Massive reworking of documentation

More consistent file names; all links now work.

README.md

@@ -3,11 +3,9 @@ Prototype code towards the great game I've been writing about for ten years, and
 
 ## Awful warning
 
-This doesn't work and isn't ever likely to fully work: it's way too ambitious for any
-single person to actually build. Feel free to mine it for algorithms and ideas, but
-don't expect a game you can actually play any time soon.
+This doesn't work and isn't ever likely to fully work: it's way too ambitious for any single person to actually build. Feel free to mine it for algorithms and ideas, but don't expect a game you can actually play any time soon.
 
-## There is documentation
+## There is (masses of) documentation
 
 [here](https://simon-brooke.github.io/the-great-game/)
 

doc/A-generic-planning-algorithm-for-craftworker-npcs.md

@@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ There are limits to the number of apprentices and journeymen a master may take o
 
 Apprentices are definitely not paid. Journeymen should be paid, but this is a detail to ignore until we have other things working.
 
-Journeymen will move on from master to master from time to time -- infrequently, but it will happen; and may be dismissed by masters when markets are tight. Journeymen probably learn their craft recipes -- which is to say, the items and qualities of item they are able to craft -- from the masters they work with. Consequently, journeymen will seek out masters with higher reputation; masters will prefer journeymen with more experience.
+Journeymen will move on from master to master from time to time — infrequently, but it will happen; and may be dismissed by masters when markets are tight. Journeymen probably learn their craft recipes — which is to say, the items and qualities of item they are able to craft — from the masters they work with. Consequently, journeymen will seek out masters with higher reputation; masters will prefer journeymen with more experience.
 
 Apprentices do not move on until the end of their period of apprenticeship (16th birthday?) when they become journeymen.
 
@@ -68,11 +68,14 @@ For each craft recipe the master knows there will be
 2. An amount of craftsperson time - for example, a standard infantry sword might take ten hours;
 3. Memory of prices achieved by item to that recipe in the local market.
 
-The master will choose a recipe for which there are sufficient materials on hand, and which is profitable to make -- the more profitable, the more likely to be selected (but I think there's probably some furtive dice rolling under the table here too; you don't want all the smiths in town producing infantry swords at the same time, because that would swamp the market and drive prices down).
+The master will choose a recipe for which there are sufficient materials on hand, and which is profitable to make — the more profitable, the more likely to be selected (but I think there's probably some furtive dice rolling under the table here too; you don't want all the smiths in town producing infantry swords at the same time, because that would swamp the market and drive prices down).
 
 When an item is started, the materials for it are removed from stock and assigned to the item, which is added to the work in progress list. The number of items that can be produced in a work session is
 
-    (the number of hours in the session * the number of people in the team) / the hours to produce one item
+```clojure
+    (/ (* hours-in-session people-in-team) 
+        hours-to-produce-one-item)
+```
 
 At the end of the session, the integer number of items produced is removed from the work in progress queue and added to stock, and the modulus is added as `:work-done` to the remaining item, which is left in the work in progress queue.
 

doc/Baking-the-world.md

@@ -74,7 +74,7 @@
 
 ## Phase four: eating!
 
- At the end, though, you have a game, and a player plays it. How much of the dynamic, organic life that brought the game through proving continues on into the playing phase? If the [gossip](The-spread-of-knowledge-in-a-large-game.html) ideas are to work, if unscripted, non-plot-related events (as well as scripted, plot related events) are to happen while the player plays, if news of these events is to percolate through the world and reach the player in organic, unscripted ways, if a lot of the emergent gameplay I'm imagining is to work, then quite a lot of the dynamic things must be happening.
+ At the end, though, you have a game, and a player plays it. How much of the dynamic, organic life that brought the game through proving continues on into the playing phase? If the [gossip](The-spread-of-knowledge-in-a-large-game-world.html) ideas are to work, if unscripted, non-plot-related events (as well as scripted, plot related events) are to happen while the player plays, if news of these events is to percolate through the world and reach the player in organic, unscripted ways, if a lot of the emergent gameplay I'm imagining is to work, then quite a lot of the dynamic things must be happening.
 
  Of course, part of this depends on the length of 'game world time' is expected to elapse in the course of one play through of the game. If it's less than a year, then you don't need children dynamically being born, and characters dynamically growing older; but if more, then you do. Similarly, you don't need a real simulation of trading to dynamically drive prices in markets, but for a fun trading sub-game to emerge, you probably do, and if you are using merchants as news spreading agents the additional compute cost is not high.
 

doc/Canonical-dictionary.md

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-# A Canonical dictionary for this documentation
+# Canonical dictionary for this documentation
 
 Where a word is used in the documentation for The Great Game and its related projects, this file describes the canonical meaning of that word. This is because a lot of the concepts in play are messy and ambiguous, so that at times even I am confused by what I mean. The presence of this file is an acknowledment of this difficulty, and an implicit admission that not all the documentation is, at this stage anyway, consistent.
 
@@ -35,8 +35,8 @@ It is assumed that the `:home` of a character is a location in this sense.
 
 **Examples**
 
-1. [{:x 5445678 :y 9684351}]
-2. [{:x 5445678 :y 9684351} :karalin-palace :hanshua]
+1. \[{:x 5445678 :y 9684351}\]
+2. \[{:x 5445678 :y 9684351} :karalin-palace :hanshua\]
 
 #### Merchant
 

doc/Division_of_tasks_between_server_and_client.md

@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ There is something which manages game state and things like the gossip network,
 
 The initial idea of The Great Game is that it is a single player game, but it actually doesn't need to be and it would be quite possible for one server to support multiple clients, each being used by a different player. 
 
-The server/planner decides what each actor does, models what each character knows, plans and records all actions and transactions. It plans speech acts, and handles conversations which happen off screen, but hands speech texts over to the client/performer layer for actual performance. It also plans journeys as described in [[Pathmaking]], but it doesn't deal with movement within a polygon or with collision avoidance. It deals with fights which happen off screen, but not those that happen on screen.
+The server/planner decides what each actor does, models what each character knows, plans and records all actions and transactions. It plans speech acts, and handles conversations which happen off screen, but hands speech texts over to the client/performer layer for actual performance. It also plans journeys as described in [Pathmaking](Pathmaking.html), but it doesn't deal with movement within a polygon or with collision avoidance. It deals with fights which happen off screen, but not those that happen on screen.
 
 ## What do I mean by the client?
 

doc/Dynamic-consequences.md

@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 # On the consequences of a dynamic game environment for storytelling
 
-First, a framing disclaimer: in [Racundra's First Cruise](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Ol1-DwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PT77#v=twopage&q&f=false), Arthur Ransome describes coming across a half built - and by the time he saw it, already obsolete - wooden sailing ship, in a Baltic forest. An old man was building it, by himself. He had been building it since he had been a young man. It's clear that Ransome believed the ship would never be finished. It's not clear whether the old man believed that it would, but nevertheless he was building it.
+First, a framing disclaimer: in [Racundra's First Cruise](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Ol1-DwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PT77#v=twopage&q&f=false), Arthur Ransome describes coming across a half built — and by the time he saw it, already obsolete — wooden sailing ship, in a Baltic forest. An old man was building it, by himself. He had been building it since he had been a young man. It's clear that Ransome believed the ship would never be finished. It's not clear whether the old man believed that it would, but nevertheless he was building it.
 
 I will never build a complete version of The Great Game; it will probably never even be a playable prototype. It is a minor side-project of someone who
 
@@ -9,9 +9,9 @@ I will never build a complete version of The Great Game; it will probably never
 
 Nevertheless, in making design choices I want to specify something which could be built, which could, except for the technical innovations I'm trying myself to build, be built with the existing state of the art, and which if built, would be engaging and interesting to play.
 
