Today we'd like to talk a little a bit about the intricate process that is procedural world generation. It is a vast topic, a core feature of the game and something that we're constantly improving and as such we've decided to split this material into few parts. In this devlog we're going to focus on landmass generation.
First, in order to construct our terrain we generate two maps represented as 2D textures that contain information regarding the elevation and moisture of the island where our players (that would be you guys) will play. These textures are created by taking simple noise functions which are subsequently manipulated to fit our needs. The elevation map has more details as we don't want our terrain to be too boring whereas the moisture map provides us with more general areas that affect the environment.
Both maps have the dimensions analogous to the vertices count of the mesh they're describing. The whiter the pixel in the elevation map, the higher the vertex of the mesh becomes. Likewise, blue areas of the moisture map constitute wet areas on the map.
All that information is taken into account when constructing our terrain. Elevation is scaled and modified accordingly to not be too overwhelming considering the camera angle and the zoom of the map that we're targeting in the game. On the other hand, moisture alongside elevation dictates the specific texture and biome of the area. For instance, flat regions just above water with little moisture will produce a desert, whereas regions with the same height but high moisture will yield beautiful meadows.
In order to avoid a situation where the terrain would stick out above water like a sore thumb, we've implemented a gradual yet steep falloff outside the coastline where a plane with a water shader seamlessly blends with the mesh and produces a nice illusion of the water gently lapping the beaches.
Looks pretty cool and it's just the beginning! In the next part of the series we'll cover generating our cities and vegetation to bring some more life onto the playing field.
As always remember to add Glorious Companions to your Steam wishlist and convince your friends to do so too! :golem:
New Glorious Companions logo
Hello Companions!
This week we've only got a short news update for you. As you can see in the image above we have a brand new logo for the game and we're gonna update all the promo materials in the nearest time. Let us know if you like it and what came to your mind when you've looked at it at first.
Other than that we already have the quest system working and it should be easy now to add new types of quest objectives and rewards, and generate proper quests for the player at various stages of his gameplay.
Currently we're laying down the fundations for the politics system as well as world generation process. Wish us good luck with that!
That's all for this week, thanks for staying with us and don't forget to comment what you think of the new logo! :cozybethesda:
As always add Glorious Companions to your Steam wishlist and convince your friends to do so too! :cozyroe:
Devlog: Remaking characters and development progress
Hello there, fellow Companions!
We are remaking all the character models from the ground up and we’d like to share with you the first unit that went under the chisel - Trapper from the race of Valrenay.
Here’s a before / after comparison, whatch’ya think?
The downside is that the process of redoing both races will take time and we’ll have to wait even longer to start making the armor assets but the upside is that all the units will have the same, consistent style and will be ready for customization and further development.
We’ve spent some time compiling a list of all the animations that each character will need, not including the animations for using special abilities or casting spells which will depend on the unit’s skill tree. It’ll total around 25 animations per character if we group up some similar types of melee weapons together as a starter which is still a pretty significant amount to make.
We’ve also planned out the geopolitical system in detail but we’ll talk about it on a later date since it’s a pretty big topic on its own. For the time being let’s just say that we’ve already started working on the procedural generation of the world map for each playthrough and more news will come in the upcoming weeks.
That’s it for this week, remember to add Glorious Companions to your Steam wishlist and tell your friends to do so too! ːsteamhappyː
Devlog: Grave Consequences
Hello there, fellow Companions!
This week we’d like to talk a bit about the health system in Glorious Companions and the approach we took in making sure our players stay wary of the threats on the battlefield without the frustration that a fluky permadeath can cause.
In Glorious Companions characters whose health drops below 0 HP faint and are unable to continue the battle. After the end of the battle, you will be able to perform first aid on the fallen companions (thus healing them by a small amount). However, if in spite of that the final blow causes them to drop further below 25%+ of their max health (the exact percentage depends on the unit’s Agility) a couple of things happen.
First, we roll whether or not that character makes it. Units with a higher Defense stat have a lower chance to die, although the probability is rather slim anyhow. If the unit doesn’t die it suffers from an injury which are grouped into two categories:
Lesser wounds: injuries which will take a long time to heal themselves, to get rid of them quicker you should seek aid from a skilled healer.
Permanent wounds: injuries that won’t go away and will remain with the character until their last day.
There’s a very small chance that the unit will get away scot-free without suffering any injuries, which is quite a feat in itself and something that other companions will surely be talking about for days! Each injury as well as other critical actions on the battlefield will adorn the unit’s achievements card and you’ll be able to boast about and share your companions success with everyone.
Now, getting back to the death situation. We want to make death a real threat, otherwise players can easily get too jaded as each battle seems less and less exciting and meaningful. On the other hand, an unlucky death that eliminates your key companion for many becomes a quick trigger to uninstall the game as they can’t be bothered to continue playing.
Thankfully, the world of Navaroth holds many secrets and you might come across certain characters on your path who could help you out even in the direst of scenarios. It can be risky and time consuming, but you’ll have a chance to make things right.
