Ecliptic Mariner: Diaries DevLog #1 - The Astronomy ROM

About a month ago I announced a new gaming project, Ecliptic Mariner: Diaries. Having had my fun with The Game for Scribes, and inspired by other games I enjoyed like Space Trader and Spirit City: Lofi Sessions, I set out to create a fun little TUI-ish, manual-driven game that was one part space trader, one part light productivity aid, and one part story-prompting journalling tool. So one month on, where have we gotten? Why, that’s easy: we’ve “finished” building the Astronomy ROM! Astronomy ROM - The What and the Why The Astronomy ROM is a SQLite3 database which will be included in the basic files of the game and which serves a few very important roles. Most importantly, it’s the core data store for seeding the procedural generation system that creates a player’s unique world when they start a new game. This is more than a set of numbers to weight the procedural generators. It’s a repository of real world astronomical data. It includes information on a bit over two dozen real-world…