Forums » Writing Workshop » Read Thread

March 10, 2021

Today was spent primarily on cleaning up the infrastructure on the map generation, just making it pretty. But if you saw my other post, you may see that the terrain looks a little different now. Firstly, there are now 7 different types of terrain, now including ICE, DESERT, and SNOW.

I've also changed the way terrain is generated. Before, terrain was generated only using a height map, which was okay, but lacked a little "realism." So now, I've implemented two other maps: precipitation and heat. Precipitation is... well, how much it precipitates, and heat is quite self-explanatory, as well, but each map will affect the level of fertility in each region of the world, meaning that in the future, once settlements are added, each settlement will produce different amounts of resources based on geography. Pretty neat, I think.

It was excruciating, I'll admit that. I've done many changes to the code that amount to very little in the player-side of things, but it was definitely a necessary makeover. 

Top: Terrain Map

Middle: Precipitation Map

Bottom: Heat Map

March 10, 2021 - P2

Extra screenshots of other generated worlds:

You can use html to make links clickable (w3schools link).

Anyway, this is very ambitious, but the fact you have the map generation to show does inspire some confidence.

I do still wonder how engaging a procedural story can be, and how procedural generation will work with choice links, but it doesn't have to be perfect to be good.

However, my bigger question is if making something like this in the CYS editor is worth the effort, or if it'd be easier and better to use something more suitable. But hey, it is an experimental project.

At any rate, I'm looking forward to progress on the text side of things, but seeing the completed map creation will also be neat.

Ah, yes, I forgot to do that. I was using my CYS extension, so it automatically made it a link, so I must have forgotten to set it up accordingly. But yeah, those are some questions I often ask myself, as well. I'll do my best to produce something worth playing!

Oh, while I can respect the tech behind AI Dungeon, I agree, it seems very pointless and random. For this storygame, I want something much more focused and grounded. I'd very much like to lean toward predominately text-gameplay with a little visual flair (like the maps), so for example if someone was fighting a battle, while the code would keep track of where the troops were on the battlefield, it would seamlessly translate to text for the player.

For example:

(CODE) - [Insert logic to store unit positions] (Enemy has 1 unit of militia swordsmen on the hill, 2 units of  veteran spearmen advancing...)

(Text Displayed For Player) - "You duly note the rapid shifting layout of the battlefield, taking care to watch your flanks. After all, the enemy general, Bapoleon Nonaparte, is famed for his tricky antics. You note there is an enemy unit of swordsmen on the hill, though the men look pale-babyfaced, and their uniforms are a disgruntled, unorganized mash of colors—perhaps some sort of citizen militia. Approaching is a large line of spearmen, their spears glinting bronze in the sunlight..."

The issue I need to figure out is how to make it engaging, but not repetitive, after several battles. If the repetition remains an issue, than I may have to fall back on to more "game-like" gameplay (which I'm more apprehensive towards), but will allow for  greater fluidity, but I dunno, it kinda seems to take away from the "text" part of the "adventure".

It's definitely something that will have to go through a lot of testing and play-testing, that's for sure, so that's a long journey ahead.

And yeah, I apologize for it breaking dark mode, I needed to do that temporarily because originally I was using ASCII maps, so it was kind of messing with those, and I just never changed it back. I'll eventually fix that, no worries!

I don't believe he's using the standard editor. Is this JavaScript?

But this site has a built in community of players and a comment system (where unlike other sites, contributing members aren't banned for commenting, or asking for comments, or other trumped up reasons) so it makes sense to put a game here if the primary desire is just feedback.

Can confirm it's broken on Android however, but it works fine on PC.

Happy?

I'm not, but I know protesting too much will make everyone think that I am.

Yes, I'm using JavaScript to read text from my own text files and write it onto the storyviewer. This allows me greater freedom to display variables (such as someone's first name), and also allows me to use JS more flexibly (because I made it so the page isn't refreshing after every link).

And yeah, I mean, the community in CYS seems greate for feedback and stuff. Call me dumb, I don't know, I just decided to make it here because this is the place I know. I'm more familiar with CYS, that's all.

Ah yes, hopefully I can add support for mobile. Those darned things.

