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Author Topic: Dwarf Fortress meets The Outer Wilds? "Ultima Ratio Regum", v0.10.1 out Feb 2023  (Read 585608 times)

Scoops Novel

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Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.7 released!
« Reply #3015 on: March 29, 2017, 07:21:26 pm »

If everything but the race fits and the cultures friendly, assume they're immigrants. If the dress is a little off, it's fashion. If it's 50/50, they're a seasoned traveler like a sailor. If it's a complete grab-bag - e.g a asian, wearing a turban, dressed like a cowboy wearing a star of david and tattooed with mexican gang signs - well. People will either point and laugh or you'll be able to sell tickets to all the people asking about your life story. Probably both. Personally, i'd pick the most important of the above (Mexican gang signs) and assume that's where there from.

In other words, you need a priority system and error checking. If all signs point to one culture, but they're famously xenophobic and you're the wrong race, eliminate it. Something very expensive counts for more as a cultural signifier, tattoes should be ranked higher still as they're permanent.

If they hate say your apparent religion but love your country, hate should be the favoured reaction. As for rank... one valuable item shouldn't be blinked at, but if half of your wardrobe is cheap and the other fabulous, they'll assume you're a thief. The same goes for someone with one conspicuously cheap item, like terrible shoes on a prince. Cheap jewelry can get a pass. 
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Retropunch

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Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.7 released!
« Reply #3016 on: March 30, 2017, 03:17:53 pm »

It does sound great, and certainly it's pushing the boundaries on NPC interaction (which is what makes URR so amazing) but after thinking about it, I do have to agree with Novel Scoops that this could become a bit confusing.

The two basic options are to communicate to the player 'you look like you're a Xylthian noble' in an inventory screen, or have it that it's very easy from talking to someone early on why you don't fit in 'You look like a Xylthian noble, but you don't wear the right clothes'. Otherwise you have a situation where the player doesn't know how convincing they are or what they can do to change it.

These options can still get tedious, with option one you'd just end up continually trying clothes until you got the right combo, and the second option could get a bit tedious, as you're still not sure which part of my clothing it is, if you need better jewellery etc.

It's one of those gameplay > realism situations where it could become quickly frustrating if not signposted easily to the player. Absolutely the best way to do it in my opinion, would be to have a list of your 'known outfits' (Xyl noble, Austar pirate etc.) and have them greyed out unless you have the right stuff in your inventory. It'd make it a lot less of a dressing game and a lot more coherent.
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Neonivek

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Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.7 released!
« Reply #3017 on: March 30, 2017, 04:30:34 pm »

Ok I am just going to create an imaginary second mode for Ultima Ratio Regum...

Ok so the world generates as usual... However the game doesn't take place in that world it takes place in the future...

And you are an archeologist.

I have to hand it to this game... it really lends itself to some pretty neat gameplay if you ever wanted to take it another direction.

But I have no idea why... no matter what this game is... I can't help but think of it as some sort of weird "cultural anthropology" game. Even the traps I am like "Oooh, now what is the context for this trap?" Mind you I mean it in the best of ways.
« Last Edit: March 30, 2017, 04:32:46 pm by Neonivek »
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Scoops Novel

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Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.7 released!
« Reply #3018 on: March 30, 2017, 09:08:16 pm »

Retropunch, i wouldn't worry about communicating it to the player. You'll be surrounded by NPC's who are wearing something appropriate, so it shouldn't be hard to figure out.
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Retropunch

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Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.7 released!
« Reply #3019 on: March 31, 2017, 05:38:34 am »

Retropunch, i wouldn't worry about communicating it to the player. You'll be surrounded by NPC's who are wearing something appropriate, so it shouldn't be hard to figure out.

I guess it depends how deep the clothing system is, and how much the NPCs react to it. If clothing is just denoted by civ name, station and item (e.g. 'Azal noble trousers, Azal noble cloak and Azal noble turban') then it isn't a difficult one to do. However, if the people of Azal wear mostly red clothing, white head coverings and necklaces, then it might be a bit more difficult for the player to work it out. This depends on how uniform the NPCs are in their dress code, and how much latitude they give you in your dress code.

