Warlords,
First off, thank you all for your extreme patience. I try my best to reduce the wait between announcements, but this time was a special case. Shortly following the release of the demo last fall, I traveled throughout Japan for almost 3 months over the holidays. It was an enlightening trip, and I was even able to visit the eponymous (and mysterious) island of Awaji! I will share more about this expedition via Discord shortly.
(Central Awaji... looks like a fun place for a Warlord game)
While in Japan, I was able to research and plan out much of the remainder of the game. So immediately upon returning to the States in January, I got back to work developing. Although I was debating on whether I should release another demo, or save everything for the full game, I decided it would be more fun for all of us to have something exciting to try out while waiting.
Almost every file in the game was changed over the past few months, so while a complete list of changes is impossible to generate, here are the "big ticket" items new in this demo!
Update Log
Horses, horseback riding, and mounted AI
Bows and ranged AI
5 arrow types and ammunition switching
Advanced arrow ballistics including penetration depth, ricochets, bounces, and shatters
Massive physics optimizations, especially noticeable in large battles
New instant action map
Updated and expanded foliage including bamboo
Warrior's mansion environment (The smallest possible example, just a taste of what is to come. Also note it is missing interior props for now)
Yabusame (traditional horseback archery) track, go WSW from the spawn point to find it
Dynamic interior lighting
Interactable and destructible doors and shutters
Shield deploying AI
Blood fidelity improvements
Melee animation follow-through and hit lags
Unique melee sounds for each weapon
Outdoor sound reverb
Improvements to AI movement and fluidity
General improvements
Please enjoy this new demo, and let me know either on Steam or Discord if you come across any bugs. Following this release I will be hard at work on the campaign portion of the game!
Also, I am thinking about hosting a Yabusame competition using the new track, so if you are interested in that, join the Discord to stay up to date!
Until next time,
Darkmatter
