Finds / development notebook
Palimpseste
A world and society generator for a game in design: land, settlements, cultures, beliefs and centuries of history, all derived from causes. The sources that counted, in the order they counted.
01 The first night: seeds and land
- used
algorithm PCG32 reference demonstration
The first six outputs of the generator’s random source match the reference: the same world on every machine.m
fed v1: deterministic seeds
- used
algorithm Priority-Flood
Fills depressions so rivers drain; later, basins are dug on purpose so lakes and marshes exist.m
fed v1 to v5: the land layer
02 The morning corpus: what was read, page by page
- read
book Chris Wickham, 2009. The Inheritance of Rome — Chris Wickham, 2009
Essential: a post-imperial world, villages, assemblies, a scattered Church, kinship and feud.m
pages read 40–62, 100–101, 157–165, 172–199, 202–226, 237–248, 471–477, 505–545
- read
book James C. Scott, 2009. The Art of Not Being Governed — James C. Scott, 2009
Essential for religion as position, genealogy, writing and regimes; thin on justice.m
pages read 54, 66–91, 174–178, 187–200, 209–237, 240–249, 265–278, 283–322
- used
book Elinor Ostrom, 1990. Governing the Commons — Elinor Ostrom, 1990
Essential for graduated justice, arenas and the inheritance of rights; silent on religion and the dead.m
fed v14: the right to the commons
pages read chapters 2, 3 and 5
- read
game King Arthur Pendragon and The Great Pendragon Campaign
Very useful: religion turned into character traits.m
pages read core book 14–33, 38–62, 69–77, 106–111, 132–157; campaign 7–37, 122–131 and more
- read
book Short and Adams, 2017 and 2019. Procedural Generation and Procedural Storytelling in Game Design — Short and Adams, 2017 and 2019
Method, not content: intersections, domain, evaluation.m
pages read selected chapters
- dead end
game Wanderhome
Empty folder in the corpus: nothing to report.m
03 Family, regime and beliefs (v14 to v18)
- used
book Emmanuel Todd, with Itao and Kaneko’s rule. Family systems — Emmanuel Todd, with Itao and Kaneko’s rule
Each culture gets a Todd family type, its succession, residence, marriage and the fate of younger sons. Used from memory: no source in the corpus cites Todd; to verify in the text.i
fed v14: family and starting regime; v18: succession and younger sons
- det. 10 Oct · interpretedUsed from memory in v14: no source in the corpus cites Todd.
to re-check since 15 Oct · now interpreted
- read
book Philippe Descola. The four ontologies — Philippe Descola
Read in the text: what each ontology entails; Europe from 1000 to 1312 is analogist.m
fed P13, metaphysics laboratory
- dead end
game The myth generator of Dwarf Fortress
Only a design plan, never shipped; and no academic work on generating religions was found.m
fed P13: the belief rules start from scratch
04 Two outside reports, and what they changed (v17)
- used
report ChatGPT Pro, reading the repository at one commit. Two deep-research reports on the generator — ChatGPT Pro, reading the repository at one commit
12 and 20 tracks, about 120 references. Where they agree: family, religion and regime describe cultures but do not act yet; rights, debts and successions must change what communities can do.m
fed v17: causeless quarrels and alliances removed (21 % and 16 % of them had no cause)
- kept, not read
paper Evans and Short, 2014. Versu: a simulationist storytelling system — Evans and Short, 2014
Cited by the first report on social simulation.m
- kept, not read
paper Boerner and Quint. Medieval matching markets — Boerner and Quint
Cited by the second report for markets and fairs.m
- kept, not read
dataset Viabundus: documentation of a historical road network
Cited by the second report as data for trade routes.m
- to test
dataset Pulotu and SCCSR
Judge the hard constraints of the belief rules against documented counter-examples, not by reading.m
fed P13, metaphysics laboratory