Glorious Companions News

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

Hello Companions!



This week we've only got a short news update for you. As you can see in the image above we have a brand new logo for the game and we're gonna update all the promo materials in the nearest time. Let us know if you like it and what came to your mind when you've looked at it at first.

Other than that we already have the quest system working and it should be easy now to add new types of quest objectives and rewards, and generate proper quests for the player at various stages of his gameplay.



Currently we're laying down the fundations for the politics system as well as world generation process. Wish us good luck with that!

That's all for this week, thanks for staying with us and don't forget to comment what you think of the new logo! ːcozybethesdaː

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

Hello there, fellow Companions!

We are remaking all the character models from the ground up and we’d like to share with you the first unit that went under the chisel - Trapper from the race of Valrenay.

Here’s a before / after comparison, whatch’ya think?



The downside is that the process of redoing both races will take time and we’ll have to wait even longer to start making the armor assets but the upside is that all the units will have the same, consistent style and will be ready for customization and further development.



We’ve spent some time compiling a list of all the animations that each character will need, not including the animations for using special abilities or casting spells which will depend on the unit’s skill tree. It’ll total around 25 animations per character if we group up some similar types of melee weapons together as a starter which is still a pretty significant amount to make.



We’ve also planned out the geopolitical system in detail but we’ll talk about it on a later date since it’s a pretty big topic on its own. For the time being let’s just say that we’ve already started working on the procedural generation of the world map for each playthrough and more news will come in the upcoming weeks.

That’s it for this week, remember to add Glorious Companions to your Steam wishlist and tell your friends to do so too! ːsteamhappyː

Hello there, fellow Companions!

This week we’d like to talk a bit about the health system in Glorious Companions and the approach we took in making sure our players stay wary of the threats on the battlefield without the frustration that a fluky permadeath can cause.

In Glorious Companions characters whose health drops below 0 HP faint and are unable to continue the battle. After the end of the battle, you will be able to perform first aid on the fallen companions (thus healing them by a small amount). However, if in spite of that the final blow causes them to drop further below 25%+ of their max health (the exact percentage depends on the unit’s Agility) a couple of things happen.



First, we roll whether or not that character makes it. Units with a higher Defense stat have a lower chance to die, although the probability is rather slim anyhow. If the unit doesn’t die it suffers from an injury which are grouped into two categories:

• Lesser wounds: injuries which will take a long time to heal themselves, to get rid of them quicker you should seek aid from a skilled healer.
  
• Permanent wounds: injuries that won’t go away and will remain with the character until their last day.

There’s a very small chance that the unit will get away scot-free without suffering any injuries, which is quite a feat in itself and something that other companions will surely be talking about for days! Each injury as well as other critical actions on the battlefield will adorn the unit’s achievements card and you’ll be able to boast about and share your companions success with everyone.



Now, getting back to the death situation. We want to make death a real threat, otherwise players can easily get too jaded as each battle seems less and less exciting and meaningful. On the other hand, an unlucky death that eliminates your key companion for many becomes a quick trigger to uninstall the game as they can’t be bothered to continue playing.

Thankfully, the world of Navaroth holds many secrets and you might come across certain characters on your path who could help you out even in the direst of scenarios. It can be risky and time consuming, but you’ll have a chance to make things right.

That’s it from us for the week. Stay tuned for future devlogs and make sure to tell your friends about the game!