June Updates
It's the first Saturday of the month, so that means it's time to review the last month's progress.
As promised, random events that are primarily tied to date were first on the agenda. Since DGR is set in 12th century England — whose economy was very much still agrarian — one of the most important date-linked events was the harvest. Sometimes everything went well. Other times things went badly, resulting in less than happy outcomes.
Chance wasn't the only thing driving these results however. There is now a rudimentary weather system under the hood that tracks years by warmth and regions by precipitation. This can result in a number of outcomes. (Guichard is a bit, though not excessively, greedy; pay him no mind.)
That does lead me to a bit of a quandary though. As a software guy and map-staring enthusiast, a weather map mode seems obvious. On the other hand, many games in this genre give shockingly large amounts of information that no king could possible have had. I try to push back against this, for example by reconnaissance getting stale. As of now, I've largely decided against such a map mode. I wouldn't mind hearing some opinions about this though.
The next item on the agenda is random events based on faction scores. This touches the legal system, which needed a fair bit of work. It's still early days on this, this is what I'm actively working on now. Here's a teaser.
The original economic model I used tried to infer urban population from the number of knight's fees in a county. It more or less worked and, if I do say so myself, was nearly perfect for Yorkshire. Unfortunately it was tragically incorrect for Middlesex — London and all that. Worse, the player sort of controls Middlesex for more or less the whole game and may or may not ever come to control Yorkshire.
I had to use numbers slightly outside the 12th century, but every county now tracks its urban population separately from number of fees. This urban population is where most of the infantry comes from, though the rural population does still contribute some. This is a change I have wanted to make for some time, but what prompted doing it now was that some of those faction-based events do interact with the magnitude of urban population.
Finishing faction-based events, including the minor factions. When that's done, the game should technically be playable from beginning to end. There is still more necessary content, especially relating to spouse and children. There is other content I want to do as well, plus some technical work on options and such. However I think the earliest round of testing can come before some of those things.
More next time!
Date-based random events
As promised, random events that are primarily tied to date were first on the agenda. Since DGR is set in 12th century England — whose economy was very much still agrarian — one of the most important date-linked events was the harvest. Sometimes everything went well. Other times things went badly, resulting in less than happy outcomes.
Chance wasn't the only thing driving these results however. There is now a rudimentary weather system under the hood that tracks years by warmth and regions by precipitation. This can result in a number of outcomes. (Guichard is a bit, though not excessively, greedy; pay him no mind.)
That does lead me to a bit of a quandary though. As a software guy and map-staring enthusiast, a weather map mode seems obvious. On the other hand, many games in this genre give shockingly large amounts of information that no king could possible have had. I try to push back against this, for example by reconnaissance getting stale. As of now, I've largely decided against such a map mode. I wouldn't mind hearing some opinions about this though.
Faction-based random events
The next item on the agenda is random events based on faction scores. This touches the legal system, which needed a fair bit of work. It's still early days on this, this is what I'm actively working on now. Here's a teaser.
Urban population
The original economic model I used tried to infer urban population from the number of knight's fees in a county. It more or less worked and, if I do say so myself, was nearly perfect for Yorkshire. Unfortunately it was tragically incorrect for Middlesex — London and all that. Worse, the player sort of controls Middlesex for more or less the whole game and may or may not ever come to control Yorkshire.
I had to use numbers slightly outside the 12th century, but every county now tracks its urban population separately from number of fees. This urban population is where most of the infantry comes from, though the rural population does still contribute some. This is a change I have wanted to make for some time, but what prompted doing it now was that some of those faction-based events do interact with the magnitude of urban population.
What's next
Finishing faction-based events, including the minor factions. When that's done, the game should technically be playable from beginning to end. There is still more necessary content, especially relating to spouse and children. There is other content I want to do as well, plus some technical work on options and such. However I think the earliest round of testing can come before some of those things.
More next time!