Armonium November Report (v0.5.6)

It's finally looking more like a game! November brought significant progress to Armonium, with key mechanics falling into place. Let’s delve into the details, as LLMs like to say.

Combat

After studying several games last month, I faced a pivotal choice for Armonium's combat system: pausable real-time combat or turn-based combat.

• Pausable real-time combat: A popular choice in fantasy games, offering fluid gameplay.
• Turn-based combat: Favored in post-apocalyptic games, with options like action-point-based systems (e.g., Fallout, Wasteland 2/3) or action-based systems (e.g., XCOM). The latter stands out for its tactical depth, emphasizing positioning, cover, and strategic elimination of enemies.

In the end, I opted for a turn-based, XCOM-style combat system with initiative-based turns. Characters with higher initiative (derived from Dexterity and planned contributing feats) get to act more frequently, adding a dynamic layer of strategy.

This shift makes combat feel more tactical and engaging. Every turn forces meaningful choices, unlike the previous real-time system where players simply clicked and waited for enemies to die.

Mechanics

• Chance-to-Hit: Modeled after tabletop RPGs, the system uses a roll of a 100-sided die, adding modifiers to determine success against an enemy's armor class.
• Damage Rolls: Attacker rolls a predefined set of dice, adds bonuses, and applies the result as damage to the defender.
• Item Modifiers: A versatile item system now supports conditional bonuses. For example, players can craft or enchant weapons that deal extra damage to goblinoids at night.

Character Progression

One of my long-standing frustrations with fantasy CRPGs is how the class based character creation locks players into rigid paths. Players often make critical and long-lasting decisions without fully understanding the game’s mechanics, limiting their options. The only way for a fighter to learn lockpicking or casting basic spells is multiclassing, which comes as a huge package rather than the one specific thing the player wants.

In Armonium, character progression is more flexible. Players earn Character Points on level-up, which they can spend on:

• Stats
• Weapon or social skills
• Spell slots
• Feats

This system allows for both well-rounded and highly specialized characters, giving players the freedom to shape their heroes without feeling trapped by early choices.

Infrastructure and Modding

Event System for Quests and Mods

A generic, event-based system for quests and mods is now in place. When significant events occur, they generate events for quests and mods to process. Quests and mods can subscribe to specific event types and handle them in custom ways. In order to test, I implemented a quest where settlement leaders send packages to other settlements. This system is designed for scalability, ensuring that even with many mods, performance remains smooth.

Save/Load System

Saving and loading functionality was another major milestone. I enhanced the code generation tool to automate much of the process and handled edge cases requiring manual serialization.

Future Plans

With November's progress wrapped up, here’s the roadmap for upcoming versions:

• 0.6.1: Quests. This is almost done, but save/load support still needs to be added.
• 0.6.2: Initial implementation of dungeons and building interiors.
• 0.6.5: Scheduler for better task management.
• 0.6.6: A memory system where characters remember significant events.
• 0.6.9: Better randomization allowing more deterministic world generation for a given seed regardless of the small actions taken by the player.

Looking further ahead, 0.7 will focus on content: adding new quests, gods, civilization diplomacy, magic systems, and new-game scenarios. By the end of this milestone, it will be possible to release a demo with meaningful gameplay.

November was a fantastic month for Armonium’s development. The game is growing in depth and complexity, and I can’t wait to share more next month. Let’s make it happen!