Hey guys,
So despite all the chaos that is happening in the world, development for Dead Monarchy continues. No fire will stop Dead Monarchy!
Today I just wanted to talk about my progress on the next major update which I guess you could call the "armor update". There is still a long way to go as the armors need to be rigged and new icons need to be made. I've been working on armors just on the side with my focus still being on addressing the more urgent issues that the world map has. The problem is just finding the time, but I am hoping to have something out by the end of this month in terms of an update to fix the economic issues.
The major armor update will be a complete visual overhaul of all the armor currently in the game and it also changes how the armor progression system works.
This update is part of the overall work that is being done to the world map. While there are broadly speaking three types of armor that being light, medium and heavy, they are restricted by level requirements. It means that you won't be able to wear heavy armor until very late in the game and that light armor progression finishes relatively early on.
I've now decided to make three definitive categories of armor with an even amount of armors within each category for a balanced progression. In other words, there will be high end light armor just as there will be low end heavy armor.
The world map introduced different types of shops in the settlements which sold different types of armor, but these types of armor were categorised mainly by their armor/helmet value. This also meant that some settlements would exclusively sell high end armor and other settlements would only sell low end armor. The armor update should address this issue by making it so that if a settlement specializes in light armor, it will sell a range of light armor from low end to high end. If you have a character that wants to specialise in light armor you can do so now and progress all the way to the end game as there will now be light armor that has higher level requirements.
The biggest hurdle with this update was the visuals. Each category of armor has 5 tiers and then added on top of that there are 5 broad cultural groups. I wanted to make it so that if you bought armor from Yamatar then it would look different to armor bought from Bretony. The visuals also needed to make sense, I couldn't have metal plated torso pieces pass off as light armor so each cultural group had to have relatively distinct light, medium and heavy armor pieces. Or in other words leather, reinforced leather, metal.
The other problem was deciding how unique each set should be, especially considering that the armor that I am currently designing is only worn by the sellsword companies. There are still other factions to do so it would not be realistic to create 75 unique helmets, one helmet for each set, per culture.
I ended up giving helmets less variation, but I feel the restriction has a positive effect on gameplay. So for example, rather then there being 5x tier 1 light helmets (one for each culture) there is only 1x tier 1 light helmet which is only available in one of the five realms. It gives the player more incentive to travel to different lands. That said, there will eventually be other factions that have helmets and armor that will fill in the gaps but of course that comes with the risk of having to fight them if you want to upgrade your armor.
I've decided to show off all the armors, so it might be excessive but it could also be a treat for the eyes. Keep in mind that this is only the armors intended to be worn by sellswords, there's still a lot more to do when I implement factions, but it is the first step towards that in a way. For the sellsword armor, I decided to go with more earthly colors, staying away from any bright colors but I feel that each set is still unique enough. The brighter more vibrant colors to me (first pass armors), felt really tacky and more suited towards the flamboyant noble houses.
I hope this demonstrates just how iterative development is and that sometimes I am willing to make drastic changes if I feel that it improves the game. Speaking of drastic changes, there is also something else I have been considering. I've been considering merging the basic attack body/head and break armor/helmet attacks into 2 attacks. So for example, if you attack the body, you first damage the armor then damage gets applied based on armor remaining, this would also apply to the head attack. I feel like this would streamline combat a bit more but also make combat feel more deadly, especially if I increased the amount of armor/helmet that weapons can reduce. In the long term, this also makes designing combat AI more viable as currently I have to run several checks just for the AI to make a relatively smart choice when it comes to using a basic attack.
These are hi-poly models, so they still need to be decimated before they are game ready, which means that the armors will lose some details when they are actually put into the game.
Nordanic Sellsword Armor from Vinmark:
Parthanite Sellsword Armor from Zabylon:
Khitanese Sellsword Armor from Yamatar:
Tiberian Sellsword Armor:
Anglish Sellsword Armor from Bretony:
With all this armor, I'm also thinking about randomising the armor values between a threshold just so things don't become static too fast. So far, these are the helmet/armor values I'm considering.
Light: 50, 75, 100, 125, 150
Medium: 175, 200, 225, 250, 275
Heavy: 300, 325, 350, 375, 400
So if I was to randomise say the tier 1 light armor, the value could be between 35-50. The values are set up so that even the best medium armor won't have more armor value than the worst heavy armor. The alternative is to allow some crossover but still considering that.
The bonus stats that light, medium and heavy armors give will remain unchanged. IE light giving Stamina, medium giving Defense and heavy giving Resolve. If I was to stick with these values, I would probably make it so that heavy armor is also a lot more expensive to acquire.
The other thing is that eventually I will phase out "cultural armors" and they will be reworked into armor sets for other factions. That's everything for now, see you in the forums.
Cheers,
Kevin.