Dev Update #30: Build 18 (Full Release)

After several demos and a complete rebuild of the game, 6 years of development has flown by and Dead Monarchy has now been fully released. I've put my all into this game, I didn't abandon it and even chose to completely rebuild the game midway through development. I feel like I can say that as a developer, I held up my end of the deal. Let's now take a look at the entire journey that Dead Monarchy took up to this point.

The very first prototype, a mockup of what could be, didn't have any art assets though.

Building a functional UI, levels and enemy AI.

Replacing the placeholder models, first attempt at skinning the UI, creating natural environments.

Second attempt at environments, I wanted to create elevation and was struggling, thought tiled approach might be the solution, I was wrong. Natural environments felt unnatural.

Released the first demo, decided to have it take place in a castle as I was still struggling to create natural environments.

Released the second demo, had a small breakthrough. I was able to create elevation that looks relatively natural but was also clear to see. Slowly getting better at creating natural environments.

The initial early access build. Elevations looked a lot more distinct now, had several custom armour models now too. UI was vastly improved.

Ultimately though, the initial build suffered from issues. Several monsters had animation issues, the combat wasn't as streamlined, contracts were unclear and I didn't like the open-world. So I completely rebuilt the game. I added in a cinematic combat camera, vastly improved the animations, overhauled the world map and took a more focused approach and completely redid the perks system.

With all that said and done, I still have more plans for Dead Monarchy and my journey as whole, is still far from over.

Future Plans:

Initially, when I set out to create Dead Monarchy, I thought I could work on this one game forever. I know, it sounds naïve, a large amount of developers that go into early access don't finish their games and countless games don't even make it into the early access stage. I felt confident that I could do it though.

I have to say, that after 6 years, it does feel like forever, especially when it's just you. Day in and day out, solo development becomes extremely "insular". I say that because at least for me, it feels like I stuck my head in the sand and popped out half a decade later. Everyone and everything around me has changed and moved on but I still remained the same. To me, time stalled but the reality is that time keeps flowing.

After that realisation, I took some time off and realised that I myself had also changed, I had become more experienced, but I never realised that until I took the time to think about it. While I still have those lofty ideals and the same amount of enthusiasm and passion, I also now have a more realistic plan to achieve my dreams.

I have decided that I will create a series of games, essentially standalone expansions. They will all relate back to Dead Monarchy, as in they will all share the same setting but they are separate games. Combat will be the one consistent thing that will improve upon each game. I will continue to add new perks, new weapon types, new armours and new enemies and they will be built upon each new game. So the combat system will remain intact and be expanded upon each new game but other features such as the open-world exploration, may be removed and other major features added in such as base management.

The reason I am doing this is because I realised that it is impossible for me to balance and design the game that I want in a single game. It also isn't exactly financially viable.

My dream is to just be able to make a living from creating games, to be able to work on my games full-time. If I made a modest 50k AUD a year from games, that would be enough to go full-time or if Dead Monarchy somehow made a million that would secure me for life and I would have all the time in the world to just work on a single game.

Both scenarios still seem so far away and deep down I knew that going in as Dead Monarchy is a niche game, but that's why dreams exist, so you can chase them and in my case, gives meaning to my life.

Once I have created a few more games and the major features that those games will be based around have received adequate feedback and have been polished, I will then combine all the games into the "ultimate" version and that game will then ultimately be my "dream" game and the game I will then continue to work on.

That is the plan and the route I have decided to take. I need to be able to work in sections, if the game gets too big, it becomes too unwieldy, sections need to be locked down, if I have multiple things that need my attention all at once, it becomes extremely messy.

Post-Release Plans:

Roaming Mobs: I have already began work on the post-release content and the work towards my overall goal. Recently I worked on a pathfinding/waypoint system for roaming mobs. This is something that I would like to implement into Dead Monarchy but I knew it would take too long. If all goes well, I hope to backport this feature into the game.

