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Author Topic: Dwarf Fortress meets The Outer Wilds? "Ultima Ratio Regum", v0.10.1 out Feb 2023  (Read 632495 times)

Glloyd

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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.

I'm not sure. I think descendants would be a good and less immersion breaking idea. You die? Play 20 years~ down the road as your son/daughter. Lives just feels way too "gamey" for me. It's a dealbreaker for me. I love me my permadeath.

Devling

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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.

I'm not sure. I think descendants would be a good and less immersion breaking idea. You die? Play 20 years~ down the road as your son/daughter. Lives just feels way too "gamey" for me. It's a dealbreaker for me. I love me my permadeath.
I totally agree with Giloyd. Maybe not being forced into playing your descendent, but having the option would be sick-rad.
(that's TWO positive adjective)
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Neonivek

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Quote
I'm not sure. I think descendants would be a good and less immersion breaking idea.

I always assumed that the three lives was your family or people who decide to take on your cause. Not the "come back to life" or "Retcon you didn't die" variety.

But after you lose 3 people, you suffer a time gap.

In otherwords you cannot babe and save.
« Last Edit: July 02, 2013, 08:07:55 pm by Neonivek »
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Man of Paper

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My idea on how it might be/should be done:

The storyline is hopefully something along the lines of "player discovers x, slowly finds evidence of y, gets a hold of z, and eventually solves humanity. Or whatever. And the three or so people destined to go down this path. My idea is that in order to continue the storyline, then you must first find the corpse of your last character. Or at least reattain the items once they are scattered across the kingdom/continent/world/space and time. That way it's like you get to play out the lives of the second+ characters prior to their life-changing discovery.

The comment on the other characters maybe being specialized to pass certain parts makes me think you'd have someone die, and then the next character, who was also on the trail of the endgame, but from a different direction, finds the body of the previous character in, say, a trap that this guy can easily manage. How lucky he is, to have come across this smorgasbord of information that pertains to his quest!
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Neonivek

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Quote
The storyline is hopefully something along the lines of "player discovers x, slowly finds evidence of y, gets a hold of z, and eventually solves humanity. Or whatever. And the three or so people destined to go down this path. My idea is that in order to continue the storyline, then you must first find the corpse of your last character. Or at least reattain the items once they are scattered across the kingdom/continent/world/space and time. That way it's like you get to play out the lives of the second+ characters prior to their life-changing discovery

Ok, I will tell you that there are elements of GENIUS! in here.

I certainly would love to play a game where you are an Archiologist in the future from the games main setting... and you play the game by finding the bodies of dead adventurers.

And you can only continue their story by finding more artifacts and bodies... heck the world could only be as large as your knowledge of the ancient world.

Honestly there is soo much that could be done with that premise.

DANG IT MAN OF PAPER! Now I want to play that game!
« Last Edit: July 02, 2013, 08:23:24 pm by Neonivek »
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tootboot

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I think it would be cool to have a procedurally generated plot, I don't think that's been done before.
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Man of Paper

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Now I guess I have to go back to school for programming.
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Delta Foxtrot

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I think it would be cool to have a procedurally generated plot, I don't think that's been done before.

Gearhead 1 & 2 have procedural plot generation, though how well they succeed is another thing. It's been a while since I played so I can't quite comment on what it did right and wrong, though it was more or less a procedurally generated excuse plot to have you blow stuff up with a mech.
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Rowanas

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Is Gearhead 2 still a thing? I heard JH got a job and the whole thing died. A look at the forums supports my assertion. Shame.
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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.

Ultima Ratio Regum

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Ah, so many replies! Whilst I obviously normally always try to reply to every message, I have once before had so many replies to a big "consultation" thing that I had to sum them all up in a future blog entry, and this is going to be the second time. Between here, the blog, Facebook, twitter and a bunch of other places I've had a good 50 comments, so I'm just going to reply them all at once next week when I post an update. Would have been this week, but was too ill to do much except just survive. So in the mean time, just wanted to say many thanks for all the feedback - can't tell you all how useful it is. Really helped me clarify what I'm aiming for and what the best way to go about it is.
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Ultima Ratio Regum

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Just got back from one conference and off to another on Monday. In the interim I'm aiming to finish all door art, door code, wall art (actually pretty cool), inventory stuff, plant growth, and a few secret things. Then it's onto bug fixing. August release impending! Will actually therefore have an update this coming Monday!
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Ultima Ratio Regum

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As people keep asking for some live coding, here you go! www.twitch.tv/maasbiolabs! Drop in, say hi, ask questions, and maybe see some secrets and spoilers if you hang around long enough...
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Sharp

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Is Gearhead 2 still a thing? I heard JH got a job and the whole thing died. A look at the forums supports my assertion. Shame.

No he is working on new things, he did a recent blog update and is actually working on a different gearhead https://github.com/jwvhewitt/gearhead-caramel

---

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Ultima Ratio Regum

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FINALLY AN UPDATE! Copied from the blog.

Firstly, many thanks to everyone who responded to my consultation thoughts about permadeath.  Between here, Twitter, Facebook and a bunch of forums I had about fifty responses about the three-lives idea. Most people were against it, whilst a small number lamented the fact the game is gradually becoming less open world (more on this in a moment) and a few said the three-lives thing could work with some kind of story reasoning behind it. Quite a few also thought that a minute or two of rolling a new world – given that early-game death will be rare in URR, and that length of time is certainly nothing on DF – wasn’t too bad. I’ve tried to put as many of these comments as well as my own thoughts together, and I think I’ve found a good solution.