-The defining characteristic of Role Playing Games - the subcategory of games in which I am interested - is that the actions, decisions and choices of the player make a significant difference to the outcome of the plot, significantly affect change in the world. This already raises challenges for the cinematic elements in telling the game story, and those cinematic elements are one of the key rewards to the player, one of the elements of the game's presentation which most build, and hold, player engagement. These challenges are clearly expressed in two very good videos I've watched recently: [Who's Commanding Shepard in Mass Effect?](https://youtu.be/bm0S4cn_rfw), which discusses how much control the player actually has/should have over the decisions of the character they play as; and [What Happened with Mass Effect Andromeda’s Animation?](https://youtu.be/NmLPpcVQFJM), which discusses how the more control the player has, the bigger the task of authoring animation of all conversations and plot events becomes.
+The defining characteristic of Role Playing Games — the subcategory of games in which I am interested — is that the actions, decisions and choices of the player make a significant difference to the outcome of the plot, significantly affect change in the world. This already raises challenges for the cinematic elements in telling the game story, and those cinematic elements are one of the key rewards to the player, one of the elements of the game's presentation which most build, and hold, player engagement. These challenges are clearly expressed in two very good videos I've watched recently: [Who's Commanding Shepard in Mass Effect?](https://youtu.be/bm0S4cn_rfw), which discusses how much control the player actually has/should have over the decisions of the character they play as; and [What Happened with Mass Effect Andromeda’s Animation?](https://youtu.be/NmLPpcVQFJM), which discusses how the more control the player has, the bigger the task of authoring animation of all conversations and plot events becomes.
 
-There are two key innovations I want to make in The Great Game which set it apart from existing Role Playing Games, both of which make the production of engaging cinematic presentation of conversation more difficult, nd I'll handle each in turn. But before I do, there's something I need to make clear about the nature of video games themselves: what they are for. Video games are a vehicle to tell stories, to convey narrative. They're a rich vehicle, because the narrative is not fixed: it is at least to some degree mutable, responsive to the input of the audience: the player.
+There are two key innovations I want to make in The Great Game which set it apart from existing Role Playing Games, both of which make the production of engaging cinematic presentation of conversation more difficult, and I'll handle each in turn. But before I do, there's something I need to make clear about the nature of video games themselves: what they are for. Video games are a vehicle to tell stories, to convey narrative. They're a rich vehicle, because the narrative is not fixed: it is at least to some degree mutable, responsive to the input of the audience: the player.
 
 Clear? Let's move on.
 
@@ -29,32 +29,34 @@ I want the player to be able to interact with non-player characters (and, indeed
 
 and it must be pretty clear that the full range of potential responses is extremely large. Consequently, it's impossible that all non-player character speech acts can be voice acted; rather, this sort of generated speech must be synthesised. But a consequence of this is that the non-player character's facial animation during the conversation also cannot be motion captured from a human actor; rather, [it, too, must be synthesized](https://youtu.be/fa3_Mfqu8KA).
 
-This doesn't mean that speech acts by non-player characters which make plot points or advance the narrative can't be voice acted, but it does mean that the voice acting must be consistent with the simulated voice used for that non-player character - which is to say, probably, that the non-player character must use a synthetic voice derived from the voice performance of that particular voice actor in that role.
+This doesn't mean that speech acts by non-player characters which make plot points or advance the narrative can't be voice acted, but it does mean that the voice acting must be consistent with the simulated voice used for that non-player character — which is to say, probably, that the non-player character must use a synthetic voice derived from the voice performance of that particular voice actor in that role.
+
+**Note that** this has interesting consequences for social equity with regard to those whose current profession is voice acting video games. Automating work people do generally has the consequence of putting those people out of work, or at least of making their work less valuable and consequently less remunerative. Almost everyone who has worked in software has to some extent done this. I'm not avoiding or ignoring the ethical issue here. I would argue in mitigation that because games of the type I am suggesting can never be voice acted, I'm not replacing work any real actors will ever do, but that is tendentious since if games of this sort are built and are successful they will compete for audience attention with games which are voice acted.
 
 ## Dynamic game environment
 
-Modern Role Playing Games are, in effect, extremely complex state machines: if you do the same things in the same sequence, the same outcomes will always occur. In a world full of monsters, bandits, warring armies and other dangers, the same quest givers will be in the same places at the same times. They are clockwork worlds, filled with clockwork automata. Of course, this has the advantage that is makes testing easier - and in a game with a complex branching narrative and many quests, testing is inevitably hard.
+Modern Role Playing Games are, in effect, extremely complex state machines: if you do the same things in the same sequence, the same outcomes will always occur. In a world full of monsters, bandits, warring armies and other dangers, the same quest givers will be in the same places at the same times. They are clockwork worlds, filled with clockwork automata. Of course, this has the advantage that is makes testing easier — and in a game with a complex branching narrative and many quests, testing is inevitably hard.
 
 Interestingly, [Kenshi](https://lofigames.com/) — a game I'm increasingly impressed and influenced by — is not quite clockwork in this sense. As the player upsets the equilibrium of the game's political economy, factions not impacted negatively will move against competing factions which are impacted negatively, in a way which *may* be scripted, but it's so well done it's hard to tell.
 
-My vision for The Great Game is different. It is that the economy - and with it, the day to day choices of non-player characters - should be modelled. This means, non-player characters may unexpectedly die. Of course, you could implement a tag for plot-relevant characters which prevents them being killed (except when required by the plot).
+My vision for The Great Game is different. It is that the economy — and with it, the day to day choices of non-player characters — should be modelled. This means, non-player characters may unexpectedly die. Of course, you could implement a tag for plot-relevant characters which prevents them being killed (except when required by the plot).
 
 ## Plot follows player
 
-As Role Playing Games have moved towards open worlds - where the player's movement in the environment is relatively unconstrained - the clockwork has become strained. The player has to get to particular locations where particular events happen, and so the player has to be very heavily signposted. Sometimes the mark you have to hit to trigger the next advance of the plot can be extremely awkward; [an example from Cyberpunk 2077](https://youtu.be/GEYkuctBUYE?t=2990) is finding the right spot, in the quest 'They Won't Go When I Go', to trigger the button which raises the cross. 
+As Role Playing Games have moved towards open worlds — where the player's movement in the environment is relatively unconstrained — the clockwork has become strained. The player has to get to particular locations where particular events happen, and so the player has to be very heavily signposted. Sometimes the mark you have to hit to trigger the next advance of the plot can be extremely awkward; [an example from Cyberpunk 2077](https://youtu.be/GEYkuctBUYE?t=2990) is finding the right spot, in the quest 'They Won't Go When I Go', to trigger the button which raises the cross. 
 
-Another solution - which I'd like to explore - is 'plot follows character'. The player is free to wander at will in the world, and plot relevant events will happen on their path. And by that I don't mean that we associate a set of non-player characters which each quest - as current Role Playing Games do - and then uproot the whole set from wherever they normally live in the world and dump them down in the player's path; but rather, for each role in a quest or plot event, we define a set of characteristics required to fulfil that role, and then, when the player comes to a place where there are a set of characters who have those characteristics, the quest or plot event will happen.
+Another solution — which I'd like to explore — is 'plot follows character'. The player is free to wander at will in the world, and plot relevant events will happen on their path. And by that I don't mean that we associate a set of non-player characters which each quest — as current Role Playing Games do — and then uproot the whole set from wherever they normally live in the world and dump them down in the player's path; but rather, for each role in a quest or plot event, we define a set of characteristics required to fulfil that role, and then, when the player comes to a place where there are a set of characters who have those characteristics, the quest or plot event will happen.
 