Looks interesting. Desert areas seem to be on the small side, which reduces potential for a desert nomad type of people.

You know, I definitely agree with you, now that you mention it. It was something that subconsciously bothered me, but I never knew it. I'll have to do some fiddling with the desert generation, because I think desert people are cool.

For now, yes, due to the way the heat map algorithm is written. So it's always hotter nearer the equators than the north and south poles. But I'll definitely change that to simulate more skewed planet rotations.

March 11, 2021

So, I've been working for a few hours straight, and I must say, I need a break. So I'm gonna make this post, then I think I'll be done for today. Also, I don't plan on posting everyday, but since I've done a significant amount, I wanted to share, and hopefully you guys can give feedback and ideas.

The first part of today was spent tweaking the terrain generation in order to better accomodate for desert generation, as suggested. In doing so, deserts typically generate much larger than before, and I've also changed the terrain map colors a bit, just to make it more appealing. I've also tweaked the way the precipitation and heat map generate, which, I feel, allows for more interesting and realistic biome placement.

Secondly, I worked extensively on a bunch of background code stuff, just optimizing things and whatnot. What this led to, is now if you go test, you have options on what to generate. I have also implemented the ability to click and drag the map, so if you generate a map which goes outside of the bounds of the canvas, you can drag it to move it.

March 11, 2020 - P2

Lastly, I've implemented, what I think is the coolest part, and something that will lead to more gameplayish development, which is political map generation. I won't get into how it's calculated and stuff, and it's most certainly not perfect, but it generates what I think are boreders that are suitable for the game. Now, alone it might not seem significant, but trust me when I say this is BIG. Now I'll be able to generate culture maps, political borders, etc. which will make the world much more diverse.

That's pretty much all, but here are some pictures if you're interested. This particular world's seed is 995 and the rest of the setting default, if you want to look for yourselves.

Dang, now that's something I can't unsee.

Well, a lot of these map modes won't be available to the player if the game goes into a playable state, but they are very useful when layered upon each other to make another map (height + precipitation + heat = terrain). Though I'm not entirely certain what specific maps I'll add, I do have a few ideas. For one, I'd love to implement culture maps, which I can use to tweak the political borders a bit and even allow things like fragmented empires, where a certain culture used to be a large empire, but now they're small and fractured. I think that'd be awesome. Also assuming the game gets to the point where each nation has its own dynamic economy, I'd definitely implent something like resource maps (iron, coal, food, etc.), which indicate which provinces are rich in a certain type of resource. The player can then strategically determine which places to conquer or even trade with...

Yeah, it's all very abstract, as of now, but we'll see. Any suggestions?

Actually, I'm glad you mentioned trade routes, I'll have to put that on my list. I'm not sure how I missed that one, really, it opens up a whole sleuth of game mechanics

Seeing this, I am reminded of CKII map creation.

I imagine file size is the main difference, along with the colours you picked for representing terrain, but oh are there some similarities, aha.

Now that the map generation has improved, I'm looking forward to the 'randomly generated world' contest (but that might be better off waiting for the rest of your ideas to be implemented).

I'll add that if deserts were sparse, mountains are too (but less so). I think this is because you've got (mostly) individual mountains rather than ranges. However, I am not sure if you want mountain generation to be different, since I suppose it doesn't stick out as much (or might just be a preference thing).

I'm a little guilty. I have to admit, CK2 is a huge inspiration of mine. I'm definitely planning on "borrowing" a few more systems from that game...

But yeah, regarding the mountains things, I agree with you. Mountain ranges are something I totally overlooked. It's probably going to be fixed in the next few minutes. Fixed!

The changes so far look amazing. Is the political map dependent on the terrain map at all? If not, it should be. Deserts, tundra, and snow should be occupied by fewer countries than rich and fertile areas, where there is more competition. This has been true historically, and it's still true now. Consider countries like Russia and Canada that occupy vast swaths of snow and tundra and North African countries that occupy vast swaths of the Sahara. Of course, if you plan on doing something like desert nomads as previously mentioned or any nomads really, then it might not even make sense to label them as a polity with a distinct border and instead just mark the area as desert.

