KickStarter Kingdom Come: Deliverance Pre-Release Thread [RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Smejki]

It'll play significant role. That's all I can say for now. After all the events lead to Hussite wars few years down the road which were a massive religious unrest.

Thanks a lot for the reply. I probably worded it in the worst way possible because I didn't know one of the devs was answering questions here and didn't expect a reply, can I try again?

My question was more regarding what role the institution and Catholicism itself will play by and large in the setting. The most historical middle-ages rpg we have so far is Darklands(which had, ironically, an exaggerated version of the period where every myth and superstition was true). Religion was central to everything in medieval life and that game did a pretty good job at expressing that down to a T, both the good and the bad. Arnold Hendricks(the developer) was an historian and that had a large part to do with it.

I ask because I am somewhat of a medieval history buff and that is the main reason why I am interested in this game. Historicity is a big selling point to me, I hate how most fiction about the medieval period is some bullshit propagating the "dark ages myth" that every single medievalist hates.

Also: How will the player interact with the Church? What role does religion and religious rites play in the game? What role do churches, cathedrals and universities play in the game? I have seem a lot about fighting, peasantry and village life, crafts, but very little about that. These things were central to life in every medieval city and Darklands did a good job at presenting that.

Yeah we despise the "grim dark ages", "that guy must a king, he doesn't have shit all over him" notion of the middle ages mainstream public generally thinks is true.
I can't tell you how specifically will The Church shape the game story. Or if it even will. It will be present and perceptable but it might be waiting for its stage light moment until later.
However everyone will be religious, more or less, and we will show it. There will be several figures from the church who will be a big part of the life.
The reason why you don't see any hint on that in the videos is that it's a part of the story and higher-level design. None of these were shown yet (except a bit of a moral mockery towards the local priest in the livestream of the vertical slice).
But there will be at least 2 churches with parsons looking over their herds. Additionally there is to be a big benedictine monastery+town (Sázava monastery or Sasau in German) on the map. That's a big player. Political, economical and religious.
Certainly Papal schism will be a thing. Eschatology/millenialism will be a thing. Incoming protestant-y tendencies and thoughts will be a thing. Indulgencies will be a thing. And so on.
BTW in the next update or the one after you might see a certain Church related thingie which is <fanboy mode>ZOMFG so fapfapfapfapfap gorgeous I nearly started crying when I first saw it</fanboy mode>.

I don't like the lighting in the screenshots too much. Blinding bright areas contrasting with dark shadows make it look too much like a photo quickly taken on regular camera. Feels like a shot from some LARP rather than a visit to middle-ages. No style, no atmosphere, just photorealism for the sake of it. Millions down the drain just to replicate live footage of subpar quality.

I'll tell our graphics that the grass and skies had different color back in the day.
Also when somebody is being hanged it should be cloudy and crows should start screaming. A nearby dead tree would be a great BONUß!

Can i also indulge myself in hard questions ?

You mentioned first person realistic malee and i saw video of that from ks campaign.

Question: How the fuck player will be controlling that. No game before managed to do well FPP and malee as one. There was Dark Messiah which did it well but it was full fantasy malee and still it looked bad. There is M&B which has fantastic 3rd person malee but in FPP mode it doesn't work because of FOV.

Auto combat ala batman/geralt ? Because i find it hard to believe players will be doing proper crossing and parry via mouse and shit.

Well, that's better tried than explained. Beside, explaining it would reveal the technical implementation. Which is not yet a public information so sorry, I cannot comment. Wait for the surprise.
I'll only say I built a little shrine devoted to Viktor, the brain behind the combat system. I also thought it is impossible to do fp melee fight feel good, but he made it.
Anyway all the info about combat system is in our videos so you might deduce a thing or two from these.

I haven't played Batman since the game is beyond me but I played both Witchers. The combat systems of either of those games and ours are completely different. I don't even know of anything even remotely similar.
Just wait for the alpha (this fall) and try it. If it won't be in the first version it certainly will appear soon with the updates.

 

[NotAGolfer]

I also thought it is impossible to do fp melee fight feel good, but he made it.

So M&B FP melee combat doesn't feel good then?

 

[WhiteGuts]

Err...I dunno. It certainly feels clunky.

 

[Perkel]

I also thought it is impossible to do fp melee fight feel good, but he made it.

So M&B FP melee combat doesn't feel good then?

It is the same shit as any other FPP malee.

Problem with malee and FPP view is FOV. Even at 80 or 90 you hardly see your hands with weapons, all body movements feel weird because they don't correspond with what player does on m&k/pad.

