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Battle Brothers Pre-Release Thread

rapsdjff

Overhype Studios
Developer
Joined
Jan 31, 2014
Messages
330
They'll also be present in tactical battles. Both if mandated by a contract, for example if a caravan the player is escorting is being attacked, and if the player decides to join an ongoing battle, such as village militia defending their home against raiding bandits. And while we're at it, three-way-battles are possible as well, for example if you join a battle raging between orcs and undead.
 

Norfleet

Moderator
Joined
Jun 3, 2005
Messages
12,250
Will there be a stat or skill to allow you to take charge of a situation involving allied units so that you can give them orders to not go full derp? Nothing more awful than an escort mission with NPCs that can't fight, yet insist on going full derp and rushing straight at the enemy instead of holding the line. Wasteland 2, I'm looking at YOU.
 

rapsdjff

Overhype Studios
Developer
Joined
Jan 31, 2014
Messages
330
There is one contract archetype currently, bodyguard duty, which gives you direct control over the NPC in question. It'd be just too limiting/frustrating not to have full control here when a whole enemy team is after just one guy. Other than these special cases you won't be able to control allied units or give them orders.
 

Norfleet

Moderator
Joined
Jun 3, 2005
Messages
12,250
If you're in any way responsible for their safety, there really should be some means of influencing their actions. Otherwise it's STILL frustrating, and more of them just means they can get themselves stupidly killed or otherwise obstruct the action even worse than that one guy.

Now, if you're not at all responsible for their safety at all, like they're just random people you encounter, then yeah, they don't have any reason to pay attention to you. Still, you'd think that there would be some kind of charisma or leadership attribute that enables you to take charge of a situation by shouting impressively, like in real life.
 

Norfleet

Moderator
Joined
Jun 3, 2005
Messages
12,250
Too late, I think we already saw one. Not that you could really tell all that much, considering that the character art consists of someone's head and extreme upper torso stuffed into a barrel.
 

zeitgeist

Magister
Joined
Aug 12, 2010
Messages
1,444
the character art consists of someone's head and extreme upper torso stuffed into a barrel.
zd9pDwV.png

I propose that this becomes the canon explanation for the character art, and that the game is renamed to Barrel Brothers.
 
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sser

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Mar 10, 2011
Messages
1,866,662
What happens if you suffer a "party wipe" in a battle? Is the campaign over or does the head of the mercenary band sorta exist outside the party, in that you could just pick up the scraps and try and put together a new crew...?
 

rapsdjff

Overhype Studios
Developer
Joined
Jan 31, 2014
Messages
330
No women Brothers thanks
We’ll build a world wherein both male and female characters exist but – keeping in line with history – the majority of the fighting profession is filled by males. Female characters come with their own backgrounds that take into account how a quasi-medieval world treats them, so they won’t just be male characters with different heads either. Just like their male counterparts, some will be more and some will be less suited to the hard life as mercenaries. It's your prerogative as a mercenary commander to hire or not to hire whoever you want.

What happens if you suffer a "party wipe" in a battle? Is the campaign over or does the head of the mercenary band sorta exist outside the party, in that you could just pick up the scraps and try and put together a new crew...?
Currently, a complete party wipe would end the campaign and has you lose the game. We want to have a fleeing mechanic to allow you to potentially retreat from any battle similar to how it is in the original X-Com; reach a certain zone on the map borders (instead of inside the Skyranger), hit the Flee button and everyone not inside the zone is lost. Reaching the zone is obviously harder when surrounded at the start of the battle as a result of an ambush and with highly mobile opponents (such as vampires). In any case, fleeing should be a viable option and a sensible alternative to a fight to the death, or to reloading. Your men will also leave you after a period of time (depending on their individual loyalty) if you fail to pay them or run out of supplies, and losing every last man this way ends the campaign as well.

At this time we have a limit of 12 Battle Brothers you can have at once, all of which are present in every battle. Ultimately we want the player to have a larger roster and the ability to choose who to take into battle, among other things to allow for the rotation of Battle Brothers that need some time to recover from their wounds. At that point we'll look again into what the lose condition should be.

