Arbitology: Dei Gratia Rex Release Date

16 Mar 2024Developer post

Not Dead Yet

It's definitely been a while this time. I do apologize for that. I have a great deal of difficulty writing these things when I don't have new features and content to talk about. The short version is this: DGR is not cancelled. My life situation changed dramatically in the last 14

It's definitely been a while this time. I do apologize for that. I have a great deal of difficulty writing these things when I don't have new features and content to talk about.

The short version is this: DGR is not cancelled. My life situation changed dramatically in the last 14 months, and I'm still figuring out how to get things done under less than ideal conditions. I did make a few more small things to prevent atrophy of skill, and they will be linked in the companion Tweet.

If you're interested in more details, read on. Fair warning though: I can't promise that it will be especially riveting material.

Blog

The last time I wrote one of these, I mentioned a death in the family and quite a mess left in their wake. That's largely resolved at this point. On the other hand, I've had to pivot to, first and foremost, being a caregiver for my aged and mobility-challenged mother. This consumes a lot of time. More than that though, it consumes time in small and medium chunks throughout the day, every day. I didn't realize what a luxury it was to lock myself in a ~~closet~~ office for 6-to-8 hours per day, heads-down on the game. I cannot do that anymore. I also didn't realize how nice it was to work on a table rather than trying to steal snatches of time with a laptop while spending hours per week in waiting rooms. Moreover, I didn't appreciate even little things like being able to wear headphones.

Had I made different life choices, I could no doubt have hired someone for this. Alas, the money I did have was spent long ago. It wouldn't have gone far anyway, given the absolute state of the Medical-Financial Complex in the Land of the Free. This falls to me to do, and honestly I don't mind it. There are far worse things in this world, and it's really the least I can do to repay all that has been done for me. All the same, it has made forward progress on DGR difficult.

All that said, I refuse to give up. It's probably a sunk cost fallacy, but I'm not letting all the time and money I invested in this go to waste. That would be a genuine tragedy, even if I have no illusions about what the most likely outcomes in indie games are. If I'm honest though, this game dev nonsense is one of the few things I have, and DGR is the only project of mine that's ever got any sort of traction.

Speaking of which, in this brief pause I've taken on DGR, I made a few small games. They're playable in the browser, free, and, insofar as such a thing exists in games, finished. There will be details on that in the companion Tweet, since I can't really put the links here. I will say I am somewhat pleased with Dream Warrior. The others perhaps not so much, but I worked out some cool tech in all of them that I'm going to add to DGR. Working on simple things of limited scope unburdened by the weight of thousands of simulated characters with 50-ish possible qualities and two-and-a-half novels worth of text has been about my limit of late.

What's next

In all honesty I don't know.

Assuming my plans hold, I will be attending a local convention with an equally local game dev group again this year. In support of that, I'll freshen some things up here Very Soon (no, really), and hopefully replace that awful trailer I made years ago.

I should have known better than to post definite plans with dates attached in the last update. I'll forgo that this time. Now that I've got some (recent) experience in finishing, I'm really going to try to apply that to DGR in the coming months.

If I can help it though, I will at least endeavor to communicate better. Nine months between updates was a bit excessive.

Original post

20 Jun 2023Developer post

April, May, and June

It's been a while, hasn't it? I've honestly been a bit stuck between competing desires. Until recently, I had never missed a monthly update. Some were a bit late, but even through the pandemic years, I did not miss any monthly updates. On the other hand, I really don't like to po

It's been a while, hasn't it?

I've honestly been a bit stuck between competing desires. Until recently, I had never missed a monthly update. Some were a bit late, but even through the pandemic years, I did not miss any monthly updates. On the other hand, I really don't like to post bad updates and even more so, as mentioned earlier, I don't want to use this space as a personal blog. In the end, in order to post something, I'm afraid it will have to be a less than good update and also a bit of a blog.

On the other hand, if you're interested in playing something else I've made, there might be something of interest here.

Blog

In late March, my stepfather passed away. He left in his wake a bit of a mess, both physical (because he was a hoarder) and financial (because he had a lot of debts, some of which were at > 28% interest). Further, my mother is not in particularly good health and needs significant assistance in even routine tasks. I've been working to fix those messes, while also having many new responsibilities. I have not taken to this new reality very easily, if I'm being honest.

I have faith in this project. That remains unchanged. Lately though, in light of my new circumstances, it has been hard to justify doing "unpaid labor." As such, very little work has been done on DGR in the last few months. Things will change. However, every time I think I've nearly rounded the corner, I find new things that sap my time and energy. This time I am not going to make any specific predictions, instead only saying that I do plan to return to as close to full time on DGR as is possible, as soon as is possible.

Dreams of Gold

I have been working on this game for over six years. I have been starting to have doubts about my ability to finish. Quite by chance, I found a post recruiting participants for a Narrative Design Jam. It's hosted on another site that, in addition to hosting jams, sells video game online. Valve, understandably, filters links to such sites. I don't blame them; were I operating something like Steam, I would not allow my partners to link to competitors either. There will be no links here, but I'm sure you can find it via my other social media.

Anyway, my efforts in May went to finishing something. I stripped down the DGR engine and made a narrative-focused game, Dreams of Gold. It didn't win the jam, but it was one of the nominees. I'm quite pleased with that result. More than that, I finished a game for the first time in a few years. Some people played it; indeed, you, too, could play it today if you wanted! It is a very different game though, and I would not be upset if you didn't.

