Well hello there!
Welcome to the first of our development progress reports. Excited? We sure are... This is the where we look to show off anything and everything we are exploring and creating that we think you might be interested in.
We'll do these every couple months to keep you in the loop! Can't wait that long? Too excited? Want to snoop? Well, luckily for you there's a Discord Server you can join and find out the latest and greatest before we make these updates. You can also ask us questions or give suggestions if you're into that sort of thing.
Alright alright, so, what's actually new?
🎨Visuals
Map regions now have colored border highlighting
Fortresses have been replaced with bunkers to start moving towards our new theme (more on this another time)
Campfires have been replaced with some more military-esque flags
Pulsing indicators for your bases on game start so it's easier to pick where to start invading
🪄Networking
Rollback and replay now reliably resolves desyncs between players and the host
Host migration! This is a massive one, and it works super well so far. If the original host leaves, the game picks a new host and it keeps going. So no more can a host rage quit and take you with them.
Plumbed in a new loading screen (with placeholder assets for now) to test out some ideas and better handle the game initialisation flow
🤖Bots
Added in the start of a chat system where they send messages, respond to peace offers, and naturally give you a bit of sass
They now use transports and attack ships for naval invasions
💂Units
When a unit gets attacked, it will "call for help" to try and recruit nearby allied units for support
You can kill your own units with an a-click to deny the deny other players kills
Selected units now show their stats, one for all you data nerds
🚗Movement
Smoother pathfinding around the front line - this should mean during large engagements your units bahave a little bit more like you'd expect and hope for
Vehicles now have weight and can push smaller units out of the way
Click-dragging when giving commands allows you to customize unit formations, now you can spread your units across a border with one command
❓Other
Absolutely loads of small bug fixes that are far too numerous to list out (read: we didn't keep track of them properly this time)
Applied for an Epic Megagrant to help fund art and animation work - fingers crossed for us!
Majek put together a this lovely tech demo video showcasing our progress
And, what's next?
Building a settings screen, with some juicy input mapping so you can customise the controls
Refining the unit movement and networking calculations to get it even smoother
Continuing to deep dive on the games theme and art direction
Creating a save/load system, and experimenting with rejoining games after being disconnected
A whole damn replay system
Aaaand some stats calculation and visualization so even if you lost all your matches, you can see that data lookin' pretty