In other news we're making good progress on the new worldmap visuals. Villages now burn as they are raided and snowy terrain can be found in the north. We'll do a video this week to give a tour on the new worldmap and world simulation.

burning_village.jpg


snow_blending.jpg
 

rapsdjff

Overhype Studios
Developer
Joined
Jan 31, 2014
Messages
330
So here it is, a first video showing the worldmap. It's obviously still work in progress, using some placeholders and missing some features such as rivers, another terrain type to the east and more interesting locations to discover.

 

Trash

Pointing and laughing.
Joined
Dec 12, 2002
Messages
29,683
Location
About 8 meters beneath sea level.
So here it is, a first video showing the worldmap. It's obviously still work in progress, using some placeholders and missing some features such as rivers, another terrain type to the east and more interesting locations to discover.



Awesome video there. Looking forward to see such things as river and lakes implemented. Am wondering though. Will rivers have chokepoints like (guarded) bridges and fords? Limiting movement and making for interesting mechanics and decisions. How about them being able to freeze over in winter? Giving the hordes a chance to invade across them? Would give a heavy Fall of the Roman empire vibe.

Also, do orc outposts and the like spawn 'settlers'? Meaning more of the countryside gets infected by evil if they're doing well? Anyway, game looks more impressive the more I see of it. Kudos!
 

rapsdjff

Overhype Studios
Developer
Joined
Jan 31, 2014
Messages
330
Thanks for the encouragement.

Rivers act as natural barriers and can only be crossed at certain chokepoints, namely bridges and fords. We've toyed with the idea of seasonal changes but the workload would be too much for now; snow and ice are, at least for the time being, a permanent terrain type in the north. We may also look into changing terrain dynamically as the campaign progresses in the future, e.g. forests becoming corrupted or plains converting into barren wastes as some evil spreads.

The AI does indeed spawn settlers which can build new outposts and other locations if it accumulates enough resources and has no other pressing concerns. This is also so the map doesn't become too empty once the player has enough strength to take down spawnpoints. New villages or watchtowers are not built during the campaign, however.
 

AbounI

Colonist
Patron
Joined
Dec 2, 2012
Messages
1,050
the village screen, with shop, mercenaries and contractors

B6dYrsECMAAAudQ.jpg:large


Is it a universal screen for all villages, or just one amongst others?Will there be some variant setting (people , houses, shop, taverns and so..)?
I like it so much though, and as I listen once again the theme town, I think both fit together pretty well .I just wish there will be some animations (birds, clouds, dust, rain or snow etc etc)
 
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rapsdjff

Overhype Studios
Developer
Joined
Jan 31, 2014
Messages
330
We currently have one screen for villages and cities (the one you posted above) and one for strongholds and watchtowers. Ultimately, we want to have more (so that cities look different from villages and stuff) but they'll have to do for now while we focus on other assets that need to be done. These screens aren't animated, unfortunately, but we do have a night time version for each and the idea is to have a soundscape here that gives the vibe of a living and breathing village. The people are placed on a different layer and only show if there is a reason for them to be there; the mercenaries in the middle only show if there are actually mercenaries for hire and the potential employers on the right each have their own contract offer for the player (so in this case there would be 3 contracts on offer, but it could just as well be none). By the way, contracts are now in the game.

We'll post a blog article with more details probably tomorrow.
 

Jack Dandy

Arcane
Joined
Feb 10, 2013
Messages
3,039
Location
Israel
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Just saw the new update! Looks super cool as always.

Heheh, wouldn't it be cool if you could demand the villagers for more money after beating quests, at cost of reputation?
And maybe you could go completely rogue and start pillaging villages outright..
But, I suppose that's going into feature creep territory.
 

rapsdjff

Overhype Studios
Developer
Joined
Jan 31, 2014
Messages
330
Yeah, that's something we thought about as well. It would require us to have a whole reputation mechanic first, though - something to consider after the initial EA release. Interaction in the contract screens is limited to flavorful "yes" and "no" responses for now, but once more critical things are done we'd like to experiment on where we can take this. The infrastructure for (shallow) dialog trees is already in place.

Anyway, here goes the blog article.

