If you haven’t checked it out yet, I’d look at the Winter Screenshot Update! I’ll try and keep screenshots coming now and then, but there are often things that don’t really look like anything until finished. For instance, at the moment, I’m working on ‘connecting’ the different map sectors so that you can move smoothly to another on the local level (like moving across the wilderness in DF). There isn’t really much to SHOW for this, but it plays nicely.
ANYWAY: in the mean time, I’ve been discussing how realistic URR is going to end up – which is to say, what factors do you and your army have to deal with, and what factors can you ignore? Having thoughts about this, I think there are three different kinds of realism people are talking about. I shall call them ‘world realism‘, ‘physical realism‘, and ‘practical realism‘.
For world realism, Tolkien is both the essential, and the cliched, example. The Middle Earth languages came first; Tolkien was originally a linguist, and one who created these remarkable fictional la
nguages and the cultural/social backgrounds of the world in which they existed. The stories, as impressive as they are on their own, are deeply mythopoeic and serve to both further the existence of Middle Earth as a living, breathing world, and to allow a greater output for JRRT’s linguistic interests and the fully-realized fictional languages he had created. In this way, Middle Earth gains realism from the detail, the depth, the complexity of the ideas behind it; we see thousands of years of history in each of Tolkien’s books, and perhaps most importantly, there is a strong sense that the world existed before the stories in question, and will go on doing so afterwards – these are but a few chapters in its history.
By contrast, barely a word is said of magic in Tolkien’s works. Obviously it exists, both from Gandalf and Saruman, Galadriel, and various ‘ordinary mortals’ who are sometimes described as having some ability we would reasonably call magic. Thus, while we can see a high world realism in language and culture, the reader simply lacks enough information to make a judgement about the world realism of magic. Is it so rare and obscure that little of it is seen, or is it simply not fleshed out? For URR, therefore, I prefer the former – there are languages (not as detailed as Tolkien’s, naturally, but not insignificant either) and a long history of the world will be generated before each playthrough, along with a different pantheon of gods, alliances, and all the rest. You’ll also be able to choose an era to enter the world in, which will have an effect on who and what you encounter…
As for physical realism, by this I mean that everything obeys the laws of the universe as we know it (or, in a fictional realm, as they know it) perfectly, but something more specific than this. Obviously, anything in any fictional world has to obey the confines of that world. Even a creature described as a multi-dimensional time-warping space-churning eldritch horror is still, despite all appearences, obeying rules, even if those are rules that state the traditional physical rules of that universe can, under very rare circumstances and involving very unusual monsters, be broken. What I mean is rather something more practical, and applies much more to games than to literature or cinema.
So which is more realistic? NetHack for having things rust, which they should, albeit instantly; or 
Skyrim, for having things never rust, but at least they don’t rust in a heart-beat when they so much as come within fifty metres of a river? Neither of these is realistic, but both can make a reasonable claim to the greater realism. Similarly, nothing melts or boils in Skyrim, but any fire applied to any potion in NetHack causes it to instantly boil and explode. In URR, I aim to try and keep physical realism high – for instance, metal melts, but does not do instantly, and temperatures differ depending on the metal. I want to make it a part of the gameplay, but not an irreversible, hugely-important part, like in NetHack.
Lastly, practical realism. By this I mean how much the necessities of life impinge on, or affect, gameplay. It differs by games – some don’t include any, while some include some but not others, and often in a limited form. Sure, in Age of Empires you need to gather food, but the food is magically transported into the stomachs of your troops, no matter how far away from a) your food-gatherers or b) your empire, they may be. Of course, in all games where food isn’t in there, it is implied to be transported (not all games take place in a transhumanist world where food is not required!) and just doesn’t factor in. As for URR:
On the one hand, I don’t want you to be able to trek an army indefinitely with no need for food; that food has to come from somewhere, whether from raiding enemy farms, setting up a supply chain, storing it with you, getting it from allied towns along the way, or whatever. However, I obviously don’t want logistics to become the sole focus of the game. A balance needs to be found; you need to consider where your source of food is, but it should be abstracted away from the player – you direct your minions to [Gather food from Enemy Farm X], [Kill all the wild deer in Square Y], [Set up weekly supply caravan from City Z], or whatever, and then they will go and do it. I think this is a compromise between the micromanagement of exceedingly high practical reality (say, DF), and still having relevant factors matter, as they should.
So what does everyone think about this? I want a high world realism (detail, history, language, culture, etc), high physical realism, and high practical realism, BUT the practical realism affects those under the player more than the player themselves; when things are running smoothly, it will be harder to notice than when there’s an issue that needs resolving. World realism creates a believable world, physical realism ensures things melt when they should, and practical realism gives you the chance to starve enemy cities into submission. Everybody wins, right?
