Legates,
I am happy to announce the 1-year anniversary of Warlord: Britannia and the foundation of Darkmatter Games! To commemorate this event I would like to share some interesting details about the game's origins, early scope, development cycle, and the launch last year.
Darkmatter Begins
Since middle school I have been interested in making games (I am almost 23 now). I started dabbling in 2D games with Scratch, a web-browser program designed by MIT to introduce visual coding to kids. After graduating from Scratch I picked up the basics of coding with Game Maker Studio by creating an Asteroids clone. This concept of Newtonian-physics was so interesting to me I decided to take the plunge into 3D development with Unity, which is still my engine of choice. In Unity, I worked on a multitude of smaller projects while in high school, some more feature rich than others, but all the while building up my toolset for a future commercial game. This is a screenshot from Impulse: Space Combat, a game now available for free on itch.io (visit my website for a link if interested).
Latin Project
While I had always had a surface level interest in Roman History, it was not until taking Latin classes in high school that I saw the potential in portraying history via the medium of video games. For my final project in the last year of the language I decided to create a first person Roman game. This project was incredibly barebones, purely a showcase, but elements of it's DNA can still be found in current versions of Warlord: Britannia.
Roma Invicta
The summer after graduating high school (2018) was truly when the game we now know as Warlord: Britannia came into being. I was fortunate enough to be brought along to England on a family trip that summer. After seeing the Roman Baths and other ruins, as well as the inviting English countryside first hand, I was convinced I could create a compelling game in that setting. Upon return home I quickly began development on project "Roma Invicta," a two-team instant-action game centered around Battlefield like control points and respawn tickets.
Campaign Mode
Following that first summer of development and my entrance into university, I picked up a minor in Classics, mainly Roman History (comprising almost all of my electives, to the detriment of my computer science major). This inspired me with more ambitious ideas for an open-world style conquest mode. The concept of a first-person open-world RTS (now known as Warlord, with it's underlying principle of immersive-strategy) was not totally new. Years earlier I had envisioned an expansion for Impulse: Space Combat in the same vein, but as my interests changed, I went all-in with the Romans. Sadly, screenshots of the game between the original instant-action mode (seen above) and the Beta I version have been lost, although this single image may be dated to that development period.
Core Development
With the idea of a campaign mode firmly established and growing in scope, what followed in 2019 and 2020 was a period of long and often sporadic development as I continued my studies online through the pandemic. During this time I crafted the underlying systems for ranks, the formation, building, enemy settlements, and raids (convoys and noble gatherings did not exist until much later). During this time I also overhauled the visual style of the game with improved modelling and texturing techniques. Note that at this point the game was confined to a small sandbox terrain surrounded by mountain ranges, not the the current, more realistic landscape.
Betas
Once the game reached a semi-playable state I created the Darkmatter Games Discord server and invited some friends (look for members with the Beta I and II Veteran roles) to try it out in two limited Betas. At this point the Discord server contained basic Roman ranks, but there was no functioning government as there is now, and it only contained a handful of members. The first Beta, in August 2021, took place on that original testing map, and was missing many features that became pivotal to the game, such as settlement unrest. The second Beta, in March of 2022, featured the finalized map of the game, and almost all of the launch-day features.
Warlord
In the couple months after Beta II, and before the launch of the game, its final name was selected. No longer just "Roma Invicta," I envisioned a series of titles in the same spirit, with Britannia as the first entry in this new Warlord franchise. Although this franchise idea could have been labeled delusion, as at the time I had no evidence to indicate the game's outcome on Steam would warrant any future plans.
Release
Leading up to the launch I sent Steam keys to prominent Youtubers in the historical-gaming sphere. However, Wishlists were very low, with most coming from a small Facebook ad my dad kindly set up. I did not expect the game to garner much more attention than that, but I was happy with the finished product. With this in mind, I decided to launch the game as a Full Release, not Early Access, with the idea that I could gauge sales as well as player feedback and enthusiasm, without making any hard Early Access promises in case the title flopped on the market (I was admitted into graduate school for that fall as backup).
