The 10-Year Journey of Ultima Ratio Regum: The Culture Generating Roguelike | AI and Games #58
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- Опубліковано 29 тра 2024
- How do you design culture? How would you get a procedural generator to design it in a video game? And do you think you could dedicate 10 years of your life to making it happen? Tommy explores the inner workings of the roguelike 'Ultima Ratio Regum' and how it builds everything from religious and political ideologies all the way down to the carvings on the chairs in peoples homes. We explore not just how the game's systems work, but go into more detail on the origins and ongoing development of the project with help from URR's creator Dr. Mark Johnson.
For those keen to find out more about URR, download the game or check out Mark's research in eSports and live streaming, be sure to visit his website:
www.markrjohnsongames.com
[00:00] Intro
[01:39] What is Ultima Ratio Regum?
[07:12] Early Beginnings
[12:45] How Does URR Work?
[18:21] Maintaining Diversity
[23:24] Connections
[26:27] Scaling-Up
[29:40] Reflections
[38:08] Lessons Learned
[42:36] Closing
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Many thanks to Mark for taking the time to chat with me about his work on URR. It's interesting the things you remember (or don't) after working on a project for almost ten years (AI and Games still has a couple years to go). This is the first time a roguelike such as this has been covered on the show and it's a pretty interesting story, if I do say so myself. I hope you find it interesting!
it blows the mind that 10 year insane scope projects like this can just be sitting under our noses. the sheer ambition in this is off-the-charts
This looks like my favorite part of Dwarf Fortress turned into its own game. I had no idea I needed this in my life.
I was one of the votes for this video and while voting for it made me feel a little guilty as it’s unlikely to do as well as a video on the AI of Alien, say, I’m so glad this exists now! URR is a fascinating project I’ve followed with interest for years and you are uniquely well positioned to give it the attention it deserves.
Thank you for spending the time making this video, thank Mark for spending years of his life bringing something from far outside the usual sphere of game development to us.
Its kind of inspiring seeing someone who’s not a professional programmer i guess you could say put together a game of such depth. Cause I’ve seen a lot of devs talk about how they’ve been doing programming and math since they were kids
It's usually the non-professionals who are more likely to make the really original stuff, because there's a selection process involved with becoming a professional that makes the resulting group a bit more like-minded on average (and speaking as a professional programmer this definitely applies to programming).
Programming isn't hard. There's definitely good practices, and ways to cope with project growth that are harder for someone to learn by themselves, but learning how to make specific "one-task" programs is easy, even for someone with no background... mostly. There's a reason why people from all sorts of areas are more and more capable of programming: it's not particular to any area, and it's just overall a useful skill to have.
Like Capuccino Pintucciono said programming really isn't that hard especially if you're using a language like Python (The language used to create Ultima Ratio Regum).
If programming would be a regular subject in school, most would prefer it over math.
What really is hard is to come up with designs and systems, that work. Like the generators in this case. You either use existing algorithms or you have to invent them, and that is hard. And every good algorithm can be executed "by hand", means you can do it in your head / on paper first before translating it to a system and actually implement it in code.
And what is even harder is to keep it up. Because programming can become boring if you do it for weeks without end.
Ive read about this game years ago and couldnt find again and kept wondering about. And out of the blue during this morning walk BLAM this was front an center on my notifications. Thank you for uploading this! This pushed me out of a bad rut and thinking again!
Wow, I love the work of a passion project, and working it in with your other priorities. An incredible amount of work.
For a moment there I thought I was watching a NoClip documentary. Great job on this video!
I had a lot of fun in my masters with similar topics to build AI assisted world building tools! Tinkering with using Sugarscape simulations, influence fields, and thematic connections by parsing novels and poetry, blending the themes of one country with another. I almost went crazy going down the "connections with connections with connections" rabbit hole. Loved URR's ambition and great work. Very inspirational during a rough period in academics. Excellent chat!
The fact that this exists is ming boggling to me. Since I've become aware of world building, this concept was on my mind, and I laughed it off as too out there. And yet someone dedicated years to making it work, and I love them for it.
This is what Roguelike hobby development is all about. One dedicated coder can make a real mammoth of a game that pushes a lot of boundaries in the areas that make the genre interesting. I hope he keeps at it for another ten years, and beyond! What good stuff. I'm going to have to play this one.
I love the idea of this. I also think with how complex of a social generator it is, he could like sell rights for people to use it to generate worlds for other products/games. Very cool thing he made!
This looks very neat, I like how he has gone the extra step of making art for when you "inspect" stuff even though with the ASCII graphics he could have avoided that quite easily
I bumped into URR when it was just a forum post probably like 9-10 years ago, if not long after it was first showed itself in the internet. Glad it has finally getting to completion.
The world needs more creatives like him, the ambition and intention behind this game are refreshing.
