sense of place (ii. out of the dungeon)

Welcome to the second installment of this article series about map generation in LoSt. Part I covered the basic anatomy of a place. The topic of this post will be climates, and some things to consider when creating an overworld-based Roguelike, such as my game is set out to be. The rant that follows may please some in part or in its entirety; there's no "tl, dr", in any case.

Meanderings 

þe olde labyrinthe

Let's start with a digression, namely the topic of labyrinths, in a meandering attempt to reach the actual topic at hand, as it were.

Early European culture distinguished two main types of labyrinths: "unicursal" (with a single path leading circuitously to the center) and "multicursal" (having branching paths, only one of which leads to the designated goal)¹. In modern times we typically include a third category of "network labyrinths"².

We might attempt to establish a fourth kind of labyrinth here. Let's call it a "deterministic maze": It has several paths, all of which lead to the same endpoint. A curious specimen in academic labyrinthology, deterministic mazes are quite frequent in video games³. Consider how the exemplary level designs of Zelda are structured as deterministic mazes: In addition to a (meandering) main path, there are shortcuts and detours available. These, however, are carefully constructed to ensure the player's passage through certain waypoints (culminating with the boss). Likewise, story-driven games tend to gravitate towards one fixed ending (or a few), like a stream might bifurcate around a great rock, only to converge on the other side.

The traditional Roguelike dungeon falls under this category of deterministic mazes. All roads lead to Yendor. And yet, procedural generation shines at its brightest when behaving more like a network labyrinth, which is to say, when the completely unexpected occurs. After all, what could be more like a network-maze of thematic associations than Dwarf Fortress?

I'll make one last point concerning historical labyrinths: The maze King Minos had Daedalus construct for the Minotaur, served as a prison, to keep the monster trapped within. Conversely, the labyrinth is also a fortification, built to keep trespassers out. Most Roguelikes emphasize this last aspect of the labyrinth, as an impenetrable stronghold to safe-keep the universally coveted MacGuffin. The motif of descending and ascending with the amulet, as featured in games like Rogue and Nethack, is actually a quite striking image. However, it was clear from the outset that I wasn't going to take LoSt in that direction.

Out of the dungeon! (screenshot: LoSt #7)

In part, I wanted a less clearcut world than provided by the genre classics. Instead of the player vertically piercing a main dungeon, I wanted plots with broad horizons, unfolding around different locations on the map: inside houses, atop steep ravines, deep within thorn forests, on the makeshift streets of desert settlements … Rather than the concentric circles of some "Caverns of Chaos", I envisioned a network maze, like the myriad connections of a root system, or perhaps even that megalithic mythic maze, but splintered, turned microlithic by erosion or earthquake.

So, I bid you farewell, unending fields of nadir … for now … Fun fact: Versions 5-7 of LoSt did play out in a dungeon (the goal was to break out of confinement), and I am planning to reintroduce caverns and mine shafts at some point. But when that day comes, the underground biotope will only serve as one of several climate types, not the center of the world (as is literally the case in most RLs).

Drawing the line(s)

Turning away from the dungeon level as the measuring stick of map generation entails leaving behind a kind of thinking one finds in for instance Andrew Doull's Unangband Dungeon Generation. And yet, rereading Doull's articles after all these years, they still inspire with their zen-like attention to fundamental design principles. Much like the pilgrim who must traverse the maze before reaching that vantage point where he finally achieves overview of its many winding paths, I find myself prompted to reexamine the inner workings of deterministic mazes, as I try to extricate myself from their manifold confines.

Games use deterministic mazes for a number of gameplay-related reasons. Globally and locally, the structure can grant the player a sense of agency whilst keeping the designer in charge of the game's progression. Some important aspects that a typical RL might contain in deterministic mazes, include:

• Scaling difficulty: The player descends ever deeper into the game world, and is faced with ever more challenging obstacles. Most RLs simply assign a numerical danger level to different monster types. The danger level of a generated level typically depends on the current depth, the player's level, or a function of both.
• Pacing progression and loot distribution: Just as the dungeon gets more dangerous, so the hero grows in strength, acquiring experience and better equipment. Some games design early levels to teach the player certain skills, or supply the character with certain props/abilities, which will be needed later on. In RLs, where each challenge might have several solutions, it is often a question of keeping the character appropriately powerful at any given time. Features like side-quests can also be used to ensure that the player has access to particular artifacts and resistances. This not only serves to balance difficulty, but even provides the player with an incentive to move on. After all, unearthing shiny loot is a core experience in most Roguelikes.
• Keeping the story in line: The world is organized so as to preserve narrative coherency. Granted, most Roguelikes skimp on the story, but let's take ADoM as an example. Before reaching the elemental temples, you are guaranteed to speak with the dying sage (who blocks your passage at an earlier level). This dialogue provides your character with an incentive to raid the temples and retrieve the orbs. In Rogue, and many successors, the vertical dungeon is presented as a goal in itself, with a storyline consisting of nothing more than a text snippet ordering you to head for the center of the labyrinth.
• (Surely, I'm forgetting something here …?) 

early experiment with "deep" climates

Some of all this must be emulated in an open world. In particular, the difficulty curve must be scaled by making sure that the top-tier baddies (and assorted goodies) won't show up too early.

When it comes to "keeping the story in line", the construction of an open world must strike the balance between narrative linearity on the one hand, and a more, if you pardon my French, "rhizomatic" narrative structure on the other⁴.

Keeping that in mind for later, I was presently more concerned with making an open map that also provides meaningful thresholds in the game space.

./lost/kits/desert_life/climate.yug

Currently, the world generator in LoSt starts out by dividing the map into roughly hexagonal zones and designating a climate type to each zone. The method is really quite blunt – I am very little interested in huge topological maps that make sense from a geological viewpoint⁵ – world generation begins by setting a climate for the centre zone, and basically flood fills from there, calculating a climate for each new zone on the basis of its preexisting neighbors. During this phase, zones can also be prepatched to contain specified "places of interest"; a feature which will be used to situate settlements, special locations, boss fights, etc. The world generator is stored as a data kit, so it can easily be expanded and judiciously randomized. It will be able to choose between many small templates (for climate map generation, water distribution, locations …) and combine them into unique composite themes for each world. As the game progresses, each new zone is generated on the fly, and put to sleep once the player reaches a certain distance.

what was the thread, again?

