0.97b - Master of Command

Hey everyone! It’s been a little while, and I know some of you have had concerns about the development of Warlords Under Siege—understandably so. But I’m happy to say we’re still hard at work, refining the game and pushing towards the best possible version before our 1.0 release! We've got a few seemingly small but significant updates lined up, and I'm excited to share what's coming next.

BUT before we go further, disclaimer:
If something goes wrong, and you want to go back to playing the previous version of the game, you can do so by right clicking on the game, going to properties, betas, and selecting the previous patch option!

0.97b - Master of Command focuses on something we’ve been wanting to improve for a while—unit behavior, responsiveness, and movement. Combat hasn’t always felt as satisfying as it should, and we know that controlling units has often been frustrating. And although there's still some work to be done on the combat itself, movement and control are significantly improved in this update!

Missile decks became popular not just because it’s fun to watch waves of arrows rain down on your enemies, but also because managing melee troops could sometimes feel like an exercise in frustration.

One of the key improvements we’ve made to enhance unit responsiveness, especially in combat, is the introduction of re-sizable colliders.

In previous patches, a major issue with unit movement was that whether there was one goblin or ten, they behaved the same and occupied the same amount of space. This often led to awkward, unresponsive movement - especially in combat. With this update, colliders will now dynamically resize as units grow or shrink, ensuring more accurate and satisfying control during battles.

We’ve also reworked the pathfinding system, now utilizing a modern A* solution powered by Unity’s Data Oriented Technology Stack (shout out to Aron Granberg for the incredible system!). This new approach is faster and more efficient, improving performance across the board. Units now navigate around each other in a smarter and more coherent way, though there are still a few quirks we’re working on ironing out.

As a result we now get much more satisfying hand-to-hand combat, which doesn't feel as dull as it used to. Units will now pile in, try to manoeuvre around and get stuck a lot less while doing so. The annoying "rotation jitter" as units get close to each other is also gone.

Talking about unit behaviour, enemy archers will also finally target the troops you have placed on the walls. It felt a bit silly that they wouldn't do that before. To compensate, units on the wall now receive 20% range bonus (up from 10%), and the Siege Shields upgrade provides 30% damage protection (up from 10%).

As you see in the image above, you can now place your units atop of Archer Towers, just like with walls. I found it a bit sad that archer towers become redundant, so I figured this would be a nice little boost. They're still not as powerful as some other towers, but I think this gives them a nice little utility. Units standing atop archer towers receive 80% protection bonus, and 20% range bonus.

THAT BEING SAID: beware! If your unit is garrisoned in a building (such as a wall or a tower) and that building is destroyed, your unit will now instantly die!

Our heroes also got a slight visual makeover. It might be that we need to de-chunkify Anwen a little bit, because she's not quite the slender Elf we've taken her for originally. That being said it's mostly the fault of animations!

But why did this update take so long?

Simply put, the code behind Warlords Under Siege was a bit of a spaghetti mess. The game was originally built on top of our first major title Citizens: Far Lands and if you compare the two, you’ll notice there’s not much left of the original source code. What did stick around, though, were some bugs and odd ways of doing things.

Although the game still has a lot of quirks, some which will not go away easily, we have managed to streamline the content pipeline a little bit and make things simpler for ourselves so that they can go faster in the future. I'm also doing everything with modding in mind, as I really hope that one day, I will see a mod with Minas Tirith, where you're holding off the forces of the Great Flaming Eye! More on that soon.

So, at last, here is the changelog:

• Units now respond to orders much better
• Implemented a new pathfinding solution, providing better decision making and performance
• Units will now avoid each other correctly
• Pathfinding is now multithreaded, increasing performance and improving unit movement
• Unique modifiers will now only be applied once and expire correctly
• Missile units can now garrison Arrow Tower (Tier 3). They receive 80% protection and a 20% range bonus
• When a garrison building is destroyed (e.g., a wall), any units garrisoned will now instantly die
• Unit collision boxes now adjust based on the number of soldiers in the unit
• Unit icons should no longer flash on screen edges at certain resolutions
• Modifiers granted by abilities and statues are now applied correctly
• Enemy archers will now prioritize attacking units on walls instead of the walls themselves
• Missile units garrisoned on walls will now face the enemy they're firing at
• Health values are now rounded to the nearest integer, so no strange numbers will appear
• Units with large speed bonuses will no longer glide around the map
• Garrisoned units can no longer move after being removed during a pause
• Gate Cauldron cooldowns no longer decrease while the game is paused
• Fixed attack visuals for Orc Shaman and Dark Mage
• New attack sounds for Merlin
• Keyboard shortcuts no longer bypass resource or cooldown requirements when casting magic
• Magic Wall Circle now has a more accurate block radius
• Unit upgrade requirements now correctly consider the highest level building
• New portraits for Melee Infantry
• New textures for Galahad and Anwen
• New model and texture for Merlin
• The card view panel will no longer close when pressing any key
• Wrath of the Desert model will no longer jitter or warp
• Arrow Tower no longer floats above the ground
• Units standing on walls now receive a 20% range bonus (up from 10%)
• Siege Shields upgrade now adds 30% damage protection to units on walls (up from 10%)
• Removed redundant test prints from log files
• Flying units will no longer spawn rewards in the air after being killed
• Adjusted buttons for removing player units from garrisoned structures
• Fixed a bug where gates sometimes threw errors when garrisoned
• The cursor will now always stick to the ground when casting magic
• Orc Shaman now has his own attack sound

For those who don’t know, our team is just 3 and a half people working part-time from home—we all have full-time jobs. We’re working hard on our games, hoping to turn this into something full-time one day, making games you’ll love as much as we love making them. If you’d like to support us and stay in touch, consider joining our Discord community HERE Your support means the world to us!

My last request is that you check out our next upcoming game, which launches on the 25th of September. It would help us immensely if you wishlist it, and consider a purchase! It's going to cost $3.99 on release.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2593440/Balling_Up/