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[Ultima Ratio Regum]

I come from the fiction side of writing where it doesn't really matter if you're entirely correct in your comma usage in certain applications. It's an established convention to use commas as a single breathing pause in dialogue. It bleeds over into my own post writing where I subconsciously insert a comma at the natural breath point unless I stop myself.

I think that might be the similar cause of my ridiculous over-usage - I end up writing as if I was speaking, not as if I'm writing.

Are, you, sure, about, that,?,

This is worryingly akin to how I write

Anyhoo, here's an update for you all! Things have happened in the last week, and here is a run-down of some of them:

Throwing

Throwing is basically finished. You can throw items around, and they will bounce off objects they hit and hit the floor, or just hit the floor immediately if you throw them at it. Tripwires will be triggered when you throw stuff at them, but currently pressure pads will not. I’m still debating whether there should be a weight requirement for triggering them, but I’ll update here once I’ve decided how this aspect should work. Additionally, message adjust themselves based on your knowledge. For example, if you throw a stone through a tripwire, it will produce one of three different messages. If you can see it, it might say “The stone falls to the floor and triggers the tripwire!”; if you cannot see it but have previously explored it, it might say “The stone falls to the floor, and you hear the tripwire release!”, and if you have never explored it, you might get “You hear the stone fall to the floor, followed by a loud snapping sound!”. There are equivalents of these messages for everything your projectiles can possibly hit, which has already built up into a pretty impressive database of messages.

Terrain

Almost all forms of terrain now come with their own lookup images, all unique and procedurally generated. This is something I’ve been meaning to get done for a while, so I just spent a few hours and put together some graphics I liked the look of. Some are more “realistic” and others more stylized, but I’m very happy with how they all look. Here’s a selection. Row by row, left-to-right, these are snow, sand, rock, dried lava, grass/undergrowth in the tropics, savannah, temperate and taiga, the bark of a tree, some branches, lava, and water. I probably shouldn’t need to say it at this point, but these are naturally all procedurally generated for every tile. Some of the wood/tree colours are a little stylized, but they generally try to adhere to a reasonable level of realism/accuracy.



Exporting Levels

You can now export the interior or exterior level you find yourself on, by pressing ‘X’, which will save to a .png file appropriately named (e.g. “25x29_Ex”, for the exterior of map grid 25 [x-axis] by 29 [y-axis]). Alternatively, the first floor interior of the first ziggurat on a grid would be saved as “25x29_Z1_F1″, and that kind of notation will be expanded to everything else. That function is still in its early stages – and later on you’ll be able to save and export information about your character, or the world’s histories and civilizations and so on – but this is a good start.

The Great Bug Purge

Over the last fortnight I’ve hacked the number of bugs and small fixes I wanted in this version down from a towering 50 to a mere 2 at time of writing, both of which are decidedly non-essential (they are more like slight improvements, not actual bugs). As such, I’m now moving onto developing the health system. Additionally, from this point onwards I’ll be increasing blog entries back up to one per week as we move towards the 0.4 release at the end of December. All that remains is the health system – or, at least, the components of it relevant to this release – and some very simple things like ensuring general “terrain items”, like branches and stones, spawn, and that some start in the player’s inventory. I was intending to allow you to create several items this release, for example oil-soaked torches (combining a torch and some oil, funnily enough), but there isn’t going to be time for that feature. I’m therefore going to push it back a version or two, and that’ll give me more time to think about what other item combinations I want to allow.

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

Version 0.4 – now due out before the end of the month – is the first URR version to implement any kind of health mechanic. Technically version 0.1 back in the days of yore had a health mechanic, but that a) wasn’t very well thought-through, b) very badly programmed, and c) actually had no way for the player to heal. I believe it was removed in version 0.2 as the game began to metamorphose into what it’s now becoming, but with the addition of traps in version 0.4, the time has come to recreate the health, damage and healing systems. In deciding how these would work there were factors. The first was how combat will play out; the second was how health and damage should work; the third was how healing should work. I’ll be writing about the way combat is going to work in the future, but the second two factors are the important ones.

