Dev Update #24: Build 12 (Random Event Attacks Balancing, New Interiors)
Hey guys,
A small update has been uploaded to the beta branch. Not fully compatible with previous save files, recommended to start a new playthrough.
Opting In:
- Right click Dead Monarchy. - Select “Properties”. - Select “Betas” on the left menu. - Select “rebuild” from the drop down list.
Update List:
- Random events won't trigger until the start of Day 3, giving you a small grace period where you won't be attacked.
- The rate of random event enemy attacks has been reduced.
- Outlaw/bandit/raider attacks triggered by random events are now location based. Outlaws attacks will only trigger in House Durant territories, bandit attacks will only trigger in House Lanrick and Sidonia territories, raider attacks will only trigger in House Acutis and Kruger territories. Essentially, the further north you travel, the more dangerous it gets. Getting ambushed at night by raiders can be game ending but now it will no longer trigger in the starting areas.
- Drag panning with the mouse (RMB) to quickly pan across the map would result in the camera jumping and skipping so I have changed how this works. You now use the (Mouse wheel) to drag pan.
- Holding down (RMB) while using the WASD keys will increase the panning speed. So if you want a more stable way to quickly pan across the map, hold down (RMB) while using WASD to quickly pan across the map.
- The 0 armour durability repair bug should be fixed again.
- The tavern rest not increment hours bug should be fixed again.
- New interiors have been added to all the new buildings in the new cities. Placeholder interiors have been removed.
- New arena scenes have been added. Now each arena has a distinct look.
The next update will update all the placeholder texts and I will be doing another small balance pass.
Cheers, Kevin.
Dev Update #23: Build 11 (Masterwork Equipment, Named Champions, New Havens)
Hey guys,
A large update has been uploaded to the beta branch. Not fully compatible with previous save files, recommended to start a new playthrough.
Opting In:
- Right click Dead Monarchy. - Select “Properties”. - Select “Betas” on the left menu. - Select “rebuild” from the drop down list.
Over the past few months, I have been working on several major features. There were still a few things I wanted to add before releasing this update but unfortunately I caught COVID-19 so development was interrupted. I didn’t want to delay things further so I decided to just release the update as is.
Trinkets & Rings:
Trinkets that will provide stat regeneration per turn during combat for Attack, Strength, Defense, Focus, Agility and Resolve. Rings that will provide a permanent stat bonus while equipped.
Masterwork Armour:
16 unique helmets and 15 unique armours have been added. They can only be found on named champions out in the wilderness, masterwork equipment cannot be bought, it must be earned. The stats of masterwork armour will vary, they are not static. IE heavy armour 375, 400, 425, 450, 475, 500. Masterwork armour also has a chance of spawning with additional effects. Light armour has exhaustion immunity, meaning you can still fight even if you have 0 Stamina. Medium armour has Vitality regeneration per turn. Heavy armour has immunity to routing, so even at 0 Resolve, you can still fight effectively.
Masterwork Weapons:
40 unique melee weapons have been added, 5 for each melee weapon type. 5 masterwork ranged weapons (arbalest) have been added. 5 unique shields (pavise) have been added, but each unique shield has 10 different colour variants, so all up 50 different masterwork shields. Masterwork weapons will have a stat range and won’t be static.
New Mercenary Equipment:
The new noble houses will drop the mercenary variant of their gear, this includes new helmets and new armours. The equipment is “Ancestral” quality, one below from “Masterwork”. The new equipment will provide more variety for your mercenaries until you can acquire masterwork equipment.
Named Champions:
20 types of randomly generated named champions that have a chance of spawning in forts, ruins and graveyards. Each champion will drop masterwork gear if they are defeated, they are extremely hard to kill.
Noble House Factions:
Four new noble house factions have been added. House Lanrick, House Sidonia, House Acutis and House Kruger. Each noble house faction has a unique look. Whilst utilising the same weapons, they will fight differently compared to each other (different perks).
New Havens (WIP):
- The remaining four havens for the first continent have been added. So each haven will spawn contracts that will affect the related haven. Shops have also been set up for the havens and the surrounding outposts, they can all be interacted with now. Arenas and their champions are now linked, so you can progress through the arenas. A lot of text still needs to be updated/added though.