That’s it from us for the week. Stay tuned for future devlogs and make sure to tell your friends about the game!
Devlog: Cities and other estates
Hello there, fellow Companions!
This week we want to shed some light on the system behind cities and other estates in Glorious Companions.
There are a few different types of interactable objects on the world map, these include cities, outposts, resource gathering facilities and others. Cities start as just a City Center surrounded by fortified walls, along with some empty space inside to build various buildings as the time goes.
Each building serves a special function, for example Lords and merchants can trade in the Flea Market, wounded units can be healed in the Temple. Mercenary groups look for new recruits in Taverns. The types of recruits that are available in a specific Tavern depend on the other buildings built in the town - Scarrling’s Den will bring wanderous Scarrlings looking for work and so on.
Then there are also buildings which allow your companions to learn special abilities if they’re left to train there for a few days. Each skill type has its own school, i.e. aspiring magicians will learn new spells in Roth Academies.
Outposts are similar to cities but they have less space for buildings and a more limited selection of them. Although there are some constructions that can be built solely in the outposts too.
At the beginning of your adventure there’ll be estates around you at various stages of development. So for example if you want to recruit some Avengers into your party straight from the get go, even if you had the money you’d have to first find a city that has the Ancient Palace built in it. You can always try to wait it out, maybe some other Lord will build it in his town soon enough?
Or better yet - you may decide to besiege the city and after you take it over build whatever you want. That is if you have enough resources and gold for the construction.
Devlog: Working on the UI
Hello there, fellow Companions!
Today we'd like to talk about the issue of User Interface and how tricky it can get to relay information well - in a way that is both simple and yet descriptive enough to satisfy player's interest.
In Glorious Companions, a player unit can enter multiple modes during combat. The three basic orders include: the move command, the basic attack command and the rotate command. The remaining three slots are taken up by your unit's special abilities that you select and level up however you see fit. The battlefield's map grid changes depending on the active mode and our tooltip system should tell you everything you need to know regarding its mechanics.
We've crafted it so that every action builds it own descriptor and has a custom UI control. That way it allows us to to manually build a unique template for each command - even if it's an ability that has unique mechanics that no other ability posses. For instance, when issuing a basic attack command, the UI is already able to show you a bunch of interesting details that go into the math behind our system.
Here the attack tooltip lists all the modifications that go in your favor in green and all the effects that help the enemy in yellow. Red is reserved for effects that directly preclude you from performing the action. The consistent color coding allows us to "train" the players so that a quick scan over the tooltip will immediately help them to intuitively tell if the attempted action is complicated to execute, while the numbers will be essential for those who like to do the math by themselves.
We hope to deliver a system that is easy to read and yet sufficiently detailed, as we'd really hate it if our players had to google things up by themselves while keeping an open tab with the game's wiki on the other monitor. We'll keep you updated as we continue to polish our interface with this goal in mind.
Race Spotlight: Scarres
Hello, fellow Companions!
This week we bring you a throughout look at the first race in Glorious Companions, the Scarres.
Scarres are a tribal race that originally had lived solely in the desert, though in recent history they have been spending a lot of time fighting Anderian troops for access to greener lands. Their tribes are usually led by older Shamans or in some cases by the mighty Raiders or Avengers. They have a strong pro-war culture, they prefer fighting their opponents face-to-face and rarely use ranged weapons (especially bows, crossbows and firearms).
Their unique resource required to cast special abilities is called Vengeance. They start each battle with zero Vengeance and they gain it when fellow companions get hurt or die nearby. So the remaining soldiers get more powerful the fewer there’s left of them.
Scarres are split into two kinds: smaller ones (Sca-cerya) and the bigger ones (Sca-valya).
Scarrling
Usually spend their life gathering food, hunting for smaller prey or crafting items for the tribe. In dire times they too get called to arms but they make for poor fighters. Their biggest upsides are high Agility, Action Points and Movement Speed which enables them to become useful (and annoying) harassers. They also do well as cheap meat shields.
Zealot
Ambitious to become proved warriors some Scarrlings leave their tribes to become Zealots. Scarre society usually discourages Scarrlings from pursuing a fighter’s career, instead they are expected to perform tasks for the good of their tribe. When deciding to leave their old lives they turn into outcasts driven to prove their skills in battle. They have the same advantages as Scarrlings and are able to wield more specialized equipment from the get go.
Thrall Raider
The bigger kind of the Scarres, they lack the mobility of their little brothers but surpass them by far in the toughness department. One could say they are the exact opposite of Scarrlings - strong, tough and slow. They spend their lives on the path - taking part in various war campaigns and collecting weapons of their fallen foes as trophies.
Shamaness
The brightest of the Scarrlings may strive to become Shamans and gain the arcane knowledge of the Blood Magics. Members of this caste often end up as leaders of Scarre tribes but in some cases a Raider may have a stronger influence on the local folk and act as the leader. Shamans specialize in debuffing and disabling enemy units with their spells but they may serve as capable warriors too.
