In todays dev diary, well be going over the new court-type event. New stories & drama to be lived!

Read our Dev Diary #75 - In the Event of Court Events

To experience the full threads and comments, please visit our forums or website.
Enjoy the FAQ Royal Court and read all there is to learn about our upcoming Expansion




many of you will likely have seen them a bit already in a few preceding dev diaries, but for the rest, allow me to formally introduce court-type events:



This new event type is seen exclusively within the court view, where they replace standard character-type events.

We added these because one of the major design limitations with character-type events is that theyre uhh theyre small. Really, really, really small, and having comparatively little space to work with means they impose a lot of restrictions on their use.

Those of you who mod, or have dabbled at modding, will likely know what Im talking about: generally, a character event can only fit about three paragraphs of copy and 3-4 options before it starts to look a little naff. Less if there are characters or titles involved with very long names, or if you have to do a lot of paragraphing.

There are good reasons for them to be this small - they get in the way less when popping up, it encourages concise delivery of information, and it frames the portrait characters in each event nicely.

For the court scene, these considerations are (generally) moot, so we wanted to play around with a more liberal event format. We dont need to worry about framing characters in the traditional sense since we show them in the scene, the player always opts into a court-type event and thus cant have one pop-up unexpectedly, and though information (and options) still need to be reasonably concise, its nice to have a little room to flex the meaning of concise somewhat.




From a players perspective, youll mostly interact with court-type events through the not-at-all-confusingly-named court events pool. Similar to random yearlies, court events reflect the life of your court just existing, with all the petty drama and courtly intrigue youd expect from a medieval monarchs household. They primarily involve characters consistently within your court (rather than far-flung vassals or guests), and often tie into court grandeur and your different levels of amenities.




Other than their tone, size, and occasional number of options, the biggest differences that players will notice are their usage of different camera shots instead of backgrounds and portraits





and their optional nature. Unlike yearly events, court events are opt-in, meaning that you dont have to take them if you dont want to, in which case their default (neutral-ish) option will be selected after a long-ish time-out period.

To open a court event, you simply click on a button thatll appear floating over one of your courts relevant characters. Whenever youve got court events you could be checking, youll be notified via the Royal Court button in the right-hand panel.




From a scripting perspective, court-type events share a fair amount of DNA with character-type events, but differ mostly in the form of their court_scene block.

Usually, Id go on to explain everything in a bit more depth inside the dev diary itself, but since court-type events can be tricksy to script till you get the hang of em, weve included an example court-type event inside one of the event files that breaks down their make-up:



^^ Hopefully, this should be a solid annotated example, but just in case, heres a few pre-emptive clarifications:
1) Every court-type event must have a button character, even if that character is just your character, so that must always be set up.
2) The group parameter defines which spot in the scene that character stands in. These groups themselves are scriptable (with a bit of work) elsewhere, so you can arrange characters inside the court however you like. The groups shown in the example actually contain multiple different preset positions within the court scene, one of which is selected randomly for each event when it tries to fire.
3) For animations, we can access all the standard ones, plus a slew of new animations created specifically for the court scene.

Finally, just for fun, lets have some more court events:




Oh, right, yes, I titled the dev diary and friend too, didnt I? Welp, the new court-type isnt the only event type were adding with this expansion (just the most exciting). We also have the new duel event type!

Duels were added as part of our first flavour pack, but Im sure youve all noticed that the space for em is pretty limited, and the animations dont work so well for this context. Welp, weve revamped both of those with this new type, giving duels a face-lift:



Naturally, the weapon held by either character does correspond to their signature weapon type, or whatever weapon artefact they have equipped (if theyve got one).

And thats all from me, folks. As ever, Ill be around in the comments for an hour or so to answer questions, but otherwise, see yall next diary!