This update includes major changes and reworks. I hope the essence of Warman is mostly the same and it does not feel like a game you did not buy.
Some elements have changed, but I am sure that is for the better and allows for a better game in the future.
With so many changes I expect there still will be a couple of bugs that I have missed. I do have an internal list if issues that still needs to be fixed, but they are not critical and I do not want to postpone the release even further.
If there are any features that you dearly miss, please to give me feedback and I will see if my decision to remove them was correct. Except jumping, jumping is gone for good. Barely used in my case and has the same utility as rolling to dodge. It may come back as a cinematic action to climb or jump down a cliff, but not as a active action you perform in combat.
There are many small issues that I fixed and improved, but did not properly track for the changelog. I have a better system for the future, so it is more clear what changes in an update.
Here is an overview of the major changes in this update:
Save location change
Location of save files has changed. The game tries to migrate previous saves to the new location.
If there are any issue migrating, you can manually move the save files into the correct folder and restart the game so the changes are picked up.
Previous location:
[Steam Install]/SteamApps/common/Warman
New location:
Windows: %USERPROFILE%/AppData/LocalLow/nine9/Warman
Linux: $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/unity3d/nine9/Warman
macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/nine9/Warman
Multiplayer Rework
Full rewrite of the multiplayer stack. The new architecture is based on Lockstep and every input is now deterministic.
With the new architecture is easier to build a complex game with lots of units, as the game now only has to sync the player input.
It does not matter anymore how complex the game simulation is for multiplayer purposes.
The flow also changed a bit, you have to pick a hero BEFORE joining a lobby, not after joining the lobby.
You can no longer change your hero after joining the lobby, for that you would need to leave and re-join with a different one.
You can not join a in-progress game, so that would require a new lobby if you want to choose a different hero.
The input delay is fine up to a ping of 100ms. Then it becomes a bit sluggish, because I am still missing client-side prediction for actions that need to be responsive.
I still have some ideas to vastly improve the input delay, but that requires more time on the technical side of things and I want to also focus on game content and new features.
Longterm this is the best approach to have a good foundation for multiplayer.
Also cross-platform support is missing. I still need to do a full rewrite of the game simulation in fixed point math.
Math calculations are somewhat validated on start-up and added to the game version hash, so there should not be any desyncs when the hash matches.
Mod support
Mods, called Scenarios in Warman, are now supported.
Maps and rooms are now fully editable. This is thanks to my internal migration to a new file format that allows me to easier build the game and be more flexible.
With this change I build an editor for Warman that edits all the relevant game files.
At this point there are still a lot of hard-coded files that are not accessible from the editor, but I plan to expose them as well.
Maps contain some settings that apply to a group of rooms.
Rooms contain a terrain and all the objects.
Objects can be freely placed and connected, allowing to create complex scenarios including mini-games and new game modes.
This update includes a scenario browser. At this point there is no workshop support, but I plan to add that.
The scenario browser shows each folder in the mods directory as a scenario and by clicking on it, the game reloads with the new scenario.
Warman in-itself is just a scenario that gets loaded the same way.
Build-in scenarios cannot be edited. To start creating your own scenario you need to duplicate an existing scenario and then you can edit it with the scenario editor.
Scenarios are fully playable in multiplayer, as long as everyone has the same files. Essentially the hash, that gets appended to the game version, has to match.
There is an engine_config.xml file that has no editor, where you can configure core settings of the game simulation.
Changing the tick rate does not work at this point, it is fixed at 20 ticks per second.
Changing any settings results in a different hash and WILL NOT allow you to play multiplayer, except the other person has the same settings.
The scenario editor can be improved a lot and I have a lot of open issues and usability improvements, but those are the same tools I used to build the Warman scenario.
With time I will expand on the editor and I am open to feature requests.
As this is the first introduction of mod support, not everything is set in stone and there may be breaking changes in the future.
I hope to avoid that, or at least provide a good path to migrate to some new format I might need.
New terrain and physics engine
The terrain is part of the room and required to exist, but can be fully edited in the new scenario editor.
The look of the rooms has changed drastically, for the better I hope. Including with the new terrain engine, there is a full rework of the pathfinding used by units.
The new pathfinding and physics engine is required for the multiplayer rework, so everything is deterministic.
Movement and combat now feels a lot better, as every action is deterministic.
You cannot jump anymore. I decided to remove jumping, as it does not fit in the type of level design I want to go for.
Terrains can have different textures, cliffs, ramps, height changes, a water layer, walkable and non-walkable textures. The terrain can be quite large and usually I build rooms that only use about 20% of the possible max size.
Features will be added and expanded as needed. All of the above properties can be edited in the scenario editor, except textures.
Fully modable terrain textures will come in a future update.
You will notice when playing that some textures have no variation and e.g. the dirt path looks very boring. The terrain engine already supports 16 variations for a texture cell, it is just that my tileset is not that good and I just did not add any variation.
New minimap and world map
In addition to the new room terrain system, there is a full overhaul of the rendering of the maps and rooms in the UI.
The minimap now shows a pixelated view of the terrain and relevant live objects, like enemies and interactables.
The world map now shows a more detailed view of the rooms. This uses the same minimap you see when being in a room, minus the live objects.
Each map is seamlessly attached in the world map.
For modding purposes the world map is rendered in runtime and allows a fully custom scenario of maps and rooms that have a proper world and minimap.
Improved loading times
Rooms in maps are now only loaded when you enter a room for the first time.
This makes loading screens near instant, on my PC.
With this change it is also possible to build big maps in custom scenarios without suffering long loading times.
New platform: macOS
This update includes a build for macOS Apple Silicon.
The build should have no major issues. I noticed some weird behavior when scrolling and weird permissions for folders when the game tries to save.
The macOS App is not notarized.
Experimental controller support
Finally the first steps were made to add full controller support.
Combat works pretty well and you should have no issues with either ranged or melee weapons.
Navigating the UI does not work well at all and requires more work. Equipping and dropping items can still be managed. Spending skill points is possible, but can be frustrating. Selling and buying items works.
Using the workbench is impossible and requires either a mouse or using the touchscreen on the Steam Deck.
All controllers should generally work but I only tested and have explicit button glyphs for: Ps5, Ps4, Xbox and Steam Deck.
Missing or broken features
Some objects that were previously placed in rooms, like destructibles, were not placed. They exist and work, if you place them in the scenario editor, but I just did not get around it.
I had to redo/migrate all existing rooms to the new terrain system, and that took a lot of time. Some sections in rooms are better than others, this is related to me getting better at level design, but also me just not having enough time to finish every room.
I plan to finish the level design for all rooms in the coming updates.
Procedural maps are not available. Every map is a modable object and the process to generate procedural rooms is not exposed to the editor at this point.
I had to remove some sections from the codex UI. The codex shows all available maps, rooms and if they were already discovered. With the changes that maps and rooms are now modable, it was not possible to display that information in the codex any longer.
This feature and the related UI was not very well thought out and I want to work on that for the next update.
I plan to build up the codex in runtime using the loaded scenario, that allows the codex to dynamically display all related scenario information and not rely on hard-coded elements.
The waypoints section in the codex will only show build-in waypoints and not all waypoints from the scenario. Again, this should be build up in runtime to support all the waypoints from the scenario.
Discover state of rooms is missing from the world map. This is also related to the mod support change. Same as with the codex, discover state of a room should be tied to a scenario and room directly, allowing a distinct state per scenario.
