next »

[Petty_King]

Although the title is temporary unless I decide I like it this devlog will chronicle my progress on my latest game. It's something I've wanted to create for several years but I've always felt I lacked the know-how to achieve it. Now after a few minor games I'm jumping in head first. I've been a huge fan of Mordheim and the Elder Scrolls, so I'm hoping to achieve something inspired by the two.

Below I present the first screenshot, a small simple field with the player character and an enemy orc. The game will be a 2D Action-RPG with a high fantasy setting. There will be a heavy emphasis on army/party building. I'd like the battlefields to eventually hold 200-300 soldiers from opposing armies at a time but I want to allow a decent bit of customization of each soldier in your army as well. I'm envisioning class-based upgrades but at any time you can upgrade any particular piece (sword, armor, mount) regardless of the class.



Currently the player can move about easily and combat is restricted to melee. I'll be working on ranged combat and friendly AI before my next post. The current cast of available units includes: humans, elves, orcs, trolls, and dwarves. Each will have fairly common restraints (dwarves can't use magic, elves are weak at melee, trolls are resistant to magic).



Above you can see the map screen. The player's party as well as parties of other characters roam the map and interact with towns and castles.

[Petty_King]

Well, I've somehow managed to make quite a few improvements despite the very limited time I've had this past week to program. Below is a screenshot of my very basic "Map Screen". It's nothing too fancy right now. However, it has several important aspects already in place.



As you can see there are various banners for factions. I've also got a rudimentary AI logic in place for the map too. You simply point and click to move your player and your party about the map. Colliding with an enemy party will toss you into a battle (as shown in the above post's screenshot). The AI parties on this main map currently move about randomly unless: 1. You're close enough that they want to fight and your party size is no more than 110% of the enemy they'll begin to chase you. 2. If your party size is too large you'll frighten them away, in which case they run in the exact opposite direction.

The size of a party also impacts its speed on the map. Larger armies move more slowly than small, nimble ones (baggage trains, etc.)

That castle, tower, and cottage are all important landmarks as well. A castle will make the battle happen at a "castle" map. These place the attacking army against a castle of defenders. A "tower" map is similar to a castle but much smaller and may just be a single tower or a wooden palisade. The "cottage" maps are villages where the attacking party will fight peasants, blacksmiths, and local militia. If two parties attack each other in the main map they'll simply fight on a randomly selected grass map.

The battles now also incorporate the party size into the game and will randomly select troops based on the size of the party. Eventually this will be a static selection of troops. Losing a battle also means your party is wiped out but eventually this will be replaced with injuries and maimed troops.

[mzn528]

For some reasons this reminds of Mount and Blade and the hundreds of hours I put into that game (good times).

Good job, I want to really see this becoming a thing. Keep up the good work and keep us posted, have a virtual beer on me! 

[Caravaggi0]

Interesting.  It is very M&B but that's cool, there's not a lot of that.  I'm wondering about custimizing 2-300 soldiers though.  Can you do it by groups maybe?  Something to make it quicker than it sounds?  Or did you mean you can customize generals or "hero" characters?

[JohansenIndustries]

I'm interested in what the plot is, since you're apparently going to be attacking villages etc.

[internationalfish]

I'm wondering about custimizing 2-300 soldiers though.  Can you do it by groups maybe?  Something to make it quicker than it sounds?  Or did you mean you can customize generals or "hero" characters?

This part made me think of the Disgaea series, in which I'm sure I'm not along in having customized scores of otherwise-generic characters in what's presumably a similar way (over the course of at least 600 hours)... I'd say it depends on the voracity of your audience. SRPG fiends love this kind of thing.

[Petty_King]

I've only just recently started working on the "party" screen so there's not much to it now other than hiring a randomized solider to your party and having that hire deplete money and then have an "upkeep" cost which is a percentage of your original hiring fee. However, I'm HOPING to allow you to either select upgrades that will apply to the whole class of units OR to each individual soldier.

