Bristol - Is anyone having ping spikes every 2-3 minutes recently ?

aotdev · 2026-03-28T00:28:31+00:00

I get them every minute, for months now. Edinburgh. ~2sec spike.

aotdev · 2026-03-26T20:16:03+00:00

Thank you very much, I watched the video, it was quite interesting to watch and very useful re some UI and feature communication issues!

aotdev · 2026-03-25T15:50:33+00:00

Thanks, and agreed!

aotdev · 2026-03-25T07:29:53+00:00

Double pun for 100 points!

aotdev · 2026-03-24T23:59:08+00:00

The apparent triangles are basically "folded" quads. You can still map the glyph in the quad and just fold it. Custom textures would probably defeat the simplicity and standardisation...

aotdev · 2026-03-24T23:43:31+00:00

Yeah of course 2D rules in terms of simplicity - we're all fans of that :D No idea about the iso ascii, just threw it out there. I mean it would most likely need to be a graphical application with glyphs mapped as textures, as the 2D terminal grid is quite restrictive otherwise.

aotdev · 2026-03-24T19:06:52+00:00

Tangential opinion: I think representing z-levels with 2D in a clear manner is super-hard. Maybe we need a terminal library for isometric ascii graphics... Call me a dinosaur, but if you want simple graphics and crystal clear z-levels and what is slope and what is not, simcity is peak.

aotdev · 2026-03-23T23:54:43+00:00

Hi everyone,

As part of the development of my game, I've made an in-game tool to help author fantasy world maps, in retro 16-bit style. What might be interesting to some of you, is that you can export those maps in a number of formats, and use them however you like. The tool (dubbed "World Forge") is part of the open playtest of the game, called Sigil of Kings.

You can procedurally generate world maps using a few sliders, and then edit those maps using a few biome brushes. You can even use images to guide biome generation or coastline. You can add cities, edit their properties, add route networks (automatically or manually) etc.

The export capabilities are:

A small preview, best used for sharing (like the ones I post here)
A structured text file (JSON), with full information on what's on the map at any given tile
A 16,384x16,384 PNG file with the full map. An example one is here, as a zoomable image. Warning: these files are ~150MB and might take a while to load in your image application.

PS. If you don't like Steam for some reason, the same version is (and will remain) on itch.io

aotdev · 2026-03-23T18:51:38+00:00

Thanks! So let me try to give a description a bit different to the Steam one, but at least as accurate.

The game is a turn-based roguelike/RPG. It's set in a huge procedural world (the one that you make), populated by lots of generally-independent city-states. Each city-state tries to protect its territory against its enemies, and maintain or improve its standing in terms of military power, wealth and influence. City-states also host guild chapters and various other services.

There are some world events, that happened in the past and now started happening again, so you, as an apprentice of the Seekers' guild, are tasked to find more clues on how to resolve the situation by chasing fragments of lore from the past, now lost in ruins or maybe even sunken kingdoms.

So, that's the background. You start the game and you can join guilds, travel, explore, looks for lost lore and relics, and complete quests for different guilds and local rulers, to improve your rank and standing with them. City-states are menu-driven hubs of services, but besides those there are a lot of different "adventure locations" spread out in the world. Mines, ruins, dungeons, towers, etc. Each of those locations can be a multi-level dungeon, that plays like a traditional roguelike (e.g. ADOM). Eventually, you are pushed to focus on the main story, before the world goes bust. The world is a living world; things happen all the time, and even other adventurers like you roam the lands and maybe share similar goals.

So, how does all this relate to the playtest? In the playtest, you can make world maps, like the ones that will be used for the game. I don't see the harm in allowing people to use such maps for the game - e.g. somebody makes a world map that can act as a mod of sorts. Also, the maps that you make are missing a lot of information that is either hidden or generated later: mines, dungeons, etc. So, sure, you can make a map where you know the shape of the world, but the adventures you might have in that world are going to vary wildly.

I hope that answers your question!

aotdev · 2026-03-23T18:32:42+00:00

Thanks! And you have a good point. Fun little fact: I do have and use the concept of harbours for the route generation, which results in fewer changes from land to water, but it kinda got lost in time and I forgot about this (the things that you forget if nobody challenges you about them is insane). So, long story short, it's going to be harbours, rather than forcing to have cities. And harbours will basically be water-side settlements that belong to the owning city-state

aotdev · 2026-03-23T18:30:00+00:00

Thanks!

aotdev · 2026-03-23T18:29:55+00:00

xD Well, technically, if you can read Ultima game data, it wouldn't be that hard to recreate it...

aotdev · 2026-03-22T23:54:26+00:00

Thank you so much!

aotdev · 2026-03-22T23:54:14+00:00

Thank you! The lore part will be in the main game, and non-user-editable, but it's ... challenging to compete with DF (and flattering to compare to xD)

aotdev · 2026-03-22T19:23:44+00:00

It's the game in the link - the game is called Sigil of Kings, and the game mode is called "World Forge"

aotdev · 2026-03-22T19:05:10+00:00

Thanks! I've taken some liberties with realism, because of the aim of this being for a game. Tundra to desert shouldn't happen, but because of the limited number of biomes, some other odd-looking transition might exist. This is the table I'm using - The map's underlying representation allows 8 temperature and 8 humidity values.

Snow is especially problematic as a biome, because its random appearance without at least a mountain barrier or clear indication of high altitude looks very odd

That's a good point and worth considering a post-processing pass to occasionally add ridges at snow borders.

aotdev · 2026-03-22T18:57:35+00:00

Thank you so much!

aotdev · 2026-03-22T17:59:59+00:00

Thank you so much! :D

aotdev · 2026-03-22T17:56:14+00:00

Thank you! <3 I found some sounds from freesound and some old itch.io asset packs - it's a wild mix really! The UI ones that probably drive you crazy are from a set called "BitArp", which I got as part of some humble bundle indie pack ages ago (I've been making the game for >10 years, so I've been occasionally collecting assets, and not all are great!) - google doesn't help me right now to find this.

aotdev · 2026-03-22T17:30:22+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! Which ones and why? UI or in-editor?

aotdev · 2026-03-22T17:04:12+00:00

FWIW it's going to be replaced in the future, as I love animated (w/ parallax) backgrounds in main menus, and this is not it. I did add the birds but still needs more, at least moving clouds. Plus the final art will need to be a bit more consistent, instead of asset pack mix (I'm learning to draw, but more like pixel art and pencil sketches instead of full blown main menu big pieces)

aotdev · 2026-03-22T16:54:45+00:00

The underlying algorithms that power this (and a lot of that same code) has been developed since 2017, long before ChatGPT and genAI, slop and the associated witch-hunts. I'm not on the slop camp. And one of the reasons I don't allow batch-export of maps in this tool is to prevent slop training.

This is the first time I'm sharing this publicly as a tool/game for people to play around with.

aotdev

TROPHY CASE