It's that time again, another first Saturday, so another update!
Soundtrack
In perhaps the most exciting news for May, the official Arbitology: Dei Gratia Rex soundtrack is finished! Not only is it finished, but you can listen to it in its entirety on the composer's YouTube channel! This soundtrack is composed of over 35 minutes of lute music and is based on authentic medieval compositions. Give it a listen, and check out the video description for more context on the pieces!
Vassal interactions
In DGR, there are many simulated people. Hundreds are alive at any one time. These are your vassals and their families, various important non-nobles, and a few others. However if you never get to meet them, does it even matter that they're simulated? This is a problem that I struggled with. There are many dealings with vassals during war and when touring the realm in the itinerant court phase. Outside of this, there just were not enough times to meet these people. I set about changing that.
There is a high degree of randomness as to who is visiting your capital at any specific time. However once I put the finishing touches on it, the itinerant court events will be retrofitted to use this also. You'll never be able to meet with any person at any time, but you will generally always be able to meet with a given vassal at the very least yearly.
This turned out to be a bit of a challenging system to create, as in the first attempt I found myself looking at a combinatorial explosion. The direction of these discussions follows the personality of the person with whom you meet. There are a great many types of personality in DGR, you see.
After some experimentation, I found a workable solution. There are some limitations on both code and prose, but I now find myself with only around 120 events to write. That's still a lot of content — I've seen some choice-based narrative games that list having that many events as a game feature — but it's not totally out of line with the other sections of the game. This isn't quite done yet, but I'm well on the way. In even better news, this system will be the seed for another system I hope to talk about next month.
Better saves
Saves were one of the first features I added many years ago. I recently added a few features to the save system, including autosaves, but the core machinery was practically ancient. I used a fairly naive approach because it was simplest, and, as we all know, premature optimization is the root of all evil.
I generate a fair few saves files while testing, and even more autosaves. I own only very weak hardware, but I actually started experiencing lag when loading the in-game save file browser menu for my autosaves! That was not acceptable.
Long story short, early game save files used to be ~1.4MB. They're now ~87kb. Also the number of saves for which previews can be generated without causing lag is now at least in the upper hundreds, but probably a bit higher.
What's next
Finishing writing these meetings! After that, some more options for the player to take of a less administrative and more personal nature.