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Author Topic: Dwarf Fortress meets The Outer Wilds? "Ultima Ratio Regum", v0.10.1 out Feb 2023  (Read 635680 times)

Ultima Ratio Regum

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Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.5 released!
« Reply #2175 on: September 07, 2014, 10:06:35 am »

This week's blog post is a personal piece about playing poker for a living, why I quit, losing in games, and having something "at stake": http://www.ultimaratioregum.co.uk/game/2014/09/07/a-story-about-losing/
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Arcvasti

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Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.5 released!
« Reply #2176 on: September 09, 2014, 10:22:24 pm »

PTW, this looks somewhat intriguing. Going to have to check this out later.
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Ultima Ratio Regum

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Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.5 released!
« Reply #2177 on: September 11, 2014, 01:36:29 pm »

PTW, this looks somewhat intriguing. Going to have to check this out later.

An excellent choice.
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Ultima Ratio Regum

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Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.5 released!
« Reply #2178 on: September 13, 2014, 04:34:20 am »

Just a quick one this week. I’m an invited speaker for a series of talks on the first day of the Procedural Generation Game Jam happening this year, headed up by Michael Cook (https://twitter.com/mtrc)!

This day of talks is on the 8th of November and the current plan is to have it streamed on Twitch. Tickets are going to be available soon, so if any of you live in London or can make it down, come along! You can read more about the game jam here (http://itch.io/jam/procjam), and the tumblr blog for updates is here (http://procjam.tumblr.com/). The jam is a week-long and there are seven or eight speakers lined up; one of the other speakers who hasn’t yet been announced will also be very familiar to those of you who follow your roguelikes…

The working title for my presentation is “Managing Size, Scope and Scale in Procedural Generation” – I’m going to talk a bit about how to manage a project of URR’s size in regards to two main themes. Firstly, the programming side – what kind of data structures can you use to handle all these different scales of information, from the histories of entire civilizations down to what items people have in their homes? How can you have the game link everything together from a battle between two civilizations, to who fought in it, to what weapons they used, where they were buried, where you might find that weapon, and what meaning others might attribute to it? The second half of my talk is going to be about this same issue but from an artistic/creative standpoint – what’s the value of having a game which holds data at all these scales, and what kind of interesting gameplay mechanics can you create with it?

In other news, still aiming for next month for beginning full-time development. New obstacles are arising as ever, but we’ll see how it goes, and PhD-finishing-work is proceeding at a damned good pace now. More updates as and when…
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Retropunch

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Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.5 released!
« Reply #2179 on: September 14, 2014, 03:16:09 am »

Off topic:  but have you see OpenRA?
It's a opensource recreation of C&C, Red Alert and Dune 2000 for multi-platform support and updated features:
Code: [Select]
Careful rebalance of the factions and units
Modular MiniYAML game logic parser instead of simple INI rules
New units: such as sniper or flak truck
Right-click orders to avoid miss-clicks
Fog of War hides enemy units
Spectator mode and replays for e-Sport events
Support for mods and mini-games
Tabbed build palette which allows queuing
Bounties for kills and unit ranks
New effects: e.g. tank husks and aircraft trails
Lua scripting instead of hard-coded mission triggers
A non-cheating AI that is still challenging
Integration of a content delivery platform for custom maps.

I've found it pretty great actually, it's very faithful to the originals with a lot of settings and ease of use functions that we expect in games these days.

http://www.openra.net/
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With enough work and polish, it could have been a forgettable flash game on Kongregate.

Ultima Ratio Regum

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Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.5 released!
« Reply #2180 on: September 19, 2014, 12:12:29 am »

I have! I've seen a few videos of it on Youtube and it looks great, though the absolute purist in me is slightly annoyed by the fact they've changed a small number of the weapon animations and that kind of thing (I think Nod's artillery have been altered a bit?). Either way, when I have a bit of time I'm definitely considering giving it a look, I've always wanted to play some multiplayer on the classic C&Cs!
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Retropunch

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Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.5 released!
« Reply #2181 on: September 19, 2014, 11:13:22 am »

I have! I've seen a few videos of it on Youtube and it looks great, though the absolute purist in me is slightly annoyed by the fact they've changed a small number of the weapon animations and that kind of thing (I think Nod's artillery have been altered a bit?). Either way, when I have a bit of time I'm definitely considering giving it a look, I've always wanted to play some multiplayer on the classic C&Cs!

