Whew, sorry for the slow replies. Since I last posted, I've got a vast range of gods generating to add to history, and detail of civs, ranging from pantheons to monotheistic religions, polytheism to ancestor worship, lovecraftian horrors to spiritualism, and everything in-between. The next blog entry (tomorrow) is going to focus on religions/cults, and will contain some parts of myths and some parts of gods, but the entry after that will probably focus heavily on gods, monsters, heroes, legends, etc. MEANWHILE:
I have managed to generate an average-sized Earth-like world in about five minutes with my setup. That is about as far as I have gotten though. I am going to test out said world later once I pick a class I like.
-edit- I picked a female Quester and took her on a hike along the snowy plains and up some mountains. Each step took about half a second to a second at most, and about three to five minutes into this venture my computer started to have some difficulties processing all of the data in this game.
Furthermore when areas are loaded it takes about five seconds minimum to finish loading and saving the game takes close to three minutes or so. I would say that my computer's system specifications do not support Ultima Ratio Regum. It strains my computer about as much as Dwarf Fortress does on the settings I put it on for Fortress Mode when the fortress gets to about ten dwarves.
Damn, sorry about that
. I feared that is what would happen. I'm constantly working to reduce the CPU load, but saving/loading is the real killer. I don't think I can really get it any faster - on a modern PC, each "chunk" - one square on the Travel/minimap, 200x200 human-size squares - should take maybe 10 seconds to generate the first time, and maybe 5-10 seconds to load/save subsequently. Again, I'd still like to get that down. But still. Damn.
I haz question!
How will the player character be effected by the laws in a civ he/she is in?
For example, in Mount&Blade, it's more difficult to become a female ruler than a male ruler. Can we expect to see gender becoming an advantage or disadvantage, rather than just a word in your character sheet? I don't think most feudal armies won't accept women and Amazon-like civs won't accept men... maybe.
If the PC commits a crime and is thrown into the dungeon, considering the PC doesn't escape, will the punishment go according to the laws? Maybe, according to the punishment laws, we can get different punishments with different side effects. For example, some real-life civlizations used mutilation as a pushiment. I think the side effect is pretty self explanatory here.
And what about PC's religion? Can we convert to other religions? What kind of an effect will it have, especially when we are in an extremely religious civ?
I want to allow both genders of player characters equal changes, but I'm not sure if I might make some more/less able to do certain things. I haven't pondered much about it yet.
Crime/punishment wise, I think so. As I think I mentioned, I've put in about 20 different kinds of execution, which is randomized when each civ is spawned, but I'll probably add in lesser punishments - tortures, fines, whatever. I want to obviously give you a lot of ways to avoid/escape jail, but I don't want jail to just be tedious punishment - it should have potential for benefits too (say, contacting someone you had to get in touch with, but was in jail, so getting yourself arrested was the only way in?).
Yes, you will be able to convert, join sects, join cults, and you will get the traits of the religion (randomly selected % bonuses to various things, mostly) or the cult you're in. It will also, I think, let you do certain things, access certain areas, or restrict others. However, cults will have far more human-scale gameplay effect than cults - in fact, see tomorrow's blog entry for more on this!
Yup, it's Hippie Earth, where all races, sexes and religions are equal and rainbows fly over prancing unicorns with gumdrop hooves!
Not QUITE, but you've certainly got the idea. Just because most of the real world's civilizations were male-focused and certain religions or ideologies came to dominate does not, in my mind, mean that was anything like set in stone (here we stray into my academic work); but I want to allow much more "variation" than the real world displays.
So what does removing fantasy elements mean? No magic? No monsters? No undead?
Technically even having functional astrology is sorta fantasy.
No magic, no monsters, no undead. Not really any astrology. But as I say, not everything will be 100% realistic - if you've read the Baroque Cycle, by Neal Stephenson, that gives you a pretty good idea. But as I say, there will be a few curious things here and there.
Lets not think about the punishment for adultery...
If a ruler passes a new law in the country you are part of will there be an alert or similar notification? Something like a kingdom summary(If you pay attention or are an official) on law changes, the royal family and the state of the war(s) at the end of the month, or will it be what you over hear?
I ask because suddenly getting arrested for killing/drinking/public indecency sounds fun annoying, if it was legal before hand and we were not informed of the change.
Nice idea about alerts - I guess I'll either have the player auto-alerted if they're in a city, or maybe they actively have to check up on the laws, and the "list of laws" the player has in memory is just what the laws were the last time they heard. On the other hand, in gameplay terms, a regular kingdom summary might just be by far the better option. Ha, yes, definitely - I don't want that to happen. Or do I? Hmm. Maybe some middle ground, like you can update yourself regularly by actively keeping up to date, but you will also passively gain knowledge of new laws over time?
I had this idea and I didn't want to forget it so I'm just gonna summarize it briefly before I pass out because of sleep deprivation.
Going to the court before being punished.
And jury tampering.
Both excellent, esp. jury tampering. One of the "Justice" policy options does, indeed, include proper courts, but even in the others, there are ways you could tamper. If justice is gladiatorial, a thousand obvious ways to fix it spring to mind.
Doubt there will be juries. Will be judges and kings/warlords. Juries are only for deciding who is a witch! "She turned me into a newt!
There will be witches! Maybe fewer newts.
Well, kinda both. I reckon that eventually you should be able to plant spies throughout a civilisaton (although primarily in the major cities, rather than the tiny villages) for information and security. Some of your spies might be leaking info, while others are just there to keep you out of trouble and whisper lies in the ears of the king.
Definitely; I've been thinking about this a bit, and I think one good way to add more "gameplay" into spies is to, sometimes, have a spy working for you tell you they have to meet you in person to give some information. This might be on foreign soil, friendly, or neutral. They might genuinely have vital data, or it might be a trap and they're a double agent, and have various ways to try and judge this, or swing the odds in your favour either way!
did i ptw this yet? i don't think so. so, there, i did it.
Excellent choice.
Author
Topic: Dwarf Fortress meets The Outer Wilds? "Ultima Ratio Regum", v0.10.1 out Feb 2023 (Read 635401 times)