Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

[Metro]

More like: 'Vaporlord', amirite?

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Metro]

Do they actually give a release date?

 

[LESS T_T]

 

[DJOGamer PT]

It seems pretty great.

I know it's still in Beta or Alpha but they should tweak the AI (specially about pathfinding). Other than that its really shaping out good.



Although, nitpicking now, did they really went on a siege with a Greatsword?

 

[Alienman]

What would M&B be without your men getting stuck in doorways.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Metro]

Do they actually give a release date?

 

[Merlkir]

Player early access hopefully 2016.

 

[deuxhero]

http://archive.is/6FPpH

Bannerlord is apparently open source. Seems cool.

 

[Infinitron]

E3 Twitch stream: https://www.twitch.tv/twitch/v/72773783?t=06h53m55s

 

[LESS T_T]

http://archive.is/6FPpH

Bannerlord is apparently open source. Seems cool.

Not the engine code, just gameplay code.

Update June 17, 2016: Taleworlds have been in touch to add a clarification, saying they will make the code accessible to modders after the engine is complete.

"We are not making the game under an open-source license," says Korneel Guns. "We are developing our engine in-house and that will be closed, along with basic aspects of the game."

"We will then make our gameplay code accessible to modders, so they can extend or rewrite to suit their purpose."

We're not entirely sure how this statement will affect what Korneel said below, but we have emailed for clarification and will update once we have an answer.

http://www.pcgamesn.com/mount-blade-ii-bannerlord/mount-and-blade-2-mods

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Space Satan]

Spoiler

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord Developer Blog 14 - Destructible Merlons
As is traditional, this blog covers our previous major event, goes talks a bit about our experience and what we showed. This time it's E3, possibly the biggest gaming event of the year and the first time we've ever attended with our own booth. Our reveal was Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord's siege gameplay, which came in the form of this trailer and the extended gameplay video below.

Our video begins with the deployment phase, where the player is able to place an array of siege equipment among various fixed positions outside the castle, to prepare the assault. During this phase, it is also possible to arrange troops in formations, and make full use of the order screen, which allows for splitting and merging of formations, in addition to some more detailed options including spread and ranged behaviour etc. This enables you to cater your approach, when deciding how to assault a castle, based on, for instance, the shape of its walls or troop composition of the defending forces.

The equipment you place is built, beforehand, on the overland map. Ladders are built by default, as part of a preparation period required when beginning any siege, and are always available, but lack protection; Battering Rams take extra time and can offer you a fight on even ground, but must be pushed into position and still require you to break through the inner gate with regular weapons; taking the longest to construct and reach the walls, the Siege Tower makes up for its costs by offering a direct route onto the walls, across a level platform. As a player, it is up to you to decide how much time to spend on these, under the pressure of wage costs and food management, as well as the chance a reinforcing enemy army will arrive.



We haven't defined any rules about what works and what doesn't in a siege battle, so really it will be up to players to innovate and explore different strategies to find those most effective. For instance, if your plan hinges on getting a siege tower into position, in order to give your heavy infantry an even footing in the melee, you might want to focus on dealing with the archers that have the best view of your men trying to push it, or that fire ballista, which threatens to leave your ambitions of conquest in a burning ruin.

As the player, you have as much or as little control over the siege as you wish. It is perfectly possible to leave your troops to act on instinct, and they will always try to behave in a reasonable and sensible way, manning the equipment you have placed and attacking or defending the walls accordingly. However, you are completely free to tell them to stop and start pushing a battering ram or siege tower, or leave a mangonel alone, for example, and they will follow your command, letting you take as much or as little direct control as you wish.

One of the major reveals in the siege gameplay is destruction. To lay it completely bare, the following are destructible: Any and all siege weapons and siege engines, all of the merlons (those battlements along the tops of the walls) and the two gatehouses. Additionally, it is possible to create a full breach in the walls, allowing for your soldiers to pass over on foot, and restricting the mobility of the defenders, who can no longer traverse that section; this is only possible on the overland map, our reasoning being that it should only be possible with a time investment, and to place emphasis on the battle itself being an assault on the walls, rather a time to sit back and bombard. There is a fleshed out bombardment phase on the overland map, during which, the siege weapons you construct will exchange fire back and forth with the defenders', resulting in casualties, as well as damage to the siege equipment and walls.