I’ve been certain for a long time I didn’t want a hit points system. It’s perfectly valid for some games, but I decided I wanted something more detailed, with limbs and components of limbs, in the model of Dwarf Fortress or (to a much lesser extent) something like Deus Ex or Fallout. I felt I needed to find a middle ground between the two – DF’s limb system has an incredible amount of detail which suits a “simulationist” game, but I felt wouldn’t be appropriate here; by contrast, both Deus Ex and Fallout seem to generally underuse the potential of a limb-based health mechanic, and rarely do more than “damaged legs = cannot stand up”. I’m currently in the process of considering what effects injuries are actually going to have, but I suspect certain injuries may lower your maximum stamina, reduce your damage and/or accuracy, slow your actions, reduce the weight of items you can carry, and so forth. At this point in time your limbs have two components – the flesh, and the bone – and each may be damaged. In the future certain classes of weapons will be more/less likely to damage each, which will be one of the ways different weapon types are balanced. In this release it is only traps that can hurt you, but in order to enable traps, we have to have a health/damage system, and this required a lot of thought to figure out.

I was originally planning to have items like bandages function in the following way: you apply them to a limb, then after x turns, the effect of the bandage takes place. Maybe it takes 200 turns for a bandage to aid a wound in healing, for example. The downside of this was quickly apparent once I thought about it – in a game where combat is going to be reasonably rare, and given that I no longer plan on having a hunger clock of any sort, the fact that healing is “slow” is no downside at all. You could just wait around between battles until the healing was complete, which doesn’t exactly make for interesting gameplay. The methods out of this were to either change how the healing items worked – make them instantaneous, for example – or to introduce either a food clock or some other kind of “clock” which pushes the player on. I decided to do the former, and produce a pretty unique (or at least very unusual) health mechanic.

Thus, the current plan is that healing items work as follows. When a healing item is used it temporarily removes all negative damage to that limb, and that limb then functions as if that type of damage hasn’t been dealt. For example, even if you have a very deep cut on one arm which might, for example, be seriously damaging your accuracy, applying a suture to that limb will remove the negative modifier, though the wound will still be there. The way I plan for combat to play out will be such that you will be able to prioritize/handle various limbs in various ways, so it will allow for battle plans where you might have to play more defensively to protect a particular limb that is currently healing. There are two types of each healing item – those which have temporary effect, but cannot be undone by another attack, such as healing moss and medicinal salve (no image yet), and those which have a permanent effect , but will be undone by taking another attack, such as bandages and sutures. The latter are for longer-term strategic use until you get back to a doctor, whilst the former are for tactical use in the midst of battle. In turn, different wounds have different effects – wounds to your arms will reduce accuracy and damage, wounds to your torso will reduce stamina, wounds to head have a variety of fun effects I’ll share in a later post, and so forth.

In order to truly “heal” a limb, you will be able to visit a physician/apothecary/equivalent NPC who will, for a price, be able to heal your limbs back to full. As these will generally only be found in cities (though perhaps you can recruit them into your party?) this will further emphasize the concept that cities will be your “base” of operations – even if the city you are based in might change throughout the game – and you restock and reequip in cities before setting out for each dungeon or area you want to explore. I am not yet sure what effects broken bones will have – nor what effects putting a splint on a broken bone will help out with – but I’m open to suggestions. I’m in the process of figuring this out and whilst a health mechanic will be implemented for 0.4 (due for release in a week or two), it is nevertheless one that is subject to change. As a whole, though, the health system boils down to this – damage is qualitative, not quantitative; items may heal you temporarily but without the possibly for being undone, or a “permanent” heal which may be undone; and cities will be the hub at which you repair your damage inbetween excursions. There will therefore be a risk/reward — how much do you push your luck staying out in the wild, but not being charged valuable coin for healing, and how often do you play it safe and heal yourself up with a doctor?

Lastly, it should be noted none of this is balanced yet – I have no idea how rare/common/cheap/expensive healing items will be, how many turns they might take to apply, and so on, but the basic mechanics as planned out to be as described above. It’s an unusual system, and I think it could work well, but I’d like any thoughts on the concepts anyone has to offer. In the future I’ll talk about my ideas for the combat mechanics, but that’s a long way off – next week we’ll be close to release of 0.4!

[Mephansteras]

I think that's a good system. Infection and improper healing are very good motivators, since they make you care about wounds regardless of how soon you think you'll be in combat again. An infected wound is getting worse with time, not better, so that's a strong incentive to have healing items to help treat wounds. And with breaks, you'll really want some sort of stabilizer to prevent the break from healing wrong and giving you a permanent penalty.