So designers more or less have two choices:

- make head locked to player controller and that means essentially Skyrim, Dead Island static malee
- make head move with whole body which means M&B, Mirrors edge, GTA4 (fpp mod) weird camera movement


Imo i would simply create third person combat and if player wants he would be able to immerse himself in FPP view but you don't guarantee that this view will be good for combat. Like essentially M&B does.

As for Deliverence. I hope you guys really deliver proper malee FPP combat because it is kind of critical for your project

 

[set]

There are some people who swear by M&B FP combat. In terms of using bows and couching lances, I'd agree. In regards to everything else, an omniscient camera is kind of necessary to get your swings right, especially on a horse. It's also unbelievably frustrating to be blindsided by a horse you don't hear coming, even if that might be "realistic" (realistic combat is difficult to make fun, since war is brutally unfair irl).

The best melee combat I think has to be very slow paced. If it's going to be fast paced, you need to simplify the mechanics.

I've seen some people go on about that furshit tech demo game that's been in development for half a decade already -- it has a few impressive fighting mechanics, but that is third person and the entire engine is being devoted to simulating various kinds of melee fighting styles.

Then you have Clang! which raised 500k and was hilariously bad / failure. They had some good ideas at the core but the implementation just wasn't there. Just because you have money and the technical skill doesn't mean your grand vision can just come together. You definitely need strong project coordinators who can get coders to work together to produce systems which actually work, instead of being half-baked or shallow.

 

[warpig]

There are some people who swear by M&B FP combat. In terms of using bows and couching lances, I'd agree. In regards to everything else, an omniscient camera is kind of necessary to get your swings right, especially on a horse. It's also unbelievably frustrating to be blindsided by a horse you don't hear coming, even if that might be "realistic" (realistic combat is difficult to make fun, since war is brutally unfair irl).

The lack of awareness of what's going on around me is something that really bugs me in FPP melee. And first person is hardly "realistic" since there's no peripheral vison, ability to quickly look to the side without reorienting your whole body etc. TPP is the best perspective for melee combat imo. M&B combat (I only switch to fpp while charging with a lance) could use some polishing but the base is good. It feels "realistic" to some degree, I like that there aren't any "fighting games" moves in it.

 

[Sir Dupre]

Smejki, how would a possible bankruptcy of Crytek affect the development of Kingdom Come?

 

[set]

M&B could use some more complexity and smoothening. If I had a dev team and access to the source I'd totally try to find a way to work in some kind of parrying and dodging system. The basic fighting mechanics work, but they could be enhanced to allow for feints and the use of smaller arms (daggers and parrying off-hands are remiss in a medieval game) more effectively. I'd also love for weapons to be about "momentum" too -- what makes M&B so great is horse battles, because horses hold momentum. When you're not mounted though, that momentum is totally gone! It's wrong. Fighting is all about using your whole body. If you wield a huge, heavy weapon your character should take a step forward to follow through with the swing. If an opponent blocks it, he should skid back or be thrown aside. That kind of physical rendering and feedback is lost. Likewise, daggers are useless because you can't target the nooks and crannies in armor, where people would shove daggers to kill heavily armored opponents.

Dark Souls kind of does this well. Many of the larger weapons have distinctive weights, animations and timings which make combat tactical and tense. Fast weapons in that game are shit too though, for the same reason, they have no weight or impact with their use -- shields or parries are often more impactful than the weapon wielded. The problem with Dark Souls though is the animations are all weapon-dependent when they should be more about player in-put. If you swing your heavy sword over and over your attack should get sloppier and sloppier as you struggle to control the momentum. Heavy swings don't usually knock enemies around either, at best they inflict a stun or knockdown. If ragdoll physics DO take into effect... well, it's fucking ragdoll physics with havok - that shit has ALWAYS been terrible. Ragdoll physics are like simulating the human body with wet pasta noodles.

In M&B, when you're not mounted, you swing your sword and it hits an x,y,z coordinate at a specific point in time. The physicality of the arm-swing is not calculated, so every melee attack not only feels the same, but it feels like you're swinging a plastic bat. This is much more noticeable in first person, where you can only see your arm move. It's hard to simulate that full body motion when traditional FP perspective does not show anything that is not an extension of your weapon. In TF2, when you're playing the scout or something, this is fine, because that's a Quake-like arena shooter, but when you're going for tense combat it's way better to find more ways to make attacking expensive, risky, and dangerous -- the fun comes from when you pull it off and survive. I'm sure in real battles, warriors grinned like idiots when they didn't maim themselves pulling off a complex life-saving maneuver, or just got stupid lucky.

