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[Ultima Ratio Regum]

A zoomed-out image of road generation across three map grids! Once city walls exist, they'd be at the top of the middle and right-most image.

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

A few potentially problematic bugs arose, were squashed, and now 0.5 stands ready for release tomorrow afternoon! The key you want to remember is 'E', for that brings up the encyclopedia, and with it, the world...

[Man of Paper]

Psst guys it's time to play 0.5

Edit: So I've read that you can be rewarded for setting up altars and shrines, and there's a militaristic religion that leaves foes injured but alive to spread tales of their holy warriors. Admittedly it's been a long while since I've downloaded any updates, but I also see like 5 bars at the bottom. How long's that been there?

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

^ yup!

With 3.5 months of development behind it (my fastest release to date), I present Ultima Ratio Regum v0.5! You can download it @ http://www.ultimaratioregum.co.uk/game/downloads/. Here's a summary of the major additions:
 
- History generation! The world now contains over a thousand years of history of conflicts, religions, settlements, colonies and more. Some categories such as discoveries and cults will be added to more in later versions. Although they are currently all shown at the start of the game, exploring and discovering these histories (and the gameplay/world information they provide) will later emerge into a central game mechanic.

- Enlarged world map! The world map is now 250x250 rather than 150x150, but due to various optimizations takes up less memory than the older version. This allows for far more room for everything the game needs, and with a larger world map I can start to think about various mechanics for exploring the world without it all opening up too quickly.

- Religion generation! The world is now populated by religions - monotheistic, polytheistic and spiritual/animist/shamanistic - some of which may spread between multiple civilizations. The game describes their entire pantheons in addition to (for feudal religions) what agendas they might wish their followers to pursue.

- Cities, towns, fortresses and settlements! The world map is now populated by the capital cities and smaller towns of feudal civilizations, the desert fortresses of nomads (between which their caravans will later roam) and the settlements of hunter-gatherer civilizations. These different types of civilization also have different types of flag and symbols associated with them. In the next version, 0.6, these population centers will be fully explorable.

- Coats of arms and families! Feudal civilizations now contain a number of noble houses, each of which has a procedurally generated coat of arms to go with it. The player is assigned to a non-ruling house in their civilization of choice, and house allegiance will be one of several "faction" alignments that offer both benefits and risks as the game progresses.

- Updated start/load screen! The start/load a game screen now displays a wealth of information about each save to allow you to easily browse the saves you may have, and also loads in a fraction of the time that was required in the past. You are also now given a choice of what civilization to follow, and whether to follow the lead religion in that civilization (if any).

- Policies! There are now a large number of "policies" that each civilization possesses, spread across eight different categories. These will act as passive boosts to the player's abilities, skills and stats in various areas.

- Road generation! A network of roads now criss-crosses the parts of the world controlled by feudal civilizations, and also generate on the human-scale map (not just the world map).

Hope you all like it. Let me know any feedback you have, any bugs you might find (I think the release is bug-free, but there is only so much playtesting two people can do) and any other suggestions or feedback. In the next few weeks I'll be talking quite a bit about the plans for URR this coming year which I'm rather excited about, so I invite you all to join me for that discussion in the near future. Hope you enjoy the release!

[Man of Paper]

I found some proving grounds and, upon not being able to enter at the time, took a detour to a nearby Ziggy. Where the game immediately crashed upon trying to go into dude view.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

  File "URR050.py", line 37170, in chunk_load
  File "URR050.py", line 124633, in make_grid
  File "URR050.py", line 127789, in make_griddy
  File "URR050.py", line 122878, in place_door
  File "URR050.py", line 44966, in make_building
  File "URR050.py", line 45475, in make_interior
  File "URR050.py", line 10685, in make_level
  File "URR050.py", line 10944, in place_room
UnboundLocalError: local variable 'brickset' referenced before assignment

I dunno if you need the rest of the log before I entered the area, if I have everything from when I entered, or even if this is the log you need at all. I'll mess around some more to see if it's the proving grounds that did it or something with the ziggurat, but I figured I'd shoot this out there as soon as I could.

[gimli]

This looks like a very promising game, but I am kinda confused atm. Is it playable as it is now? I mean do we have any content gameplay wise? What can a player character do in the lastest version?