I got some tangible benefits out of it also. I worked out a process (and wrote code to automate most of it) of producing pre-compiled builds, which is a lot nicer than shipping full source for everything. This will work more or less unchanged for DGR. I also got a few bug reports for the underlying engine. I have already applied these fixes to DGR.

Less pleasantly, there just wasn't an audience for the game. It's a weird art game, so that's to be expected. I wasn't quite expecting it to sink so hard, so soon though.

This has really inspired me to finish DGR. As niche as it is, there are levels. I admit, I was hoping something might happen with DoG, and maybe I might make a few other small games with micro budgets that may earn a tiny profit, so I could keep the lights on for a while via games. But no.

What's next

Now that I have found some ways to be at least a bit productive, I am going to get more done on DGR. Hopefully I can apply the lessons on finishing here as well. Also, as it's already the 20th, I'm not planning a post in early July, but instead resuming the regular cadence on the first Saturday in August.

Original post

02 Apr 2023Developer post

March Update

Welcome to another regular monthly update. The bad news is that there isn't much to report. The good news is things should be returning to something approaching normal by this time next week. I've still got a lot of other work to do now, both the paying kind and otherwise, but at

Welcome to another regular monthly update. The bad news is that there isn't much to report. The good news is things should be returning to something approaching normal by this time next week. I've still got a lot of other work to do now, both the paying kind and otherwise, but at least I should be able to carve out large blocks of time to work on DGR going forward.

I'd like to thank everyone for their patience and understanding. I really appreciate the kind messages.

What's in a name

Rather unexpectedly, there was a recent discussion about DGR on another forum. It's still going on at the time of writing, in fact! Also much to my surprise, there was a rather vigorous discussion of some of the names used.

DGR is an alt-historical scenario. From the beginning I have striven for "hard historical fiction," in the sense of hard sci-fi, however. I'm trying to get as many details right as is possible, even if I'm also allowing enough invention to allow the game to be replayable. This does include even superficial things like names.

A central conflict in this game is that of two competing claims to the English throne: the Norman claim, gained by the incomplete conquest, and the Saxon claim, from the northern barons' support of Edgar Ætheling. Both are of these are fairly large, strong realms. Both of them claim to be the real England.

I ended up with "Bryttania" — etymologically connected to the title "brytenwalda" — as the title for the Anglo-Saxon England, and simply "England" for the Norman England. I fully admit that the former isn't a good name. However, they aspire to more than a title like "Northumbria" communicates. A compelling argument was made in the aforementioned thread to have each side call themselves England, but in their own tongue: thus "Englaland" and "Angleterre" for Saxon and Norman respectively.

I'm not fully convinced of this myself. If someone were to briefly look at the above screenshot, they may not really know what those names meant. Almost everyone, on the other hand, will recognize "England." Either way, I would definitely not mind hearing more input on this!

In any case, that discussion inspired me to decouple the display name from the internal name. So regardless of which way I go, it will be easy enough to mod the name to your preference.

What's next

I'm honestly not sure. The more I try to plan things, the worse they seems to go. What I do know is that I'll let you all know on (or around!) the first Saturday of next month. Thanks for reading these updates!

Original post

07 Mar 2023Developer post

February Retrospective

Things continue to be hectic on my end. If you're interested in that sort of thing, there will be a few details at the end. Otherwise, here's a quick update on some new developments. Still more family events As expected, these continue. There are some events that set up long, ong

Things continue to be hectic on my end. If you're interested in that sort of thing, there will be a few details at the end. Otherwise, here's a quick update on some new developments.

Still more family events

As expected, these continue. There are some events that set up long, ongoing situations.

Ongoing doesn't mean perpetual though.

There was also a fair bit of work on an event with rather momentous implications. If you're familiar with some of the influences on DGR, you'll probably have expected this. However, unlike said influences, there are a few different species of this event, and you may or may not encounter it at all!

Blog

I'm kind of hesitant to turn these update posts into a personal blog. Also the common advice is to never talk about negative things in an official capacity. I'm going to go against the grain a bit, because I think everyone who has been following these updates should know what's going on.

Long story short, both of my parents are in old and have been in poor health for a number of months. One was recently admitted to hospice. There were some complications in getting to that point, which required quite a lot of work on my part. It may take days or it may take months, but this isn't a situation where recovery is possible. I have a lot of things to do on that front, and I cannot plan around any of them. This means I can't really block out large stretches for work, because there are frequent interruptions. I also have to be available to help them most of the time.

Further, DGR was always intended to be a 12-18 month project. Obviously that was massively arrogant on my part. The progenitor of this sort of game takes 5+ years to make one and is rather more experienced and talented than am I. Perhaps creating a simulation of thousands of characters was a bit of over-scoping as well. Either way, the money I set aside is long gone at this point, even if I brutally optimized my expenses and sold my valuables. When short term work appears, I more or less have to take it. I don't have anything right now, but in April there will be another fairly sizable contract.

All this means that work on DGR has slowed considerably. This isn't a choice I've made. This isn't an abandoned game, either. It's just the consequences of life (and taking too long in finishing). I'm sorry this post didn't have that much content. Hopefully next month will see a better post!