Arena Champions:
Four new arena champions have been added to the newly added arenas for all four cities. Baldric, Caspar, Jodocus and Gregor. Each champion looks different compared to one another and fight differently as well. Not as strong as the randomly generated named champions, but still provide a challenge nonetheless. The champions are now linked to their respective cities, so you can follow the story and attempt to slay the champions as you traverse across the world.
Additional Things:
- Each map quadrant is now under control by a specific noble house faction. - Noble house factions will now spawn in their respective forts instead of raiders. - Named champions will now have a chance of spawning in forts, ruins and graveyards. These champions are extremely hard to kill but will drop masterwork equipment. Forts will contain heavy armour, ruins will contain medium armour, graveyards will contain light armour. - The arena champion Kaladur has had his group reduced from 18 to 6. Subsequent champions will have their groups gradually increased by +3. - Fixed the issue of arbalest type units disappearing due to unintentionally triggering an AOO attack and not having a means to engage in melee. - Fixed the issue of models disappearing when “Shield Smash” ability is used while a hammer is equipped.
To Do:
- New building interiors need to be added for the new cities. - New texts need to be added for contracts, arenas etc for the new cities. - Player camp. - Player crafting. - Additional contract types. - Story updates. - Fix the weapon duplication glitch when swapping weapons during combat.
That’s all for now, the next update will at the minimum address the first 2 things on the to-do list.
Cheers, Kevin.
Dev Update #22: Build 10 (Map Expansion, Random Events, Arena Champion)
Hey guys,
A large update has been uploaded to the beta branch. Not fully compatible with previous save files, recommended to start a new playthrough.
Opting In:
- Right click Dead Monarchy. - Select “Properties”. - Select “Betas” on the left menu. - Select “rebuild” from the drop down list.
The past few months have been extremely productive, I have fixed several bugs and done the first pass on:
- Items Update - Arena Champions - Combat Maps - Random Events - Map Interactions - Map Locations - Map Expansion - World Map
In addition, I’ve removed all the placeholder text from UI elements and updated it with the appropriate text and added initial “Journal” entries.
In the next update, I’ll finish implementing the rest of the settlements for the first continent, the models have been added but they have yet to be fully implemented. Then I will be looking into implementing “Trinkets Rings and Legendary Equipment”, which will then help flesh out the new locations.
Items Update:
All items now have the appropriate description. Trade items have been added to outposts and can be sold in the major havens for a profit. In addition, food items have been added but they are different to the provisions you consume each day. Upon consumption, food items will restore a small portion of Vitality, have a chance of improving company morale and will provide a Stamina boost during the next battle.
Arena Champions:
The first arena champion has been added, he is a master duelist who specialises in medium armour and longswords. Arena champions play a pivotal role in the overarching story of Dead Monarchy and are extremely hard to beat. As a sellsword captain focused on rebuilding your company, you will journey across the lands and seek out the various arena champions in hopes of defeating them.
Combat Maps:
Seeing as random events and map locations have been added, new combat maps have been added so that the map locations and random events are reflected appropriately when combat starts.
Random Events:
A plethora of random events have been added. Most importantly, the player can now be attacked while exploring the world map. During the day, you will have the option of retreating easily however if you venture out at night you will be ambushed. If you are ambushed, you will be surrounded by the enemy making retreating a lot harder. Here are the random event types:
- General lore about the land. - Gain or lose company morale. - Find herbs, tools, provisions, crowns and items. - Someone asks to join the company. - Company member gains a stat boost. - Forcibly acquire an item but lose Affinity (relations). - Outlaw/bandit/raider encounter. - Outlaw/bandit/raider ambush. - Ambush a small group of outlaws/bandit/raiders at their camp. - Noble retaliation if your Affinity (relations) drops to 0. - Assist in a merchant that is getting raided. - Assist a noble army camp that is getting attacked. - Attack a small militia patrol.
Map Interactions:
During your travels, keep an eye out for treasure chests that will periodically spawn on the map. These chests can be quite lucrative so they are well hidden but will provide a nice boost for explorers with sharp eyes.
Map Locations:
Several types of locations have now been added to the map. During your travels you will come across caves, ruins, forts and graveyards. These locations are quite challenging especially the ruins, forts and graveyards but if you can emerge victorious the rewards will be worth it. These locations are where the future “Legendary Equipment” will be located.
