Massive Performance Update + New Features

New Features & Improvements

• AdjustedMassive performance overhaulImproved levels, lighting, character rendering, hair systems, visual effects, gameplay code, and animations.

• Updated to Unreal Engine 5.5.4.

• Dynamic damage system: Wounds, bruises, blood splatters, and equipment scratches during battle. (No dismemberment yet—but we're working on it!)

• Facial expressions: Gladiators now show expressions during attacks, hits, and executions.

• New overlays for game over screens, flowing blood on defeat, and confetti on victories!

• Footprints in the sand.

• Selling your gladiators and gear.

• New hair, eyebrow, beard, and mustache styles.

• Improved hair rendering and physics and enabled groom on default. Make sure to change this if you modified this setting manually!

• Higher-res gladiator portraits with more reliable capturing.

• Hardware mouse cursor: The custom cursor now stays responsive even if the game lags or freezes.

• Improved gladiator rendering in menus: Now rotatable and better looking.

• Inventory tab in the Ludus for inspecting and selling your equipment.

• Sorting and filtering in the inventory tab and the barracks equipment selection.

• Adjusted intro camera.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed several soft locks in the gladiator level-up menu.

• Delete gladiator portraits of gladiators that don't exist anymore on game start

• Fixed visual clipping on various equipment pieces.

• Fixed gladiators randomizing their pose in the market on each visit.

• Red screen overlay now triggers correctly on damage.

• Tons of other edge-case fixes in UI and combat behavior.

Dev Notes

We know progress may feel slow and the game still feels a bit barebones — many of you have told us as much. But we’re incredibly grateful for your support and patience. As a very small team, we have to choose carefully where to focus our limited resources. This update aimed to lay down a stronger technical foundation, optimize for more hardware, and prepare the game for much larger expansions going forward.

Here’s just some of what we’re working on next:

• Dynamic dismemberment system

• Full UI overhaul and controller support

• Complete combat rework (dodging, parrying, motion-captured animations)

• New maps and game modes

• Gladiator skill trees and talents

• Account-wide progression

• Coop mode and lobby invites

• Equipment durability and rare traits

• Permadeath in all non-practice modes

• XP and cost rebalancing for a faster, more varied experience

We truly believe in ROAL’s potential—and we’re going to keep building until we reach it. ❤️

Note: PvP is currently disabled while we migrate our matchmaking system. We're working to bring it back online as soon as possible!