Salvēte future Lanistas!

The time has finally come, Gladiators from across the empire are doing their final preparations, the officials are finishing up the arenas and the crowds impatient for when the league kicks off!

Ludus Magnatus: Gladiator Manager Simulator will release in Early Access July 21st!

So with the big news out, lets take this opportunity to take a look at some of the new features that's been added to the game.

Gladiator Variety

I believe this might have been one of the very first suggestions made on the Steam forums, and with good reason. Until now all Gladiators shared the same height and facial features. Only variety was eye, skin and hair colour as well as beards for men.

With these changes, height, build and facial features will now differ per Gladiator to create more variety to make them feel more unique. Furthermore after doing VERY extensive research aka watching Spartacus: House of Ashur I realised they would often shave, so body hair has been toned down for the males, but will differ slightly.
At last eye textures has also gotten a major visual update for both Gladiators and Lanistas alike.

Lanista Customization

I believe we've all tried at some point in a game to regret some of our customization choices in a game at some point. However, fear not - It's now possible to change your clothes, hairstyle and accessories at any time for your Lanista.

Ludus Renown

You might have noticed that next to your Denarii in the menu there's a new field showing with a number. This is your Ludus Renown and essentially an indicator of how "famous" your Ludus is. And while such a metric is of course fun to have, it would be a bit boring if it wasn't tied to any gameplay, which creates a natural transition to the next feature added I want to show you.

Exotic Trader

The Exotic trader is a new addition to the game that allows you to purchase different kind of contracts. These contracts are mostly tied to Exhibition Matches, but it's also a way to unlock new armours in the market.

Exhibition Matches

So what can probably be considered the biggest "new" feature is that of Exhibition Matches. Not only does it allow you to setup special matches against all sorts of exotic enemies (As long as you've unlocked them), it also acts as a way to boost your Gladiators' fame and Ludus Renown additionally. Because of this I've decided to add a 30 day cooldown to them. And to be honest, I might increase this further or make it an option as I don't want it to distract too much from the core gameplay loop.

Furthermore, it also prompted me having to redo a lot of the code behind how matches are done, as to support the new wave system.

Besides these things, a lot of smaller QOL changes and improvements has been added, a bunch of which was suggested by players of the demo - So really appreciate the feedback once again! For the ones of you interested in these kind of things I've added my internal "patch notes".

(DONE) Added Ludus Renown

(DONE) Added "battle cam" to Gladiators in matches

(DONE) Added new hairstyles

(DONE) More variety with body hair

(DONE) Added more Gladiator variety

(DONE) Added new Eye textures

(DONE) Added Multiple favourites icon + making them show in pregame selection

(DONE) Added Barbershop

(DONE) Fixed background characters spawn for training and tactics on Ultrawide monitors

(DONE) Improved Combat

(DONE) Fixed new hairs with helmets

(DONE) Added Exotic Market

(DONE) Improved Market Scene

(DONE) Champions cup now show division of the teams in the pregame selection

(DONE) New Loading Screens

(DONE) Changed Dirty Fighter

(DONE) Made AI use more varied equipment and weapon loadouts

(DONE) Added Exhibition Matches

(DONE) Added New Armours

(DONE) Fixed Dirty Fighter text

(DONE) Fixed trait gains

(DONE) Combat experience now always show as number 2 trait

(DONE) Added trait list for Gladiators with more than 5 traits

(DONE) Pregame - Fixed start match text

(DONE) Trait gain from training has been decreased from 1% to 0.5% daily chance

(DONE) Fixed Doctore(s) spelling when singular

(DONE) Added Blood effects to portraits of dead gladiators

(DONE) Changed so duplicate items now show a counter in the Stash instead of being multiple entries

(DONE) Added Localization support to the game and started translations

Now the focus before release is to finish/polish up a few minor things, but otherwise solely on Multiplayer and Translations.

All the best

Mathias