Hey guys,

So I'm still alive amidst all this chaos and I hope you guys are all keeping safe as well. Things may seem a little quiet for Dead Monarchy but as I mentioned a while back I have decided to completely rebuild the game from the ground up. I'm now more or less fully submerged in the rebuild so it will be a while before I have anything substantial to show but I feel like the current build of DM is in a relatively good position, especially when considering it's still only $10 after several updates.

There are several things that I have to look into for the rebuild, I'll be upgrading to a newer version of Unity and also overhauling and upgrading the development tools that I am using so it is a lengthy process. I still stand firmly behind my decision to rebuild despite how long things are taking as it is the only real way forward. Anything less is really just a temporary fix.

Rebuilding means I can strip things down but also improve upon things that already work. The majority of my time has been spent on designing and revising concepts and also designing new things like a "resource gathering" system which doesn't necessarily have to involve combat.

Aside from that, I've taken a completely new approach to armor, as customization is one of the core pillars of DM. I've decided to go ahead and design a sleuth of new armor sets to further increase the variety of equipment as that was one of the issues that was quite evident in the previous builds.

This might change but at this point I'm leaning towards separating armor into "Standard, Ancestral and Masterwork" armors. As Dead Monarchy has post-apocalyptic undertones, there are hints towards previous civilizations that have come and gone so I used that as the basis.

Standard armor is what you will have relatively easy access to, so long as you have the crowns to afford it. The visual design of standard armors was to ensure that each set had a unique torso piece and helmet with the underlayers mainly consisting of a universal "material" like chainmail or leather. From a design standpoint it means I can spread my art assets around further but from an immersion/logical point of view a chainmail hauberk was more or less the "go-to" armor anyway. Armor design has taken inspiration from a vast period of time so it is somewhat of an amalgamation of different designs but still grounded in reality. I'd place "standard armors" at around 5th century AD in terms of the armor pieces that are readily available. So you won't really see things like shoulder/wrist armor. Here is an example:



Every region has its own armor design but it still needs to adhere to the same design guidelines I've set out, so you have a unique torso and helmet piece and the icons would reflect those models. In the current build what changes between sets is mainly "tabbards" or the underlayers but those are really hard to spot so the idea is to make each armor set more visually unique both in combat and when viewing in menus.

Following that idea, the next set could look something like this:



As you can see the chainmail tabbard is the same, but the actual torso piece and helmet models are unique and change and those would be reflected in the icons too.

Then when you apply that chainmail tabbard to armor from another region, you could get something like this:



Ancestral armors, are armors from before the "Great Mistake" they are like sets that can't be reproduced with the resources and knowledge that is available as of now. You could almost say that the world of DM got up to about 16/17th century before it got blasted back in time. Ancestral armor are "rare" armors that will have higher stats and unique modifiers. They also share assets from standard armors but there is such a huge jump that to me they feel like two different sets. So it could look like something like this:



Masterwork armors, I haven't completely decided what to do with them but the idea is that they only come from one source. It's like pseudo legendary but I am against having only one unique item as I feel that's too much of a punishment if its lost. So you can obtain more than one copy of these items but it'll be very very hard.

I keep saying "it could look like this" as I'm still not 100% sure but they would more or less have completely unique meshes aside from the underlayer chainmail, but at that point you can't really make a chainmail hauberk different, especially when it's under layers of metal. So a masterwork armor could look something like this:





That's all for now, again thank you to everyone for the support and patience. DM is an ambitious game that much I know, it's subject to a lot of iteration as it is my passion project but I'll keep plodding along.

There probably won't be another announcement for a while but as always I check the forums daily so I'm still around to answer any questions and I'll probably make a "Rebuild Thread" once my ideas have at least been prototyped.

Cheers,
Kevin.

Note: This update is not 100% compatible with current save files.

Hey guys,

So first up, Dead Monarchy has a couple more days until the sale is over. This is another update in response to player feedback and brings more tweaks to the overworld map. This update will probably be the last update for a while as I would now like to spend my limited time on rebuilding Dead Monarchy. Obviously development hasn't stopped but there is a shift in things now. I'll still be on the forums, listening to player feedback but I won't be able to really act on them yet I will consider them when rebuilding.