Dev Blog #37: Progress Update – Village Screen and Mercenary Contracts

We hope you all had a great holiday time and a happy new year!

After the holidays it’s back to work – and we’re happy to announce that our last missing core mechanic, the mercenary contracts, has now made it into the game. From now on it is adding meat to the bones, that is content, polishing and eventually secondary features. Read up in our progress update on villages, castles and mercenary contracts to learn more.

Village and Castle Screens
As your mercenary company roams the land there are a number of friendly locations you can interact with. Both civilian locations, such as villages and larger cities, and military locations, such as watchtowers and mighty strongholds, can be entered.

As you enter them, you’re presented with a screen that acts as both an atmospheric backdrop, giving you a sense of where you are, and a hub for all actions there. From here, you can reach the shop to stock up on equipment or sell surplus items, you can hire new men to fill your ranks, and you can bargain with potential employers over mercenary contracts and collect your pay for done deeds. Of course, depending on where you are, you’ll have more or less options. For example, the selection of goods is far greater in a rich city than in a poor village – but so are the prices. Castles will offer different equipment, more suited to professional war, than villages which often have to use improvised weaponry and armor – not any village smith will be able to forge you a masterwork armor, afterall. On the other hand, you’ll find potential recruits more readily at villages and cities than at a lonely watchtower along the road.



This is how the new village screen looks. You can see the merchant on the left, mercenaries for hire in the middle and potential employers on the right, each with a contract offer of their own. The people are placed on a different layer and only shown as there is a reason for them to be there; the mercenaries are only shown as there are actual people to recruit, and the number of potential employers shown depends on the actual number of contract offers available at that location.



As you can see, castles use the same general layout, but have a different backdrop for atmosphere. In addition, we aim to have different soundscapes for individual locations to convey the vibe of a living and breathing village, or a busy castle readying itself for war, respectively.



During night time, both villages and castles will close their shops until morning. Ultimately, we want to have more and different backdrops for a number of locations, so that villages and cities feel noticeably different not just by the options available there but also in atmosphere. For the time being, however, villages and cities share a backdrop, while castles and watchtowers share the other.

Mercenary Contracts
A core mechanic of a game simulating a pseudo-medieval mercenary company is the idea of mercenary contracts. Basically, your men being hired to fight for coin. We’ve talked quite a bit about how contracts are issued and how they work in the past, and even if your’re familiar with the details, you might want a refresher at our previous blog article here: Blog Post on Contracts.

With the basics out of the way, we can announce that mercenary contracts have finally made it into the game. We’ve started with a few simple ones to ease us in, such as the classic errant (someones hires you to safely bring an item to another location) and the less classic discovery of a location (someone hires you to venture out into the wild to find a particular location, with varying degrees of clues to point you into the right direction). Now, let’s take a look at how the whole contract process works by using the example of another contract type, the hunting down of wild beasts.

As a party of werewolves roams across the worldmap and dwells in the vicinity of a village for a time, snatching a villager as meal every so often, that village will get alarmed and try to get rid of the looming danger in the area. It can muster a militia force if it has the resources to do so, but militia fights poorly and is ill-suited to tracking a pack of dangerous werewolves in the forest. A better course of action is thus for the village to offer a mercenary contract to exterminating these beasts, that is, offering payment for the player to track down and destroy the party of werewolves which has a very real effect on the village by slowly draining its resources.



As the player enters the city, an individual will offer the contract to the player in the form of a short story, looking something like in the image above. The details of all contract offers are proceduraly generated, making use of a variety of interchangeable pieces. Two contracts to hunt down beasts can therefore have very different descriptions – different employers, motivations, payment and potentially helpful details, such as where the beasts were last seen heading. A poor village may not be able to pay you much in terms of coin, but may instead offer to pay with bread and dried meat – is it still worth it for you to risk the lives of your men? Although, realistically speaking, we can’t really avoid repetition here, our aim is to provide enough variety to have these texts be interesting, informative and succinct enough to be read well into a campaign and provide atmosphere, context and light roleplaying opportunities. We purposefully decided not to go with a bare billboard list of tasks with nothing but rewards attached but want the player to pause if only for a brief moment and consider what his or her actions mean in the context of the world.



