How much of the game is there though?
Solar system generation, world generation sans civs, some of the visual effects, and you can walk around and look at the game (which does look beautiful).
That's pretty fair (and thank you!).
It's the first ASCII game I've ever thought genuinely looked good. I especially like how the shading is done, especially where there are lotsa trees around.
Thanks! This week's update (bottom of this post) has some more graphics I've been working on.
'Kay
Can we pick up the mummies in tombs, I wanna throw them about and stuff. You could create a mummy collection and get angry protesters peasants without enough work calling you a grave defiler.
(That was worryingly the first thing that came to mind.)
Yes! I hope so. You won't be able to 'wield' anything effectively like in DF, but I'd like to in the future have a lot of context-specific attacks involving different terrain, objects, etc.
I assume that there'd be huge ramifications for defiling any sort of tomb connected to a still-existing civilization or religion, and definitely get BadBoy points with any family related to the corpse. I'd like to see the PC eventually able to create works of art. Using Character experiences, historical references, and a random generator dealy to create what the works are specifically.
Definitely, but only if they know about you, of course. I really like the family idea - that would be a good reason for feuds, bounties etc, if a family discovers you've been messing about in their tomb. As for CREATING works of art... that's interesting. Again, see this week's blog entry for a bit of early "art" in ziggurats. But the player creating art... I'll have to think about that. Existing art works will be generated from myth, history, blah blah, but I'll have to think about how the player could go about it...
Unless their cultural values place no value in corpses.
I'm sure there's a lot of people who don't particularly care about any morality attached to dead people; so it's not unimaginable that there could be civilisations where corpses are not treated with any sort of respect. And it's not as though the dead people care.
Why would there be a tomb if they didn't care about the bodies?
Nobody ever specified how elaborate the tomb would be.
It could just be a place to put bodies without them uglying up the scenery.
I suppose I could vary how civilizations choose to bury their dead. Or at least dispose of them. I have different methods of execution, so I see no reason why I couldn't do the same for burial. At sea, burning, tomb, graveyard, etc etc...
This game sounds like a great idea, I especially like the idea of ruling a kingdom/republic from 'first person', ordering invasions and construction projects, and then being able to visit conquered/built up areas. Also ordering arrests, threatening/bribing senate members etc., all in person.
Kinnda sounds like crusader kings II actually, but with cool factor that you can actually visit any location and person in the world, and also play as adventurer/possibly merchant?
Question for developer: Will there be a trade system, and how will it be handled? Will there be production of resources (supply), i.e. mines, farms, plantations, pastures etc., that can be both visited (and owned!!), and demand for those resources by city populations? Will there be import/export of resources from other civs - trade system that influences both economy and diplomacy?
Thank you! Yes, that's the eventual goal. I'm working on the "exploration" aspects first, in gameplay terms, before I then start working on cities, NPCs, etc. Trade I intend to split into barter, and trade - bartering being just exchanging items, trade being money for items, or money for money (I'd like to implement some kind of system for exchange rates between currencies, etc). I don't know if resource areas can be owned yet, as I want to abstract out some of the "construction" aspects (as DF does that kind of thing) but resources will contribute to how many people an empire can support, what armies it can field, etc. Importing and exporting is something I need to work on in history generation relatively soon, so I might do a blog entry about that when I've got it implemented. Pretty much everything will go into history generation first, and then into the 'real' game
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MEANWHILE, this fortnight's blog entry, with some more art, and a first generated creation myth:
http://www.ultimaratioregum.co.uk/game/2013/02/19/inside-ziggurats/