Regarding the looming question of how to put thresholds in an open gameworld, the examples of games having already done this in various ways are too numerous to start listing.

In LoSt, I'm experimenting with what I call "deep climate" types. A deep climate is a derivative of a basic climate, spawned in pockets within the bigger region. In their basic layout, deep climates provide a threshold by hindering the player's movement somehow: "Deep deserts" might be an area overgrown by thorns, or just a deadland with a looming ziggurat in the middle. "Deep plains" might be wild groves, oases ruled by ferocious animals and plants, understood in part by native people, but where no life-lovin' settler treads. The idea is to use these deep climates to set up barriers between the opening and the mid-game. Overgrown areas can be constructed as half-way mazes, with uneven "corridors and rooms" dug through an otherwise dense carpet of vegetation. Different kinds of deep climates will offer different kinds/degrees of impenetrableness. You can always wade through thorns at decreased speed, but it's harder to trick your way around a narrow mountain pass.

Deep climates zones will also spawn more dangerous encounters than the basic climates. They will feature fiercer cousins of the critters you find in the basic climate, or larger packs with more and tougher alpha individuals, in addition to particularly nasty critter types exclusive to the deep climates. I hope to use these deep climates  as antechambers/buffers/passages to "vaults" and other special locations. Should I succeed in that venture, I may actually have done little more than replace the concentric RL dungeon with a slightly more loose network of glorified "deterministic mazes". And yet, that's still a place to build from, I guess.

Did I go a full circuit with this whole labyrinthine post, and end up about where I started? I should probably be content with that tiny advancement, a whiff of something slightly ellipsoid.

As always,
Minotauros

---

1 As Penelope Reed Doob points out in her study The Idea of the Labyrinth: From Classical Antiquity Through the Middle Ages, unicursal designs were curiously used to illustrate texts describing the multicursal labyrinth of myth. The earliest labyrinths were unicursal, and seem to have been something like fertility rituals, where the devout would pass through a spiraling maze – much like we organize airport waiting lines today. In any case, the kind of multicursal designs we know from children's comics and coloring books, is a modern phenomenon.^↩

2 The very idea of the "network labyrinth" implies a winding maze in itself. The term was coined by Umberto Eco, who described it as "a tree plus an infinite number of corridors that connect its nodes." (From the Tree to the Labyrinth) This kind of maze connects with a multitude of modern concepts, from data clouds to deconstruction, whilst retaining an aspect of a particular medieval idea of the labyrinth as a metaphor for laborious/hard-gotten knowledge (even if substituting medieval "circuitousness" with modern "rupture" as the source of epiphany).^↩

3 Streching the definition of a deterministic maze, we could hold Pacman as an early example: A maze with no center has as its endpoint the state of depletion after Pacman has covered all its corridors, gobbling up all the pellets. Pacman's concept of "covering the entire area" is really borrowed from the ancient unicursal mazes, but set instead in a maze of branching paths.^↩

4 I'm not implementing bounties (quests) yet, but keeping some of this in mind: hoping to opt out of fixed quest lines, perhaps by implementing bounties as part of the factions found within the game world. Let's say you're assigned a mission to capture a criminal. The task should be solvable in different ways, but it should also be possible to ignore the mission, or join the baddies instead, or fail, yet live to see another day. I expect finalized versions of LoSt to have no win condition (but several possible plot hooks to get you started). This will ideally make it possible to recover, at least story-wise, from committing a blunder such as making your intended ally your lethal enemy.^↩

5 A tiny bit of topology is high on my todo-list, but it will pay more attention to the rules of drama than the rules of science. I am thinking of adding an intermediate step in map generation, after the climate zones have been defined, but before quest locations are placed, where the game will put natural borders in the form of water and cliffs. Rivers and lakes will be straightforward enough, simply continuous bodies of water patterned across the land. Cliffs will be implemented as a map feature, so the game won't keep actual track of relative elevation etc. A cliff hex will be defined with a slope in one direction. It has the property of sliding everything that lands on it in this direction. Barring any special skills or equipment, if you try to scale a cliff from below, you'll just be thrown back where you started, but it'll be possible to jump down the cliff from above. Cliffs will also provide special cover, giving advantage to shooters on the high side. Once the functionality of cliffs is sorted out, they can be distributed around the map, both in "encounter-sized" chunks, and in great walls that form an initially impenetrable barrier: to reach that summit, you have to take the winding mountain road, crawling with baddies.^↩

sense of place (part i)

One of the features I'm working on right now, is map building. There is a lot to be done here. I need locations, starting with a small frontier settlement. I need the different biotopes to stay more distinct, as well as blending more seamlessly together. I need a map that makes sense, which can be used to tell a story.

So to clear my mind, perhaps, throw out some ideas, I'm going to write a bit about map generation in LoSt. I'll be covering some of the game's principal design decisions as I go along. In this series started in the midst of the 2016 7drl frenzy, let's hope for a modest first article, just to lay out some basics and get the ball rolling.

Kitting up

The data is stored in homebrew module files of what I call kits. Each defined kit can spit out an instance of a certain class (eg. a critter or a place template). An important feature of kits is that they can look up and invoke other kits semi-randomly.

On the implementation part of things, most classes share certain functions and features, by inheriting a basic class that I call FlagThing. I suck at OOP, so bear with me. FlagThings are used to keep track of everything, store things like variables (a house may store a $dweller1 and $dweller2, its inhabitants, who in turn know that house as their $home). "Everything" is a FlagThing, from place templates to skills to critters, and even kits in themselves. They make up a kind of network of parents and children, emanating from a "world" FlagThing at the root of it all.

What's in a place?

Regarding the grid, suffice to say that it's hexagonal, and that, in addition to single coordinates, I keep track of "superhexes" (clusters of ~16 hexes; and then of course you get your hyperhexes and ultrahexes).

