Full Invasion 3 Progress Report #2 news

In our last progress report post, we mentioned that there are several large features still required before the first version of Full Invasion 3 can go live. Though we've had periods of less progression due to the holiday season and busy work schedules, we did make good progress on a lot of fronts, so let's go over the major points!

Progression system

As mentioned in the previous progress report, one of the major features we wanted to have ready is the progression system, and we currently have a first version done!

The progression system no longer makes use of gold, but instead makes use of two new terms: Mastery and Class Level. Both of these are gained by performing basic actions: hitting/killing bots (the only thing implemented for now), getting assists, healing allies as a healing class, etc. Let's break these terms down:

• Mastery: this indicates how much experience your character has in a certain skill. Using the skill increases your mastery, just like proficiency in singleplayer. Increasing your Mastery in a skill unlocks better weapons in that category, and is required to unlock higher tier classes. This means your Mastery levels carry over between classes too.
• Class Level: this indicates your character's experience with the current class they are playing as. Progression to your class level is made by gaining any kind of experience while playing as the class, and it's used to unlock better armour and horses for your class. Logically, your class level does not carry over between classes.

This system will of course be much expanded in the future. One of our goals is to include (almost) every skill from singleplayer in a meaningful way to Full Invasion (for example: Engineering for using/maintaining siege equipment, Scouting for... scouting).

Flag capture system

One of the major improvements planned for FI3 compared to FI2 is giving bots something more to do than just "Exterminate". For this we're implementing capture points, much like the ones being used in Siege mode in Native. Currently our mappers are hard at work implementing this system into the maps we have:

This system requires a few more tweaks (like determining when the AI prioritizes capturing a point over attacking a player), but it's essentially ready for the first version.

Additional improvements

The rest of the time we've spent on working on smaller additional improvements, essentially filling gaps in multiplayer (that really should have been handled by Native to begin with, but alas), such as showing spectators in the scoreboard, making arrow refill barrels work with throwing weapons, adding health restoration props, etc.

Required for the first release

The following features are still on our todo list as required before the first release:

• Create classes for the Calradia defender faction. We've currently only got Sturgian classes, but we have a good method down for adding more classes quickly (and let me tell you: it's a lot less of a hassle than in Warband).
• Ensure all maps make good use of the capture system. We've currently got 3 maps for the first release, with more on the way.
• Map rotation after a game ends. For some reason, this is not currently a feature in Native, so we have to ensure servers don't just reset whenever a game is over. Edit: this is inaccurate, as this is already a feature in Native, so less work for us!
• AI improvements related to the capture system. As mentioned above, the bots need to consider the capture system as their actual objective.
• Preliminary release testing. Once all systems are in place, we have to test to ensure we're not releasing something obviously broken to the public.
• Set up dedicated servers to play on. Pretty self-explanatory.

There are further points to work on in the meantime, but if those don't make it into the first release, that's less of a problem. Therefore our goal is to release the mod once the points listed above are done.

We will be tracking our progress on these final points in our Discord server! So join us there if you'd like to keep track of how much further we've got to go.