Having said all that, there will still be forums posts and I will be posting official updates as I continue the next step in my development journey. The future is somewhat unpredictable now, I don't really know how long this rebuild will take as my financial income has dwindled but it is the right step forward and I know that so long as I'm alive I will get the job done.

The loss in financial income (day job) just translates to longer development times basically, it has nothing to do with IF the game will be completed but rather WHEN as I have now mostly secured all the custom art assets that I need, it's just a matter of time really as I alternate between working on art assets and then directly on the rebuilding process.

Lastly, I'd like to again thank everyone for their support and to the new players that have bought the game during the sales period. Also thanks to Blindseye and stcrispin for their reviews.

- Sped up map movement speed by x3.

- You can now use the arrow keys to pan the camera whilst in combat and Right Ctrl and 0 (Num Pad) to rotate the camera. This also applies to the world map.

- Removed obsolete weapons from siege loot tables.

- Legendary equipment cost reduced to 24k.

- Monarch level reduced to level 50, more in line now with updated player levels.

- Vault UI now splits the party into Party/Garrison.

- Cost of herbs reduced to the same price as tools.

- Herbs now also restore Strength by +25.

- All starting companions now only have a -10 crowns daily upkeep.

- Condition now starts at 10 and increases up to 20.

EDIT: Added couple more things:

- Reduced end phase sound by 50%, shouldn't be as loud now.

- Take All button in battle loot menu is now right at the top.

- Changed "purchase" button to "hire" button in the recruitment menu.

Cheers,
Kevin.

Hey guys,

Just a very small update. I disabled Unity's anonymous collection of hardware stats as reported by "lonetrav". I wasn't even aware of this, as when I looked into it, it was actually an option that I had to opt out of, rather than opt in. In other words, there is a setting in Unity "Disable HW Statistics" and it is disabled by default. If it is still triggering let me know.

UPDATE: Disable another setting regarding analytics, updated to Build 7.31.

Cheers,
Kevin.

Hey guys,

This is just another small update that addresses a couple issues brought up by the community. I'd like to say thank you again to everyone that has decided to support DM especially during the sale, the extra added revenue is sorely needed.

I'd also like to thank the 4 players (Cynath, rebelpoet, Wolfgang, fiby12) for their recent reviews, they have been very motivating to read in these trying times.


- Fixed the issue of not allowing more than 5 abilities on the ability bar. All 9 active abilities (weapon abilities) should appear on the shortcut bar now. This will only apply to new characters unfortunately.

- Added a button to the left of the building research progress UI. If you press the + button, you can now access the upgrade menu regardless of where you are on the map.

- Mentioned in the tutorial (page 8) that you can access the inventory menu by pressing the "I" button.

- Further tweaked how contract difficulty is determined, it is now based on the days passed. First 30 days, 75% chance for 1 star, 25% for 2 star, no 3 star. Day 31-60, 1 star reduced to 40% chance, 2 star more frequent with small chance of 3 star. Day 61-100, 1 star further reduced to 25% chance, more even spread of level 2 and 3 star. Beyond 100, 10% chance for star 1, if that roll fails then 50% for 2 star or 1 star.

- Fixed missing faces on the inside of the new armor models.

- Fixed lighting in town to properly light character models when in the various menus.

- Added an "End Day" button to the world map layer, this means you can end the day without moving around. The button is to the left of the "Company Morale" UI, a moon icon.

Cheers,
Kevin.

Hey guys,

I'd just like to mention first how truly grateful I am for all the support, really am glad to have such a supportive community!

Important: Dead Monarchy is now 35% off and the sale will be running for 2 weeks. I just wanted to mention that the tutorial still needs to be reworked and may be a little confusing for new players. If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the forums.


This update brings the new changes to the live build but also addresses the crafting system as previously it was broken due to the new weapons and armor. Also added in a few tweaks.

- The crafting system has now been updated to accommodate the armor and weapons overhaul. You can now craft starting armor and weapons straight away without upgrading the workshop first.

- The crafting requirements for weapons have been shuffled around, the 10 metals have been worked into the 5 tiers of armor and weapons.

- New weapon models and icons for weapons have now been added.

- Upgrading the arena building now grants a passive EXP boost to all soldiers that are garrisoned (reserve).

- Workshop and Arena information has been updated to reflect the changes.

- The new armors are now displaying correct names in certain UI menus instead of their editor names.

