Gladiator: Road to the Colosseum (Out Now!)

There’s a definitive lack of specialized light infantry like the agrainian troops in the Macedonian army from what I know about Roman auxiliaries, gladiators could fulfill this role of incredibly athletic specialists

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@idonotlikeusernames

Yes this is historically accurate. This would make it quite difficult for your MC to live on and affect any real change beyond his/her sphere of influence. And the children would likely be driven to pledge their loyalty to Rome given that they would grow up in Roman society.

This makes a great deal of sense. So essentially by granting more power to the manumitted gladiator, we could see a great deal of potential in his/her ability to affect change. I understand that this would greatly enhance gameplay. But I am currently bandying with the idea of a general storyline which goes like this:

In the event that the MC is manumitted, he is restricted to historical roles → Go back to being a gladiator, become a lanista (gladiator trainer) or while his/her time away (this would make terrible gameplay). So I suppose I would steer the story towards the MC becoming an MC, creating a gladiatorial managerial kind of game.

Concurrently, the MC would have family and children (who will be full Roman citizens). In the following books, the player could put themselves in the shoes of one of the children and chart a new path. This would explore the intricacies of Roman culture and possible careers of a Roman, but perhaps it would deviate entirely from the original premise of the Gladiatorial story.

What do you think about this?

An alternative would be to launch an all out servile revolt again and try to tear Rome apart from within (which would be highly impossible given the complexity and immensity of the task) This would see the MC playing political roles to garner support from the slaves and freedmen to amass enough influence to wage war on Rome.

I think that this would really open up a ton of gameplay opportunities and make the entire story so much more unpredictable. Again, its all about making it realistic yet exciting and entertaining, but I am loving this idea and I think that it has a lot of potential! Of course, it would have been unthinkable for a foreigner to serve in the legions. And being an auxiliary would really hammer home the concept of being a second-class citizen. While doing so could open up various possibilities such as you have mentioned, and maybe even betrayal (think the Battle of Teutoburg Forest) which could lead to the MC leading his/her home nation against Rome, which could be another awesome epic.

But I think at this point I’m getting way ahead of myself hahaha! But thank you for all the great advice so far :smile:

@Pyyrhus
Yes, the Romans employed many foreign specialist troops as auxilias, most notably cavalry and ranged troops to supplement the regular legions of Rome. Doing so allowed them to tap on the skills of their conquered subjects and create a more dynamic army.

I would think that gladiators who enter the army might not find it as smooth sailing as we assume. While discipline and hard training are bound to be common, a gladiator fight had its own rules, and were as much about showmanship as about skill. In a brutal, no holds barred battle, soldiers would have to maintain discipline and be drilled to work as a unit instead of as individuals.

This difference could pose some challenges to the transition from gladiator to a Roman auxilia but I am sure there will be ways to overcome them.

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Well the partial-citizens could and did effect a lot and they could certainly carve out their sphere of influence. The historical ones were mostly teachers and merchants, having been the more intellectually inclined former slaves to begin with.
If our gladiators pick up a some language skills and literacy during our enslavement there is no reason they couldn’t become merchants either.

I couldn’t see my mc going back to being a gladiator after being manumitted, a trainer is possible I guess but not for all mc’s either as we’d have to be comfortable with condemning the kids we “train” to our fate at best or more likely death.
The main historical difference would be that we would do it as partial citizens rather than declaratii who were subjected to re-enslavement at any time and for any reason historically.
Again becoming a wealthy partial citizen would still be a huge step up in social status for the peasant and merchant background mc’s, less so for the former “noble” one though. Still the reason why this path would likely be unsatisfying for my mc is that he wants to take his revenge on the noble brat who made him a slave in the first place, if he isn’t free to travel in order to do that it would mean our freedom would still be less than that of the other citizens and partial citizens and any fortune he does amass would be largely useless to him.
So it’s suggest replacing the “while our time away” with becoming a merchant, which is what a lot of freedmen did anyway and it would allow us to travel and possibly exert a lot of influence that we could use to obtain revenge.
Much like today wealth wasn’t just useful to obtain elected office for yourself (which the mc as a partial citizen would be barred from) but for the influence money could exert on politics.

Again, if freed, my mc would want to use his new freedom and fortune to ruin the noble who did it to him in the first place and hopefully make them sell themselves into slavery in the end.

You could do something similar with the military path if you let the mc become an officer in the auxiliaries if the noble who got us enslaved in the first place were to be leading a provincial revolt against Rome for example then that would also allow a revenge plotline where my mc would seek to capture the guy alive and enslave him as “spoils of war”.
For the former noble mc I guess the conflict would be more between his former noble family (who did get him enslaved too) and Rome.

No objections, but consider allowing gay mc’s like mine to adopt our children instead and make use of the historical fact that in Rome and much of the ancient world dynasties were made by a shared family name, not a bloodline per se, which would allow us to adopt capable children or young adults as our heir(s).

