Roots
Towns With a Past
A whole town, ninety years of history, from one code. You arrive in a town where people have known each other for twenty years, where two families hate each other for a dated reason, and where a child has her grandmother's nose because she really inherited it.
Roots creates a town's past, not its future: once the history has unfolded and the residents are created, it no longer runs during your game.
What it changes
Families really look alike.
Resemblance is inherited over three generations by the game's own engine, not painted on afterwards. Grandmother's nose is grandmother's nose.
People know each other.
Ex-partners, rivalries, long-time neighbours, colleagues: every relationship exists because a history produced it. The game shows it in its own screens, not just in a file.
Share your town.
One world equals one code. Two players who type the same code get the same town, identical. A town is shared by sharing six syllables — or a file.
year 3 · wedding — [family] and [family]
year 11 · birth — [name]
year 24 · separation — [family]
year 38 · move — [district]
year 52 · death — [name], 81
year 67 · birth — [name]
year 89 · wedding — [name] and [name]
real lines at the first generation
What the mod does not do
This is what sets it apart from a family generator, and it is deliberate.
It creates the past, not the future.
The history unfolds once, before your game. After that, you and the game write what comes next.
It does not replace the original families.
By default, it populates around the families written by the game's authors and weaves them into the network.
It does not run during the game.
No continuous computing, no watching over your save. Once the town is created, it goes quiet.
New game. Roots runs on a new game. It does not install into an existing save, and it will refuse rather than touch one.
Compatibility and uninstalling
What is not true yet
Written the day it is measured, never before.
The engine that simulates the history works and is tested outside the game. Creating the residents in game is written but has never yet been executed once in the real game.
None of this page's images exist yet: the reserved spots await the first successful generation.
No release date is announced.
Download
Not yet. When a version exists, it will be free, with no sign-up and no paid early access. Announcements come first on the Discord, and that is where players will share their codes.
Join the DiscordFree, and it will stay free. If it helped you: support Tanven.