Another month draws to a close, so that means its time for another update! This month mostly was about boring systems work. Unfortunately it doesn't make for riveting reading or scintillating screenshots, but I'll do what I can.
Many games start with war and combat. It makes a certain amount of sense, as games thrive on two or more sides competing. In Arbitology: Dei Gratia Rex, the warfare systems appeared relatively late, as I didn't want to end up making a full-on wargame. As a result, a lot of work was required to get war properly into DGR. But first, maps!
Map Modes
DGR has had a political map for some time. This map has been shown before; it features counties that shade themselves according to which kingdom controls them and borders that likewise thicken themselves if they are external rather than internal. Since siege warfare is a big part of war in this game, I found it useful to have a resource that shows what was actually captured.
Perhaps unsurprisingly this required a bit of a refactor in the map code. It is better now and new map modes can be added easily in the future also! I'm kicking around an economic map mode, but I want to avoid making information too easy to come by. Medieval kings struggled for accurate information after all.
Medieval Musters
Summoning armies was never easy. Nobles technically owed military service connected with the lands they held, at least for a fixed number of days per year. In reality, actually getting nobles to show up with men where the king willed and when the king willed it was difficult at best. Some lords refused to show up, or showed up late, or showed up with less men than they were obligated to bring. So it also is in DGR.
Flow of Battle
I experimented with several ways of handling military exercises. Most of them ended up not meeting expectations in one way or another. It ended up taking a fair bit of time before I found the solution that was there all along: events, just like everything else in the game! The event system is robust enough to handle it, and it doesn't require a departure from the way the rest of the game works. There will probably be more on this later.
(As an aside: as a proof of concept of the technology behind this event system in DGR, years ago I made a working, dynamic item shop solely with events. It can accommodate quite a lot of needs.)
Various Other
Quite unexpectedly, I discovered that there was a local game dev community where I live. In case you missed the last update, I actually got the opportunity to give a talk about procedural and interactive narrative at their first annual summit. Should that make it to YouTube, I'll definitely post a link.
That's about all for now. More next time!