Lmao yup that pretty much sums it up!The redemption arc of a filthy casual turned omega chad PC gamer/indie dev. Does the heart good.
Lmao yup that pretty much sums it up!The redemption arc of a filthy casual turned omega chad PC gamer/indie dev. Does the heart good.
Dev Update #33: Build 21 (Roaming Patrols, Dynamic Portraits, New Factions)
(Experimental Build Update)
Hey guys,
The first of the free post-release content has been uploaded to the beta/experimental branch. A lot of work has been done under the hood as this update introduces quite a few major additions.
Here are the instructions on accessing the beta version.
Opting In:
- Right click Dead Monarchy.
- Select “Properties”.
- Select “Betas” on the left menu.
- Select “roaming - Experimental build” from the drop down list.
Roaming/Pathing Patrols:
- Roaming mobs, so now you have roaming enemy mobs that will roam around. I decided to not make them actively hunt down the player as there are already hostile random encounters however combat will trigger if you happen to not be paying attention and walk into the roaming mob or they path into you.
- Patrolling mobs, bands of militia will actively patrol the roads going between havens and outposts, these are neutral groups. You can choose to attack them by clicking on them to interact or leave them alone.
Both variants will have triggers for settlement conditions too. Time of day will also impact the hostile roaming patrols. IE if you path into them during the morning, you will spawn on opposite sides, if you path into them during night, it will be an ambush scenario instead.
New Factions:
These new factions will basically be utilising underused armour sets and perks. The first step was redistributing the armour sets that were originally all given to the sellsword faction to some of the new factions. The sellsword faction was basically just where I dumped all the standard armours in combination with specific sellsword armours. Balance wise, this would result in some sellswords with extremely weak tier 1 armour sets mixed in with other sellswords wearing ancestral tier gear yet both units would have similar stats. Whilst in some ways that is thematic, because of the sheer amount of armour sets, a lot of them you wouldn't really see and also diminished the power of the sellsword faction if you got lucky with tier 1/2 gear spawning on them.
Vagrants
(Level 6) = they use tier 1/2 standard light helmets and armours, they have extremely high movement thanks to Lightfooted Movement perk and also have Adaptive Strikes.
Looters
(Level 6) = they use tier 1/2 standard medium helmets and armour, they have Graceful Impact, so are quite tanky if you don't have the ability to hit consistently.
Pillagers
(Level 6) = they use tier 1/2 standard heavy helmets and armour, they have perks like Kinetic Impact so will punish the player when they (enemy unit) are hit.
Zealots
(Level 4) = These guys will use peasant outfits, so they have extremely low armour however they have Nimble Movement perk so they will still take a few hits. The distinct thing about Zealots though is that all units have Calculative Strikes, meaning they will always inflict bypass damage when flanking from left/right. During midgame despite wearing low armour, Zealots can prove to be a challenge if you are surrounded as you are bound to eventually be hit from the left/right and as such you'll take bypass damage.
Fanatics
(Level 4) = These guys will wear the monk and butcher outfits with menacing hoods. Light armour again but they will have a damage reduction perk along with Adapative Strikes meaning they will eventually hit.
Adventurers
(Level 11) = These guys fight somewhat similarly to sellswords as well but have their own set of perks, visually adventurers will make use of all the additional sellsword variant helmets/armour that were only available in marketplaces/arena rewards beyond Korburg (first haven) and not originally worn by sellswords. Adventurers will also make use of the standard tier 3/4 light/med/heavy equipment.
Sellswords will now exclusively wear ancestral (orange) gear instead of having the previous larger range of equipment, however this change only applies to armours, for helmets they still have a wider range.
Dynamic Potraits:
This took forever to get working but was something I've always wanted to do. Dynamic portraits, IE a portrait of each character that will get updated in real-time based on the equipment the character is wearing. A lot of things had to get reworked under the hood to get it working but it definitely beats the old static portraits.
Known Issues:
As this update is one of the largest updates ever, there are bound to be some issues. I've decided to upload it to the beta branch for initial feedback. This update will probably be in beta for a while since there are still additional UI features that I am planning to add and there are still issues that I need to fix regarding the roaming patrols.
- Opening a chest breaks the patrolling militia, they will eventually reset though.
