Mount & Blade .890 released

[Nedrah]

Yes, it's that time of the year again.

No idea what it does really, but I'm sure they fixed the arena shield bug and added a whole lot of other stuff.

Taleworlds topic is here: http://forums.taleworlds.net/index.php/topic,26287.0.html

Also there is a SA topic here:
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2629066

I may post some more about that in here, but for now I hope some of you are going to be as happy to get their hands on this as I am.

Edit:

Shameless copypasta from the SA thread linked above:

RAGDOLLS!
Loads of smaller villages and townships to visit.
The existing cities have had slight layout changes to expand them.
There are now townsfolk walking around during the day in the cities.
Merchants are laid out slightly different now, the town trader is no longer the horse merchant (now a separate guy) and you can directly access each merchant from the town menu (hit TAB).
Different towns have different opinions of you, and you can view individual people's attitude to you by mousing over their portrait in the conversation window.
Horse stats have been altered, and the horses seem even more responsive now.
A bunch of new graphics options, including actor detail, environment shadows and auto-scaling.
The combat engine has been optimised, and the speed of combat can be altered in the options.
You can now pick up dropped weapons and shields in combat.
Battle size now maxes out at 72 instead of 48.
Certain heads in character creation mode are limited to certain hair colours.
World map camera rotated to sit lower and give a better view of the map.
World map has a 3d compass that stays on screen at all times now instead of being a static object off in a corner of the map.
Villages can be looted, by yourself and by others (you'll see notifications about which village and who did the looting).
2 new factions, The Kingdom of Nords, and the Kingdom of Rhodoks.
The Khergit Khanate is now an actual faction you can join.
Food choices now have an effect on overall party morale.
Morale effects how quickly you move on the overworld map.
Tutorial mode is totally separate from the main game now.
Quick battle mode.
Quest Log screen now has a huge plethora of info, like who's in control of which city, which faction that person belongs to, how much food the city has, etc.
You can earn the right to bear a banner, which among other things displays over your head on the worldmap.
Cities fly the banner of their occupying general on the worldmap
You can gain fiefdoms, which earn you a weekly amount of cash, and allow you to recruit troops. The fiefs can be upgraded.
Mercenaries are now present as actual people in the taverns now, and you speak with them to recruit them. No longer do you have to speak to the tavern keeper.
Cavalry charges actually work now, the horses have appreciable weight and will plough through a crowd of infantry like an axe through a skull.
Tactical map/order menu on the battle screen. Accessed via backspace (has been reported on the official forums to occasionally cause crashes or errors)

Edit2:

Both the taleworlds and the torrent mirror are very slow right now, although I would imagine the Torrent one will pick up later. The hyperfileshare one is working at decent speeds, though.

Ed3:

Ops, the torrent actually works nicely if you give it some time. I'll be seeding this for a while, although I now have two copys of the file on my hdd - forgot to shut down Utorrent after getting it through regular channels.

 

[dagorkan]

Cool. Thanks for keeping us updated.

 

[JoeDirt]

i wish bryce made 5 posts about this update

 

[dagorkan]

Lol. His "League of Maedhros" mod is supposed to be out shortly after this new release. Sounds pretty damn good actually.

 

[Shoelip]

Get it from the torrent link. It starts slow but speeds up.

 

[Balor]

Bah! Heroes 5 expancion, next-mega-version opf Dwarf Fortress will be ready in a few days... and now M&B.
Do I have to take a few days-off or something?

 

[Vidken]

Bahaha, yes.

And the biggish Unreal World update actually wasn't *that* long ago. These three would make a nice package.

 

[YourConscience]

Wow, do I correctly see that there is a ton of, you know, game play changes and additions?! Now that's a good reason to reinstall it finally! After all those boring graphics enhancements I kind of assumed the project in zombie state. But it's very much alive and kicking!

I am really curious about those fiefdoms. (Anyone knows the etymology of that term?)

 

[dagorkan]

A fief is like a plantation, all it's land and the people working on it - the personal property of a thug criminal with pretensions of nobility. I think it's originally a french word.

That feature was apparently taken from a mod, The Battle for Sicily, which I never played but was quite popular. You can upgrade your domain (which produces money and low level troops), capture other fiefs, burn down villages etc.

Too bad I never finished my mod. I was working with another guy and had plans to have real dynamic economies - settlements produce good, the type of goods and supply/demand in other towns determine caravan routes - and to revamp the political/reward system (series of quests to climb the ranks of the nobility, special events like fairs/courts).

