; you could reload floors with treasure rooms or shops until they sell what you want; and so on and so on. Game balance in any good roguelike is not just broken but utterly destroyed if you don’t have a single life you can’t reload, because it hinges on the game distributing good items, bad items, easy foes and nasty foes towards you according to whatever algorithms govern them, not according to someone endlessly rerolling until they get a great outcome.

However. I got to thinking about permadeath in URR, and realized an issue. Generating a world currently takes around a minute – once history generation is implemented, probably in the next version, it’ll take maybe 2-3 minutes to generate a world. That isn’t much by DF standards, and there will be a lot of gameplay in that world, but it’s still a decent block of time. I originally thought the solution to this was to simply let you have new characters in the same world, as many as you want, but that won’t work. A lot more will be said on this later, but here’s the big reveal: URR is developing a plot (lots more on this in the future, but it’s going to be very interesting, and nothing like normal medieval-story fare). A weird and obtuse one, but still a plot (which the secret items in 0.3 are a part of). Having infinite characters in one world means you, like save-scumming in Crawl, cannot fail to complete the game, if only by just trying character after character until one them gets through each challenge.

That does not appeal.

However, nor does having to generate a brand new world every time you die. Admittedly combat and death are going to be comparatively rare in URR compared to most RLs, but combat is going to be brutal and bloody, so you will lose characters, or to traps or starvation on long excursions if not to direct combat. I don’t want to discourge new players by forcing them to sit through a new world-gen every time they die rather than being able to jump back into the action, but I don’t want the game to be made too easy by having infinite characters all contributing to succeeding in a single “campaign”. I’ve been trying to think of a solution, and I think I’ve developed one which is original, sensible, and could produce some interesting emergent risk/reward strategies.

The current idea is this. You have three “lives” in each world – when you die you can create another character twice. When your third character dies, that world is finished. Each life starts with 25% of the XP of the previous character which you can assign into any skill tree from the start, but none of the items – they are left upon the original corpse, vaguely likes a Bones file in another RL. This means when you die the first time, you don’t have to reroll a world, and can learn from your mistakes whilst keeping whatever progress you made. Also, and possibly more importantly, it could lead to interesting tactics. Once you know the game you could make one character to do one particular area, then kill them off and start a new one for the rest of the game – you might have got a specialist to solve one region, but you’ve used up a full character, and you don’t have many to spare, so that’s a risk/reward decision. Equally, losing a character not by choice could let you reassess what killed you and either create a new build to deal with the same, or explore another region with another build.

So that’s the current plan. There is no way to die in 0.3, so this isn’t implemented yet, but this is my plan. I’m firmly set on the “plot” idea as I have a lot of ideas for it (go read some Jorge Borges for some clues), and that necessitates true permadeath, but without the annoyance of endless re-rolling. I think it’s a good compromise, but I want to know what everyone else thinks. Let me know your thoughts! I should stress I have in no way settled on the three lives idea – maybe I will stick to normal one-life permadeath – but I’d like some feedback on the concept.
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Delta Foxtrot

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I think that one reason for rogulikes getting away with single-life permadeath is that they lack plot. ADOM being the obvious exception, Rogue, Crawl and NetHack all are quite plotless. You're a guy in the dungeon killing stuff and at the end you win or die. Death gives tension and meaning to these games even though they lack a compelling story. It would be unsatisfying to play an RPG for hours and suddenly die, only to see a "You die, Quit/Restart?" text.

Tome4 emphasises the plot in roguelikes quite a bit and it's default mode has multiple lives for your character. It works. So based on what you have planned for URR, a single life permadeath is definitely not the way to go, unless you make it a lot harder to die. I trust you will find something good through testing and whatnot. Maybe just flat out multiple lives, maybe award people more lives as they progress in the game. Each time a player reaches a new 'plot' milestone they get an extralife, or part of an extralife. Or maybe even just some cosmic currency that can be used to purchase lives or other properly thought out and balanced goodies. There would be a certain risk/reward mechanic right there, "Do I get an extralife or do I get something that benefits me in other ways?".