 ## Cut scenes, cinematics and rewarding the player
 
-There's no doubt at all that 'cut scenes' - in effect, short movies spliced into game play during which the player has no decisions to make but can simply watch the scene unroll - are elements of modern games which players enjoy, and see to some extent as 'rewards'. And in many games, these are beautifully constructed works. It is a very widely held view that the quality of cutscenes depends to a large degree on human authorship. The choices I've made above:
+There's no doubt at all that 'cut scenes' — in effect, short movies spliced into game play during which the player has no decisions to make but can simply watch the scene unroll — are elements of modern games which players enjoy, and see to some extent as 'rewards'. And in many games, these are beautifully constructed works. It is a very widely held view that the quality of cutscenes depends to a large degree on human authorship. The choices I've made above:
 
 1. We can't always know exactly what non-player characters will say (although perhaps we can in the context of cut scenes where the player has no input);
 2. We can't always know exactly which non-player characters will speak the lines;
 3. We can't predict what a non-player character will say in response to a question, or how long that will take;
 4. We can't always know where any particular plot event will take place;
 
-each, make the task of authoring an animation harder. The general summary of what I'm saying here is that, although in animating a conversation or cutscene what the animator is essentially animating is the skeletons of the characters, and, provided that all character models are rigged on essentially similar skeletons, substituting one character model for another in an animated scene isn't a huge issue, with so much unknowable it is impossible that hand-authoring will be practicable, and so a lot will depend on the quality of the conversation system not merely to to produce convincingly enunciated and emoted sound, but also appropriate character animation and attractive cinematography. As you will have learned from the Mass Effect analysis videos I linked to above, that's a big ask.
+each make the task of authoring an animation harder. The general summary of what I'm saying here is that, although in animating a conversation or cutscene what the animator is essentially animating is the skeletons of the characters, and, provided that all character models are rigged on essentially similar skeletons, substituting one character model for another in an animated scene isn't a huge issue, with so much unknowable it is impossible that hand-authoring will be practicable, and so a lot will depend on the quality of the conversation system not merely to to produce convincingly enunciated and emoted sound, but also appropriate character animation and attractive cinematography. As you will have learned from the Mass Effect analysis videos I linked to above, that's a big ask.
 
 Essentially the gamble here is that players will find the much richer conversations, and consequent emergent gameplay, possible with non-player charcaters who have dynamic knowledge about their world sufficiently engaging to compensate for a less compelling cinematic experience. I believe that they would; but really the only way to find out would be to try.
 

doc/Economy.md

@@ -32,22 +32,22 @@ Farmers are settled. Farmers occupy standard runrig plots, but because they don'
 * fibres: linen, hemp and silk (from silk-moths in mulberry orchards)
 * possibly other stuff I've forgotten.
 
-Farmers are all basically subsistence farmers, farming first to feed their own household and selling only surplus in the market.
+Farmers are all primarily subsistence farmers, farming first to feed their own household and selling only surplus in the market.
 
 ## Crafts
 
-Crafts generally process primary goods into secondary goods - whether intermediate stages or final consumer items. Some elite 'crafts' deal with abstract primary goods like law and knowledge, and they may be seen as somewhat separate.
+Crafts generally process primary goods into secondary goods — whether intermediate stages or final consumer items. Some elite 'crafts' deal with abstract primary goods like law and knowledge, and they may be seen as somewhat separate.
 
-A master craftsperson may occupy a standard runrig plot, much like a farmer's plot. Like a farmer, a poor master crafter household will cultivate part of the plot to produce food for the house - at least grow vegetables and keep hens. However, as the crafter takes on apprentices and journeymen - and gets richer - more buildings will be required as accommodation, workshop space and materials stores.
+A master craftsperson may occupy a standard runrig plot, much like a farmer's plot. Like a farmer, a poor master crafter household will cultivate part of the plot to produce food for the house — at least grow vegetables and keep hens. However, as the crafter takes on apprentices and journeymen — and gets richer — more buildings will be required as accommodation, workshop space and materials stores.
 
 Also, Tchahua is much more a gold-rush town than an organic, grew over hundreds of years sort of town, so it is not ex-runrig; and additionally the original settlement was probably along the river bank, land which has now been redeveloped as warehouses and as rich merchant residences. Generally, town house plots are small from the get go.
 
 Hans'hua is again an exception from normal organic development, as it has no agricultural land close to the city at all.
 
-Generally, primary goods aren't transported over land - because overland transport is expensive, by the time they've been transported they're no longer low cost goods. So often the craftspeople who process primary produce into at least commodity intermediate forms will live close to the source of the primary goods.
+Generally, primary goods aren't transported over land — because overland transport is expensive, by the time they've been transported they're no longer low cost goods. So often the craftspeople who process primary produce into at least commodity intermediate forms will live close to the source of the primary goods.
 
 So, for example, the town(s) where the shepherds hold their shearing fairs will tend to have a lot of weavers. While around mines there will be smelters producing ingots and bar stock to be marketed to smiths all over the place, there will also be smiths close to the mines producing commodity tools and weapons.
 
-See the table in Populating a game world.
+See the tables in [Populating a game world](Populating-a-game-world.html).
 
 

doc/Further-reading.md

@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ Work by other people which is relevant to what I'm doing, and which I should stu
 
 ## Modelling the natural environment
 
-1. [Synthetic Silviculture: Multi-scale Modeling of Plant Ecosystems](https://storage.googleapis.com/pirk.io/projects/synthetic_silviculture/index.html) -- see also [this video](https://youtu.be/8YOpFsZsR9w).
+1. [Synthetic Silviculture: Multi-scale Modeling of Plant Ecosystems](https://storage.googleapis.com/pirk.io/projects/synthetic_silviculture/index.html) — see also [this video](https://youtu.be/8YOpFsZsR9w).
 
 ## Systemic games
 

doc/Game_Play.md

@@ -18,9 +18,9 @@ The principles of game play which I'm looking for are a reaction against all I s
 
 Of these, the last two, I think, are key: they are the root cause of the other problems. In fact, to take it further, the real key is the last. We talk a lot about 'Game AI', but really there's nothing remotely approaching artificial intelligence in modern games. Non-player characters do not think; they do not learn; they do not reason; they do not know. They speak only from the script. And they speak only from the script because of the fetish for voice acting.
 
-## Death to Dumb-Dumb
+## Death to Dum-Dum
 
-As I've argued [elsewhere](Voice-acting-considered-harmful), [repeatedly](Selecting Character), we can now generate a wide variety of naturalistic speaking voices, and have them narrate text. Now of course there's great deal of information conveyed in human vocal communication in addition to the words – of which emotion is only an example, although an important one. Generating voices with the right tone, the right emphasis, for different situations may be harder than I anticipate; there may be an '[uncanny valley](Uncanny_dialogue)' in which generated speech just sounds uncomfortably off.
+As I've argued [elsewhere](Voice-acting-considered-harmful.html), [repeatedly](Selecting_Character.html), we can now generate a wide variety of naturalistic speaking voices, and have them narrate text. Now of course there's great deal of information conveyed in human vocal communication in addition to the words – of which emotion is only an example, although an important one. Generating voices with the right tone, the right emphasis, for different situations may be harder than I anticipate; there may be an '[uncanny valley](Uncanny_dialogue.html)' in which generated speech just sounds uncomfortably off.
 
 But it's a trade off. For possibly less than perfect vocal performance, you get the possibility of much richer repertoire. You get not only the possibility that non-player characters can talk about the weather, or gossip about their neighbours, or give you directions to local places of interest. You get the possibility that a non-player character's attitude to you may be conditioned by the fact that they've heard that you stole from their second cousin, or that you killed an outlaw who'd raped one of their friends.
 

doc/Gossip_scripted_plot_and_Johnny_Silverhand.md

@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 # Gossip, scripted plot, and Johnny Silverhand
 
-I've been writing literally for years -- since [Voice acting considered harmful](Voice-acting-considered-harmful.md) in 2015 -- about game worlds in which the player speaks to non-player characters just by speaking the words they choose in their normal voice, and the non-player character replies using a pipeline that goes, essentially,
+I've been writing literally for years — since [Voice acting considered harmful](Voice-acting-considered-harmful.md) in 2015 — about game worlds in which the player speaks to non-player characters just by speaking the words they choose in their normal voice, and the non-player character replies using a pipeline that goes, essentially,
 
 1. Alexa/Siri style speech interpretation;
 2. A decision on whether to co-operate based on the particular NPC's general demeanor and particular attitude to the player;
@@ -13,21 +13,21 @@ As I've argued before, the game engine necessarily knows everything about the lo
 
 What individual characters know should, of course, be more limited. People who live in Japantown or Heywood are unlikely to know who lives in a particular apartment in Watson; only real old timers, like Rogue, are likely to remember who was mayor fifty years ago. That's the reason for filtering; but the filtering really isn't a big deal.
 
