October's Post
This post has some updates and some bad news. The updates are up first and the bad news is at the end. Times being what they are, please feel free to skip that last section if you're not up for it. Anyway, on we go!
Like the tournament, the feast looms large in the popular imagination of the medieval period. Indeed, it is a favorite of modern reenactments, and for good reason. However Arbitology: Dei Gratia Rex takes great pains to get the history right as possible.
Feasts are real things that happened, clearly. However they were not typically raucous parties. When they were, it was usually a sign that something was out of order. More commonly, they were tightly choreographed affairs. There had to be a reason for the event, for starters, and of course nothing of this sort might happen during Lent, those 40 days of holy fasting.
Rank and precedence were of the utmost importance in those days. This applied even (or perhaps especially!) to seating arrangements at feasts. When you appointed a chamberlain to head-up the royal household, you did find someone with talent, right?
As public affairs, feasts were also an ideal time and place for giving gifts, that all may see your largess. Not only monetary gifts, but also land grants were commonly made on these occasions: perhaps that vacant episcopal see that you've been taking revenues from, much to the chagrin of the Church?
There are other things that happen as well. Naturally food is the focal point. Spending more lavishly does allow more options. Gifting leftovers from the high table to others, even to the poor, is historically attested after all. Feasts provide opportunity to take counsel with those present as well. Moreover the feast provides a nice backdrop to more unpredictable events. I don't want to spoil it all in screenshots though.
I added a bit more love to the tournaments hosted in your own kingdom, as opposed to fighting in a foreign contest. As in the tournaments in France, the domestic ones now also conclude with a small feast. This can result in rivalries or friendships continuing from the tourney ground into later affairs.
Or perhaps an annoying noble from a neighboring realm might provoke an international incident. This could be both a good and a bad thing, depending on how much you want a war.
Much else can also happen as your tournaments conclude!
Bus factor is a measure, common in the software world, of the number of people who, if hit by a bus, would imperil a project. A wonderful thing about indie dev is games that no large or even medium company would touch are possible. A terrible thing about indie dev is low bus factor. I've worked with some wonderful contractors for art and music, but those were short term arrangements. The daily work on prose, code, and everything else is done by me alone. Thus, the bus factor for DGR is one.
Well, gentle reader, I've been hit by a metaphorical bus.
In late August I developed a heart condition. In late September I sought treatment for said heart condition. Long story short, the clinic insisted on a hospital visit and my life has been a waking nightmare ever since. And it is not yet over. I briefly had a negative net worth until I phoned some people and negotiated the numbers on these bills. Bills plural, you see, because apparently everything is charged separately by a different party. The money I was planning on investing into the company for advertising purposes has been devoured by the insatiable rapacity of the medical-industrial complex. No prizes for guessing the country in which the above transpired.
I'm not writing all this because I'm fishing for sympathy or because I am going to hit you with a GoFundMe link. It's just… things will be slow for a bit. I'm probably going to have to do more activities that generate short term money and less work on the game. I've also got some more bureaucratic hoops to jump though. And then there's, you know, the cardiac problem that has been stealing time from me over the last few months.
DGR will release. I've sacrificed too much for it not to. I'm just not in a position to make any definitive statements about when, as I genuinely don't know what the next few months hold in store.
More updates, and less bad news, on the the first Saturday of next month!
Feasts
Like the tournament, the feast looms large in the popular imagination of the medieval period. Indeed, it is a favorite of modern reenactments, and for good reason. However Arbitology: Dei Gratia Rex takes great pains to get the history right as possible.
Feasts are real things that happened, clearly. However they were not typically raucous parties. When they were, it was usually a sign that something was out of order. More commonly, they were tightly choreographed affairs. There had to be a reason for the event, for starters, and of course nothing of this sort might happen during Lent, those 40 days of holy fasting.
Rank and precedence were of the utmost importance in those days. This applied even (or perhaps especially!) to seating arrangements at feasts. When you appointed a chamberlain to head-up the royal household, you did find someone with talent, right?
As public affairs, feasts were also an ideal time and place for giving gifts, that all may see your largess. Not only monetary gifts, but also land grants were commonly made on these occasions: perhaps that vacant episcopal see that you've been taking revenues from, much to the chagrin of the Church?
There are other things that happen as well. Naturally food is the focal point. Spending more lavishly does allow more options. Gifting leftovers from the high table to others, even to the poor, is historically attested after all. Feasts provide opportunity to take counsel with those present as well. Moreover the feast provides a nice backdrop to more unpredictable events. I don't want to spoil it all in screenshots though.
Tournaments, part 2
I added a bit more love to the tournaments hosted in your own kingdom, as opposed to fighting in a foreign contest. As in the tournaments in France, the domestic ones now also conclude with a small feast. This can result in rivalries or friendships continuing from the tourney ground into later affairs.
Or perhaps an annoying noble from a neighboring realm might provoke an international incident. This could be both a good and a bad thing, depending on how much you want a war.
Much else can also happen as your tournaments conclude!
Bus Factor
Bus factor is a measure, common in the software world, of the number of people who, if hit by a bus, would imperil a project. A wonderful thing about indie dev is games that no large or even medium company would touch are possible. A terrible thing about indie dev is low bus factor. I've worked with some wonderful contractors for art and music, but those were short term arrangements. The daily work on prose, code, and everything else is done by me alone. Thus, the bus factor for DGR is one.
Well, gentle reader, I've been hit by a metaphorical bus.
In late August I developed a heart condition. In late September I sought treatment for said heart condition. Long story short, the clinic insisted on a hospital visit and my life has been a waking nightmare ever since. And it is not yet over. I briefly had a negative net worth until I phoned some people and negotiated the numbers on these bills. Bills plural, you see, because apparently everything is charged separately by a different party. The money I was planning on investing into the company for advertising purposes has been devoured by the insatiable rapacity of the medical-industrial complex. No prizes for guessing the country in which the above transpired.
I'm not writing all this because I'm fishing for sympathy or because I am going to hit you with a GoFundMe link. It's just… things will be slow for a bit. I'm probably going to have to do more activities that generate short term money and less work on the game. I've also got some more bureaucratic hoops to jump though. And then there's, you know, the cardiac problem that has been stealing time from me over the last few months.
DGR will release. I've sacrificed too much for it not to. I'm just not in a position to make any definitive statements about when, as I genuinely don't know what the next few months hold in store.
More updates, and less bad news, on the the first Saturday of next month!