Hey Hobror, nice to see you. Thanks for playing.
Regarding the writing, this is a fun idea. I've been easing into this by trying to make a distinction between the commoners and nobility with Anglish / Norman vocabularies. Some Thee's, Thy's and Thou's would be pretty fun too in the style of Dark Souls. I'll experiment with this next time I'm writing dialogue.
I am glad you like the animations.
Regarding these requests:
- I do plan on overhauling the visuals, I'd like to go for something a little more like fire emblem meets dungeon siege. I don't want to go particularly desaturated though, since the bright colours make my neurons go brr.
- The camera controls seem to be a sticking point for many people, I am contemplating solutions. It is a thorny problem because of the hybrid RTS/RPG nature of the game. For the dungeon crawling sequences the camera lock is preferable, but for the mass combat sequences you will definitely want a traditional RTS camera. I liked the idea of pressing space to toggle a camera lock on the prince. I also think maybe a zoom in/out function would make it a little easier on people as well. I shall continue to meditate upon this.
- Regarding speech bubbles and sound effects, I plan on having some "order confirmation" effects, as seen in warcraft/starcraft. This is essentially what you were talking about, but with audio in the stead of speech bubbles. I'd also like to have some warcries as you see in Total War, so there's a nice din of battle when the camera is panned over.
- I was considering making the entire magic system based upon riddles, poems, & songs, (I suppose it already is if I just say the spell books are songbooks, and add singing sound effects for each spell) and having morale mechanics based around standard bearers and marching music, but I haven't implemented those ideas yet. These ideas are currently in the "probably not going to be included in the first release" pile unless I find some awesome musicians to collaborate with.
- On the music front, I've been listening to Electromedieval playlists (it is quite hard to find good ones however), Wardruna/Amon Amarth/Corvus Corax, and the Dune & Mechanicus Soundtracks while coding, for inspiration. I'll happily add the game of thrones soundtrack to the rotation and see how I feel.
- I'm also big fan of mass bagpipes.
The bugs have been driving me nuts. I spent the past week, about 20% of the total time I've spent on this project, polishing it up to be nice and stable for testers, and never came across any of these. I even set up a Windows partition on my Mac to test in that environment. I must be subconsciously playing in a fashion that "avoids the skeletons" so to speak.
Did you play the version I uploaded last night? I suppose you might not know, since I've been deleting the old versions as I upload the hotfixes. I'll start including version numbers. I'm open to feedback on how to better test my game for stability before handing it over to testers.
I lol'd at the "glow up" comment.
Thanks for the thoughtful suggestions, it is motivating to see your enthusiasm