Map Expansion/World Map:
The first continent has now been fully mapped out, visually everything has basically been placed but a few things still need to be implemented. The world map depicting the continent has also been implemented. Navigation is quite simple, the world map is divided into square grids and always faces north. Your current location is highlighted along the border of the square grid. In the overworld maps (traversal), the borders of the maps will have exit zones (North, South, East, West) and you will use those zones to guide you.
That's all for now, the next update will continue to focus on map expansion, fully implementing the 4 remaining havens.
Cheers, Kevin.
Dev Update #21: Build 9 (Perks, Abilities, AI)
Hey guys,
A large update has been uploaded to the beta branch. Not fully compatible with previous save files, recommended to start a new playthrough.
Opting In:
- Right click Dead Monarchy. - Select “Properties”. - Select “Betas” on the left menu. - Select “rebuild” from the drop down list.
This month has been extremely productive, I have done the first pass on:
- General Perks - Abilities Update - Ranged Combat - Character Traits - Elevation Tiles - Enemy Intelligence
Combat should feel a lot more varied now that all the general perks have been implemented. I haven't done much testing or balancing though so any feedback is appreciated, I will be balancing and fixing things over time.
Next month I will be working hard on getting the random events in along with other locations on the first map. Essentially, next month's goal is filling out the first map, giving more reasons to go out and explore. Once that is done, I will then go back to fixing bugs and balancing.
Patch Notes:
- All general perks (80) have been implemented, these will need more testing and to be balanced.
- The remaining weapon types “Pavise” and “Arbalest” have been implemented, so shield and ranged combat.
- Battle AI has been implemented, the enemies now utilise the newly implemented general perks.
- Character traits have been implemented.
- Elevation has been implemented.
- Sword ability Focused Slash updated, adds +5 Focus, stacks x5, removed at the end of battle.
- Warsword ability Reactive Slash, when reaching 5th stage, adds focus on normal attacks, +10 focus, stacks 5, removed at the end of battle.
- Warhammer ability Swift Strike, now has 100% chance to strike twice at 4th stage.
- Swapping between primary and secondary weapon sets now costs 5 AP.
- Short Strike now only costs 5 Stamina as opposed to costing the same amount of Stamina a standard attack would.
- The game can now run in the background.
- Polehammer ability Sweeping Strike now knocks the primary target back 1 tile regardless of hitting or not, secondary targets are not knocked back.
- Tidied up the UI relating to ability tooltip descriptions, the descriptions based on ability ranks now don’t all appear at once.
- Finished the remaining weapon abilities that were not implemented and adjusted their animations.
- Fixed Polesword ability Piercing Strike not properly apply extra bonus Focus after being fully upgraded.
- Outlaw Attack buffed from 50 to 60.
- Optimised combat scenes (arena and forest).
- Map camera can now be zoomed in further.
- The issue with quiet weapon impact/damage/hit sounds should now be fixed.
Dev Update #20: Build 8 (First Rebuild Update)
Hey guys,
Well, I’ve just made it in time, I did say I would release an update this year and here we are. A lot of work has gone into the rebuilt version of Dead Monarchy however at this point the beta build is still rough and bare-bones but it is playable. A lot of the work is internal and not easily seen. The most important thing is the groundwork is done, this is a glimpse into the future, in 2022 I'll be focusing heavily on creating new content. Let’s go over a few things:
Opting In:
- Right click Dead Monarchy. - Select “Properties”. - Select “Betas” on the left menu. - Select “rebuild” from the drop down list.
- The old DM used to load everything into memory at once, which resulted in a very long initial load up, after upgrading to a newer version of Unity I used asset bundles, so now most things are loaded as needed. The trade off now is that there is a small load up time when initially viewing things like character models in the inventory, but it is a once off per session. Overall, it is a big improvement, the old method had a 4gb limit which meant I had to heavily compress all my textures if I wanted to fit in all the armour and weapon sets, that is no longer an issue now.
- There is now a day/night cycle and dynamic shadows, the lighting system has been vastly improved, the old DM didn’t even have nights. I will be expanding upon this in the future, for now it is just visual but the groundwork has been laid.
- New music tracks, there are completely new tracks that stick to more period appropriate instruments, music also changes depending on the time of day, overall it is a vast improvement and makes the world feel a lot more alive and cohesive.
- Overhauled animations, each weapon type now has unique attack and idle animations, there are 5 tiers of weapons with unique models, the old DM only had 1 set of weapon models. Whilst ranged combat isn’t in yet, there are now polearm weapons that allow you to attack over a tile and from behind an ally.