This way if you want to improve all of your archer's armor it's as simple as one individual soldiers equipment but if you want to really micromanage your party you can. I'm trying to get away from the Mount & Blade style progression of strict class-based troops. This way you can equip the same "class" of archers however you see fit. I don't plan on allowing you to have a farmer "upgrade" to a spearman and then upgrade to a knight. Instead that "farmer" has a unique name and you can lump your soldiers into their own groups and equip them as you see fit. Their usefulness as a soldier only happens over time PLUS whatever experience they have.

I'm hoping this solves the issue in so many games where in the late game your party gets wiped out because you have a large enough horde of resources that you just walk into town and buy the best soldiers in the game. I want there to be a noticeable consequence for rushing headlong into a moronic battle. Sure, you'll have the resources to go hire 100 more soliders and you'll have the resources to equip them with the best weapons and armor but they won't be at their full potential until they've leveled up in some real combat.

[Petty_King]

I put a lot of time into the travel map today and am thrilled to say there are a lot of new additions. The mountains are placeholders until I find the time to play with pixels.



Both the computer and the player's party now utilize path-finding so they can avoid natural obstacles. I've created mountain ranges and a large lake which are impassable at various times. Parties are able to travel through the mountains at half speed during "warm" months but they are completely inaccessible during the winter. The lake is the exact opposite of this, as it can only be crossed during the winter when it freezes over. I have a sprite change for the lake already in place, now I just need to add some snow to the mountain tops when they map is in winter.

Since I was already working on path-finding for the map parties I figured why not go ahead and streamline the AI pathfinding for the battle sequences too. Those objects now navigate more intelligently although with some of my more complex battleground set-ups there is still a sizable bit of work to be done. Level creation is taking far longer than I initially expected as I don't want castles and towns to feel too similar. I'm also toying with what aspects of the game should be procedurally generated and what should be static. Right now I'm leaning toward a few hundred hand-made battle levels (castles, towns, fields) and a randomly generated campaign map.

I've also created a little more dynamic "coin purse" representation. If you have a decent amount of gold the pile of coins is large, as in the above photo. A middling number of coins as a single stack, and a low purse size is a single gold coin next to your numeric total.

[Petty_King]

Lots of new updates as you can see from the below screen shot. I've set up a random name generator that randomly assigns a name to each town/tower/castle. I've also spruced up the castle image for the map screen as well. There's now a very basic recruitment system in place to allow hiring of troops from each town/tower/castle. Depending on where you hire troops from and your relation with each town/tower/castle the number and quality as well as the cost of the troops will vary.

Your relations are also dependent on BOTH historical relations with that location as well as overall faction alignments. I think this is much more realistic as it means an enemy border town could be more favorable to you then their liege lord if you've gone out of your way to aid them despite the fact that their liege lord hundreds of miles away is their "true" ruler. I've also created the option to attack locations and will soon expand this to trade and other options with each locality.



I also took some time to test a possible multiplayer aspect to the game. While it's far from being implemented it's a possibility that I would love to add if I can find sufficient time and think it'd be quite achievable to have at least two players and the computer in one game world.

[Petty_King]

As you can see in the above screenshot other parties on the map now have unique titles and names. Each faction will have one "king" or equivalent. A few "Duke" titles and the remainder are "Barons". The names are selected at random and each lord will have a relation with each faction on the map.

I'm also working on adding cavalry to the game. They'd be fairly dynamic and you'd have a chance to hit the horse or the rider, meaning there could be some stray horses running around the map or thrown riders who get up and keep fighting.

As far as the story goes I've been developing it a bit. The player's character is the son of one of the factions. A rival faction will have attacked your father's faction, leaving your father dead. You've now come into power but some of your realm's supporters have their doubts as to your ability to rule.

I'm hoping to make this somewhat dynamic based on which faction the player chooses to join. There will be a kingdom based faction (where you'd have the highest possible level of support due to hereditary reasons). There will also be a republic, where you are only one of several equally ranked rulers and will have to win the support of a majority to quell dissent within your own faction while being attacked from without. The Orc faction will favor brute force and in many respects be similar to the human kingdom faction (thinking you'll have to beat a few Warbosses to gain the title of ruler for your faction).