- Tooltips for certain items have been updated, like gems no longer mentioning the marketplace building that was taken out when the world map was added. Metal and wood tooltips updated too.

- Added a UI to display the main objectives on the screen at all times.

- Fixed the scroll bar UI in the recruitment menu, it is now using the same texture as all the other menus for the scroll bar.

- The player now starts with x10 tools and x5 herbs, won’t take into effect unless you start a new game.

Cheers,
Kevin.

Hey guys,

So the operation went smoothly and now I'm just taking things easy as I recover. While I spend the majority of my time just laying down resting, I've had a lot of time to think and plan. A lot of time to think about the future of Dead Monarchy and also the current situation we are all facing.

So I guess it is time for me to address the elephant in the room, otherwise known as the Coronavirus or Covid-19. As the situation continues to intensify it will no doubt impact upon development. I'm a solo indie developer working on a project that has been entirely self-funded yet I cannot work on this project full-time as it is not generating enough revenue for me to leave the multiple day jobs that I'm juggling. At the end of the day, I need enough money to support my family, our day to day needs and whatever freelancers that I'm working with.

It's only a matter of time before the restaurants and cafes shut down and so when that happens a significant portion of my income will be affected. It's not all doom and gloom though, this isn't when I say that I'm stopping development but it has been a very rude awakening for me.

If there is a total lockdown in Australia, who knows how long that will last and the revenue alone that I make from Dead Monarchy won't cover the daily expenses. To put things into context, I've spent over 8000 hours now on development and I have netted under 10K. The game has sold 1336 copies and has 30 reviews of which 27 are publicly displayed. I'm sure a few indie developers might be interested to see the actual figures too, so I've posted them up.



The figures are pretty brutal but at the same time, these were the figures I was more or less expecting. This is the first game from an unknown developer and it is also an early access title. I've noticed quite a lot of my posts recently have been quite "negative" I suppose and I'm not inherently searching for sympathy but I'm just talking about my development journey and it just so happens that the end of 2019/2020 has more or less been the hardest year in my entire 27 years of existence.

At the same time, I also want to say that I am extremely grateful for everyone that has bought, tried, reviewed and wishlisted the game, the support without a doubt is very encouraging. I knew Dead Monarchy wouldn't be a hit right out the gate, it's a niche game and a passion project of mine that will go through countless iterations. I was more or less plodding along but sometimes passion doesn't put food on the table, especially when your primary source of income is suddenly under threat by a global pandemic of all things. I knew my development journey would be hard, but I didn't see this coming haha.

Now that I got all of that out of the way, I want to stress that development of Dead Monarchy will continue, as a solo developer I don't inherently rely on anyone or have to pay anyone to perform crucial tasks, that is the one good thing about working on this project alone. So long as I'm alive, Dead Monarchy will continue to move forward.

That said, I need to start thinking about the future and think about generating multiple sources of income so I can support myself. As such, I've decided to do a complete rebuild of Dead Monarchy from the ground up. At first glance that doesn't really make sense, it might make more sense to rush the game out but I have my reasons.

The rebuild is really a COMPLETE rebuild, I will be looking into every single aspect of DM from models to formulas, UI and gameplay etc etc. After the rebuild is completed, that will most likely be the point in time where I will increase the price, I feel that is fair enough.

As this is my first game, there has been a lot of iteration but also a lot of redundant things in the editor that clogs things up. Now that I know the limitations and have a framework to reference, it will be a lot easier to implement larger changes. Also going in the second time, I now have a great community behind me with a lot of good feedback. Rebuilding from the ground up is really the only way to implement more dramatic changes, now that I have a better idea of what works and what doesn't. It really is just like creating a sequel.

Lastly, as I rebuild Dead Monarchy, I will be using this new framework to look into the possibility of creating new games or spin-off titles. Those new games are still years away but the reality is I need to start looking into trying to create more sources of income, it's just the reality that I now face. There needs to be some change in the game plan now that my primary source of income is under threat, I cannot just maintain the status quo and sit by idly.

This means that my main focus will now shift to rebuilding Dead Monarchy, but the existing DM builds will still get periodic updates, the next update will be coming out soon in fact. While I am rebuilding, I will of course be posting updates and gathering feedback on proposed changes. The rebuilding effort is basically a very large update, a total overhaul of the entire game, the catch is it will just take a while. I've also decided that as I reach milestones I will be uploading the rebuilt version to the beta branch so that you guys can see the progress for yourself.