- A whole plethora of new armour sets, appropriate for a region that on the surface looks like 13th century medieval Europe, not historically accurate but leaning towards “realism”. I wanted to really double down and just focus on one region first. Some armour sets now are not all completely covered, the system has been improved to account for things like exposed hands or a sleeveless top. In the past, every armor set had to be completely covered as that was the only solution when other skin tones were brought into the picture.
- New and reworked abilities as there will now be a lot more weapon types, but the future weapon types will be introduced with the new regions, so I had to spread things out like deciding to put axe type weapons up north, so you won’t see them in the Midlands (starting area). Abilities are still WIP and general perks haven’t been implemented yet so you won’t see the full picture yet.
- A livelier city, with villagers gathering at markets or in taverns, despite only having 1 city for now it is a lot more condensed and packed and will only improve in the future. It includes new activities such as the Arena.
- Arena, 3 types of fights, exhibition (against outlaws, bandits, raiders), medallion (against sellswords) and championship (against nobles - the future will include arena champions). Championship fights require medallions which you obtain by completing medallion fights. Exhibition fights scale up and down depending on the combat party size you enter with, medallions can also be used to acquire equipment from the arena.
- Contracts, for now there are just raid contracts but I will be creating more contract types in the future, completing contracts will impact the state of the governing city in the region.
All in all, content is still pretty light in the beta build, but the groundwork has been laid out and I can now finally concentrate on creating new content rather than just rebuilding and improving what I had already done. The beta build branch is the first glimpse into the future of Dead Monarchy rather than just me talking about it.
Dead Monarchy will be seeing substantial growth in 2022, here is the content forecast. As always things are subject to change, it’s hard to make concrete promises when you can’t work full-time however I do feel quite confident that I can hit most of these this year. The first thing I will be working on is getting the general perks in which will lead to updating the abilities and then creating the Battle AI for the enemies.
I would like to thank everyone for their support, patience and understanding, it truly means a lot to me! Currently the beta build has no guides, so I have created a new thread with some initial information and I will continue to fill it out over time. As always, I am also active on the forums, so feel free to ask any questions there.
Cheers, Kevin.
General Update #25: Improved World and Settlements
Hey guys,
It’s time for another update and this will be a big one to round out the year. There is quite a bit to talk about, but let’s start with the big question first. I still don’t have an exact date but more or less by the end of this year I will be releasing the first update since I decided to rebuild Dead Monarchy completely from the ground up. The update will first be available on the beta branch and eventually it’ll transition to the main build.
Here is what the first update will have:
- 1 map, with 1 major settlement and 5 minor outposts. The way the open world works now is different, instead of just 5 largely empty islands, I am going for small maps that join together to make a region. Smaller maps will allow me to put a lot more detail into each map and it will be easier for me to handle random events and place locations.
- Dynamic day and night cycle. While in this first build, there won’t be much impact however at least now there are day/night cycles as opposed to just constant daylight, you’ll be able to see the shadows move as the sun rotates while you traverse across the map. Map movement has also been slowed down as a result, the days do not pass as quickly. Map movement speed is now no longer tied to difficulty, it can be toggled on and off at any time.
- Major settlements have been completely updated. Major settlements take place in a new scene, with a fixed camera. Whenever you click on an option there will be a nice camera transition taking you to the front door in which you then load into its interior. I wanted to pull the player further into this world rather than just immediately opening up an options list and killing the immersion.
- Contracts have been completely overhauled. Now rather than just suddenly opening up a list and being presented with a random contract, the player can now choose. Similarly to the very first build of DM when released, the player has 6 difficulty options. There will only be 1 type of contract, “raids” when this update is released.
- Each region with a major settlement now has its own regional modifiers. Your “affinity” or relationship with the settlement will determine contract pay and other things like market prices. “Prosperity” will determine what type of equipment will be available in settlements and in the future the result of a contract will affect these regional modifiers too.
- 10 weapon types (5 tiers, so 50 weapons), each weapon type has 10 perks (abilities bundled in), so 100 perks all up. Weapon types are thematic to each region and as of now I have decided to just focus on one region. General perks will be added in the future. Weapon types are now tied to backgrounds.
