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This is a long-shot, but the name instantly made the science-fiction series Riverworld come to mind.
I also saw 'Medieval Slave' as a worker background, what would make sense in the book (every human who has ever lived is resurrected on an alien planet).
Wow it looks EXACTLY like Prison Architect. I can already see i'm going to like this game. They are also going for a random story generator like Dwarf Fortress and Crusader Kings.
AI Storyteller
RimWorld is a story generator. It’s designed to co-author tragic, twisted, and triumphant stories about imprisoned pirates, desperate colonists, starvation and survival. It works by controlling the “random” events that the world throws at you. Every thunderstorm, pirate raid, and traveling salesman is a card dealt into your story by the AI Storyteller.
There are several storytellers to choose from, and each one applies a different algorithm for generating random events. So Randy Random does crazy stuff, Cassandra Classic goes for rising tension, and Phoebe Friendly just makes good things happen. So if you want a different kind of story for your colony, you can just choose a different storyteller.
No. RimWorld isn't really about digging the way Dwarf Fortress is, and there are tons of interesting story things you can do with no Z-levels. We're focusing on the story-generating parts of the game. Z-levels may come eventually, but not soon.
Story generation in this case being random events the AI throws in...
This is an interesting approach really. In DF-like games the "stories" occur organically, more through the mistakes the player (or his AI controlled characters) do and less through the RNG. If the game starts generating those "fun" events, how does that influence the experience?
DF can be really boring when everything goes well, but on the other hand there is a world of difference to fucking up because you did something foolish and getting fucked by the RNG.
I hope that the "AI storyteller" will take more of a King of the Dragon Pass -like approach of throwing in a scenario, then tracking the way the player resolves it and throwing in a follow-up scenario(s) later in the game that reflect the choices the player makes.
Ideally I'd see those events occurring as a consequence of player actions rather than pure random luck. And hopefully there will be enough variety so that you won't be able to predict the AI.
Played a couple of hours yesterday. It was pretty fun.
There's still a lot of content and systems to be implemented but I like the general direction they are going.
And for anyone interested, this version has my name as a potential settler name as part of a backer prize. So, remember, you could very well be torturing a Codex admin at any time!
Refactored map generation into encapsulated steps and parameterized them.
Added rich dirt patches.
Pawn decision trees are now defined in XML.
Added simple door. Cheaper, but cannot be powered.
Filled out storyteller moddability.
Bugfixes.
364 - February 24
Bugfixes.
Februray 23
Bugfixes.
Reworked debug lister menu to handle large numbers of options. Also added a type-in filter.
361b/362 - February 22
Bugfixes.
360a/b/c, 361a - February 21
Finished up stone economy with stone walls.
Bugfixes.
Added blasting charges back in as a mod.
Started working on getting code loading with mods.
359 - February 20
Tons more bugfixes.
Work type definitions and work giver definitions are now in XML, so you can mod in new work types to correspond to new economy chains.
Added gather spots so you can make idle colonists gather around certain tables.
Added stone economy: stonecutter’s table, crafting worktype, stone cutting workgiver, stone blocks thing, stone tiles floor, low stone wall, high stone wall.
358 - February 19
Tons of bugfixes.
February 18
Extensive refactoring and bugfixing.
February 17
Bugfixing and prepping for internal test cycle.
Added max ingredient search radius for bills.
Added qualitative descriptions to skill levels.
Skills now decay over time when at very high levels.
Created the passion system, which affects learning rate according to characters’ natural inclination towards different subjects. As in real life, anyone can learn anything that they’re willing to do, but you learn a lot faster if you’re naturally interested in the subject.
Game save/load of lists, dictionaries, and hashsets now runs the same code whether saving simple values, deep-saveable objects, in-map cross-references, or references to game data definitions.
Mods can now override core game data as well as add to it.
Storytellers are now defined in XML.
Made turret look and sound weak to match its functionality.
February 14
Migrated all remaining Thing data into XML.
Rewrote how thing component data is handled (it’s no longer defined per enum on a centralized list) and migrated it all into XML.
Rewrote XML inheritance to inherit data about subelements and permit inheritance chaining (e.g. pawn->animal->squirrel).
Set up apparels to spawn according to who they are, data-driven.
Some late-night optimization, especially to the reachability checker, which, although not an expensive algorithm, can be called thousands of times in a frame, and so needs to be fast as hell.
February 13
Finished decent refactoring of effects system so it can be data-driven. Different meals/recipes can make different effects while being eaten/worked on.
Finished refactoring out the Interactive interface; all AI actions are now specified in AI code, not in the things they interact with.
Factored out a lot of EntityDefinitions. These are now used as mini-categories, not individual entity identifiers, so modders can add more entities easily.
Migrated pawn kind definitions (sniper, drifter, refugee, etc) into XML.
Migrated research project definitions into XML.
February 12
Refactoring day.
Converted a bunch of old AI code into the new consistent toil format.
Converted all building definitions from hardcoded into XML.
Started modularizing EffectMakers and making them data-driven.
February 11
Recipe ingredients are now configurable and work using categories. You can tell your colonists what to butcher, and whether or not it should include people.
Balance: Colonists self-extinguish 2.5x more often.
Created cook stove and three meal types to cook. Advanced meal types require multiple ingredients but have better psychological and nutritive effects.
Added varied food types from plants: potatoes, agave, and berries.
Added release-mode console GUI so modders can properly debug their content without going insane.
February 10
Refactoring day.
Cleaned up and pumped up map save/load to be able to handle all sorts of funky cross-references. This was originally so I could save a colonist’s job with a true reference to the specific work order they were in the process of carrying out.
Blasting charges cut (until they can be balanced properly).
Skill needs are now data-driven so you can define specific relationships between skills and different recipes’ efficiency and work time.