I feel that Dead Monarchy is a true to roots early access title, not just a late beta build masquerading as an EA title being released into EA because it's a safer and more profitable way to gauge public opinion. A lot can change, a lot has already changed and the feedback from players no doubt prompts change, the culmination of all this feedback is partly why I have decided to do a complete rebuild.

I'm hoping I can get everyone's support and understanding on this. It is a pretty big move but we now live in strange and unpredictable times so at the very least I need to start thinking about trying to secure the future and this is the only way forward that I can see without having to sell my soul or secretly deciding to stop development but still announce that I'm opening up a Patreon account to help "fund" development.

Cheers,
Kevin.

Important: I'll be going in for my operation in 2 days and from that point on I'll be recovering for a couple weeks so there won't be much activity from me unfortunately. Once I am fully recovered I will release Build 7.1 which will add in some updated weapon models, weapon icons and I'll be fixing the crafting system.

Important: Existing save files won't be fully compatible with this update. The armor overhaul has broken the crafting system, the next update will address this issue and also implement the first wave of weapon models and icons.

Instructions to opt into the beta/experimental branch:

1. Within the Steam library list, right click 'Dead Monarchy", then select "Properties".
2. Towards the top of the window that pops up, click the "Betas" tab.
3. A dropdown menu list will then appear, select "experimental - Experimental branch".
4. The game should then automatically download and update to this build.
5. Once you have booted up the game, if you see "Build 4" in the main menu, then you are good to go.

This update mainly focuses on reworking weapons, armor and streamlining combat. Each region now sells its own distinct armor based on the cultural influences. This update shakes a few things up so it will be going to the experimental branch first.

- Armor progression has been reworked. There are now 3 clearly defined types of armor. Light, Medium and Heavy. Within each type of armor there are 5 tiers of armor.

- Armor values and bonuses have been tweaked. Level requirements have been adjusted.

- There are visual differences between armor sets depending on each region. Marketplaces from specific regions will sell armor that is specific to the region.

- Weapon stats have been tweaked. In general weapon damage and break ratings have been increased across the board. Weapons have also been condensed to 5 tiers.

- The four basic abilities that each weapon has (attack body, attack head, break armor and break helmet) have all been merged into one ability called "attack body". Armor/helmet reduction is done simultaneously. This is an an effort to streamline the combat. Special abilities remain untouched.

- With the above change, this means that you no longer first break armor/helmet and then decide if you want to further break armor/helmet or start doing damage. The changes just streamline the whole process making it feel less "fiddly".

- The player can now have up to 9 active abilities instead of the previous 6. Active abilities are things like special abilities as opposed to a passive perk.

- "Quick Hands" has been flagged as an active ability so it will now show up correctly on the shortcut bar.

- Scaling of Break and Damage stats for monsters has been increased across the board, this basically means that they will hit harder.

- Cost of tools has been decreased. Increased the total amount of tools that can spawn from 5-15 to 5-25.

- Attacking the head is now triggered on a critical hit rather than being a separate ability. When you critically hit, you will do BOTH head and body damage.

- Critical hits no longer reduce Resolve or do bonus damage based on the user's current resolve. These will probably be reworked into abilities in the future though.

- The player avatar no longer starts with cultural armor, starts with tier 1 heavy armor instead.

- The player avatar now starts at level 10.

- Cultural armor has been removed from sieges and Monarch drops. The models will be reworked into other armors.

- The amount of crowns rewarded for a siege or Monarch kill has been increased.

- First pass of legendary equipment has been put into the game. These helmets and armor uses the existing armor models that were replaced by the newer armor models. These pieces of equipment have higher stat thresholds compared to standard equipment. Each Monarch will drop a set of legendary equipment and there is a very small chance that a legendary piece will spawn in the marketplaces.

- Fixed missing UI elements in the blacksmith interface.

- Started on the framework for random/world events. For now I have added in some random events that have a chance of triggering on each new day. The random events just reward a couple items like food, crowns, tools, herbs or a random gem.

- Tidied up some minor UI elements in various menus.