There are a few changes - artillery has had a bit of a buff in general, and there are a few units that I don't remember being in (although they may have been in expansion packs I don't have) but it's surprisingly well balanced. The main thing is that it stops you getting that slightly grating feeling that you get when going back to old games and have forgotten how quirky their interface/controls are.

The AI is quite competent too, slightly weak (and doesn't guard it's harvesters at all), but combats basic tactics without too much trouble.
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With enough work and polish, it could have been a forgettable flash game on Kongregate.

Ultima Ratio Regum

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Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.5 released!
« Reply #2182 on: September 20, 2014, 09:10:32 am »

Hmm, all mighty interesting. I saw in some of the C&C 95 OpenRa videos that they had the SSM (?) launchers which were only ever in multiplayer and one or two Covert Ops missions, which was pretty neat. I don't mind the artillery buff from a game design perspective, but the classicist in me is bothered by it. I mean, they weren't *totally* useless in the original... I mean, not completely, utterly, profoundly useless...
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Ultima Ratio Regum

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Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.5 released!
« Reply #2183 on: September 21, 2014, 05:27:40 am »

Made some big thesis progress this week so decided to give myself two days off. Half of this time was spent making something that will have to remain secret for now (but holy crap guys, it’s awesome), and the other half was spent working on religious buildings. I’ve been putting these off for a little while because the method I wanted to use to generate them was a little bit daunting, but I decided the time has come.

So, in keeping with my objective to give everything in the game a totally unique generation algorithm and therefore make my workload infinitely greater (and, y’know, make the game look better), I decided to try something new with religious buildings. They are created in a modular manner. Each religion chooses a unique layout for its religious buildings (and also a unique name, so you’ll get churches, stupas, pagodas, monasteries, convents, etc) and this consists of a central component and a number of peripheral parts to the building. The central part of the religious building has a number of points where extra parts can be “attached”. There’s somewhere in the range of fifty cores to these buildings (each of which will have unique generated interiors in the next version), and around fifty attachments. Some attachments can only go on some cores, so there’s a little over a thousand possible religious buildings. Each religion will always have the same type so the player may come to recognize them as the game goes on. Whereas most cities have their religious buildings scattered around, some cities have religious districts like this one:



So, in this case we have nine religious buildings; this is from a nation with a lot of religions. Only nations with the “Religious Freedom” policy will have such a district, so it’s pretty rare. Other nations will place their religious buildings in other districts – a “Zealotry” nation will have a religious building in every district and have no room for other religious buildings (much like those with “Theocracy” leadership), whilst some might have religious buildings in city centres, or in a small number of districts, or throughout the countryside in towns.  In a “Collective Faith” or “Organized Religion” civ, for instance, you’ll have religious buildings around most districts, though OR will be a little more centralized/organized than CF. Some nations will therefore have many religions represented, some will only have few, and in 0.7 you’ll be able to walk around inside these modular buildings and steal the holy cheeses, or whatever one may find inside.

The last thing to do on religions for this release is to handle the spread of religions so we know which are represented in which cities, and therefore which religious buildings should appear where. I’ll probably implement a simple version of this for this release, and then in later versions possibly allow you to the spread of each religion on the world map, or at least give the player more information about it. I also fixed a bunch of bugs to do with roads I hadn’t really noticed before, stacked up a bunch of other things to fix closer to release, and started to seriously think about how docks were going to work before realizing I needed to do a lot more research first on how the hell 17th-century ships actually docked.
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coolio678

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Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.5 released!
« Reply #2184 on: September 21, 2014, 08:17:00 am »

looks great as always. You might already be aware of this, but the image link is broken on your website for a few people at least (myself being one of them).
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Scoops Novel

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Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.5 released!
« Reply #2185 on: September 21, 2014, 10:51:42 am »

and started to seriously think about how docks were going to work before realizing I needed to do a lot more research first on how the hell 17th-century ships actually docked.

I like this. I understand you're pretty much doing a realistic game, so i wonder how you want to give that feel? I'm particularly interested in day to day life.
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Retropunch

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Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.5 released!
« Reply #2186 on: September 21, 2014, 02:08:01 pm »

As always, phenomenal.

One thing I'd really, really like to see in this though is a number of different 'levels' of religious buildings and a central ruling place for the religion. For instance, church->city cathedral->central cathedral.
I know this is a lot of extra work, but with a modular design I could imagine that it might not be too difficult. This would allow you to have more options via policy, and also allow for a rather interesting 'gradient' effect, where as you get closer to the central ruling position of the religions, their buildings could grow larger. Similarly, smaller religions may never have anything above small temples.