Original post

07 Feb 2023Developer post

January Update

The first Saturday of the month has come and gone. Apologies. I'm kind of behind on everything right now. I have an unfortunate amount of things going on right now, and will for some time to come. I'm still doing as much work as I can despite that, but sometimes things like updat

07 Jan 2023Developer post

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 forwa

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.

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!

Original post

05 Nov 2022Developer post

October report

Yet again, we've reached the first Saturday of the month, so it is time for an update. The Magnum Concilium continued In the previous update I mentioned a fair bit of hidden complexity in the Magnum Concilium. The good news is that this feature is almost entirely finished! More o

Yet again, we've reached the first Saturday of the month, so it is time for an update.

The Magnum Concilium continued

In the previous update I mentioned a fair bit of hidden complexity in the Magnum Concilium. The good news is that this feature is almost entirely finished! More on what "almost entirely" means later. The bad news is that it consumed way more time than I was expecting

To review, the Magnum Concilium was a great council of lords convened now and again by English kings to discuss important matters within the realm. In the time of the Conqueror, it was not particularly formalized and was held at the king's will. In later centuries, this body evolved into Parliament. In our time period, it is far closer to the former than the latter.

Not only can laws be affected, as discussed last time, but so too can other things. When acting in unison with the lords of the realm, many things can be done cleanly that would otherwise be considered tyrannical. Perhaps you want to increase taxes or disseise an enemy? These are among the possibilities.

Of course there's no guarantee that your tenants-in-chief will agree to such things. If you share a common enemy, then naturally they will want to see them suffer. Likewise lords who feel they do not possess enough land will happily support you in a bid to conquer more land, as they're likely to gain some of the spoils.

Other methods of building consensus are available as well. You could always try to argue in favor of your proposal. Favors gained through various methods can be called in as well.

Perhaps most interesting though is that the other lords have certain ideas about what aught to be done at these councils. If you lend your support to their causes, they might well support you in turn, assuming they aren't among your enemies of course.

What's next

When I say that this feature is "almost entirely" finished, I mean that everything is done that presently can be done. From the beginning of this feature, some actions were planned that involve the player's heir. Holding a grand knighting ceremony when he comes of age for example, or compelling the lords to pledge loyalty to your intended heir as you enter your twilight years.

While NPCs have no problems marrying, reproducing, and all that, I removed the player character from that system when I wrote the courtship and marriage content. At present, the player character isn't exactly producing heirs. I want all of that to be handled via events, as these sorts of things are fairly momentous life events, after all.

That content is next on the agenda. More next time!

Original post

01 Oct 2022Developer post

September in Review

It is, once again, the first Saturday of the month. It is time for another update. The Magnum Concilium The Magnum Concilium, that is the "great council," was an important instrument of governance in 12th century England. Now and again the king would summon all his tenants-in-chi

It is, once again, the first Saturday of the month. It is time for another update.

The Magnum Concilium

The Magnum Concilium, that is the "great council," was an important instrument of governance in 12th century England. Now and again the king would summon all his tenants-in-chief, as well as the most important clergy in the realm, to discuss matters of great importance. In later centuries, this body morphed into Parliament, but in our time period, this is the object of our concern.

From a gameplay perspective, I didn't think it was fitting that legal changes were only forced on the king. In previous posts I wrote about dealing with the major and minor factions. Sometimes they wanted a decree in their favor, other times they were willing to let slip a previous legal change in service of a beloved king. The clergy, in command of the power of binding and loosing, could even remove a pesky law imposed by others! However all of this is reactive. Being able to proactively make decisions is much more fun, so the main purpose of the Magnum Concilium is to allow for such player-directed interactions with the legal system. There are other matters the council can address, like war-making and revoking titles, but the law was the primary motivation.

The feature is still under active development, as it has proved a bit more complex than I had intended. Working on this even managed to reveal some performance bottlenecks(!) in autosave code(!!), so suffice it to say, some things may change.

Attending this council is a right granted only to the great lords and the king's personal advisors in the household, chapel, and exchequer.

Gathering the great lords is an excellent way to get focused advice from many voices. This is often higher quality advice than you might receive from individual meetings or at feasts.

You can make a number of proposals. However, the other lords will have certain ideas in mind as well. You might need to work with others to get their support, supporting their goals to win support for your own. On the other hand if you're feeling a bit tyrannical, you can force through what you wish even without support; the other lords will remember it though.

Location-based random events

The interplay between global prosperity and banditry and local ruin and unrest is largely finished, requiring only some balancing. Some random events were indeed written to support that.

It seems the good prior's concerns regarding Buckinghamshire were warranted.

What's next

Finishing the Magnum Concilium. I definitely think it will be worth it when finished, but there's a lot of hidden complexity here.

More next time!

Original post

03 Sep 2022Developer post

August Update

Once again we have reached the first Saturday of the month, so it is time for another update. More Faction-based Events The previous work on faction-based random events focused on the main concerns of the kingdom: nobility, clergy, and peasantry, as well as the nascent class of b

Once again we have reached the first Saturday of the month, so it is time for another update.

More Faction-based Events

The previous work on faction-based random events focused on the main concerns of the kingdom: nobility, clergy, and peasantry, as well as the nascent class of burgesses. These are important enough to be shown at all times, but there are other concerns in the kingdom as well.

Bandits are one such concern. There are numerous ways for bandits to infest the kingdom: dismissing mercenaries, poverty and ruin, angry peasants, and even some event outcomes. On the whole, having bandits around is unpleasant.

