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| The Varangian Guard Says Hello |
Raven Errant released on Steam at the beginning of the month, September Year Of Our Lord 2026.
It's my latest game, and it's a low poly medieval hack and slash RPG, were the player wanders around (that's the ERRANT bit) scavenging the dead (that's the RAVEN bit).
The game is somewhat of a self-contained world, various historical warbands wander the world (that ERRANT thing again) and stop off at campsites to loot the area for gold (that RAVEN thing again). These Raiding Parties clash with each other, flee if they think they might lose, and generally do their own thing without the player being required - though the player can join them on their expedition to get free XP from the loot sites. (if the raiders will have them, that is).
There has already been an update to the game, increasing the number of wandering (that E word again) raiding parties to 9, with the appearance of the Varangian Guard (late 11th to 12th Century version). As the warband factions are based on historical groups, and I have been creating them chronologically, we are just getting up to the "Transitional Period" of armour and weapons. The next group to be added in a not so far away future update, will be the Knights of the Tuetonic Order.
The game was always designed to moddable, like my previous games, Monsters Loot Swag and Airship Dragoon, but this one will eventually have Steam Workshop added to it - as much to see how Steam Workshop works for my own dev skills as anything else.
So, with this in mind, I created Raven Errant specifically with a base game system to cover the majority of gameplay (wandering, fighting, fleeing) and have a seperate gameMode module for doing specific gameplay "objectives". These are specifically called "gameModeObjects", and when each warband has completed all immediate tasks (like life and death struggles, etc) then they move onto the gameMode objective.
I designed a loading system which gathers expected game data - such as the warbands, equipment, weapons, armour, and such which is referenced at the start of the game, and then the gameMode itself will ask for further modules which contain similar, for example; mods to create additional warbands. This also allows the gameMode to control things like spawning, respawning, mission updates and completion whilst communicating with the base game, and allowing the overriding of base gameplay logic.
And it all works something like this:
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| It affects you when I get Steam Workshop working later in the year |
The default gameMode revolves around the warbands moving to campsites to loot them, so once the warband think routine is satisfied that it is safe to do so, it calls the gameMode to inquire about what it should do with the gameModeObject and the "Main Task".
Currently I am testing to make sure it doesn't break everything before releasing Steam Workshop, probably in a couple of months (December 2026).
Apart from that, there has been a number of tweaks and changes, and a lot more functionality added. Including factional prefered colour schemes. Previously if armour had colour it was randomized, but now it defaults to a prefered list of colours in the warband's factionData object. This also includes specific textures and materials for factions, very useful for knights showing off their loyalties with a team based tabard or surcoat. This will be show off soon when the Tuetonic Order arrive in a forthcoming update.
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| Enlist With Magyars And Your Clothes Change To Red, White or Green |
Previously when the player enlisted with a warband their shield would sport the faction emblem, but now their clothes also adopt the team colours. If the factionData does not have specified colours then it will be randomized as it was with the old system. If the player changes their clothes, the new clothes will randomize but still adopt the team colour system. When the player leaves the warband, clothing colour will return to randomized.
I also stopped the same colour coming up twice in a row when the player clicks on equipping armour in the inventory, so if you're wearing yellow and want blue, yellow will not apply twice in a row.
Headgear and body armour are now allowed seperate colours, and this gives greater variation in colour schemes. It has also allowed me to reduce the number of meshes a character has to load on creation ... which turned out to be the thing that hit fps when a warband spawned. Originally I thought this was due to the number of characters spawning together but it turns out it was the way I was adding seperate meshes onto the ShapeConstructor. More testing is required, but I hope to remove the warband spawning jitter soon.
A major change to gameplay is that warbands that performed poorly would lose some troops each respawn. Warbands were created on a fair points system, so better equipped troops cost more, and lightly equipped troops (historically older factions) would receive more men to make up the gap in costs. Respawning losses were capped at the original 10 warriors in the factionData lists, so was unfair on lightly equipped factions who could cost much less than later better equipped factions. Now all factions lose troops on spawning after a previous poor raid, and any faction that cannot field at least 5 warriors retires from the game. Previously retirement only occurred when a raiding party was wiped out in combat.
There will be more updates of Raven Errant, and more historical warbands are to come - we've only just got to the 12th Century and my favourite helmet type doesn't appear for another 200 years!