-Again, the generation of distinct voices for hundreds of non-player characters isn't any longer a big deal. Distinct social groups -- the corpos, and the different gangs such as Maelstrom or the Mox, will have their own argot, their own slang, their own habitual figures of speech which can be encoded into template libraries, while technologies like Lyrebird can produce an infinite range of realistic-sounding voices.
+Again, the generation of distinct voices for hundreds of non-player characters isn't any longer a big deal. Distinct social groups — the corpos, and the different gangs such as Maelstrom or the Mox, will have their own argot, their own slang, their own habitual figures of speech which can be encoded into template libraries, while technologies like Lyrebird can produce an infinite range of realistic-sounding voices.
 
 In particular, they can mimic real voices. They can mimic the voices of real actors. They can mimic [Keanu Reeves](https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Keanu_Reeves). (Interestingly, since I first wrote this note, CD Projekt Red have used Lyrebird-like technology to [resurrect a voice actor](https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/13/23915535/cyberpunk-2077-phantom-liberty-polish-voice-actor-ai-ripperdock-viktor-vektor) in Phantom Liberty, proving that the technology is good enough).
 
 So: how do you integrate this free form 'you can say anything to any character' style of play with scripted plot?
 
-Obviously, my vision -- as I've set out in [Organic Quests](Organic_Quests.md) -- is that many quests should emerge organically from modelling the lives, activities and motivations of non-player characters. But that's a radical vision and not one you can really expect many people to buy into until it has been demonstrated to work. I think that investors are still going to want to have confidence that there's something exciting in the game for players to engage with, and I think directors are still going to want to tell the stories they want to tell.
+Obviously, my vision — as I've set out in [Organic Quests](Organic_Quests.md) — is that many quests should emerge organically from modelling the lives, activities and motivations of non-player characters. But that's a radical vision and not one you can really expect many people to buy into until it has been demonstrated to work. I think that investors are still going to want to have confidence that there's something exciting in the game for players to engage with, and I think directors are still going to want to tell the stories they want to tell.
 
 So if I'm to sell the idea of free-form speech interaction with characters in the game world, I need an account of how it works with scripted characters voiced by high value actors in a scripted plot. I'm picking Johnny Silverhand as a core example, here, because I think he presents particular challenges.
 
 But I also think these challenges can be addressed very easily.
 
-In [Cyberpunk 2077](https://www.cyberpunk.net/), the player can't just go and find Johnny Silverhand, to speak to him. On the contrary, Johnny will just appear when the script calls for him to appear, and when he does he'll always initiate conversation. When a plot NPC initiates conversation with the player, the game could show -- as it does now -- a menu of things the player can say, with the implicit promise that selecting any one of these things will at least bring an interesting response which will expand one's knowledge of that character or of the lore.
+In [Cyberpunk 2077](https://www.cyberpunk.net/), the player can't just go and find Johnny Silverhand, to speak to him. On the contrary, Johnny will just appear when the script calls for him to appear, and when he does he'll always initiate conversation. When a plot NPC initiates conversation with the player, the game could show — as it does now — a menu of things the player can say, with the implicit promise that selecting any one of these things will at least bring an interesting response which will expand one's knowledge of that character or of the lore.
 
-Just as the player does now, the player in a game with free form speech interaction could choose to say one of the things presented in the menu, and the implicit contract -- that this would lead to a new revelation, or would advance the plot -- would remain unchanged. But the player could also choose to go off script, to take the conversation in an unscripted direction, or just to end it.
+Just as the player does now, the player in a game with free form speech interaction could choose to say one of the things presented in the menu, and the implicit contract — that this would lead to a new revelation, or would advance the plot — would remain unchanged. But the player could also choose to go off script, to take the conversation in an unscripted direction, or just to end it.
 
 It should be said that in Cyberpunk 2077, unlike some other games, the player already has the choice to abruptly break off conversations, even with plot characters, so how the game handles breaking off the conversation does not need to change.
 
@@ -41,7 +41,7 @@ Well, the first and obvious thing is to parse the unscripted response to see whe
 >
 > **V**: Yes, dammit.
 
-But the second thing is to respond to the response exactly as the non-player character would if the player had initiated the conversation, using the pipeline given at the beginning of this essay. Of course, in the special case of Johnny Silverhand, he is -- at least initially -- decidedly hostile and extremely selfish, so his response will typically come at step two in the pipeline:
+But the second thing is to respond to the response exactly as the non-player character would if the player had initiated the conversation, using the pipeline given at the beginning of this essay. Of course, in the special case of Johnny Silverhand, he is — at least initially — decidedly hostile and extremely selfish, so his response will typically come at step two in the pipeline:
 
 > **V**: Hey, Johnny, what's the quickest way from here to Jig Jig Street?
 >

doc/MVP-Roadmap.md

@@ -36,7 +36,7 @@ There should be one or two multiple decision point quests in this world which ca
 
 ## Prototype two: adding organic quests
 
-Extends prototype one only by adding [organic quests](Organic_Quests).
+Extends prototype one only by adding [organic quests](Organic_Quests.html).
 
 ## Prototype three: voice interaction
 

doc/On-dying.md

@@ -24,4 +24,4 @@ It should be said that [Kenshi](https://lofigames.com/) — a game I've only
 
 If the player is going to depend on good samaritans for rescue after losing a fight, then there must be at least a social convention that people should assist people found injured on the wayside. Consequently, if the player fails to do this, that should in itself become a 'gossip' event which will lower the player's reputation with non-player characters.
 
-On the other hand, helping NPCs found injured at the wayside can be another category of [organic quest](Organic_Quests.md), as a special subcategory of an escort quest.
+On the other hand, helping NPCs found injured at the wayside can be another category of [organic quest](Organic_Quests.html), as a special subcategory of an escort quest.

doc/Pathmaking.md

@@ -2,6 +2,8 @@
 
 **NOTE**: this file is called 'pathmaking', not 'pathfinding', because 'pathfinding' has a very specific meaning/usage in game design which is only part of what I want to talk about here.
 
+**NOTE**: Work on this is being carried on in a separate library, [Walkmap](https://github.com/simon-brooke/walkmap), q.v.
+
 ## Stages in creating routes between locations
 
 *see also [Baking the world](Baking-the-world.html)*

doc/Populating-a-game-world.md

@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 
 #### Saturday, 6 July 2013
 
- *(You might want to read this essay in conjunction with my older essay, [Settling a game world](../../2009/12/settling-game-world.html), which covers similar ground but which this hopefully advances on)*
+ *(You might want to read this essay in conjunction with my older essay, [Settling a game world](Settling-a-game-world.html), which covers similar ground but which this hopefully advances on)*
 
  For an economy to work people have to be able to move between occupations to fill economic niches. In steady state, non player character (NPC) males become adult as 'vagrants', and then move through the state transitions described in this document. The pattern for females is different.
 
@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@
 
 
 
-| Occupation | Dwelling | condition | New trade | Notes |
+| Occupation | Dwelling | Condition | New trade | Notes |
 | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
 | Vagrant | None | land available and animals available | Herdsman |  |
 | Vagrant | None | arable land available | Farmer | See crops |
@@ -43,28 +43,26 @@
 
  Crafts are occupations which require acquired skills. In the initial seeding of the game world there are probably 'pioneers', who are special vagrants who, on encountering the conditions for a particular craft to thrive, instantly become masters of that craft.
 
