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[gimymblert]

wow such depth much analysis!

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

wow such depth much analysis!

Very detail!

[PowRTocH]

Not sure if I said this already but this devlog is pretty amazing.

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

Well thanks . It doesn't seem to be the kind of game that gets a lot of attention on TIG, but I'm *very* glad you like it. I generally cross-post everything from my blog, but since I have to take a few months out from intensive coding before going into my full-time development year, updates have been slightly more scarce lately than I would like .

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

This week's update is half games crit, half future URR plans, but either way, it's about MAPS:

http://www.ultimaratioregum.co.uk/game/2014/08/23/the-value-of-maps/

[saluk]

"MAPS! Get your fresh maps here!"

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

"MAPS! Get your fresh maps here!"

Ahhhh I want to work on NPCs. Soon. Soon.

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

Copied from blog, first proper URRpdate in a while:

In the little bits of time I’ve been able to find to code at the moment, I’ve managed to just about finish off all the different fortress archetypes. There are twelve in total – each nomadic civilization decides on one at worldgen that it will use for their desert encampments, and then each is subsequently generated according to the chosen algorithm. They each also handle rivers going through them in different ways – some loop rivers around them, some have rivers go through them, and there’s a fair bit of code handling the placement of bridges and entrances to ensure that no matter your angle of entering the fortress, and the position of the fortress on/off a river, you can always access the entire thing. Some are large, some are small; most have all their components within the walls, but some have spread out beyond the walls; some are well-defended, some less so. The white %s are placeholders for market stalls which I haven’t yet created the terrain type for, and the large “oval” buildings are barracks, the smaller circular buildings in military districts being buildings where you may find particular NPCs of military value.

Here are some examples. Bear in mind that these images don’t show the changes in height, but rather give you an overall plan of how these areas are laid out. The algorithms shown here are the “Concentric Square”, “Circle Lines”, “Star Fort” and “Cross” variations. They’re tremendous to walk around – even without NPCs (two versions away!) one can already tell what they’ll be like once they’re populated.









Now, for a general update. Editing my PhD thesis for submission is going well. The first third of it is bordering on submission-ready and I’m now working on the middle third. I’ll be moving house to “start” the full-time development year around the first week of October, give or take, but I suspect I won’t be submitting my thesis until some time around the middle of October. So, for the next month-and-a-bit we’ll be focusing on non-URR entries with a few short updates like this one, then my current prediction is starting my full-time development year some time in October. Once we do, we’ll switch back to full and detailed weekly blog updates, regular Facebook/Twitter updates and the rest of it. AND 0.6 WILL BE COMING, as the first step to totally finishing the worldbuilding block within a year of going full-time. Once that officially starts, I might even put up some kind of “one year countdown” on the blog to remind me how many days I have left to finish the worldbuilding. It’s going to be awesome, internet friends. Next time: an entry I’ve been working on for the best part of a year with some thoughts about AI…

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

Tomorrow's blog entry is something a little unusual, but I think you'll all like it. It's a bit of a personal story about games, about losing, and about the bizarre game that is poker. Something I've wanted to write for a long time.

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

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/

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

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…

[gimymblert]

let's cut straight to the important question, will be there a video or any report? 

Personally I'm trying to find a way to have rich character history and interaction (social, travel, change, death) with a "local" algorithm. Kind of like a "crusader king" dynasty story generator but base on initial seed instead of previous state.

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

Yessss! It will be streamed on Twitch, and I believe uploaded to Youtube as well.

[failrate]

I'm so excited by this news.  This is exactly the kind of thing I've been wondering about, especially with your rather prolific output.

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

I'm so excited by this news.  This is exactly the kind of thing I've been wondering about, especially with your rather prolific output.

Thanks . I can't wait for my output to actually re-prolific-erate once more in a month or two! I'm still only able to find about 1 day/week atm, and it sucks, though progress is still being made

[Low_Chance]

Looking over this devlog, I'd say there is an extremely high risk that the OP is going to accidentally write some code that causes a portal to suck them into the game world they have created, forever trapped in a procedurally-generated game of Machiavellian letters and punctuation like a much more politically-oriented TRON.

If there is ever a sustained lapse in updates, I propose we mount a rescue mission into the ASCIIverse to save URR.

Seriously though your game looks amazing, incredible, intimidating, and important. I can't wait to see the final result because something tells me it's going to be pretty mind-boggling.

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

Wow, thanks for the amazingly nice comment low_chance! Really appreciate it . I'm glad you like the concept so much! You really seem to have "got" what I'm trying to make. Updates have slowed down temporarily, though only due to external factors rather than being consumed by the game (though this remains a terrifying possibility), but in a month or so I'm going to be working on the game full-time for a year from my own savings. I'm just biding my time until then and until development will massively speed up!

[Low_Chance]

Yes, I fully believe that Ultima Ratio Regum will be an important game that will attract an extremely devoted following of players seeking to plumb its depths, and you can already see from the work you've shown so far that it is also going to be a work of art worth contemplating.

However, full disclosure, I also think you're completely insane, so it evens out. 

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

Hah - well, that is a tradeoff I am very comfortable with . Thanks again, I hugely appreciate the positive words. I'll have an update from this week to post here soon...

[Mete]

Hey Mark, what is "Borges"? This is a common name in Brasil hehe