It fits in to Mark's request for suggestions - I'd suggest that the NPCs take anything that's over 50% of the attributes as you being from that nation/religion. However, I'd fluctuate the NPCs 'trust score' of the player accordingly - if you're trying to do something that requires you to be a noble/religious ordinary then you should be challenged if you're not 100% in the right garb.

The NPCs might also respond to any slip ups in conversation ('wait, if you're really Azal you should know that we celebrate the most holy pesto day on Friday! Heathen!') whereas if you're in 100% convincing you'd get ('friend, you surely wouldn't skip out on the giant pesto baptism ceremony? It'll be a rapturous event.'). Again, I'd flag this up clearly to the player before hand though.
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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, v0.7 released!
« Reply #3020 on: April 15, 2017, 12:26:18 pm »

If everything but the race fits and the cultures friendly, assume they're immigrants. If the dress is a little off, it's fashion. If it's 50/50, they're a seasoned traveler like a sailor. If it's a complete grab-bag - e.g a asian, wearing a turban, dressed like a cowboy wearing a star of david and tattooed with mexican gang signs - well. People will either point and laugh or you'll be able to sell tickets to all the people asking about your life story. Probably both. Personally, i'd pick the most important of the above (Mexican gang signs) and assume that's where there from.

In other words, you need a priority system and error checking. If all signs point to one culture, but they're famously xenophobic and you're the wrong race, eliminate it. Something very expensive counts for more as a cultural signifier, tattoes should be ranked higher still as they're permanent.

If they hate say your apparent religion but love your country, hate should be the favoured reaction. As for rank... one valuable item shouldn't be blinked at, but if half of your wardrobe is cheap and the other fabulous, they'll assume you're a thief. The same goes for someone with one conspicuously cheap item, like terrible shoes on a prince. Cheap jewelry can get a pass.

Fantastic thoughts, I totally agree about the need for a priority system; check the things an NPC cares most about first, and thnen work "down" from there. Great thinking on thief idea too, and I agree, hate should prioritise love (ah, a bleak reflection on our world!). Great thoughts on permanent things too; that's a really nice foundation to build other stuff on.

Tedium, gameplay, realism

These are great thoughts. Hmm. That is definitely a concern I've had for a while, but as it currently stands... I must be honest, I'm not too concerned about that happening. As below with my other reply, I think part just comes down to playtesting, but I think your idea to have something appear in the inventory screen could be a nice idea, but I think I'd prefer to communicate this by clothing, and have players "identify" clothing as belonging to Nation X or Religion Y when they're in a scenario where it's totally clear/obvious. However, the "known outfits" model I think might be the very best of all the ideas; have a section in the encyclopedia for that, basically, and when you see someone who is perfectly doing Outfit X, that goes in, saying "Priests of A wear B hat, C cloak, boots from any constituent nation, a Ring of D, E or F depending on their rank", etc.

But I have no idea why... no matter what this game is... I can't help but think of it as some sort of weird "cultural anthropology" game. Even the traps I am like "Oooh, now what is the context for this trap?" Mind you I mean it in the best of ways.

I mean, in a way, that's the intention anyway! The more you learn about the world's cultures/peoples/histories etc, the better-equipped you are to pursue the clues you've looking for. But yeah, it definitely does lend itself to other things too.

I guess it depends how deep the clothing system is, and how much the NPCs react to it. If clothing is just denoted by civ name, station and item (e.g. 'Azal noble trousers, Azal noble cloak and Azal noble turban') then it isn't a difficult one to do. However, if the people of Azal wear mostly red clothing, white head coverings and necklaces, then it might be a bit more difficult for the player to work it out. This depends on how uniform the NPCs are in their dress code, and how much latitude they give you in your dress code.