February 7
Started creating the “bill” interface so you can tell your colonists what to create at a recipe station. e.g. What meals to cook, what to butcher, etc.
Reactions are now called recipes.
Created a data-driven default settings system for storage buildings. Hoppers default to not accepting human meat.
February 6
Finished basic new AI failure condition framework.
Thoughts are now moddable definitions.
Cannibalism causes bad thoughts, differently depending on whether it’s eaten raw or cooked into a meal. Colonists avoid eating it. Different meats look different.
Integrated first-pass weather and ambient sounds.
February 5
AI: The old code for having AIs watch for job failure conditions is creaking under the strain. I’ve cut it and started a new, more modularized failure condition watcher infrastructure. Now, when the JobDriver defines the high-level behaviors, the action and failure conditions won’t have to be coupled together. You’ll be able to configure and stack together failure conditions appropriate to the job being done. This allows reuse of behavior code in different contexts (e.g. Hauling a resource to a stockpile, hauling a resource to a building site, hauling a resource to a table for reaction site have different fail conditions but can use the same hauling core code).
Started integrating Al’s ambient sounds.
February 4
AI: Started the reaction/butchery/cooking system. Working on a generalized reactions framework that characters will follow to transmute one set of items into another.
Letters now have varying urgencies. More urgent gets a hotter color. The most urgent ones also bounce occasionally to get your attention.
Readjusted probabilities of solid and shuffled pawn bios appearing.
Combined pawn RaceDefinitions into general ThingDefinitions. All pawn definitions now generate meat definitions.
February 3
Guns and equipment, plants, and apparel are all now loaded from XML. Added rose decorative plant.
February 2
Mods can now load content cross-references and images. Content handling is much cleaner overall. In progress. Created Royal Bed test mod.
February 1
Added mod browser. Restructured mod data to be configurable. You can now install mods and run them in parallel. Created mod metadata screen (author, description, etc). http://puu.sh/6GuGD.jpg
Stockpiling AI: when on hauling runs, colonists now pick up extra resources from nearby piles even if they can’t carry all of them.
Cooks taking food to hoppers now more perf-efficient and cooks will no longer fill hoppers that are already nearly full.
January 31
Trader kinds (farm vessel, slave trader) etc are now in XML and moddable.
For modding, I cleaned up the load sequence so it loads every definition in the game and all mods before resolving all references between them.
For modding, decoupled many references that found ThingDefinitions via their entitytypes, so we can have lots of definitions that share entitytypes. Now they use the ThingDefinitions directly.
Created a no-roof region similar to the home region. The game won’t generate roofs in these regions. In addition, player-constructed roofs are removed when no-roof regions are added.
Some small optimizations.
January 30
Restructured how map section meshes are rebuilt to eliminate the in-between step that allocated large amounts of data. Now things print directly onto the mesh’s working data, which is a major optimization. Code is cleaner now too.
January 29
Ridiculously huge performance improvements across the board due to simple rewriting of old perf-blind code. For example, we no longer draw the whole map every frame(!) - and tons of others.
January 28
Plant growing zones added, along with AI to find and interact with them. Redesigned work AI to handle work on locations as well as things.
Added an options menu button to open your saves folder (nobody can find the damn thing).
Added an options menu button to reset the adaptive tutor.
Mac version now places Mods folder inside the app package to make the install cleaner.
Cleanup and optimization: TargetPacks and DamageInfo are now structs for better GC performance. Made system to save TargetPacks when they refer to Things. Various other.
January 27
Started some heavy refactoring of how different items fill different slots in a square.
Any updates on this from people who have it? Sci-Fi + Dwarf Fortress-ish sounds awesome and LPs on it look decent, but as always hard to tell without playing. That said, was playing Factorio lately, which has that "sci-fi" element, but different kind of game. Kind of scratched the itch.
And can't believe nobody mentioned Ringworld, by Larry Niven. That's the obvious sci-fi name connection.
Definitely needs more content but the current framework is pretty good. Lack of Z-levels is a bummer, since this game practically begs you to build some elaborate outright Blamemorian bunkers.
I've played quite a bit over the weekend and if there is one thing it clones the best from DF it is Fun. I mean honestly, while the storyteller thing may seemed to be a pointless buzzword, no other DF clone manages to capture the myriad of ways things can go horribly wrong and spiral out of control. Between quite lethal fires, infections, deadly weather, pirate/indian raids, colonists going stark raving mad, captured prisoners escaping their cells and murdering your colonists, attacks of berserking squirrels, good old famine either due to negligence or mismanagement, killer robots and getting shelled by pirates 9honestly these sieges are pretty cool in how the pirates build defenses first and start shelling you), the RNG is most entertaining.
I mean hell, one of my colonies, built high up in the cold mountains where it is impossible to grow food outdoors, survived for months by hunting elk/hare/squirrels and rushing fertilizer pump research, despite -30 Celsius cold outside.
It eventually died because:
1) I had a nice farm in a carved out cavern. The set up was simple, some fertilizer pumps created soil*, placed sun lamps, heated the cavern with 3 heaters so that shit could grow.
2) One of the cables caused a fire, it quickly spread to my crops.
3) Brave colonists rush into the cavern to stop the fire.
4) They start collapsing one by one, for some reason. I was baffled by that fact until I realized the fire raised temperature inside the cavern to nearly 300 degrees Celsius, so everybody got cooked alive after collapsing from heatstroke.
*actually the pumps were not needed, in tundra biomes in the winter you can just build a room over snow, heat it up to 20C and dump any snow outside to reveal fertile soil, sunlamp it and you have a proper greenhouse. A pity that plants do not grow under sunlamps in the night for some reason.
It gets bonus points for being the only DF clone so far to have good world generations, proper seasons, weather and varied biomes.
