Last week we posted Annah's Combat Art Progress Update and that was well received with fans and the community. This week Konrad has found the time to speak about the design elements of combat.

Early Combat Design

"My original goal was to integrate combat into Homeworld and Weyworld, but after watching groups of soldiers slug it out in Homeworld in an early build of the combat implementation, it became immediately obvious a number of things were very off. Great care had been taken to create a peaceful Zen like atmosphere in Godus. Everything from the pacing, the visuals and the music and sound effect had been tailored towards this goal. And now these bloodthirsty warriors were ruining it all."

Another consideration was when to introduce combat, what role it would play and how. After all, we really want to create engaging wars. The structure and layout of Homeworld simply wasn’t very condusive to introducing combat in a big way. Weyworld was better, but still not ideal and I didn’t want players to have to wait that long to get stuck into battles. Homeworld takes a long time to play through after all. A good solution would be to create a whole new world designed with combat in mind from the ground up allowing us to showcase how this can be more like wars than just combat in the most impactful way while retaining the tranquil gameplay in Homeworld.


Example combat map

So the decision was made to introduce combat in a brand new world. We’ve been experimenting with world size and pacing and right now we’re finding combat works much better on smaller, more concise worlds. The pace of building and expansion (basically all the non-combat stuff) felt much too slow for a combat world, so we’ve also been experimenting with streamlining and speeding up that part of the gameplay. We want players to get stuck into combat quickly without being bogged down too long in extensive village building and sculpting.


Example combat map

Looking at the Graphical User Interface

We had to make some extensive changes to the control scheme and GUI to accommodate the needs of combat mechanics too. While leashing was a fine way of getting followers about in Homeworld, it proved too slow and imprecise for ordering troops about. We added controls for moving selected Warbands anywhere or having them attack any target with a single click, more akin to what players would expect from an RTS game.

In the last update you saw the changes to the GUI. The banners are a great multipurpose feedback and control tool. At a glance you can see how many Warbands you have, what type of soldier they are, what kind of shape they are in and what they are currently doing. Not only that, but clicking one will centre your screen directly on the Warband allowing for fast navigation of the map to where it counts.




Of course, the new GUI features are taking up the space previously occupied by the Timeline button and unlocked cards display. The GUI change, different method of moving followers and various other mechanics adjustments are all contributing to making a combat world very different to Homeworld and Weyworld. Combat is rapidly evolving into an entirely separate mode altogether. The great advantage of this is that by keeping the gameplay experience of Homeworld and combat separate, we don’t have to try to squeeze everything into a single mode and make large GUI, tone and gameplay compromises. We already have systems and the precedent of delivering a different game mode within Godus (Voyages) and it’s becoming more and more attractive to deliver a combat experience in a similar manner.

Next Week - Programming

Anthony - Producer

Production time! Next week we'll have the finalisation of this combat sprint and a similarly in-depth look at the programming side of development with Richard.



"I've been stripping the tasks into JIRA for the next sprint and planning the finalisation week for this one. Next week, along with Richard's Programming Update, I'll share the contents of our next sprint plan and a small review of this one."

Thanks and catch up soon
22cans team!