Battle Brothers Pre-Release Thread

[Zdzisiu]

As far as I understand, you will fight undeads, orcs and possibly other humans? Is that all you have in mind? I dont mean it is not enough, just wondering if you are hidding something more in your sleeve.

Also, can't fucking wait for this.

 

[Crabcakes]

As far as I understand, you will fight undeads, orcs and possibly other humans? Is that all you have in mind? I dont mean it is not enough, just wondering if you are hidding something more in your sleeve.

Also, can't fucking wait for this.

Hey! Glad you like the game
The next enemy to be released are the goblins. I already finished most of the assets so its mostly skill icons, some ai programming and sounds we are missing. The bandits will be only humans and make up a faction of their own. After that we have concepts for another faction and ideas for ten more factions its just a matter of time and funding.

Cheers!

 

[rapsdjff]

In addition, there are the beasts. Those are kind of a neutral faction where we can put all the monstrous creatures that roam the world independently. The only beast in the game right now is the werewolf (which has a rework scheduled to make him more interesting) but we have a bunch more planned and want to go wild with ideas here and beyond the usual giant spiders and such seen in a dozen other games already.

 

[SmartCheetah]

Mmkay, game looks better and better with every day. Really can't wait for it.

You guys planning any other "human" faction, except the bandits? Or only monstrous things?
Game holds so much promise that you keep thinking about new ways to play it. I hope you guys won't dissapoint dedicated modders

 

[rapsdjff]

There are no plans for another human-only faction currently that opposes the player, but we have a concept for another faction that contains some humans. They're not the primary threat of that faction, though.

As Paul said, we want to look into other factions if time and budget allows once we have all the originally planned ones in place. If you have any good ideas, by all means, share them.

 

[Crabcakes]

Two factions I have in the back of my mind for a long time now would be some kind of norse barbarians (Humans only, Warhammer Fantasy Chaos Barbarians style) and for non-humans a "beast men" faction with goat like dudes (also Warhammer Fantasy style )
But that`s just some random ideas I'd like to realize evetually, perhaps in an expansion if the base game is successfull enoguh.

 

[Alienman]

How about mole people?

 

[rapsdjff]

Good news, everyone.

Dev Blog #33: Progress Update – Character Generation, Hiring and Shopping

With the Early Access release coming up early next year we try to step up our game and make a lot of progress each week. This week we have for you a complete rework of how Battle Brothers are generated and rendered. Get prepared for uniquely looking Battle Brothers with no less than 80,640 possible combinations for heads currently!

On the worldmap we also added two more core features – hiring new Battle Brothers and the buying and selling of equipment. Let’s take a look…

Character Generation Rework
We took a step back and reworked the whole process of how Battle Brothers are rendered in the game. First, all heads have been separated into hair, face and beard and made freely combinable. Second, we added a massive amount of faces, hairstyles and beards in different colors so that we ended up with a staggering 80,640 possible combinations of unique looking Battle Brothers – and that isn’t even counting in all the different equipment they can wear. For every campaign, all Battle Brothers will be randomly generated so that every player will get their very own set of mercenaries. Let’s take a look at this in action:



As we now have hair and beard on separate layers, helmets no longer need to be extra large to cover all hair. This allows both for more creative hairstyles and also to decrease helmet size by roughly 10%, resulting in more realistic proportions.



What is more, we also separated the armor from the bodies so that they also have a layer of their own and are rendered ontop of bodies. This makes it easier to show broken or damaged armor with parts missing and also allows Battle Brothers to have unique skin colors for more variety.

Hiring
A core mechanic in a game about mercenaries is hiring them, of course, which we just finished implementing.

When approaching a village or city you can visit the local tavern and have a look at all the volunteers offering their swordarm for coin. Each volunteer comes with their own background, like being a farmhand or a retired soldier, a procedural background story, and their own equipment. Both the hiring fee and the daily wage they request depend heavily on the character’s background. A skilled and seasoned sellsword who brings a chainmail and sword with him will cost as much as 10 times or more compared to a sickly beggar with a club. We want you to make some tough decisions here when deciding which volunteer to hire. Would you rather hire a few well equipped and battle hardened fighters, or a wild bunch of cheap beggars, thiefs and outcasts with no combat experience?



Like everywhere else in the game we don’t want to reveal more stats here than necessary. You won’t see any numbers besides the costs, but based on the background you’ll have a good idea of what to expect. Want a strong and sturdy Battle Brother? A farmhand or lumberjack is a good bet. Want someone good with ranged weapons? Try to hire a hunter. Need someone with combat experience? A sellsword or a retired soldier should do, although the latter might not have the stamina of a young man anymore. What is more, all characters come with traits, good and bad, which are also linked to backgrounds. Characters used to hard work are more likely to have the “strong” or “tough” traits, and while you won’t find any insecure adventurous nobles, they can be as brave as they can be cocky and overconfident.