That's not to say it is all bad, though. If the problem festers, you might be able to ask for certain favors that are not available elsewhere.

Another of these concerns is the Jewish community. In our timeline, William I resettled many Jews from France to England, primarily to serve as moneylenders. Before this time, the economy in England was only semi-cash: some obligations were still paid in kind and William much preferred coin. In exchange for this, he placed the Jewish community directly under him without any intermediary. Should anyone do harm to a Jew, it directly concerned the Crown. On the other hand, English kings had a free hand to extract extortionate taxes from Jews.

Despite these protections, Jews frequently were the target of suspicions, accusations, and even violence. Shamefully, 12th century England was the birthplace of the blood libel in the case of William of Norwich. However, it was also a place where Aaron of Lincoln prospered to become the richest man in England, holding even more liquid wealth than the king. Moreover it was a place that could attract prominent Jewish scholars like Abraham ibn Ezra.

In short, it was a complicated time. It would be very safe and easy to ignore all of these things. However taking that path would not be compatible with "hard historical fiction." I've endeavored to present as much nuance as I'm able, while neither whitewashing the less savory bits nor indulging in gratuitous barbarity.

The treasury is also one of these concerns, if an abstract one as it is not really a faction. It is important enough to be shown at all times, but unlike the others it can't directly force you into a game over. Running it too low can, however, accelerate one of the other failure states. On the other hand, having an abundant treasury can open new possibilities, albeit very expensive ones.

What's next

I'm presently working on the interplay between the county-local values of unrest and ruin, and the global values of prosperity and banditry. This is mostly code, but there will probably be a tiny number of events to support this as well. Next I plan to work on tying up all the loose ends, mostly with making sure all the legal stuff affects what it should.

More next time!

Original post

06 Aug 2022Developer post

July Report

The first Saturday of the month has arrived, so let's look back on what happened in the previous month. It's a fair bit this time, so let's get to it! Faction-based random events As expected, much work was done on random events based on faction scores. I briefly touched on those

The first Saturday of the month has arrived, so let's look back on what happened in the previous month. It's a fair bit this time, so let's get to it!

Faction-based random events

As expected, much work was done on random events based on faction scores. I briefly touched on those last month. These events are caused by large factions in the realm, visible at all times on the scroll at the left of the screen. Sometimes they have disputes among themselves. Others times they directly petition for something from the crown. When things go badly, they can go very badly, like the noble rebellion I posted last month. Not all of these can eventually lead to a game over, but most can. It is not wise to antagonize one group too much.

It's not all bad though. Now and again, if they really like you, a faction can grant you a boon. These favors are sometimes rather powerful.

Quite a lot of these events have been created, but more are still required.

Legal effects

A lot of the work in preparing these faction-based random events is in creating effects and interactions. Among other things, this finally prompted me to code the legal system. Some of the things that are requested are laws benefiting a faction or reducing royal power. As you pass these, you might find your capacity to do things (at least without tyranny) wanes.

Other legal restrictions can be forced on you from outside. For example if you annoy the Church too much, the realm might be placed under interdict.

There are ways to revoke these decrees. If a faction likes you enough, it may decide it trusts you enough to no longer need a previous law, for example. It is a topic for another day, but with all this in place, I can build the Magnum Concilium feature to interact with the legal system. More on that another time though!

Visuals

I made some improvements to the visuals. First, I found myself often losing track of characters. Which William was my friend, which Edouard was my enemy? Now relations information is communicated via color: redder colors are enemies, bluer colors are friends.

You might have noticed, but there are new page textures as well. The previous one was fine, but always looked to me more like paper than vellum. Additionally, there are now several similar-yet-distinct page sets for increased visual variety.

I also introduced a very subtle jitter in the text. There are occasional deviations in spacing and weight on letters. Even professional medieval scribes didn't make perfect, mechanical letters every single time, after all. Here's an event with a lot of text. You may or may not notice examples at normal scale, but you can definitely notice it zoomed. In this way, it is like the minor randomness in the rubrications.

What's next

Finishing this faction and law stuff! After that, I'll see what's left to do before starting testing. I don't think much remains to be done at that point.

More next time!

Original post

02 Jul 2022Developer post

June Updates

It's the first Saturday of the month, so that means it's time to review the last month's progress. 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

It's the first Saturday of the month, so that means it's time to review the last month's progress.

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!

Original post

05 Jun 2022Developer post

May Developments

One day late, but the time for a monthly update post has come. Yet more trait-based random events The previous batch of 400-ish trait-based random events was finished during May. It took a bit longer than anticipated, but I also had a paid side project going on these last 2.5 mon

One day late, but the time for a monthly update post has come.

Yet more trait-based random events

The previous batch of 400-ish trait-based random events was finished during May. It took a bit longer than anticipated, but I also had a paid side project going on these last 2.5 months. For better and worse, that's more or less over now.

When I finished those events, I noticed a bit of a problem. These events all assume that the player has traits. I could see a scenario in which the player character, perhaps accidentally or perhaps on purpose, ends up without any personality traits. Being drab and painfully average just wouldn't do, so I wrote another medium-sized set of events that will move the needle. Here's one example:

Each of these options gives a reasonably large bump to one of the personality traits. What's interesting about these events though is that they have an impossibly low — but non-zero — weight most of the time. However if a player character happens to have a total trait sum under a certain threshold, this set of events have vastly higher weight. In DGR, every aspect of an event is a function, so even weights can do cool things like this.