[BigD145]

Finally! We can have some toilet paper and proper modern amenities in the wilderness.

[Mephansteras]

A few more thoughts on the subject of injuries and their effects. As well as some additional items to take into account.

First off, bodies are very interconnected. People tend to forget this fact, for some reason. So having a leg chewed on by a bear trap isn't just going to slow you down, it's going to make many things more difficult. You can't carry as much, for one thing. You also get tired much more quickly when moving (which is also very slow, at least for anything long term). A walking stick helps with this, as can a makeshift crutch, but even with those you're going to be gaining either the ability to carry a bunch or the ability to move a good bit faster. You usually can't do both on an injured leg. Severity has an impact as well, but generally speaking the lower down the injury the bigger an impact it has.

Having an injured arm makes that arm pretty useless, of course, but it also hobbles many tasks. It's really hard to do things well with only one usable arm. Even something as minor as an injured finger can really making doing anything with your hands more difficult.

A cracked rib is going to make doing things in general more difficult, reduce how much you can comfortably carry by a good bit, and increase how quickly you get tired from performing actions. And for all actual broken bones the more you push things the increased chance that you'll sustain additional injuries.

Head wounds, especially serious ones, will pretty much impact everything. A good concussion and you're going to be downgraded in probably all categories until you have a chance to rest up for a bit. Not an issue if you have time to rest, but if you're in a dangerous situation (say...the ancient temple collapsing around you) it could be a serious problem indeed.

Thinking about this some more, I think I'd do something kind of like this:

Have a general endurance system. Taking any wounds at all is going to reduce endurance, both current and maximum. The more serious the wound, the bigger the hit. Current endurance comes back fairly quickly with a little rest, but maximum endurance takes proper rest and healing to come back. Reduced endurance is going to impact the player by reducing all of their abilities. Skill checks, perception, and the like. It's all well and good that in peak condition you're a master at disabling traps, but how well can you do when you're pressed for time after sprinting down a corridor dodging blowdarts? (Adding a Stress condition might also be handy, but that could also be rolled into endurance)

I'd then assign each body part a % effect on skill types & stats (Movement, Carrying Capacity, Perception, Manual Dexterity, etc). So that an Injured Hand might just reduce your Carrying Capacity and Manual Dexterity by a bit while a Broken Ankle will serious hamper both Movement and Carrying Capacity, along with seriously reducing your maximum Endurance.

Bandages can help support things like twisted ankles or cracked ribs, both reducing the negative effects a bit and reducing the chance of further injury during heavy activity. Walking sticks, crutches, and the like can do the same for any sort of leg injury. They also reduce the Endurance cost for moving with those injuries, but you'll still be worse off than you would when uninjured.

Hopefully I explained that reasonably well.

[Nighthawk]

I like your thinking, Mephansteras, but I feel like his system is there to be detailed and yet not too complicated at the same time. If every single bodypart started having an effect upon every single other bodypart, it would become very difficult to implement as well as a pain for the player.

I think it's a fair system, and as long as limbs can be hacked off and other such fun can ensue from hitting certain spots on a body, it's detailed enough for me.

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

@ Big - my thoughts exactly! Though I confess, it is hard to make bandages look completely "like bandages". Maybe a slightly different shade...

@ Meph - that was very much my thinking, that managing wounds and the like is a strategic thing as well as a tactical thing within specific battles. As for interconnectedness, that's an interesting one. All wounds contribute to an overall "pool" of blood loss, for instance. However (as Nighthawk said), I think having too much overlap between injuries would actually be to the detriment of gameplay - I think it's better to have mechanics which are very distinct, so you know that taking damage to your arms will do a/b/c, taking damage to a leg will do x/y/z, and there's no overlap between them. Obviously an example of gameplay over realism, but I think it is better that way.

