Mask of the Rose (tuxdb.com)

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Dressing for Success in Mask of the Rose

This month's development blog is from Failbetter programmer and principal developer on Mask of the Rose, Samus Buadhachin As our Creative Director Emily Short has written, Mask is deterministic in places where our previous games have used randomness: success in a given challenge depends not on a die roll but a combination of variables affected by the choices you've made. But your outfit certainly still matters: present yourself as an avatar of the law, for example, and prepare for difficulty ingratiating yourself with people on the other side of it. Communicating this kind of effect to players is, of course, a pretty crucial part of any outfit system, and there are some fairly standard ways of doing so. We've presented the effect of your wardrobe in our previous games in traditional RPG fashion: if carrying around an unexploded mine helps you win arguments, or having an incognito princess aboard your locomotive makes it easier to get along with space-faring bohemians, this is explained to the player with visible changes to the underlying variables that are being modified: the relevant number goes up or down. It's a tried and true system and it's especially well suited to games with random challenges and a lot of stats to track.
Mask is designed as a chattier, intimate experience, and quite early on in development we decided that the wardrobe view should work towards this design goal too. There are still a dizzying number of variables at work driving any interaction, but baldly describing a given hat as +1 Coquettish didn't seem to fit the theme quite so well this time. So, as you'll have seen if you've played the demo, when you put on a set of outfit items, the wardrobe view talks back to you instead: your own player character telling you, in English, how you're likely to come across when you leave the attic room you call home. This is something we could really only pull off with Mask's comparatively tight scope. (It would certainly be entirely out of the question in Fallen London, for example, where some back-of-the-envelope maths suggests there are around 120 billion outfit combinations.) Even in Mask, though, the number of potential outfit combinations is comfortably in the thousands, far beyond what's reasonable to ask a team of writers to describe one by one. Handling combinatorial explosions like this requires a certain amount of algorithmic deftness. Or, to put it another way, we have to cheat a bit. Our particular style of cheating borrows from formal language theory. The underlying model for outfit descriptions is a grammar: a set of x y rules for replacing something on the left-hand side of the rule (x) with something on the right-hand side (y). Suppose we just want to let the player pick a choice of hat, and to describe it. The rules for describing hats might look like this, with the hat in question on the left-hand side and its description on the right:

ordinary hat "a perfectly fine hat"
fancy hat "a fabulous choice of headwear"
hideous hat "quite a novel and fascinating hat"
no hat "a very brave choice, not to wear a hat"

With a certain amount of care in how we frame it, we can embed this hat-description rule into a longer text in such a way that we will always generate a well-formed sentence if we replace it; a template, in other words: "That's ! You're sure to make a splash." When we want to talk back to the player, it's pretty straightforward: check what they're wearing; find a rule that matches what they're wearing; and substitute in the right-hand side of the rule. If the player's wearing an ordinary hat, for example, we can replace with the right-hand side of the rule for describing an ordinary hat: "That's a perfectly fine hat! You're sure to make a splash."

This is a pretty basic system, certainly, but we're off to a decent start. If we now let the player change shoes, and add some rules for describing shoes

fancy shoes "What lovely shoes!"
ugly shoes "Your shoes are quite remarkable!"
no shoes "I do hear bare feet are quite en vogue."

we can update our top-level outfit description to embed a shoes-description rule as well: "That's ! " Let's say the player is wearing a hideous hat, and no shoes. Expanding this new outfit rule step by step hat, then shoes produces first (by finding a matching hat rule) "That's quite a novel and fascinating hat! " and then (by finding a matching shoes rule) "That's quite a novel and fascinating hat! I do hear bare feet are quite en vogue." We might not be being terribly candid, but we've managed to produce a coherent opinion. (The Mask PC's internal monologue is more honest.) Any combination of hat and shoes should work: find a matching hat-description; find a matching shoes-description; fill out the template. The results will tend to look suspiciously similar, tipping our hand to the algorithmic work going on behind the scenes, but we can do something about that later. You may have already noticed a quietly important property of this approach: by writing 4 + 3 = 7 rules (plus a top-level outfit-description rule), we're able to describe 4 3 = 12 different outfit combinations. Another pair of shoes would increase this to 16, but we'd only need to write one more rule. This will continue to scale as we add more outfit items: strictly speaking, we only need a linearly-increasing number of rules to describe a geometrically-increasing set of combinations. This becomes especially handy when we go beyond just hats and shoes to describe, say, the player's coat or gloves, and the extra multiplicative terms cause the number of potential combinations to grow even more quickly.