I'm also toying with the notion of an undead faction. This would be controlled by a Lich King/Necromancer who's power keeps the hordes of undead from turning to dust. With the death of the former Lich King (if the player chooses to be this faction) you'd be the next most powerful Lich and it would be a matter of rebuilding the armies of dead.

Just a few basic notions for the storyline. Still working on it and fine tuning the relationships between the factions and figuring out what to add. I'd also like to get elves and dwarves in there somewhere as well.

[Petty_King]

Today I was able to implement a feature that will possibly create the most depth to the game overall, the implementation of structures into levels! As you can see in the below screenshots laying siege to a structure really creates some interesting situations.







I was able to implement a new "guard" mode for units. This will keep them within a pre-determined distance of any structure they're trying to defend on a particular map. I like this because it means units won't go sally out of their superior position to attack an enemy. I might create a few unit types that prefer to sally out from defenses (I have a bezerker class in mind). I also have a few different ideas for siege options that I'd like to toy with. Each would be able to be selected when attacking a tower or castle and would create varying dynamics on the battlefield (ladders, battering rams, siege towers, tunneling, catapults).

While there is TONS of material to add to the game it's in a decently playable state although far from it's hopeful full amount. I'm tempted to release some kind of demo soon and was curious if there's any interest to play it or if people think it'd be better to hold off? There wouldn't be too much story and only 2-3 factions but the core gameplay is certainly present. I know the overall trend has been for demos to go the way of the dodo but I enjoy getting feedback on what works and what doesn't.

[Bahototh]

Looks cool!

[Petty_King]

Another solid few days of programming. After reading the Survival Skyrim Diary on Rock, Paper, Shotgun I was inspired to create some kind of diary system that would record what the player has done since coming into control of their army. Although this is still in its infancy I'm pretty happy with the basic concept. Every time you visit a town or castle it gets "recorded". When you die it scrolls through the journal of all the places you've visited, who you've fought, and if you won or lost the battle as well as how many of your men perished.



I've also been developing castle levels within the game further. I'm hoping to eventually add palisades as well to mix it up so they're not all stonework castles. I find these really just and I'm excited to have a large variety of layouts in the castles and levels themselves. I think this aspect will really set the game apart.



Given that some of these castles have multiple ladders leading from one level to another I had to go through and rework the Unit AI yet again. They were consistently getting stuck on the battlements, so that ate up the better part of another day. Fingers crossed I'm done with pathfinding for the time being.

I also added friendly parties to the main map and spent a substantial amount of time working out how AI battles happen on the map. That's at a functional but less than perfect level right now. Overall a lot of moving pieces and definitely some substantial progress. I'm hoping I can get most of the planned features in within the next 2-3 months so I can just work on content (levels, unit types, storyline). I've got some great ideas for factions and interactions between factions but I'll have to leave that for another time.  

[Petty_King]

Having not touched this game in several months I'm back at it and hope to post some demos soon to show my progress. I've been working hard to re-write the game engine as a lot of it was pretty haphazardly thrown together. The overland map was and is still quite solid but I'm reworking the combat portion to ensure I can have epic large battles.

I'm also working on making the travel map economy very robust. I'm hoping to have each lord's army be effected by the wealth of their holdings. Small armies are a result of a lord with only a village, larger armies are a result of a lord who has several affluent castles. This will lead to a kind of tiered tax system. If you're the lord of a small village there will be a percentage tax you have to kick upstairs to your king and superior lords (whomever owns the castle you village is under protection from). This will ensure King's always have the most superior armies, as their hands are in all of their lord's honeypots. It'll also provide a tiered system for lords among themselves.

[Petty_King]

Releasing a very work-in-progress alpha for everyone. Would love some feedback.

https://scottgoldsmith.itch.io/dominion-of-kings