- Loading back into the map from a battle (contract spawns) will break the pathing/roaming mobs, they won't have map icons and cannot be interacted with. Again, it will eventually reset as you do other battles.
That about wraps it up, unfortunately it is taking longer than expected however with the scope of this update there were bound to be issues. Once this update is released to the public build, I will then start working on the new cultural factions. The cultural factions update will probably release much later into the year, think Q4.
As always, a big thanks for all the support over these years.
Cheers,
Kevin.
Disgusting.Achievements?
Very much cooling on this game. I haven't played for a good week or so and don't have any desire to fire it up again. The grind is so bad. If you thought pre-DLC Battle Brothers was tiresome, wait until you try this.
The biggest problem is the lack of enemy variety - despite what the skaven illustration on the game's steam page might lead you to believe, Dead Monarchy is all humans, all the time. What's more, while the difficulty does ramp up the further away from the starting area you venture, all the roaming enemy patrols, and all the smaller enemy camps like mines, are exactly the same for each map section. In the starting area, you will be fighting 6x outlaws, over and over again. In the next area, you will be fighting 12x fanatics, over and over and over again. To be fair to the game, the character development system is cool and differently built enemies require different tactics, so it's not quite as monotonous as it sounds. But it's still really bad. Other fights are also available, in the form of a few bigger locations per area, and also arena fights in castles, but I never got stronk enough to fight them without losing half my team in the process.
Which leads me to the second problem: losing mercenaries is absolutely crippling. There are two reasons for this. One is that much of the fun in this game comes from levelling up your dudes. Like I said, the character development is really entertaining and allows you to specialise a dude into a given role to a much greater extent than most other tictacs games of this kind. The trouble is, of course, that this makes losing one that much more costly. The other problem is that picking up new recruits is unreasonably difficult. New recruits can be picked up from any major castle, which usually has about three to five on offer, of which at least one is likely to have shit stats. The pool of recruits takes ages to refresh, and castles are a long way away from each other, and this makes picking up new recruits a major pain in the ass. It's not limited by your funds, as it should be, but rather by your tolerance for tedious treks back and forth and your patience for waiting near a castle for in-game weeks at a time hoping for the recruitment pool to refresh.
Battle Brothers suffered from this problem as well, where it was often not worth it to take a difficult fight if even one of your high level bros kicked it. It's much worse here, where suffering a casualty not only means losing what's essentially a traditional RPG party member you spent a lot of time and effort thinking up a build for, it's also a major hassle to even find a new recruit to replace him, let alone a good one. The Battle Brothers brothers, by comparison, are both more limited in what you can build them into, and much more plentiful in the gameworld. In BB you can put your warband through the Darwinian grinder where only the strongest survive, but that's not really a viable tactic in Dead Monarchy, where any new recruit has a) significant inherent value due to scarcity, and b) the potential to become a specialised powerhouse with a couple of levels in him. This dynamic naturally leads to savescumming whenever someone dies, which simply kills a game like this.
The upshot is that despite being released in full Dead Monarchy still plays very much like an early access game. The core of the combat system is pretty damn good, similar to Battle Brothers but with its own identity. The rest of it is miles below even BB's barebones gameplay. I would say it's worth picking up for a couple of hours of fun (the low price helps), but don't expect anything more.
Bantichai Any plans for optimization in the future? I had to refund it back then because I couldn’t run it at the lowest settings (and I have managed to run “better looking” games before, so it can’t be just my non-GPU), but I still hope to play this one day.
Good to know.It's currently built on Unity 2019 and some users have reported stuttering. I did a quick test on Unity 2021+ and it ran a lot smoother, a lot of the FPS drops have to do with the legacy UI system which is all I had available at the time of development but eventually I may do a proper rebuild on a higher Unity version, can't say for sure though. I'm currently still making UI improvements so there should be some improvement overall.
Very much cooling on this game. I haven't played for a good week or so and don't have any desire to fire it up again. The grind is so bad. If you thought pre-DLC Battle Brothers was tiresome, wait until you try this.
