Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5087810/Pennants\_of\_Glory\_Condottiere/

Having fun refining mounted combat in my game. raylib cs 8.0

I have been tweaking infantry and mounted combat and battle AI to prepare for play testing on steam.

This battle I found really entertaining and it shows off some of combat AI maneuvers quite well.

Feedback comments are appreciated! The feedback regarding formations and about horse combat was awesome!

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5087810/Pennants_of_Glory_Condottiere/

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/pennantsofglory/

1. More tactical hard counter
2. Bit more realistic

Don't know which direction to take, so i'm asking for experts help

steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5087810/Pennants_of_Glory_Condottiere/

Spend some time refining the core system, added ability to cut enemy formation in half or more :)

The aggressive attacking might help to win the combat but also drains stamina from soldiers, if enemy repulses it you might be in trouble and have to fall back to defense or use skill to survive.

So this completest he system where we can choose engagement mode, evaluate enemy an react to his attempts to do the same to us.

steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5087810/Pennants_of_Glory_Condottiere/

trailer: https://youtu.be/MS-Rfg1JQ-4

reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/pennantsofglory/

No rosters, you equip your men train them, procedural overland campaign.

steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5087810/Pennants_of_Glory_Condottiere/

trailer: https://youtu.be/MS-Rfg1JQ-4

Thanks for warm welcome when I showed the trailer !

When you initiate combat you have two choices either fight defensively like in Total war or try to breach enemy and rout it faster.

Breaching is calculated risk, if enemy is prepared you might just expose formation for counter attack and be breached in turn. It cost stamina and calculates skills + mass of defenders and attackers.

It shows friendly breaches as yellow and enemies as red.

When fighting at high levels breaching is usually a best way to win with lowest casualties, if you cannot overwhelm with multiple formations.

Still balancing each :)

Feedback welcome!

Links:

steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5087810/Pennants_of_Glory_Condottiere/

trailer: https://youtu.be/MS-Rfg1JQ-4

reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/pennantsofglory/

I am a solo developing a strategy/RPG about managing mercenary company in fictional procedural kingdom inspired by Italian age of mercenaries, though I give myself plenty of leeway.

Worked and reworked the trailer many times :D I think it captures the spirit of game.

Wishlist if interested:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5087810/Pennants_of_Glory_Condottiere/

Big performance pass done. The battle simulation now runs on a separate thread and more soldier animation work runs on the GPU. I also cut a lot of repeated work in movement and combat.

I also switched runtime to move from OpenGL 3.3 to 4.3. Changing the version alone doesn’t make the game faster, but it opens up compute shaders. I use those to blend animations for distant soldiers on the graphics card.

The animation data sits in GPU storage buffers, and the finished poses stay on the GPU for drawing. That matters because sending results back to the CPU and waiting for them can eat up the performance gain.

Soldiers were already drawn in batches. I improved that path so we reuse GPU buffers instead of repeatedly creating temporary ones for each batch. That reduces the CPU work needed to draw thousands of men.

Before, just moving and reforming formations could drop the game to around 11 FPS. Now I’m getting around 50 FPS with 2,000 soldiers fighting.

When i originally imagined the game which is strategy/rpg mercenary sim my thoughts were 700-800 soldiers fighting in small scale 2d formation combat.

Now with most of core features added and adding LOD to 3d models, the rendering is quite small but i noticed fps drop a lot with 2000 soldiers in battle, main culprits are the simulation of combat and formation arraign behaviors that in some cases iterated over every single soldier and repeated melee calculations on same target.

Still optimizing, maybe i wont have huge battles but i think 1500-1600 might be achievable without having a supercomputer, not that each soldier still defends fights selects attacks it has available in Mount and blade fashion so i think this would allow having slightly bigger battles at beginning (instead of 30 man formation start with 50 and have like 120-140 as max) in 5 vs 5 unit battles.

More info: https://www.reddit.com/r/pennantsofglory/

New company 1 unit level 2 decided to test attacking a bandits hideout. bandit were better armed and broke my melee formation, you can see them just smashing my melee with excellent charge. while my ranged tried to kite with no luck :)

Showcasing some troubles early companies can have in game.

Finished tweaking one of core features of the game which is breach and defensive stance.

First part shows:
Defensive stance is regular combat, where formation tries to keep cohesion and hold the line against enemy in some cases for example two handers vs braced pikes it not a really good trade even though pikemen are lightly armored they have the reach to decimate two handers who just maintain their line and are not aggressive.

Second part shows:

When two handers stance is switched to breach, they dont care about holding the lien as much and they use their assault skills to create and exploit the breach to essentially break the light pikemen.

Feedback is welcome!.

Gunpowder weapons are in, no special tactics for them yet. So it's possible to play pike and shot :)

Though you will be bale to use pavise with guns too :)

I am early/late gunpowder nerd even if this is not really historically correct for rest of weapons this is low fantasy game and i am giving myself some leeway :)

Demo of different fire modes to ranged weapons.

showcasing a bit buggy first battle in campaign i am testing, new company just two small formation against early bandit force. Still some bugs that i am working out, improved soundscape a bit.

Working on medieval mercenary RTS/RPG, staretd to make the combat more readable. white damage armour, red health and decided to add indicator for how engagement is going . Not sure if i should keep it.

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Decided to implement better models but animations are still rough :)

My hats off to professional animators, without free packs this would be impossible for me :(

Very early prototype of my campaign procedural map. What do you think should i leave the height contours on by default or not, i am leaning towards having them always on.

Decided on name and now working on demo :) Anyone willing to play test early are welcome !

Lots of free placeholder music and assets still :)

Here is a quick demo loop :)