Slow results

Me hearties! It's been a whole year with no progress reports on the blog, after I started refactoring the whole project last winter. I've been concentrating on other stuff – publishing a book and also going back to university (starting a course in computer science). So it's been a slow year in development, but on the flip side I've cleared time and headspace to fiddle more with programming in the time to come.

The latest tech

Regarding the current state of the code, I did put in some work last spring, updating the tool chain and reassembling many basic features. What I have at the moment is a slimmed down code base with the base functionality, but no real content. Where I left off last year, it was time to reimplement world generation, and after that NPC behavior. Both of these will see some redesigns, and both are systems I find highly motivational to code, since the game world comes more alive with every step of the road.

I think Roguelikes can make up for their lack in linear storytelling, by making the world capable of generating meaning in its own right. In Moby Dick, Herman Melville writes: «Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out of them, the twigs. So, in productive subjects, grow the chapters.» I'm quoting this for no particular reason other than my immense love of Melville. In LoSt, I want the narrative structure to be less like a tree, but rather a mesh of interconnected roots, or perhaps something akin to what Derrida described as a «dredging machine» (machine à draguer).

Going forward, I'll try to imbue the game world with a sense of direction and vague purpose, by focusing on factions and other forces of influence as fundamental building blocks of the game world. Last week I've picked up the old code base and design notes, and have started some simple prototyping for generating these forces and representing their relations in a graph, which should be used to inform stuff like terrain generation and quest lines. A working system will not come overnight, but should crystallize in not too long if I put in some time and effort.