- 5 factions which are the outlaws, bandits, raiders, mercenaries and nobles, you also have non-hostile factions like the peasants/militia. The outlaw/bandits/raiders are your typical brigand factions, 3 tiers with raiders essentially being deserters from the noble armies. Again, all the armors/outfits are thematic to each region too. Gear loadouts of enemies are completely randomised now too to ensure for maximum variety. The first region is commonly known as the “Midlands”, inspired by various medieval European regions. There will be 5 noble factions in this region, each faction will have its own distinct look.
- WIP shot of another noble faction:
- Vastly polished UI. The inventory, organise and perks menu are now fullscreen. The inventory menu now has an animated character model, item toolips have also been polished, it will show its quality and the full item image.
- Over 50 sets of armour, I really am only scratching the surface here with equipment. The equipment that is currently implemented is also only for this region. It is very loosely 13th century in appearance. That said, it is more that the world has been forcibly pushed back to the 13th century so to speak. In the future though, I will be implementing “Masterwork” equipment, which is essentially highly coveted equipment from a later period.
- Armor sets also have a lot more variety, previously I couldn’t show off things like hands or arms due to technical issues, every set had to be completely enclosed. This also means that characters now have actual faces, hair and eyebrows rather than just use the placeholder human model. Again, these faces are thematic to this particular region.
To close off, overall my objective is to polish up this 1 map first, to implement all the major features the full game would have before moving onto other areas. There is still quite a bit of work to do, I’m a couple weeks out from connecting the main gameplay loop and then I need to do some initial testing and balancing. Once that’s done and I feel its adequate enough I’ll upload it and I’ll be looking forward to your feedback. That’s all for now, until next time!
Cheers, Kevin.
General Update #24: Improved Visuals and Improved Music
Hey guys,
Following up a couple weeks ago when I posted the first look at combat, I want to show you guys the huge improvements I've made to lighting and the general look of the game. I've spent a few weeks delving into post processing and optimizing shadows etc and I'm pretty happy with the look so far. Of course the screenshots are still heavily WIP, I'm showing off the improvements I've made to the forest biome but keep in mind I haven't added in elevation yet and most of the environmental assets are still from the old build, I may end up improving them as well but the focus now is more on lighting. I have also made changes to how I handle the "backdrop" terrain, for a while I struggled with natural environments but I'm pretty happy with the results so far.
Here is what the old forest biome currently looks like.
Here is my progress on the new forest biome with improved lighting, UI is disabled in these screenshots.
The armors are still of course heavily WIP and I'm only using placeholder weapons right now, the shots might look real cinematic but they are all in-game, they just use the cinematic camera that triggers on attacks. You can see there is a pretty huge difference, with shadows in and proper lighting techniques it really brings out the scene. So yeah progress is steady.
On the music front, I spent over a month sorting out a non-exclusive deal with a great musician called Marcus Bressler. The deal was settled a while back actually but I've only recently gotten around to putting all the tracks together as I wanted to bundle them in with some pictures. I made a video which is mainly just for me really, I like having a video with all the tracks compiled into one place. The soundtrack is over 4 hours long, there are more pictures too taken from the same scene that show off more WIP armor sets.
[previewyoutube="ytcICDefpo8;full"]
I am really happy with how the tracks came out as Marcus did a lot of custom edits for me to better suit my needs. For the longest time I was just using placeholder/generic tracks, they were a bit too "Hollywood" for me, I wanted to find tracks that were more gritty with more use of "authentic" or period appropriate instruments. So yeah, if you got a full day, why not take a listen?
That's all for now. Until next time!
Cheers, Kevin.
General Update #23: First Look at More Visceral Combat Effects
Hey guys,
So I'd like to show you all a first look at the rebuilt combat, this is just 3 weeks of work so there is a lot that has not been implemented yet such as the UI and the environment. This also goes for sound effects and animations, I'm only using 1 sound effect so it will get a bit repetitive. The main things I want to show off are the new effects/features that I am adding to combat to make it far more visceral than before.