This update mainly focuses on addressing some of the issues that have been reported to me by the players. I'm sure this will be the first of many patches that will improve the world map experience.

- Increased the duration until a new monster is introduced from 10 days to 30 days.

- Made the chances of getting level 1 and 2 contracts more common whilst decreasing the chances of getting a level 3 contract.

- Increased the rate at which contracts are refreshed.

- Increased the amount of crowns rewarded for all contracts.

- Increased the amount of food that can appear in marketplaces.

- Buffed the starting companions that accompany the player character. The base stats of these starting companions will not initialise below 10.

- Both player avatar and player starting companions can no longer start with negative traits.

- Reduced the maximum amount of enemies that can spawn on 1 and 2 star contracts.

- Lowered the minimum amount of enemies that can spawn on a 3 star contract, effectively meaning that 3 star contracts can be slightly easier now as the minimum amount of spawns has been lowered.

- Renamed “Tiberia” to “Hadrium” and “Zabylon” to “Zumeria”.

- Updated the equipment slots UI in the inventory to display all equipment slots on one panel without having to scroll down. This should solve the issue of where you may accidentally equip a second weapon but it appears to just disappear from your inventory when actually it is equipped on the second slot which is partially hidden from first glance.

- An issue where equipment icons appear to be partially cut-off when dragging items off the selected character in the inventory menu has been fixed.

- Added some new functionality to the camera in the world map. The default position of the camera is slightly pulled back now as the old default position felt too limiting. In addition to this, you can now tilt the camera forward and back, just like in combat with the < and > keys.

- You can now pan the camera with the arrow keys.

- You can now center/reset the camera position by also pressing the "left shift button", this is in addition to already being able to center the camera with the "C" key.

- "Swap Weapon" has now been changed to "Quick Hands".

- The ability "Quick Hands" previously known as "Swap Weapon" now appears correctly in the acquired perks section of the arena UI when the selected character acquires the ability.

- The secondary slot for weapons will no longer appear until the "Quick Hands" ability has been acquired by the selected character. This should further clear up any confusion.

- Fixed the issue where if you open up one building UI with a selected character that isn't the first character in the UI positioning, when opening up another building UI with that same selected character, it will highlight two portraits simultaneously.

- Updated the inventory/vault UI to display both active and garrisoned units.

- Fixed the issue again with the warhammer idle animation not looping.

- Fixed the issue of being able to pan the camera when the mouse is hovering over UI elements at the edge of the screen.

Hey guys,

So despite all the chaos that is happening in the world, development for Dead Monarchy continues. No fire will stop Dead Monarchy!

Today I just wanted to talk about my progress on the next major update which I guess you could call the "armor update". There is still a long way to go as the armors need to be rigged and new icons need to be made. I've been working on armors just on the side with my focus still being on addressing the more urgent issues that the world map has. The problem is just finding the time, but I am hoping to have something out by the end of this month in terms of an update to fix the economic issues.

The major armor update will be a complete visual overhaul of all the armor currently in the game and it also changes how the armor progression system works.

This update is part of the overall work that is being done to the world map. While there are broadly speaking three types of armor that being light, medium and heavy, they are restricted by level requirements. It means that you won't be able to wear heavy armor until very late in the game and that light armor progression finishes relatively early on.

I've now decided to make three definitive categories of armor with an even amount of armors within each category for a balanced progression. In other words, there will be high end light armor just as there will be low end heavy armor.

The world map introduced different types of shops in the settlements which sold different types of armor, but these types of armor were categorised mainly by their armor/helmet value. This also meant that some settlements would exclusively sell high end armor and other settlements would only sell low end armor. The armor update should address this issue by making it so that if a settlement specializes in light armor, it will sell a range of light armor from low end to high end. If you have a character that wants to specialise in light armor you can do so now and progress all the way to the end game as there will now be light armor that has higher level requirements.

The biggest hurdle with this update was the visuals. Each category of armor has 5 tiers and then added on top of that there are 5 broad cultural groups. I wanted to make it so that if you bought armor from Yamatar then it would look different to armor bought from Bretony. The visuals also needed to make sense, I couldn't have metal plated torso pieces pass off as light armor so each cultural group had to have relatively distinct light, medium and heavy armor pieces. Or in other words leather, reinforced leather, metal.