The biggest problem is the lack of enemy variety - despite what the skaven illustration on the game's steam page might lead you to believe, Dead Monarchy is all humans, all the time. What's more, while the difficulty does ramp up the further away from the starting area you venture, all the roaming enemy patrols, and all the smaller enemy camps like mines, are exactly the same for each map section. In the starting area, you will be fighting 6x outlaws, over and over again. In the next area, you will be fighting 12x fanatics, over and over and over again. To be fair to the game, the character development system is cool and differently built enemies require different tactics, so it's not quite as monotonous as it sounds. But it's still really bad. Other fights are also available, in the form of a few bigger locations per area, and also arena fights in castles, but I never got stronk enough to fight them without losing half my team in the process.
Which leads me to the second problem: losing mercenaries is absolutely crippling. There are two reasons for this. One is that much of the fun in this game comes from levelling up your dudes. Like I said, the character development is really entertaining and allows you to specialise a dude into a given role to a much greater extent than most other tictacs games of this kind. The trouble is, of course, that this makes losing one that much more costly. The other problem is that picking up new recruits is unreasonably difficult. New recruits can be picked up from any major castle, which usually has about three to five on offer, of which at least one is likely to have shit stats. The pool of recruits takes ages to refresh, and castles are a long way away from each other, and this makes picking up new recruits a major pain in the ass. It's not limited by your funds, as it should be, but rather by your tolerance for tedious treks back and forth and your patience for waiting near a castle for in-game weeks at a time hoping for the recruitment pool to refresh.
Battle Brothers suffered from this problem as well, where it was often not worth it to take a difficult fight if even one of your high level bros kicked it. It's much worse here, where suffering a casualty not only means losing what's essentially a traditional RPG party member you spent a lot of time and effort thinking up a build for, it's also a major hassle to even find a new recruit to replace him, let alone a good one. The Battle Brothers brothers, by comparison, are both more limited in what you can build them into, and much more plentiful in the gameworld. In BB you can put your warband through the Darwinian grinder where only the strongest survive, but that's not really a viable tactic in Dead Monarchy, where any new recruit has a) significant inherent value due to scarcity, and b) the potential to become a specialised powerhouse with a couple of levels in him. This dynamic naturally leads to savescumming whenever someone dies, which simply kills a game like this.
The upshot is that despite being released in full Dead Monarchy still plays very much like an early access game. The core of the combat system is pretty damn good, similar to Battle Brothers but with its own identity. The rest of it is miles below even BB's barebones gameplay. I would say it's worth picking up for a couple of hours of fun (the low price helps), but don't expect anything more.
Dev Update #34: Build 22 (Deployment Menu, Roaming Patrol Fixes)
(Experimental Build Update)
Hey guys,
This build will have quite an impact on ongoing playthroughs so a new playthrough is suggested, but not required. It is suggested due to the new "Deployment Menu". Overall, this update continues with more UI improvements.
If you already have a playthrough with "Instant Deployment" enabled, then the playthrough should be fine.
Here are the instructions on accessing the beta version.
Opting In:
- Right click Dead Monarchy.
- Select “Properties”.
- Select “Betas” on the left menu.
- Select “roaming - Experimental build” from the drop down list.
Deployment Menu:
- Manual deployment is now being phased out. If you have an existing playthrough it will still trigger but you will not have the option to toggle it on and off. Manual deployment is being phased out due to there being issues that I just couldn't fix (disappearing deployment grids, wonky camera etc). It's only used during early game and once your party is close to 18, it starts becoming a chore.
- The option "Instant Deployment" is now essentially toggled on by default and not accessible in options. This option always existed however the deployment itself was quite wonky and couldn't be used with smaller party sizes as the player did not have control over where they could place the units in relation to the UI.
- So now, there is a dedicated "Organise" menu where the player will configure their deployment position and drag and drop who is in active/reserve groups. You can no longer drag and drop into active/reserve in the "inventory/perks" menu, you can only do this in the "Organise" menu, otherwise it will break things.
- Within the "Organise" menu, the top box is active and bottom box is reserve, as usual you can drag and drop between the two boxes. The difference is the representation of the active box will match the deployment positions in all battle maps and it also allows for empty positions, meaning the first combatant doesn't always have to be in the top left-hand box. In other words, it is just a literal depiction of the formation. If you want your player captain to spawn in the second line, middle position, then all you need to do is to drag him into the corresponding position within the UI (orange highlighted portrait) and then the player captain will auto deploy in that same position whenever a battle occurs.