[previewyoutube="s-jhWvOwFA4;full"]
1. Cinematic camera angles, which can be toggled on/off. 2. Damaged and bloody armor, the armors will get damaged and eventually get bloody once the character starts taking direct damage. 3. Blood on weapons. 4. Blood splatter which stays on the ground for a time. 5. Blood pools that form on the ground from the slain. 6. Weapon trails, while it may be slightly unrealistic, I feel it really adds to the impact of the attacks and allows the animations to be more easily distinguished/conveyed. 7. Decapitations, although it is really exaggerated in the video, I have not yet implemented checks for it, IE when to trigger a decapitation and when not too, or to explode the head on blunt impact. 8. Updated grid highlights, the move range (blue lines) used to have issues with the lighting making them appear darker on certain angles, that issue is now fixed and I've added animation to the grid cell highlights to further distinguish them and removed the "cartoony" icons that I used to use.
While I will say that things are still subject to change, I hope to get most of these additions in, the ones I'm not 100% sure on are the damaged/bloody armors and possibly decapitations although ideally I'd love everything on the list in as it all just helps to make combat far more visceral.
I will continue to work on the combat in the coming months and then eventually I'll reach a point where I can link back up with the work I've done on cities/contracts etc which will eventually result in the first build for the rebuilt version. So things are definitely on track.
As always thanks to everyone for their support and patience, until next time!
Cheers, Kevin.
General Update #22: More Loot Than You Can Shake a Stick At
Hey guys,
So this will be a pretty heavy development update, I'm going to show off all the custom art assets for Dead Monarchy that I've been working on over the past 4 years. There are a lot of pictures to get through, so you could play the video on x2 speed but I've also included a variety of new music tracks that will be going into the rebuilt version so why not just sit back, relax and enjoy the video.
[previewyoutube="uZgBMSBKzHE;full"] So moving on from the video, let's take a closer look at the weapons and armour. First you might have noticed that most of the weapons look really "flat", that's because I haven't actually textured the weapons yet, I still need to tweak the textures. The main purpose was to just show off all the 3D models, so I just quickly applied some textures so that the weapons wouldn't be completely untextured although they were mainly applied in that specific order for my own reference to make it easier to keep track of all the textures. When the textures are tweaked for each weapon, the edges should become more apparent and the weapons themselves should look a lot more detailed.
So for both of these images below, the weapon on the far left is taken from the video showcase and the subsequent weapons leading on all have tweaked textures, I'm just showing off what they could potentially look like, I still haven't decided on a final look yet. What I'm trying to convey is just the sheer amount of variety. The weapons are also extremely modular, the weapons I've shown will be broken down further, for example the "pommels" on the end of the weapon shafts/hilts could easily become the striking head of a blunt weapon for a mace and blades can be attached to shafts to create a swordstaff or some sort of hybrid polearm.
The same can be said for the shields, all the shields are "flat" but because of this decision it made the shields extremely modular. All the shield "boss" elements or the decorative elements on the shields can be placed on other shields, if they were curved it would make it a lot harder. Here is a quick example.
Moving onto armours now. I know I've made several posts about armours in particular but to me it is just something that a lot of indie RPGs don't get quite right and for me it becomes the first thing I notice that triggers a sequence of events that eventually leads to me losing interest in the game. You could say a lack of diversity becomes the "chink" in the game's armour that eventually exposes a lot more issues, mainly being lack of content which then makes the world feel small, confined and then inevitably, boring.
So for the armour sets in general, I just want to say that these are the source models, they don't fully represent the actual in-game armours. Pieces will get moved around between source model sets, pieces will be layered on top of others and the reality is, each set itself could be broken down into at least 2-3 unique looking sets. So while I am showing it all off, I'm not really spoiling much because when the sets get implemented into the rebuilt version, most of them will end up looking a lot different.
I've also completely overhauled the "underlayers" of the armours or what I like to internally call "tabards". There's a section in the showcase that shows off a lot of retextures for a single torso piece, those would be the tabard textures. Mainly used as underlayers but they will also be used by themselves as armour sets, especially because I made them extremely modular. Tabards can be sleeveless, they also have modular parts so you can create a layered look and then you can literally create layers on top.
For example, here you have 3 different tabards.
With modular parts, I can make the top sleeve chainmail and the rest of the arms cloth which then gives the tabard a layered look, it looks like a leather jerkin worn over a chainmail hauberk which then has cloth padding underneath.
I've also created a simplified torso mesh based on the tabard mesh which can then be worn over the top and that mesh can use all the tabard textures. This is an actual individual mesh though so without the knowledge of how modular the tabards are, most players would just think it's a unique torso chest piece. When you throw in a different pair of boots, gloves, belt and a helmet it then makes it even more unique.
