Dev Blog

• First actual Soma payout to players! It’s taken a while of trial-and-error on how this would all work together.

• Working on a video channel for Yannis the Yenta - we’ll see if it works out. Check out Yannis’ picks on the ships page.

  

• fixed the ages counting today - it just created the schema for the appropriate table, but never created it. :B

• fixing up ships to be a more dynamic thing. Kissie kissie!

funny of the day:
Lucky *stepping forward*:
“The expansion didn’t... un-fail? Is that a word?”

Diamond *stepping forward*:
“*on knees* We succeeded! This is me succeeding! Please remember this when I fail!”

Velvet the Merciless:
“You must fight the chickens. Don’t ask why we have chickens. Fight them.”

some pokes and prods for today:

• added goals to the dialog system, so characters and npcs have north-stars for what they are doing. Dialog becomes a way to achieve those.

• Made villains completely dependent on their minions to achieve their plans. This should be ripe for comedy as each minion has a personality that effects what they do when given a command.

• Meditation on Claude: its definition of done could use work. “I’ve finished” when there’s huge holes…. speaking of villains, it’s also like being a villain with a super literal, sycophantic minion.
  ”Yes, master! That’s brilliant. I’ll get to it.” [makes it look pretty but basically nothing else]. >:(

I’m LMAO at this little beauty that the simulator produced. 100% fried gold!

CULTIST ENCOUNTER Bjorn, a person of mixed heritage wearing brown robes with suspicious stains, carries a massive subwoofer on their back approaches Piston Oilcan...

Bjorn → Piston Oilcan: Piston Oilcan, we should talk about Bass Guitar.

Piston Oilcan → Bjorn: Everyone’s talking about this stranger seems unhinged, Bjorn.

Bjorn → Piston Oilcan: Piston Oilcan, I need your help with The Great Bowel.

Piston Oilcan: Wait, did you say ‘Piston Oilcan, I need your yelp with The Great Bowel.’?

Piston Oilcan → Bjorn: Bjorn, did you hear about strange religious pitch?

Bjorn talks for several more minutes, growing increasingly fervent... After an uncomfortable conversation, Piston Oilcan finally escapes.

• Did some revisions for comedic purposes on the villain turn system. You can monitor their often-lack of success on world-lore under the first tab.

  

  
  

• fixed up league page so it shows members, and gives the commissioner extra tools and information.

• working on new stuff for ships!

(if you’d like to be in the discord, go here: https://discord.gg/5s6yuVKk)

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INN/TAVERN - Evening at Admin Borough

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Royale Monte enters the common room...
The smell of roasted meat and ale fills the air.

🍺 DRINKING:

💭 Royale Monte has a hard time resisting the ale...

🍻 Royale Monte drinks heavily into the night!

⚠️ CAROUSING COMPLICATIONS!

💤 Royale Monte wakes up the next morning...

🚨 Committed a serious offense! Wanted by guards!

In the wake of “sell-low-and-rebuy-high”-gate (see previous log), put in memory for the character.

Implemented a memory stack for the characters and npcs so unlike the ultimate new-ager, they don’t forever “live in the moment”. They remember, and how much they remember is based on their intelligence. Smarty pants remember a lot, dumb-dumbs don’t remember too much.

From the turn reports:
🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪 SHOPPING ENCOUNTER 🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪🏪 Hakon enters Arcane Antiquities... 💰 Available gold: 85 👤 Shopkeeper: Article (Goblin magic shop owner) Personality: patriotic 🔄 AUTO-SOLD DUPLICATES: +1 gold (Kept one of each common item, sold extras) 📦 SELLING MAGIC ITEMS & COMPONENTS: 💬 Article: “I’ll give you 7g for that Minor Healing Potion As we say, ‘Disruptive innovation!’” 💭 Hakon cuts straight to business... 💢 Hakon: “That’s not enough. Pay me more.” Negotiation check: Rolled 10 + 1 + 1 (approach) = 12 vs DC 13 ✗ Failed - accepting initial offer of 7g ✓ Sold Minor Healing Potion for 7g 💬 Article: “I’ll give you 7g for that Scroll of Light I see unlimited potential here” 💭 Hakon scrutinizes for hidden catches... 👁️ Hakon: “Don’t try to cheat me.” Negotiation check: Rolled 10 + 1 + 1 (approach) = 12 vs DC 13 ✗ Failed - accepting initial offer of 7g ✓ Sold Scroll of Light for 7g 💬 Article: “I’ll give you 7g for that Wand of Sparks” Negotiation check: Rolled 9 + 0 = 9 vs DC 13 ✗ Failed - accepting initial offer of 7g ✓ Sold Wand of Sparks for 7g 💰 Total earned: 21g 💰 New total: 107g Hakon: “Let me see what you have” 🛒 SHOPPING: Current gold: 107g 💬 Article: “Minor Healing Potion costs 50g If you’re not growing, you’re dying” Negotiation check: Rolled 4 + 0 = 4 vs DC 14 ✗ Failed - paying full price of 50g ✓ Purchased Minor Healing Potion for 50g 💬 Article: “Scroll of Light costs 20g” 💭 Hakon cuts straight to business... 💢 Hakon: “Too expensive. Lower the price.” Negotiation check: Rolled 19 + 1 + 1 (approach) = 21 vs DC 14 ✓ SUCCESS! Negotiated down to 16g ✓ Purchased Scroll of Light for 16g 💬 Article: “Wand of Sparks costs 75g I see unlimited potential here” Negotiation check: Rolled 19 + 0 = 19 vs DC 14 ✓ SUCCESS! Negotiated down to 57g 💰 Total spent: 66g 💰 Remaining: 41g

• Trying to get a more narrative feel to the character turn report. Trying to dance between reading a tabletop roleplaying session and a really weird, meta, fantasy story. Revised conversations to use a less “print out” approach, a little more dynamic dialog system - the characters actually react according to what they see only, instead of the system telling them "this is a <blah blah>, use this statement”, to characters / npcs have tags that describe them, and the characters react to these tags. Can’t take credit for that idea - it was Chad GPT’s (ChatGPT).

• Revised both the villain turn reports (you can see them on the world-lore page, under overview, and the world-leader updates (again, under world-lore, under general events) to be more narrative rather than declarative. Will keep working on it, but the idea again is to a living, breathing world that feels real and full (and funny).

• Fixed to show player’s gravatars or custom avatars if they upload one, and custom username if they enter one (click your user pic / name at the top to go to your profile).

• fixed rending of city maps on hexmap

• Added some mythological encounters for characters - should be interesting! I want to give the world the depth that fantasy has, where there are hidden things moving under the surface of reality.

• adding a show-don’t-tell capacity to the npcs, instead of just listing personality and oddities, let’s describe them, and perhaps have them come up in dialog.

Man, I have learned more about fantasy sports than i ever wanted to know. Draft sessions have presented a lot of interesting logic challenges. I started at 4 hour draft turns, and because a draft is done every “age” of the game (to understand the ages, go to world-lore and click on the ages and mechanics), it’s important that it is easy and fast.

4 hours in a group that is more than 2 people takes an “age” to get through. So then I trimmed it to 2 hours. Still too slow. Currently, it’s 15 minutes, but to prevent players from missing their turns in the middle of the night and getting an auto-pick (which may be your jam), the draft sessions are only active from 9AM-9PM PST. If someone’s turn is cut off, it resumes in the morning. Thus, the snake draft continues.

I’d love input from y’all about the mechanics or ideas about making “The Metal Erp” a cooler, more entertaining place.

First of hopefully many dev blogs.