But ideally, I'd really love it if they could implement the sword stance you might see someone use with iaido or a european longsword swing. Battleaxes or battle maces making you swing with huge powerful physical attacks would truly make the melee combat more invigorating and exciting. You'd also need to balance this by introducing more defensive options for players, like subtle side-steps, feints, and parrying/redirecting. But complex motions like this are hard to simulate or execute with KBM set-up -- it won't be natural to players even if you can pull it off right, so expect a huge learning curve.

 

[Kaucukovnik]

I'll tell our graphics that the grass and skies had different color back in the day.
Also when somebody is being hanged it should be cloudy and crows should start screaming. A nearby dead tree would be a great BONUß!

Hell no, you are missing my point. Which is the first impression, before any logic kicks in to analyze whether this is an appropriate depiction of the medieval period, which it very well may be.
Paintings from the time are dim, despite most of them originally having rich colors. Almost any film or photo is different from the original sight in some way (exposition, filters, postprocessing..). Romanticized imagery is engraved in our minds as the default idea of past ages. You might want to use just a bit of that in your favor.

Your devotion to realism is commendable, but at wrong places it could actually undermine your goal.
Anyway, good thing that KC: D won't be all brown.


Funny situation. Craftsmen try their best to get their physical creations exactly sized, straight, angular or whatever, while digital artists try to replicate every tiny imperfection familiar from the physical world. It requires a lot of skill, but I personally see it as a loss that so much ability is wasted just duplicating an original they can never really reach anyway.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

I don't like the lighting in the screenshots too much. Blinding bright areas contrasting with dark shadows make it look too much like a photo quickly taken on regular camera. Feels like a shot from some LARP rather than a visit to middle-ages. No style, no atmosphere, just photorealism for the sake of it. Millions down the drain just to replicate live footage of subpar quality.

Which is great because for once you're looking at the actual picture. No gritty filter, no pop history, no bullshit. That's what a medieval village was like, that's how it would have been if you walked right into it. Fits very well with the approach they're taking and I appreciate that they stick to the reality of medieval Bohemia, in architecture from the castles to simple peasant houses, in clothing, in weaponry.
It's fine that for once the peasants aren't subhumans covered in sickly pimples with no teeth and crawling in their own shit.

I hope the behaviors, dialogue and unfolding events are in the same vein of historical accuracy. Do they have historians on board?

 

[Smejki]

Hell no, you are missing my point. Which is the first impression, before any logic kicks in to analyze whether this is an appropriate depiction of the medieval period, which it very well may be.

Ah, ok.

Paintings from the time are dim, despite most of them originally having rich colors.

Uhm, I am not really sure.

Medieval art is quite far from realism and I'd say there is no overall atmosphere, at least from the graphical stadnpoint.
The dim realistic paintings followed a bit later

Almost any film or photo is different from the original sight in some way (exposition, filters, postprocessing..). Romanticized imagery is engraved in our minds as the default idea of past ages. You might want to use just a bit of that in your favor.

That's really upon our lead artist to decide. And I personally woudln't like it. That's like making Mafia in monochrome sepia just because it's from 1930's.

Your devotion to realism is commendable, but at wrong places it could actually undermine your goal.
Anyway, good thing that KC: D won't be all brown.

What is our goal?
It's delivering medieval world as it was, not some romanticised version of it. We would then very well might make a place full of plagues, cruel feudals, starving peasants and shit all over everyone's face.
I am not saying that's some inferior form of art it's just fundamentally different. Mixing it is like eating hamburger with spaghetti.

 

[Zombra]

Mixing it is like eating hamburger with spaghetti.

Not the best analogy if you're trying to make it sound like a bad idea.
Remember (some of) who you're talking to here!

 

[set]

Mixing it is like eating hamburger with spaghetti.

Just add some catsup and you already have many Americans' favorite dish.

 

[Kaucukovnik]

We would then very well might make a place full of plagues, cruel feudals, starving peasants and shit all over everyone's face.

Damn, I was looking forward to these...

The part of your goal is presenting your idea to the audience. I'd leave it here, I'm not going to try to change your mind about your already clearly defined game. And sorry about the "realism for the sake of it." You really do have reasons for it.