-
-| Craft | Dwelling | Supplies | Perishable? | Customer types | Needs market? | Customers | Supplier | Suppliers | Recruits |
-| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
-| |  |  |  |  |  | Solo | Per journeyman | Per apprentice |  |  |  |
-|     |     |     |     |     |     | --- | --- | --- |     |     |     |
-| |  |  |  |  |  | Min | Max | Min | Max | Min | Max |  |  |  |
-| --- |     |     |     |     |     | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |     |     |     |
-| Smith | Forge | Metal Items | no | Farmer, Soldier | No | 6 | 10 | 4 | 6 | 1 | 3 | Miner | 1 | Vagrant |
-| Baker | Bakery | Bread | yes | All NPCs | No | 20 | 30 | 12 | 18 | 6 | 10 | Miller | 1 | Vagrant |
-| Miller | Mill | Flour, meal | no | Baker, Innkeeper | No | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Farmer | 6 | Vagrant |
-| Weaver | Weaver's house | Cloth | no | All NPCs | Yes | 6 | 10 | 4 | 6 | 1 | 3 | Herdsman | 2 | Vagrant |
-| Innkeeper | Inn | Food, hospitality | yes | Merhant, Soldier, Farmer, Lord | No | 10 | 20 | 5 | 10 | 2 | 4 | Farmer,Herdsman | 2 | Vagrant |
-| Miner | Mine | Ores | no | Smith | Yes | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Farmer | 1 | Vagrant |
-| Butcher | Butchery | Meat | yes | All NPCs | No | 10 | 20 | 4 | 8 | 2 | 4 | Farmer, Herdsman | 2 | Vagrant |
-| Merchant | Townhouse | Transport, logistics | n/a | Craftsmen, nobility | Yes | 10 | 20 | 4 | 8 | 2 | 4 | n/a | n/a | Vagrant |
-| Banker | Bank | Financial services | yes | Merchant | Yes | 10 | 20 | 4 | 8 | 2 | 4 | n/a | n/a | Merchant |
-| Scholar | Academy | Knowledge | n/a | Ariston, Tyrranos, General, Banker | No | 1 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 0.25 | 0.5 | n/a | n/a | Vagrant |
-| Priest | Temple | Religion | n/a | All NPCs | No | 50 | 100 |  |  |  |  |  |  | Scholar |
-| Chancellor | Chancellory | Administration | n/a | Ariston, Tyrranos | No | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |  |  | Scholar |
-| Lawyer | Townhouse | Legal services | n/a | Ariston, Merchant, Banker | No | 4 | 6 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2 |  |  | Scholar |
-| Magus | Townhouse | Magic | n/a | Tyrranos, General | No | 3 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 0.25 | 0.5 |  |  | Scholar |
-
+<table>
+<tr>
+<th rowspan="3"> Craft <th rowspan="3"> Dwelling <th rowspan="3"> Supplies <th rowspan="3"> Perishable? <th rowspan="3"> Customer types <th rowspan="3"> Needs market? <th colspan="6"> Customers <th rowspan="3"> Supplier <th rowspan="3"> Suppliers <th rowspan="3"> Recruits </th></tr>
+<tr><th colspan="2"> Solo <th colspan="2"> Per journeyman <th colspan="2"> Per apprentice</tr>
+<tr><th> Min <th> Max <th> Min <th> Max <th> Min <th> Max </tr>
+<tr><td>Smith <td>Forge <td>Metal Items <td>no <td>Farmer, Soldier <td>No <td>6 <td>10 <td>4 <td>6 <td>1 <td>3 <td>Miner <td>1 <td>Vagrant 
+<tr><td>Baker <td>Bakery <td>Bread <td>yes <td>All NPCs <td>No <td>20 <td>30 <td>12 <td>18 <td>6 <td>10 <td>Miller <td>1 <td>Vagrant 
+<tr><td>Miller <td>Mill <td>Flour, meal <td>no <td>Baker, Innkeeper <td>No <td>2 <td>3 <td>1 <td>2 <td>1 <td>1 <td>Farmer <td>6 <td>Vagrant 
+<tr><td>Weaver <td>Weaver's house <td>Cloth <td>no <td>All NPCs <td>Yes <td>6 <td>10 <td>4 <td>6 <td>1 <td>3 <td>Herdsman <td>2 <td>Vagrant 
+<tr><td>Innkeeper <td>Inn <td>Food, hospitality <td>yes <td>Merhant, Soldier, Farmer, Lord <td>No <td>10 <td>20 <td>5 <td>10 <td>2 <td>4 <td>Farmer,Herdsman <td>2 <td>Vagrant 
+<tr><td>Miner <td>Mine <td>Ores <td>no <td>Smith <td>Yes <td>2 <td>3 <td>1 <td>2 <td>1 <td>1 <td>Farmer <td>1 <td>Vagrant 
+<tr><td>Butcher <td>Butchery <td>Meat <td>yes <td>All NPCs <td>No <td>10 <td>20 <td>4 <td>8 <td>2 <td>4 <td>Farmer, Herdsman <td>2 <td>Vagrant 
+<tr><td>Merchant <td>Townhouse <td>Transport, logistics <td>n/a <td>Craftsmen, nobility <td>Yes <td>10 <td>20 <td>4 <td>8 <td>2 <td>4 <td>n/a <td>n/a <td>Vagrant 
+<tr><td>Banker <td>Bank <td>Financial services <td>yes <td>Merchant <td>Yes <td>10 <td>20 <td>4 <td>8 <td>2 <td>4 <td>n/a <td>n/a <td>Merchant 
+<tr><td>Scholar <td>Academy <td>Knowledge <td>n/a <td>Ariston, Tyrranos, General, Banker <td>No <td>1 <td>4 <td>1 <td>2 <td>0.25 <td>0.5 <td>n/a <td>n/a <td>Vagrant 
+<tr><td>Priest <td>Temple <td>Religion <td>n/a <td>All NPCs <td>No <td>50 <td>100 <td> <td> <td> <td> <td> <td> <td>Scholar 
+<tr><td>Chancellor <td>Chancellory <td>Administration <td>n/a <td>Ariston, Tyrranos <td>No <td>1 <td>1 <td>0 <td>0 <td>0 <td>0 <td> <td> <td>Scholar 
+<tr><td>Lawyer <td>Townhouse <td>Legal services <td>n/a <td>Ariston, Merchant, Banker <td>No <td>4 <td>6 <td>2 <td>3 <td>1 <td>2 <td> <td> <td>Scholar 
+<tr><td>Magus <td>Townhouse <td>Magic <td>n/a <td>Tyrranos, General <td>No <td>3 <td>4 <td>1 <td>2 <td>0.25 <td>0.5 <td> <td> <td>Scholar 
+</table>
 
 A craftsman starts as an apprentice to a master of the chosen crafts. Most crafts recruit from vagrants, A character must be a journeyman merchant before becoming an apprentice banker, while various intellectual crafts recruit from journeyman scholars.
 
@@ -95,15 +93,13 @@
 
 As in the real world, aristocracy is essentially a protection racket, and all nobles are originally outlaw leaders who found an area with rich pickings and settled down.
 
-
-| Rank | Follower rank | Client type | Clients protected | Trade in market | Followers per client |
-| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
-| |  |  | Min | Max | Min | Max | Min | Max |
-| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
-| Bonnet Laird | Private | Farmer | 6 | 20 | 0 | 100 | 0.25 | 0.5 |
-| Ariston | Captain | Bonnet Laird | 10 | 30 | 25 | 1000 | 0.5 | 1 |
-| Tyrranos | General | Ariston | 10 | unlimited | 250 | unlimited | 0.1 | 0.5 |
-
+<table>
+<tr><th rowspan="2"> Rank <th rowspan="2"> Follower rank <th rowspan="2"> Client type <th colspan="2"> Clients protected <th colspan="2"> Trade in market <th colspan="2"> Followers per client 
+<tr><th> Min <th> Max <th> Min <th> Max <th> Min <th> Max 
+<tr><td>Bonnet Laird <td>Private <td>Farmer <td>6 <td>20 <td>0 <td>100 <td>0.25 <td>0.5 
+<tr><td>Ariston <td>Captain <td>Bonnet Laird <td>10 <td>30 <td>25 <td>1000 <td>0.5 <td>1 
+<tr><td>Tyrranos <td>General <td>Ariston <td>10 <td>unlimited <td>250 <td>unlimited <td>0.1 <td>0.5 
+</table>
 
 Every noble establishes a market and, if he employs a chancellor, taxes trade in it. Crafts which 'need a market' can only be established in the vicinity of a market, irrespective of whether there are sufficient customers elsewhere. All non-perishable goods are traded through the markets, and merchants will transfer surpluses between markets if they can make a profit from it.
 