The other problem was deciding how unique each set should be, especially considering that the armor that I am currently designing is only worn by the sellsword companies. There are still other factions to do so it would not be realistic to create 75 unique helmets, one helmet for each set, per culture.

I ended up giving helmets less variation, but I feel the restriction has a positive effect on gameplay. So for example, rather then there being 5x tier 1 light helmets (one for each culture) there is only 1x tier 1 light helmet which is only available in one of the five realms. It gives the player more incentive to travel to different lands. That said, there will eventually be other factions that have helmets and armor that will fill in the gaps but of course that comes with the risk of having to fight them if you want to upgrade your armor.

I've decided to show off all the armors, so it might be excessive but it could also be a treat for the eyes. Keep in mind that this is only the armors intended to be worn by sellswords, there's still a lot more to do when I implement factions, but it is the first step towards that in a way. For the sellsword armor, I decided to go with more earthly colors, staying away from any bright colors but I feel that each set is still unique enough. The brighter more vibrant colors to me (first pass armors), felt really tacky and more suited towards the flamboyant noble houses.

I hope this demonstrates just how iterative development is and that sometimes I am willing to make drastic changes if I feel that it improves the game. Speaking of drastic changes, there is also something else I have been considering. I've been considering merging the basic attack body/head and break armor/helmet attacks into 2 attacks. So for example, if you attack the body, you first damage the armor then damage gets applied based on armor remaining, this would also apply to the head attack. I feel like this would streamline combat a bit more but also make combat feel more deadly, especially if I increased the amount of armor/helmet that weapons can reduce. In the long term, this also makes designing combat AI more viable as currently I have to run several checks just for the AI to make a relatively smart choice when it comes to using a basic attack.

These are hi-poly models, so they still need to be decimated before they are game ready, which means that the armors will lose some details when they are actually put into the game.

Nordanic Sellsword Armor from Vinmark:

















Parthanite Sellsword Armor from Zabylon:

















Khitanese Sellsword Armor from Yamatar:

















Tiberian Sellsword Armor:

















Anglish Sellsword Armor from Bretony:

















With all this armor, I'm also thinking about randomising the armor values between a threshold just so things don't become static too fast. So far, these are the helmet/armor values I'm considering.

Light: 50, 75, 100, 125, 150
Medium: 175, 200, 225, 250, 275
Heavy: 300, 325, 350, 375, 400

So if I was to randomise say the tier 1 light armor, the value could be between 35-50. The values are set up so that even the best medium armor won't have more armor value than the worst heavy armor. The alternative is to allow some crossover but still considering that.

The bonus stats that light, medium and heavy armors give will remain unchanged. IE light giving Stamina, medium giving Defense and heavy giving Resolve. If I was to stick with these values, I would probably make it so that heavy armor is also a lot more expensive to acquire.

The other thing is that eventually I will phase out "cultural armors" and they will be reworked into armor sets for other factions. That's everything for now, see you in the forums.

Cheers,
Kevin.

Hey guys,

I'm sure some of you have heard of the bushfire crisis in Australia, it's been ravaging for months with no real end in sight and it has now gotten to the point where I have been personally affected too. I've been moving around a bit too and trying my best to keep in contact with relatives as I am deeply concerned about them.

I have no doubt though that this will just be another challenge on my development journey, a challenge that I'll overcome but I am just writing this to let you guys know of the current situation.

As an obligation to remain transparent to all my fellow players, if for some reason you guys don't hear from me just assume that I have been evacuated and that I do not have stable access to the internet. I understand that it is these types of situations that make players wary of solo developers but rest assured that I am still 100% committed to the development of my game.

With the release of the world map update to the public build there has been an influx of feedback and activity on the forums and I am extremely grateful for all the support. I am going to let it stew for a couple weeks and continue to gather more feedback, so please let me know what you think and what can be improved as I am taking it all down.

Right now the majority of my time is spent on weapon modelling with the freelance modeler. I know this might not make sense initially but please remember that freelancers come and go so I need to prioritize the work with them when they are available. Work with this particular freelancer has been extremely challenging but I am determined to see it through.

The goal for these next couple of months is to continue working on the world map, overhauling the armor system and to start implementing the weapon models into the game. Thanks again for all the support in 2019 and looking forward to 2020.

Cheers,
Kevin.