This solves two problems: the one described above, but it also allowed me to finally delete a placeholder event. That was a change I was very happy to make.

What's Next

I'm being a bit of a broken record here, but what I said last time. The random events based on faction and season are the next things that need to be done, and then I really want to see testing start.

On another note, there was a thread about DGR recently, and one of the topics was modding. I've said from the beginning that event modding should be very easy, but modding other aspects would be hard. I kind of wonder how much interest there is in mods for DGR? Some of my influences are extremely moddable: Crusader Kings for instance has numerous high quality mods. On the other hand, I'm not sure there's even such a thing as a mod for King of Dragon Pass.

Dear reader, would you be interested in modding DGR? Mod tools are unlikely to appear at launch one way or the other. However there are a few decisions I need to make in the near future that will directly touch moddability.

Original post

07 May 2022Developer post

April Update

Once again, the first Saturday has arrived and with it a monthly update post. Main Phase Random If you've been following these updates, you'll know that the current priority is getting the game into a state where it can be played beginning to end. The biggest hurdle to that right

Once again, the first Saturday has arrived and with it a monthly update post.

Main Phase Random

If you've been following these updates, you'll know that the current priority is getting the game into a state where it can be played beginning to end. The biggest hurdle to that right now is sufficient main-phase random events. So this month I picked up where I left off and continued writing those.

This graphic may not seem particularly frightening, but there are some implications. You see, the current batch of events are random events that are triggered by player traits. I opted for a uniform flow for these; it makes composition and balancing ever so slightly easier. There is an introduction to the scenario, a "safe" choice that takes you away from the trait that triggered it, and another choice that takes you toward the trait but randomly will go well or badly. That's 4 pieces of content per trait. Also, there are two different scenarios per trait: one for simply having the trait, another for having a high value of the trait.

All that's fine and good if you have, like, 5 traits. In DGR, there are 49 traits that participate in this scheme — and a few more that do not. Most of these events (though not all) are fairly simple, but still result in some faction adjustments in addition to the movement of traits. However it turns out that writing 392 pieces of content is a bit time consuming. I have not quite written all 392, but I am close to finishing this part. Some examples:

What's Next

More main-phase random events still need to be written after this. Specifically random events that flow from the faction values and from the seasons are required. All of the above trait-based random events are allowed to repeat, but carry a multiple year cooldown. There must be other events that are more amenable to repetition, should nothing with a higher weight be chosen. Besides, all these events can alter personality traits, and personality is meant to be rather less malleable upon the conclusion of the introductory phase in Normandy.

When all that's complete, as frightening as it is to say, I think I want to start testing. Hopefully more on that soon.

Original post

03 Apr 2022Developer post

March Review

Convention If you've been following the Twitter, you might have seen mention of going to a convention. Yesterday I attended a local convention, ETSU Con, along with some other people from the Tri-Cities Game Developers. If I met you at the con, thanks for checking out the Steam p

Convention

If you've been following the Twitter, you might have seen mention of going to a convention. Yesterday I attended a local convention, ETSU Con, along with some other people from the Tri-Cities Game Developers. If I met you at the con, thanks for checking out the Steam page! If you're looking for the group link, let me know and I can get it for you. Attending this con is a big part of why this post is appearing now rather than yesterday.

Pictures of our table exist, I'm told, but because of my absolute lack of media savvy, I don't have any of them. They will be posted on Twitter if I ever do get them.

Development-wise, I didn't quite get the full demo I wanted done in time to show. However driving toward it did result in a lot of things getting built that I had been putting off. There's now a user-friendly splash screen that hides the flash of weird content on loading. Though the music has been finished for some time, it's now fully integrated via playlists that are dynamically tweaked based on the current event being displayed, optionally with aggressive fading upon list changes. Speaking of options, there are now much more convenient options like remembering game window position between sessions (the previous method I was using was weird and bad, as most things are that developers build for themselves). Age progression properly updates the portrait now. I squashed some old bugs that somehow escaped notice for years. I replaced much placeholder text with the words that aught to be there. Most foolishly of all, I updated my dependencies from their circa '17 versions to the newest. All-in-all it's looking a lot more like a game and less like a random development project now.

Very little of this shows well in screenshots, but here's the splash screen. It's based on the key art which is slowly but surely becoming standard for Dei Gratia Rex across all my social media. Speaking of which, did you happen to notice the new buttons and such here on Steam, as well as the new screenshots?

About those marriages…

The more deeply I tested the entire courtship module, the more bugs surfaced. I actually spent the first part of the month fixing things which I thought were working. So it goes in software sometimes. It can be annoying, but I'd much rather find the bugs now than find them in a bug report later.

What's next

My present goal is to "close the loop." I think enough systems are in place now such that satisfying stories can emerge. That's not to say that there isn't more that must be added, especially regarding the player's family. However development at the moment is focused on making the game playable from beginning to end so that I can get this into the hands of testers sooner rather than later.

First on the list is vastly expanding the number of "main phase" random events. These are things you see when you're not at war, touring the realm, holding tournaments, during the introduction in Normandy, and so forth. The bad news is that many of these are needed. The good news however is that the vast majority of them are rather a lot simpler than the "phase-bound" random events. I actually tried to have just enough done for the con, but it was always a bit hubristic to think I could do weeks of work in 4 days, regardless of how much I crunched.