@@ -115,15 +111,13 @@
 
 The aristocracy is supported by the military. An outlaw becomes a soldier when his leader becomes a noble. Otherwise, vagrants are recruited as soldiers by bonnet lairds or sergeants who have vacancies. Captains are recruited similarly by aristons or generals, and generals are recruited by tyrranos. If the conditions for employment no longer exist, a soldier is allowed a period of unemployment while he lives off savings and finds another employer, but if no employer is found he will eventually become an outlaw (or, if an officer, an outlaw leader). A private is employed by his sergeant or bonnet laird, a sergeant by his captain, a captain by his arison or general, a general by his tyrranos.
 
-
-| Rank | Follower rank | Followers |  | Condition | New rank |
-| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
-| |  | Min | Max |  |  |
-| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
-| Private | None | 0 | 0 | Battle hardened, unled privates | Sergeant |
-| Sergeant | Private | 5 | 15 | More battle hardened, unled sergeantts | Captain |
-| Captain | Sergeant | 5 | 15 | More battle hardened, unled captains | General |
-| General | Captain | 5 | unlimited |  |  |
-
+<table>
+<tr><th rowspan="2"> Rank <th rowspan="2"> Follower rank <th colspan="2"> Followers <th rowspan="2"> Condition <th rowspan="2"> New rank 
+<tr><th> Min <th> Max
+<tr><td>Private <td>None <td>0 <td>0 <td>Battle hardened, unled privates <td>Sergeant 
+<tr><td>Sergeant <td>Private <td>5 <td>15 <td>More battle hardened, unled sergeantts <td>Captain 
+<tr><td>Captain <td>Sergeant <td>5 <td>15 <td>More battle hardened, unled captains <td>General 
+<tr><td>General <td>Captain <td>5 <td>unlimited <td> <td> 
+</table>
 
 Soldiers have no loyalty to their employer's employer.

doc/Roadmap.md

@@ -1,7 +1,9 @@
-# Roadmap
+# Roadmap (obsolete)
 
 This document outlines a plan to move forward from where I am in June 2021.
 
+**NOTE**: this document has been [superceded](MVP-Roadmap.html).
+
 # JMonkeyEngine
 
 [JMonkeyEngine](https://jmonkeyengine.org/) is not, at this time, an AAA game engine. But at the same time I'm never, really, going to build an AAA game. It is a working game engine which can display characters on screen in scenery and have them move around, and, actually, they can be fairly sophisticated. It will be resaonably easy to integrate Clojure code with JMonkeyEngine - easier than it would be to integrate either Clojure or Common Lisp with [Unreal Engine](https://www.unrealengine.com/) or [Unity 3D](https://unity.com/). As a significant added bonus, JMonkeyEngine is open source.

doc/Selecting_Character.md

@@ -18,7 +18,7 @@ If we have voice interaction sufficiently sophisticated that we can allow the pl
 
 ## Tinder as a Character Selector
 
-Tinder is a dating app. It shows you pictures of potential partners, and you choose from them by swiping left to reject them, or right to express interest in them. That's a kernel of an idea for how to select from among a large selection of people.
+Tinder is a dating app. It shows you pictures (with brief profiles) of potential partners, and you choose from them by swiping left to reject them, or right to express interest in them. That's a kernel of an idea for how to select from among a large selection of people.
 
 So how about:
 

doc/Settling-a-game-world.md

@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 
 #### Wednesday, 30 December 2009
 
- *This essay is part of a series with '[Worlds and Flats](Worlds-and-flats.html)' and '[The spread of knowledge in a large game world](The-spread-of-knowledge-in-a-large-game-world.html)'; if you haven't read those you may want to read them before reading this. This essay describes how a large world can come into being and can evolve. I've written again on this subject since - see '[Populating a game world](Populating-a-game-world.html)')*
+ *This essay is part of a series with '[Worlds and Flats](https://www.journeyman.cc/blog/posts-output/2008-04-04-worlds-and-flats/)' and '[The spread of knowledge in a large game world](The-spread-of-knowledge-in-a-large-game-world.html)'; if you haven't read those you may want to read them before reading this. This essay describes how a large world can come into being and can evolve. I've written again on this subject since - see '[Populating a game world](Populating-a-game-world.html)')*
 
 ### Microworld
 
@@ -34,7 +34,7 @@
 
 ### Microworld Two
 
- The objective of this essay is to outline an angorithm for creating inhabited landscapes in which games can be set, which are satisfyingly believable when rendered in three dimensions. The objective of creating landscapes 'procedurally' – that is, with algorithms – is that they can be very much larger than designed landscapes for the same richness of local detail. This does not mean that every aspect of the final landscape must be 'procedural'. It would be possible to use the techniques outlined here to create landscapes which were different every time the game was played, but it would be equally possible to create a landscape which was frozen at a particular point and then hand edited to add features useful to the game's plot. And while I'm principally thinking in this about role playing games, this sort of landscape would be applicable to many other sorts of games – strategy games, god games, first person shooters...
+ The objective of this essay is to outline an algorithm for creating inhabited landscapes in which games can be set, which are satisfyingly believable when rendered in three dimensions. The objective of creating landscapes 'procedurally' – that is, with algorithms – is that they can be very much larger than designed landscapes for the same richness of local detail. This does not mean that every aspect of the final landscape must be 'procedural'. It would be possible to use the techniques outlined here to create landscapes which were different every time the game was played, but it would be equally possible to create a landscape which was frozen at a particular point and then hand edited to add features useful to the game's plot. And while I'm principally thinking in this about role playing games, this sort of landscape would be applicable to many other sorts of games – strategy games, god games, first person shooters...
 
 ### The physical geography
 

doc/Sexual-dimorphism.md

@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ OK? Let's start.
 
 When a man and a woman have sex, there's a non-zero chance that the woman will get pregnant. There's a zero chance that the male will get pregnant.
 
-A woman can typically give birth to of the order of twelve children in the course of her life, and each childbirth involves a non-zero risk of death. If modelling the sort of bronze-age-to-late-medieval cultures I'm generally considering, there are no available reliable methods of contraception, although their may be, for example, known spermicidal or abortifacient spells or potions. If it's abortifacient, that's pretty unpleasant for the woman, too.
+A woman can typically give birth to of the order of twelve children in the course of her life, and each childbirth involves a non-zero risk of death. If modelling the sort of bronze-age-to-late-medieval cultures I'm generally considering, there are no available reliable methods of contraception, although there may be, for example, known spermicidal or abortifacient spells or potions. If it's abortifacient, that's pretty unpleasant for the woman, too.
 
 Children, especially when young, are very vulnerable and need protection. Children with good protection are much more likely to survive to adulthood. Raising children involves a fair amount of work.
 
@@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ Another significant point is that women's ability to bear children ceases at a m
 
 ## Why have sex at all?
 
-If a character has 'having children' - the [**Ancestor**](intro.html#aspirations-and-goals) aspiration, in my typology - as their key aim, then they will want to have sex. But to have children in this sense is to have acknowledged children, so while a male character may be motivated to have multiple female partners, he will never the less have some degree of long term committment to them, and will want both to feel confident that the children are his and to be recognised by their father.
+If a character has 'having children' — the [**Ancestor**](intro.html#aspirations-and-goals) aspiration, in my typology — as their key aim, then they will want to have sex. But to have children in this sense is to have acknowledged children, so while a male character may be motivated to have multiple female partners, he will never the less have some degree of long term committment to them, and will want both to feel confident that the children are his and to be recognised by their father.
 