Speaking to world generation more specifically, the world consists of layers of places: The map as a whole is treated as a single place, containing several smaller places, called landscapes. Each landscape is a continuous field of hexes which share one climate and one name. They in turn contain smaller places: a house, a cluster of plants, a circle of totem stones, an animal or human encounter … Some of these places even contain within themselves subplaces or encounters (a wandering desert animal, a family seated to dinner in a house). Basically anything that spawns a being on the map when it is generated, is understood to be a place.

When a new place is generated, the first thing it does is to find and occupy some open space within the confines of its mother place. While some places use blueprints, most places are circular at the moment. Upon generation, they can fill parts of their interior to percentage values, like a basic house or a lake, put instances of inhabitants and subplaces, and do other interesting stuff.

   place bungalow template
shape "circle"
size (4,6)
get $wall ['dirt wall']
get $gate ['closed door']
room_fill {'wood tile':100}
edge_fill {'$wall':100}
edge_put {'window'(0,2)}
edge_put {'$gate':(1,1)}
end

   place salt pond
shape "circle"
size (2,5)
edge_fill {'water tile':50}
core_fill {'water tile':99}
brim_fill {'water tile':75}
end

   place hermit house
inherit "bungalow template"
get $hermit (['cri'],['persons'])
get $thing (['prop'],['loot','tools'])
core_put {'$hermit':(1,1)}
core_put {'$thing':(0,2)}
end


The routines for place generation are sound enough. Next steps include establishing more meaningful relations between places. That's a topic I hope to cover in my next post.

As always,
Minotauros

Some experiments are
just pure failures

slow shot

With a phantom gun in an empty hand he has bluffed Mike into violating a basic rule of gunfighting. TYT. Take Your Time. Every gunfighter has his time. The time it takes him to draw aim fire and hit. If he tries to beat his time the result is almost invariably a miss. …

– William Burroughs, The Place of Dead Roads

not a release candidate

I'm tinkering on and off with LoSt. Release #10 will probably take a while to arrive, though. I received enough helpful comments to the last few versions that it doesn't seem necessary with another desert pastoral. Instead, I will wait until I have something more gamey before I publish the next snapshot. I'm envisioning something light, with a temporary win condition (like versions 5-7 had), at least in time for ARRP 2016.

The basics are still being laid down, both engine-wise and game-wise. I'm humaning up to adding hovering text for speech bubbles and other messages (maybe sound effects like "BANG" and "click", maybe status updates and the like). That also has me finalizing other parts of the graphics engine, and so the process meanders its way on.

Game development (like so many creative endeavors) is an activity where meticulous planning is necessary – not because you're likely to execute your original plan in the intended order, but because it will help you tackle the unplannable, which is sure to crop up.

Content-wise, I've begun work on a starting settlement. It will probably just be a few houses of different builds and a dirt road, but at least a place for restocking and getting ahead on the latest news. I'm thinking of a main story revolving around 3-4 semirandom bosses located around the map. But there may (should) also be other minor quests (let's rather call them "missions" or "bounties"). Something like a robbery might be an interesting example: The player should be able to choose sides and form alliances.

I already have the bare bones of a faction system. Each critter adhers to certain Causes, which affect behavior/goals, reactions, and initial bias towards other critters. When I should add NPC templates like "lynchin' judge" (with law as a major Cause) and "livestcok rustler" (with a criminal Cause), they will automatically be hostile to each other, because of their opposed Causes. As I fine-tune this, I can add a reputation system where the Player gains fame/infamy with followers of different Causes. Building a reputation must be a central part of a screaming wild frontier RPG as LoSt is aimed to become. I'm still spawning ideas on exactly how and how much to track the Player's behavior, and I guess I'll be implementing a little of that in upcoming releases.

For LoSt #10, I'm concentrating more on making the map itself more interesting. It's mostly a question of adding and balancing content, and tweaking the world building engine a bit as I go along. There will still be exploring around the landscape to reach the different locations, but focus will probably lie with a few major shootouts/fights, which the player has to prepare for. Combat (especially with guns) is very deadly in LoSt, so people and animals will be nudged towards neutral/shy behavior, with possible interactions other than fighting. Of course, you'll still run afoul with the occasional angry ursine or get ambushed by renegade soldiers or a crazy lead digger. Encounters should be generated to be interesting in themselves. An ambush shouldn't be completely random, but occur at a strategic position in the map (eg. shooting from the hills or a barricade). And of course there must be gambling, learning skills, hearing rumors, taming/riding/herding animals, digging for lead to get by … I'm still considering if and how it could be cool to implement survivalist mechanics (including food) and item crafting, further down the road … Hah, it's easy to think big, but the devil is in the details. Let's just hope the final version of LoSt is released sometime before the singularity/rapture/what-you-will.

In the interim, I already mentioned that speech is the next big feature to add. It's a prerequisite of "making the map interesting". In addition to tactically interesting positions, we need goals and paths for the player to explore the map. Collecting bounties/reputation and trading will be important, and are to be added in the next release (at least the basics). I often find conversation trees to be a big turnoff, so I'll start with simple lines of dialogue, printed in the message log and as speech bubbles on the map. The player should largely be able to react by performing actions (for your fetch quest: drop the item you were sent to get, pick up the reward). Maybe there'll be the occasional Y/N prompt.

Bounties ("quests") can be set up as wanted-posters anywhere semi-official, or through NPCs offering odd jobs and favors. Instead of traditional experience points, I'm planning for bounties to play a role in pacing character development and the passage of time. There must be an option to resting, since lost health levels don't regenerate by waiting in the map, and I don't want "med kits" that instaheal you between battles (but maybe something like adrenaline syringes to use in the heat of it). Maybe resting will take several weeks in-game, and also be the game phase where you digest your recent experiences, and so to speak level up. If you're forced back with the tail between your legs after being stabbed over an animal baiting contest, you'll have to pay for housing and medical bills, and maybe all you get out of it is a pesky war wound, a minor skill advancement, or the news that Slim Jim Bonney, who you were out to get, has slipped town. On the other hand, returning with the head* of Slim Jim nets you loot and fame and other auspices. (* I do mean the head, by the way. In The Land, it is customary to decapitate one's victims to prove their identities. It provides an easy interface to collect a bounty on someone, by literally carrying the head back in your inventory.)