More next time!

Original post

06 Mar 2022Developer post

February Development

Once again, the time for a monthly update has arrived. Technically said time arrived yesterday, but spotty internet convinced me to just postpone it. My apologies. Without any further ado, let's get to the update. Marriage negotiations, continued I wrote about this some in the la

Once again, the time for a monthly update has arrived. Technically said time arrived yesterday, but spotty internet convinced me to just postpone it. My apologies. Without any further ado, let's get to the update.

Marriage negotiations, continued

I wrote about this some in the last post. The counterproposals ended up being a bit thornier than anticipated. The good news however is that they, and all the other bits touching wedding negotiations, are finished.

Medieval wedding ceremonies in game

Royal weddings were important events. Rather than a minor footnote which might perhaps occasion collecting a feudal aid, these were times for feasting, processions, and much else.

And, yes, also raising a tax if you desire it.

The 12th century predates the Church's formal understanding of marriage as a sacrament. More on the historical aspect to follow. Despite this, it would have been shocking to not have any religious involvement in the marriage of a king. Bishops are, and were, a bigger deal than they are portrayed in many medieval games. There were only about a dozen in all of England and certainly far fewer than that in the fractured state of our timeline. Given their stature, it is fitting that a member of the episcopate performs the service.

Amusingly I managed to track down an edge case in which crashed the wedding (in several senses of the term) if no bishops were to be found in the kingdom. This required, as I mentioned on Twitter, some workarounds:

Regardless of what else happens, the wedding ends in the familiar feast hall. This is, for the more “standard” choices, perhaps the first opportunity to really get to know your wife.

Medieval wedding ceremonies in history

Many things about medieval wedding ceremonies are preserved in modern ceremonies. However there are many notable differences as well. As mentioned, there was not yet a requirement that the Church be involved for a wedding to be valid. Indeed, all that was required in those days was present consent of both parties and a witness. A priest makes a great witness, and naturally most people desired blessings for their new union, so a liturgy developed from a fairly early point to solemnize weddings, even if it was not strictly required to form them. Luckily for us, this was put down in the Use of Sarum, which would have been largely finished and coming into widespread use during the early parts of the game.

According to this, the service was performed in front of the church rather than inside it. Some of the wording is a bit different than a modern ceremony — “I will” rather than “I do” for example — but most things are at least analogous. A nuptial mass followed, where further prayers and benedictions followed for the couple.

Interestingly, Western Rite Orthodoxy still to this day follows the Use of Sarum. There are a few differences between this and a medieval wedding, for instance two rings are used in this service rather than just one for the bride as in medieval weddings, but this is as close as one can get to a medieval English wedding in the present era:

Watch on YouTube

If any part of a wedding in DGR feels unusual, consulting this video might help!

What's next

A few more matters, mostly behind the scenes to bring some of the terms of the wedding into effect. There is also some text left to write, as there are a great many traits that might prompt comment in the feast section.

More next time!

Original post

05 Feb 2022Developer post

January Report

It's yet again time for a monthly update. There are some interesting — if a bit historically crunchy — details this time. Let's jump right in. Marriage One of the goals of Dei Gratia Rex's design is "hard historical fiction," in a similar sense as hard sci-fi. The game presents a

It's yet again time for a monthly update. There are some interesting — if a bit historically crunchy — details this time. Let's jump right in.

Marriage

One of the goals of Dei Gratia Rex's design is "hard historical fiction," in a similar sense as hard sci-fi. The game presents a fictitious scenario and will privilege gameplay over simulation. However where possible, things are kept as closely in line with the actual history as I can. With that in mind, the time had come to revisit marriage.

Medieval marriage was a complicated process. It wasn't as easy as, say, searching a database of every woman in the world, filtering it, scrolling until you found the one you wanted, and being married under a week later. Indeed, even knowing who you could marry wasn't straightforward. Sometimes you might meet a prospective spouse naturally, but that's not necessarily the best plan for a royal marriage. Luckily we have a chancellor.

Moreover, the marriage always required terms.

In particular, dowry — known also as marriage portion or in the primary sources maritagium — was extremely widespread in 12th century Anglo-Norman England. A century later, the practice was indeed nearly universal from the highest ranks of society to the humblest. To be very brief, this was property (more often lands or rents rather than chattels) given by the bride's family to her on her wedding, in the care of her husband. More on that last bit later.

For a royal wedding, matters of oaths, alliances, and monetary payments must also be sorted. Beyond that, there's also the matter of providing for the lady should she become a widow. Her dowry would be part of this most assuredly, but provision of a dower was also part of the marriage contract. These are lands held by the groom that are promised to the bride at the time of the groom's death. Dower lands were only held for a life term before reverting to the normal chain of inheritance.

Isn't medieval land tenure wonderful?

Enjoying the lands of others

Here we see the maritagium in action. The title is clearly the lady's. However the befit of these lands belongs to her husband, who has not yet gained lands of his own. Her father, whose gift these lands were, owes the military service attached to those lands until such a time as his daughter's husband can provide it. This is a new feature that I wrote specifically to handle these lands given as dowries. However that's not the only place I'm using it.