Destruction is enhanced by the inclusion of fire damage. With some extra investment, it is possible to construct mangonel and ballista that shoot flaming arrows or burning jars of oil. Fire is a type of damage, just like Cut and Piece in the previous games, which is effective against wooden siege equipment, troops and horses. Jars of oil also have an area of effect when they collide, making them particularly lethal in clustered choke-points, such as the murder holes.

Something that is really important to us, when designing the game, is historical authenticity. While Calradia is a fictional land, the raw materials, upon which its built, have a firm rooting in historical fact. Of course, not everything is 100% accurate and there always has to be a trade-off, when balancing playability and realism, but we've made a lot of effort to avoid cutting corners. When you look at the design of the castle we used in the demo, it is structured in a way that purposefully gives a significant advantage to the defending side: Low points in the walls are overlooked by high, flanking towers; the gatehouse holds two gates, forcing attackers into a narrow choke-point, overlooked by murder holes; loopholes and crenelations provide additional cover for the defending archers; defending siege weapons are placed on platforms, allowing them to turn and face multiple threats. All of these have a real effect in the game, and in a way which is completely organic, making it robust and setting a platform for the kind of emergent gameplay we believe players of the series enjoy.



There were a few ways we could have gone about presenting siege, for the first time. Eventually we settled on showing a full, uncut wall assault, from the player's perspective. Ultimately, we decided this is the best way to communicate the feeling of a siege battle in Bannerlord, in the game's current state. This did mean a few errors found their way into the footage, though, which we recognise and will be addressing between now and the game's release.

There are some questions around the video, which are worth referring to; primarily referenced were the shout sounds that matched up with some of those from the old Mount & Blades. While some commenters actually liked the presence of the old sounds, it is worth us reassuring the rest of you that they are, in fact, placeholders. One of the reaction videos mentioned it was hard to distinguish friend from foe, which is (regretfully) even a cause of confusion for the player at one point in the fight! The “banners above heads” option is still present, we simply disabled it to avoid clutter in the video. Many of you spotted the health cheats we used, any many of you preempted our reply... of course, that was just to show the entirety of the battle and account for our inadequacies in combat!

Two additional noteworthy points are the retreating troops and the companions in the battle. When we see the defenders backing into the castle and holding their shields up, to deflect the player's arrows, what they are doing is making a tactical retreat. Like Warband, there is a second phase keep fight, which plays out after the assault. During the assault, some of the soldiers seen are equipped with weapons and armour, not in-keeping with those of their faction. While it is possible, via a number of routes, for troops of any culture to end up in the services of another, what you actually saw here were the companions of the player and the defending lord. In Bannerlord, Lords now have their own companions, much like the player, augmenting their own abilities by employing the services of others. And naturally, these may include individuals from distant lands...

Finally, we'd like to really thank everyone for all the comments we've received and support given around our first E3. There has been a lot of excitement and good number of interesting, useful suggestions as well.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Spectacle]

Additionally, it is possible to create a full breach in the walls, allowing for your soldiers to pass over on foot, and restricting the mobility of the defenders, who can no longer traverse that section; this is only possible on the overland map, our reasoning being that it should only be possible with a time investment, and to place emphasis on the battle itself being an assault on the walls, rather a time to sit back and bombard. There is a fleshed out bombardment phase on the overland map, during which, the siege weapons you construct will exchange fire back and forth with the defenders', resulting in casualties, as well as damage to the siege equipment and walls

Now this bit is fucking awesome. Historically siege warfare was a drawn out battle, unlike in most games where it's presented as a long period of building war engines and starving the defenders, followed by a quick bombardment and assault assault where catapults act like howitzers.

