I know you are eagerly waiting for the new update, but as Mathieu explained the other day, it’s work in progress! I thought it could be fun if I shared with you some screenshots and explanations on what we are currently working on and that is actually coming for you. We'll start with the roads: the visual and game design explained by Mathias and the game designers.
The roads Mathias has worked on [ART]
Hi, I’m Mathias, 3D Artist/Lead Artist at Amplitude Studios.
These past few days, I have worked on the roads in Endless Legend that you will discover in the next update. I’ll let the Game Designers handle the gameplay aspect of the feature below, so I’ll just focus on the visual part.
Anyway, we are using what is called “decals” with an atlas to create and apply roads on the landscape. Indeed, it’s quite an old school technique but with all the bump/specular effects, roads are well integrated and fits with the “detailed board game” art style of Endless Legend. You could almost compare it this to re-usable pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
I have worked a lot with Timothée, (my other favourite graphic programmer ^^), he programmed a few specific things to make the roads clearer and more realistic.
- Trees are removed when a road passes through a forest
- We have small bridges across rivers
- He makes fancy transitions when paths goes from various terrain types
- And we created a battlement with an access to the city where the road reaches it
The roads [GAMEDESIGN]
What are roads?
They are used to link two adjacent cities, allowing faster movement for armies and enabling trade route bonuses between them.
How do you create a road?
- The prerequisites for a road to automatically appear are:
- The road improvement has been built in at least one of the two cities
- There must be at least one valid land path between the two regions that doesn’t go through any other region
When those requirements are met, roads will be drawn on the corresponding path inside their region. If the other region doesn’t have the improvement, then only half of the road will become complete roads (paved roads), and the other region will have pathways instead.
Roads are always made on the shortest path between the two connected points, regardless of the existing road shortcuts.
Road bonuses
Paved roads will reduce movement cost on the corresponding tile to 0.5, even on forests. However, pathways don’t have any bonus.
Old roads
When a city with is destroyed or moved, all roads within that region will start to deteriorate:
- Roads and pathways will disappear after 10 turns.
- If a player creates or moves a city (with Roads improvement) into that region again, new roads will be created, and not necessarily passing through old road parts.
- Any pathway on the same tile than paved road parts will be removed if needed.
Screenshots