In terms of parts of legs or arms, I've decided to just treat legs as singular things, with a "bone" and a "flesh" value, purely for the sake of simplicity. The health system is proving relatively complex already and I felt that would just further confuse things. Head-wise, concussion is something I intend to implement, though it isn't going to be in 0.4. My intention is that superior head damage raises the risk of blacking out, which will only be for a few turns, but could obviously be very significant in battle (similar to paralysis in other RLs). I do agree with your idea about body parts having effects on various stats - for example, currently leg and torso damage reduces your overall stamina, whilst in the future torso damage may also reduce carrying capacity, arm damage will reduce the strength/accuracy of weapons and shields, etc. True re: bandages for support, but again, I'm trying to keep healing items very distinct, so bandages are only (currently) for burns, though they might gain another effect in the future. We'll see. I'm still not clear on how splints are going to work though - for the duration of 0.4 broken bones and splints will likely have minimal effect, but we'll see. Basically, I'm going with the kind of idea you suggested where damage to different limbs has different effects, but aside from some things which "carry over" - pain, blood loss etc - they will remain totally distinct. With that said, it is naturally still in flux, to an extent, but having been playtesting what I currently have I'm really happy with how it's looking.

@ Nighthawk - Detailed and not-too-complicated is exactly what I'm after. Limbs will indeed be off-hackable, but that's going to be very rare, and I'm not yet quite sure how to handle it. I'd like to make it something which seriously affects how you play the game, but doesn't make it unplayable if you lose one - for instance, maybe you need to move your skills into commanding allies if you lose your sword arm, or similar...

Lastly, my intention is now to release 0.4 on the 21st (or 22nd) of December! It'll be a week of crunch time, but it should be possible. More updates hopefully over the next few days .

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

First and foremost, I’m aiming to release 0.4 on the 21st or 22nd of December! It’ll be crunch time for the next week, but I think that’s a realistic target. By the end of today I should have finished every feature, after which it’ll just be down to bug-hunting, playtesting and compiling. Due to a number of unforseen real-life circumstances in the past month or two I haven’t had the spare time to experiment with a Linux build as I would have liked, so I’ve had to push that back again and focus on prioritizing the game itself. It is therefore once more in the pipeline for 0.5. In the mean time, however, here’s some of this week’s work:

- I’ve finally created an ointment graphic I’m actually happy with. This blasted thing went through over a dozen iterations until I found one I liked. Many of the earlier versions were more like small bottles, but they didn’t look particularly impressive, shading was proving difficult, and I didn’t want there to be any overlap with the ‘bottle’ item type (which will appear more fully in later versions), so I changed it to be something more like a jar instead.



- I’ve done a significant overhaul of the in-game UI. Health is still displayed on the left, but it is now displayed in a very new way which gives you all the information you might require about your various limbs in a very concise manner (more on this below). Secondly I’ve added a huge number of extra possible in-game messages, colour-coded them appropriately, and also recoloured some older messages to help them fit into the new order of things. I’ve also adjusted the various bars displayed below the map screen. I’ve taken out the idea of willpower as being akin to a “berserk” attack, and the idea of exhaustion, as I felt they were adding an unnecessary extra layer of complexity, probably wouldn’t play all that well, and – perhaps most importantly – there were other things I wanted along the bottom. So, next to stamina (which is all but disabled for this release) you have four new metres. The first displays your pain level, and as this increases you may start to notice some visual effects clouding your sight. The second is the amount of air you have. Standing inside any kind of cloud (and swimming underwater, in later versions) takes away a unit of air each turn, and unless you replenish your air in time, you will suffocate, as well as taking whatever forms of damage (fire, poison, etc) might be caused by the cloud. In the future there may be items to negate this effect or provide you with more air. Next to that is your blood level. You regain 1 unit of blood every turn, but injuries which are left bleeding without being staunched (by healing moss) or sutured will also cost you blood with each step you take. I would advise against letting that counter reach 0. The final meter shows your poison level; above a certain point poison is fatal. For this release you will either be equipped with a single potion of antidote when the game begins, or I will simply disable fatal poisoning (depending on the time each of these would take). Also, an important note – for 0.4, when you die, you will respawn in the same world. This will not be the case in later versions, but I want people to be able to experiment in multiple lives with the health/damage/limb system without having to create a new world each time.



Here’s a closeup of the new health system. Along the top we have the six “limbs” – Head, Left arm, Right arm, Torso, Left leg, Right leg. The bits in brackets are not shown in-game, but are visible in the guidebook entry which explains this in detail. Flesh and bone show their statuses on a range of 1 to 4 (with different colours), whilst fire and acid burns are shown by stars. Infections (disabled for this release) and blood loss are shown by exclamation marks. Ointments, healing moss, sutures, bandages and splints are displayed as shown in the diagram, whilst old wounds (caused by failing to set a broken bone quickly enough after breaking it) show as a counter. Do also note the diagram below is actually impossible, as your torso cannot be splint-ed for example, and just serves as an illustration of the system.



