Dead Monarchy - Medieval | Turn-Based | Mass-Tactics | Survival-Simulator | RPG

I've been tinkering around with dismemberment and decapitations to bring a more visceral feel to the combat. Dismemberment and decapitations will also have an effect on morale but are quite hard to pull off. Once again this is still early testing and everything is subject to change but I'd like to say that dismemberment and decapitations will be in, in some form or another. Also the "gore caps" as I like to call them are not finished, which is why you can see inside the head/neck or waist. I'll scrounge up some textures later and fill in those gaps later on. Also don't pay any attention to the environment, I'm in the middle of migrating my game to a newer version of Unity. I've also zoomed the camera in further than it it is normally, just to show everything off.
 

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Just a small update on the interface again. Added some additional headers, change some statistic names and the main thing is I've done the tooltip for the items. Once again some of the stuff, including descriptions, icons (plate icon - lamellar name) and item effects are placeholder. Quite happy with the progress on this interface, to me it is something that can definitely make or break a game.

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Also, another set has come through and I've ready to show it off. The great helms have quite a lot of variation, there will be plain great helms, decorated helms (with rings) and fully decorated (with helmet piece and rings). I haven't settled with the naming convention, but just wanted to point out the modular nature of some of the armor pieces. I've settled with 3 slots for armor, Head, Body and Legs. The reason why I've gone with this is because the armor zones tie directly into gameplay as they are each a stat and that stat represents the durability of each piece.

More details will come as I come closer to the demo, the other reason why was there was too much clipping with some existing sets and I would of had to rework a lot of the base meshes to avoid clipping. It got to the point where armors looked too similar and lacked striking/prominent features as too much emphasis was placed on not having armors clip. That said, I think there is still enough base variation with 3 slots also the individual pieces like shoulders and wrists will be bundled together with chests, so within base sets there would be progression within it as well. IE chest, chest with gauntlets, chest with gauntlets and shoulders.

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Clipping... always the animators nightmare.
The artists have these great visions and the animators cringe.
I dont envy anyone trying to find that balance.

Looking good so far.
 
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Clipping… always the animators nightmare.
The artists have these great visions and the animators cringe.
I dont envy anyone trying to find that balance.

Looking good so far.

Luckily this is my passion project, otherwise I would have gone insane already. Thanks for the feedback! :)
 
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The equipment interface is near completion. Today I rigged up the model cameras and also did some icons for loot. I'm still deciding on the final style for the loot/equipment icons but I've decided to go with colored icon backgrounds with colors that match the appropriate loot quality. IE purple backgrounds = legendary or epic equipment depending on the naming convention. The backgrounds themselves are a bit more on the artistic side as opposed to just a flat color.

The icons themselves too, I'm deciding on whether I should have slightly abstracted icons, ie a chest plate represents the entire body piece, or more accurate icons that include all the components of the chest piece. Both have their own issues to deal with, but I think with the amount of equipment in this game, I may have to lean to the second opinion or find a balance in between. IE the same chest plate mesh right now, would be appearing on more than 1 chest armor, so it may get confusing if the same icon is used. For now I'm just using the basic models to give you guys an idea and also to make testing for myself easier. Moving away from the placeholder icons to custom made ones.

I'm quite happy with the model viewer, I've also thought small touches like that really draw me into the games. Aside from that, a couple more improvements to the skill tree side. Also a note on classes, classes are in but they are loosely assigned. IE a guy who is more proficient with a 2-handed sword could still be a 1 handed duelist but the perks assigned to him would not be utilized as well.

Also I wanted to mention, the icons will match up with the armor, right now I just wanted to quickly do up some icons from another armor set that I have not yet fully rigged. It should however, give you an idea of the direction that I'd like to go in.

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Hey guys, so have an update today detailing the beginnings of the world map and challenge/tournament mode. Tournaments are an integral part of core gameplay although they only appear mid-game and are used to determine the power structure of the kingdoms and domains. They are mid-game because there are precursor events that lead up to triggering tournaments, so challenge mode just skips the first part of the game and focuses on the tournaments themselves. There will be a tournament ranking ladder (which I've nearly finished) that showcases the participating groups and will update as you progress further up the ladder.

