October in review
Since the Steam page has been created, I've done very little in the way of marketing. That is something that will be a struggle going forward, I fear. Nevertheless, despite the lack of spreading the word, ~300 people have added the game to their wishlists. That's very helpful and I'm honestly blown away by the support. Thank you very much.
When DGR was in its earliest stages, everything was procedurally generated. For a game about alternate history that's not exactly brilliant, so at some point I decided to move the dial a few clicks towards the historical. Minor lords and titles are still created via procedural generation, but now there are some historical characters. The player's family in particular has fixed names and non-random traits. During the end of last month, most of that transition was completed.
The map has existed in some form from a very early version of the game. Unfortunately it wasn't very useful other than showing which kingdom owned which county. This was improved during the month: hovering over a county now creates a tool-tip telling what county it is, and clicking that county brings up information about who holds manors there. Here is a gif of it in action (ignore the debug console on top):
Beyond that, the rest of the time was spent writing content for the itinerant court phase. One thing we have in DGR but which is absent in other games is itinerant court. In continental Europe and especially the German realms, it was not uncommon for a ruler to spend most of their reign traveling from place to place within their lands. England, especially post-Conquest, was considerably more centralized, but this mode of governance was not entirely alien either. In game terms, this allows you to handle more local matters.
Gameplay wise, this phase is split into two types of event: a random event while traveling, then a matter to judge. The first part isn't terribly difficult to formulate, lots of good and bad things can happen when moving about. What matters did monarchs actually handle in local courts though? This proved a little difficult to pin down. Luckily, the National Archives (specifically the British version) preserves about 16,000 individual petitions. These were not necessarily local matters to be clear, and worse most were outside our time period. Writs of novel disseisin or mort d'ancestor for instance didn't even exist in our time period, yet they made up a significant body of the petitions I read. Still, there was plenty of material to work with.
The bulk of both types of these events is done. I'll probably add more later though. The next step, begun today, is adding small story hooks. As a player, I love it when a game remembers my decisions later. Much of this is accomplished mechanically in DGR, but I thought it would be worth the effort of having small events that trigger later based on smaller decisions. I'm adding these to the itinerant court section now, and might retrofit some previously written content to use them.
We'll see where that takes us!
When DGR was in its earliest stages, everything was procedurally generated. For a game about alternate history that's not exactly brilliant, so at some point I decided to move the dial a few clicks towards the historical. Minor lords and titles are still created via procedural generation, but now there are some historical characters. The player's family in particular has fixed names and non-random traits. During the end of last month, most of that transition was completed.
The map has existed in some form from a very early version of the game. Unfortunately it wasn't very useful other than showing which kingdom owned which county. This was improved during the month: hovering over a county now creates a tool-tip telling what county it is, and clicking that county brings up information about who holds manors there. Here is a gif of it in action (ignore the debug console on top):
Beyond that, the rest of the time was spent writing content for the itinerant court phase. One thing we have in DGR but which is absent in other games is itinerant court. In continental Europe and especially the German realms, it was not uncommon for a ruler to spend most of their reign traveling from place to place within their lands. England, especially post-Conquest, was considerably more centralized, but this mode of governance was not entirely alien either. In game terms, this allows you to handle more local matters.
Gameplay wise, this phase is split into two types of event: a random event while traveling, then a matter to judge. The first part isn't terribly difficult to formulate, lots of good and bad things can happen when moving about. What matters did monarchs actually handle in local courts though? This proved a little difficult to pin down. Luckily, the National Archives (specifically the British version) preserves about 16,000 individual petitions. These were not necessarily local matters to be clear, and worse most were outside our time period. Writs of novel disseisin or mort d'ancestor for instance didn't even exist in our time period, yet they made up a significant body of the petitions I read. Still, there was plenty of material to work with.
The bulk of both types of these events is done. I'll probably add more later though. The next step, begun today, is adding small story hooks. As a player, I love it when a game remembers my decisions later. Much of this is accomplished mechanically in DGR, but I thought it would be worth the effort of having small events that trigger later based on smaller decisions. I'm adding these to the itinerant court section now, and might retrofit some previously written content to use them.
We'll see where that takes us!