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

I found some proving grounds and, upon not being able to enter at the time, took a detour to a nearby Ziggy. Where the game immediately crashed upon trying to go into dude view.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

  File "URR050.py", line 37170, in chunk_load
  File "URR050.py", line 124633, in make_grid
  File "URR050.py", line 127789, in make_griddy
  File "URR050.py", line 122878, in place_door
  File "URR050.py", line 44966, in make_building
  File "URR050.py", line 45475, in make_interior
  File "URR050.py", line 10685, in make_level
  File "URR050.py", line 10944, in place_room
UnboundLocalError: local variable 'brickset' referenced before assignment

I dunno if you need the rest of the log before I entered the area, if I have everything from when I entered, or even if this is the log you need at all. I'll mess around some more to see if it's the proving grounds that did it or something with the ziggurat, but I figured I'd shoot this out there as soon as I could.

Damn it. Thanks, fixed, uploaded new version.

This looks like a very promising game, but I am kinda confused atm. Is it playable as it is now? I mean do we have any content gameplay wise? What can a player character do in the lastest version?

A lot of the information I just posted above answers that question, but the primary gameplay currently is exploring ziggurats. I'm working on most of the world-building before the gameplay aspects, but a lot of the world-building also informs the gameplay, as you'll see if you look at the in-game history, for example .

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

Psst guys it's time to play 0.5

Edit: So I've read that you can be rewarded for setting up altars and shrines, and there's a militaristic religion that leaves foes injured but alive to spread tales of their holy warriors. Admittedly it's been a long while since I've downloaded any updates, but I also see like 5 bars at the bottom. How long's that been there?

5 bars? Do you mean stamina etc? Er... those were added in 0.4!

[Man of Paper]

Man, this fading webosphere has gotten in the way of me keeping up on things. Yeah, those are exactly what I meant.

Now when did you add the voices telling me to do things I'm hearing on startup?

[Reyn]

Few things noticed at first: numpad enter doesn't work on the new menus(encyclopedia included), numpad arrows don't work in the encyclopedia.

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

Now when did you add the voices telling me to do things I'm hearing on startup?

Ha, well, they're certainly one of the more unusual features in the new release. REVOLUTIONARY GAMEPLAY!

Few things noticed at first: numpad enter doesn't work on the new menus(encyclopedia included), numpad arrows don't work in the encyclopedia.

Ta - will fix for next release.

[gimli]

This looks like a very promising game, but I am kinda confused atm. Is it playable as it is now? I mean do we have any content gameplay wise? What can a player character do in the lastest version?

A lot of the information I just posted above answers that question, but the primary gameplay currently is exploring ziggurats. I'm working on most of the world-building before the gameplay aspects, but a lot of the world-building also informs the gameplay, as you'll see if you look at the in-game history, for example .

Allrighty, so the major gameplay elements like moving armies, conquering, expanding the realm, diplomacy etc. are not in the game yet. Can we have some info that when will those be added? I will keep an eye on this thread. Keep up the good work!

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

This looks like a very promising game, but I am kinda confused atm. Is it playable as it is now? I mean do we have any content gameplay wise? What can a player character do in the lastest version?

A lot of the information I just posted above answers that question, but the primary gameplay currently is exploring ziggurats. I'm working on most of the world-building before the gameplay aspects, but a lot of the world-building also informs the gameplay, as you'll see if you look at the in-game history, for example .

Allrighty, so the major gameplay elements like moving armies, conquering, expanding the realm, diplomacy etc. are not in the game yet. Can we have some info that when will those be added? I will keep an eye on this thread. Keep up the good work!

A lot of those are no longer gameplay goals! It has shifted to a much more plot-based game, actually. There's a development plan on my site (link in my earlier post) - I've been making the game for over 3 years now and expect maybe a decade until it's finished? I'm coming to the end now of the world-building chunk, and I'll soon be working on the key story/area/enemy elements.

[gimli]

Oh, so this isn't a roguelike with lot of strategic elements like creating armies etc.? It sounded awesome, it makes me sad if those plans have been dropped.

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

Oh, so this isn't a roguelike with lot of strategic elements like creating armies etc.? It sounded awesome, it makes me sad if those plans have been dropped.

Correcto. I've moved onto a much more philosophical/sociological theme about the nature of history, reality, and various concepts like philosophical idealism, particularly inspired by the literature of people like Borges and Eco. I wanted to move in this direction both because these are interesting themes I want to explore, and also because I was simply more passionate about creating something really unique in this direction. For a project of this size I had/have to go in the direction I'm most enthused about, and I just wasn't that interested in those ideas any more

EDIT: longer explanation here: http://www.ultimaratioregum.co.uk/game/2014/02/15/plot-story-and-the-game-itself/