We Who Are About To Die · published
Welcome back to the third and last Preview on the upcoming Anniversary Update. First, a surprise - eagle eyed gladiators will have noticed the Anniversary for the game is actually ... tomorrow. Well, sharpen your daka's and chaka's:
A quick second dive into the AI!
The AI in WWAATD uses "steering behavior" - basically, the AI doesn't have logic to go from hardcoded A to B to C, they instead have a list of general desires steering their movement every second.
They want to move towards their enemy, away from allies, away from traps, etc. All this gets added up and that decides their movement. It makes for super interesting movement, emergent surrounds and much more - all dynamically.
But, it's a bit too predictable. It ends up being too precise - perfect placement, almost robotic. We noticed once the AI finds an optimal place they don't move that much, and so it kind of made fights more static than before. Not the "combat dance" I envisioned.
To fix this, we've thrown something in the spanner. Introducing the Gravitation Point! There are now invisible balls in each map that can either attract or push away in the AI's steering behavior at a certain strength.
These spheres move around the map slowly and generally push characters around, forcing the duels and fights going on to also move as a whole. It makes for a WAY more lively and dynamic movement in the arena.
We use the reverse - a big map-wide attractor - in the field battle map of Draft, to make sure the reinforcements end up near the middle in a big skirmish.
I thought this was quite a clever fun solution, and wanted to show it off!
We've also added custom code for the AI to detect and prevent being cornered.
When retreating/escaping, the AI generally moves backwards, but if there is no space to go backwards, it will now take a less-favourable position sideways or even toward the enemy, desperately trying to avoid being cornered.
A cornered enemy will adjust the weights of potential locations (color coded here) based on where it's allowed to go. Here escaping via the rightmost wall is the best option (in this worst case scenario)
In preview #1 and #2 I revealed a bunch of traits with the new Attributes system - but we've also added some new general traits.
It's almost harvesting season! With harvester, random enemies can carry pouches of gold, similar to the Valerius event or the Coin King Elite fight. These pouches get knocked off and can be picked up for a meaningful gold bonus.
Reverse underdog? This trait sees the usually-minor-enemies grow up to full blown strength. You better kill quick in Survival matches, and Elite Fights especially need to be very carefully chosen.
A quarter of 1vs1's are stacked against you and spiced up. You could avoid duels entirely, or risk the extra challenge.
1% chance for an Elite to appear in a random match. Surely... it won't happen to you right? This is a major negative trait alright - it could be nothing, but you wanna make sure you're ready, just in case.
I showed off 2 of the new boss fights, lets look at the remaining 3!
Here to pass judgement, the Magistrate, clad in all bronze, is the lead imperial executor and ready to bring down the law, by way of the hammer.
As seen above, it's almost harvesting season, and you're the crop. Cultivator Cren and his workers are a tier 1 boss that will certainly seperate the wheat from the chaff.
The bigger brother of Khunda the Pillager, Khor is Lophosi royalty. He's a fierce foe on his own but with his Palace Guard by his side... Well, you better go into this arena with a lot of respect.
The text is edited in because it made us think of a PS2 era cutscene, hehe.
Wanted to show off the Lorica Hamata inspired armor once more in full Hanian attire!
Here's a new Lophosi fur-padded chestpiece + the new Exalted style cuirass. (Linolian Captain's Cuirass)
A new higher level Linolian Kromo.
A 2-handed Owakhan Kapha.
And some new helms!
All these items are also poured into unit types, including some new ones. Here are some that highlight new gear!
Linolian Captain
Lophosi Palace Guard
The update contains a lot more changes that don't fit in any particular category. Speed round...
The Third Person Camera has been made more immersive. A better angle, dynamic camera movement based on attacks, a minor handy-cam noise, and countless other tweaks. This is one of those things that seems minor and is hard to write about, but it has a ton of impact & makes the game really feel very different.
Some of you know the statistics page was all kinds of broken. We've rebuilt the entire stats panel and system in preparation for 1.0 (tying into Achievements) but figured we'd release it already. This will reset your stats once you make a new character, but ... it will actually work now (hopefully!)
There have been countless combat tweaks but on the physics front, the weight of the weapon now determines how it will be thrown. Heavier weapons are harder to throw and feel heavier. Throws have also been improved across the board, to be much more useable and look better.
You can now see Bets you took on inside combat, and whether or not you completed or failed them.
The Weekly Report Panel has gotten a lot of small visual upgrades (with more planned!) and a few more notifications have been merged into it.
We heard you - the loading screen now auto continues, no need to press a button. The option in the game options remains - so you can still reverse this if you preferred how it was.
In order to allow you to read tips though (because for many the game loads too quick! This was our original reasoning) there is now a "press [any] to PAUSE" instead.
Across the last months we added lots of little performance improvements and, at least on my machine, the game runs far better. Report in, let me know if you feel the difference!
I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot. And of course, we'd done tons of bugfixes as well - too many to list here.
That's it for Preview #3. The update will drop tomorrow together with a 30% discount! Like what we're doing? Help us out and share the word please!
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We who are about to die salute you,
Jordy