Sinathir evolved a lot this year. I added quite a bit of features, fixed (and added) good number of bugs and generaly improved the game in every way. This year is coming to an end and so I think it is a good time to tell you my plans for next year.

First of all, the faction update might not be released this year. You will learn why soon. I will try to fix any bugs you find or I might add minor features that could be implemented quickly and easily, but don't expect anything major this year.

Now for the plans. I have several bullet points I want to go through and finish next year. In no particular order:

• Faction system
• War system
• Dialogue rewrite / typo fixing
• New graphics
• General expansion of existing features

I will get more into them in detail soon, but bear in mind that the order of these will be different than what you see above. I will most likely jump between them as I work just to stay sane. These will still be multiple separate updates and on top of that, I have some plans for minor additions and small features I will release between those, like new quests or locations. Now for individual bullet points.

Faction system

Faction system is technicaly already in the game. This system will simply improve it and make it deeper. I will improve it and add more to it once I add even more factions. Initial version will include just one rank promotion and three ways to raise your status, together with a overview screen.

Factions are simple. You join one by fulfilling the requirements and you get some benefits. This is already in the game. Now you will be able to do simple repeatable activities to raise your faction status. Once this value gets to a certain point, you get a quest and stat requirements. Once you finish the quest and raise your stats enough, you will be promoted. This will give you more benefits and more activities fot raising your faction status.

For example, church faction will allow you to travel and light candles at shrines or clean shrines. Ranking up will give you new armor, new weapons, new magic types and new activity to raise your faction status, giving blessings. Higher rank will also unlock new events and quests in general.

Initial version will have the church, militia and kobold factions. The war system will also tie into that.

War system

This will be probably the most time consuming part of the game (programing wise) I ever worked on. 

As you progress the story and rise through the faction ranks, you will be able to command armies and use them to change the map. There is quite a lot to talk about.

1. Interaction with other systems

War system will slot neatly into other parts of the game. It can be ignored but it will reward those who decide to use it. It will give more use to certain skills and items while rewarding you with experience, items and map changes. Individual battles will count as a half day activity and will take only few minutes of real time.

2. Reason for adding the war system

One of the theme of this game is basicaly "from zero to hero". You start not being able to do pretty much anything and after several years, you will end the game as someone very skilled, respected and powerful. Leading soldiers into battle is one of those things that ties nicely into that. You will start with a small band of kobolds, killing wild dogs and you will end the game commanding hundreds of troops, laying sieges to entire settlements. And as I said above, it will give more use to most trade skills and items, making them more important.

3. The basics

Initial version will have only the kobold army. Kobold faction will give you complete control over them if you have any major mutation. You will train new soldiers, suply them with weapons and send them to raid or capture new locations. These will have a physical place in the world so you can visit them your self. Capturing a territory will change the overworld and give you some kind of bonus. For example, the first war location will be the western forest. You can send your kobolds to get rid of all the aggresive wild animals. If you win, all those animals will be gone and kobolds will be free to gather fruits, vegetables, wood and hunt in peace. And you will get a nice cut of what they harvest every week. As your army grows, you will be able to attack the rival kobold clan. Winning will remove most aggressive kobolds from the south Sinathir.

3. Recruiting troops

Recruitable troops are governed by your faction membership and general quest / war progression. If you end up having a high church rank, you will be able to recruit acolytes and use them together with kobolds. As I said though, initial version will have only kobolds.

Most important resource for recruiting is population (Different variable for different races). Population depends on your captured locations, relationship and fame. It increases every week. 

Next, you will need weapon and armor "generic resources". These can be gained by "storing" weapons and armor you don't plan to use (finaly a use for all those spears and shivs you looted from dead kobolds). You can generate these resourcess passively by capturing certain locations, but you will have to provide these your self at the start. For example, giving a shiv will net you "1x Small melee" resource. Giving a short sword will give you "5x Small melee". Basic upgrades will give you "1x Small melee" a week. Training your smithing skill and making some melee weapons to give to your kobolds will be a good way to build up your armory.

Here is a small table showing some units I plan to add and what you need to train them:

Recruiting will be instant. You just need to have enough resourcess.

4. Types of battle

Once you have enough soldiers, you can go to the war table. This will show you the map of Sinathir together with all locations you can attack. Selecting one will show you the enemy type, their aproximate number and benefits for capturing said location. Confirm your selection and you can choose between Raid and capture. 

Raiding will pit you againts small percentage of the total enemies present in the location. Winning will lower the total number of enemies present and also give you some resourcess.  You can raid the same location multiple times.

Capturing location will require you to defeat all enemies present at once, so it is a good idea to raid it a few times before you try to capture it. Capture battlefields will also have some kind of bonus for the defenders, like walls for example.

Raiding reduces the total manpower that location has, but it will increase again if you don't raid it for certain amount of time.

5. Battle

Battles will be quite simple and straight forward. I plan to make it as a sort of idle turn based affair. Here is a rough mockup of the battle screen:

The entire thing will be done by showing / hiding windows and selections, so I don't have to fit everything into one screen. I might even do a little visual part showing you your deployed units, just like in the picture. Again, this is a concept. Finished battle screen will look different but the idea will stay the same.