For trade, I'm thinking of "traveling saleskids" wandering the map as well as permanent shops at different locations. Shops will definitely be nethack-like, with items that can be picked up, and paying by interacting with the shop keeper. Traveling saleskids will probably carry an inventory of up to 6 items for sale, which they drop in a circle around them when bumped. Currency will be lead (♄), the same with which you load your iron.

So the next release will have a bit more direction: some people to talk to, places to go to and missions to perform, some character development, hopefully some stuff like that …

As always,
Minotauros

Released: LoSt v.9 «Broken Windows»

spread the glorious news!

Version 9 is out. Links to the archives are the same as ever:
Windows (exe)
Linux (deb)
Sources (python)

This version mostly fixes some bugs and adds a few more things to do. Now you can blow up stuff with dynamite and shoot stray cats with elephant guns. Here's the changelog:

• Bug: Game would sometimes crash when unloading gun in hand
• Bug: Chainhook critical hits could cause a crash
• Bug: Chainhooks could drag victims over/onto obstacles
• Bug: Crash when actions executed without a proper target/tool
• Bug: Spirit stone displayed false tile when carried
• Bug: Items would sometimes be generated in water
• Bug: Windows version warned about duplicate files
• Bug: Holy site animals would sometimes get "prickly plant" AI
• Props and features: Dynamite, rubble, smithereens, sledge hammer, elephant gun, sniper rifle, gun slits, windows
• Place template: pillbox bunkers
• Game: Inventory items can grant flags/intrinsics
• Game: Stackable inventory items
• Game: Simplified day/night cycle
• Game: Carrying heavy items encumbers the player
• Game: Demolishing house walls
• Game: Beings can trigger actions upon destruction/death
• Game: Worked on corpses and rubble
• Kits: Each animal species gets a random disposition (ornery, shy, docile)
• Kits: (Some) animal families now have set special abilities (cats sprint, dogs charge, horns penetrate, bears deal more damage, etc.)
• UI: Placement of text log now configurable to center, top or bottom
• UI: Status line in menu displays timer for temporary flags
• UI: Menu displays current place and time
• UI: File structure for prop tiles now much more orderly
• UI: Testing out another style for prop tiles
• System: Game now keeps a log file
• System: Config and save files now track release version, tries to repair obsolete options 

Is it right to have left left for right?

I've also been taking the visual style in a more abstract direction. The changes do reflect my experimenting towards a vague plan I have for the visual design of the game. Frankly, it'll also be easier to add content once I don't have to hand draw/steal tiles for each new prop. I'm hoping to get some visual snazz whilst maintaining the flexibility and low maintenance of traditional Roguelike displays. Let's see where it may end. Here's a picture showing some simple examples: To the left, props as they were displayed in version 8. To the right, how I'm displaying the same objects now. Similar items use similar icons, only differently colored. So even encountering a new object, you'd be able to instantly classify it as a whip, bomb, medicine, etc.

Barring any glaring bugs, this'll probably be the last release of the year.

In any case, I'm sorry for spamming you with release notes. The next entry will surely be some piece of text pertaining to game design. I hope to turn my attention towards NPCs now, evolving the AI a bit and adding some more content and features.

As always,
Minotauros

Released: LoSt v.8 «Still Life»

I decided to release the game in its current state, This is version 8, titled «Still Life». Hopefully, someone might have interest in trying it, just to stifle their own curiosity, and perhaps to leave a comment or two.

Get your fresh bloodshed here:
Windows executable
Python sources

(Linux users: Apologies for delayed Deb package this time. I'll put it up shortly; in the meantime, Linux and Mac users can quite easily run the game from source, by following the readme inside the archive.)

Save files are not backwards compatible. This even goes for the configuration file, so if you're reinstalling LoSt, your safest bet is just to delete your old configuration folder (named ".LoSt" and contained in your home directory).

«Still Life» is very much a pre-alpha release. Compared to the last version, which featured a dungeon and a win condition, I've rolled back to something even less reminiscent of a real game! Let's hope the one step backwards precedes a leap onwards … Highlights of «Still Life» include randomized species of plants and animals, basic overworld generation, and snazzier graphics (with configurable resolution and animation options).

There have been a lot of changes behind the scenes, which will make it easier to add more content to the game from now on. I guess the basic setting will take shape within a release or two, and hope to start working on humans in the next release. Implementing NPCs will entail getting more or the basic engine in place, including speech, trade and bounties (quests).

Comments welcome

I'd be happy for any comments, even (especially) if it's just that someone didn't get the game to work or didn't understand how to play it. At the current point, I'm curious as to how people find the interface and combat system, both of which are quite unconventional.

Ideas and requests for content and features will be given high priority, as a carrot for those interested in the further development of LoSt. At the current point, the game is a bit lacking in theme. There are not many objects to find, and practically no lore. Also, the random animal species doesn't yet yield really memorable creatures. I'm sure the animals will get some more personality once text descriptions are added, but I'll also need some inspired ideas for how to take this feature a bit further. In general, I'm looking forward to getting the setting more or less in place. So if anyone want to see telescopes implemented before lassos, or would love to play a travelling quack in the next release, make your voice heard, and I'll try to accomodate.

As always, Minotauros

fearsome critters

I'm working on random animal species for LoSt. I figured this is a good place to start, before adding (randomized) NPCs, which will be a lot more complex. The basic engine has been tested with a quite bland "foo beast" and a "monstrum biformis". The foo beast gets a very simple random name and shape that each member inherits, whilst each individual monstrum biformis is a unique mixture of two animal parts. I might keep these genotypes in the game, just for the hell of it, although they'll have to be refined and renamed (in particular the monstrum biformis, which I don't even know how to decline in plural).