It fits in to Mark's request for suggestions - I'd suggest that the NPCs take anything that's over 50% of the attributes as you being from that nation/religion. However, I'd fluctuate the NPCs 'trust score' of the player accordingly - if you're trying to do something that requires you to be a noble/religious ordinary then you should be challenged if you're not 100% in the right garb.

The NPCs might also respond to any slip ups in conversation ('wait, if you're really Azal you should know that we celebrate the most holy pesto day on Friday! Heathen!') whereas if you're in 100% convincing you'd get ('friend, you surely wouldn't skip out on the giant pesto baptism ceremony? It'll be a rapturous event.'). Again, I'd flag this up clearly to the player before hand though.

I think there are all great thoughts (and hilarious examples!). Have NPCs be increasingly generous to the player the less important the situation you're in, basically; gaining access to a ruler's quarters would be meticulously checked, whereas wandering from one district to another would, obviously, be somewhat less so. And a good point about dress codes etc. I think the best plan is to get this out as fast as possible (obviously!), see how it plays, and put all the "NPC identifying who the player is" code in one area so I can readily go back and change it based on feedback.

---

In the mean time, a blog entry this week on other stuff, as I continue to deal with everything in the way of finally getting 0.8 released: http://www.ultimaratioregum.co.uk/game/2017/04/15/gambling-virtual-reality-arcades-mechanical-games/
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Ultima Ratio Regum

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Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.7 released!
« Reply #3021 on: June 24, 2017, 03:54:02 pm »

Cross-posted from my blog: http://www.ultimaratioregum.co.uk/game/2017/06/24/burnout-and-the-future/

So… this is what burnout feels like.

I’m almost now ready to submit the manuscript for my first academic monograph. It will have taken two months longer than anticipated, which was a great disappointment to me – it’s the only piece of academic work I’ve ever had to ask for an extension on. There were many factors at play there, some within my control, and some outside of my control, but the bottom line was that had I taken on less than I wound up taking on (and had the circumstances I was working within been different), I would have been able to get it submitted on time. Although I’m very happy with the final product, and I’m confident the work will be a valuable contribution to the study of unpredictability in games (of all its forms), I find myself reflecting specifically on the process by which the final parts of it – the crunch, if you will – were written. From around the start of March until the start of June, I can truthfully say I did effectively nothing with my spare moments except writing the book. All day on both days of every weekend was book writing; every evening was book-writing; every train journey and flight and coach trip was book writing. During this period I spent effectively no time with friends, no time exercising, and no time whatsoever doing any programming, much to my chagrin.

During this period, I began to experience for the first time what I believe is called “burnout” – my appetite dropped, I developed some anxiety (a deeply new experience for me), I developed some depression (similarly), and it felt at times as if there wasn’t really any point to what I was doing; that was I just speaking into the void because nobody else would read it; that I was letting everyone down by not working on URR (which I still feel quite acutely); and other feelings I’m not going to share here. Although certainly not the darkest time in my life, it has been, in many ways, a deeply unpleasant three months. Travelling a lot in this period helped me, and finding some times to engage with nature – whether meeting wild bison and wolves in the frozen tundra of Northern Canada or meeting wild tropical birds and lizards in the equatorial jungles of Hong Kong and Singapore – helped my mood a lot, but it only stemmed the bleeding, without addressing the underlying issues.

Academia, especially early-career academic before one secures a tenured faculty position, is notoriously stressful and time-consuming. One is always in competition with vast numbers of recent PhD graduates for a ludicrously small number of postdoctoral or junior faculty positions; one is constantly bombarded with requests and obligations and things that need to be done; one is strongly encouraged to submit only to top-tier journals, and yet doing so leaves one waiting for potentially years until publication, damaging one’s employability in the short term. The other crucial element of academia is that there is always more one can do. As academics, we don’t really have working hours, as such – just contracts that say we must “fulfil the expectations of the job”, or some equivalent language, using however many hours across however many days per week that takes. Many contracts even explicitly state we are expected to use evenings, weekends and holidays to meet those requirements where necessary – and that, assuming one wants to spend one’s academic career actually doing research, will always be true.