While unfortunately the player won't be able to have this level of customization in-game as armour just comes as a helmet and body armour (based on a design/gameplay decision I made), as a player I still have never seen this level of equipment variety in any solo indie RPG so as a developer, I’ll make sure to create as many interesting armor sets as possible to ensure a lot of visual variety.
Lastly, aside from the equipment talk I am implementing the framework for the cities. Cities will now have a lot more activities and in general, I'm polishing things up. When clicking on a city you will now trigger a dialogue menu with the gate guards, they'll check to see if you are smuggling contraband (unless it is your home city) or perhaps you want to try to bribe them. Once you make it into the city, clicking on a menu option now triggers a sleek camera transition to the building before the appropriate menu appears. Contracts are also getting a big overhaul, it is no longer a single click which then assigns you a random contract. You'll choose from a list of contracts now and you'll get information on the contract before you accept it. There is a whole host of new features coming to cities like arenas too but I'll save the talk on cities for another day.
That's it for now, I wanted to show off the equipment as I hit a major milestone but also I wanted to double down on my commitment to Dead Monarchy, to show everyone who has supported me that I have not stopped working on this game nor lost the passion for it. I haven’t held back either, it is literally everything, as I said before I won’t be doing paid DLC or expansions. You buy the game once and you get all the content although with each expansion “update”, I will be increasing the base price and eventually I’d like to set up a patreon so I can at least recoup the development costs as I have gone far beyond the original scope that I intended. With all these assets, I could easily have made 4-5 games but instead it is all going into Dead Monarchy, into 1 game.
Things are tough for a solo indie developer, a lot of challenges still lie ahead but I know I'll get the game done one day, I don't think anyone can really say that I am not putting everything on the line. Until next time!
Cheers, Kevin.
General Update #21: December News
Hey guys,
So it’s been a while since my last official development update but I have been hard at work as usual working on the rebuild. Things might seem quiet but there’s been a lot of progress. If you’ve been following me on the forums then you’ll know that as of now I’ve created all the UI for the game, with the exception of combat UI. I created a lot of new UI for the new activities and also overhauled all of the older menus. Right now what I’m working on is implementing things like items, weapons, armor and traits, content that the UI would display as I can’t develop the UI any further without setting these things up. Let’s have a look at some of the new things that will be introduced in the rebuild.
When you start a new game, the first thing that will appear is a menu asking you to initialise all the settings. The old screen was a series of several smaller menus, I’ve know merged it all into one single screen. There are more difficulty parameters to customise now, such as the modifier for starting crowns, party or equipment along with more significant parameters like determining the experience multiplier or map movement speed. Also, while I haven’t implemented this yet, there will be additional content that is only accessible when playing on the hardest difficulty settings.
Next up is a “character customisation” sequence at the start of the game. So you will no longer start with a randomly generated character, you’ll now have a lot more control over your player character. There is a lot of placeholder content so please excuse that but I can show you in general, how all the menus will play out.
There will first be a general prologue sequence introducing the world and setting up the context, this is no different to the older build however I’ve overhauled all the UI art and I feel it looks a lot better now.
You will then be asked to select a portrait, there will also be female portraits too. Ideally I am aiming for all the portraits to match the character models, but that is still to be confirmed.
After that, you’ll be asked to select your traits/background. Each background will have different base stat modifiers and traits. For example, a farmer will have more base Strength than a scholar. It won’t just be stat modifiers either, some backgrounds will have traits that allow for increased Stamina recovery per turn in combat or playing as a "Former Paladin" that starts with 2 companions that don't have a daily wage. In total, there will be 24 backgrounds for the player to choose from. Excuse the placeholder text, but essentially the menu will look like this. Basically just several options but the text would be formatted better.
After you have selected your traits/background you’ll then be asked to pick a set of weapon proficiencies. This is something new so let’s talk about it now.
Weapon Proficiencies:
Currently the player/companions can choose to use any weapon without any restrictions which does allow for a greater sense of freedom but I also feel it reduces the experience in other areas. Exploration is important and with 5 vast regions to explore, each with unique cultural influences, I wanted there to be a multitude of reasons to visit each region and also factors that made each region feel unique. To that end, aside from the player (can you choose), the backgrounds of the companions that you hire will be locked to certain weapons. Those weapons will naturally be associated to the region they belong to, IE certain backgrounds in Yamatar (Chinese/Japanese inspired) would be able to use a “Katana” but a northerner from Vinmark is not going to be able to use a “Katana”. Some might argue that it is restrictive but I feel it now also makes backgrounds more unique. It all ties into giving the players more reasons and incentives to get out and explore. I guess to some extent too the backgrounds could now also be called “Classes”. For a long time, I was adamant in complete freedom for player progression but I truly believe with the size of the world that I am envisioning, there are more benefits to a more traditional “class” system to allow for a steady stream of “new things” to encounter as you explore the world.