True enough, again I hope you’d let our mc’s enter as officers and not common soldiers again as if they are going to entice former gladiators with the carrot of partial citizenship on completion of their terms of service they would want to use them in a leadership role, rather than that of a common Auxilliary. Not that the discipline for officers wasn’t (even more) brutal too of course.:wink:

Again I’m just glad to have opened you to some of the tweaks that might possibly be made to history while still keeping the game feeling authentically Roman. Mostly the fact that being manumitted as declaratii would be very much a downer ending for the mc. :grinning:

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@idonotlikeusernames

But even so, without political office, I imagine that it would have been difficult to project one’s influence? Of course there is always the method of becoming a successful merchant and paving a way forward with gold. But political strength would have been the primary route to power back then.[quote=“idonotlikeusernames, post:184, topic:26462”]
pick up a some language skills and literacy
[/quote]

Yes, with the right choices, this could very well happen. With regard to becoming a trainer, this might sometimes be a common route as gladiators would know little about surviving in Roman society. Being a trainer would give them a stable source of income, as well as value to Romans.

I would assume this is true for many. And I intend to include some form of this in the future chapters, but of course I wouldn’t want to spoil it as yet.

The merchant path would be possible, but it is only the very wealthy that could start to think of exerting influence on politics. As in real life, I would expect many businesses to fail or die. But this is a story so perhaps it would be workable.

This would be awesome indeed. And then you would be torn between avenging your family and betraying your home nation. Vs forgiving your old enemy and allying against Rome. That would be a very difficult decision, I presume.

I think this can be done, as the ancient world was largely more liberal with homosexuality and it was quite a common thing in Rome and Greece.

The pleasure is all mine. Thank you so much for all the input, its really got me thinking about the future direction of the story, which will definitely impact how I write the next few chapters.

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You are overjoyed with your victory over the larger Thracian. Antonius climbs down with his sailors to congratulate you on the fight. He launches into a speech about bravery and victory, praising your tenacity and valour. You don’t really hear him, simply taking in the looks of admiration the crowd was giving you. You could see ${bestfriend} and
*if gisilars > taurusrs
Gisila
*if taurusrs > gisilars
Taurus
smiling broadly at you, cheering your name.

That section of code doesn’t come out right if you like Taurusrs or Gisilars equally, neither does this:

Having eaten till you could hardly move, you manage to sneak a few pieces of food back down for ${bestfriend} and
*if gisilars > taurusrs
Gisila.
*if taurusrs > gisilars
Taurus.
They could hardly believe their eyes!

All of this is in chapter2_slave.txt.

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I enjoyed the first two chapter tremendously. This seems a very promising game and the lack of good stories set in ancient Rome or Greece is definitely something that ought to be remedied with respect to the choice of game site. Keep up the good work, I shall look forward to updates.

One comment with respect to equipment is that there were defined types of gladiators. It would make more sense for your character to be trained as a type and receive the equipment commiserate with that type. For advancement purposes they may receive better and more finely made version of that equipment though.

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@Danki
Thank you for that! I have changed it on the working copy.

@chrisbat
Thank you so much for the encouragement and playing through the first two chapters! I’m about halfway through the third and hopefully I can get it out sooner rather than later (:

Yes, about this. Although this is historically accurate (locking the type of gladiator the MC can be), I must say that for gameplay’s sake, I will be bending this fact quite a lot. Historically, gladiators were defined and allotted into specific classes and matched off against a specific class. For example, the murmillo is often paired against a hoplomachus etc. And because it would be boring to always fight the same type of opponent (regardless of skill level), or for a bestiarii to constantly fight only animals (regardless of species), I won’t be keeping to this convention.

Hence, I will have the various types of gladiators represented, but I think I won’t be locking the character. This gives the MC the ability to specialise in a certain fighting style or decide to be a generalist and try his/her hand at a range of weapons. It also allows me to throw the MC into the arena against a range of other gladiators, beasts and scenarios which would really serve to make the read much more enjoyable. I hope you understand where I am coming from :smile:

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Hey guys, sorry the updates haven’t been coming along. Been working on things and trying to get an internship overseas (which has been incredibly difficult). Thank you for the patience and guidance so far!

Also, quick question to the experienced writers/players. During the course of a WIP when chapters are being released individually, testers would have to slowly grind through the first few chapters to get to the new content. I was wondering how we could overcome this, so that testers can jump straight to the new content without having to click through the old chapters again whilst still retaining their character and decisions from the old play through.

It might sound a bit ambitious, but is this possible?

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Well back in the day @Vendetta did this with a custom system, @Havenstone included a skip chapter feature for testing, but that code itself was extremely buggy took away character customization and caused a fair amount of headaches.
I think designing a custom save system would be the best bet. There is a save plugin on Dashingdon too, I believe but those are soft saves that still get wiped on browser/cookie resets.

