A melee of Norse versus KievRus versus Saxons at the back
Warbands now look the part, with each individual faction having it's own style and shield markings, because in the middle of a disorganized melee it's not always easy to tell who the hell is who.
So, without further ado, let's have a quick rundown.
Avar Warband
The Lombards - could have been the Franks but France features more later on
The Saxons, featuring the cool Sutton Hoo helm
The Norse, not a horned helmet in sight thankfully
KievRus
The Magyars, pre-paprika
The Normans (boo!)
And so we have our initial warbands, and I am only up to the 11th Century. Whilst shields and helmets tend to be unique to each faction, the lower ranking peasant levies do tend to rather look the same, so I might have to add warband specific patches. Back in the days of the Anglo-Scot Border Reivers warriors would wear the cross or saltaire on cloth pinned to their armour ... usually with the other flag on the back incase they wanted to swap sides mid-battle ...
With all the warbands now equipped - at least except for bows as I haven't out the code needed for archery just yet, but it is coming - I needed to bring home the awesomeness of hitting someone with a poleaxe. For this I hunted around for some of the old death animations which I had got for Airship Dragoon and modified them for the new rigging system which my current models use.
And so the whole thing comes together with slashing sounds, the ring of parried metal, fountains of blood and the screams of the mortally wounded!
Pumpkin!
And of course it has been All Hallows Eve. Can you believe that there are some folks who carve a pumpkin but don't scoop all the food out? That was 1.5kg of seasonal veg going waste! I bag it up into portions and stick it in the spare freezer ... which turned out to still have last year's pumpkin in it because I'd forgotten all about it. More pumpkin on the menu now!
Next up for Untitled Medieval Warband Game - a land fit for heroes! Time to make an actual level with terrain and points of interest for looting, to give raiding parties something to raid.
I have been stuck on this rock for 5 centuries - sorry 5 decades, feels like 5 centuries ... and more on medieval times later ...
Monsters Loot Swag has a new BETA version available on Steam. A BETA in Early Access? Well, yes.
The BETA branch is a whole new game engine ... well, actually it's
kinda the same game engine with a whole new system. This system includes
a fully function asset system, Physical Based Rendering (that's cool
reflections of roughness and metal to normal folks), and HDR!
Want
to try out the BETA branch? Go to your game library in Steam and click
on Monster Loot Swag, click settings (circled in red) and bring up the
drop-down menu, choose preferences and when the new window appears, go
to Beta in the sidebar and select the new BETA version. You can opt-out
of the BETA in the same way, by choosing default.
Don't want to play the BETA for the new game engine? No problems, the original version is still available.
Q: So why is it a BETA and not just the standard game branch? A:
Well because it's taken a fair bit of effort for updating and I need
extra testing for various internal linkages that I may have missed,
before I can set it to the master/default branch of the game.
Q: Is the default branch still getting updated? A: YES! The default branch is still getting updated whilst I work on bringing the new game engine BETA version up to speed.
There have also been ~25 fixes and changes, including finalizing the models and effects for the remaining swag attacks and the special use items.
Monsters Loot Swag now requires just 3 characters, 3 levels, 3 bosses and some extra stuff before Early Access is complete and it can be shipped. I am hoping for completion around April-May.
I've also been giving some thought about my next project to start sometime in 2024 and was thinking of making a third person medieval melee combat game, but not a Soulslike, more fighting against multiple opponents, but not a Musou-like either. Just a solid hack'n'slash.
I would like to make a massive single-player RPG but am actually thinking of something more manageable and bitesized. Something that might actually not require 5-8 years of work to finish ...
There has been quite a lot of this in the last 5 millenium ...