Unfortunately the Python system they use is a bitch to work with and not worth the effort you have to put in (unless you're just changing textures which is what most modders do).

 

[Kingston]

I bet this fucked up a lot of mods. Cool.

 

[Nedrah]

No, not a lot of them, ALL of them.
Like every new release does. Armagan (the main dev) has stated it should be very painless to convert mods to the new version this time around - if they don't plan to use the new features, obviously.

In any case, if it bothers you, it's perfectly viable to keep one or more older versions installed for the time being.

 

[Blacklung]

No kidding. I had just downloaded the Last of Days mod too...maybe I'll finish my game before I try this...Maybe.

 

[Nedrah]

If you plan to finish it, you might indeed want to do so before even getting the new one. I'd imagine it would be quite hard to go back to non-ragdoll and oldstyle worldmap after a while. Besides, you'd propably end up using .893 or whatever if you wait a while, thus avoiding the early after-release bugsquishing period.

 

[VenomByte]

I haven't played M&B since 0.632

Anyone care to give me a brief summary of the major changes since then?

 

[Nedrah]

Look, it's a 109MB download.
Unless you're on dial-up or something I strongly suggest just getting and installing it.
You don't ask people "care to give me a quick summary of what has changed between Dos 6.0 and Windows XP", now do you?

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Look, it's a 109MB download.
Unless you're on dial-up or something I strongly suggest just getting and installing it.
You don't ask people "care to give me a quick summary of what has changed between Dos 6.0 and Windows XP", now do you?

Except this is Mount and Blade. The last umpteen updates have included such exciting things as... umm... a different cursor and umm... no other noticeable changes what-so-ever!

You'd have been better off calling him a dumbfuck and pointing him to the rather extensive list of changes that are included in the first post instead.

 

[The_Pope]

To be fair, the graphics did need a lot of work.

 

[Nedrah]

Ok, right.

However, he wasn't asking about .0808 to .890 differences, which would have been reasonable IF the (by no means complete, I assure you) list in the first post did not exist.
While there may not have been too many visible (as in gameplay) changes in the mostly graphical .808 update compared to .751, there definitely has been a lot going on "under the hood". Since the question was pretty general, those things would have to be mentioned, too. But then the changelog is supposed to go back even further, when the main-dev is notorious for never really coming up with a coherent changelog and instead leaves it to the community to find out most of what has been happening. Seriously, you'd have to pay me for me to come up with a list of even the more important changes that have gone on since the version in question. On the other hand, using a broadband connection he could just have found out himself nicely and first-hand what has changed, with no hassle or paying people for forum-gruntwork involved at all.

My Dos-Xp comparison was over the top, though.

 

[MisterStone]

I only played about 1/2 hour yesterday, but it looks a lot more professional and complete than previous versions. The main difference I noted was that there are actually different kinds of towns: I saw villages, towns and castles. Also, there were parties lead by named NPCs that were going around and looting villages. Combat seemed to work better, though I can't lay my finger on why. I couldn't really tell the difference with the ragdolls... I probably won't be satisfied until we see horses tumbling head over heels when they crash into boulders, and riders go flying through the air. Not holding my breath though...

All in all I was really happy to see the game jump forward in development like this. I had pretty much given up hope on it, but the latest update shows that he devs. are actually concerned about making a complete game, not just an engine for modders to mess with. The game is starting to remind me a lot of the old Pirates! game, with a better economy, factions, and so on.

If you get the torrent, seed it for a while. It started out slow for me but quickly sped up to 80k/sec, so as long as people keep it up, that should be the best way to get ahold of the game.

 

[dagorkan]

I managed to download it in about half an hour yesterday, 8-9ish GMT which should be a peak time. Use a download manager/accelerator - like Flashget

 

[Woetohice]

__

 

[Claw]

I bought it long ago. I don't regret it although I haven't played the last few releases. I already had enough fun with it to justify the purchase.

 

[Nedrah]

I personally did pay for the game. I can't say I regret it.
I was expecting a lot more of the modding scene at the time of my purchase, though. (It was at .751 at the time). If you are absolutely positive about liking the combat system and general style, I'd say go for it. Otherwise, seeing how some of the most talented modders seem to be "on vacation" right now, I'd say wait a bit longer and see how things turn out.

 

[Shoelip]

I bought it for twelve dollars on 8/28/05. I still have the receipt in front of my computer.

By the way, the ragdolls are off by default, you need to turn them in in the options menu.

 

[Section8]

I bought it around the same time frame, and it's one of the best game purchases I've ever made. Mount & Blade just absolutely nails low-fantasy action combat.