Dev Diary #36 - Worldbuilding 🏗️
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page.
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Worldbuilding is commonly associated with largely fictional worlds (think: Tolkien, Pratchett, or George Lucas) rather than art rooted in historical accuracy. Even in deeper alternate-history scenarios, the world is more of an extrapolation than an invention. Espiocracy, however, walks the path much closer to worldbuilding due to the subject matter (many "alleged" and "classified"), sheer need for details, and requirements posed by the emergent nature of gameplay.
Today we'll explore the ontology of our game world.
As hinted in DD#24, the entire world is built out of entities (a conceptual element of the domain of discourse, or just a fancy word for a thing that is less material than "a thing" and less mathematical than "an element"). These are divided into two main categories: physical objects and mental concepts.
Subject to change and already slightly outdated.
In an implementation closer to colony builders rather than classic strategy games, all entities have parameters, belong to hierarchic categories, are dynamic, can be manipulated, and can interact with other things. Instead of designing strict rulesets with hardcoded units, the game bakes an inherently emergent simulation, where every cog in the machine - every country, player, ideology, city, and so on - can be potentially modified.
All mechanics described in the previous 35 dev diaries utilize this system to some extent. There are even mechanics mostly nailed by sheer relationships between these entities. For instance, an intelligence operation launched by the player exists in the game world as a mental concept, which means that it can be even a subject of a view (eg. guilt after assassinating X), which in turn is a thought that, unless recorded on a medium of thought such as documents, resides only in the mind of a human or a group of people and can perish with death of minds harboring this thought. This is not a special mechanic for generating and then killing guilty operatives, it's natural worldbuilding. The possibilities, also for modding, can be spectacular - technically, it is possible to develop a 1984-ish mod where players can erase entire mental concepts from existence, even countries (as an organization, as a mental concept from the minds of people, and from all the records). Likewise, on the physical side of the entity spectrum, any physical object can be destroyed, up to the hellish mod which can take an advantage of the fact the Moon is also a physical object in the game world. (Kōan: will biblically accurate angels be modded in as physical objects or mental concepts?)
[h2]Traits[/h2]
To illustrate the power of universal entities building the game world, let's take a look at an innocent feature: traits.
Game designers usually pick a single entity (or a few) to be fleshed out by traits. This is a result of their costly implementation and maintenance - that is, costly if you implement entities separately. In Espiocracy, all world entities can get traits and the same traits may be even applied to more than one type of entity because they are implemented on the level of hierarchic categories (and because the code doesn't shy away from the OOP beauty of C#). Here's an example of a city with a set of traits:
"Sea of Rubble" can be applied to any kind of infrastructure - for instance to the economy of a nuked country. To find another example, "Impulsive" can be a trait of any human - an operative, a president, or a witness. Beyond storytelling and modding possibilities, traits can also form the basis of universal decisions, such as rebuilding critical infrastructure or transport networks to remove its "Sea of Rubble" trait.
[h2]Gameplay[/h2]
The universality of entities is reflected by the user interface. Any entity can be selected. A click on a country on the map de facto selects it as an organization, one of the actual entities existing in the world:
After selecting an entity, you get not only details about it (either a standard rundown of details or a designed widget for more important categories such as above), but also hyperlinks to related entities (eg. local events listed above are links to relevant mental concepts), and possible interactions (buttons on the right).
Interactions follow the same principle of emergence. All items can be moved or stolen, all humans can be killed, all thoughts can be disseminated, and so on. Moreover, many of these interactions are enhanced by the rich toolbox of an intelligence agency, meaning that the player can for instance pull off ~20 types of intelligence operations against any human in the game world, from kidnapping all the way to expelling.
[h2]New Entities[/h2]
Entities in the world are initialized historically (more on that in the next section) and spawned during the campaign. At the moment, there are three methods of procedural generation:
[h2]Historicity[/h2]
It is said that a historical game becomes an alt-history game the second it is unpaused. Espiocracy, to pursue more interesting gameplay, takes it one step further and by default engages the engine of alternate history before the game is unpaused.
This is motivated mainly by the huge benefit of hindsight issues in the world of espionage. Take for instance very popular case of Kim Philby - at the start of the game, in 1946, he was a high-ranking member of MI6 and a Soviet spy. Featuring him precisely in this form creates an obvious degenerate strategy for at least two players, a move so obvious that it's a meaningless chore instead of genuine gameplay (British player should always chase Philby, Soviet player should always recall Philby before he's imprisoned).