- These changes naturally do not reflect in ambush battles, as deployment in ambush battles is not two straight lines.
- I had to manually go through all 250+ battle maps to update their positions in relation to the UI so let me know if you encounter any issues, IE deployment positions not matching up with the UI.
Sorting Keys:
- Sorting keys have been added to Inventory and Marketplace menus. Previously the sorting options were all bound to one key that you would have to click multiple times to cycle through. That was made due to UI limitations however it resulted in the player not knowing what current "sort" filter they were currently on. This has all been reworked now.
- "Quality Filter", there is a separate filter button and it will sort the items from lowest quality to highest. Lowest items at the top so it means selling items will be faster.
- "Lowest Price", there is a separate filter button and it will sort items from lowest price to highest.
- "Highest Price", there is a separate filter button and it will sort items from highest price to lowest.
- The previous sorting button, "curved arrow" icon, will now just sort items in the order that they were added to the inventory, IE the default filter.
Fixes:
1. Fixed the issue of dynamic portraits showing the player's feet when "Faster Movement" is enabled.
2. Sorting of stacked items now takes into account the entire stack value rather than individual price.
3. Fixed the issue of roaming patrols breaking after interacting with the treasure chests that spawn in the overworld maps.
4. Fixed the issue of roaming patrols breaking after completing locations spawned by contracts.
That's it for now, there are still a couple more issues I need to tackle before this will all transition to the live builds. As always, thanks for the support guys.
Cheers,
Kevin.
Dev Update #35: Build 22 (Roaming Patrols Update)
(Live Build Update)
Hey guys,
The beta build has now transitioned to the live build. You will need to start a new playthrough for this update, it will break existing save files. For those that were already playing on the beta build, please transition to the live build, existing save files from the beta build will work without issues.
Here are the instructions to access the previous build.
Opting In:
- Right click Dead Monarchy.
- Select “Properties”.
- Select “Betas” on the left menu.
- Select “previous - Previous live build” from the drop-down list.
Near Future:
There will be a couple of smaller updates before the end of this year which includes a much requested QoL feature, "waypoint plotting" in combat, IE being able to plot a path when moving on the grid.
Then, a much larger update will introduce new endgame enemies and new helmets/armors right at the end of this year which will be released as the new beta/experimental build.
Lastly, sometime in the first half of next year, there will be another massive post-release content drop which I will elaborate on sometime in the future but rest assured, there is still a lot of content on the way.
For those that haven't tried the beta build, let's recap what this update will cover.
Roaming/Pathing Patrols:
- Roaming mobs, so now you have roaming enemy mobs that will roam around. I decided to not make them actively hunt down the player as there are already hostile random encounters however combat will trigger if you happen to not be paying attention and walk into the roaming mob or they path into you.
- Patrolling mobs, bands of militia will actively patrol the roads going between havens and outposts, these are neutral groups. You can choose to attack them by clicking on them to interact or leave them alone.
Both variants will have triggers for settlement conditions too. Time of day will also impact the hostile roaming patrols. IE if you path into them during the morning, you will spawn on opposite sides, if you path into them during night, it will be an ambush scenario instead.
New Factions:
These new factions will basically be utilising underused armour sets and perks. The first step was redistributing the armour sets that were originally all given to the sellsword faction to some of the new factions. The sellsword faction was basically just where I dumped all the standard armours in combination with specific sellsword armours. Balance wise, this would result in some sellswords with extremely weak tier 1 armour sets mixed in with other sellswords wearing ancestral tier gear yet both units would have similar stats. Whilst in some ways that is thematic, because of the sheer amount of armour sets, a lot of them you wouldn't really see and also diminished the power of the sellsword faction if you got lucky with tier 1/2 gear spawning on them.
Vagrants
(Level 6) = they use tier 1/2 standard light helmets and armours, they have extremely high movement thanks to Lightfooted Movement perk and also have Adaptive Strikes.
Looters
(Level 6) = they use tier 1/2 standard medium helmets and armour, they have Graceful Impact, so are quite tanky if you don't have the ability to hit consistently.
