Bay 12 Games Forum

Banished is on sale (50%) on Steam for midweek madness.  I've had my eye on it for a while, but no idea whether it's worth a purchase at that price or wait and see (as I suspect it'll be 50% again in the inevitable Christmas sale).  Reviews seem to be mixed. 

PTW too.

Also, something I learnt from the comments on that RPS article: there is an Android version of KoDP.  I can foresee my mobile battery having to earn its keep.

In other news, I've just posted a new article to the blog - "We need to talk". Please check it out!
http://humanorbit.com/blog/

Absolutely loved that blog entry - I'm really intrigued now to see how the process of working through a dialogue tree, moving to another subject and the whole general pattern of it actually works in practice.  Excellent use of diagrams as well - made the whole thing very straightforward and easy to understand!

Taking back off again (assuming you're going to attempt that) might be interesting for you.

Huh.  Okay.  I appear not to understand how heirship works for republics.


Now, my brother (leftmost portrait) is due to inherit all my non-republic titles - the cities that I've taken and held, and my family home.

My cousin, Kyros, is patrician of one of my rival families - and appears to be my 'heir' for all the republic titles with no regard to the level of respect my brother has.  Seriously - I've pumped his respect level up to nearly 4000 (versus 1840 for the nearest rival), and he still doesn't show up as my expected successor.  What gives?

You can't see in that image, but my brother (Polkarios family) is my designated heir, my closest living male relative, is mayor of a grand city and loves me to bits.  Kyros Konstantios, my cousin, hates my guts and is apparently just there to spite me.   

Okay, as an utter neophyte in terms of game design/code structure, I'm intrigued: how do people tend to structure the flow of their game code?

For example, if I'm building a real-time pausable game (DF-fortress-mode stylee), various things I might want to happen are:
1) Some sort of title screen upon loading the game, with options for new/load/quit/etc.
2a) The ability to create a new game.
2b) The ability to load a previous game.
3) After 2a or 2b, the ability to play said game.
4) In game, the ability to accept player input and react to that.
5) The game to progress dependent on a particular time setting e.g. paused, slow, normal, fast.
6) Potentially, the ability for a 'popup' window to be displayed, and for that window to be interacted with (move it around, click 'OK', etc).

I'm struggling with a number of these.  1 is relatively straightforward, 2a and 2b could presumably simply be different ways of creating/initiating a 'Game' class, 4 is simple enough to check in the main loop of the 'Game' class...

...5 puzzles me a little bit.  6 puzzles me a lot.  If I'm running a main loop that checks player input and processes the game, then if I've got a popup window appearing then I want to game to cease proceeding, but still be checking for player input.  How does that tend to work structurally?  Instancing a separate 'popup' class with its own processing loop?  Switching 'Game' itself into a state that says "you're dealing with a popup, wait until you're told it's gone before proceeding"?

The world seems lacking in materials for game development that's higher than "Hello World" but lower than "Here's the entire codebase of a twelve-year-old heavily-developed roguelike, get to work".   

I had one really bizarre game where through a random event the Order developed a port, which gave them trade - the Golden Republic pounced on creating a trade route with them because trade with "uncivilized" and "Exotic" nations is worth a bonus, so then they also established a Merchant Guild branch there, which then led to a second overland trade route which the Order established with the emerging Lizard Kingdom in the swamps to the south.  Fast forward multiple turns (I was busy testing something in the wild lands) and the Order progresses to a republic, the Lizardmen become a Monarchy, and they all join in an alliance with Aventura and the Golden Republic.  Very odd, but this happened because trade routes can cause cultures to become closer together, and a society can shift it's government type if it becomes close enough with a more advanced government.  It was worth it just to see the Lizardmen have a Grand Ball in the swamp.

If I hadn't already funded (congrats on the Kickstarter goal being met, by the way!), this story would have made me. 

Any faction in particular?

Not really - I've got one light assault on each.  And I'm low-level/useless with all of them.   

I play on Miller though, which I think may not be the ideal for Bay12 folk (I'm in the UK).  No matter if not, was simply going to take advantage of there being an outfit if there was one.