Up until now, I’ve always been able to field this and maintain the other things I want in my life, but in these last three months, I am not exaggerating when I say every spare moment has gone into the book. For the three months before that extreme compression of my time, almost every spare moment went into the book, and looking back, I can see my free time shrinking into a smaller and smaller gap with every passing day. Something inherently enjoyable – and I do enjoy academic work tremendously – quickly ceases to be enjoyable when it is something one must do, and when it is the only thing one is spending one’s time doing. Because of this the book became something of a chore, which itself made it harder to write, and which itself made it more of a chore, and made more painful my inability to spend my time on other things, and so forth. As a result of the stress leading up to and during the book-writing, I screwed up. I made two serious errors of judgement – one being a different but major piece of academic work I submitted, and another being a piece of work I submitted elsewhere. In both cases I made poor judgements about what I wrote, and over-estimated my knowledge of those domains, and was – quite appropriately – brought down a rung by those who do know those domains. They were both humbling experiences, which really brought home how much my judgement had been impaired by the stress of finishing the book.

But now, the book is basically finished, and I’m on my final visiting position of the year, having also just been offered an amazing new two-year postdoc opportunity in Canada where I will be able to drive my own research and make my own hours. However, as I sit here for now in a cafe in Nevada, trying to take stock of things, I realise that there are four things I must make time for, and a fifth change I need to make overall, from now, moving forward, no matter what, in order both to be the kind of academic I want to be, and to have the life I want beyond the academy.

Firstly, I need to make time again for programming, starting now. It’s something I enjoy tremendously, it’s creative work which forms a crucial balance to the intellectual work I make my income from, it’s something a lot of people are following and counting on me for, it’s something absolutely tethered to my online presence, and it’s something I simply deeply want to start doing again, and which gives me valuable balance in my life. It makes me deeply sad that I wasn’t able to get 0.8 out before I went into this period of total time compression and book-only-focus, and I want to put this right and get 0.8 released as fast as possible, and certainly before my new position starts later this year. Once 0.8 is out URR will be more than half-done, and psychologically, that’s an important marker I need to hit. Therefore, starting next weekend, I intend to devote a day per week to programming, no matter what else might be looming over me or might be requiring my attention. Either Saturday or Sunday each week, but probably I think Sunday, my intention is to always spend that day – as a minimum – programming. Despite the long hiatus, URR is not cancelled, but has certainly been on hiatus, and it’s finally time for that hiatus to properly, and truly, end.

Secondly, I need to make time again for fitness and exercise. I haven’t exercised once in the last three months, with the exception of hiking up and down Victoria Peak in Hong Kong and a couple of hikes in Alberta and Nevada. Normally I would exercise for at least an hour at least four or so days a week, but the book has simply dominated my time and my thought to such a degree that I’ve let this slip completely, down to zero. I can tell and feel that I’m less fit now, I’m less strong now, and less healthy now, and I don’t like it. It’s an unsettling and disturbing change from the state of being I’ve become used to, and I want to get back to my previous level of fitness as soon as possible. I’ve now managed to get this back to exercising twice a week, and hopefully I can push that back towards four as I decompress in the coming months. As I’m moving to Alberta, I’m keen to do lots of hiking there, too, and I have some interesting future travel plans which should also help with that.

Thirdly, I need to make time for a personal life. The fact that I am likely moving to a new country/city in a few months feels like a good time to make this kind of resolution – both to renew existing acquaintances in the UK and elsewhere, especially important now that I’m no longer in physical proximity to my friends in the UK, but also to go out there and find new friends and new colleagues. I’ve always been someone with a small group of close friends instead of a far wider social circle, but this, also, has shrunk to nothing in recent months, and my personal relationships have definitely suffered for it. I’m making amends to those I have unintentionally hurt, which I believe to be an important first step, and from this point onward I’m going to make a lot more time with friends and family in the coming months. It seems that the importance of this to one’s mental health only appears after it is lost, and that’s a lesson I don’t want to have to repeat again in the future.