You could always try to imbue death in to the gameplay and plot. Maybe you have things that need to be unlocked, but some require living deeds while others require character death. Background story in Icewind Dale had a great barbarian warrior sacrifice himself by sealing a demongate with his own body. Planescape: Torment used the PCs immortality in some puzzles, you could do the same in URR. Except you're not immortal, you merely shift your control from one digital peon to the next to advance in the game world.
I guess this all depends on how attached you want us to be in our singular characters. Am I, the player, Lord Karl von Hessen-Kassel, or am I some unexplainable force behind the actions of half a dozen or so individuals who all play their part in some cosmic powerplay?
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Askot Bokbondeler

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i think those 3 lives would have to be very well explained to fit into the plot and not break immersion. you could alternatively toy around with the idea of successors, like allowing your character to produce offspring and then if one of these reaches teenagehood before you died you could continue to play as one of them, and perhaps giving you a brother off the bat so you get a second chance if your character dies too early

Dutchling

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I am greatly in favour of successors, not so much of multiple lives though. Not at all to be honest.

A successor doesn't even have to be a kinsman. Maybe you can start a mercenary company and have a new leader appointed when you die, whom you can play as.

edit: It looks like you're actually making your own dreamgame, and not mine :P
« Last Edit: July 02, 2013, 11:03:10 am by Dutchling »
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Ivefan

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I do not know how you plan the plot you're thinking of, but having 3 different characters progress the same story sounds weird to me. I guess you could have a Diety sending you out and reviving you when you die but just a part of your essence, or whatever you want to call it, is restored. But at the same time you said you want a low fantasy world.
I was always under the impression that URR was going to be a free rowing, large scope sandbox game where you made your story yourself. That does not exclude semi random quests though, and I do not mean "go slay 4 wolfs in nearby region" but premade dungeons and the like that is just random in if they are in the game on this map and where you'll find questgivers.

Maybe you should separate your story/plot and a sandbox mode? The story mode would have a more narrow focus or scope where you go about your quest while the sandbox mode is do whatever and where you can inherit a portion of skills or items with a child, but where if you have none you can start over in the same world a few decades later. See how the world changed after your demise.
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Delta Foxtrot

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I do not know how you plan the plot you're thinking of, but having 3 different characters progress the same story sounds weird to me.

I disagree. The original Star Wars films. Luke, Leia and Han. While they did party up, they all spent time doing their own things that advanced the plot. Or Lord of the Rings, Frodo & Sam were doing their stuff, Gandalf was doing his wizard things, Merry & Pippin were somewhere else and Aragon led his little ragtag of heroes doing yet more things. All were part of the same story, everyone was doing something different at different places.

I guess I tilt slightly towards stories that feature large casts and multiple points of view.
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Glloyd

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But at the same time you said you want a low fantasy world.
I was always under the impression that URR was going to be a free rowing, large scope sandbox game where you made your story yourself. That does not exclude semi random quests though, and I do not mean "go slay 4 wolfs in nearby region" but premade dungeons and the like that is just random in if they are in the game on this map and where you'll find questgivers.

Maybe you should separate your story/plot and a sandbox mode? The story mode would have a more narrow focus or scope where you go about your quest while the sandbox mode is do whatever and where you can inherit a portion of skills or items with a child, but where if you have none you can start over in the same world a few decades later. See how the world changed after your demise.

This.

I became interested in this, BECAUSE it  was a scalable low fantasy sandboxy RL. But by the looks of it, it's suddenly Ghost's n' Goblins and I  need to conserve my 3 lives (or whatever you decide on) to make it to endgame? That holds no appeal for me. I assumed (and I'm assuming so did others (oh god so many assumptions)) that the overarching "goal" was whatever we wanted it to be. Want to unite the desert tribes as their chieftain? Go for it, and recreate the Mongol hordes while you're at it. Want to go pirate? If you can get a ship (and I'm assuming, a crew), go for it. The thing that drew me to this game was the apparent freedom it offered, and I fear that having a plot will take away from these freedoms.

Dutchling

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But at the same time you said you want a low fantasy world.
I was always under the impression that URR was going to be a free rowing, large scope sandbox game where you made your story yourself. That does not exclude semi random quests though, and I do not mean "go slay 4 wolfs in nearby region" but premade dungeons and the like that is just random in if they are in the game on this map and where you'll find questgivers.

Maybe you should separate your story/plot and a sandbox mode? The story mode would have a more narrow focus or scope where you go about your quest while the sandbox mode is do whatever and where you can inherit a portion of skills or items with a child, but where if you have none you can start over in the same world a few decades later. See how the world changed after your demise.

This.