The solution? Gradual randomization in the form of historicity setting.
10/10 corresponds to Philby in MI6 and all the other entities roughly the same as in history. It is still alternate history (some holes in historical records have to be filled) but players interested in historical accuracy will still be covered. While I believe that this type of gameplay has many disadvantages in the context of espionage, I'm a larger believer in giving players full customization of experience.
Every lower level gradually randomizes locations, dates, types, and entities themselves. This is implemented in a two-fold way - by actual randomization of the initial state and running a simulation of the game world before the start date, longer with a lower historicity level.
Default recommended level will be probably set to 8/10. This is where there is a high-ranking Soviet agent in the West but not Philby and not in MI6. It also corresponds to more scrambled plans of actors in the game world, slightly altered incoming political changes, or modified views, facilitated by approximately two months of pre-game simulation.
Lowering it further starts to build the world in a more verbatim sense - for instance, changing the position of fossil fuel deposits (to the point where Arabian oil ceases to be a hindsight). By elongating pre-start simulation and lifting limits on its course, it may even lead to slightly changed borders or different political processes in place, all while ensuring relative historical plausibility (eg. Germany may start as an already unified neutral state).
[h2]Final Remarks[/h2]
Next dev diary will be posted on February 24th.
If you're not already wishlisting Espiocracy, consider doing it:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1670650/Espiocracy/
There is also a small community around Espiocracy:
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"You had to start wondering how the fresh water got in and the sewage got out... World building from the bottom up, to use a happy phrase, is more fruitful than world building from top-down" - Terry Pratchett
---
Worldbuilding is commonly associated with largely fictional worlds (think: Tolkien, Pratchett, or George Lucas) rather than art rooted in historical accuracy. Even in deeper alternate-history scenarios, the world is more of an extrapolation than an invention. Espiocracy, however, walks the path much closer to worldbuilding due to the subject matter (many "alleged" and "classified"), sheer need for details, and requirements posed by the emergent nature of gameplay.
Today we'll explore the ontology of our game world.
As hinted in DD#24, the entire world is built out of entities (a conceptual element of the domain of discourse, or just a fancy word for a thing that is less material than "a thing" and less mathematical than "an element"). These are divided into two main categories: physical objects and mental concepts.
Subject to change and already slightly outdated.In an implementation closer to colony builders rather than classic strategy games, all entities have parameters, belong to hierarchic categories, are dynamic, can be manipulated, and can interact with other things. Instead of designing strict rulesets with hardcoded units, the game bakes an inherently emergent simulation, where every cog in the machine - every country, player, ideology, city, and so on - can be potentially modified.
All mechanics described in the previous 35 dev diaries utilize this system to some extent. There are even mechanics mostly nailed by sheer relationships between these entities. For instance, an intelligence operation launched by the player exists in the game world as a mental concept, which means that it can be even a subject of a view (eg. guilt after assassinating X), which in turn is a thought that, unless recorded on a medium of thought such as documents, resides only in the mind of a human or a group of people and can perish with death of minds harboring this thought. This is not a special mechanic for generating and then killing guilty operatives, it's natural worldbuilding. The possibilities, also for modding, can be spectacular - technically, it is possible to develop a 1984-ish mod where players can erase entire mental concepts from existence, even countries (as an organization, as a mental concept from the minds of people, and from all the records). Likewise, on the physical side of the entity spectrum, any physical object can be destroyed, up to the hellish mod which can take an advantage of the fact the Moon is also a physical object in the game world. (Kōan: will biblically accurate angels be modded in as physical objects or mental concepts?)
[h2]Traits[/h2]
To illustrate the power of universal entities building the game world, let's take a look at an innocent feature: traits.
Game designers usually pick a single entity (or a few) to be fleshed out by traits. This is a result of their costly implementation and maintenance - that is, costly if you implement entities separately. In Espiocracy, all world entities can get traits and the same traits may be even applied to more than one type of entity because they are implemented on the level of hierarchic categories (and because the code doesn't shy away from the OOP beauty of C#). Here's an example of a city with a set of traits:
"Sea of Rubble" can be applied to any kind of infrastructure - for instance to the economy of a nuked country. To find another example, "Impulsive" can be a trait of any human - an operative, a president, or a witness. Beyond storytelling and modding possibilities, traits can also form the basis of universal decisions, such as rebuilding critical infrastructure or transport networks to remove its "Sea of Rubble" trait.