There’s now not much left to do. I need to have the game spawn branches and stones across the map, dependent on biomes; I need to spawn the player with an appropriate variety of inventory items; I need to enable the player to ‘w’ield torches and ensure that torches actually burn down, though until a later version you will not be able to make torches yourself; ensure all throwing/hitting/landing messages for items are correct for all combination of impacts on things you can and cannot see; and then work on the death system, which for now will despawn you, explain to the player that “true” death is not enabled for this version, then respawn you elsewhere on the map. Barring some unexpected pitfalls, see you all next weekend for the 0.4 release!

[Mephansteras]

Looking good!

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

Looking good!

Thanks!

I've now compiled 0.4 to .exe, cannot find any immediate gamebreakers that have arisen post-compiling. Today and tomorrow are playtesting days, and possibly a few other very minor additions if I have the time. Still on track to release this Saturday!

[Sharp]

How do you splint the torso? Is that like spine immobilisation?

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

Ah, no, torso/head "bone" damage results in death. That's just a mockup picture. Only arms/legs can be splinted .

[varsovie]

Sorry, but I must disagree the fact that a sutured wound is less prone to infections. If not thoroughly cleaned, then kept clean and dry for at least two days, you'd have an heavier risk of infection or making an abscess. The "prevent infection" phase would start about 72h after the suture, since at that point if no complications the skin as clotted together.

Of course it will be more about game mechanic than simulation. Who would like to be bed resting a week after a penetrating abdominal injury, or can't walk forever after receiving an arrow in the knee.

You also need to implement pain killers, and all their secondary effects including dependency... 

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

Sorry, but I must disagree the fact that a sutured wound is less prone to infections. If not thoroughly cleaned, then kept clean and dry for at least two days, you'd have an heavier risk of infection or making an abscess. The "prevent infection" phase would start about 72h after the suture, since at that point if no complications the skin as clotted together.

Of course it will be more about game mechanic than simulation. Who would like to be bed resting a week after a penetrating abdominal injury, or can't walk forever after receiving an arrow in the knee.

You also need to implement pain killers, and all their secondary effects including dependency... 

Hmm, interesting. As you say, the mechanic has to win out, but I haven't decided yet how infection is going to work (if it'll even be a thing at all), so maybe something slightly more realistic will appear later . As for pain killers, I have thought about opiates and the like, but for the time being you have medicinal ointments to help out with the pain.

Well, every bug is fixed, and I'm released 0.4, at long last, tomorrow! Will post here when it goes live.

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

After four months of work, I am proud to announce the release of Ultima Ratio Regum alpha v0.4! Download page: http://www.ultimaratioregum.co.uk/game/downloads/

HIGHLIGHTS:
- Limbs – damage, healing, movement penalties/bonuses, etc.
- Expanded basic inventory system.
- Addition of torches & healing items.
- Traps – trap rooms, lethal/non-lethal, gas/acid/spikes/poison/fire and more.
- Ability to throw/pick-up items.
- Full terrain & tree procedural graphics.
- 50%-75% time reduction for all saving/loading screens.

The focus of this release is on several mechanics relating to traps which generate in dungeons – specifically throwing items, picking up items, and the implementation of the early stages of the health system. Unlike in most roguelikes where traps are invisible until “detected” or triggered, traps in URR are fully visible, and making your way through them with a minimum of damage forms a puzzle of sorts. In future versions there will be additional methods to navigate traps including raising shields to deflect incoming projectiles. This release has also seen significant improvement in saving/loading/world generation times, the addition of procedural graphics for all terrain when you ‘l’ook at it, and the implementation of a simple and modular inventory system which will be developed in future versions.

For information about the future of the game, please check out the development plan page (http://www.ultimaratioregum.co.uk/game/development-plan-2/), and if you have any questions or comments or bug reports, please let me know, here or by emailing me at mark at my domain. Thanks to everyone for your support thus far, and I hope you stick with the project as we move forward to generating the rest of the world – civilizations, cities and everything else – in the next few releases.