[aspettando] Ultima Ratio Regum

[Jon Irenicus]

A semi-roguelike game inspired by Jorge Borges, Umberto Eco, Neal Stephenson, Shadow of the Colossus, Europa Universalis and Civilization.

In realtà lo apro per decidermi di seguirlo visto che ci sono update settimanali...

Cos'è? Sostanzialmente un 4X roguelike. Ma la parola roguelike non è certo usata a sproposito come a volte accade. Potrei dire che semplicemente è forse il roguelike like più ambizioso che si stia vedendo.
Parola di RPS:

“Ultima Ratio Regum is one of a few ambitious, long-term projects which I think represent the most exciting things about indie game development, about PC games, and about what technology can do for the games of tomorrow.”

Perchè? Perchè è veramente massiccio come idee, il dev coi suoi updata settimanali analizza vari aspetti del gameplay considerando anche alternative. Ed ha l'ascii art migliore di sempre. Seriamente, se odiate l'ascii non solo per questo si potrebbe fare un'eccezione, ma veramente è gradevole da vedere!

Un po' di copia incolla con immagini che male non fa:

Ultima Ratio Regum is a middle-ground between roguelikes, RPGs and strategy games. It has no fantasy elements and seeks instead to be closer to a realistic history simulator, and a strategy/4x game which just happens to be in ASCII. Combat is rare and deadly - whilst these mechanics are modeled in detail, exploration, trade and diplomacy factors will have just as much effort put into them. URR aims to eventually be a fusion of roguelike and strategy two genres - rather than a strategy game where you command with omniscience (even in ancient eras), you instead command as an individual character also in the game. Orders must be issued in person; you can lose contact with distant armies; but the same mechanics affect the AI players who also lack omniscience and depend upon the knowledge of situations they themselves can garner. Worlds can be generated over a vast array of sizes, climates and types, but all ultimately with no fixed objective but a world full of civilizations and factions to be allied with or battled against. It aims for depth in character development and world events, but with much in the 'middle' - constructing buildings, city growth, resource management - abstracted out (as other games exist which handle those well). Political and social dynamics will be modeled via a complex system that aims to generate both a history for the world, and the current state of political affairs when your game begins.

Although currently in its early stages, URR aims to explore several philosophical and sociological issues that both arose during the sixteenth and seventeenth century (when the game is approximately set), and in the present day, whilst almost being a deep, complex and highly challenging roguelike. To do this the game seeks to generate realistic world histories, though ones containing a few unusual happenings and anomalous experiences. The traditional roguelike staple of combat will be rare and deadly – whilst these mechanics will be modeled in detail, exploration, trade and diplomacy factors will have just as much effort put into them.

A generated world – coastline, ocean, volcanoes, mountains, hills, biomes, rivers…

Worlds can be generated over a vast array of sizes, climates and types, but all ultimately with no fixed objective but a world full of civilizations and factions to be allied with or battled against. It aims for depth in character development and world events, but with stuff in the ‘middle’ – constructing buildings, city growth, resource management – abstracted out (as many other games exist which cover those). Political and social dynamics will be modeled via a complex system that aims to generate both a history for the world, and the current state of political affairs when your game begins.


-Exploring a ziggurat; all outdoor areas change colour and shading according to season and time of day.

Art Generation: Ultima Ratio Regum will feature significant amounts of complex generative graphics, ranging from planetary atmospheres to ancient temple murals, landscapes to military rankings, and from sword designs to family coats of arms. The game explores what can be done with ASCII graphics to detail and explore a deep generated world. These graphics are not merely side-dressing – many of them are essential to gathering clues and information to aid you through the world.


Some patterned stone remnants of earlier civilizations…

Ancient Exploration: Set in the 16th/17th century, the game contains a number of relics of earlier civilizations, which can be explored. These temples and tombs will be full of murals generated according to ancient myths (see the art generation objective), but these murals serve not just an aesthetic purpose – they will give clues to the locations of artefacts, or catacombs containing great wealth. They will also contain procedurally-generated puzzles, mazes, and other challenges, whilst also shedding light on some aspects of the great political changes going on in the world the game is set in. Recent releases have focused on this aspect of the game.


All graphics – like this main menu landscape – are procedurally generated, and unique.

Linguistics: Different civilizations – ancient and contemporary – will have different languages you may not necessarily be able to speak at the start of the game. Ancient languages can be learnt to give greater insight into murals or ancient texts, whilst contemporary languages enable you to communicate beyond your empire’s boundaries, trade with others, and handle yourself in other empires.


A procedurally generated door – runes, vines, bricks and everything else are unique to this particular entrance…

Multi-Square Units: Ultima Ratio Regum will include a large number of units that span many squares, a significant break from the roguelike norm of one-square-per-unit. Catapults, ballistas and other siege weapons take up around 5×5 squares and behave accordingly, whilst other larger structures will also later make it into the game.


Checking out the world map; city, town and village generation are on their way in 0.5…

Insomma di roba ce n'è tanta, ma proprio tanta, c'è una creazione del mondo con società ecc (in un update dice che le casate hanno un po' la funzione che potrebbe avere la religione su altri rl) esplorazione di dungeon con puzzle tutto generato casualmente.
Vedere dettagli come danni localizzati e così via quando dovrebbero esserci anche scontri tra armate è spettacolare! Si comanda una persona in effetti, tutt'altro che onniscente, visto che si può perdere contatto con le armate e occorre dare ordini di persona.
Esplorazione di rovine antiche con sezioni dungeon crawl...
E poi c'è diplomazia, mercanteggio...
Sicuramente un mucchio di altra roba che m'è sfuggita perchè non l'ho seguito per un pezzo e il dev scrive tanto...