A particularly thorny issue in the 12th century was the Investiture Controversy. Kings, as they had done for some time, thought they should choose who aught to be enthroned bishop within their kingdoms. The Pope on the other hand thought that he (or his delegates anyway) aught to be the one to choose. This matter was inflamed further by the practice of leaving sees vacant so that their wealthy estates could pay into the Exchequer. Using the new system, a king can enjoy these episcopal lands without holding the title.

Another historical case of this was wardships. If one of your direct vassals is a child, the same sort of thing applies. They will continue to hold their titles, but you, their lord, will enjoy the revenues until they reach the age of majority. On the other hand, they will not owe you knight service during that time. This is not fully implemented, so no screenshot just yet!

What's next

Finishing the marriage negotiations. Some work remains on that front. When that's finished, plugging in the wardships so that they use the new system. When that is done, some provisions for, shall we say, less than regular marriages.

More next time!

Original post

03 Jan 2022Developer post

A New Year begins

The time for another update post is upon us. Actually that time was yesterday; I'll hope you forgive me for being a day late. Christmas was cancelled for us (COVID; I'm fine now but others somewhat less so), and I'm just now getting on top of things. 2021 Many exciting things hap

The time for another update post is upon us. Actually that time was yesterday; I'll hope you forgive me for being a day late. Christmas was cancelled for us (COVID; I'm fine now but others somewhat less so), and I'm just now getting on top of things.

2021

Many exciting things happened this year. Perhaps most recognizable was the creation of some new art. The line-fillers and bas-de-page illustrations now give life to what were otherwise blank voids on the pages. Between the text, illuminations, marginalia, and glosses, medieval manuscripts rarely had much empty space, and I wanted to capture that. Here's a before and after for the same event:

The soundtrack was also completed this year. I've linked it before, but in case you've missed it:

Watch on YouTube

I finished quite a lot of content as well. Events for tournaments, feasts, hunts, various other ways of interacting with your subjects, and more were written. All that totaled hundreds of events: I noticed some time ago that there were more events in some of DGR's subsystems than exist in other narrative games. This isn't a small game.

What I didn't do was launch. I tried to meet an external deadline in May. Missing that hurt financially, but too much was getting cut. I'm happy about not forcing it out the door then, but I am cognizant of the fact that this is taking far too long. My goal in the first part of the year is to "close the loop" so that whole-game testing can begin. All of the events are thoroughly debugged, but sometimes defects won't show up without the sort of interactions full gameplay provides.

Courtship

To that end, the biggest thing missing that is required to play a full game is marriage and family. Since we start with a quite young king, courtship is necessary as well. Love marriages among the nobility were incredibly rare, especially among high nobility. Love was of course an outcome that was pleasant and desirable, but it was not at all a precondition for matrimony. Thus when I say courtship, I largely mean the identification of good prospects, negotiations regarding the terms of the marriage, and so forth. Alliances, dowry, and other factors all must be taken into consideration. It also might also be prudent to ascertain the personality of the woman in question. She will play a large role in your life going forward, after all. Queens don't cease to exist when you get married — quite the opposite in fact — but more on that at a later date.

This has required a rather lot of work under the hood. Unfortunately this sort of work doesn't show off well in screenshots. A non-exhaustive list of things I've done to support this: added Ireland and more of Scotland to the simulation, ensured that land can be held outside of the realm without breaking things, vastly expanded the character templates used for women, and created family trees of particular special
historical family should you wish to pursue a certain high-risk, high-reward marriage. Hopefully more details on this, with pictures, next time.

Thank you

While I'm here, I want to thank everyone for following along. I really do appreciate the support shown thus far.

I genuinely expected this to launch in late 2020 or early 2021, but here we are. I know how frustrating it can be to follow something for this long. I'm very focused on finishing the game at present. It still needs a few things before then, but I'm very motivated to get this launched.

Original post

04 Dec 2021Developer post

November Review

A bit of a smaller update this time. As expected, things are unfortunately going a bit slowly right now. What I'm presently building also doesn't translate well into update posts just yet; hopefully more on that next time. Feasts part 2 In a few previous posts I wrote about vassa

A bit of a smaller update this time. As expected, things are unfortunately going a bit slowly right now. What I'm presently building also doesn't translate well into update posts just yet; hopefully more on that next time.

Feasts part 2

In a few previous posts I wrote about vassal interactions. There is an entire system for meeting with others in your kingdom. One major goal I have is to ensure that the other characters in the realm aren't just amorphous, interchangeable entities. To that end I actually expanded the taking counsel part of the feast I wrote about last time. Those at the high table can give you advice: some of it is generic based on their traits, some of it is specific based on things that are going on in the realm.

I reworked some of the random events at feasts to show vassal personalities as well.

And, as always, there are some continuation events. This one is rather rare and based on some literature written in the same time period as the game. Kudos to those that recognize it!

Information obfuscation

I recently read some online discussion about the topic of "too much information" in strategy games. Specifically the idea was put forth that having exact numbers and percentages turns a lot of things into spreadsheet management. I'm not sure I'd quite go that far, but deciding to obscure information to some degree was a decision I took very early in the development of the game.

I've written previously about era-appropriate fog of war. Additionally, I don't say exactly what happens when you make a choice before you make it, but, as seen in most of these update posts, risky choices tend to get marked with redder letters. As yet another example, under the hood all traits and skills are integers. All relationship values are numbers too, though not necessarily integers. However you can only gain a general sense of these when looking at someone's "character sheet."