Avenger
The remnants of the old Scarres legacy, before they left their old continent in hopes of finding a new motherland. No Avenger has been born in the last few hundred years and the last few remaining are worshipped among other Scarres as some kind of demigods. It’s not known if they even die of old age, some of the oldest ones have lived for over a thousand years. They can use Blood Magics too, though in a more limited form.
Which unit from the Scarre’s race do you like the most after this short introduction? Who’ll be the go to companion in your adventures?
Devlog: Combat AI in Glorious Companions
Hello there, fellow Companions!
Today we'd like to talk a bit the approach we've taken into designing and building our combat AI systems. In a combat heavy game it is paramount for the AI to behave in a realistic and seemingly smart way. Players want it to be challenging and yet play fair - by the same rules that the game world imposes on them.
In order to check all the boxes and build an easily extensible module, we've decided to explore and utilize the so-called Utility AI approach (used in games such as Hitman or Civilization). Instead of following a bunch of set defined rules the AI system takes a look at all the possible actions and scores them using a list of considerations. The decision making layer then takes all these scores and chooses an action in one of the few possible ways, i.e. by simply choosing the best one or by performing weighted randomization where each option's weight is represented by its score (in other words: if attacking a unit has a utility score of 5 and moving away has a score of 1 then attacking would be 5 times as likely to roll compared to running away).
We've quickly found out that in Glorious Companions simply looking at a single action ahead wouldn't be enough to build an immersive system. Consider the following:
In this situation if we were to analyze only the very next command, then the Scarrling on the right would almost always choose to attack the beefy Avenger that stands right next to him as opposed to moving to a different tile. There's way more immediate value to that, whereas the correct play would be to move past him and then attack the wounded captain in order to win the battle. What constitutes a reasonable play in context of the entire turn gets in fact quite complicated especially as you introduce more and more mechanics into the game.
In order to get the best response from our AI controlled enemies, we have implemented a solution which looks at all the different permutations of all the possible actions a unit can take. AI agents construct a list of command chains and then evaluate them as a set. For instance, suppose we only have two possible to execute actions: AttackAction and MoveAction and a scenario from the image above, the AI would build a list of the following chains:
Once we sum up all the chains then it is quite obvious that it’s the last set that makes the most sense (walk up to the captain and attack him). If during the execution of a previously selected chain something happens that makes the execution unable to continue (let’s a say a unit has died that we were supposed to keep on bashing) then the AI will reevaluate its plan.
Well, that’s quite a lot of information to process right there, hope you’re still with us. The thing we’re talking about today is merely the unit layer of the system we’re working on. The layer on top of that, called the tactics layer, works on influencing each units’ goals (should we focus the captain? build a formation around a key wounded unit?) which makes sure the entire army is able to swiftly adapt to the situation on the battlefield.
Glorious Companions throughout the years (2009-2019)
The world of Navaroth has been carefully built and maintained by us throughout the years. The whole premise began as a pen-and-paper RPG system. Even the game itself had many different forms throughout the years. In 2009 it was a small mini-game with 2D cards representing the characters. However, it has turned into so much more.
As you can see the first prototype for Glorious Companions was created a decade ago, and the rpg system behind the game began its existance even earlier than that. Although naturally as we learn and gain experience our vision becomes clearer and we become less and less restricted when it comes to the execution side of development.
Compare what difference 10 years of learning makes:
2009
2019
So far our biggest problem was focusing on the multiplayer aspect too much, we wanted to start with a massive online experience with e-sport in mind. In the last year we finally decided to put that on hold and focus solely on delivering a great single player game that will gather a solid community around Glorious Companion's universe.
The code we're working with stays ready for addition of multiplayer later on so once we release GC we will probably restart the online mode development. We didn't entirely scrap our dreams but for the moment being we wanted to go about the development in a more realistic manner.
Add the game to your Steam wishlist and follow our community to stay up to date!
Devlog: How we designed armors for the Scarres army
Hello there, fellow Companions!
First of all we wanted to say thank you to everyone that followed our game or added it to their Steam wishlist. We greatly appreciate it and are surprised by the positive response!
During the last month we managed to finish the design for Scarre armors, including both light and heavy ones for all units. Our goal was to make the armor look distinct between different units of the same race, but also give the visual feedback on how well the character is armored and what weapon to use against it.
The latter is pretty important as in Glorious Companions we have varied weapon types that are suited for different opponents. For example maces and hammers are great vs heavy armor users while sabres and scimitars will do better against lightly armored foes.
When deciding which armor to wear the players will not only have to consider its price and the damage reduction it provides. The heavier the armor the bigger penalty it applies to your companion’s Action Points and Dodge skill. The better light armors also require a certain amount of Agility attribute while heavy armors require higher Defence.
We also spent a lot of time discussing which version of heavy armor design will fit Scarre Shamaness and we’re still not quite sure. Which design do you like the most?
At the moment we’re skewing towards version C because of how cool those shoulder pads look on her. Let us know in the comments which version would you pick and why!