Tbh, I did try adding rivers, but like you mentioned, it's pretty difficult, and was sucking up a lot of time, so I scrapped my current implementation. I definitely will be going back to that in the future though, so hopefully I don't make too many people mad.

Good point. For now, the political map was a little hastily done, hence the very straight borders between most of the countries. But I'm definitely going to be overhauling the way the political map is generated, in so that the borders make more sense, geographically. And that's a good point you made about nomads, I'll have to keep that in mind

Oh uh, well, things are coming along as expected: slowly. I've kinda been working on a custom engine to help speed things along, but there's still a lot of work.

June 24, 2021

So, it's been a while since the last update, and while I'd like to give a good excuse, there really isn't one. Nonetheless, Rising Honor is coming along nicely! I'd realized not too long into development that current format of the CYS editor is a little restricting regarding the mechanics I have planned, so some of the development time has been put into a new text-adventure editor I've been working on. As it is now, it looks a little barebones, but behind the scenes, there are some things I must say that I'm quite proud of! 

Here you can see an of the new engine (and of course, I'll spruce up the look once I get further into development):

Once I complete the engine, I can implement into the CYS storyviewer directly!

Anyways, that isn't all I'd done, either! While previous posts had been showing off the randomly generated worlds (and I admit, I've been sort of scratching my head at a few problems), this past month, I'd decided to step back from the world generation for now and to focus on something more detailed, and so I present to you...

DYNAMIC POPULATION AND ECONOMY

I'm a big fan of Victoria 2, and something I've always loved in that game is the dynamic population system, which drives all of the game's major systems including the economy. I find that it mirrors real life economics much better than most games out there, and for the longest time, I'd been trying to wrap my head around how it worked—efficiently, at that, to the point that it represented millions of people, each with their own culture and religion and it wasn't at all impeding to the game at all.

Well, I think I'm happy to announce that, while I'm nowhere near the skill level of a proper game development studio, I think I've been able to implement a system which will be able to represent the population in Rising Honor in the way that I want.

Down below is a screenshot of a settlement overview screen (AND AGAIN, I want to express, this is all ugly on purpose! It's "programmer art," if you will).

This is a lot. Let's break this down, shall we?

• The first line says "This is the main overview of your settlement!"
  • Essentially, in RH, the lowest title a character will be able to hold is a settlement, while the highest will be an empire. Titles are essentially a claim of rulership, so if one's main title is of a kingdom, for example, they will be a king.
  • The world of RH runs is organized like a pyramid-shaped machine. A settlement is made of many people, a county is made of many settlements, a duchy is made of many counties and so on (if you're familiar with CK, you'll know what I'm talking about).
    • People -> Settlement -> County -> Duchy -> Kingdom -> Empire
• The next few lines display the current population of what type of people you have living in your settlement.
  • Each job produces varying quantities of different resources. At the end of each month, they will produce a varying quantity of their respective resources and sell it to the market at the current market price. After, they will need to purchase the resources they require, first to survive (such as food), then they will purchase other luxury needs and even the required needs for their job (i.e. blacksmiths need iron).
    • The population and economy is entirely dynamic. If there are too many farmers, there will be too much food being produced, which means that the price of grain will plummet and farmers will be paid nearly nothing for what they are producing. The people will see this, and many farmers will leave their jobs for other higher-paying jobs, which will again shift the dynamic of the economy. Beware, if too many people switch jobs, you may go from a food surplus to a food shortage, meaning that food will be super expensive... and people without food die!
• The next section is the market view. Here is where you can see the current price of a resource and it's supply and demand last month.
  • Resources which are in demand will rise in price and resources which are in surplus will fall in price, simulating a "realistic" economy.

And here is a more detailed view of the population. I just want to add here, in RH, there will be hundreds of different cultures and religions in your own randomly generated world. As you can see, this particular population screen represents the division of these people between cultures: "Araenian" and "Oracien." We'll touch more on this later. Instead, I'd like to focus on the two buttons "Raise Levies" and "Disband Levies."