Fourthly, I need to make time to actually play games. I got into game design and game scholarship and game writing and competitive game play because I love games; because I’ve played hundreds, probably thousands, and certainly own thousands; and I’ve been playing them since I was as young as I can remember. But I no longer find myself with the time to actually play any; in the last year I’ve played only two games for pleasure, which were Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3. Both were incredible experiences, but that’s only a fraction of the time I would normally spend playing games. Even in other periods of stress – such as when I was simultaneously finishing my PhD and dealing with a life-threatening illness – I still found far more time to play. It’s fun (most crucially), but it’s also important for my ability to be a good game designer and good games scholar. As such, my goal is now to at least double the number of major games I play each year for starters, and hopefully increase this number as time goes by. Right now, The Witness, Demon’s Souls, Shadow of the Colossus, The Bridge, Antichamber, and perhaps even returning to playing roguelikes all look very appealing, and that’s where I plan to start.

Fifthly, and lastly, I need to focus. Forgive the cliched phrase, but I now realise I need to work smarter, instead of working harder. I’ve been trying to be a game scholar, and a competitive game-player, and a game designer, and a game writer, and all the other things in my life outside games. This is just too much. As a result, I’ve decided to permanently “retire” any competitive gaming from my life. I want to really focus on scholarship/writing/coding, and in turn, to present myself specifically at the intersection of those three things. My background in poker remains a major informing element on my academic career – especially as I move toward studying gambling more seriously as a topic of study – but I think I’m spreading myself too thinly, both in terms of my effort, and in terms of how I appear. I want to focus in on my strengths, instead of trying to be everything, and do everything, when it comes to games.I think this will, without a doubt, be for the best, and strengthen my ability to work in my core domains without “distracting” myself with others.

As for the wider future, academia certainly remains my career path of choice. I take tremendous satisfaction from the unfolding of intellectual ideas on paper; I love travelling around the world to do research, to attend and present at conferences, to meet colleagues, and to experience new parts of this earth; I enjoy the freedom of working hours that academia (generally) gives one, even if that same freedom means working a lot of those hours, and the ability to largely work where and when I want. But these last three or four months have shown me what can happen when I take on too much – I make mistakes, and my ability to do anything else with my time beyond academia gets reduced down to a minimum, and then disappears altogether. This is not a “New Year’s” resolution, but this is certainly a mid-year resolution: I need to adjust my life back toward the kind of life I want to have, and I am confident this will have benefits both within and beyond my academic work. So with this written, and with this posted, I’m going to head to the gym in this hotel and work out for an hour, then head back to my hotel room and play something, anything, on Steam, then do some programming in the evening. The change starts now.
« Last Edit: June 24, 2017, 04:04:41 pm by Ultima Ratio Regum »
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FakerFangirl

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Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.7 released!
« Reply #3022 on: June 24, 2017, 06:22:02 pm »

Academia, especially early-career academic before one secures a tenured faculty position, is notoriously stressful and time-consuming.
Yeah.

Firstly, I need to make time again for programming, starting now.
Yush!

I’ve been trying to be a game scholar, and a competitive game-player, and a game designer, and a game writer, and all the other things in my life outside games. This is just too much.
But this is how you prevent burnout! You flicker between many different interests so that each 'job' feels like a 'break' from the others. Like, if you're a professional poker player, and you're tilted, you do something else. Unfortunately, with real life, there's often only one... 'Life'. You can hop between games but you don't get to hop between lives and such. So yeah. When I'm annoyed with willful stupidity and nonsensical hostility (raging for the sake of venting) from competitive teammates then I make a Youtube video. When I'm tired of making Youtube videos I write erotica. When I'm tired of writing erotica I watch world politics. And when I'm depressed from reading and posting about world politics I go play competitively. #Hikki

I find that my most productive moments are when I convince myself that I am working at something in order to procrastinate finishing something else! I value self-improvement and pursuing meaningful interests. Then again, this lifestyle requires a small fortune to sustain since I don't get paid by an employer.