Genotypes are distinguished at least by their morphology (including health and main attack form), habitat (how and where it's encountered), and behaviour (simple AI plug-ins like "flock mentality" and "self-preservation" apply goals and tactics), as well as special quirks (stuff like poison, spinnerets and tunneling fall under this category). Just working with these four basic parameters makes a wide range of beasts possible: Consider that if I hobbled together ten templates for each of them, the engine would support 10 000 different kinds of animals.


However, it also becomes clear that a completely random bestiary won't work. The results would too often be ridiculously unbalanced, or simply uninteresting. There must be some method to the madness, and it's worth considering which functions encounters serve in the first place.

1. They might provide a challenge to the player: Encounters which are aggressive or otherwise have to be overcome create a tension in the game. We're making a Roguelike here, so the player should always be wary of suddenly coming under attack. Even if not generated hostile, NPCs and neutral entities can provide challenges in the form of missions, puzzles and other tasks.

2. They might advance the character: The basic form of this in most Roguelikes and rpgs is killing the next guy to steal his cash or other stuff. Another classic RL trope is experience points. There'll be no xp in LoSt, nor will dumb beast go about carrying various treasures. (But there might come some survivalist mechanics that include hunting later on.) Again, neutral/friendly critters can also advance the character. Shopkeepers ("travelling saleskids" in LoSt) spring to mind, as do missions with rewards.

3. They should provide mood or story: Not least, and this goes for friendly as well as malicious critters, they should speak to the mood and setting of the game. Whether pilfering booze off a mad prospector, barely escaping a crazed bear, saving a small reptile from the claws of a feral cat, or just observing a flock of birds taking off from a far away field, the player should experience that the animals and persons s/he encounters form a greater whole, some kind of game world.

There's a lot to consider here, especially when expanding a randomized system. The first two points directly point to gameplay aspects, and must be balanced in relation to each other. But they also tie in with the third point: If a game world contains only vile predators, the engine has failed on all points – the game would probably be too hard, and in addition such a setting makes no sense (what would they eat, apart from the player?). The same goes for a world with nothing but docile prey – which might bore the player in so many ways, unless (who knows?) a freak accident transforms our Roguelike, for a single session, into some kind of pastoral simulator.

In that sense, consistency of mood and story is useful as a kind of measuring stick to get an intuitive feel for whether the game world is properly balanced. But for LoSt, it's no less important in and of itself. Frankly, I'd rather make a game with an evocative game world than one that is superbly balanced. And I certainly hope in the long run to implement some features and content that will borderline on procedurally generated literature, randomizing things like dialogue, monologue (including folk songs), monster memory, item descriptions and mission details.

Some words about the actual design: On the technical side, I have defined a bunch of critter templates and traits that can be combined to spawn actual beings (I call these data templates kits). Most of these kits describe very simple qualities, like "beaked", "small" and "avian", which combined gives the outline of some random bird. A slightly bigger bird, like a buzzard, could be specified as "medium" and attacking with an improved beak. And of course there is room for things like giant dogs with antlers and airborne mini-aligators!

What I'm doing at the moment, is bundling kits together into bigger packages and specifying templates which are more picky about which kits they choose. This enables me to steer what kinds of animals are generated, whilst still retaining a degree of randomness. For instance, the basic kit "flocking bird I" inherits subkits like "small avian template" (basic morphology, including attack and defense stats) and "flock mentality" (currently a very crude set of behaviours, just trying to approach as well as defend critters of the same species). This basic kit can be patched with further traits (specifying for instance that the species sports a special attack, or that it's a flightless fowl). Another basic template I have in place is called "royal predator I". It is always a solitary beast with good combat stats and a penchant for attacking critters tagged as "prey" (which in turn are programmed to flee anything tagged as a "predator"). Other than that, the royal predator can turn out a mammal, a reptile, or even a giant bird.

During world generation, each climate type randomly generates its encounter table by spawning a few species types. Again, the tables are weighted: A certain climate might demand to get one predator, one prey, one carrion eater, and one completely random animal. The system should be smart enough to be able to pick for instance "flocking bird I" as its carrion eater, and then patch it with the appropriate kits to make it go after corpses and eat them. I'll also have to implement filters to make sure that the same species template isn't picked over and over again. I'm considering emulating something like decks of cards – lists containing one or more references to each appropriate kit, removing referances as they are picked and used.

Be that as it may, I'm currently less concerned with balancing than just getting the engine to spit out some interesting beasts. I'm of course reviewing Borges' entry on American cryptozoology in The Book of Imaginary Beings, and trying to dig up some other sources of inspiration. One thing that is becoming clear to me, is that I need to differentiate between the different groups/families of species. Right now, there is little difference between a giant lizard and a cow, except for slightly different attack forms. Making each type more distinct will not only make the bestiary more varied, but will also strengthen the kind of learning curve that is typically associated with Roguelikes. I don't really want a game where experienced players share a standardized knowledge of "which resistances to stack up on" before engaging which critters. But it'd add some depth and predictability if certain patterns are true for every game. Maybe cats are inherently fast and reptiles inherently tough, for instance. That way, a knowledgeable player will be prepared to draw some information just from seeing a critter for the first time, and yet not be sure what to expect from every new playthrough. A world full of raging bulls will probably require different tactics to handle than one stalked by man-eating lizards. And the mark of an experienced player would be that s/he's able to deduce facts about the generated world, and react accordingly.

As the bestiary starts falling into place, I'll be picking up my old plant life generator and migrate it from python sources into files containing kit definitions. At which point we're looking at an upcoming release to see if I can harvest some comments on the basic workings of the biotope generator. Never mind if it's going to be badly balanced and utterly crazy – there will be due time to reflect and refine later on.

As always,
Minotauros

measurements of the known world

I want the setting to be highly random every time you play. Questlines, species of animals and plants, important places, they should all be procedurally generated – at least to a certain extent.  It's impossible not to work with some templates. Say you want random places – you have to stop the randomness at some point and set fixed parameters. If I want settlements to crop up in the game, it's not going to happen unless I make some blueprints with blanks to fill in, and a balanced "world blueprint" to put at least a few villages in addition to other places of interest. The same goes for animals: I can't just blindly generate a bunch of random species and put them on the map. There must be a balance of predators, prey, pets, and atmospheric population of The Land.

