Like all good things, even the spookiest month of the year must come to an end. But there is a silver lining - that means it is time for a new edition of Dinolords Monthly! This month has been very focused on production as a result of no big events or streams or trailer deadlines to race towards. Which has been a welcome change in all our schedules that usually consists of one task after the next more-or-less frantically chained together. As a consequence of actually getting a bunch of "real" work done on the game, this means that there is less of an overall focus of this issue of Dinolords Monthly, but I have tried to touch base on some of the areas of the game that has seen some big progress over the past month.
Up until now, the humanoid units in the game have primarily consisted of a basic melee type and a basic ranged type. We are working on adding a bunch more units, more typically akin to what you would expect from an RTS-type game where different units might be good in certain situations or setups, or works as effective counters against different enemies or fortifications. Some of them were hinted from Lina's art showcase in last month's edition, but this time we will have a more descriptive look at some of the units. Overall, on the philosophy of unit design in the game, we try to consider a "rock/paper/scissor" approach to unit design, and new units have to offer something different and not just be a straight upgrade compared to another unit - there will be other ways to increase unit power, so having two functionally identical units with different values does not make for interesting gameplay.
Knights are heavy, defensive units wearing big shiny plate armor and carrying a huge shield. When in your warband, knights can be commanded to slam down their shields in a wall formation and provide cover from incoming blows and arrows - super handy especially if there was a unit that could fire some sort of piercing bolts...
Oh hey, look, a unit that can fire some sort of piercing bolt!
Slow loading but heavy damage with piercing bolts that can pass through multiple units.
Not entirely meant as a straight upgrade from a regular archer, but something different where each still offers pros and cons in different situations.
Skittish ranged attacks and the ability to spit slowing gunk on the ground to crowd-control other units, paired with a fast ability to get out of harms way makes this little bugger one super fun addition to combat and really moves the battle around on the map!
And while the specifics of its design isn't completely set in stone, it represents the first introduction of terrain-modifying effects to the game, a system we hope to expand with other effects like fire and more.
Chunky guy who can dig itself under structures and pass obstacles paired with a solid melee attack. An experiment into different layers of unit navigations - what if a unit could dig, hide underground, or dig a tunnel beneath walls?
All of the above and many more units led us to needing a setup where we can test units in combat, both against each other, but also against the player, because all the hypothetical design is worthless if the result is not engaging and interesting and leads to cool gameplay. So we set out to create a simple level where we can quickly add friendly and enemy units and press go to see how different combinations of units interact. The layout is pretty simple but it is deliberately made to afford as many aspects of testing as possible; there is a friendly and an enemy base so we can see scenarios from the perspective of the attacking or defending force, and there is a big field in the middle where we can just throw units against each other or against the player to see how different matchups feel and how they play out. And while we had a bunch of chaotic fun just spawning in loads of units, we also made many important discoveries. Among them were the fact that units lumped together too much when fighting with many units, effectively turning the fight into a moshpit. This had led us down a spiral of unit navigation handling and navmeshes and pathfinding and behaviour, but that will be a story for a future monthly.
Another area that has been seeing some major progress is the environment and weather effects - we now have a weather system that can introduce wind and rain and change the lighting of the level to reflect a storm or a quiet afternoon breeze. Additionally, we have been playing with fire, literally! A level can now burn based on the flammability of the surface, which means dry grass burns really easily but a rain-wet bog does not really want to ignite.
That's all for this edition, thank you all for following along, and watch this space when we are back next month for the November edition.
-panxter