Hi everyone, Griffin here, Game Director and Lead Designer for Master of Command: Seven Years’ War. If you like what you see today, don’t forget to give our game a wishlist and follow on Steam. It’s the best way you can support the project. You can also join our Discord, linked here: Master Of Command: Seven Years' War Discord
In today’s development log, we’ll be going over what’s changed since our first dev log, and I’ll be giving you a first look at our brand new battle system. If you want to watch this development log, you can do so here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZw0mkIAzxU
Starting Fresh
For this project, we started 100% from scratch. None of our code for Fire & Maneuver, our previous game, is being carried over to Master of Command. This means we got to lay new foundations, and our aim is to deliver a polished game. That being said, we are still early in development, so everything you will see here is Pre-Alpha.
What’s New Since Our Last Development Log?
Name Change and New Focus:
The most obvious change is that we’ve retitled our game from Master of Command: Prussia’s Glory to Master of Command: Seven Years’ War, along with a new logo. This name change reflects the new focus of our game, which will now represent the big five nations involved in the Seven Years’ War, instead of just focusing on Prussia.
Our new nation lineup now includes:
- The Kingdom of Prussia
- Archduchy of Austria
- The Russian Empire
- The British Empire
- The Kingdom of France
Faction-Selection Screen Preview
Here, you can see a preview of our faction-selection screen. Keep in mind that many UI elements and the art are still a work-in-progress. In a future development log, we will go over how our game differentiates each nation in some pretty major ways.
Additionally, every faction will receive its own main theme, reminiscent of what we created for Fire & Maneuver. The theme for Prussia, composed by Jacob Gullion, has already been posted, and you can hear a preview of that track linked here: https://youtu.be/h4zWlLKKFtY?si=EMQifUuxKwMkF6nD
Some new art has also recently been made, including mouse cursors and loading screens.
The Battle System
Let’s get to the interesting part - the battles. This is a very early preview of our battle system. There’s still a lot of time we’ll need to give it more polish, especially in terms of animation, visuals, post-processing, UI, and the AI.
Real-Time Battle System
Master of Command utilizes a real-time battle system. There are no tiles, nor turns. Issuing commands is simple: left click to select a unit and right click to move. Everything is quick and snappy, and while our animations are still a work-in-progress, it’s a lot smoother than we had done with 2D sprites in Fire & Maneuver.
Your units can access four different formations:
- Closed Order: Decent firepower and melee resilience.
- Column: Moves quickly but is vulnerable to enemy fire.
- Square: Great to repel cavalry charges but is immobile and vulnerable to enemy fire.
- Open Order: Covers a large section of the front but is vulnerable to enemy fire and has weaker morale.
We’re reworking the way we handle formations. In a future log, we’ll showcase a new system that will allow players to determine the exact length and depth of their formation by dragging and holding right click to draw out wider lines. This will give players full flexibility to build their lines the way they want them.
Customizable Units and Flags
Each one of our units flies its own regimental flag, which the player can fully customize, including parts of the unit’s uniform color. We’ll go into more depth about that in a future development log.
Combat Mechanics
Combat is a work in progress, but the AI currently forms columns to position their troops to the frontline before deploying in line and engaging my troops. The AI has an issue where they group up a little too closely, but we intend to improve this over the next few weeks. We have a developer on our team whose primary job is to focus on AI, so we are making great progress.
User Interface in Combat
The white bar displays the reload progress of the regiment. This is especially useful because we have unique weapons for all the nations in our game, and they can be mixed and matched. If you’re leading a Prussian army and beat a Russian force, you can loot their weapons and your stats are updated accordingly.
Above the reload bar, we can see our unit’s strength in green and its morale in blue. We are making morale a really important part of battles, where superior positioning will win a fight rather than just sheer firepower alone. It won’t be uncommon for a defeated force to rout from the battlefield without a ridiculously high casualty ratio like 90% of men lost.
Firing Methods
Players in Master of Command can control the firing method of their troops:
- Volley Fire: Requires every soldier to have their weapon fully loaded before being allowed to shoot. This deals higher morale shock to enemies but takes longer.
- Free-Fire: Troops will fire as soon as they’ve got their weapon loaded. This deals higher casualties over time but doesn’t shock the enemy with sudden volleys.
Division System
Your regiments are all grouped under divisions, led by an officer. These officers can provide passive or active buffs to the men under their command by gaining “traits.” Traits are received after an officer levels up in battle and allow you to specialize your division toward certain playstyles. Players can have up to 5 divisions at once under their command, which means the maximum unit size is 20. This number is best for getting attached to your men, and each unit is unique with no copy & paste stats or uniforms.
Development Progress
Overall, we have been making fantastic progress in achieving our goals. All of our core gameplay systems are nearly finished, and it’s just a matter of spending several months polishing and improving off the foundations we’ve laid. Thank you for the support on our previous video, “What Happened to Fire & Maneuver.” I tried my best to respond to as many comments as possible, and I’m hoping to win back your trust and support with a far more polished release than our previous game.
I’m really excited to show you more about Master of Command, especially the real-time campaign system we recently adopted over the turn-based node system previously shown, as well as the customization features we’ve added. Let us know in the comments below what part of our game you want to see next, and hopefully pretty soon we can showcase a full proper battle in Master of Command: Seven Years’ War.
Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to wishlist and follow, as well as join our Discord server to keep up-to-date.