Greetings Lords & Ladies, and a lucky Friday the 13th to you all!

Over the past few months I’ve been hard at work pushing development forward and bringing the world of Before Arthur closer to life. We’re steadily approaching our first playtest, and if all goes well I’m hoping to have an early demo available in the next few updates.

Here’s a look at what’s been added recently:

AI Update: One of the biggest areas of work has been improving the faction and NPC AI systems.

Factions are now fully active in the world. They raise armies, raid villages, and lay siege to towns and forts as they pursue their ambitions. Meanwhile, NPC lords and kings who are not leading armies now go about their day-to-day lives, tending to their personal needs and managing their lands.

Factions and nobles can also now construct their own buildings, towns, and villages, meaning the world will grow and change dynamically as you explore it.

Polished Land Claiming: I've added a short event that fires when you claim new territory. Showing you what was claimed and the difference to your borders.

Kingdom Religion: Both your kingdom and rival factions can now manage their realm’s religion.

A kingdom’s level of faith will influence the stability of its people. If faith falls too low, negative events may occur, peasants may convert to other beliefs, unrest may spread, and loyalty can suffer. Maintain strong devotion, however, and your kingdom may receive positive blessings and events.

Indepth Kin System: A new Kin System UI now allows you to see detailed information about the families living in your lands and where they are working.

Over time, these family units develop lives of their own, forming marriages, having children, and sometimes even developing feuds with rival families.

Keeping them loyal, prosperous, and content will be important for maximizing their productivity and preventing unrest, banditry, or criminal activity.

New Weather System: A new dynamic weather system now tracks weather patterns as they move across the world.

Rain, droughts, storms, and snow can all affect the land, and each weather system influences local farming output. These conditions can also trigger farm events that further impact crop yields.

Lord Dialog & Kingdom Voting: NPC lord dialogue trees are now complete, allowing you to speak with them about matters affecting their lives and lands.

Their responses are dynamic and influenced by their personalities and past events in the game world.

I’ve also added a kingdom voting system, where faction members decide who should receive newly conquered lands—introducing politics, alliances, and rivalries into the process.

Law Improvement: Expanded on the law and punishments options integrating the system into how kingdom loyalty and lawlessness is determined.

More updates are on the way as development continues toward the first playable demo. As always, thank you for following the project and supporting the development of Before Arthur.

Hello Lords and ladies, it's time for another dev diary / progress report on Before Arthur's development! Although I personally fell short of where I wanted to be by now with the war system, I did manage to start / polish a number of smaller mechanics that will be integrated into this much larger game feature.

Breaking down the overall war mechanic, raiding villages will be an integral part of any war. At the start of a war, each faction will vote on the best lord they would like to lead their faction's raiders. This NPC will then raise a number of men to take across the borders to cause general mayhem and distract from the factions main armies who will be trying to capture towns and forts. Unlike the main factions' armies, the raiders will be focused entirely on attacking caravans and burning down villages and farms.

Once a village raid has started, the plan is to have the army visually split into three groups each with their own tasks. The first group will begin attacking and killing villagers that will lower the village's population, the second group will begin sacking warehouses to steal goods and supplies from the defending faction, while the third group will take out torches and begin burning the settlement down.

We currently have completed how this NPC lord will be selected, the rising of their raiding party, village target selection and AI faction movement to the target village, but the actual visuals of raiding the village is currently being developed, of course the player won't see any of this unless they happen to be at the unlucky village being attacked, or is leading a raid themselves.

To start the raiding visuals I needed to create a fire progression system that will spread the firers starting from the point of contact with a thrown torch and ultimately destroy the building...

In the next few weeks I hope to have the AI troops hunting down and killing the villagers, stealing supplies and of course our new fire system all integrated together to create a realistic village raid!

While adding the torch throw mechanic I also added a weapon throw system (cause why not?) allowing the player and future NPC's to throw their weapons at a target in a last desperate attempt to kill a troublesome enemy. When the player is armed with a throwable weapon, holding left control will display the current throw range (affected by the player's skills), clicking the right mouse button (at the same time) will throw the weapon.

Both accuracy and range is affected by skills with strength being the primary factor for range, and overall character level affecting accuracy. Thrown weapons can also be picked up later, allowing the player to temporarily lighten their inventory. A dropped item's location will be persistently saved across game sessions and scene loading, meaning you can return safely for an item later (unless it has been stolen by an NPC, or ruined by weather).

Horses have been added to the game and stables can now be constructed with the right technology. A basic stable can hold up to 4 horses, with later versions increasing the holding limit. Horses can be assigned to your armies and will allow the player to have mounted units in battle. Horses will need to be purchased from a merchant or can also be bred later if you have more than two in stock. There are currently 6 breeds added each with their own strengths and weaknesses.

The player can ride these horses themselves and a bonding system keeps track of how attached a horse is to the player. Increased bonding allows the player to name the horse, unlocks special abilities such as jumping, or crossing of rivers; and also increases the time you can spend in mounted combat without being thrown, or spooking the horse.

The player can now drown if they fall into the river while riding, or the ocean from future ships. I also plan on adding in some nice looking water shaders (waves, reflections) in the next few updates to give more polish and feel.

• Expanded the crop planting system to allow harvesting once the crop has grown.

• Included a crop growth visual allowing a quick way to tell growth without going to the farming UI.

• Allow the player to learn poems by talking to traveling bards (used when courting ladies).

• Expanded the diplomacy tab UI to allow players to offer treaties to other factions while on the go. Note: talking to your advisor in the throne room is still a better option as they have access to advanced offers to influence the factions chance of accepting the offer.

• Allow the player to assign farmers to your farms, thus increasing yield and harvest.

• Added woodcutters, market stale, stables and execution block to buildable buildings.

• Polished some existing buildings.

• bug fixes!

And there we go, horses, fires and drowning are now permanent features for the upcoming release.

Finishing the raiding mechanic and allowing both the player and AI factions to use it.

• Pathfinding! finally finishing the pathfinding system to be more robust and stop NPC's from walking through walls and buildings.

• continue work on the AI faction build system allowing them to construct their settlements just like the player. (this is a huge feature and will likely need to be done in sections)

• A weather system handling rain, storms and winter.

• Expand the lord NPC dialog options, including allowing permission to court (date) their female family members.

• And more!