Dean's Janky RTS

Basic soldier types that physically whack, stab, and shoot each other are working. They employ strategies to block, parry, and counter-attack in hand-to-hand fights, and some have ranged weapons for damage at a distance. Each character is animated and has particle effects for clashing weapons and taking hits.

Three different primary soldier/unit types are supported. They represent all the basic types of foot soldier we want in the game. Check them each out in more detail below.

Spearmen

Backbone of the army

Close-order rectangular formations bristling with spearheads

Resilient and deadly in hand-to-hand combat

Skirmisher

Vanguard and scouts

Loose clusters of freely-moving spear-throwing sword-fighters

Limited in ammo but terrifyingly deadly in short-medium range

Archers

Precise long-range shooters

Neat lines of dedicated shooters

Plenty of ammo for consistent missile fire

As you can see, we've also added goblin variants of these troops. They sport their own gear and have some different behavior to give them a more goblinoid personality. In the future we will expand on the goblins and other fantasy creatures.

These troops are organized into units for the player to command and control. However, they have a mind of their own. They monitor their own health and the battlefield situation to determine their morale level. Naturally if things are dire, they scatter and rout. But if things are going well, units can become aggressive and tear into the enemy.

That said, the player is not riding the elephant bound and blind. The game enables them to build orders for their troops. Key and mouse strokes generate waypoints, formations, and attack commands which fill up a queue visible in the Orders Menu. After making any tweaks or additions, the player can then send out their commands via one or more couriers.

Once the player is done with their scheming and hits "Send", their commands pass into the hands of their couriers. These couriers then ride around distributing them to each unit. When done, couriers blow a horn to signal the orders to commence (this can be disabled to instead have units start as they get their orders, to allow snappier unsynchronized action).

These couriers add some verisimilitude and reinforce the themes of the game. They provide an in-world on-screen method to convey orders and naturally add a delay to any army action. The delay modestly reduces the value of micro-management and rewards the player for keeping their commander close to the action.

Furthermore, couriers and their mounts are just as mortal as everyone else. Since any orders carried die with them, players have to take care to protect their couriers. Not only can pending orders be lost in the moment, but also the ability to quickly respond to changing conditions with quickly-distributed mass orders.

We're still working on fleshing out content as well as features for this game, but we do have some basic levels playable. We have 5 basic "skirmish" levels where the player is tasked with driving goblins out of different areas.