Looking forward to 0.8  ;D
« Last Edit: June 24, 2017, 06:25:00 pm by FakerFangirl »
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Ultima Ratio Regum

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Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.7 released!
« Reply #3023 on: June 25, 2017, 11:13:54 am »

Thanks for the reply :). You are completely right - I used to be very good at flicking between things, and in most cases, as you say, still procrastinating by doing something useful. If I didn't want to code, I'd do some academic work to pass the time; if I didn't want to do the academic work I was meant to do, I'd do some popular writing instead; if I just wasn't in the mood to write that piece I was contracted to write, I'd do some coding, and so on and so forth. It's definitely that kind of rhythm I want/need to get back into!
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Ultima Ratio Regum

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Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.7 released!
« Reply #3024 on: July 03, 2017, 01:51:28 pm »

Firstly, I’d like to express my sincere and heartfelt appreciation for the outpouring of kind wishes after last week’s blog post, both here, and on Reddit, and Twitter, and by email, and elsewhere. They are deeply appreciated and deeply felt, and are a real credit to what a supportive bunch of people the roguelike community (and those who read my blog for the non-roguelike posts!) are. I don’t think there are a lot of games communities that would have responded so positively, and it really means a lot to me. I won’t disappoint you all; we’re back to coding, and 0.8 is back in development. I’m also going to get back to weekly updates, which will mostly be development logs/patch notes in style – however short they might be – with some longer pieces interspersed.

So, as mentioned in last week’s entry, my objective is now to devote one full day – either Saturday or Sunday – each week to programming until 0.8 is released, and beyond. As such, this weekend has been the first weekend of that new pattern (I’ve actually been coding both Saturday and Sunday), and for the first time in months I opened up URR’s files (or rather, file…) and took a look at where everything was; I also took some time wandering around the game world to see how everything was functioning and what still needs to be done. My first feeling, I must be honest, was a deep satisfaction at coming back to the project and wandering around the game world. Having slightly forgotten where I was up to before the monograph crunch/burnout began, I was pleasantly surprised to see just how many topics one could talk to NPCs about, and how intelligently (I think) they responded; how alive with activity the cities and towns were; and just how different the world felt to anything else that I’ve played, something in its texture, or the potential to fall down a rabbit hole of conversation, or ‘l’ooking in detail about the world. It was a tremendously motivating return, and one long overdue. So, without further ado, here’s the changelog for this weekend:

- The second I loaded up and tried to ‘s’peak to someone, we saw the first problem: the speaking crosshair seemed able to traverse the entire length of the screen, which was deeply puzzling. I discovered this only happened when the player was near the edge of one of the 200×200 grids the player actually walks around in, and this was because of a piece of code designed to prevent the crosshair from slipping off the screen; in this case it was registering that the player was near the edge, but thinking the player was using an infinite-length crosshair (e.g. the ‘l’ook crosshair) instead of one which is supposed to be contained to a 3×3 area. A quick fix took care of this, and told the game to handle edges differently depending on the crosshair the player is using.

- Then discovered that if the relationship between your nation and another nation was classed as “Unknown”, then one particular piece of code relating to greetings wouldn’t work, because it was looking for a friendship_value which didn’t exist. Instead, encountering an “Unknown” civilization now sets the friendship_value to a number determined by the ideologies of the nation in question, so a more outward-facing nation will be more friendly to total unknowns than an inward-looking nation.