 From the point of view of seeking to become an Ancestor, there is little benefit to the woman in having multiple partners, except in very harsh environments. It will be easier to give one partner confidence that all your children are his, and while a man can increase his number of potential progeny by having multiple wives, mistresses or other classes of long-term female sexual partners, a woman cannot.
 

doc/The-spread-of-knowledge-in-a-large-game-world.md

@@ -2,18 +2,17 @@
 
 #### Saturday, 26 April 2008
 
-![part of the role of Dandelion, in The Witcher games, is to provide the player with news](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-F2gxx0dRM8o/UlfSsRe8ybI/AAAAAAAAYIA/I1I9D5Yk7to/s1600/Tw2_full_Dandelion.png)
-
-
 ### Note
 
-_This version of this essay has been adapted to use the code in `the-great-game.gossip.news-items`, [q.v.](the-great-game.gossip.news-items.html). The original version of the essay is [still available on my blog](https://blog.journeyman.cc/2008/04/the-spread-of-knowledge-in-large-game.html)._
+*This version of this essay has been adapted to use the code in `the-great-game.gossip.news-items`, [q.v.](the-great-game.gossip.news-items.html). The original version of the essay is [still available on my blog](https://www.journeyman.cc/blog/posts-output/2008-04-26-the-spread-of-knowledge-in-a-large-game-world/).*
+
+-----
 
  These days we have television, and news. But in a late bronze age world there are no broadcast media. News spreads by word of mouth. If non-player characters are to respond effectively to events in the world, knowledge has to spread.
 
  How to model this?
 
- Some non-player characters - doesn't need to be many - are news-spreaders. News-spreaders need to travel. They have to travel even when there are no player characters in the vicinity. But, they don't have to travel very often - once or twice every game day. When a news-spreader is in the immediate vicinity of another character, the pair may (with some degree of randomness) exchange news. There needs to be a hierarchy in the exchange of news, so that 'I-saw' events need to be more likely to be passed on than 'I-heard' events; there needs to be a counter which counts the number of times a knowledge item has been passed on, and also an age counter so that knowledge items are less likely to be passed on as they get older.
+ Some non-player characters — doesn't need to be many — are news-spreaders. News-spreaders need to travel. They have to travel even when there are no player characters in the vicinity. But, they don't have to travel very often — once or twice every game day. When a news-spreader is in the immediate vicinity of another character, the pair may (with some degree of randomness) exchange news. There needs to be a hierarchy in the exchange of news, so that 'I-saw' events need to be more likely to be passed on than 'I-heard' events; there needs to be a counter which counts the number of times a knowledge item has been passed on, and also an age counter so that knowledge items are less likely to be passed on as they get older.
 
  One obvious class of news-spreader is a merchant. Merchant agents can either shuttle mechanically between a fixed group of markets or else possibly respond intelligently to supply and demand. Provided that there is a mesh of merchant routes covering the markets of the game world, and that a useful subset of non-merchant characters are required to visit a market every few game days, this should give a reasonably realistic framework for news spreading.
 
@@ -65,11 +64,11 @@ But also, the added knowledge is *degraded*. If the recipient isn't from Hans'hu
      :nth-hand 4,
      :time-stamp 17946463}
 
-The timestamp could also be degraded, or lost altother - although how exactly this is represnted I'm not certain. Someone interested in the incident may remember 'it was exactly 17 days ago', whereas someone else may remember that it was 'this month, I think'.
+The timestamp could also be degraded, or lost altother — although how exactly this is represnted I'm not certain. Someone interested in the incident may remember 'it was exactly 17 days ago', whereas someone else may remember that it was 'this month, I think'.
 
  Obviously the rate of decay, and the degree of randomness, of the news-passing algorithm would need to be tuned, but this schema seems to me to describe a system with the following features:
 
-* Non-player characters can respond to questions about significant things which happen in the world - without it all having to be scripted
+* Non-player characters can respond to questions about significant things which happen in the world — without it all having to be scripted
 * If you travel fast enough, you can keep ahead of your notoriety
 * Characters on major trade routes will know more about what is happening in the world than characters in backwaters
 
@@ -79,8 +78,8 @@ The timestamp could also be degraded, or lost altother - although how exactly th
 
  Let's work around the idea that a 'game day' equates to about two hours of wall clock time. Let's work around the idea that there are of the order of fifty markets in the game world, and that for each market there are two or three merchants whose 'home base' it is.
 
- Obviously non-player characters who are within the vicinity of a player character have to be 'awake', in order that the player can see them interacting with their world and can interact with them. Those characters have to be in working memory and have to be in the action polling loop in any case. So there's no extra cost to their gossiping away between each other - around the player there's a moving bubble of gossip, allowing each character the player interacts with to have a high probability of having some recent news.
+ Obviously non-player characters who are within the vicinity of a player character have to be 'awake', in order that the player can see them interacting with their world and can interact with them. Those characters have to be in working memory and have to be in the action polling loop in any case. So there's no extra cost to their gossiping away between each other — around the player there's a moving bubble of gossip, allowing each character the player interacts with to have a high probability of having some recent news.
 
- But the merchants who aren't in the vicinity of a player don't have to be in working memory all the time. Each merchant simply requires to be 'woken up' - loaded into memory - once per game day, move a day's journey in one hop, and then, if arriving at an inn or at a market, wake and exchange news with one resident character - an innkeeper or a gossip. So the cost of this algorithm in a fifty-market game is at worst the cost of loading and unloading two non-player characters from memory every minute, and copying two or three statements from the knowledge set of one to the knowledge set of the other. If you're dynamically modifying significance scores, of course, you'd need to also load the characters about whom news was being passed on; but this still doesn't seem unduly onerous.
+ But the merchants who aren't in the vicinity of a player don't have to be in working memory all the time. Each merchant simply requires to be 'woken up' — loaded into memory — once per game day, move a day's journey in one hop, and then, if arriving at an inn or at a market, wake and exchange news with one resident character — an innkeeper or a gossip. So the cost of this algorithm in a fifty-market game is at worst the cost of loading and unloading two non-player characters from memory every minute, and copying two or three statements from the knowledge set of one to the knowledge set of the other. If you're dynamically modifying significance scores, of course, you'd need to also load the characters about whom news was being passed on; but this still doesn't seem unduly onerous.
 
  Obviously, if memory is not too constrained it may be possible to maintain all the merchants, all the innkeepers and all the characters currently being talked about in memory all the time, further reducing the cost.

doc/Things_Voice_Interaction_Enables.md

@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ At which point you can either tell him, or not. Suppose you tell him, he could s
 
 > Oh! I've heard of you. It's said you're very handy with a sword.
 
-And you can reply however you like, acknowledging, or being modest, or perhaps even denying (although from this line of dialogue if you deny he'll think you're being modest, for reasons see later). He can then say, taking our example from the 'abducted child' quest in [the Introduction](intro,html),
+And you can reply however you like, acknowledging, or being modest, or perhaps even denying (although from this line of dialogue if you deny he'll think you're being modest, for reasons see later). He can then say, taking our example from the 'abducted child' quest in [the Introduction](intro.html#dynamic-quests),
 
 > Thing is, old granny Grizzel's granddaughter Esmerelda has been abducted by bandits, and we've done a whip-around for a reward for someone who can rescue the girl.
 
@@ -34,11 +34,13 @@ OK, but what if, in the game world, the player character is not good with a swor
 
 It's the same quest, and, whatever Tobias has said, the player can still use either violence or persuasion or trickery to complete the quest (and gain appropriate reputation thereby), but it's flexible enough to adapt to the player's in-game persona, and it means we can direct the player to quest-givers without having to stick a bloody great icon on the quest giver's head.
 