Every now and then, some fresh developer announces that he (mostly guys do this, yeh :P) is writing a RL where a totally unique world and plot will be generated each time. Content like trade, reputation and other intelligent behaviour will supposedly just procedurally occur from the sublimely wrought code that binds it all together. I think what we (counting myself amongst this throng of vapourware developers) fail to realize, is this basic principle, that you have to actually implement all the content that goes in the game. Sure, you can patch it together so that interesting combinations will occur procedurally, but there is a reason why so few RLs (if any?) exist that really take this to the next level. A conventional truth is that procedural generation can be used to alleviate manual labour by pregenerating stuff like landscapes, that would otherwise have to be coded by someone. This may be true for genres like FPSs and development models used in big business, but in RL development, the opposite seems to be true: Rather than handcrafting less content than the player is going to see in any one game, you'll end up having to make more, by orders of magnitude.

If there is something like a story in any given RL game, I think it's the setting. Exploration of the game's universe doesn't happen linearly, but rather fractured up by features like permadeath and randomness. I actually believe this to be a key to random stories in RL games: Granted, you'll find yourself implementing stuff like procedural dialogue and questlines, but the actual sense of the work will be in something perhaps much less grand: just the kind of random stories that have always been extolled on RL forums. So much for holy grails and silver bullets.

As I stated, I want the map to be randomly generated, but I'm not aiming for a huge world. My current testing version generates a landscape encircling a diameter of about 400 hexes, surrounded by endless desert. Rather than each playthrough taking place on an entirely different planet, I'm envisioning different regions in one and the same world. For one thing, it'll make a lot more sense if later I implement ghosts, or even the option for retired characters to show up as NPCs in later games. It also means I can write quite specific lore to reflect a single world/culture, and possibly conceive of one or more overarching plots, possibly even win conditions. (And yet, why bother with win conditions; doesn't an unwinnable game world highlight the very strengths of the RL genre?)

I will of course allow myself to vary parameters in the setting if I think it can be used to advance gameplay or the story itself. The Land is situated on the frontier of a continent loosely based on historic America, during a period of colonization by settlers and officials of «the old world». One could randomize the ruling form of the old world, for instance: Is it an empire or monarchy, or a federation or a group of rivaling states? That might not be worth the effort, actually. But it might be interesting if for instance the religious fractions were partly randomized. In one game priests and mystics hailing to the prevalent religion(s) might be wandering monks and nuns, in another they could set up temples in villages or near natural sources and holy sites. And I've been thinking about having the old world represented by a random currency in each game.

Old world money, however, would probably just function as trade goods. The popular currency used in The Land is always lead bullets. Slugs function as coins as well as ammunition, so in The Land, the saying that one person's life is worth one bullet, is no metaphor; it's the actual rate. It's a harsh land. Slavery may be more or less predominant in different playthroughs, but it will always be an issue
in the game world. But I guess there may be some sort of hope. Should I flesh out the theme of slavery into a main plotline, one conflict would surely have to be the fight for the abolishment of slavery! The law is still fluent in The Land, dictated by the varying influences of various power fractions. Fractions might include commercial companies and military forces from the old world, opposed to forces for political independence, ranging from semi-autonomous settlements to secret societies, but also powerbases ambiguous to this dichotomy, like the church or different sects/cults, local commercial interests and gangsters fighting it out between themselves while simultaneously trying to stave off the man, who wants all of their heads on a platter.

Some fractions might be pure berserker types when faced with the players, such as desperadoes, highwaymen, and parts of the natural world. For now, I have more than my hands full just getting all systems to work and writing the bare bones of a weird western setting, but naturally I would love to add an indigenous culture, with its own bases of power and playable careers. In the current public version, there is already the skeleton of a career system, starting the player out with a random career out of many. I'll soon pick and flesh out a few careers, and then add more as I go along. Careers might represent power fractions in themselves, and I hope to use them as stepping stones to describe the setting. I'm pretty sure The Land will feature lots of conspiracies, so it might make sense to have some of the careers represent something akin to guilds or networks. There may be a fellowship of the railway station masters, or a code of conduct taken by certain gunslingers and avengers, etc. The career you choose at the beginning of the game will represent your background, so it should be fully possible to start out as a lyncher, but then pursue the skills and ethos of a witch hunter or an agitator. Starting careers should open up something like a skill tree, however, and maybe possible starting missions. As development progresses, specialized skills can be assigned to specialized careers, in addition to being learnable in the game.

At the moment, I'm debugging and finalizing the basic world building engine, whilst simultaneously using it as an opportunity to add some content. For instance, I've been having some trouble with places/encounters containing subencounters (say, a pampas, containing a house, containing a critter). To test and tweak, what better way than writing up a few places that use this exact mechanism. The next release seems to be in sight. And if you think I've been ranting my way through this blog post, you should probably have stopped reading a long time ago.

As always,
Minotauros

Shaping up

I've been hacking away some at LoSt (even if I borrowed my motto from Beckett's early prose piece The End: «I did not work every day.») – adding more infrastructure for loading and randomizing content, as well as a basic landscape/climate generator and encounter system (if still pretty crude, it'll do for our testing purposes).

This means I'm facing a period of adding some content, which is always fun. Especially as most of the game is generated from data files now, meaning I'll be able to quickly add and test different kinds of items and critters/people with particular behaviors.

I'm recycling a lot from abandoned projects, so I can move quickly enough, even if «I did not work every day».

I reckon the next release will feature a wasteland with some houses and human encounters, as well as plants and animals (randomly generated species, of course).

Speech and experience/time are probably next on the todo list, after which I'll be able to concentrate more and more on adding content.

Compared to coding, adding content is easier from a technical point of view, but it can be much harder to design and balance. (Not to mention that I'm still ironing out system basics like whether or not to use explicit facing).

As always,
Minotauros

the joy of rotozoom()

A quick update: I've been working on a new routine to display tiles, with support for animated sprites. Instead of the epitomal @, you are a pair of footprints wanderig around. There are some dogs pawing about, as well, and the system currently supports critters up to 4 hexes big (mounts and pachyderms, I reckon). Further down the road, I'm opting for some kind of speech system with speech bubbles, and probably typographic sound effects (comic book onomatopoeia like "clank" and "boom").

