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.

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0 comments by UltimaRatioRegum on Jun 11th, 2013

This week's URR post is a short update on what's been happening the past week. I've been working on a bunch of things, some which are bug fixes and small features, some of which are further development of the procedural graphics in the ziggurats, and some of which are secret for now. Here's a list of what's been done over the last week, and what the goals for next week are.

This week:

Seven
new procedural graphics
have been finished off for ziggurats, leaving all the block graphics finished. These include various creatures and locations, each of which has a wide variety of different poses, positions or permutations. As ever, generated art is a central part of the game, and I'm pretty damned happy with how these are looking.

Ocean
travel
is now temporarily enabled for the next few releases. In the future, you'll need ships or similar to travel, but for the time being, you can travel across ocean squares when you're in the fast travel screen ('T'). This ensures you can get to all the imporant ziggurats in this release.

Ziggurat rewards have been largely programmed in. Right now, these are either a) secrets, or b) hints towards which ziggurats you can find secrets in. Naturally in the future there will be a far greater variety, but for the time being, 0.3 is focused on locating these items.

Various bugs have been fixed, and various small features added, generally in the direction of clarity and ease of use. A few small things have also been removed as they aren't fully implemented yet (for instance, the skills menu), to focus on the exploration in this release.

This coming week, I'm going to be focusing on finishing off all the possible puzzle generation. There's a very large number of components coming together so that the blocks, clues, codewords, puzzles, pressure pads and gates all combine correctly, and ensuring the game places puzzles of the correct difficulty on appropriate floors. Expect easy puzzles at the bases of ziggurats, and ones that are sufficiently complex they pretty much require a pen and pad at the top. I'm also going to be trying to deal with a few more little bugs and features, and generally continue cleaning up 0.3 for release in a month or so. By the time of the next URR update all aspects of ziggurats should (fingers crossed) be completed, at which point I'll give a little postmortem on that process, and keep you all updated on finishing things for this release off. See you then, and remember - clues might be hidden anywhere.

Moon

In the mean time, you can keep up to date on my devblog, Facebook page, or Twitter feed. The devblog is updated weekly or fortnightly on Mondays, Facebook a few times a week, and the Twitter roughly daily. Any thoughts, please leave them in the comments! Stay tuned...

Post comment Comments  (0 - 10 of 90)
SaschaWillems
SaschaWillems Jun 3 2013, 2:07pm says:

Just wanted to download the last release from your blog, but it seems the download links are broken.

Instead of links I only get [wpdm_file id=26] (which I guess is the link format for your wordpress download plugin ;) )

Any chance of fixing them so people can take a look at the game?

+1 vote     reply to comment
UltimaRatioRegum
UltimaRatioRegum Jun 3 2013, 8:36pm replied:

Looks like you tried in the one minute earlier when I was updating the site's plugins! They're back up now :). This version has been out about six months, and the next version is due out in a month or so.

+1 vote     reply to comment
Sphyrna
Sphyrna Mar 10 2013, 6:10pm says:

Seeing the screenshots, I am immediately reminded of Dwarf Fortress.
I am thoroughly interested how Ultima Ratio Regum will turn out to be.

+1 vote     reply to comment
UltimaRatioRegum
UltimaRatioRegum Mar 12 2013, 3:45pm replied:

Glad you like the look of it :).

+1 vote     reply to comment
Arethrid
Arethrid Mar 6 2013, 3:28am says:

I am kinda hoping to see a playable demo or at least a video of gameplay sometime soon (If actually there's one that I might have missed, please do tell me).
I love the idea of proceduraly generated graphic elements. Procedural game environments are something most gamers are familiar with but I belive procedural graphics that is as stylistic as pre-designed assets is something yet to be explored.
Being a programmer myself, I am always interested to see what other programmers can come up with procedural generation algorithms. I like watching the development of this project not only from a gamer's perspective but also from a programmer's technical perspective.

+1 vote     reply to comment
UltimaRatioRegum
UltimaRatioRegum Mar 7 2013, 9:30pm replied:

There's a playable version on the site with my development blog atm, though it's mostly in early alpha - you can walk around and look at the world, but little else. 0.3 which I'm working on now will have the first 'gameplay'. Glad you like the idea - I totally agree that it's a relatively new/unexplored one, which is a big reason why I'm so keen to do it. The talk I'm going to give at the conference is actually about this kind of generation, both in terms of art/graphics and coding, so I'll be sure to post up a link or something about it when the video's up. Though there will probably be updates before then on the same topic...

+1 vote     reply to comment
Arethrid
Arethrid Mar 8 2013, 7:25am replied:

I found the demo in your blog after posting the comment above.
Looking forward to that conference video.

+1 vote     reply to comment
UltimaRatioRegum
UltimaRatioRegum Jan 4 2013, 9:44am replied:

My sincere thanks! Very glad you like the concept and the graphics. As I speak, I'm finishing off the religious symbol generation (which there will be a blog entry on next week), which is itself another graphical route I'm exploring (along with flags). Let me know if you have any thoughts/ideas for the game in general, anyway :)

+1 vote     reply to comment
romenigcandido
romenigcandido Jan 4 2013, 11:50am replied:

I have some questions and ideas about Religions, but I'll wait for the next update to comment on the matter.

+1 vote     reply to comment
UltimaRatioRegum
UltimaRatioRegum Jan 4 2013, 8:08pm replied:

Cool; I await them come Monday :).

+1 vote     reply to comment
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Ultima Ratio Regum
Platform
Windows
Developed By
UltimaRatioRegum
Engine
Custom Built
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Official Page
Ultimaratioregum.co.uk
Release Date
TBD
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Roguelike
Theme
Realism
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Single Player
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Latest tweets from @ultimaregum

New Ultima Ratio Regum devlog: progress update, future plan, new procedural graphic screenshot. RTs appreciated! T.co

Jun 10 2013, 7:13pm

Or quasi-racing game. I am unclear.

Jun 10 2013, 6:27pm

Oh Ubisoft, I thought you were above racing games. And Honda adverts.

Jun 10 2013, 6:25pm

@Thexare Oh, yeah, I did consider VAT, but we're still the ones paying the additional price, though I admit it's not all MS' fault. Urgh.

Jun 10 2013, 5:00pm

Mirror's Edge 2! The first was an under-appreciated gem, for its flaws. Actually interested in that.

Jun 10 2013, 4:59pm

@sz94 *PS3! Never had a Playstation, so a back catalogue of maybe a dozen games I'm interested in. PS4 doesn't appeal either :\

Jun 10 2013, 2:08pm

Xbox pricing! The ultimate joke. $499, €499, £429. Right, so Europe and the UK are shafted by around £100 each. Buying that PS3 soon...

Jun 10 2013, 2:03pm

@SamuelKikaijin I think so, sadly. Still, one game isn't going to persuade me to buy this ridiculous thing.

Jun 10 2013, 2:02pm

@SamuelKikaijin A game called "Below"; they said "somethingy somethingy, in a connected world, with a roguelike formula..."

Jun 10 2013, 1:55pm

The word "roguelike" uttered at E3. A tear has just been shed.

Jun 10 2013, 1:50pm

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