Each fight in the tournament is more or less a death match between two groups putting everything at stake to have a shot at obtaining lands and wealth. Between each tournament round you will complete tasks to gather intel on your opponent, such as who their leader is, their group strategy and classes. You will also have time in between each fight to train up your mercenaries and explore the map outside the village. You will also have to deal with the day to day struggles of just trying to survive until the tournament fight day, you will be able to receive contracts from various questionable individuals and when interiors are implemented, you will be able to "plunder all sorts of holes", in the ground like caves and dungeons.

The combat UI has also gone through another update, although it is a small one. Also a note on the world map, the towns are represented on a 1:1 scale, I've decided to go with this route because the overall scope of even the largest cities won't be so large that they are unpractical to portray on the world map. The world in Dead Monarchy is more or less recovering from a crisis which decimated most of the population, so the towns and cities are built around to cater a smaller population. This will help add more detail on the map, because the overall detail will be kept to a minimum. The finer details of the town will be abstracted like roads inside or people, but the layout is the same. There won't be grass on the world map but trees are presents and hopefully rivers in the future. I think this is more or less a nice balance.

The map is fully nav-meshed and a model will represent the player allowing you to traverse the map. As you traverse the map you will encounter random events and at all times the world clock will keep on ticking. Each day at 12pm, food and gold are deducted and if the requirements are not met, morale will drop. The further morale drops the higher chance members will leave.

While the clock has been implemented, time of day lighting hasn't yet, nor weather which I hope to implement as well later. Shadows are "disabled" or to put in better words not implemented yet as I am implementing shadows differently to how you would project them in default Unity workflow.
The demo is shaping up to be:

1. One town, that hosts the first tier of tournament or tourney. It determines the local champion of that specific town. There are 3 rounds or 3 battles. Tournaments are not to be underestimated, a lot is at stake, like your own life. You can prolong the fight date of your tournament fight by bribing officials.
2. A small portion of the map surrounding the outlying areas of the town.
3. A few dungeons and caves to plunder.
4. 10 armor sets, weapons which are hosted in a shop in town.
5. Random events on the world map.

As usual things are subject to change, but at this point this is what it is shaping up to be.

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Just a small tease today, between working on the demo I've been working on a new shader with my modeler. Trying to get the metal to reflect better and well look more like metal, as opposed to plastic. I think the results are quite promising :)

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So it has been a busy month as I've been working away on the demo. Still aiming for an end of year release if not very early into the new year. Also preparing a trailer that hopefully should be dropping at the start of next year. I've got a few screenshots of how tournaments will look, the armor sets you see will also all be available in the demo.

Also yes, that is a Katana and as such there is samurai/eastern inspired armor. I'll be giving more details on the setting in Dead Monarchy towards the end of the year however it is safe to say that I am not sticking strictly with a medieval European setting and will be eventually branching into different cultures :)

The pictures below are showing the grand melee tourney which takes place outside of the town, there will be smaller tournaments with less combatants and more space to maneuver around in.

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Mainly just showcasing the updated lighting, really gives depth to the scene. Also designed the tournament space which will hold most of the combat in the demo. Don't mind the missing heads :p

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Not sure how hard it is to do it, but it would be great to have more of positional moves within the combat. E.g. attack from one tile and end up on the tile behind your opponent, or do like a fint and end up on the side right of the opponent and so on. Of course that would also mean that you'd need to have positional advantages and disadvantages.
 
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Positional abilities such as attacking diagonally, attacking at range, knocking back, swapping tiles, attack 2 tiles away, attack multi tiles, attacking on coming opponents coming into your range (spear wall) will all be in the early access and elements may later be updated in the demo.

However for now, the combat in the demo is limited to just basic attack ranges. The main reason is due to animations, I am very particular about the animations and naturally attacking diagonal means you cover slightly more space, diagonal attacks are also separate to default attack ranges, IE N, S, E, W :)
 
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Oh, and by the way: If you didn't play it yet, I recommend playing Tahira, which uses a turn based, tile based combat system as well, and was one of the best tactics game I played during the last years. Might be the one or another thing to learn from it. :)
 
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Oh, and by the way: If you didn't play it yet, I recommend playing Tahira, which uses a turn based, tile based combat system as well, and was one of the best tactics game I played during the last years. Might be the one or another thing to learn from it. :)

I actually did play Tahira, but never really got into it as I'm too busy these days, however I did play Banner Saga which I'm pretty sure influenced Tahira.
 
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