Arbitology: Dei Gratia Rex News

Welcome to another monthly review post. There's a fair bit this time, so let's jump right in.




The big one first: it is in the best interest of the game to push the planned release date back.

I have been pushing hard for a release on May 13th. In order to do launch right, there are a number of things that need to be in place which just aren't right now. Moreover as the date approached, more and more game content also ended up on the cutting room floor. If I had forged ahead anyway, I'm almost certain it would have ended badly.

I also considered doing an early access release on that day. Some people were strongly in favor of this. Others were considerably less enthusiastic. Ultimately what tipped the balance for me was seeing a YouTuber talking about a different early access game. He said something to the effect of it being a game that they played briefly but then decided to ignore because they didn't want to ruin the experience of playing the finished game. For a game like Dei Gratia Rex, I feel like there is real risk of ruining the final experience by playing an incomplete version, both for content creators and players alike.

This deadline was a hard, external deadline with some consequences attached. It's not the end of the world, but please know that I did not take this decision lightly. That said, the silver lining is that I can now do what's needed for the game without arbitrary deadlines hanging over my head. I still very much want to launch sooner rather than later though.




In more positive news, most of the new art is in and integrated with the game. The line-fillers I wrote about a while ago now use real art instead of placeholders!



There are new miniatures!



Also those large, uncomfortable stretches of empty space that appeared on some pages tend to get illustrated with weird marginalia now.






There has been a lot of behind the scenes work. However, now that I can, I have taken the opportunity to add some new utility features. Specifically there's better bug logging, more comfortable unique game IDs (base32 instead of hex), and the player portrait is now a clickable shortcut to the player's character information. Also, as a result of early playtesting, I found that the game wasn't forceful enough when mentioning things that aught to be done, like addressing unfilled council positions or making a big deal about Lent. Notifications of this sort have been improved.






More work on the game of course. However, also look for an improved store presence soon-ish. The store page was put up a long time ago, and the game has definitely improved in the interim. I'm not exactly good at making buttons and such either. There is some new branding artwork to tie everything together, and I'll have some help with the redesign. I think it is going to be much better!

More to come next time!

Welcome to another monthly update post! There are a few topics this month, so I'll dive right in.




Now that wars are playable from beginning to end, I ran quite a few to look for problems. I also had the privilege of getting input from a friend who played for a bit. I learned a few things from this: raiding was underpowered, war was too cheap, extorting money from a defeated opponent was a bit too good, battle could be a little more attainable, and small wars could get dragged out to an unreasonable degree.

To buff raiding, county ruin values now can drive defections. County levies provide the bulk of the infantry and tend to be a bit more reliable than the troops provided by feudal elites. Beyond the customary 40 days per year required of them, the latter take a certain amount of convincing, after all. Raiding now provides a way to indirectly attack the county levies. If you ruin their lands and homes, men will begin defecting.



Previously raiding was a good way to get money. Unfortunately this was not especially relevant. I initially balanced the revenues based on the historical data my research uncovered. Wherever possible I want to adhere to history. However this is going to have to be a point of departure in the service of gameplay. Tax revenues are a bit lower now, troops demand higher wages now, and forcing the payment of a literal king's ransom from a defeated enemy is now much more difficult.

As I've mentioned in previous dev diaries, pitched battles in this period were quite rare indeed. The war system I created doesn't envision that every conflict, or even most conflicts, would contain one. That seems to fly in the face of player expectations though. Part of this is a communications problem; I'm planning on writing some ever so slightly railroaded events to teach proper 12th century tactics. For the time being however I did make it somewhat more easy to force battle on an enemy that doesn't want it and very easy to force battle on an enemy who is heavily outnumbered.



To speed wars, especially small ones, along, there is now a war weariness system. After hostilities have been going on for some time, the belligerent who is doing better at sieges gets small by steady gains to war score. The exact algorithm is based on percentage of land under control, so this factor is highly relevant against a small opponent, but only of minor concern against one of the larger kingdoms.




It turned out that I had some work to do to get the AI to properly use its casus belli, especially since this can interrupt whatever else you may be doing. There was also a little bit that needed to be done to allow the AI to present and properly value an initial offer at a peace talk — even if it has understood counterproposals for some time. All that is done; wars are fully playable from beginning to end.