I can well imagine that this might cause problems in recognizability however, so you'd need to do some careful work to get around that, but I think it'd be very worth while.
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With enough work and polish, it could have been a forgettable flash game on Kongregate.

Ultima Ratio Regum

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Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.5 released!
« Reply #2187 on: September 22, 2014, 04:28:52 am »

looks great as always. You might already be aware of this, but the image link is broken on your website for a few people at least (myself being one of them).

Thanks :). Yeah, not sure why, but I think I've fixed it now.

I like this. I understand you're pretty much doing a realistic game, so i wonder how you want to give that feel? I'm particularly interested in day to day life.

Yeah, the game is... 98% realistic. There are a few unusual elements, but it's going to be left very open just how real these other elements are (more on this in the future). For docks you should be able to view ships entering and leaving the docks on an appropriate schedule as the ships move around the world, but I need to figure out what's the best way to have them dock/depart that is somewhere between "easiest to program" and "most realistic based on historical record".

As always, phenomenal.

One thing I'd really, really like to see in this though is a number of different 'levels' of religious buildings and a central ruling place for the religion. For instance, church->city cathedral->central cathedral.
I know this is a lot of extra work, but with a modular design I could imagine that it might not be too difficult. This would allow you to have more options via policy, and also allow for a rather interesting 'gradient' effect, where as you get closer to the central ruling position of the religions, their buildings could grow larger. Similarly, smaller religions may never have anything above small temples.

I can well imagine that this might cause problems in recognizability however, so you'd need to do some careful work to get around that, but I think it'd be very worth while.

Eeeexcellent. I do intend to have two levels for each religious building, a "small" type like shown here that might also appear in towns, in other districts etc, and then a "large" version that each religion will only have one of, that will be its main religious hub (like the vatican) that can be found generally in city centres. With modular design as you say it wouldn't be that hard, should only be a day's work to create the larger versions of each tile. Religions for hunter-gatherer civs won't have anything vatican-esque, only these religions that show up in feudal civilizations, but I think all of them should have a religious 'hub' building somewhere. I'm currently in the process of figuring out how city centres are going to generate, and I think I have a good idea for the method that could include (or not) religious hubs whether or not one needs to spawn in that nation. For theocratic nations that religious building would also be the seat of government/rule.
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Retropunch

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Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.5 released!
« Reply #2188 on: September 22, 2014, 11:37:14 am »

Eeeexcellent. I do intend to have two levels for each religious building, a "small" type like shown here that might also appear in towns, in other districts etc, and then a "large" version that each religion will only have one of, that will be its main religious hub (like the vatican) that can be found generally in city centres. With modular design as you say it wouldn't be that hard, should only be a day's work to create the larger versions of each tile. Religions for hunter-gatherer civs won't have anything vatican-esque, only these religions that show up in feudal civilizations, but I think all of them should have a religious 'hub' building somewhere. I'm currently in the process of figuring out how city centres are going to generate, and I think I have a good idea for the method that could include (or not) religious hubs whether or not one needs to spawn in that nation. For theocratic nations that religious building would also be the seat of government/rule.

Bow to me, the lord of feature creep!!

I think that sounds great, I really like the idea of a few levels - I feel the more the better (or 3-4) would be good, but obviously a line needs to be drawn. Perhaps very small shrines could also spawn in villages?
Perhaps hunter-gatherer civs would be more inclined to have a 'sacred ground' which could be a natural landscape feature (like a big rock) or something like a ziggurat? Perhaps others would have an elders hut/circle/area, or to a sacrificial place - which may or may not be in the settlement itself. It'd be incredible to see villagers going on a sort of mini-pilgrimage (I think there's a proper Anthropological word for that) to the village elders or their spiritual place.

This could also lead to some interesting game play interactions where the player would need to respect (or horribly defile) their sacred areas/elders/whatever.
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With enough work and polish, it could have been a forgettable flash game on Kongregate.

coolio678

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Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.5 released!
« Reply #2189 on: September 22, 2014, 04:52:36 pm »

Romans also kept small shrines to the household deity in the main room where they left offerings, if you feel that religions need even more unique forms of worship.
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Dwarves passing by get good thoughts from the mist of water and exploding felines.
Anyone of the equivalent to the royal bloodline in a nomadic group would have a sun tattooed on their hand, or a scrotum on their forehead (it's a little-known fact that fraternities are based off of long-forgotten tribes).
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