- Have added the start of NPCs commenting when you ask the same question twice, and also forgetting after a lengthy period when you last asked something. In the first case, NPCs will give a new response if you ask or say the same thing a second time, and a third time, and then a final response at the end when you’ve asked over twice. The final response will be more or less exasperated depending on the mood of the NPC. Also, asking the same question over and over again will cause the mood variable of the NPC to drop. In some sensitive topics – e.g. talking to an inquisitor about a heresy – will cause mood to drop extremely quickly, and they might even get suspicious about why you keep asking…

- In the second case, all NPCs now have a hidden “forgetfulness” trait, which is influenced by a small number of other factors and determines how quickly/slowly they forget when you last asked them a specific conversation. In all cases, though, it’ll take at least days, and potentially weeks. As noted in a previous entry, there also needs to be some kind of “geographical memory” function to prevent you just asking Person 1 Question 1, then asking Person 2 Question 1, and going on and on in that manner. Instead, people will know when you’ve asked many others the same questions – they “heard on the grapevine” or whatever – and will refuse to answer. This is an important element to prevent tedious grindy gameplay, and I’ll implement this a bit later.

- Fixed some issues with asking people about their parents, grandparents, children, siblings, etc, which sometimes led to crashes when the game couldn’t construct a sentence properly. Will need to also come back to this later when special NPCs have relationships to other special NPCs.

- I’ve also done a lot of fixing of grammatical and spelling errors, which are (as expected) significant in number given the complexity of the conversation system. I had it print out every possible sentence stored for every civilization in a particular world generation – well over one thousand – then went through them all, found every typo, found where in the sentence generation that typo had arisen, fixed it, and moved onto the next. I must have fixed at least a hundred possible errors. I think I’ll do this again, to get another set of sentences, and go through those, and I’ll do this once or twice more before 0.8’s release. Should get the number of errors down to a tiny number by the end.

- I also discovered that fifteen of the “negative replies” – e.g. when you ask “Do you have X” and they say “I do not have X”, or whatever – were returning “This is a placeholder” instead of an appropriate hand-crafted response. This took a little bit of hunting down, but in the end I discovered this all just came down to fifteen typos in the thousands of words/phrases the game now stores! Things like “unimportant” being accidentally written down in another location as “unimpotant”, and things like that.

- Also made a list of questions which need special replies if you appear to be of the same nation/religion as the person you’re talking to (“Why are you asking me that?”, “Shouldn’t you know that”?, “The same as you, surely?”) or a particularly hated nation (“Why do you want to know that?!”, “There’s no way I can tell you that!”, etc). This will connect to the function that allows NPCs to estimate what nation/religion you’re from, which I’ll be working on soon.

- Added a ton (100 or so?) of new words that can be varied across nations, allowing nations to say even more things in a greater variety of ways than they could before. I also found a few cases where a culture would choose a way of saying X1 (e.g. “interested”) but wouldn’t always transfer that to ways of saying X2 and X3 (“interest” and “interesting”), so you would wind up with a culture whose people said “interested”, “intrigue” and “fascinating”, instead of “interested”, “interest” and “interesting”, the latter of which is far more logical and consistent for a single given dialect. I think I’ve now fixed all the cases where this could happen, and the differences in dialects should now consequently be just that little bit sharper.

- Started to think about how to implement what I’ve taken to calling the “metaquestions” that player can ask, e.g. “What do you think about [artwork]” where [artwork] can be replaced by the title of any artwork. I’ve put in general responses for NPCs on these questions now, i.e. I don’t know what this is, I have no opinion, I’ve already told you about this, etc, with more detail to come soon.

So: for a first week back, I’m incredibly happy with this progress! In the coming weekdays I’ll be focusing on my current academic work and continuing to put the final touches and edits to the book, then next weekend, I’ll be back to coding for at least one of the two days. I really feel incredibly invigorated by this weekend, I have to say – I’m really excited to continue pushing the conversation system to point where I can release the first version of it in 0.8. Lastly, and very briefly, here’s a little debug of some sentence generation and whatnot; you’ll see the sentences (on the right hand side) are almost entirely grammatically correct (they are the generated versions of the default sentences on the left); I really like letting these run and just seeing what the game can produce, and the different ways the game can utter the same sentence. And now, to conclude this entry on a sentence I’ve been wanting to say again for months: see you all next week for another URR 0.8 update!