Naturally, any strategy game needs an autosave system. I was going to add this later, but I'm chasing a few annoying bugs at the moment. Being able to load directly to where the problem is (or even the turn before) is hugely helpful! While I was revisting the save code, I went ahead and added some integrity checks and another line to the save file browser to show character name and in-game year.






The final batch of art is almost finished! Once it is, expect a few more decorations on the screenshots where this is now empty space. Also expect improvements to the store page. Despite being quite some time since the last art was done, the style of the new work is wonderfully consistent with the existing art.

Additionally I'm very excited to announce that Dei Gratia Rex has a nearly complete lute-based soundtrack! The soundtrack is composed principally of variations on existing medieval works and is played on a real instrument. More info to come when it's all finalized.

I'm really fortunate to work with such talented people.




I'm still mulling what will happen in May. I don't think I am going to make full launch in time for that deadline. I could release into early access then. Some people have strongly suggested this, others have warned against it. It's a hard decision, and there is some pain associated with not launching early access then. That said, I want to give people the best possible experience with this game.

I'll know one way or the other by the next post.

Welcome to another first Saturday update post! Just a few quick topics this time.




I'm tentatively planning to release on May 13th. There are some external deadlines in play, but that's not surprising for a project that's gone on as long as Arbitology: Dei Gratia Rex has. I'm crunching to make this, but if it slips then I'm planning at the least to enter early access at that point.

I'm a bit leery of early access if I'm honest. Lots of games I've followed entered early access only to remain there for years and never release; I absolutely want to avoid that fate. I'd much rather do a full release and be judged on what is available at that point, and then support the game with free content patches going forward. I'm definitely interested in opinions on this, though: would you rather buy a game in early access, or a full release that will be getting free content patches?

In other news, I'm pleased to announce that the soundtrack is coming along nicely! Last month, in a bit of serendipity, I found a composer who understood what I had in mind for the project. The music is principally based on existing works — but with some variations and flourishes — and recorded on a real lute. Several tracks are done and more are coming; I can't wait to share more on this!




I finished the melee section I mentioned last time. There's not a lot more to say here, so here are some screenshots of new stuff instead:



Once I got morale calculations pinned down, I went back and added an optional pre-battle speech. This is of course mutually exclusive with the surprise charge tactic, and in any case you can skip it if you're not an especially talky king. This one was a fun way to get some effects from lots of skills. If you've not read some of the earlier updates, a quick guide: the redder the option, the riskier it is (in this case, the risk coming from your associated skill). Also the stricken options can still, usually, be chosen, but to do so you must spend willpower, a terribly limited resource. Forcing through a choice in this manner also usually affects your personality.






It took a fair bit of time to get the numbers balanced for battles, and maybe there's still some to do there. I'm hoping to play through a few more entire wars to see how it goes. As mentioned earlier though: pitched battles in this era were rare. Unless one side or the other has a marked advantage, battles like this may not even happen at all in a given war.

Also I did some very early play testing with other people. A few missing things were added and some confusing text was changed. It also made me aware of some things that the game did not communicate well enough. I hope to do some more of this in the coming months!

More to come next time. After that post, I'll likely deviate from the monthly schedule though. With any luck, there will be more things to talk about!

Another first Saturday of the month has arrived and with it another update post.




These aren't yet totally finished, but they are pretty close. There is enough done to discuss them at least!



In common with many strategy games dealing with medieval warfare, Arbitology: Dei Gratia Rex breaks battles into a series of phases. These battles start with a deployment phase as shown above. Each arrangement will unlock different tactics in the next phase, the approach.



Here are a few different possibilities. At the start of battle there is a certain distance between the armies. Depending on which tactics are used, that distance is reduced (or not) at a commensurate rate. When the distance reaches zero, the melee phase begins.



Melee phase is still under too active development to show screens, but it works in a very similar way. A number of tactics will be available based on how things are going. The opposition chooses a tactic simultaneously and the results of these choices will result in damage to one or both armies based on the specifics and the sizes of the armies.

When morale on one side falls too low, it will break and run. Pitched battles were generally uncommon during this period, and even rarer were battles fought to the last man. When this happens combat transitions into a pursuit phase — but be on guard against feint tactics!




Pitched battles aren't the only sort of battle. It's often advantageous to engage in limited skirmishes instead. There are fewer risks, especially if you have an advantage in light infantry and men-at-arms.






Testing out combat revealed some funny cases in which a force could be reduced to nothing. This ended up needing some special logic to bounce the skeleton force to a safe county where it could try to reinforce. This naturally comes with a heavy war score penalty and balanced values hit.



