Hello there.
First of all, to dispel any possible rumours around; we are not stopping development of the game. There is a great fear amongst those that support products in early alpha that developers abandon after launch. This is not the case with Rise. As it happens with programming, roadblocks may appear, people get sick and budgets get short, especially with independent companies. Our programmer may be very talented, but he's only one man, after all.
The choice of today's news being a continuation of the last is simple; we promised features that are yet to be complete. This does not mean our development is halted; we can progress in other areas as one section is still being made, and here we'll show what is coming for the game.
Our merchant system requires the dialogue function to work. It's a very important step for our game and will unlock many new areas to develop. Here is a small video showing roughly how it is going to work:
The rework of the Visigoth Captain (Hundafaths) is complete, and its new graphics will come to the next update. This finishes half of the old graphics used for the Visigoth first units. The other two requiring reworks, the Spearman and Bowman, will take a little longer, because of our workflow.
New portraits have been made to both the Visigoth Captain and Spearman.
We always mention in our game the presence of the tribal kings, and the first one we're going to make is the Visigothic king Theodoric II. This is a sketch of what's to expect of him in the future:
Next update we'll also add a new map, the Suebian Village. The map should be complete in the next few days, and should roughly look like below. Our idea was to mesh old stone buildings with newer wooden constructions, signalling that the tribals didn't care using the abandoned structures and instead went with their own wooden buildings.
Our Territory Conquest mode will start in the province of Tarraconensis. Our map artist is finishing the last touches, and now you should be able to fight for the conquering of the province as it is shown below. For now, travelling is not enabled soon; players will simply compete for wins and the tribe with the best score in a given time will win the region.
We also promised new units for each tribe, and here is a sneak peek of the new Basque unit, the Freeman (Askeherri). He fights with spear and small shield, but also carries a sling for ranged combat. As it is expected from hastily hired fighting men from non-professional backgrounds, Freemen are not very skilled, but can fill in two important positions relatively well; throwing stones before an engagement and using their spears to stop advancement of enemy infantry or cavalry.
Our poll is still ongoing; make sure to vote here, we are in a contested tie between two tribes that will be very interesting to see fighting with the other four! https://surveyhero.com/c/21a5b339
Last, but not least, I'd like to thank those that review our game, regardless of their opinions. Constructive criticism is always welcome, and our first negative review will serve to let us know where we are lacking to improve and strive to become better in our game development. Obviously, it is always a shock when it first happens, and the critic in question had many valid points we'll tackle on. Any of you are welcome to join our Discord or add me in your Steam friends, or simply make a thread in our forums with your critics, and we'll be very welcome to read and correct it, as it happened many times in our official forums (a big shoutout to a great German contributor to this, Majo).
As always, thank you so much to you guys for supporting our game. I am making sure these hiccups do not happen as often.