Al momento deve ancora definire varie cose tra cui anche una struttura definita del gioco, ma gli aggiornamenti costanti e l'approccio molto metodico del dev fanno sperare benissimo (oltretutto adesso sta terminando un dottorato ma sviluppa lo stesso...).
Infatti qui c'è l'attuale piano di sviluppo a breve medio termine:
http://www.ultimaratioregum.co.uk/ga...opment-plan-2/

Per chi vuole ci sono build aggiornate sul sito da provare.
Il gioco è free, ma il dev accetta donazioni.

Riguardo tempi di sviluppo:

I have been developing it for over two years, and anticipate that at least a good decade remains until I’m happy with it.

Altri shot random dal blog:

[Donbabbeo]

Seguilo su Twitter come faccio io, scrive poco ma scrive tutti i nuovi sviluppi sul gioco.

Ovviamente seguo gioco davvero promettente

[Jon Irenicus]

E' un'idea!
Magari dovrei anche imparare ad usare i feed rss, saran 2 anni che dico "li uso" poi non li uso mai...

[Jon Irenicus]

Me ne accorgo adesso, dai commenti moodb:

UltimaRatioRegum Mar 2 2014, 11:12pm replied:
Haha, thank you! Having been developing this entirely in my spare time for the last three years, I'm thinking of a Kickstarter so I can spend a year working on the game full time. Check back in a month or so .

Altro kickstart in arrivo? Non sarebbe male vista l'ambizione del progetto.

[Jon Irenicus]

Come annunciato, uscita oggi versione 0.5!

Ultima Ratio Regum 0.5 Released!
Posted on April 12, 2014

With 3.5 months of development behind it (my fastest release to date), I present Ultima Ratio Regum v0.5! You can download it here. Here’s a summary of the major additions:


- History generation! The world now contains over a thousand years of history of conflicts, religions, settlements, colonies and more. Some categories such as discoveries and cults will be added to more in later versions. Although they are currently all shown at the start of the game, exploring and discovering these histories (and the gameplay/world information they provide) will later emerge into a central game mechanic.

- Enlarged world map! The world map is now 250×250 rather than 150×150, but due to various optimizations takes up less memory than the older version. This allows for far more room for everything the game needs, and with a larger world map I can start to think about various mechanics for exploring the world without it all opening up too quickly.

- Religion generation! The world is now populated by religions – monotheistic, polytheistic and spiritual/animist/shamanistic – some of which may spread between multiple civilizations. The game describes their entire pantheons in addition to (for feudal religions) what agendas they might wish their followers to pursue.

- Cities, towns, fortresses and settlements! The world map is now populated by the capital cities and smaller towns of feudal civilizations, the desert fortresses of nomads (between which their caravans will later roam) and the settlements of hunter-gatherer civilizations. These different types of civilization also have different types of flag and symbols associated with them. In the next version, 0.6, these population centers will be fully explorable.

- Coats of arms and families! Feudal civilizations now contain a number of noble houses, each of which has a procedurally generated coat of arms to go with it. The player is assigned to a non-ruling house in their civilization of choice, and house allegiance will be one of several “faction” alignments that offer both benefits and risks as the game progresses.

- Updated start/load screen! The start/load a game screen now displays a wealth of information about each save to allow you to easily browse the saves you may have, and also loads in a fraction of the time that was required in the past. You are also now given a choice of what civilization to follow, and whether to follow the lead religion in that civilization (if any).

- Policies! There are now a large number of “policies” that each civilization possesses, spread across eight different categories. These will act as passive boosts to the player’s abilities, skills and stats in various areas.

- Road generation! A network of roads now criss-crosses the parts of the world controlled by feudal civilizations, and also generate on the human-scale map (not just the world map).

Hope you all like it. Let me know any feedback you have, any bugs you might find (I think the release is bug-free, but there is only so much playtesting two people can do) and any other suggestions or feedback. In the next few weeks I’ll be talking quite a bit about the plans for URR this coming year which I’m rather excited about, so I invite you all to join me for that discussion in the near future. Hope you enjoy the release!

[Jon Irenicus]

Uppo anche qui...
So che lo sviluppo si era fermato un pochino quest'estate, a dicembre ha ripreso ed è ripartito... Troppa roba da leggere, ma è impressionante vedere di quanti dettagli si preoccupa per un gioco di tale respiro. Sta ancora sempre su generatori di contenuto random e mi domando se mai finirà.
Per dire, nell'ultimo parla della generazione di questa parte del dialogo: Greetings, Farewells, Compliments, Insults, Threats, Thanks

Dovrebbe buttare fuori l'update 0.8 i prossimi mesi e dice che sarà quello più grosso che abbia mai fatto, rimane solo qualche bug da sistemare. Non sarà comprensivo del dialogo che farà nella versione 0.9 che dice sarà un update abbastanza rapido da fare.
Dopodichè le basi dovrebbero esserci tutte...
Magari prima del 2020 si vedrà la 1.0...