All animations can be switched off in the configuration menu, of course. Even then, I've a nice system where you can switch between resolution levels (and, theoretically, tile sets) at a whim, to support both small and big screens. All very much thanks to pygame's smoothscale() and rotozoom() functions.

The next release is probably going to be all about a desert biotope, with pseudo-random species of animals and plants. I've been moving a lot of the content over in data files, to make it easier to add new stuff. The very template-like desert dog that's currently in the game, is contained in the following lines in the data files:

cri small dog # "cri" means "critter", as in "define new critter"
inherit "critter" # get some basic stats
nom ["a","big chihuahua","chihuahuas",""]
max_health (2,1)
tags ["animal"]
causes ['self-preservation','zombi moves'] # define behavious
hands "bite" # natural attack
size 2 # two hexes big
tile ((2,2),(2,2),(2,2),(2,2)) # refers to four (identical) paw sprites
end # end entry for critter "small dog"

# the following three entries make up a very simple "reptile brain" AI plugin:
cause self-preservation # "cause" = preferences/ethos of being
bias [(('harm',0,0,'self',0),('aggravate','agent'))] # hate attackers
states['relaxing'] ["zombi wander"] # when relaxing, just walk randomly
states['attacking'] ['zombi attack'] # need to be able to fight
end
state zombi wander # the "relaxing" state of the critter
actions [(30,("relaxing",0),("finish",0))] # 30% find other pastime
actions [(10,("wait",0),("finish",0))] # 10% stand still
actions [(100,("wander",0),("finish",0))] # 100% walk randomly
bias [((0,'foe',0,0,0),('attacking','agent'))] # attack foes on sight
end
state zombi attack # attacking state
actions [(100,("is_dead","q"),("return",0))] # if quarry q is dead, exit state
actions [(100,('ally','q'),('return',0))] # is q is an ally, exit state
actions [(1,('nil',0),('return',0))] # 1% P of randomly exiting state
actions [(40 ,('approach','q'),('finish',0))] # 40% try to approach quarry
actions [(100,('attack','q'),('finish',0))] # 100% try to attack quarry
actions [(100,('approach','q'),('finish',0)), (100,('wander',0),('finish',0)) # backup strategy: charge!
end

As you can see from such snippets, I'm not aiming for this to be expandable by anyone except me ;) but there is support for "modules" in the game, so you can theoretically mix and match packages of content. In the long run, one could release expansion packs, maybe stuff like a "steampunk mod" or an "undead apocalypse mod", for people who are into that kind of weird west, and the players could choose to include or exclude the various modules at their leisure (I would love a "postapocalypitic cowgirls/Burroughs/Genet queerporn mod", mesself).

Dreaming about long term goals such as this, is of course a very important part of RL development. I think I'll celebrate the next release with a meatier blog post detailing my sterling Slow Application Development (SAD) Method. In the meantime, interested parties can get your snapshot release here (python sources).

The next big thing to do, is to systemize how random elements are picked, so that I can start adding more content; the encounter tables, so to speak. I'm going to use the kind of rhizomatic data entries examplified above, but they need lines beginning with something like "frequency". There needs to be a module or object to make sense of cases like how, if an oasis appears in the desert, it might possibly contain the tent of a travelling salesboy (but probably not a nest of poison ugguks, which you'd be more likely to encounter underground), and in that tent (possibly) of box of posessions, amongst which (possibly) a handgun which (possibly) only holds four bullets, but scores deadly shots with a 1/6 accuracy (just possibly).

The devil, of course, is in the details, that is to say the content. The anatomy of a critical hit, and of the revolver itself, not to mention the salesboy and his tent, the oasis, the desert … With small steps I might be able to slowly populate the current waste land and build a world of biotopes subtle and sprawling, struggling centres of civilization, and a gruesome, mysterious subterranea.

By the way, rescaling the sprites can also be used to get a nifty overview map, although it would be risky to navigate around that, once I get some dangerous encounters up and going in the desert. On the long todo-list is a "travel mode" which zooms out to a larger map view. But here and now, it's more pressing to fix various issues with map generation, some of which become apparent from this very screenshot.

As always,
Minotauros

On the fence

How time flies when development is at a standstill. LoSt can be said to be en route, though; in concordance with the Slow Application Development (SAD) methodology that "we" (that is to say, I) have proudly developed in-house, I'm zealously adhering to the doctrine of "release sometime, release sometimes".

Being busy with other things still leaves me headroom to ponder some issues I'll be tackling in LoSt (this being quite possibly the only redeeming quality of the SAD methodology). I'm not so far away from having most basic functionalities in place, but I still need to make some big decisions. For instance, I'm still on the fence regarding whether I should keep content in data files or put them straight in the source code. In my single big computer game project so far (Squirm RL) I kept "everything" in data files, and I loved how easy it was to add new effects, items, quests, and monsters. On the flip side, I had to stay within the boundaries of the "natural laws" that ruled the game world, and whenever I needed to step outside of these boundaries, I had to mess around with the parser itself, as well as dive into stuff like the main loop and basic event handling. (Let's hope this is the last time I squeeze in a Squirm postmortem on this blog)

For LoSt, it might have been a good idea to use a scripting language. But since I'm writing the darn thing in Python, anyway, that would basically amount to bundling content in with the source code. I think that may be the way to go, just to get maximum flexibility. For instance, I'm planning to have most animal species randomly generated for each world seed. It'll probably be easier to balance and maintain such a fluctuating bestiary as a separate module, rather than implementing a half-assed "catch-all" data syntax.