I became interested in this, BECAUSE it  was a scalable low fantasy sandboxy RL. But by the looks of it, it's suddenly Ghost's n' Goblins and I  need to conserve my 3 lives (or whatever you decide on) to make it to endgame? That holds no appeal for me. I assumed (and I'm assuming so did others (oh god so many assumptions)) that the overarching "goal" was whatever we wanted it to be. Want to unite the desert tribes as their chieftain? Go for it, and recreate the Mongol hordes while you're at it. Want to go pirate? If you can get a ship (and I'm assuming, a crew), go for it. The thing that drew me to this game was the apparent freedom it offered, and I fear that having a plot will take away from these freedoms.
I agree with this as well. I was initially very hyped about this game as it seemed to be very close to my 'dream-game'. Later on you moved even closer, but it seems like you are moving away from it again :/
Not that you don't every right to do so, it's your game after all :P.

But yeah, I do hope you can just play this game in sandbox mode all day and ignore game-arching plots. Cult, or whatever it's new name is already got that going anyway, albeit in a fantasy world.
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mendonca

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I think it sounds like a fantastic idea all round. Really excited about the direction this is going in.
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Askot Bokbondeler

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i don't think the plot will be that linear or restrictive, guys, and add to that a good dose of parameter oriented procedurally created content.

casserol

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I first I wasn't very enthusiastic about a plot either, but when I read "jorge luis borge inspired" i changed my mind.
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Ivefan

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I disagree. The original Star Wars films. Luke, Leia and Han. While they did party up, they all spent time doing their own things that advanced the plot. Or Lord of the Rings, Frodo & Sam were doing their stuff, Gandalf was doing his wizard things, Merry & Pippin were somewhere else and Aragon led his little ragtag of heroes doing yet more things. All were part of the same story, everyone was doing something different at different places.

I guess I tilt slightly towards stories that feature large casts and multiple points of view.
Right. Except that it seems that its just one point of view by three different guys, because the first guy died and the second one picked up the same plot after that. Using your comparison, that would be like Luke died and Han picks up his light sabre and cry that Vader is his father...
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Warmist

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So that’s the current plan. There is no way to die in 0.3, so this isn’t implemented yet, but this is my plan. I’m firmly set on the “plot” idea as I have a lot of ideas for it (go read some Jorge Borges for some clues), and that necessitates true permadeath, but without the annoyance of endless re-rolling. I think it’s a good compromise, but I want to know what everyone else thinks. Let me know your thoughts! I should stress I have in no way settled on the three lives idea – maybe I will stick to normal one-life permadeath – but I’d like some feedback on the concept.
I know this will be a lot harder, but what about implementing a lot of plot lines. They would lie dormant in the world until you create a character. Also you could run a few npc over them so playing the world you could sometimes meet them. I mean this because i'm a very big fan of persistance (be it in df or ksp or any other) and to throw away a world just because some dude dies is just not fair with all the stuff you do to it. Sure the crawl has little persistance in that way: just a ghost of your predecessors, but it's still fun to find.

Rowanas

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I'm in the "scary plot" camp myself, which is to say, I think plot is scary. Limiting me to three lives in a world means that I can't play the conquering warlord, leading my legions from exile in the south to retake the steppes of my grandfathers, because if I die too many times in single combat against generals and kings, the plot-life counter will go "that's your lot, bugger off" and now I'm back to regenning a new world.

Now, I know the worry you have over incremental and unstoppable final victory, by using each of your characters to build up to the plot finale, but I really don't think it will significantly affect anyone's enjoyment of the game. Lots of roguelikes have your character drop his equipment on death, and a later character can go and loot it to claim various shiny things to help them progress further in the game. Having some kind of impact on the world is important if you want URR to be anything like it was originally envisioned, and like it was originally presented to us. The character and nation that we've spent days shaping into the perfect tool for whatever we had in mind, will still deal a huge blow to us, the player, if killed. We're not going to throw away our pet champion just because we know we can work our way to the top again. A new character has new problems, new obstacles; the fledgling kingdom we built will fall to chaos and the ravages of fueding dukes, perhaps a new leader takes the throne while we work our way out of our humble beginnings. Out of such things are great stories made, histories of the noble leaders of desert tribes and the untested sons of kings, working to create a plot more complex and excellent than is possible with 3, 4, 5 lives. Entire dynasties, in which you, the player, have played king, conqueror and ambassador or even started on the other side of the fence and set siege and spy against the very things you helped build.

TL;DR
The scope of this game demands unlimited lives for freeplay. Perhaps some division between plot-based and sandbox?
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I agree with Urist. Steampunk is like Darth Vader winning Holland's Next Top Model. It would be awesome but not something I'd like in this game.
Unfortunately dying involves the amputation of the entire body from the dwarf.

Neonivek

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Or how about this solution Rowanas.

You get 3 lives and after that the world generates a bit more and you are thrown back in to the same world that has changed a great deal since you were away.
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