Finally added a Player, well, sometimes...

So there were some problems with the old system, so I spent the last, 55 days rewriting it. Ok, that might have been a bit too long.

The upside? More of the internals are exposed 🎉!

The downside? There’s less there, I had to disable the innovation system for the moment, until I get a few other things working 🤦. Also the new engine is slow… But that’s fixable =)…

One fun new thing that has happened as a result is mass starvation, thankfully it’s fixable, but I wanted to get this out first before starting to tackle that… Squints at the 55 days ago, It’s clearly already been too long…

One other note, I’ve got some issues with screen size layout that I need to tackle, sorry to anyone who’s inconvenienced by that!

Where is this at?

Version 0.0.5:

Let’s pull in some screenshots:

So one thing I should start mentioning is that this is a current problem, at times world generation will go a bit overboard and throw you into a water world, which is kinda stupid and I’ve not gotten around to fixing it yet.

The good news is if this happens to you, there’s a super simple fix, just generate a new world! ;)…

As an aside, I’m not 100% sure if this is a failure mode? I mean maybe there’s some interesting gameplay possible in this sort of environment? But for now, definitely not.

So this is a much better world that’s been generated, there’s actually space for stuff to be on it…

So, now that we’ve found a world that seems to be interesting, hit that big “Simulate History” button!

So some time has passed and the world has kept going.

We can see some settlements have developed, so let’s take a look at them!

One other warning is that sometimes you’ll get a complete failure to kickstart history. Yes, that can happen… So basically, generate a new world and start simulating history again.

So the map will center on the settlement that you just selected. If there’s a Meganeura sitting on top of it you won’t be able to see it, but otherwise it will be that nice blue square with a letter on it.

Yep, names have been shortened back down to single letters for the moment.

Here’s another settlement for comparison.

So let’s just pick one and hit Start!

So this is the reason that I wanted to move to this approach, the prior system had a similar amount of data, but it came with the downside that tweaking / experimenting with it was slow. Making changes using this approach is a lot faster, with the caveat that it makes everything a bit slower. At least at the moment it does, there’s some things I can do to speed it up, but to be honest, for the moment it’s fast enough.

One thing to note, you can see in the stats bar at the top a Money figure? That is your settlement’s capital, which you’re gaining through taxes. I’ve not added anything for you to spend it on yet, I was going to, but the starvation issue I mentioned is a bit more of a priority.

Speaking of starvation, you can’t lose still =)… At least until I get the underlying system more stable.

Let’s select a city and a market type!

So once again you can see a bunch more information =)…

And I’ve noticed a two bugs, which is not great, specifically the aggregated Total’s aren’t being calculated correctly.

It’s become a bunch easier though to understand what’s happening in the simulation while I’ve been working like this.

For example that mass starvation issue I mentioned before was always a bit of a problem, but now it’s a lot clearer what’s causing it and how to start tackling it.

So for now I want to get some of the basic bits working at a high level before I start breaking stuff down.

You might have noticed that population of each individual settlement doesn’t change? Yea, that’s intentional for the moment, having them sea-saw up and down while double-checking the sim is working correctly would be problematic.

Instead I’m trying to ensure that enough of the other bits provide interesting dynamics without varying stuff that will definitely create variance in the sim.

That’s it for now, once some other systems are in, I’ll start putting back other stuff =)…

It’s getting exciting!