• Raise Levies
  • For as long as humans have existed on earth, civilizations have been plagued with the incurable curse of war. So why should RH be any different (that is of course, if your character isn't already ruling everything)? This button will allow you to enlist a certain percentage of your entire population to raise under your banners and fight for your cause. Remember, however, your people are the fuel to your civilization. If too many of them perish, you may find yourself struggling. 
• Disband Levies
  • This simply disbands your surviving levied civilians and sends them back home to their old job.

Now, before we were talking about how people were divided into different cultures. Ah... cultures, it's so beautiful to have a world full of so many different, unique, and equally beautiful beliefs and values. It's what gives us identity.

But dang, sometimes, don't you just want to oppress a specific people group with a specific culture because... well... you want your own culture to be the top of society? Well, in RH, now you can! Just tax those dang Oraciens to the moon, and you'll see them all struggle to survive and hey, you'll make a boatload of money off of it, too!

Yeah... so if you want to play as a crazy oppressor, go for it. Live out the dreams you want in a safe space, where you don't have to worry about a watchlist. Also, I want to add in some other things too, so don't think this is all the discrimination RH will be having!

That aside, this taxation screen will allow to better finetune your economy for your future endeavors. Are you planning on going to war soon and you're worried you don't have enough weapons for your armies? Bump down those taxes on your blacksmiths, and you'll have people flocking over to forge tools in no time!

Anyways, that was all I have, and I hope you all are enjoying. If you have any ideas, questions, or comments, feel free to let me know below. This is definitely going to be a slow burner project, so all the feedback is appreciated!

Yeah, don't be too excited, yet. I'm well known to never finish any big type of project... But, I'm glad you like it!

And definitely feel free to do so. It's quite an eyesore.

This is quite amazing! I feel like I'm reading a Paradox dev diary. Some question and comments, though I realize you most likely don't have answers for all the questions since this is still so early in development:

1. In the first post, you said that the player is a "common nobody". I may be misinterpreting that phrase, but to me it indicates that you start out as an ordinary citizen, and the game would be a sort of open world RPG based on daily life and exploring the world around you with the potential to rise to power if you choose it. This update seems to have quite a heavy emphasis on ruling, and the fact that you've change the game's name to "Monarch" seems to indicate that you can only be a ruler, which makes this seem more like a kingdom management type of game, which is of course also a fun genre. I just wonder how you will incorporate the RPG aspect since kings don't generally roam around exploring the wider world especially not outside their own kingdoms, and in this world your own kingdom is only a tiny part of the map. Of course, you could take the WarSim approach and ignore realism to allow the king to explore at will. I suppose it's a topic for another update, but I also worry about how you will handle the story component of a procedurally generated game.

2. Related to my previous worry, how much do you plan to make each settlement unique? Will the king be able to explore a particular settlement, and if so, will there be any difference between exploring two culturally and climatically identical settlements? Also, how will the economy between each settlement, each region, and each country be different?

3. I love the idea of an economy based on supply and demand. Too many games like this make you micromanage how many people get to be miners vs. loggers vs. farmers, etc. Since you're a fan of Vic II, I assume the demand will change based on our own activities as well as those of other kingdoms. Will the demand from other kingdoms be pseudorandom, or will it be based on the particular situation within each kingdom? In fact, will the domestic situation within other kingdoms even be generated each turn, or will they be like a black box represented by numbers ticking up and down?

4. Will there be any way to intervene in the economy such as through subsidies, tariffs, or state enterprises? Will the technology improve over the course of the gamespan?

5. Will there be the equivalent of aristocrats and capitalists from Victoria II?

6. How will internal and external trade be simulated? Will settlements and/or regions have different resources or otherwise hold competitive advantages? On another note, will the supply and demand change through anything other than governmental actions?

7. Will different cultures have different propensities to occupy a particular trade? Will they behave differently in other ways in terms of the game mechanics, or will they just be arbitrary labels?

8. You were probably going to do this before release anyways, but please add overall sliders for changing tax rates for the entire population or an entire culture or an entire industry. Also please add the actual percentage of income that's being taxed at the end of the slider.

Overall, I love what I see so far.  I think the most important aspect to the success of a procedurally generated game like this is that there's a sense of uniqueness to every individual, settlement, region, country, and culture such that they don't become just numbers and names on a screen.