Monster Enemies: The monster enemies in the initial early access build had several issues. I will eventually reintroduce a good chunk of them back into the game as well as new monsters. I plan for 4 monster factions.

Different Cultures: The initial early access build had different cultures however each map felt extremely bland so I decided to just focus on one culture, which was medieval Europe. I will be reworking the armour sets and reintroducing new human factions. These new factions will be inspired by the Danes (Vikings), Persians, Chinese, Japanese, Romans and Greeks. I plan to create 4-5 human factions and they will utilise perk combinations that have not been used in the base game yet. These human factions will essentially be "legendary companies", endgame enemies.

Reworked Factions: There are certain sets of armours that are not used as much and so I plan to do some reworking to create new factions that will fill in the level gaps between the current factions. This should create more variety for future playthroughs. All these reworked factions will most likely drop at once whereas the others mentioned above will be released gradually.

Other Surprises: All I'll say is that, if all goes well there may be a few other additions aside from just new factions.

Price Increase:

Once all the post-release content for Dead Monarchy is finished, the game will be increasing to $15 USD. I feel like that is more than fair as I don't plan to do paid DLC for Dead Monarchy.

Next Game:

I will be working on the new game whilst simultaneously working on the post-release content for Dead Monarchy. It's important for me personally that I do this so I don't burn out.

For the next game, I want to significantly expand the combat system and fully introduce new cultural factions. So not just visually through their armours but new weapon types that will change the way they fight. Axes, scimitars, spear + shield, dual wielding, bows, different shield types like bucklers. One of the main goals for the next game/standalone expansion is to fully lockdown the combat system. I want to know how the combat feels when it is fully fleshed out. It was too big of a jump to do it in Dead Monarchy, especially after the complete rebuild. When you consider all the tweaking I did in response to player feedback, something as little as changes to critical hits would have taken me 10x as long if I had added several more weapon types as several abilities have their own critical hit calculations that are impacted by perks etc. That is an example of what I mean by "locking down sections", it would have gotten extremely messy if I made the game any bigger without getting a sizable group of players to play it and provide feedback first.

Thanks Again:

Thank you to everyone that purchased Dead Monarchy, I am extremely grateful of what I have achieved currently and I owe a lot of that to the players. Thank you for all the feedback left by the players on the forums and the constant show of support, I've read every comment.

I also want to give a special thanks to the 64 people that have left a review for Dead Monarchy, positive or negative it all ends up as a positive outcome in the end.

My game development journey has just begun, I still have a long road ahead of me. Even if my games don't become huge financial successes, I don't regret the time I spent working on them, even during the hard times.

There is something special about seeing a dream that started in your head manifest itself into the world as a tangible product that you can interact with. I believe that feeling goes far beyond the exhilaration of monetary gain, it soothes the soul. It was worth selling my house to partially fund development.

Build 18:

• Fixed a major exploit where changing weapons during combat would replenish all stats, IE restoring Stamina and removing the "Exhausted" status effect.

• Fixed the issue where if "Faster Combat" was enabled, characters would still move after being hit with an Attack of Opportunity. Now with this option enabled, characters that are hit will remain in the same spot instead of moving.

• The chance of Resolve being reduced on death now takes place at the start of the death event instead of the end, this should fix the issue of the AI committing to an action only to suddenly rout afterwards due to the delayed effect from the death event.

• Updated Stalwart Believer perk description to reflect the new changes to Resolve.

• Stamina penalty on Ancestral (Orange) shields, reduced to -15 from -25. Masterwork (Purple) shields, reduced to -5 from -20.

• The "Instant Deployment" issues on certain combat maps have now been fixed.

• The official steam guide has been linked to the main menu.

• The post-game boss has now received a new set of armour with its own model.

• The stats for the post-game boss as well as the armour itself has been significantly reduced.

• Various tweaks to texts.

Cheers, Kevin.