Greetings once again, Great and Mighty Netherlords!
We return to you at long last, with the first of several important updates on the development of Lords of Nether!
Before we begin, please make sure to wishlist and follow Lords of Nether on Steam through the link below, as we are gradually going to move the majority of our updates there!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1566440/Lords_of_Nether/
It has been some time, as we have been immensely busy behind the scenes. We have been working on a number of big features, while also making tweaks, adjustments and improvements to other things such as dungeon layouts, lighting and more, but more on those in the next update.
Today, we focus on the first of these features – Combat!
Developing our combat system has by far been the single biggest task we have undertaken in Lords of Nether. Combat is a very prominant and important part of LoN’s gameplay, as you can naturally expect to be doing a great deal of fighting while conquering the world! We must therefore make sure that the experience is fun and engaging.
In addition to the regular challenges making a combat system for a real-time strategy game would present, Lords of Nether is at its heart a simulation game, where your orders are only a part of the equation when it comes to what your minions do in combat. As such, we are presented with a rather unique, but exciting challenge – how to make combat fun, with units autonomous enough for the player to feel like they are in control of (mostly) living, thinking creatures – a sort of loosely directed chaos! As no tried and tested solution for what we are doing exists, we have to design and build this entire mechanic and all its systems completely from the ground up.
So, here are the first steps we have taken in that direction!
1. Awareness
Knowledge, my Lord, is power! And the first step in acquiring knowledge of one’s foe is by using one’s senses! Therefore, your minions (as well as your enemies) are now equipped with several:
- Vision: A cone-shaped field of vision that allows units to perceive each other. This vision can be blocked by certain obstacles, such as walls, making it possible for units to lose track of each other.
- Sound: Units are equipped with a hearing radius in which they can percieve loud sounds, such as the chaos of combat or the heavy stomping of trolls and armored foes!
- Proximity: Standing too close to a unit will alert them to your presence, in order to prevent units being caught entirely off guard, unless certain abilities are used to nullify this sense.
- Harm: Any harm that befalls a unit, such as being bashed over the head or shot with an arrow, will send it into an alert state, making the general direction of its source known to that unit and those directly around them.
These systems combined give units the ability to detect and react to other units in a natural and realistic way. Units will try to find the source of the harm when they get hurt. If they cannot immediately see or hear their opponent, they will investigate the direction the attack came from, or the last known position of an enemy. Alternatively, a unit might hear the sound of combat from behind a door and try to investigate the source of the disturbance, etc.
2. Actions
When at last engaged in combat, the fun truly begins! Units now have the ability to perform a variety of actions. Gone are the days where we simply had goblins whacking each other with sharp implements! Well, they mostly still do that, they are goblins, after all, but now they have a greater variety of tricks up their sleeves!
- Offensive Actions: These are actions that are negatively impactful to other units, from swinging a sword to casting a fireball at foes in the back lines. There is a variety of things that these will be able to accomplish aside from simply dealing damage, such as applying debuffs to enemies or disrupting their spells and attacks.
- Defensive Actions: When not carried away in the throes of carnage, units may choose to defend themselves, be it by dodging out of the way of enemy attacks or blocking them entirely. If that is not enough, they may even choose to apply buffs and protections upon themselves or their allies.
Currently, Goblins in particular boast the ability to perform standard and heavy attacks, as well as a kick that may knock a lighter enemy back and disrupt their charged attack or ability. They can also attempt to dodge out of the way of incoming attacks to avoid them entirely, or they can attempt to block attacks if dodging is not a valid option. They can mix and match these actions, currently picking at random from their bag of tricks.
All of these actions are highly configurable within our editor, possessing many variables that can be edited and changed. This gives us the tools to create the many varied abilities and actions units can perform in combat, from melee strikes, blocks and dodges, to lightning bolts, curses and fire novas!
Most RTS games use random number variables to represent damage, but due to the variety of actions our units can take in combat we do not need to resort to that, and can instead use a preset damage adjusted by multipliers for specific attacks. This allows us to build a far more interesting combat system, which makes more sense in a slower-paced, simulation-heavy game like LoN.
This is the current state of our combat system. It must be noted that though we have shown units “fighting” before, there were no real systems behind it yet; it was a very simple approximation of combat, put together quickly to represent a rough idea in the game. What we’ve spent so much time doing now is building a truly intricate system that can and will tie into many others and be built up gradually as we continue to develop the game and add more content. This is the final form of our combat system, even if it’s only in its foundational state.
This has been the largest project among the showable work we have been doing for the past year, though yet more exciting additions to this mechanic are on the horizon:
- Unit decisions in combat will be tied to information granted to them by our extensive influence maps, which indicate how dangerous or favourable locations on the battlefield are. Units can then use this information to make (mostly) smart decisions regarding where to go, who to attack and what abilities to use.
- A Morale System that keeps track of how well you’ve been taking care of your minions, as well as the current state of a battle, will further inform the decisions of a unit and determine how they fight, or if they fight at all!
- Our existing Force system, which can apply various levels of physical force to units, will be applied to combat. This will make it possible for units to be knocked around depending on their mass and the strength of the forces being applied. Blocks can currently be broken if the damage threshold is exceeded, but this will also lead to an increased level of force taken by the blocker, compared to what they would normally incur, as they attempt to take the attack head on. This may cause an oponent to be knocked back by an attack that would normally have staggered them, or knock them down where it would’ve knocked them back. With sufficient force, such as with fireballs, or a particularly heavy warmace, some units may even be thrown into the air, only to once again meet the cold, dank floor bellow.
- Spells and abilities such as Sneak or Invisibility will affect unit senses, and sound propagation will be reduced through obstacles such as walls and doors. This will create a more realistic sense of the environment and an incentive for players to build dungeons in ways that will alert their minions to enemies traipsing through your domain.
There will of course be much more, more than we can reasonably write here! But for now, we feel the foundation of our combat is finally good and we will continue to polish and improve it as we go forward!
That is all for now, my Dark Lords! We will return soon with a wider focus update on numerous smaller but nonetheless important and impactful features!
Thank you once again, from the bottom of our cold, dark hearts, for your continued interest and support! This project is made all the more rewarding with the continued involvement and excitement coming from you all!
Until next time, Netherlords!