Ah yes, all good questions!

1. I totally forgot to clarify, the game is still "Rising Honor," but the screenshot that says "Monarch" was just a demo I was using, which has nothing to do with RH. Overall, the plan is still the same as the beginning, where, yes, the player does begin as a common nobody, meaning they have no titles to begin with. Really, this update was just a work towards the "ruling" side of things just to get a basic infrastructure laid down regarding population and economy, since every mechanic will revolve around this. As for the RPG aspect, I hear you. As it is planned, rulers will be allowed to leave their court whenever they wish, whether it be for diplomatic affairs, war affairs, or... perhaps other certain types of affairs. I don't think it's too unrealistic to assume a king could leave his own lands in search of unfound treasure. Of course, leaving your court means installing a regent, whose personality and abilities will affect the governance of your lands (if the regent is incompetent or cruel, people will definitely not like that, whereas if he is kind, gracious, and ambitious, the people will support him to overthrow you). However long you are absent from your court will affect how great an impact this will be. So it really is a sort of balancing game.

2. This is a great question. I think one of the worries I have is that each settlement will feel like a bland copy of one another with just slight variation. Without getting too far into it, I will be keeping track of all unique features of a settlement (is it by the coast? what's the average elevation? is the weather usually nice? has it been recently conquered?), then i'll check what the population demographic looks like (who lives here? Are they rich or poor? Is there a huge wealth gap?). By this and a few other factors, I'll build up the settlement procedurally and store the data so that when the player visits again, it'll be consistent. To be honest, though, it's still a little fuzzy in my mind, so any suggestions are welcome!

3. Yeah, so every settlement in the world will be calculated in the same way the player's is, meaning that the other kingdoms will have to manage their supply and demand in the same way you do. So if you are facing a food shortage kingdom-wide due to a war or something, that can also happen to the other kingdoms (so no, it will not be pseudorandom). 

4. Totally, I could never imagine RH without these things! Let's take tariffs for example: let's say you have a kingdom and you want to conquer one of your neighbors, but you aren't quite strong enough to do so. However, you know that they import a huge majority of their food from you. So instead of declaring flat out war, it would be awesome to be able to go to your diplomat and tell him "raise the tariffs going to X Kingdom to the sky." Boom, now your merchants don't want to export to them and now they're in big trouble! But yes, definitely expect these things!

5. Definitely! Actually, I'll dig a little into it in the next question.

6. So, naturally, trade will occur between nations, regardless of any sort of "trade agreement." Instead, I've been playing around with the idea of a merchant population. Essentially, what they will do is take over-supplied resources from your settlement and exchange them at other settlements for other goods you are in need of. Then they will take those other goods and sell them back at your settlement. So, this way, if your settlement is near an iron-rich mountain, for example, you could soley focus on iron production and get the rest of your resources through trade. Anyways, this isn't to say that you have no control over foreign trade. As said in an answer above, you will be able to control this through tariffs, subsidies and the like. But yes, supply and demand can depend on many factors, including weather, season, internal/external conflict, etc.

7. Both culture and religion will affect a lot. As you were wondering, yes, certain cultures will be drawn to particular jobs. On the gamey side of things, cultures will have different boosts and malices to many different stats (though will be represented through text). So for example, if your main culture is more suited to guerilla combat in the forest, while you're at war with a culture which fights fiercely on open ground, you better bet your but you're gonna lose if you take them head on the plains. Instead, since their general is a proud man, lure him into a fight in the forest and take him on your terms. Another example will be when I implement characters (important individual people). Perhaps you have your eye on your brother's wife, and in her culture, she sees brawn as attractive. Unfortunately, you're more of a stay-at-home type of guy, while your brother is your best commanding general. You're definitely going to need to try quite hard to woo her!

8. Duly noted!

It was really fun answering these questions, haha! Makes me feel really important. But I totally agree with you. I want to add flavor and uniqueness into everything in this game, otherwise all this random generation would have been a waste. Again, if you have anymore questions or any suggestions, I'm all ears. This has really helped me refine my plans a bit!

.