Improving the city. Part II: Adding remaining elements

 Hi there, friends and foes of democracy!

40 days ago I finished and published this animation, showing how the city in Socratic Democracy evolves as seasons pass. It was good enough to share, but it is not the final version I have envisioned. Many planned elements were left out simply because I could not design them fast enough. This devlog presents these elements and concludes by showing the new (and improved) animation.

Farms, farmhouses, poor landowners

Socrates mentions briefly the class of small landholders of his time. According to him, they are usually disinterested in politics but may show up when the city is deciding something that affects them directly.

In the game’s lore, the city has specialized in wine production but still supplies some of its own wheat. I thus decided to include a dozen farms in the image. Most farmers are poor, as attested by their simple houses and small plots.

Library and Record Office

In the period known as “Classical Greece”, some cities began to construct record offices, which also served as public libraries. In the game, this building will play a considerable role.

The library/record office will have a collection of scrolls describing the city’s history and myths. It will contain writings presenting different accounts of the revolution that preceded democratization. Among its official documents, it will contain old censuses, constitutions and tax law documents.

Players who enjoy investigating will be able to use the library as an alternative path to learn the lore and develop strategies. By reading the scrolls, they will learn new arguments to fight a war against the neighboring city, new ways to tax the population, new accusations against rivals, and so on.

I also plan to, on a future date, invite players to contribute to the library… by writing their own ancient Greek tomes! The idea would be to involve the player community in creating the lore of the game. Of course, I would need to act as an editor of what is produced, to guarantee that lore, tone and real-world history are respected. As this requires me to dedicate time, and my time is the scarcest resource in making this game, I am thinking of making these participations conditional on patreon contributions.

Would you be interested in participating in the project in this way?

Atmosphere effect

For a long time I have been wanting to implement atmospheric effects in the air and distance objects. While the latter is still not a reality, I have managed to create a decent light scattering effect in the sky, as can be seen in the comparison below.

I am currently thinking whether this effect is really desirable artistically or not. While I love the looks of it, I am wondering whether it contrasts with the rest of the art style (at least until I implement the other atmospheric effects). What do you think?

For the beginner programmer-artists out there: This effect is not a shader, but a mere semitransparent layer created using the radial gradient tool offered by Krita.

Rainbow

Another atmospheric effect is the rainbow, which appears in late spring. In the future, I will add rain and snow animations, and the rainbow will appear as the conclusion of the rain animation. But for now it is a symbol of spring.

Like the light scatering effect, the rainbow is just a sprite made in Krita.

Areopagus

When I was studying democracy in ancient Greece, the rich and complex traditions of Athens began to fascinate me. I found out that mythology, traditions, habits, geography, social and international conflicts had all shaped a truly byzantine political system, with amazing and baffling peculiarities.

During that research, I got to learn about the Areopagus, which translates as “Hill of Ares”, was a prominent rock outcropping just outside the Acropolis in Athens. Legends say that Ares, the god of war, was put on trial on the Areopagus for killing the son of Poseidon (now, Poseidon was also said to have fought to become the patron of Athens, obviously failing).

The Areopagus was used for different political functions throughout Athens’ history. For a time, it served as the place where the government council met. Later, it became the arena for serious judicial trials, such as homicides (a nod to the myth?). It would later also be the place where St. Paul made his Sermon on an Unknown God.

Although Socratic Democracy is not about Athens, the game is peppered with references to it. I thus decided to create a local “Areopagus”, which looks like this:

The game’s Areopagus will serve two main functions:

• If the player goes to war with the neighboring city, all war announcements will be made there.
• If the war is going badly and the player has no protective militia, at some point the people will kill him there---as if tried and sentenced for the unnecessary death of citizen-soldiers.

I am still thinking about the lore of this place. I will definitely write about it at some time… and add the writings to the city library, of course.

Improved trees and forests

The animation I shared in February was missing most of its local forest, as well as the agora trees. I thus added these elements in the new version:

The large forest in around the river was also improved. While the previous version was just a rework on the concepts made by hired artists, this time I redrew the whole thing from scratch (but keeping the same structure. Thus, the background forest has true seasonal variation now, as can be seen in the late fall comparison below.

I am still not totally happy with this forest, as it does not transition smoothly enough into the horizon. But it is good enough for now and until the demo.

The resulting video

And so the animation is now like this:

Conclusion

Making this improvements was very satisfactory. I had clear goals and could reach each one of them with just 1 to 2 days of work.  I am much happier with this version, it is starting to feel organic and balanced.

There are some improvements still remaining, like the greekness elements described in the previous devlog, and some animations. The shadows also need rework, as most new elements don't have yet any shadows. But I am feeling like I could move on to work on other aspects of the game soon, as this one is good enough, maybe even for a demo.

But what about you? What do you think of this animation and its evolution?