This efficiency gives us some breathing room to finesse the system. One thing we can do to make our system fancier is add some rules for special cases: noteworthy combinations of particular items, for example. Let's add some shoe-description rules to apply when the player is wearing a particular kind of hat as well:

(ugly shoes, hideous hat) "And the shoes match perfectly!"
(ugly shoes, fancy hat) "And the shoes make a delightful contrast!"

If we agree, when looking for a rule, to always pick the rule that matches the largest number of items in the player's outfit, then we'll pick these if (and only if) the player is wearing both items, and our outfit description for (ugly shoes, hideous hat) will expand, step by step: "That's ! " "That's quite a novel and fascinating hat! " "That's quite a novel and fascinating hat! And the shoes match perfectly!" We can write some more specific hat-description rules, too; and, in fact, we can write some extremely specific top-level outfit rules, for outfit combinations that are so outr that the entire structure of the description template ought to change. It's a very effective way to start getting that sameness we observed earlier out of the system; with a few dozen such rules, we can produce good descriptions for thousands of combinations. (A number of unusual special cases are handled like this in the Mask demo, and it might be rewarding to revisit the wardrobe with this in mind.)

We're still not done in terms of what's possible, either: we can add multiple rules of equal specificity and choose randomly between them, to provide even more variation. And, while so far we've restricted ourselves to just using what the player is currently wearing, we don't strictly need to: we can also consider things that have previously happened. Any aspect of the game state that can be expressed in a similar way can be fed into our system, if we want. So there's really nothing stopping us from writing rules like this: (hideous hat, player-has-met-the-aliens) "a novel and fascinating hat, quite improved by the scorch marks from the aliens' death rays" (Well, nothing but considerations of taste in narrative design, perhaps.) In fact, this last idea that you can take arbitrary bits of a game's state, pass it through a set of grammar rules, and produce coherent, meaningful textual content is extremely powerful in the right hands. Once the technical pipework for describing outfits is in place, it's easy to generalise it and apply it wherever it's useful. This has enabled us to give Mask's text some real dynamism. We've used it for a number of other gameplay systems in Mask, some of which are already at work in the demo and some of which are under development for launch. It's been extremely rewarding to work on and test internally; I hope you enjoy the finished product!

[ 2022-03-10 14:37:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

Mask of the Rose

Failbetter Games Developer

Failbetter Games Publisher

Coming Soon Release

Singleplayer Tags

Game News Posts: 37

🎹🖱️Keyboard + Mouse
🎮 Full Controller Support

Mostly Positive (205 reviews)

http://www.failbettergames.com

Steam Store

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Welcome to Fallen London: a darkly hilarious gothic underworld where death is a temporary inconvenience, the rats talk, and Hell is only a stone's throw away.

Thanks to an unknown bargain, London now resides in a vast cavern under the earth. Down here, the sun doesn't shine, and Parliament has sunk into the Thames. Queen Victoria never emerges from her palace. Cats spy on their owners and whisper their secrets abroad. The fabric of strait-laced Victorian society has begun to fray.

New Masters are in charge. Why are they so… tall? And always cloaked? And why are they so interested in love stories?

The possibilities for personal connection in London are different now. Thrown together in crisis, you might befriend or romance many of the characters you meet, from Griz, your assertive housemate for whom the Fall was a chance to break free of Victorian societal norms, to the infernally well-dressed gentleman at the Brass Consulate with the amber eyes.

Even death itself has a twist here: the first murder victim since the Fall is feeling much better, and keen to see justice done. Unfortunately, as the doctor who treated him immediately before he expired, your housemate Archie is the prime suspect...