Moreover outside of your kingdom and its immediate English neighbors, only very high level information is available about other realms. If you've noticed, there aren't even hard internal border lines drawn within Wales, as the exact political conditions there weren't especially clear to the Anglo-Normans.

I certainly understand why some games do provide very clear information about everything. However I'm trying to take a somewhat different tack here. For a game like DGR I think it will work well, even if it might not in other strategy games.

What's next

I'm not ready to set a date, but I am very motivated to see this finished. One of the major blockers is courtship and family events. I put these off for some time so that I could have more entry points to their sections, especially for courtship. In the same vein as the above section, I don't want marriages to happen by pressing a button and searching a database of women. At this point I think I have enough of those entry points in place.

If health holds, I expect to have some things to write about on that topic next month.

Original post

06 Nov 2021Developer post

October's Post

This post has some updates and some bad news. The updates are up first and the bad news is at the end. Times being what they are, please feel free to skip that last section if you're not up for it. Anyway, on we go! Feasts Like the tournament, the feast looms large in the popular

This post has some updates and some bad news. The updates are up first and the bad news is at the end. Times being what they are, please feel free to skip that last section if you're not up for it. Anyway, on we go!

Feasts

Like the tournament, the feast looms large in the popular imagination of the medieval period. Indeed, it is a favorite of modern reenactments, and for good reason. However Arbitology: Dei Gratia Rex takes great pains to get the history right as possible.

Feasts are real things that happened, clearly. However they were not typically raucous parties. When they were, it was usually a sign that something was out of order. More commonly, they were tightly choreographed affairs. There had to be a reason for the event, for starters, and of course nothing of this sort might happen during Lent, those 40 days of holy fasting.

Rank and precedence were of the utmost importance in those days. This applied even (or perhaps especially!) to seating arrangements at feasts. When you appointed a chamberlain to head-up the royal household, you did find someone with talent, right?

As public affairs, feasts were also an ideal time and place for giving gifts, that all may see your largess. Not only monetary gifts, but also land grants were commonly made on these occasions: perhaps that vacant episcopal see that you've been taking revenues from, much to the chagrin of the Church?

There are other things that happen as well. Naturally food is the focal point. Spending more lavishly does allow more options. Gifting leftovers from the high table to others, even to the poor, is historically attested after all. Feasts provide opportunity to take counsel with those present as well. Moreover the feast provides a nice backdrop to more unpredictable events. I don't want to spoil it all in screenshots though.

Tournaments, part 2

I added a bit more love to the tournaments hosted in your own kingdom, as opposed to fighting in a foreign contest. As in the tournaments in France, the domestic ones now also conclude with a small feast. This can result in rivalries or friendships continuing from the tourney ground into later affairs.

Or perhaps an annoying noble from a neighboring realm might provoke an international incident. This could be both a good and a bad thing, depending on how much you want a war.

Much else can also happen as your tournaments conclude!

Bus Factor

Bus factor is a measure, common in the software world, of the number of people who, if hit by a bus, would imperil a project. A wonderful thing about indie dev is games that no large or even medium company would touch are possible. A terrible thing about indie dev is low bus factor. I've worked with some wonderful contractors for art and music, but those were short term arrangements. The daily work on prose, code, and everything else is done by me alone. Thus, the bus factor for DGR is one.

Well, gentle reader, I've been hit by a metaphorical bus.

In late August I developed a heart condition. In late September I sought treatment for said heart condition. Long story short, the clinic insisted on a hospital visit and my life has been a waking nightmare ever since. And it is not yet over. I briefly had a negative net worth until I phoned some people and negotiated the numbers on these bills. Bills plural, you see, because apparently everything is charged separately by a different party. The money I was planning on investing into the company for advertising purposes has been devoured by the insatiable rapacity of the medical-industrial complex. No prizes for guessing the country in which the above transpired.

I'm not writing all this because I'm fishing for sympathy or because I am going to hit you with a GoFundMe link. It's just… things will be slow for a bit. I'm probably going to have to do more activities that generate short term money and less work on the game. I've also got some more bureaucratic hoops to jump though. And then there's, you know, the cardiac problem that has been stealing time from me over the last few months.

DGR will release. I've sacrificed too much for it not to. I'm just not in a position to make any definitive statements about when, as I genuinely don't know what the next few months hold in store.

More updates, and less bad news, on the the first Saturday of next month!

Original post

Updates & announcements

Blog

What's next

Blog

Dreams of Gold

What's next

What's in a name

What's next

Still more family events

Blog

Family events, continued

Traits and continuation

What's Next

2022

More visuals

Options menu

Spouse events, continued

What's next

Changes

Types of relationship

What's next

The Magnum Concilium continued

What's next

The Magnum Concilium

Location-based random events

What's next

More Faction-based Events

What's next

Faction-based random events

Legal effects

Visuals

What's next

Date-based random events

Faction-based random events

Urban population

What's next

Yet more trait-based random events

What's Next

Main Phase Random

What's Next

Convention

About those marriages…

What's next

Marriage negotiations, continued

Medieval wedding ceremonies in game

Medieval wedding ceremonies in history

What's next

Marriage

Enjoying the lands of others

Further reading

What's next

2021

Courtship

Thank you

Feasts part 2

Information obfuscation

What's next

Feasts

Tournaments, part 2

Bus Factor