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Dorsidwarf

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Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.7 released!
« Reply #3025 on: July 03, 2017, 07:24:19 pm »

Good to hear from you again, I missed your big post about academia last week, so I'm glad to hear you're getting yourself back on track (and that the game is still included in that track!)

How are you seperating types of questions up? I can understand things like "what is the disposition of the army"  getting around on the grapevine that you're being nosy about them, but is there a level of low importance or personal questions this doesn't apply to? Surely asking for names a lot will just annoy or offend individual people if you ask repeatedly, not result in society at large refusing you their names, and the like.
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FakerFangirl

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Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.7 released!
« Reply #3026 on: July 03, 2017, 07:32:09 pm »

This is like, when one of your favourite mangas gets an anime serialization. Waiting for that 0.8 season before doing the marathon.  8)
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Ultima Ratio Regum

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Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.7 released!
« Reply #3027 on: July 05, 2017, 02:24:25 am »

Good to hear from you again, I missed your big post about academia last week, so I'm glad to hear you're getting yourself back on track (and that the game is still included in that track!)

How are you seperating types of questions up? I can understand things like "what is the disposition of the army"  getting around on the grapevine that you're being nosy about them, but is there a level of low importance or personal questions this doesn't apply to? Surely asking for names a lot will just annoy or offend individual people if you ask repeatedly, not result in society at large refusing you their names, and the like.

Hey Dorsi - and many thanks :). So, yes, personal questions will not get around, "less important" questions will get around a bit, "important" questions a lot. This is something I need to code, either for 0.8 or 0.9, I'm not sure yet, but it'll basically mean splitting all possible questions into categories, and then using those categories to determine how rapidly (if at all) your line(s) of questioning spread across a society or a certain area.

This is like, when one of your favourite mangas gets an anime serialization. Waiting for that 0.8 season before doing the marathon.  8)

Hahaha. Good choice :).
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Dorsidwarf

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Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.7 released!
« Reply #3028 on: July 05, 2017, 06:30:07 am »

Maybe consider having tags, or keywords attatched to them, like

"What is your name" - personal, common
"What is the disposition of your country's forces?" - location, authority, unusual, millitary
"where is the government of this location" - location, authority, directions
"What do you think of the government" - personal, unusual, authority
"What do [Religion X] worshippers think about the government?" - political, religion, dangerous, authority
 
that sort of thing, then build how they react behind the scenes so if you ask a lot of political questions people will get suspiscious if word gets about, asking "dangerous" tag questions a lot might bring interest from third parties if rumor gets about that you're asking them, and so on.


just a few thoughts, might not be worth it in the end!
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Ultima Ratio Regum

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Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.7 released!
« Reply #3029 on: July 06, 2017, 11:03:46 am »

Maybe consider having tags, or keywords attatched to them, like

"What is your name" - personal, common
"What is the disposition of your country's forces?" - location, authority, unusual, millitary
"where is the government of this location" - location, authority, directions
"What do you think of the government" - personal, unusual, authority
"What do [Religion X] worshippers think about the government?" - political, religion, dangerous, authority
 
that sort of thing, then build how they react behind the scenes so if you ask a lot of political questions people will get suspiscious if word gets about, asking "dangerous" tag questions a lot might bring interest from third parties if rumor gets about that you're asking them, and so on.


just a few thoughts, might not be worth it in the end!

I have to be honest - this is *way* better than the technique I was going to deploy! And this could help things much clearer to the player, too, by grouping questions into these kinds of keyword categories and making clearer the link between the question and the potential for irrelevance/annoyance. Yeah, great concept - I'll be doing it this way!
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