So, firstly, something about “open-world”. As I’ve been thinking about this, I’ve come to realize that there are perhaps two different things encapsulated in that term. On the one hand you have a world with a great degree of freedom – one you can move around in any direction you like (though with perhaps limits on certain buildings/dungeons early on) – and on the other hand you have a game that is “open world” in the sense of Dwarf Fortress. DF is open world in that first sense, but also in another sense – there’s no plot, no story, no objectives, etc. Maybe there are two distinct terms and I simply don’t know what they are, but I think it’s worth distinguishing between games where the world is open, and where the gameplay is… “undirected”? This puts me in mind of Mafia II – that had a wonderfully realized Goodfellas-esque “open world”, but because there was nothing to do except the main story missions, the gameplay was very linear (and the world was, I think, somewhat wasted).

Anyway, URR is most certainly staying an open world in the first sense of a planet with few restrictions on movement and exploration, and partly so in the second sense. I am keen to involve a story, but I do not want to fall into the Mafia II trap of having an impressive world with little do outside linear story missions. There’s a bunch of ways I’m navigating this – firstly, by simply making the plot a lot “wider” and requiring quite a lot of the world to be explored to complete. Secondly, obviously, the procedurally generated aspects mean more exploration of the world is required and there’s no way to know up front (except in quite broad parameters) what parts of the world will be involved. Thirdly, it’s not at all a linear story/plot, and will be playable in a large number of different orders and sequences (think Dark Souls if you have the Master Key). Fourthly, I plan for each area/challenge to be conquerable in a number of different ways depending on your character’s skill set, and the player’s preferences. There will also be a lot of optional activity which might make later activities easier – for example, if you need to move through a war zone, you don’t have to try and intercept some intelligence beforehand, but it’s probably going to help.

I am firmly fixed on the story idea. I have some ideas for that (I think!) are interesting, original, and can provide a lot of challenging gameplay. I therefore put out a consultation about lives and reloading. As above, most people didn’t like the three-lives idea, and I agree with most of the criticisms leveled at it. Thus, the model we’re going for is that of one life, permadeath, and you need to roll a new world upon death.

I was concerned about this system for one major reason – that it takes a minute or two to roll a new world. From talking to friends who don’t play RLs I have increasingly realized that my concern over three-second load times in-game and the like are maybe a little misplaced; however, a few minutes is still a chunk of time. However, I think this will be an acceptable solution for two reasons. Firstly, world generation does show you its progress, and once history generation is fully implemented, I intend to include counters and rapid updates showing you its progress. Based on my early experimentation of this, it looks pretty neat. But the second (and rather less trivial) reason is simply that although there is permadeath, and I intend to ensure there’s a lot out there that can kill you, there probably won’t be that many particularly early in the game. Unlike a lot of RLs which struggle from the problem of that early game being the hardest segment, I’ve been planning seriously to make sure this isn’t the case. A new player is unlikely to encounter rapid death both because they won’t necessarily be aware of where to travel and what to do, but also because the early game will be relatively (relatively) friendly. Having to reroll a world will be reasonably rare as a new player.

So that’s the model. I don’t think rolling a new world upon death will be too annoying as it should be relatively rare when you’re a new player, and as a more experienced player you should get much longer games before you do expire (if you do, that is). Also, due to the procedural generation, dying once after uncovering a small part of the plot will likely mean the next character in a new world might come across a different aspect of the story first. It will be interesting to see how players try to put components together, especially if they’re new to the game and only seeing small fragments of the plot with each character as they learn the game. I’m very much looking forward to this shift for the game – I think it’s a good way to meld the open-world I want to make, but also the narrative I want to write and maybe more importantly that sense of real progression you get from playing something like Crawl.

Lastly, a more general note. I’ve been very ill the last few weeks, and whilst I thought it had largely cleared up, it has un-cleared in the last week (hence why this update was so badly delayed). Once I feel better I think I’ll be able to get back on track, but I don’t know when that will be. Still aiming for an August release, but it’s probably going to be towards the end of August. Thanks everyone for keeping with me during this unusually long release – I do still aim for six month releases a maximum, and after this one and normality is restored in my non-URR existence, hopefully I’ll be able to stick to that.
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Ivefan

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Not knowing how you plan to tell your story nor what it will be, Its a bit hard to properly advice.
Consider following games:
Oblivion & Skyrim; Open world, go wherever you want whenever. Linear story, Npc's waiting for you to talk to them so they can give you a task with no options.
Fallout 1 & 2; Open world, Go wherever you want but face the consequences because wherever does not care if you carry a rock or a minigun. Multi-path story, Events wait for you to arrive but your actions determines the result.
Dwarf fortress; Open world, Go wherever you want but the RNG rules supreme. No story or events, The RNG and you decide your story.
Planescape torment; Sequential world, Travel between unlocked areas. Multi-path story, Actions have a bigger influence over future events than any other game I know, not to mention the 5-15 dialogue options every time you get to input and a great story.

From the little you've written about your story, It seems like treasure hunting. Find a part of the puzzle that the RNG decides to give you then track down the rest.

In my experience, Open world games should have events that appears depending on ingame criteria which with what the player decides to do and what events occur will decide the story.
To tell a good story you need to restrict the player to a predictable path but you create different branches for the player to take.
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