-So, to repeat for clarity: the idea is, if there is a quest in the vicinity, whether organic or scripted, all the quest giver's neighbours know about it, and will bring it up in conversation, introducing it and directing the player to the quest giver. And I believe that this can be done reasonably naturally.
+So, to repeat for clarity: the idea is, if there is a quest in the vicinity, whether organic or scripted, many of the quest giver's neighbours may know about it, and will bring it up in conversation, introducing it and directing the player to the quest giver. And I believe that this can be done reasonably naturally.
+
+Obviously there are some sorts of quests where for narrative reasons he quest giver will **not** want their neighbours to know of it, and those quests need to be signposted differently; but I think that effective ways need to be found of signposting those quests to the player without resorting to noticeboards or quest icons.
 
 ## Command in Battles
 
-Player characters in role playing games are often narratively great heroic leaders -- see any of the Dragon Age games but particularly Inquisition for examples of this -- but when it comes to a pitched battle all they can do is follow a scripted battle plan and fight individual actions, because in current generation role-playing games there is no effective user interface to allow strategic and tactical control of a battle.
+Player characters in role playing games are often narratively great heroic leaders — see any of the Dragon Age games but particularly Inquisition for examples of this — but when it comes to a pitched battle all they can do is follow a scripted battle plan and fight individual actions, because in current generation role-playing games there is no effective user interface to allow strategic and tactical control of a battle.
 
 So how would a real-world, before modern communications technology, war leader command a battle? Why, by observing the battle and talking to people, and those are both things that in our game the player can do.
 

doc/intro.md

@@ -33,21 +33,21 @@ repertoire of speech.
 ## Previous essays that are relevant
 
 * [The spread of knowledge in a large game world](The-spread-of-knowledge-in-a-large-game-world.html) (2008) discusses what individual non-player characters know, and how to model dynamic updates to their knowledge;
-* [Settling a game world](https://blog.journeyman.cc/2009/12/settling-game-world.html) (2009) gives rough outline of ideas about creating the environment, including modelling things like soil fertility, local building materials, and consequently local architecture;
-* [Tessellated multi-layer height map](https://blog.journeyman.cc/2013/07/tessellated-multi-layer-height-map.html) (2013) gives ideas for how a designed geography for a very large world could be stored relatively economically;
-* [Genetic Buildings](https://blog.journeyman.cc/2013/07/genetic-buildings.html) (2013) sketches algorithms which would allow procedurally-generated buildings to be site-appropriate, broadly variable and reproducable;
+* [Settling a game world](Settling-a-game-world.html) (2009) gives rough outline of ideas about creating the environment, including modelling things like soil fertility, local building materials, and consequently local architecture;
+* [Tessellated multi-layer height map](https://www.journeyman.cc/blog/posts-output/2013-07-04-tessellated-multilayer-height-map/) (2013) gives ideas for how a designed geography for a very large world could be stored relatively economically;
+* [Genetic Buildings](Genetic-buildings.html) (2013) sketches algorithms which would allow procedurally-generated buildings to be site-appropriate, broadly variable and reproducable;
 * [Populating a game world](Populating-a-game-world.html) (2013) provides outline algorithms for how a world can be populated, and how organic mixes of trades and crafts can be modelled;
-* [Modelling the change from rural to urban](https://blog.journeyman.cc/2013/07/modelling-change-from-rural-to-urban.html) (2013) describes the idea of procedurally modelling settlements, but it is grid-based and not particularly satisfactory and has largely been superceded in my thinking;
-* [Of pigeons, and long distance messaging in a game world](https://blog.journeyman.cc/2013/10/of-pigeons-and-long-distance-messaging.html) (2013) builds on ideas about flows of information;
-* [Modelling rural to urban, take two](https://blog.journeyman.cc/2013/10/modelling-rural-to-urban-take-two.html) (2013) revisited the idea of modelling organic settlement structures, trying to find algorithms which would naturally produce more persuasive settlement models, including further ideas on the procedural generation of buildings;
-* [More on modelling rivers](https://blog.journeyman.cc/2014/09/more-on-modelling-rivers.html) (2014) talks about modelling hydrology, with implications for soil fertility;
-* [Modelling settlement with cellular automata](https://blog.journeyman.cc/2014/08/modelling-settlement-with-cellular.html) (2014) talks about successful implementation of algorithms to model vegetative environment, human settlement and the impact of human settlement on the environment;
-* [Voice acting considered harmful](https://blog.journeyman.cc/2015/02/voice-acting-considered-harmful.html) (2015) outlines the ideas behind full speech interaction with non-player characters, and modelling what those non-player characters should be able to speak about;
+* [Modelling the change from rural to urban](https://www.journeyman.cc/blog/posts-output/2013-07-17-modelling-the-change-from-rural-to-urban/) (2013) describes the idea of procedurally modelling settlements, but it is grid-based and not particularly satisfactory and has largely been superceded in my thinking;
+* [Of pigeons, and long distance messaging in a game world](https://www.journeyman.cc/blog/posts-output/2013-10-01-of-pigeons-and-long-distance-messaging-in-a-game-world/) (2013) builds on ideas about flows of information;
+* [Modelling rural to urban, take two](https://www.journeyman.cc/blog/posts-output/2013-10-14-modelling-rural-to-urban-take-two/) (2013) revisited the idea of modelling organic settlement structures, trying to find algorithms which would naturally produce more persuasive settlement models, including further ideas on the procedural generation of buildings;
+* [More on modelling rivers](https://www.journeyman.cc/blog/posts-output/2014-09-28-more-on-modelling-rivers/) (2014) talks about modelling hydrology, with implications for soil fertility;
+* [Modelling settlement with cellular automata](https://www.journeyman.cc/blog/posts-output/2014-08-26-modelling-settlement-with-a-cellular-automaton/) (2014) talks about successful implementation of algorithms to model vegetative environment, human settlement and the impact of human settlement on the environment;
+* [Voice acting considered harmful](Voice-acting-considered-harmful.html) (2015) outlines the ideas behind full speech interaction with non-player characters, and modelling what those non-player characters should be able to speak about;
 * [Baking the world](Baking-the-world.html) (2019) an outline of the overall process of creating a world.
 
 ## Organic and emergent game-play
 
-If a world is [dynamically populated](https://blog.journeyman.cc/2014/08/modelling-settlement-with-cellular.html), with [dynamic allocation of livelihoods](https://blog.journeyman.cc/2013/07/populating-game-world.html) then several
+If a world is [dynamically populated](https://www.journeyman.cc/blog/posts-output/2014-08-26-modelling-settlement-with-a-cellular-automaton/), with [dynamic allocation of livelihoods](Populating-a-game-world.html) then several
 aspects of gameplay will emerge organically. First, of course, is just
 exploring; in a dynamically changing world there will always be more to
 explore, and it will be different in each restart of the game.
@@ -119,7 +119,7 @@ To make dynamic quests work, of course, you need a dynamic world; a world in
 which conflicts can arise. A world in which traders trade, robbers rob, lovers
 love, haters hate, scandal-mongers make scandal, organically and dynamically
 whether the player is there or not, and where news of these events will filter
-through to the player through the [gossip network](https://blog.journeyman.cc/2008/04/the-spread-of-knowledge-in-large-game.html) also organically and dynamically.
+through to the player through the [gossip network](The-spread-of-knowledge-in-a-large-game-world.html) also organically and dynamically.
 
 ## Extending the story
 
@@ -324,10 +324,7 @@ or empty. So the base cost of a journey is a function of the time taken, which
 is essentially a function of the distance. 
 
 Obviously, on top of the base cost of movement there are tolls, which are imposed
-by the aristons through whose territory the journey passes (and therefore predictable, 
-and can be used in route planning), and also the risk of having to bribe or fight outlaws, 
-and the possible need to hire mercenaries to defend against outlaws, which is not predictable 
-but can be estimated and thus also used in route planning.
+by the aristons through whose territory the journey passes (and therefore predictable, and can be used in route planning), and also the risk of having to bribe or fight outlaws, and the possible need to hire mercenaries to defend against outlaws, which is not predictable but can be estimated and thus also used in route planning.
 
 ### Outlawry and merchants