A New Year begins
The first Saturday of the month — and year — is upon us. First of all, I hope everyone had a safe and happy Christmas, Hanukkah, Steam Winter Sale, or whatever other winter observance you may happen to celebrate. Now is a time for reflection on the previous year and looking forward to the next.
Perhaps the thing I am most proud of this year wasn't writing any events, quite the opposite in fact! In June, I finally deleted a certain temporary event. Much of the content I wrote before this point was player-directed content and content contained in specific modes (like warfare, the itinerant court, and the introductory phase in Normandy). As of last summer, I finally had enough main-phase random events that I could delete a min-weight placeholder. Hurray!
That's not all of course. Looking back on some older updates, I find the old book texture a bit jarring. That was among the visual updates.
That reminds me, I really should update the store page with screenshots that showcase these new visuals.
Otherwise, lots of content! I wrote hundreds of events of many types, from simple random events touching traits, factions, and locations, to complex systems of interfacing with laws. I'm very much looking forward to the future.
I knew my schedule would be a bit fragmented in December, so I shifted gears to work on a few systems that don't necessarily require long periods of concentration. One of these was another go at the handwriting effect which I outlined previously.
The basic idea was good, but there were some problems. The goal was to better simulate text written by hand, while still remaining easily legible. To that end, I introduced a subtle jitter in spacing and letter form. This was all fine and I'm actually a little proud of it. However there was also a random jitter in opacity which, in retrospect, does not make all that much sense. This was changed such that ink levels start high, decline slowly up to a point, then rapidly decline. After a threshold is reached, the digital scribe, so to speak, refreshes their ink and continues.
In the second paragraph, you can notice that the scribe is running low on ink when they get to the word "skill."
I also finally got around to making a functional options menu.
I had an unexpected chance to demo the game in real life somewhat recently. Unfortunately I was just hand-editing options in a JSON file at that point. So when I did the demonstration, it had to be without the benefit of music, which was tragic. The options menu solves that particular problem, should it happen again. It was about time, honestly.
Conspicuous by their absence are options involving resolution. Worry not, that's on the agenda. I have a bit of a wild idea that should result in incredible flexibility, should it work as well here as it does on my website. On the other hand, I'm not sure it's going to be performant. Should that fail, I will at least create a few common resolution layouts by hand.
This is still on-going. I find writing these events a bit slow if I'm honest. In the first place, they say "write what you know." It may come as a surprise to some, but I've never actually been married to a stranger for political purposes. The sources don't offer as many details as I'd like here, either. I find myself having to invent situations and then proof them for historical accuracy.
On a technical level, these are also large events. Consider that DGR tracks thousands of characters, most of whom are randomly generated. It would not be possible, nor especially desirable, for me to write thousands of different sets of events based on one's spouse. On the other hand, writing one set of events for highly varied personalities wasn't all that appealing either. In the end, I decided on the compromise of seven different templates. From a very early point I was using templates for random characters anyway, so it seemed natural.
Here is a small taste of that in action. Depending on your spouse's personality, they will have different interests, reactions to your deeds, and requests of you.
I feel as though I've said this before, but finishing the family-based events. I think I have a workable framework to get these done a bit faster now, at least.
More next time!
2022
Perhaps the thing I am most proud of this year wasn't writing any events, quite the opposite in fact! In June, I finally deleted a certain temporary event. Much of the content I wrote before this point was player-directed content and content contained in specific modes (like warfare, the itinerant court, and the introductory phase in Normandy). As of last summer, I finally had enough main-phase random events that I could delete a min-weight placeholder. Hurray!
That's not all of course. Looking back on some older updates, I find the old book texture a bit jarring. That was among the visual updates.
That reminds me, I really should update the store page with screenshots that showcase these new visuals.
Otherwise, lots of content! I wrote hundreds of events of many types, from simple random events touching traits, factions, and locations, to complex systems of interfacing with laws. I'm very much looking forward to the future.
More visuals
I knew my schedule would be a bit fragmented in December, so I shifted gears to work on a few systems that don't necessarily require long periods of concentration. One of these was another go at the handwriting effect which I outlined previously.
The basic idea was good, but there were some problems. The goal was to better simulate text written by hand, while still remaining easily legible. To that end, I introduced a subtle jitter in spacing and letter form. This was all fine and I'm actually a little proud of it. However there was also a random jitter in opacity which, in retrospect, does not make all that much sense. This was changed such that ink levels start high, decline slowly up to a point, then rapidly decline. After a threshold is reached, the digital scribe, so to speak, refreshes their ink and continues.
In the second paragraph, you can notice that the scribe is running low on ink when they get to the word "skill."
Options menu
I also finally got around to making a functional options menu.
I had an unexpected chance to demo the game in real life somewhat recently. Unfortunately I was just hand-editing options in a JSON file at that point. So when I did the demonstration, it had to be without the benefit of music, which was tragic. The options menu solves that particular problem, should it happen again. It was about time, honestly.
Conspicuous by their absence are options involving resolution. Worry not, that's on the agenda. I have a bit of a wild idea that should result in incredible flexibility, should it work as well here as it does on my website. On the other hand, I'm not sure it's going to be performant. Should that fail, I will at least create a few common resolution layouts by hand.
Spouse events, continued
This is still on-going. I find writing these events a bit slow if I'm honest. In the first place, they say "write what you know." It may come as a surprise to some, but I've never actually been married to a stranger for political purposes. The sources don't offer as many details as I'd like here, either. I find myself having to invent situations and then proof them for historical accuracy.
On a technical level, these are also large events. Consider that DGR tracks thousands of characters, most of whom are randomly generated. It would not be possible, nor especially desirable, for me to write thousands of different sets of events based on one's spouse. On the other hand, writing one set of events for highly varied personalities wasn't all that appealing either. In the end, I decided on the compromise of seven different templates. From a very early point I was using templates for random characters anyway, so it seemed natural.
Here is a small taste of that in action. Depending on your spouse's personality, they will have different interests, reactions to your deeds, and requests of you.
What's next
I feel as though I've said this before, but finishing the family-based events. I think I have a workable framework to get these done a bit faster now, at least.
More next time!