There is also a chance of characters having a title based on their traits, like an especially large and sturdy character being known as “the Mountain”, which should give you a hint. You’ll have to hire them to find out what hidden traits they have exactly. If you want to know more, you can read up on character backgrounds and traits in an earlier dev blog article.

All in all, our goal is to have all the characters have a lot of, well, “character” despite them being randomly generated. Their unique looks, their background stories and their traits all come together for this. Some players won’t care about this, but if you don’t want a fisherman who strangled his wife to death in your band of mercenaries, you better take a close look at who it is that is applying to join you.

Ye Olde Shoppe
What do you do with your freshly hired Battle Brothers? Get them some weapons for bashing in heads of course!
In villages and cities, but also in military locations like watchtowers and strongholds, you can spend your crowns on equipment like weapons and armor and also sell surplus equipment to fill up the piggybank. Shops have different equipment for sale depending on the wealth of the location and the type. A civilian village will sell different things than a military stronghold, and some pieces of weapons and amor will only be available in one of the two.

The wealth of a location also determines the quality and quantity of available equipment, as well as its price. Villages that are bled dry from bandit raids and lost a lot of wealth will have little to offer you, whereas rich cities will have a great selection of equipment for you to purchase at kingly prices. If you make it your mission to protect a village for some time, even if the village isn’t able to reward you much at first, you can see it grow and stock up on better equipment.

 

[Jack Dandy]

Too fucking good! I love how you're trying your best to inject the feeling of "character" into this title.
Usually, you don't see much of that in these kinds of games, and that's what keeps me away from most of 'em.

This all sounds positively fantastic. Love all the character variety, both in story and in looks.

 

[Dickie]

I didn't read the whole thread, but what is the point of hiding stats?

 

[Jack Dandy]

To discourage players from min\maxxing and numbercrunching, I guess.
I welcome it - trying to get players into the mood of the game.

 

[rapsdjff]

Indeed. Note that you can see all their stats once you've actually hired them, though.

 

[Crabcakes]

Appetite for some new armors and tunics? Have a bite!

 

[ASTRAL]

You should make the visibility of stats dependent on the difficulty setting so try-hards wont use mods to reveal them in fear of their e-pen size

 

[rapsdjff]

This just happened.

Dev Blog #34: Progress Update – New Armor, Helmet Rework, Banners

Like every week we have some sweet new stuff for you. We went back to take a look at all the armor in the game and reworked all helmet appearances and armor values. What is more, we added some missing body armors to get a nice progression of armor values into the game. To round things up, a banner generator is in the works that will allow you to create your very own custom banner when starting a new game of Battle Brothers.

Lets explore this in more detail.

New Body Armors
We want to have a smooth progression of both the protection that armor offers, as well as their price and how rare they are in the game. Until recently, there were some big jumps in armor values – for example there was little inbetween a simple mail shirt and the heavy coat of plates. With some new armor added, we filled these gaps and now have a great and steady progression.

The heavier armors are quite expensive and hard to come by, so you’ll likely only be able to afford them later in the game. They’re also quite rare so that you’ll never find them on offer in great quantities and only in rich cities and strongholds to begin with.



The protection from armor is crucial though, as a Battle Brother with little or no armor may be struck down with a single lucky hit. Before you know it you’ll see heads flying about left and right if you don’t get your guys some protection. Just take a look at our last gameplay video showcasing a tough and gory fight against orcs: Orc Line Battle Video.



The new armors from top left to top right are

• Heraldic Coat of Plates: Two layers of leather with heavy metal plates rivetted inbetween on top of a full mail shirt.
• Coat of Scales: A heavy armor made of overlapping metal scales covering most of the body.
• Scale Armor: A body vest with overlapping scales.
• Heavy Lamellar Harness: A lamellar armor that covers most parts of the body with thick, overlapping metal plates for maximum protection.
• Mail Shirt: A mail shirt with shoulder guards providing excellent protection against most weapons.

On the bottom row we have a variety of linen tunics to get some more flavor into that early game when you’re hiring farmhands, lumberjacks and fishermen that don’t own any armor of their own.


Reworked Helmets
Until now all helmet variations within the same category were just visual flavor. This led to the odd situation where a helmet with a complete mail coif underneath gave the same amount of armor points as a helmet with just a piece of cloth underneath.

To remedy this we split all visual variations into items of their own and gave them individual levels of armor points, malus to maximum fatigue and to sight range. This way we now have a ton of unique helmets and you’ll be able to instantly recognize which helmet will grant more or less protection or inhibit your Battle Brothers’ field of view. What you see is what you get, basically.