I already did some work on this, quite early in the process, and came up with a simple plant generator, which spits out basic info on six species of plants, balanced against each other so you won't get a  world with only poisonous plants, or no flora except grasses. A sample run gives something this result:

Bluebread (a small bush, bearing fruit, with a poisonous stem, and capable of walking by uprooting itself), nodding olive (a huge cactus, labeled a tree, with branches that can be used to make rope), sugarelder lilac (a tree with medicinal roots and flowers containing an antidote to poison), bane-grass lily (a toxic grass, however with edible flowers, and roots that can be made into rope), medusapod needle (a flowering grass tagged as "hexweed" and "species delicacy"), and crow's nest foxbrush (a big bush with medicinal berries, and which also is capable of walking).

It'll take some work of the imagination to expand this simple mock-up to include a whole biotope. I'll probably have the generator start out with some kind of "template ecology" where the blanks are filled in, to make sure of stuff like at least having some plants and herbivores at the bottom of the food chain, but more importantly to enforce such as affects gameplay: For instance, there should always be some ferocious animals for the player to fear, but not too many of them; and I certainly want horses or some kind of equestrian beast to appear in every world; and depending on how the game ends up balanced, I need to make sure that resources like food and medicine are distributed in appropriate quantities.

I imagine it a bit like laying out the cards in a fixed pattern for a game of solitaire, or when consulting the Tarot. Except the cards themselves may contain new blank slots, to be filled with yet new cards drawn from the deck. Thus, a "card" containing the template for a small predator will contain some basic stats, but also ask the engine for more "cards" to flesh out the details: whether it's a mammal or a reptile, how it lives and hunts, as well as more unique traits (eg. particularly fast or strong, or poisonous, or easy/hard to tame as a pet).

This, again, raises the question of how to draw random elements when constructing and populating the game world. I may hold on to the "deck of cards"-analogy, making each alternative less likely to show up twice in a row. That would make it easier to restrict for example the probability of every single species in a world being poisonous (although even that may be left at least theoretically possible). And a "deck of cards", periodically reshuffled, may be a better way to assure balanced random drops over time, than simply rolling a die and consulting a table of results.

At the moment, I'm happy enough to ponder this a bit more before getting back in the thick of coding.

In related news, I'm about to send off a pile of stuff for work, which might mean I'll manage to make space for some LoSt development in the next months – although I may have to scramble for a new big project, to accumulate the resources I need for that long-awaited frontal attack on the evergrowing stack of bills.

Thinking Out Loud

Development of LoSt is seeing another burst of activity, be it long or short. On the top of my old todo list was to get a decent "AI" (or, call it, action determination system) up and going for NPCs and enemies, so that's where I'm at now.

A golden rule to keep in mind when developing NPC/critter behavior is that the actors need to be "thinking out loud" to a certain extent. It's easy for a developer to fall in love with a system where there's a lot of hidden stuff going on, stuff the player simply won't notice. In many situations, simple hacks are better than complex algorithms. Making changes in the code will also have more predictable results if you're using simple rules (a fixed probability to flee/fight as opposed to a function that takes into consideration factors like relative health and strength of the opponent).

Truly believable characters may come off as bland; a fictional person is much more easy to make memorable if defined by traits underlined to an almost absurd degree (consider the monomaniac ramblings of Captain Abab or The Red Queen in Alice; the archetypical nice naughtiness of someone like Little My (in the Moonmin books) or Pippi Longstockings; the sincere stupidity of Sancho Panza. Examples that might hit closer to home include the conspicuous inclination of pixies/leprechauns in traditional Rogue-games, or how that pesky puppy in ADOM ceaselessly gets into fights with ogres and worse).

I'm basing my "AI" system of how I did it in my abandoned Roguelike Squirm. Each actor is always in a certain state, which dictates the actor's behavior (eg. "hungry-at-home" state: if there is food on the table, eat it, else go to "cook-and-put-food-on-table" state). The personality of any actor is really contained in the sum of states that actor is capable of being in, as well as (what I call) the "bias switches" used to switch the state of the actor, depending on what it observes on the map. It is a quite flexible system for tactical behavior (switching between different attacking/defending states, so that some goon might keep her distance, seeking cover and firing a gun, maybe turning to run if she gets hit herself, whilst man-eating big-dogs might hunt in packs, aiming to surround their victim and go for the throat) as well as functional or even choreographic (going to the doctor if you've been shot in the leg; frequenting the railway station to proclaim the villainies of villains and handing out cash bounties to said villains' vanquishers; heading to the saloon with a loaded gun to settle all your debts once and for all).

The whole thing borrows heavily from Bear's Roguelike Intelligence articles on Roguebasin. Andrew Doull's essays about developing Unangband was also a huge inspiration back at the time I was developing Squirm.

Right now I'm just testing it with a desert stray dog, quite ineptly identified by the game as "a dog, holding teeth". It starts out in a "wander" state, which just loops endlessly, with the dog always walking in a random direction. Its sole cause in this world is self-preservation: if someone (presumably the player, being the only other living thing in this infinite desert) inflicts damage upon it, it fights to the death.

I might test this further with some more desert life (I have a prototype for randomly generated plant species lying around), but I'll soon be delving back into the lead mines to develop the slave break scenario a bit more. It's a pretty fruitful scenario to use for early development. It involves some fighting, possible even between two groups (slaves and owners, if it turns into a real uprising), which is good to get a lot of technicalities in place. There will also definitely be some talking, and I hope to develop at least the slave community as an interesting part of the setting/theme, with their own rumors and rituals, staying pretty small while hinting at larger issues.

As always,
Minotauros

The Story So Far

A while ago, I started to tinker with a computer game named Land of Strangers. The game is a Roguelike set in a fantasy world inspired by various fictions about cowboys and cowgirls. It's still in the very early phases of development, but can already by downloaded (as a Windows executable, a software package for Debian/Ubuntu Linux, or as source code (written in python)).

Louise Ortiz, travelling salesgirl, soon to be dead (screenshot from LoSt v. 7)

This blog was established to write about LoSt (although I might make the odd excursion into stray topics, I'll try to stay on the case). For the sake of archival completeness, here is a final link, to a forum thread which I've been using to rant about LoSt: http://forums.roguetemple.com/index.php?topic=3221.0

The summer is going to be awfully quiet, but I'm guessing we can expect a new release early next fall. It will focus on making the supporting cast a little smarter.

As always,
Minotauros