Upon confronting the beast party and killing the werewolves the player has to return to the village to collect the promised pay. Here again we use the same screen with a short procedurally generated story to give closure to the contract, pay out the player and provide a bit of atmosphere.

At this time we have four different contract types in the game, all relatively straight-forward. We aim to have several more for the initial Early Access release, including escorting caravans and defending a location from raiders. After the initial Early Access release, we aim to experiment with more complex contracts, including contract chains where one fulfilled contract can sometimes lead to another. We feel that a large number of varied contracts, both simple and complex ones, will go a long way to keeping things entertaining and diversified.
 

rapsdjff

Overhype Studios
Developer
Joined
Jan 31, 2014
Messages
330
Here is the full version. Any programmers interested in Battle Brothers around?

bb_header_new.jpg

Hiring a UI Programmer & Game Preview (German)

Due to a recent change in our team we are now looking for a UI programmer to support us in the development of our project. If you are an experienced UI programmer, this can be a chance for you to become a part of Overhype Studios and develop Battle Brothers together with us! See below for more information.

Also, the venerable Writing Bull was nice enough to sit down with our very own Jaysen yesterday and do a guided Let’s Play while interviewing about the game, our development and our future plans. The interview is in German only and well worth a listen. Take a look at the first of three parts here:



Also, you may want to check out his Blog (German) on game culture and strategy gaming. Thanks again!

Hiring a UI Programmer – HTML5/JS/CSS, C/C++ a plus
Join us to work on Battle Brothers – a turn-based strategy RPG mix developed for PC, Linux and Mac. The gameplay and setting are inspired by such classics as Mount & Blade, Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat and X-Com.

We are Overhype Studios, a small indie company based in Hamburg, Germany. The three of us, an artist, a programmer and a producer, all have previous professional experience in working on games. Now, the first game we’re developing as a team is Battle Brothers. You can find more information, including gameplay videos and a developer’s blog, at www.battlebrothersgame.com.

Battle Brothers is close to ready for an Early Access release, scheduled for the end of February 2015. The game was successfully greenlit on Steam back in autumn of 2014 and has received press coverage from several online magazines, including Rock, Paper, Shotgun where it made the Best Games of 2015 list. We have a fully playable combat demo available here which was met with very favourable reviews.

What we’re looking for in you is a programmer mainly responsible for the game’s UI. The game is based on our engine written in C++, using Squirrel for scripting most of the gameplay and Awesomium for a HTML driven UI. As such, you’d need advanced knowledge of HTML5, JavaScript and CSS to create the UI for Battle Brothers. A good part of the game’s UI is already done, but as our former UI programmer will be unable to continue his work, you’d have to take over and work with an existing code base. Further, knowledge of C/C++ would be a huge plus and would allow for possible other programming tasks beyond the UI in the future.

We’re interested in a longterm relationship with you, a professional and reliable individual, for the development of the game for the whole Early Access period and also beyond. Although we can not offer much compensation up-front, with the game close to public release, monetary compensation is not just an idle promise. Currently, only one of us works fulltime on the game, the other two doing it in their spare time, and we’re flexible in discussing with you how much time you can invest into the game at this point and how best we can compensate you.

Requirements
  • Advanced knowledge of HTML5, JavaScript and CSS
  • Experience in UI Development
  • Experience in Game Development
  • Ability to quickly learn new C-style languages
  • Ability to quickly get your bearings in an existing code base
  • Fluency in English and/or German
  • Advanced knowledge of C/C++ would be a huge plus
  • Knowledge of Awesomium is a plus
  • Knowledge of the Squirrel Scripting Language is a plus
  • Knowledge of Linux and Mac development is a plus
What’s in it for you
  • Valuable experience from working with a professional team
  • The opportunity to work on a great game that actually gets finished
  • The opportunity to have creative input on the game
  • Monetary Compensation
If you feel you are the right man or woman for this job, send us your résumé to contact@overhypestudios.com – we look forward to hearing from you!
 

rapsdjff

Overhype Studios
Developer
Joined
Jan 31, 2014
Messages
330
City and trading caravan assets have made it into the game.

city.jpg
 

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