We’re happy now with the variety of armors and helmets in the game and feel that they’re ready for our upcoming Early Access release. For the final game there’ll also be unique legendary items that come with their very own visuals, name, background story and sometimes even magical properties. They’ll be very hard to get and we’ll do a dedicated article on them in time.


Custom Banner Creation
When starting out with your brand new mercenary company you’ll get the opportunity not just to name it, but also to create a custom banner for it. Just like the player, all locations – villages, watchtowers or orc camps – will have their own banner, as will the parties that originate from there. This way you can quickly identify a party’s affilliance and know where they come from.

The banners will be composed of a banner shape, a pattern, a main emblem and additional secondary emblem. You’ll also be able to choose from a variety of colors, of course. These are just some possible color combinations:



There will be a variety of banner shapes to choose from.



Here are some examples we created to show the possibilities of the banner generator with included main emblem and secondary emblem. Note that these are still in development and not implemented in the game yet.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Great work, clever idea for the helmets, I really like how you constantly refine the game.

 

[pakoito]

So loot improves linearly and one tier is immediately better than the previous one. No distinction between light and heavy armor, etc?

 

[Galdred]

So loot improves linearly and one tier is immediately better than the previous one. No distinction between light and heavy armor, etc?

heavier armor gives better benefits(hitpoints) and higher malus(fatigue, sight) at the same time, so it is not really a pure improvement.

 

[MRY]

This game is making me very jealous and more than a little depressed.

 

[Jack Dandy]

The level of detail and art! I love it all.

 

[Chef_Hathaway]

I just got wind of this, played the demo and loved it. Keep up the good work!

 

[rapsdjff]

Thanks! We're making steady progress still.

Dev Blog #35: Worldmap Progress and Feature Lists

Finishing all core mechanics is our top priority right now and a lot of work is getting done on the underlying mechanics of the strategic worldmap. Unfortunately, this also means that we don’t have anything flashy to show you this week.

In the meantime we gathered all the most important information of previous blog posts into 3 detailed feature lists. Each feature comes with a status so that you can see at a glance if it has already been implemented or is yet to come, which should give you a good idea of where we are at with the game.

Worldmap Progress
The worldmap is in the center of our attention right now as we implement all the core mechanics. Most of the work is already done and we now focus on the strategic AI that guides individual factions and the mercenary contracts that will be offered to the player on various occasions.



At the same time, we’re doing a rework of the worldmap visuals. The look we had for the worldmap wasn’t entirely satisfying to us, and neither was it flexible enough for our more ambitious goals. We’re still experimenting with a new style, but it will look something like in the image above. Instead of trees and similar being painted directly onto tiles, those tiles now only cover the ground while objects are independently placed on another layer ontop. This allows for more natural and less repetitive looking landscapes and transitions between different terrain types. More importantly, it also gives us more flexibility for dynamically changing the world, such as forests slowly becoming corrupted or fields being burned as the nearby village is raided. We should be able to share the final look with you in the next few weeks.

Detailed Feature Lists
With no less than 34 blog posts to read so far, gathering information about the game can be quite a bit of work. Since our Early Access release is also coming closer we think this is an opportune time to get all the most important information in one place.

We’ve therefore extended the “Features” category on our website with three additional feature lists containing more detailed information about aspects of the strategic worldmap, the tactical combat and the factions in the game. In addition, you’re also able to see what feature has been implemented so far and what is still to come. The feature lists will always be updated when a new feature is implemented so that you can follow the progress we make. Every feature that is marked as “implemented” will be in the Early Access release guaranteed, so the list can also help you to decide whether to get it now or wait a while longer.

Head over to the three feature pages to learn about where the game is at and what is still to come:

Worldmap Feature List
Tactical Combat Feature List
Factions in Battle Brothers

If you have any questions or ideas, just post them in the forums!

 

[Jack Dandy]

Pretty! I love me some world maps.
Would love to one day go on an adventure using the tools you've made for this game. One more RPG-y, with dungeons and shit

 

[rapsdjff]

We'll actually have dungeons. They're already sitting on the worldmap, waiting to be looted. Since we don't have any dungeon tileset for tactical combat yet, entering them just triggers a battle on open ground for now, though. I was considering adding even procedurally generated trigger plate puzzles, traps and such in the future, but we'll have to see how it fits with the rest of the game and if it doesn't turn out to be too repetitive or annoying given the turn-based nature of battles. It's something we'll get into after the initial release.

 

[Chef_Hathaway]

I noticed that there are Men-at-Arms and Village factions, will these be present in tactical battles as allies on occasion? Or do they just fight battles on the strategic map/give contracts?