After 2 years of development and 6 months since the last trailer video I recorded for the game, let's go over all the new stuff I've been busy working on!
UPDATED VISUALS
Soon after recording the video I upgraded the project to Unity 6 and HDRP (was using Unity 2022 and URP in the trailer video). This allows much better post processing, some nice optimizations and fading for shadow cascades, object motion blur, local volumetrics, auto-exposure, etc.
NEW VEHICLES
Added some new units that weren't available at the time of the last trailer video, like APCs, Artillery and light transport vehicles.
AIR SUPPORT
As promised, you will be able to request air support from your allies (if your reputation is good enough and you still have allies). That may be in the form of missile strikes or planes, so I added those planes too!
UNIT HIERARCHY
The Last General is all about the big picture of a massive conflict, so I reworked the army hierarchy to display companies, platoons, squads and individual units clearly on the map. I used a mix between visual representations for unit types, and some elements of NATO symbols, for those players that are used to those. In the future I will probably allow switching to fully NATO symbols too in the settings too.
STRATEGIC ACTIONS
In the trailer you could see hand-drawn attack arrows, but I didn't show any of the other orders available to draw. Here is a sneak peek of all the orders available (you can see them at the bottom bar too)
RIVERS AND BRIDGES
Islands used to be a huge single landmass, now they have streams, rivers and bridges, adding chokepoints and strategic complexity to the conflicts.
AI IMPROVEMENTS
In the last 6 months I've improved AI behaviors and pathfinding, made it work well with the new army hierarchy and greatly improved it's efficiently to be able to support thousands of troops without any performance issues.
LIGHTS AND AUDIO
Given the scale of The Last General, most classic Unity features aren't fast enough, so I have to create my own custom solutions for the game. One of those custom solutions allows me to have lights and sounds on any number of objects in the map (city lights, vehicle lights, engine sounds, fire sounds, etc.) without the performance impact of actually having to use thousands of expensive Unity objects. This allows me to have a large number of lights in cities at night without any issues:
IMPROVED ONLINE PRESENCE
I do my best to answer every single message or comment online and gather as much feedback as possible to improve the game. The TLG Discord community has been amazing and has grown to 1200 members in the last few months. Feel free to join to see updates almost daily, ask questions or hang out with other future generals!
I've also revamped the official website to include screenshots and a press kit for anyone interested in making videos or articles about the game, which luckily has been happening pretty often!
NEXT STEPS
For the next two months I will keep adding features and improving visuals (main things will probably be construction, C-RAM, drone view and better effects) then I will release a new video showing all of this, but more gameplay oriented than the previous one.
I will also start posting progress summaries here monthly.