The AI is now a little smarter about seeking out or avoiding battles and skirmishes as well. On the other hand, the AI no longer cheats to have perfect reconnaissance while the player must expend precious time to get that information.




I'm pleased to announce that I have in fact approved a new batch of art and it is well under way! It will be some time before there are things to show, but I'm excited to see what will come. Hopefully there will soon be additional news on this front as well.

I also wrote a launcher for the game! DGR is actually made using web technology, targeting the desktop via NW.js (think Electron). Some people have some legitimate grievances against this technology, but if you're making a game this is overwhelmingly styled text, 2D images, and a few animations, I content that it's one of the best choices. However one weakness is that packaging an app for launch is a bit of a process. There are some solutions provided, but I just went ahead and dusted off my C programming skills to make a standalone launcher. This is perhaps the most boring thing I'll ever write about in these updates, but it's a real step in my mind toward this game actually, you know, shipping.




In a previous update I mentioned that my local game dev group was having its second annual summit in January. Unfortunately this did not actually happen. Given pandemic conditions it was scheduled to be a digital only event. Some things came up and a few people had to pull out, resulting in cancellation. By that time however I had already written my talk, so I just recorded for YouTube.

I'm not very good at recording video and this was a very spur of the moment thing without a lot of preparation. My apologies for the quality here. That said, if you're interested in a short talk about one method of dealing with the combinatorial explosion in narrative design (or alternatively some nuts and bolts of DGR events) here's that video:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Thanks for reading, more to come next month!

First and foremost, happy New Year, everyone! It has been quite a ride, but hopefully things will be better this year than they were in the last.




Work on pitched battles has started. This is the very last piece of the war section. As frequently happens, there's nothing terribly good to show just yet, but here's a teaser:



Also on the agenda was line-fillers. Line-fillers, in a medieval context, are small illustrations placed at the end of a line of text which continue to the right margin. Medieval scribes loved patterns and hated empty space, so this even extended to the ends of lines. More practically, spacing was also a bit different in manuscripts than in modern writing. I've added these to DGR:



I'm currently repurposing some existing icons. However more appropriate art is going to be added before launch; until then I'll keep the setting off for most screenshots. Speaking of which, there will be one more batch of art assets! There are a few more miniatures that need to be added, plus some general decorations like the line-fillers and such. Also I missed the letter 'Æ' (that is, the AE ligature) when I commissioned the first set of art. It turns out that there are still Anglo-Saxons milling about in the 12th century and some of their names start with Æ. I've been writing around this omission thus far, but it would be a lot easier to be able to have that majuscule available.




The game has grown quite a lot over the year. The main accomplishment was most of a war system. In retrospect I should have made that part simpler and more abstract. A province-based map-staring war game delivered via hundreds of narrative events that tie into a simulation of people and kingdoms with a robust peace negotiation system could be a standalone game, at least it could be at indie scale. Regardless, what's done is done. I do think it will be worth it in the end though!

The simulation greatly improved as well, and I finally worked gameplay effects into the economics. Beyond that, a number of smaller changes and tweaks, like the initial-stroke rubrication, were made.

On the whole I'm pleased with the progress. My productivity was greatly reduced this year, but frankly a lot of that is beyond my control. It was a hard year for everyone.




In news simultaneously good and bad, Arbitology: Dei Gratia Rex must launch at least by early May. I blew past the first hard deadline of the project last year, and some pain resulted from missing that date. Missing the next hard deadline would be worse. I'm hoping to be able to do a full launch then, but if it comes to it there will be an early access release at that time. Early access for me is like crowd funding: I don't want to be in a position where I disappoint people who have given me money. I very much believe in DGR, but I want to do everything I can to deliver the best possible experience from launch day on.

In other upcoming news, the game dev group of which I am a part is doing its second annual summit on the 16th of January at 3:00 PM EST (20:00 GMT). Since there are still pandemic concerns, this will be an online event that, as I understand it, will be streamed on Twitch. I'll be giving a talk on using floating modules to handle combinatorial explosion in narrative design, dissecting some DGR events as part of the presentation. If you're interested in the nuts and bolts of the game, please feel free to tune in! I'll have more information, including some links, in a future post this month.




Keep making it until it is done, as a wise person once suggested. It will be a bit tight, but I'm hoping for the best!