(Re)invent yourself: who were you before the Fall? Who will you be now?
Create outfits from a selection of clothing and unusual accessories to unlock different story options
Fall in love with a cast of diverse Londoners, each with their own secrets
Matchmake among your friends, or seek love for yourself (by any definition you like)
Write love stories in a delightful minigame, and use them to impress the new Masters
Pick up odd jobs to earn money and gather resources. How are you at rat catching?
Solve the first murder since the Fall, with the assistance of the victim
Discover cosy, mysterious and magnificent locations in a dark and delicious version of Victorian London
Seek deeper and deeper secrets over multiple playthroughs

Will you be a brilliant matchmaker, connecting friends and rivals while remaining unattached? Or are you looking for lasting love? Perhaps you're open to whatever comes your way? Every major storyline is accessible regardless of whether your approach to love is romantic or platonic.

Use an elaborate, dynamic story-crafting system to create love stories – and murder theories. Are the twists in the tale not to your taste? Then change the motive, the location, even the victim, and see how the stories adapt!

Your past will open different doors for you in London. What was your life on the Surface like? Were your family landed gentry? Or did they own a tailor’s shop, or dabble in the occult?

Your clothing will also make people think differently of you. Your outfits open new possibilities in conversation: be bolder, more commanding, more flirtatious. Ingratiate yourself with London's inhabitants by changing your style of dress – they won't be able to resist you in that hat!

You'll also work odd jobs and collect resources which will open new avenues in social situations. Your housemate Griz has found you work as census-taker for those curious new Masters. Fill your census-taker's notebook with intimate details about your fellow citizens and you'll find you can pursue deeper relationships with them, romantic or otherwise.

Griz

For your fellow lodger Griz, the Fall of London has been a liberation – the chance to throw off her corsets, dump the dresses and be taken seriously in a position that would have been forbidden to her when she was 'Miss Griselda'.

Archie

For your other housemate Archie, the change is terrifying. What is a medical student supposed to believe in when even the laws of death no longer apply?

Harjit

When the Fall struck, Harjit stepped up to help anyone who needed it. Now he’s settling into his role as a man in uniform, but the territory is unfamiliar – and, secretly, he has a missing person of his own to find.

Milton

Milton is the amber-eyed host of a literary parlour with a scalding handshake and a prior address in Hell. He’s an excellent listener, but does he only want you for your soul?

Rachel

Rachel was halfway through her serialised novel when London fell and everything she was writing about was turned upside-down. Her publisher grows impatient. Fortunately (?) meeting Milton has rekindled her passion – for more than just writing.

David

Rachel’s brother, and no fan of Milton, David is also destined to be Fallen London’s first murder victim. When he returns from the dead, you can ask him all about it.

Horatia

For a decade, Horatia has taken in lodgers and turned them into family. Since London fell, people need the security she offers more than ever. So when a man made entirely of clay knocks at the door, offering to pay handsomely for lodgings, she can hardly refuse.

Mr Pages

One of London's new, mysterious “Masters”, Mr Pages has embarked on the titanic endeavour of conducting London’s first post-Fall census! But why are its questions so concerned with the love-lives of London’s citizens? How do people declare their affection, in this fair city? How lasting are their attachments? Might a Londoner take an interest in a very tall, broad-shouldered, cloaked personage that leans towards the chiropterous, hypothetically speaking?

Explore this unique city in glorious, richly rendered 2D. Experience London through three seasons: the season of Confessions, the season of Yule, and the season of Love. Help establish the first Feast of the Rose, a festival of romance that will be celebrated in London for decades to come!

For players of Sunless Sea and Sunless Skies, Mask of the Rose offers a chance to immerse yourselves in the city that founded this deep, dark, and marvellous universe. And for veteran players of the Fallen London browser game, it marks your first opportunity to visit the city just after it fell. But fear not: Mask of the Rose is an excellent introduction to the universe we’ve been building for more than a decade, and you don’t need to have played our other games first. Come on in. Most things won’t bite, unless you want them to.

Explore the locales, lives, and loves of an impossible city. Exchange bon-mots with devils. Investigate the first murder where the victim can testify at the murderer’s trial. Dive into the sunken ruins of poor drowned Parliament. And if you’re truly reckless, fall in love.

MINIMAL SETUPOS: Ubuntu 20.04+. ArchLinux
Processor: Intel Pentium 2GHZ or AMD equivalentMemory: 4 GB RAM
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: OpenGL 3.2+. Vulkan capable
Storage: <8 GB available space

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