Despite this haphazard approach to marketing, a number of those Youtuber's picked up the game right before and around launch, and Steam's algorithms favored Warlord: Britannia, catapulting it into the top of the New & Trending section for over two weeks (only to be beat out by the new Sniper Elite). With this unexpected success on my hands I quickly finalized and published the Update Roadmap, which contained ideas from prospective players who joined the Discord pre-launch, as well as initial reactions to the game after it was publicly released. At that point I also scrapped my plans for graduate school and transitioned to working full time on Darkmatter Games.
Post-Launch Updates
Work on the Roadmap picked up right after release, and I am pleased to say everything promised thus far has been delivered. While working on these updates I have followed player feedback and suggestions closely. Almost everything added into the game post-launch was at one point an idea from a player or Discord member. Here is a quick outline of the major update releases thus far.
- Foundations 2.0, August 29, 2022
- Auxiliaries 3.0, October 24th, 2022
- Archers and Artillery 4.0, December 14th, 2022
- Logistics and Outposts 5.0, March 16th, 2023
End of Roadmap
As many of you know, with the completion of Logistics and Outposts, the Roadmap only contains two more planned updates: Animals and Ambience, and the much anticipated Cavalry addition. Animals and Ambience is well on the way and is optimistically estimated to release June 2nd!
After Animals and Ambience, I will be travelling abroad in Greece with my Roman History professor, who invited me to help out with their archeological survey of Plataea, in Thebes. I will be out town on this expedition June 17th to July 4th, but I should be able to reconnect here and there.
The Roadmap also contained a final "Future" category which included some highly ambitious items that could come to the game at some point. These included: Diplomacy and Tribes, Drop-in Multiplayer, and Workshop Support. After much consideration I have decided to remove explicit mention of these from the latest edition of the Roadmap, and rename the category "Support and Future," to give me more flexibility after the Cavalry update is complete. However, rest assured these items and many more suggestions are still possible for Warlord: Britannia further down the line. Here is the latest edition of the Update Roadmap:
What's Next for Darkmatter Games?
This next year of work at Darkmatter Games will be different. Instead of the usual ebb and flow of Warlord: Britannia updates, after the completion of Cavalry, I will pivot to laying the groundwork for the Warlord franchise going forward. To facilitate this, I plan on putting together a brand new development PC (open to build suggestions) and loading up all new software (I am currently reliant on Unity and Blender versions from 2018). My current system, which is long past outdated, may be converted into more of a test-bed and/or an Official Darkmatter Games Minecraft server. With this refresh I plan on adhering to a modernized and industry standard workflow, so future Warlord titles will not suffer from extreme cases of "technical debt," as Warlord: Britannia has.
In the 3-6 months after the Cavalry update I plan on announcing the following:
- A new code base and design philosophy that will power all future Warlord titles, essentially an engine within the Unity engine
- A new "little brother" franchise to run either in parallel or alternation with Warlord. Something with a different scope and focus, but the same historically authentic, "boots on the ground" feel
- And finally, the next title in the Warlord franchise. More on all of this soon!
With these announcements and transition into the post-Roadmap development period, I may also expose elements of my solo-game development process to those especially interested in learning, via a paid platform such as Patreon. My hope with something like this would be to cultivate a new corps of like-minded, multi-disciplined developers that can further enrich the historical-gaming market with their own creative ideas. The fee would be nominal and simply to offset my own time commitment providing individual support while I continue development at Darkmatter Games. More on this in the next 6-12 months, but if any of you are already interested in such a program, reach out on Discord so I can get a gauge.
Legacy Builds
To give you all a hands on look into the evolution of Warlord: Britannia, I have dug through my archives and found the above mentioned Latin class final project build, as well as the Beta I version of Warlord: Britannia (then known as "Roma Invicta"). Access to these archaic game builds are on the Discord server in the "anniversary" channel!
Signing Off
Thank you all for your support and encouragement over the past year! I could not be doing any of this without all of you. Special thanks to those contributing to the community on Discord and Steam. I would also like to mention Discord Co-Consuls (senior moderators) cametexx and Volsung who have held their democratically elected offices repeatedly and help me immensely with the daily operation of the sever.
The future is bright for Warlord and Darkmatter Games, and I am thrilled to bring more compelling historical content to Steam in the coming months and years. Stay tuned for Animals and Ambience!