[h2]Gameplay[/h2]
The universality of entities is reflected by the user interface. Any entity can be selected. A click on a country on the map de facto selects it as an organization, one of the actual entities existing in the world:
After selecting an entity, you get not only details about it (either a standard rundown of details or a designed widget for more important categories such as above), but also hyperlinks to related entities (eg. local events listed above are links to relevant mental concepts), and possible interactions (buttons on the right).
Interactions follow the same principle of emergence. All items can be moved or stolen, all humans can be killed, all thoughts can be disseminated, and so on. Moreover, many of these interactions are enhanced by the rich toolbox of an intelligence agency, meaning that the player can for instance pull off ~20 types of intelligence operations against any human in the game world, from kidnapping all the way to expelling.
[h2]New Entities[/h2]
Entities in the world are initialized historically (more on that in the next section) and spawned during the campaign. At the moment, there are three methods of procedural generation:
- New entities are derived from existing entities. A population may create a new actor to act on popular views, sprawling economy may lead to the establishment of a new city, and so on. Entities can also undergo internal-external changes, such as organizations creating branch organizations, a new organization created in a merger, or splitting one entity into a few new entities.
- For most important categories, such as actors or countries, there are sublayers - they contain entities nominally belonging to a different category, but with a high potential to be promoted. For example, the "sublayer of actors" contains people and organizations who are not yet (or no longer) influential enough to be actors influencing the country and the world. Usually, when an existing actor is deposed, the vacuum is filled by promoting one of the leading subactors (which creates nice small gameplay around supporting/subverting them to reap benefits later).
- Inventing from zero is either achieved via simulation engines (eg. top intelligence operatives created by a separate full simulation or new witnesses spawned as side products of an operational simulation) or, in simpler cases (eg. spy gear), spawned by various mechanics.
[h2]Historicity[/h2]
It is said that a historical game becomes an alt-history game the second it is unpaused. Espiocracy, to pursue more interesting gameplay, takes it one step further and by default engages the engine of alternate history before the game is unpaused.
This is motivated mainly by the huge benefit of hindsight issues in the world of espionage. Take for instance very popular case of Kim Philby - at the start of the game, in 1946, he was a high-ranking member of MI6 and a Soviet spy. Featuring him precisely in this form creates an obvious degenerate strategy for at least two players, a move so obvious that it's a meaningless chore instead of genuine gameplay (British player should always chase Philby, Soviet player should always recall Philby before he's imprisoned).
The solution? Gradual randomization in the form of historicity setting.
10/10 corresponds to Philby in MI6 and all the other entities roughly the same as in history. It is still alternate history (some holes in historical records have to be filled) but players interested in historical accuracy will still be covered. While I believe that this type of gameplay has many disadvantages in the context of espionage, I'm a larger believer in giving players full customization of experience.
Every lower level gradually randomizes locations, dates, types, and entities themselves. This is implemented in a two-fold way - by actual randomization of the initial state and running a simulation of the game world before the start date, longer with a lower historicity level.
Default recommended level will be probably set to 8/10. This is where there is a high-ranking Soviet agent in the West but not Philby and not in MI6. It also corresponds to more scrambled plans of actors in the game world, slightly altered incoming political changes, or modified views, facilitated by approximately two months of pre-game simulation.
Lowering it further starts to build the world in a more verbatim sense - for instance, changing the position of fossil fuel deposits (to the point where Arabian oil ceases to be a hindsight). By elongating pre-start simulation and lifting limits on its course, it may even lead to slightly changed borders or different political processes in place, all while ensuring relative historical plausibility (eg. Germany may start as an already unified neutral state).
[h2]Final Remarks[/h2]
Next dev diary will be posted on February 24th.
If you're not already wishlisting Espiocracy, consider doing it:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1670650/Espiocracy/
There is also a small community around Espiocracy:
---
"You had to start wondering how the fresh water got in and the sewage got out... World building from the bottom up, to use a happy phrase, is more fruitful than world building from top-down" - Terry Pratchett