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I know the Rebellion game which has been testing for the last year or so had options at the beginning to start at a certain chapter. So skipping ahead is definitely possible.

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@idonotlikeusernames @chrisbat
Well, skipping chapters is definitely possible using the *goto_scene function. The issue is really how to carry over the saves for each player. For now I only have a soft save that wipes when you close the tab. And also, it doesn’t carry over from game to game.

One way I can think of is to auto-generate a code at the end of the game for the player to copy and key in at the start of the next update. For example 13245 would mean option 1, option 3, option 2, option 3 and option 5 in that order. So yes it would be a really long number by the end of it, but this will be generated for the tester and can be copy/pasted.

The issue is, I don’t think ChoiceScript has a splice function (the opposite of concatenation) so I don’t know if it is possible.

The next alternative is to get the player to key in stats manually. But with the number of variables I’m looking at… I think it might be best not to. What are your thoughts? Do yall think it is important to skip right to the new content as the WIP progresses (perhaps playing as a random character). Or would you be willing to click through the portions that you have played before.

I know the demo for Community College hero 2 asks you a short series of questions to adjust your stats to decisions you made previously. That may be a possibility.

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I think this would be quite a good option. I’ll play around with it after I’m done with the chapter! Thanks @chrisbat :smile:

Also, shoutout to @RETowers for tagging this topic. Much thanks :smile:

As @idonotlikeusernames correctly recalls, it is possible to develop a beta testing system to achieve your aims. In our case it involved a separate website, a database, some clever code in a ‘proper’ programming language, and a not-inconsiderable amount of time & effort… Is it a practical (or even necessary) solution for most Choice Game authors? Probably not.

Most make do with either “soft saves”, which are of course only useful for a single session but can still be a great benefit to play-testers, or make use of the excellent smPlugin.js by @CJW, which is fully supported by dashingdon.com. This uses a browser’s LocalStorage so saves can persist between sessions, provided that no changes are made to game files up to the point of the latest save. If or when such a change is made, it will usually break all existing saves.

It would take a bit of doing, but it’s certainly an intriguing alternative. This topic might provide the functionality you’re looking for?

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One game I have beta tested uses this feature and it works ( almost every time ) and that was one of the coolest thing of that game

The second one uses something slightly different as that game saves the values of the variables ( obviously encrypted ) to give us a password which we can use anytime we play to get to some specific points in the game ( sort of checkpoint ) I have asked the author that how they do it and he told me how to but I wasn’t able to replicate the thing ( I think I should try it one more time )

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Will we be able to pick what weapons we can use in the ring.

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@Vendetta
Thank you for sharing. It seems to me like this is an ongoing issue and there’s no one easy fix for it. The smPlugin.js by @CJW has been really helpful and it is what I am using now but I find that most of the time, there will be changes to the game files up to the point of the save because things like typos and bugs might come up, or things might change to make the entire story more cogent.[quote=“Vendetta, post:195, topic:26462”]
It would take a bit of doing, but it’s certainly an intriguing alternative. This topic might provide the functionality you’re looking for?
[/quote]
This is extremely helpful. I will see if I could device something with it. Thank you so much!

@DUNGEON_MASTER
Wow that sounds like a really good system to emulate. Do you mind pointing me towards these games? Or perhaps share the code that goes into the save system?

@Arcane_warrior
It depends on the type of fight, as well as some political events. Over the course of the game, players will slowly get more proficient with certain weapons. But some fights would impose certain restrictions that cause the player not to be able to use his weapon of choice.

One big factor might also be the kind of backing you get. If you were a no-name fighter who was sent as fodder against a crowd favourite, you might be stripped of your weapons and armour (this would be the worst-cased, politically triggered event - perhaps you angered your owner or trainer) but if you win, it will be much more awesome and people would love you. On the flip side, if you were a popular and famous gladiator, you would get to bring in your favourite weapons and armour.

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One is the upcoming CoG game - Unmasked ( bookmark feature )
And the other one doesn’t have any name ( yet ) it’s by grapefruit - the author of magikiras ( password feature )

Bookmark feature provides more freedom to save because you can save at any given point in story

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One thing worth bearing in mind, when making minor changes to existing files, is that save systems tend to work on line number. If the changes you’re making don’t change the actual line number of the save / reload point (e.g. by removing an unnecessary blank line for each new line of code added) then the chances are it won’t break existing saves.

Not much use when making substantial changes, of course, but useful to remember for minor bug fixes and the like.

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@DUNGEON_MASTER
Thanks for the links! I really appreciate it :smile:

@Vendetta
Oh wow alright. That is definitely new information to me. Thank you so much for the pointer!

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