Every battle will have certain number of battle slots, ranging from 1 to 3. Every slot will have two rows. Front and back. Number of slots will depend on the battle. Small bandit camp will have only one slot, like in the picture above. Towns or fields will have more slots.

At the start of the battle, you will place your troops into all your battle slots. You can also split your soldier stacks. Every type of soldier will have different stats and uses. For example, archers will attack enemy back rows first, and have weak armor. Grunts will attack front rows and have better armor. Naturaly, you put grunts into the front row and archers into the back row. You your self will also be able to take into the field and fight the enemies. You will be extreamely weak at the start, but once your raise your stats and get good weapons, you will be able to defeat entire armies by your self. Just don't get killed, because that would be game over for you.

Once you place your troops, your will be able to use one ability / item. These will depend on your experience, skills and gear you have. If you have the fire spells, you can attack one enemy stack and hurt them before the battle starts. If you have entrenching packages, you can use them to improve defence of a unit in one slot.

The enemy leader will do the same. I will get into the AI later.

Once you deploy your troops and use one ability, the battle starts.

All units will attack simultaneously and target troops in front of them. Each units has three main stats, manpower, attack and defence.

The higher your manpower, the higher your attack. Each attack passing through units defence will lower its manpower and in turn their attack. This makes even weaker units quite useful if you have large number of them.

All units attack five times in one turn. They attack automaticaly and only enemy units in front of their slot. If there are no enemies left and they attack the empty spot, the attack hits the enemy general and the battle is over. Same goes for you.

After five attacks, you can move your units around again. Switch them up, change their numbers, retreat them and replace them with new units. You can again use one ability and once you are done, new turn begins.

The battle ends once you kill the enemy general by destroying all units in one slot and by you retreating or losing all morale points.

Each turn lowers your morale by one. Once it reaches zero, your units retreat and the battle is over. initial number depends on your stats, renown and the number of lieutenants you have. Some abilities will allow you to restore it a little, giving you more time to win.

Enemy AI will be very simple. They won't switch troops around, but they will use abilities depending on their "personality". Some commanders will preffer increasing their defence, making you run out of morale, some will increase attack of their soldiers to try and destroy you quickly.

All of this will be achieved by simple condition checks and then lining the results depending on enemies personality. 

For example: Game will check if there is friendly stack with less than 50% manpower, if there is stack with lower attack than your defence and if there is your stack with less than 50% manpower. Lets say the answers to those are all yes. Different enemy generals will do different actions, because they will have different priorities. One might improve defence of the low manpower stack, other will choose to boost the attack of the weak soldiers so they actualy have a chance of hitting you or he might boost attack of another stack to quickly finish off your weakened soldiers. There will be more to that system, but it will be quite simple at its core and nothing ground breaking.

6. After battle

Once you win the battle, you get a detailed report showing you your lost troops, the troops you killed and what you gained. Raids will give you mostly items depending on the location. Capturing will give you more resourcess and also give you the bonus the location has. These will benefit both your war effords and your normal gameplay. 

As another example, capturing the infested mine will clear it completely (Basicaly removing the dungeon) and populate it with kobolds mining resourcess. You will be getting raw mineable resourcess every week and also unlock lower levels of the mine, serving as a new, better mine dungeon.

There is more to this system I have planed, but I don't want to drown you in text. Plus I want to keep some things as a suprise. 

This system is quite simple to do, but it will be very time consuming to add, since I never attempted doing something like this. There is no ETA for this system, but I wil try to release it in the first half of next year.

Dialogue rewrite / typo fixing

Quite self explanatory. I have a good amount of typos recorded by you guys and I will get around to fixing them all. I will also add missing dialogue options for all NPCs and make them fully fleshed out. This will be very time consuming and boring, but I will work on it between bigger milestones to make it bearable.

New graphics

I think it's high time to ditch the default tilesets and make my own. This is one of the reason why I didn't release the story dungeon yet. Making an old soviet research facility with fantasy medieval tilesets is not fun and a waste of time.

This overhaul will incliude everything. UI, tilesets and character sprites.

I'm not entirely sure yet, but my idea is to make everything by using pre-rendered graphics, giving it similiar feel to games like alien shooter.

The general atmosphere is suposed to be very similiar to the stalker series. The island is full of old soviet building and the weather is mostly gloomy. It will be very different from how the game looks now. 

First of all, I have very little experience with making tilesets. I worked on many RPG maker games, some of which were prequels to Sinathir, but I always used tilesets I found on the internet. I tried making completely original tileset for one of the games and you can see how that went.

This overhaul will take quite some time, mainly because I will have to learn a lot to make the graphics look alright. I don't think I will be able to make it look great or very good. Not without years of practice. This was my first attempt:

It's not very good, but It matches my vision to some degree. Dark saturated colors, and it reminds me of old games using prerendered graphics. I will be working on the graphics through out the next year and hopefuly be able to release a version with all default tilesets replaced before the end of 2023.

General expansion of existing features

I will be finishing all unfinished / underdeveloped systems currently in the game. This will include things like hangouts. Giving you more options, making them more important and useful. Electricity system and farming will get expanded and much, much more.

These are my plans for next year. No roadmap this time. I will post a report every month and I will try and release small version updates every so often, but larger updates will be less frequent. 

Hope you understand an I also hope you look forward to all the new stuff I'm planning.