All the various types of trees look as if they're coming along very well. I think I remember you mentioning cryptography briefly earlier on. Will there be various means of encryption more than just the substitution ciphers like they have in the newspaper's cryptoquotes, or will we see more complex methods of friend and foe transferring messages? Is there a possibility of polylaphabetic ciphers, and will we see more complex (on the scale of programming, I'd assume) tactics such as scytale, which was a ribbon of letters that had to be wrapped around an object of a specific diameter for the message to be revealed?
If I was wrong about you discussing cryptography then ignore the above questions and instead pretend they're suggestions.
There are going to be number of types of cypher, and a number of ways in-game to get hints on them. I think currently the higher your crypto skill and intelligence the higher the chance of your character identifying the code - say, "This looks like a moderately difficult Caesar cypher" or whatever. For the tougher ones, there will also be sources in-game that would give you hints, or part of the key, or people who could be bribed/threatened etc, but I'd like to leave most of them actually solvable by the player, as none of them are going to be too tricky. I hadn't considered the scytale; interesting. Say, if one was a Vigenere cypher, then you would have various sources you could find the key from, or parts of the key, or maybe someone who knows at least the length of the key. I'm even debating having civilizations generate simple cryptography machines... Of course, it's an entirely optional element, but I think incorporating it could be very interesting
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Will characters be able to communicate at all if they don't understand each other's languages? They'll have to be able to at least show their intentions through some simple, universal language, right?
I *really* like that idea! If you encounter a friend/foe, you can try and communicate non-verbally; drop a weapon to surrender, point somewhere to suggest you both go that way, etc. I love that notion - I'll definitely add that.
In the mean time, I think feature bloat #2 is going to be finished within the next hour, which is a huge step forward for the 0.2.0 release! It looks pretty damned good. I've also fixed about twenty or thirty things on my list of small fixes/additions today as well; over the weekend I'm going to try and get the majority of the remainder of the list done, then I'll probably just be left with a few bugs and difficulties. Will keep everything updated here!
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Topic: Dwarf Fortress meets The Outer Wilds? "Ultima Ratio Regum", v0.10.1 out Feb 2023 (Read 632668 times)