This was really cool! I love these kind of passion projects that go deep on creating complex and compelling underlying systems. Good on him for making something great despite everything. :)
I'm way too drunk to understand most of this but I enjoy it anyway
To quote the late, great Colonel Sanders, “I’m too drunk to taste that chicken”
Getting too drunk is the first step to the second of getting more drunk ;)
This makes me so excited and optimistic about the whole dang medium. I truly love the idea of a game procedurally generated with seeds of carefully considered and purposeful connections. When you naturally trust that everything has meaning, you buy into the world- it becomes interactive in a very special way. Can't wait to try Ultima Ratio Regum for myself!
- Stephen
The idea of AI showing us new kinds of cultures to consider that will best reflect more than the past/present but where we need to go (to survive ourselves) is a very interesting proposition.
As amazing as all the stuff in URR is I suspect that 99% of players will wander around, talk to a few people, explore some buildings and look at the PCG images of tables and whatnot and then just.. stop. There's no driving force to motivate you other than knowing that there is some conspiracy in the histories of the world to uncover. Perhaps Dr. Johnson just hasn't worked on this yet. Perhaps that's the last thing he plans to do, I don't know but right it feels to me like a transparent puzzle box. You can see the intricate workings and clues of intriguing goodies within but without the tools to get inside you're just left admiring it rather than playing with it.
Anyway, Dr. Johnson's talks are great and he always had interesting stuff to say when he was on Roguelike Radio podcast. So check those out if you liked this!
That's what happened to me. He needs to implement some basic combat/questing after the treasure map.
This channel remains one of the only sources for information on AI on games for the non-developer. Thanks for everything you do in providing this resource for the rest of us.
Such a fascinating way of using procedural generation. It's one of my favorite forms of game creation, I hope this project picks up steam and can become something more and more complex.
This absolutely incredible and so well thought out. 10 years incredibly well spent it seems
I can relate to the hacky creative process here - intense, focused development of one feature, then immediately forgetting how it works and having to use, shall we say, unorthodox methods to make other systems interact with it.
As an English major, especially when I first started teaching myself front-end web development on the job, my projects were all exactly like that.
Suddenly I want to put a Theocracy in one of my RPGs where they also obey strict freedom of religion and have to work out silly solutions to the many conflicting religious dictates.
That is some next level shit right there. 🤘
This comment serves as an additional upvote.
I get the feeling this project nearly sent Mark over the edge the way he speaks about it.
Wow, someone who studied sociology and went on to make a game or at least progress towards a finished game with what he learned... that's actually very similar to what I had planned to do a few years ago.
At the moment that isn't my plan anymore but it's only been a few years since that was my plan so I could still return to that plan a few years later.
great video, what an amazing developer. I look forward to digging in to the rest of this channel!
Never got the notification for this or had it show up in my subs. Even though I have rung the bell. I only saw you posted a new video because of the community post.
The ongoing struggle to actually get videos to the audience who have pressed all the buttons to ensure they actually see it! Le sigh...
How did I miss this?!
I heard about it almost 4-5 years ago.
What an incredible project! Amazing stuff.
It's nice to hear about the hacky, pragmatic choices he made in development- it makes me feel less bad about some of my own code!
Awesome episode!
Combine this and a.i. dungeon and... whoa! Fantastic project!
16,000 views for this quality of video production. I'm very surprised by that.
Wow, great work!
This is absolutely bonkers. I love it.
mans a goddamn inspiration
I've never heard of it, it seems awesome
This channel is intelligently amazing
+1👍 💪 thanks for this overview/review. URR has been on my radar for years, but i never played because i'm Linux and prefer not to install WINE.
the project has come so far!
Interesting game. Great episode.
A new video right when I come to youtube, wondering what I could see from AI and games ! Were you reading my mind haha ?
*_I'm already in your head..._* 😈
interesting video!
is the full interview uploaded somewhere ?
Haven't watched the video, so maybe mentioned, but Mark's done a GDC talk on handmade details in procedural generation, and also a roguelike celebration talk on speech generation, both of which are nice watches and on youtube.
Ayy, GDC talks in it
Any chance of an episode on Dwarf Fortress at any point? It's tricky to see much of it, but there's a lot of AI stuff in there, I think.
Listening to your voice is something almost esoteric.
I'm not sure that word means what you think it means
0:44 I know this is a bit separate, but I never realised the Taj Mahal, the structure used to measure beauty and luxury, was surrounded by hideous slums.
Says a lot about reality.
I wonder if the game has any systems that account for trade with nearby regions and along trade routes. (Not that this feature is necessary for the project to be impressive.)
5:48 the captions say what?
making games is hard yall
Arrived before one dislike man
Trying to post new videos when he's not looking.
@@AIandGames I believe they might be hiding under your bed. :P
Random thought: I'd be curious to see if there's a video concept in bad game AI, and why it is bad. Maybe colonial marines?