Coming Monday 9th: Smooth maps & sidebars!
Coming Monday 16th: Mountains, volcanoes, and the end of world generation.
Sounds like a solid way to go about it—gotta give it more of an instinctual/emotional weight to throw about than just a MathsJumble Salad with some token flavour text—everybody likes Gestalt.
Maybe for the supply caravans, you would have to set the amount of wagons (or whatever), gaurds (if your caravan is traveling through dangerous territory), and choose waypoints for the caravan to pass through. Like going through mountains would be faster, but higher chance of caravan getting attacked, going around the mountains would be slower but a litttle safer? idk haha just (a poorly explained) idea.
Your stance on realism seems interesting to me (I also prefer my fantasy worlds ‘realistic’), but I’d be wary of the interactions between the different kinds of realism you mention here.
In particular, ‘physical’ and ‘world’ realism can cause a big increase in the complexity of the decision making brought by the level of ‘practical’ realism you described. I don’t know it’s I am explaining myself clearly, but for example, let’s say weapons and armors rust at a rate corresponding to the humidity level of the area they are in. You’ll have to weigh the cost of setting up a caravan from the nearest town which is in a very wet swamp against starting from further away, but in a dryer area. Compound that with issues related to race/tribe animosity, and the logistics you tried to ‘hide away’ become fast a very involved affair.
That said, congratulations on your progress so far. I’ve only stumbled on your game a short while ago, but I’m excited as hell to try it! Keep up the good work!
“Realism” in and of itself isn’t a necessary end in a video game, especially a fantasy video game. There only really needs to be enough realism to fuel the suspension of disbelief. The fact that weapons do not rust or melt in Skyrim does not prevent people from getting immersed into the game. On the other hand, sea creatures taking baths in bathtubs (as in Spongebob Squarepants-related media) ruins immersion because those elements are completely out of place.
Beyond the suspention of disbelief, the only useful function that realism performs in video games is in the creation of deeper gameplay. Taking the NetHack example, the addition of rust, potion dilution, and potion boiling causes the player to perform additional planning to take these elements of gameplay into account, and the strategy for completing the game becomes more than just moving around and killing monsters until the end of the game is reached.
However, realism is not the only source of deeper gameplay: look at the item crafting systems in Legend of Mana. These systems are completely fantastical and unrealistic, but they are also very complex and open up entirely new layers of strategy for completing that game. These non-realistic systems can also add depth to gameplay, and they don’t ruin the immersion either.
Realism is one of those topics that is fairly easy to discuss, but deceptively difficult to reconcile with a fun and smooth gameplay and with finite developer resources.
For me, the best way to go about it has been to have a rough idea of what elements of the real world I want to model within my game, eg. food, supply lines, stamina, day-night cycles, etc., then add them one by one and see how well they gel with the overall vision and feel of the game.
I haven’t gotten too far down the rabbit hole with wilderness survival features in Dance of Death (although these are coming), but one game I can point out that is a mixed bag of successes and failures with regards to its implementation of practical realism is UnReal World. The food, thirst, and stamina models work well with the moment-to-moment gameplay, but managing your body temperature as the day-night cycle progresses is borderline tedious.
On the other hand, Skyrim has taken great care to provide a strong sense of place– world realism– painstakingly crafting a detailed world, but lacks depth in modeling physical or practical realism, partly due to deliberate game design choices, but surely partly due to development resources focused elsewhere.
Looking forward to how URR shapes up!
Ebyan “Nolithius” Alvarez-Buylla
http://www.nolithius.com
@ Getter – exactly; I want the sense of a lived-in world that expands way before the player actually appears, which I think is especially important with ASCII graphics, etc, to add much of the game’s depth.
@ FantaSea – I had been thinking about selecting the size of the caravan and the size of the guard, but I do like the waypoint idea. Could tie into intelligence-gathering about the movements of enemy forces, where you know/think monsters to be, etc. I like the idea – consider it included!
@ Grungi – I know what you mean. I’m wary of adding so much detail that every option has an obvious ‘disadvantage’ in the way you described, as that could/would quickly become annoying. I want to keep all the diplomatic/military concerns in the foreground, and definitely background all the others. I think ultimately it’ll just come down to playtesting, but I’m going to add in all the important ones first, then gradually throw in the physical realism bit by bit to see how it plays out. Also, thanks! Hopefully before too long you’ll be able to : )
@ Anonymous – you’re undoubtedly right about realism not being an end in itself. I do think it’s a tricky balance to find, especially when ‘realistic’ factors can, as you say, add in depth gameplay/tactical choices that weren’t there before, but crucially, that depth *doesn’t* have to come from realism per se. I agree that immersion is the thing, as long as the rules make sense for the world and don’t screw with your impression of that world – that’s why (as above) I think I’m going to keep the ‘physical’ realism aspects out for the time being until I can see if they’re needed, how they play out, etc. For instance, I hope to eventually have a complex system for dealing with deities,- and as you say, that wouldn’t be realistic, but it should add a lot of depth to that part of the game!
