SONS OF MARS — Playtest v2

A huge update since the last build. New systems for character creation, recruitment, promotions, combat, conquest, and more, plus a long list of fixes.

🧑‍🎨 CHARACTER CREATION & CUSTOMIZATION • Wardrobe System: Added a full character creator for your Roman commander. Mix and match armor, helmets, arm-guards (manica), and shoulders, all previewed live on a lit model stage. • Pairing Rules: Pieces that belong together stay together, and the game won't let you assemble an illegal loadout. • Bareheaded Hair: Hair now swaps in automatically whenever you remove your helmet, so there are no floating helmets or bald gaps. • Icon Picker: Grid-based selection with pan/zoom limits, deduplicated catalog entries, and tidy categories.

🛡️ RECRUITMENT OVERHAUL • Dedicated Fort Screen: Recruiting is now a single screen opened at your fort instead of scattered buttons. Hire Tirones, Miles, and Veteranus by rank, each with its own gold cost. • Live Costs: Running totals update as you queue troops, so the screen can never promise something the purchase won't honor. • Clean Muster: Recruited troops form up cleanly in the fort, and the balcony camera now frames whichever fort you're actually standing in (not always the first one). • Recruit Stances: Newly spawned recruits mirror the active stance of their squadmates instead of spawning in a default pose.

🎖️ PROMOTIONS & OFFICERS • Promotion Panel: Added a dedicated promotion screen with sort and filter, a full roster, step tabs by rank, and a close-up of the man being promoted. • Watch the Change: Promoting a soldier flies the camera in first, and the rank and armor swap now happens while you're looking at him, with a promotion sound, instead of popping instantly on click. • Officer Posts: Veterans can earn the Optio (deputy), Signifer (standard bearer), and Cornicen (horn blower) posts, each with real battlefield effects and its own distinct look drawn from a role-specific wardrobe. • Manual or Vote: Two tabs on the promotion screen. Use MANUAL to promote and pick a post by hand, or OFFICER ELECTIONS to let the men decide. • The Centuria Votes: In the elections tab, select which open posts to fill (click or click-drag across them) and hold a vote. The soldiers elect veterans into those roles in an on-screen tally ceremony, then the winners are commissioned.

⚔️ COMBAT OVERHAUL • Directional Melee: Rebuilt melee into a directional system. Aim your swings and choose attack direction with the mouse. • Blocking: Blocks now read the incoming direction, with proper block-and-riposte flow. Attacks and blocks no longer cancel each other incorrectly, and you return to your block after swinging while holding it. • Kicks: Kick to break an enemy's guard and shove them back (Space), with a cooldown so it can't be spammed. • Finishers: Killing blows can trigger cinematic paired finishers. • Deliberate Pacing: No sprinting while winding up an attack, tighter kick facing, and stray hits no longer knock you out of your own paired animations mid-move.

🎥 CINEMATIC KILL CAMERA • Per-Kill Camera: Added a data-driven camera system so each finisher can have its own custom camera move. The view swivels around the action during a kill and then hands control cleanly back to you. Built to be reused by any future finisher animation.

🧠 ENEMY COMMANDER & AI • Autonomous Warlord: The Gaul commander now leads his own war-band, decides when to commit, and can advance on you while you're facing the wrong way, rather than waiting for you to attack. • Skirmish First: He throws a randomized number of javelin volleys before committing to a charge, so he's sometimes more cautious instead of rushing in after a single throw. • Duel Dance: Against the player he pushes in, clashes, and pulls back out in a calculated rhythm, instead of gluing himself to you or constantly fleeing. • Run, Don't Stroll: He now retreats and routs at a full run, and reacts to incoming javelins by raising shields.

🏛️ FORMATIONS & BATTLE FLOW • Line Combat: Formations advance at a walk into contact and clash as a line, with an ebb-and-flow of men pushing in and falling back rather than a static blob. • Auto-Engage: Your following troops now fight nearby enemies on their own. You can no longer wade in while your soldiers stand idle. • Contact Triggers Battle: Fights begin on contact, not only when you press charge.

🪓 AMBUSHES (NEW) • Warband Ambushes: Bands of naked Gallic warriors can spring from hiding as you travel. They break cover, skirmish with javelins, and hit-and-run, routing after a short strike instead of fighting to the death. • War Cries: Ambushers shout Gaulish battle cries as they attack, several voices at once.

🗺️ CONQUEST, SETTLEMENTS & THE MAP • Post-Battle Decisions: Take enemy settlements and decide their fate. Enslave or spare captives, and raze or hold a town. • Handled From the Map: A captured settlement's icon glows until you resolve it, and the decision panel lives in the map's side panel. • Fast Travel: Travel between your forts and settlements from the map, with fort teleport prioritizing your Home Fort. • Map Navigation: Reworked zoom and pan (framed on open, cleaner limits) plus open and close sounds.

🖥️ IN-GAME HUD (NEW) • Command Display: A low-profile HUD shows your current orders live: command (1), follow/stop (2), charge (3), sheathe/draw (X), and javelins remaining (F). • Shortcut Hints: On-screen reminders for Recruit/Promote (N), Map (M), Objectives (J), and Build Mode (B), plus a TAB debug hint. • Health Bar: Your health is shown on screen. • Toggleable: The whole HUD can be turned off in Settings, and hides itself automatically when you open a menu.

⚙️ SETTINGS & OPTIONS (NEW) • Full Settings Screen: Added a settings menu in the game's UI style, opened from the pause menu. • Video: The standard graphics options most games ship with. Window mode, resolution, frame limit, VSync, and overall plus per-category quality up to Cinematic. • Controls: A readable control list and a mouse sensitivity slider, with sensitivity tied into attack-direction aiming so the two stay in sync. • Audio: Separate Game Sound and Music sliders, each with its own mute toggle. • Gameplay: Toggle the in-game HUD on or off.

🔊 AUDIO • Music During Pause: Music keeps playing while the pause menu is open, silencing only world and game audio. • Menu Sounds: Hover and click sounds across the recruitment, wardrobe, settings, and map screens. • Battle & World Audio: Added map open/close sounds, ambush war cries, and commander command shouts.

🐎 HORSES & TRAVEL • Horse Follows You: Your horse now comes with you when you fast travel, arriving beside you rather than on top of you, whether or not you were riding it. • Cleaner Handling: Improved mounting, dismounting, and camera handling around horses.

🐛 BUG FIXES & STABILITY • Crash Fix: Fixed a hard crash caused by cleaning up old battle corpses. • Zombie Soldiers: Fixed dead and severely wounded men popping up and following orders when you rally or form up. They now stay down. • Fast-Travel Corpses: Dead soldiers no longer resurrect or drift after a fast travel. • Stop Then Travel: Soldiers told to hold now follow you after a fast travel instead of marching back to the old spot. • Recruit Outside Fort: Trying to recruit away from a fort now shows a short message instead of yanking the camera across the map. • Build Mode Overlap: Build mode no longer overlaps other UI. Opening a menu closes build mode, and vice-versa. • Blood Overlay: The player and commander no longer turn fully red at low health. • Combat Fixes: Block and attack no longer consume each other incorrectly, you can't be hit during a kill animation, kick facing was tightened, and the attack windup no longer sticks.

⚠️ KNOWN ISSUES • Map and HUD scaling on unusual monitor resolutions is still being tuned. • A few settings tabs have placeholder rows reserved for future options.

Thanks for playing the Sons of Mars playtest. Bug reports and feedback are hugely appreciated — please post them in the Discord.