Pillagers
(Level 6) = they use tier 1/2 standard heavy helmets and armour, they have perks like Kinetic Impact so will punish the player when they (enemy unit) are hit.
Zealots
(Level 4) = These guys will use peasant outfits, so they have extremely low armour however they have Nimble Movement perk so they will still take a few hits. The distinct thing about Zealots though is that all units have Calculative Strikes, meaning they will always inflict bypass damage when flanking from left/right. During midgame despite wearing low armour, Zealots can prove to be a challenge if you are surrounded as you are bound to eventually be hit from the left/right and as such you'll take bypass damage.
Fanatics
(Level 4) = These guys will wear the monk and butcher outfits with menacing hoods. Light armour again but they will have a damage reduction perk along with Adapative Strikes meaning they will eventually hit.
Adventurers
(Level 11) = These guys fight somewhat similarly to sellswords as well but have their own set of perks, visually adventurers will make use of all the additional sellsword variant helmets/armour that were only available in marketplaces/arena rewards beyond Korburg (first haven) and not originally worn by sellswords. Adventurers will also make use of the standard tier 3/4 light/med/heavy equipment.
Sellswords will now exclusively wear ancestral (orange) gear instead of having the previous larger range of equipment, however this change only applies to armours, for helmets they still have a wider range.
Dynamic Potraits:
This took forever to get working but was something I've always wanted to do. Dynamic portraits, IE a portrait of each character that will get updated in real-time based on the equipment the character is wearing. A lot of things had to get reworked under the hood to get it working but it definitely beats the old static portraits.
Deployment Menu:
- Manual deployment is now being phased out. If you have an existing playthrough it will still trigger but you will not have the option to toggle it on and off. Manual deployment is being phased out due to there being issues that I just couldn't fix (disappearing deployment grids, wonky camera etc). It's only used during early game and once your party is close to 18, it starts becoming a chore.
- The option "Instant Deployment" is now essentially toggled on by default and not accessible in options. This option always existed however the deployment itself was quite wonky and couldn't be used with smaller party sizes as the player did not have control over where they could place the units in relation to the UI.
- So now, there is a dedicated "Organise" menu where the player will configure their deployment position and drag and drop who is in active/reserve groups. You can no longer drag and drop into active/reserve in the "inventory/perks" menu, you can only do this in the "Organise" menu, otherwise it will break things.
- Within the "Organise" menu, the top box is active and bottom box is reserve, as usual you can drag and drop between the two boxes. The difference is the representation of the active box will match the deployment positions in all battle maps and it also allows for empty positions, meaning the first combatant doesn't always have to be in the top left-hand box. In other words, it is just a literal depiction of the formation. If you want your player captain to spawn in the second line, middle position, then all you need to do is to drag him into the corresponding position within the UI (orange highlighted portrait) and then the player captain will auto deploy in that same position whenever a battle occurs.
- These changes naturally do not reflect in ambush battles, as deployment in ambush battles is not two straight lines.
- I had to manually go through all 250+ battle maps to update their positions in relation to the UI so let me know if you encounter any issues, IE deployment positions not matching up with the UI.
Sorting Keys:
- Sorting keys have been added to Inventory and Marketplace menus. Previously the sorting options were all bound to one key that you would have to click multiple times to cycle through. That was made due to UI limitations however it resulted in the player not knowing what current "sort" filter they were currently on. This has all been reworked now.
- "Quality Filter", there is a separate filter button and it will sort the items from lowest quality to highest. Lowest items at the top so it means selling items will be faster.
- "Lowest Price", there is a separate filter button and it will sort items from lowest price to highest.
- "Highest Price", there is a separate filter button and it will sort items from highest price to lowest.
- The previous sorting button, "curved arrow" icon, will now just sort items in the order that they were added to the inventory, IE the default filter.
That's it for now. As always, thanks for the support guys.
Cheers,
Kevin.
General Update #28: (Northern Expeditions)
Future Teaser
Hey guys,
What's this? Snow? A brief teaser at next year's major post-release content, "Northern Expeditions". More info will be released later towards the end of this year. New maps, new armors, new enemies (from early to end-game), entirely new weapons and abilities.
Cheers,
Kevin.