@ Ebyan – I totally agree with your first paragraph. I’ve got a reasonably realistic fire system working, but I haven’t tested it out at length in an actual combat situation to see what the thing does. I also think I spent rather too long on it at first, to be honest…
Hmm, body temperature’s a strange one. I do plan to have heat of desert regions and cold of polar regions play a small part, but only a small part; you’ll be able to sleep anywhere immediately as long as you’re not blisteringly hot or freezing cold. I do want the world realism from Skyrim, but I do want some components – though likely not all – of the physical/practical components from other roguelikes. As you say ,though, I’ll have to see both a) what takes time to code, and b) what seems important, and what just seems peripheral. Cheers! And let me know if you add more of the ‘survival’ stuff to DoD; I’m still pondering things like hunger, thirst etc at the moment myself…
Realism needs to be just enough to bring up gameplay elements. DF/Slaves to Armok tries to simulate a fantasy world, and it has almost too much detail for most games, up to the point where the game tells what kind of stone the doors are made of (yet nobody cares about how tiles are abstracted or why imps shoot fireballs). But for a game where the focus is on sandbox procedural world play, it suits it just fine.
Nethack, like most roguelikes doesn’t even really make sense, but the ‘realism’ is just enough to give you an instinctive set of problems to mess with. I had this little game going where I invented my own set of physics to the world, with applicable gameplay elements, and all the beta testers put away the game in confusion. Nethack applies their gameplay using ‘realism’, i.e. get swords near water and they rust.
For a game like URR, the focus seems to be on tactics and combat. Which is why I’m a little disappointed to hear about logistics being abstracted out. I’d like to see villages built near river mouths. Cities near a rare resource experience an economic boom.
Any real wargame takes supply lines and logistics very seriously. Instead of killing the commander, you starve them. Expect a huge army headed your way? Burn all the farms in the region and increase their attrition rate. Facing a group of heavily armed ogre raiders? Lay traps between their base and their source of food, or poison their water supply. Supply lines also bring up other interesting situations like caravans, robbing caravans, and (getting hired as) caravan guards. Of course, it shouldn’t be too complicated to the point where it gets boring, but enough so to bring up interesting gameplay.
That’s really interesting about playtesting confusion over creating a ‘new’ set of physics, rules, etc. I can see what you mean – even if neither NetHack’s nor DF’s worlds are 100% ‘realistic’, there is enough common ground and sufficient well-known concepts in them that people can immediately and easily get to grips with them.
Villages *are* built near river mouths, and cities near rare resources will benefit from them! Same goes for all your ideas below about starving, destroying farms, poisoning, caravans, etc. Maybe I haven’t expressed it well – I suppose I want to keep some of the non-military logistical side in the background, *unless* the player chooses to actively involve themselves in it. Things for *your* army/civ should run smoothly (assuming you aren’t under attack, have enough resources, etc) when you merely command those under you, and they sort it out. You can involve yourself in more detail in those aspects, however, if you want to. On the other hand, when on the offensive, you will be able to disrupt your enemy’s logistics every bit as much as they will try to disrupt your logistics; and inevitably, the fewer resources your army has, the more you will have to take a role in deciding who gets what, and the harder it might become to keep your force loyal : ). I want the military logistics side strong, the non-military logistics side less so, but obviously the two blur, but it should (hopefully) be up to the individual player to decide how much of the latter they care about!
Gameplay is the only thing. The failure of so many ambitious indie projects such as Dwarf Fortress is that they get wrapped up in simulating broad systems that ultimately have nothing to do with gameplay. Consider carefully what the player will do when he plays the game – what he must think about, the decisions he’ll make, the things he’ll learn, and the skills he must have. If a system has no measurable effect (or a derogatory effect) on these considerations, strip it out.
That is, provided that you’re interested in making a game with a goal. If your goal is to create an open-ended simulation, then disregard my advice – but I probably won’t play it, since completely open-ended sandboxes are, for me, pointless and unsatisfying.
I couldn’t agree more about your first point – I am making sure to only simulate those things that are essential to gameplay. I want complexity, but only when it comes to important factors. Something that exists purely to add layers of confusion without adding depth will be removed immediately.
I guess it depends on what you mean by a ‘goal’. The goal is to make a mark in the history books, found a dynasty, and affect the world around you; there’s no fixed plot or narrative, but there is definitely a goal. The player’s interpretation of the goal is up to them. If that the kind of thing you mean, or would you still count that as being very open-ended? I think it’s a hard distinction to make for URR, since the objective is clear, but the specifics are open…