Week 41 Update

TL;DR continued decoupling old UI & replacing it with new UI framework.

Build & Deployment:

Development:

• Finished moving code from the sector screen to the new sector layer. Testing that the new input switch works to catch gesture, gamepad, mouse, & keyboard.

Design: 

• Language, Culture, and Religion work. This last week I realized that magic and spells are my throughline connecting languages, cultures, and religions. Spells themselves are akin to living things, and they manifest with the spoken word.
  • I still haven't yet figured out how to really "gameify" languages or language acquisition, or turn them into a mechanic. I want languages to be an "in your face" kind of game mechanic whenever you engage in dialogue, and I have some ideas but nothing really concrete yet. Like, during a conversation when characters switch languages a little editor's note pops up like in comic books?
  • Put this way, rather than treating language like a "locked door" problem where knowing the language determines whether you get the message or not, language is a range of possible results, where the more you are in sync, better results are possible?
  • Culture is tied very much to the family and social status of a character. These will be a combination of several things, including language, religion, and Patron options & preferences, but also clothing, diet, music, & visual aesthetics. Now, will all of these be visually represented at first? No. But they will be baked into the foundation of the game setting. 
  • My focus on religion this last week was around Jewish eschatology, gnostic beliefs, and the developments of the Second Temple period, so like BC-AD changeover type stuff. I also started adding the first not-strictly-religious-but-more-cultish stuff, like the schools of philosophy in Greece. I added Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle and wove in Orphism and the Eleusian mysteries.
  • As these mysteries, cults, and religions merged & developed new & older metaphysical concepts, they gave rise to new types of beliefs, which very nicely parleys into the next subject...
• Belief system work: very generally speaking, the belief system is a collection of predicate logic that will be used by the AI to prioritize and select behavior based on game state. The game mechanics are is constructed from real-world belief systems, which is a pretty bold claim to make, but let me provide an example of how it might work:
  • An agent holds the belief they are being watched at all times by an omniscient deity. The agent understands the deity condemns theft so the agent will avoid stealing items, even to its own detriment.
  • An agent holds the belief that the undead are an abomination, and when presented with 3 or more potential adversaries (say, a kobold, a demon, and a skeleton), the agent will prioritize attacking the skeleton over the other two.
  • Conflicts will necessarily arise between beliefs held by the same agent. Beliefs may come from any of several different sources: character class training, religious beliefs, and cultural background or social status/peer pressure. Depending on the character's personality, these conflicts may result in the accumulation of stress... or they might not.
• Soul design work was spread across Life, Karma, and Destiny.
  • Life is broadly speaking, the glue that holds the soul together in a mortal body. It is the animating force, blood, and breath (and some other things). Life (as a soul component) contains language, spells, dreams, music, and aspirations. Like suffocating or bleeding to death, losing these things (physically, emotionally, or magically) harms the soul and threatens its cohesion.
  • If Life holds the soul together then Karma binds one soul to another. Karma contains your social status, your relationships with family & friends, your memory (both yours of others, and theirs of you), your titles & honor, and your True Name. Your Karma grows with your renown but it also serves as a unique vulnerability in the event of amnesia, True Name theft, or damnatio memoriae.
  • Destiny ties the soul back to the greater cosmos, as Karma binds souls to each other and Life binds souls to the body. Destiny contains a character's Arete ("character level"), their Patron, and their Fortune & Luck. A Patron is more typically a deity but this will not always be the case, as some characters may draw power from supernatural entities beyond those "benevolent" gods...
    
• Spells & magic traditions are always the icing on the cake. When I originally set out to overhaul the D&D magic system in 2006, I never imagined where it would take me. I wanted magic to permeate every facet of the game system and it DOES. I'm really, beyond excited. I won't have the opportunity to begin implementing the spells themselves for a while but the foundation is setting and it only gets better.

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