Because you play as a leader of a caravan of sorts, a big part of Vagrus is how you manage your crew. The Crew Management UI aids you in your management tasks and displays information on your crew's stats. Crew management also includes the character sheets of the named 'Hero' characters, where you can check their stats and manage their progression. These characters can also play important roles in the crew, becoming your closest aides, called Deputies.

We're back again with another Map Movement video!

The most important changes from last time:

• Movement Points (MPs) are displayed on the top left UI (March movement points, available as bonus and calculated from normal Movement Points) are displayed in red behind normal MPs. Running out means you have to camp, and thereby end your turn, advancing a day in-game.

• Movement Point costs are displayed either in blue (normal movement MP cost), red (the additional cost of Marching), and grey (which only serves to help you calculate longer journeys, as these nodes are not reachable this turn, not even by Marching).

• Currently, when you move the comitatus, you can first only move to deplete your MPs, then - and only then - you can opt to March further, using the March MPs, but of course risking brutal fatigue and Morale losses.

As you can see, though the base system of movement is pretty much set, we'll continue to tweak how details work.

As a strategy-RPG hybrid, Vagrus is pretty heavy on UI, so a lot of our effort goes into designing a functional and appealing UI for various elements of the game. Today, we'll take a look at our progress with the 'main UI', which is on the campaign map. This is what the player will see the most of and it's UI has to be a gateway to several key game elements.

So the big news is that the game's title is finalized at last! For now. :D

Check out the title reveal short video!

The word vagrus is the same pseudo-Latin that most of the Imperial Tongue used in the game (as it hearkens back to the Roman Empire in material and immaterial culture). It meant 'wanderer' or 'vagabond' in Imperial, but nowadays it only refers to the men and women who lead a comitatus across the wasteland. It is short, easy to remember, and easy to be associated to the English word 'vagrant' (which also originates in Latin).

Here's a second look of how the comitatus (caravan) led by the vagrus (the player) moves on the world map. It is still pretty early stuff, a lot can and will change, but it should give a good idea of how things will work. A few thoughts on the movement mechanics that might further clarify what you can see in the video:

Well, we have been so busy that we skipped a beat in our originally planned monthly project updates. Which is actually good news if we are looking at it from a progress perspective. So what has happened since last year?

After returning recharged (and pot-bellied) from the holiday period we focused our attention on two things: 

• Creating additional graphic design capacity by finding more super-talented and like-minded artists to create environment and character art assets for us.
• Prototyping our hero combat to test its mechanics both in terms of graphics and game design.

The obvious intent behind choosing those focus areas was that we wanted to show more to our follower community on how the game is going to look like as well as display some of the game mechanics we're planning on using.