Now we get to probably the most significant change of late, something like this was a big reason why I chose to rebuild, implementing this on top of the existing systems would have been too difficult. You can now configure your starting stats as opposed to having them randomly generated. Your traits/background will initialise your starting stats and from then on you’ll have 150 stat points to assign into the 7 stats. There are max/min caps to each stat in this menu so you can’t walk out with 100+ attack, but overall you have a lot more freedom now in building your character at the start. As a bonus, you can now also edit the names of every companion you hire. Just click the “scroll” button and a rename box will pop up, the button is in the top right corner of the portrait. Keen eyes might also have noticed that there is a new stat now, so I’ll explain below.
Vitality vs Strength:
Basically vitality is now health and strength is strength. In the current build your current “Strength” is both your health and also determines a portion of your damage. It was an interesting idea at the start but over time to me it felt like a gimmick. If I wanted to add a monster that felt “tanky” with high health it would then also have an extremely high damage output as well or if I wanted to create backgrounds that were more defense orientated, they would also benefit from having high damage output, there would be no way to separate the two things. So I guess in this regard I am also taking a step back to “traditional” RPG design. Strength is its own stat now and just like all other stats, it can be reduced in combat, so there is still a way to reduce the damage output of your enemies. The formula for damage output remains the same though, the player’s Strength + Damage bonus from the equipped weapon is the total amount of damage, which is then subtracted against the helmet/armor value of the enemy target. I suppose this is the second biggest change I’ve made to combat, the first one being removing having to manually reduce helmet/armor and integrating it directly into the basic attacks. Again, I feel like this is the correct step forward.
Moving on, I’d like to show some more updates I’ve made to the overhauled inventory screen. I’ve merged the equipment slot box with the model display box, looks a lot more polished now. I’ve also experimented with equipment icons, by adding a glow/color that is associated with the item’s rarity. I’ve tried a few different things from just coloring the border of the icon to the entire background. What you are seeing here might be a bit too excessive, I might only do glows for ancestral/masterwork items, right now still deciding but wanted to show it off anyway. It’s just another one of those small touches, I’m remaining committed to polishing the game as a whole and not leaving out the smaller details.
Activities & Skills:
A bit on this now. A lot of the UI work done was to accommodate to this. All the various activities need new UI for things such as gambling or going to a gathering site to mine iron. You can see the full list of skills in the menu below. I haven’t implemented them yet so I won’t be going over them, but as I’ve said in the past this is all to expand the world and to give the player more activities to do. You are no longer just a mercenary and you don’t start as one either.
Wrapping things up, let’s talk a bit about the armor sets. Currently you might have noticed that all armor sets do not show any skin at all, the body is fully covered. This was due to a technical limitation, essentially I had to cover up all of the body because there would be different skin tones and I had no way of handling that. When armor is worn in most cases the body underneath is culled out but if I want to have an armor set that is say a simple harness I then need to make that specific area not cull the body out and accommodate to different skin tones as it would be worn over an exposed chest. It took me a long time to overhaul the internal customisation system and while the results are essentially only visual, I think it is again another step up in terms of polish and increasing the believability of the world. In addition to that, I’ve been trying to think of smarter ways to utilise my existing art assets and internally I now have something called “modular tabbards”. It is essentially a model of a tabbard broken down into smaller sections in which I can then swap out the textures to create a vast amount of different tabbards or “shirts”. Some of these would serve as underlayers in which another unique 3D torso mesh would be applied on top or in cases of lighter armor it would serve as the main armor but still have unique elements like a belt on top. Here are some examples of what is now possible.
Lastly, I’d like to just thank everyone for their continued support, I was very apprehensive about doing a complete rebuild as that meant updates would have to stop and I was fearful of getting a negative response but I am very glad to know that everyone is supporting my decision. I believe the rebuild will truly be worth the wait! Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
