Glorious Companions News

Hello there Companions,

Today our Steam store page has received a bit of a lifting. Be sure to check out all the new screenshots as there’s a couple of new interesting things to be found.









We’ve also created a Discord server for our community as we’re getting closer and closer to the EA launch, which should happen this month, in April. Be sure to join the server if you want to chat and mark your calendars!

Official Glorious Companions Community server on Discord

We’ve reached out with preview access to some youtubers that we thought would like Glorious Companions and we’ll see if anyone picks it up. If you know any good content creators that would be interested in GC, let us know in the comments!

Here’s our email address for press inquiries: contact [at] gloriouscompanions.com

Hello there Companions,



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbywG3Qx5tc
Today we have something special to show you - the first official gameplay video from Glorious Companions, and it's whole 10 minutes of unedited gameplay with a developer commentary on top!

Let us know your thoughts and please share it, we'll greatly appreciate it ːsteamhappyː

Hello there, fellow Companions!



This time we want to share with you some informations about the company leader’s skills. However, we should start with explaining the basic attributes that each character in Glorious Companions possesses and is defined by. Let’s cover them one by one.



[STR] Strength - it’s used to calculate your companion’s melee attack accuracy. On top of that most weapons have at least some STR damage modifier, and while when fighting with a sabre the amount of Strength your companion has won’t make that much of an impact on the resulting damage, having more STR will significantly increase your damage output with weapons such as axes, maces and polearms. The only weapon types that don’t take STR into consideration are firearms and crossbows. Strength is also used to calculate companion’s chance to Parry an attack (which can be only done in melee combat).

[AGI] Agility - used to determine the accuracy of ranged attacks, as well as your companion’s ability to dodge incoming strikes and projectiles.

[DEF] Defense - reduces the amount of damage your companion receives and is also used to calculate the probability of blocking an incoming strike with a shield.

[MND] Mind - it’s crucial for both casting powerful spells / special abilities and surviving arcane attacks or curses.

[SPD] Speed - a permanent attribute which can not be leveled up, each unit archetype starts with a given amount of speed and it’ll stay that way forever (unless the companion breaks their ankle or something). It determines how many AP points it costs to move a given distance. It’s also used to calculate the travel speed of the whole company on the world map.

[HP] Health - this one is pretty obvious, don’t let it get down to zero or your character will die.

[AP] Action Points - a crucial attribute, the more AP your companion has, the more it can do on the battlefield. First off in each turn you can only use up to half of unit’s Action Points for movement. Then each possible action has its own AP cost assigned, be it swapping weapon sets or rotating (positioning in very important in GC). Also each weapon has a different cost for attacking (and some also have an additional cost for reloading), for example a dagger uses only 4 AP per attack, while a heavy halberd will require 8 Action Points.

[RES] Resource - each race in Glorious Companions has its own resource along with a unique mechanic paired up with it. In short it allows units to use the special abilities they have learned.

That sums it up pretty well, we didn’t want to go with too many base attributes as to make each one count - so the players don’t just keep leveling up only a single stat.

Next we have the Leader Skills, and as the name suggests, only the company’s leader has those. Let’s cover them one by one as we did with the attributes.



Leadership - increases the maximum party capacity, the more you level it up the bigger your company can get.

Trading - increases your bartering ability, you’ll receive fairer prices when buying items from the merchants of Navaroth and you’ll be able to make a bigger profit when selling.

Tactics - increases the range of your deployment zone at the beginning of a battle.

Intelligence - when leveling up this skill the tooltips will start giving you more and more info on enemy parties in the world map and on enemy troops on the battlefield.

First Aid - increases the chances of your companions not permanently dying after receiving a fatal wound.

Spoil - increases the amount and/or quality of loot your receive after a won battle.

Wayfaring - impacts your company’s travelling speed on the world map.

Construction - decreases the amount of time it takes to construct new buildings in the settlements you own, as well as the time it takes to properly fortificate your camps (more on that in future devlogs).

Surgery - increases the rate at which your companions regenerate their health passively on the world map.

That’d be it for this week’s update, thanks for staying with us! Which Leader Skill will you be “maxing out” at the beginning of your journey?

As always remember to add Glorious Companions to your Steam wishlist and share the game with your friends!

Hello Companions!

Come and see how we’ve made the new character for the Valrenay race - from the concept stage to the finished low poly, textured model.



We start off with a blueprint for each character, it’s a base for further modelling. We focus here on the general proportions and the silhouette of a unit, as well as its color scheme. However, we often change the latter in the later stages of production. The blueprint is also a nice reference for texturing further down the line.



The next step is creating a “sketch” of the character in high poly. It’s important to get the overall proportions of the model right at this stage. Considering that it allows us for a faster iteration speed, it’s the stage where we can implement any of the last minute ideas that we had not thought of during the concept art phase. After that, we try to make it a rule to leave the geometry alone and use texturing to polish everything up.



The low poly model is subsequently created based on the high poly version. After that, we get to the most important part in bringing the character to life - the hand painted texture.

On top of that, to be fully game-ready, the model needs to be rigged and properly animated.



Engineer is the 4th Tier unit of the Valrenay race and has unique access to the Engineering skill tree. She is known for her vast array of different gadgets that she deploys on the battlefield as well as surprisingly high defence capabilities. She’s able to control the battlefield well, making it harder for enemies to pass through the initial line of your formation. Pair her up with a couple of Marksmen and suddenly you’re cooking with gas.

That’s all for this week, make sure to tune in for the next week’s devlog!

As always remember to add Glorious Companions to your Steam wishlist and convince your friends to do so too! ːsteamsaltyː

Hello Companions!

Today we'd like to talk a little a bit about the intricate process that is procedural world generation. It is a vast topic, a core feature of the game and something that we're constantly improving and as such we've decided to split this material into few parts. In this devlog we're going to focus on landmass generation.

First, in order to construct our terrain we generate two maps represented as 2D textures that contain information regarding the elevation and moisture of the island where our players (that would be you guys) will play. These textures are created by taking simple noise functions which are subsequently manipulated to fit our needs. The elevation map has more details as we don't want our terrain to be too boring whereas the moisture map provides us with more general areas that affect the environment.



Both maps have the dimensions analogous to the vertices count of the mesh they're describing. The whiter the pixel in the elevation map, the higher the vertex of the mesh becomes. Likewise, blue areas of the moisture map constitute wet areas on the map.

All that information is taken into account when constructing our terrain. Elevation is scaled and modified accordingly to not be too overwhelming considering the camera angle and the zoom of the map that we're targeting in the game. On the other hand, moisture alongside elevation dictates the specific texture and biome of the area. For instance, flat regions just above water with little moisture will produce a desert, whereas regions with the same height but high moisture will yield beautiful meadows.



In order to avoid a situation where the terrain would stick out above water like a sore thumb, we've implemented a gradual yet steep falloff outside the coastline where a plane with a water shader seamlessly blends with the mesh and produces a nice illusion of the water gently lapping the beaches.



Looks pretty cool and it's just the beginning! In the next part of the series we'll cover generating our cities and vegetation to bring some more life onto the playing field.

As always remember to add Glorious Companions to your Steam wishlist and convince your friends to do so too! ːgolemː