 

[Smejki]

Funny thing is that since there are no pure medieval games there is still space for a romanticized medieval game on the market. I'd play it.
There are such movies and books and people like them. I bet it would be even easier to sell it to the public.
So there you have it. A gap in the market! You found it.

 

[Paul_cz]

Really awesome presentation by Dan posted today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwZ7Tjtd_Rg

Unfortunately CZ without EN titles, at least for now.

Talks about everything from conception of the company up until now.

 

[Drax]

Wait, what?
So Youtube's TOS allows people to upload videos in Czechzk?
The world is fucking mad, I tell you...

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

Wait, what?
So Youtube's TOS allows people to upload videos in Czechzk?
The world is fucking mad, I tell you...

It's all part of the decline of civilisation. The barbarians are massing at the gates of Rome....

 

[Drax]

This people and their heathen tongues...

 

[JarlFrank]

I like that this game is trying to be realistic and historically accurate. But I am a historian and therefore biased towards historical accuracy, so maybe fucking uncultured idiot retard peasants common people prefer hollywood history.

 

[Drax]

That, and most people probably think hollywood history IS real history, because that's the only version they know of it.
Like many people think that "America won the world war, no need to thank us frenchie" and other misconceptions.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Damn, I was looking forward to these...

Why are you so against history, mmh?

There is a reason why fantasy games are popular. Because they capture an aspect of the "reality" (as it was, really) of medieval life without all those juvenile dystopian exaggerations. A balanced perspective that adopts everything that made the middle ages so fascinating without going too far on either side of the spectrum is more than welcome.

 

[Magic User]

Yes, my interest in this game is now sparked. There is a sore lack of medieval fiction that respects actual history, and as Lyric Suite alluded to, the medieval period shaped much of our culture and values, and that's why people keep coming for more of it even if it means presenting that through a fantasy setting with elves and dwarves for some reason. It would be a welcome change to start seeing historical fiction untainted by all the stupid clichés that came to pass as history in popular culture.

Last work of medieval fiction I came in contact with was the movie adaptation of a bestselling book called "The Physician". That was painful to watch, and they tell me the book is even worst. It is about an english peasant called "Rob J. Cole"(lol) who disguises himself as a jew, travels to Persia and becomes a student at Avicenna's Masadra. Believe me, the premise is not as stupid as the overal depiction they pulled off of medieval civilization and culture, both Christian and Muslim.

 

[Tigranes]

Hell no, you are missing my point. Which is the first impression, before any logic kicks in to analyze whether this is an appropriate depiction of the medieval period, which it very well may be.

Ah, ok.

Paintings from the time are dim, despite most of them originally having rich colors.

Uhm, I am not really sure.

Medieval art is quite far from realism and I'd say there is no overall atmosphere, at least from the graphical stadnpoint.
The dim realistic paintings followed a bit later

Almost any film or photo is different from the original sight in some way (exposition, filters, postprocessing..). Romanticized imagery is engraved in our minds as the default idea of past ages. You might want to use just a bit of that in your favor.

That's really upon our lead artist to decide. And I personally woudln't like it. That's like making Mafia in monochrome sepia just because it's from 1930's.

Your devotion to realism is commendable, but at wrong places it could actually undermine your goal.
Anyway, good thing that KC: D won't be all brown.

What is our goal?
It's delivering medieval world as it was, not some romanticised version of it. We would then very well might make a place full of plagues, cruel feudals, starving peasants and shit all over everyone's face.
I am not saying that's some inferior form of art it's just fundamentally different. Mixing it is like eating hamburger with spaghetti.

Regarding colour there is an interesting argument that I haven't had the time to really check the literature on - that much of our ideas about the 'austere' nature of art, architecture and sculpture in Antique and Medieval periods is due to, well, all the bloody colours being washed out (in painting) or, even more starkly, falling off entirely (in sculpture). E.g. Roman statues were polychromatic with amber and other material used for eyes, hair, etc., as were medieval ones; sculpted figures in romanesque architecture too were painted (not sure about Gothic and beyond). The point being, we derive from museums a rather greyscale, solemn atmosphere which in fact is the product of decay over time, and in some cases, Renaissance 'restoration'.

 

[Smejki]

I am far from being expert on art so I don't know. I remember being told there is at least some deterioration of the white color in some medieval illuminations therefore some parts look inappropriately dark and brownish.
However there's similar situation with the medieval castles. As we see them now, many of them in ruins, we picture them as a being rough structures with the bare stonewalls being exposed to the air and eye while in reality most of the castles, at least in Central Europe, were plastered, therefore white and smooth and very house-like.