 

[Space Satan]

Well, we already saw what Total War can do with siege battles and having a breach before entering battlefield is something I can live with. At least Engeneering will not be as useless as it was.

 

[Modron]

Mods kind of fixed it, PoP gave engineering more value by offering a ton of improvements to construct at towns/castles/villages and having said skill of stewards (which you trained to your skill level) affect which ones were available as well as the rate at which they were erected. While this kind of led to some grind, it was still nice to have more progress happening while you butchered thousands. What the game really needs is some kind of standing orders/carrier pigeons/stewards you could send out from a central location to confer direction to various locations without you having to gallop out there.

 

[Severian Silk]

I remain skeptical about pathfinding.

World map looks better. But that font (town names) sucks (as it has since M&B1), and the HOMM style giant-character-walking-on-world-map model scaling is cartoonish (since M&B1).

Also is there a story? (Hahahahahaha...)

 

[LESS T_T]

Interview on modding, sandbox gameplay, setting and AI: http://www.pcgamesn.com/mount-blade...lade-ii-bannerlord-mods--taleworlds-interview

There’s a castle, ugly and imposing in that medieval European way, and it’s under siege. A wave of serfs and soldiers breaks against its uneven walls, slowly persuading ladders and battering rams into place. Arrows bounce clumsily off the ramparts - programmed by somebody who valued simulation over showiness - and big, burning missiles knock away chunks of masonry.

The destruction doesn’t go unnoticed by one knight, headed for the main gate on horseback when he realises: the bloke behind the catapult is having more fun. He promptly dismounts and leans unceremoniously over the operator’s shoulder to have a go. 30 seconds later, the battlements look like swiss cheese.

This is the hands-on premise of the Mount & Blade series, which Armağan Yavuz describes as “medieval career simulation”. It’s a genre he helped invent upon founding TaleWorlds in Ankara, Turkey, a decade ago.

It isn’t just TaleWorlds who’ve contributed to Mount & Blade’s success, of course - the games have a proud and prolific history of modding, which has turned Calradia intoMiddle-Earth, Westeros and a steampunk Sudan.

In Warband, TaleWorlds basically turned over their entire scripting code to players. That solution offered almost total freedom but led to lots of problems when running mods simultaneously, or installing the studio’s official updates.

“We had a lot of headache from players who were frustrated that their favourite mod was not working,” laughs Yavuz.

The equivalent modding system in Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord is in some respects more restricted, but opens up the parts of the game that will “give modders the most power”. TaleWorlds say that mods should be unaffected by patches, and that players will be able to cherry-pick their favoured combination of settings, textures and AI tweaks.

“We came up with, I believe, a great system,” says Yavuz. “What we have now will allow modders to create without stepping on each others’ shoes or disturbing the core of the game. The sky’s the limit, but I expect there will be total conversions and I’m pretty sure there will be something about Game of Thrones.”

Playing Bannerlord, Yavuz believes, is all about getting your hands dirty: “You can get into the fight, use ballistas and break down the doors yourself.”

And yet you can also issue commands on the battlefield. And before that, determine the formation and positions of your soldiers. And before that, build siege equipment. Battles are merely the ground phase in a much larger game that takes in an entire crumbling empire, Calradia. And you are just one person capable of bringing change to a land occupied by AI warlords with their own agendas.

This sprawling, systemic world nearly turned out very differently. When asked whether his vision for Mount & Blade’s first numbered sequel has changed during its four year development, Yavuz falls silent, thinking hard.

“It definitely has,” he muses. “During those four years, we were able to do a lot of testing and see what works and what doesn’t. We had to drop some ideas. And, I guess, got some really great ideas in the process.”

The Bannerlord that TaleWorlds began with attempted to fold a far more traditional narrative into Mount & Blade. But it came at a cost to the sandbox appeal of the series, and the team instead doubled down on smarter, deeper and more dynamic systems.

“It’s a brave new world,” says Yavuz. “We have so many games that try to build upon storytelling like movies or books. An interactive thing has so much opportunity to go beyond somebody’s scripted story and let the player create the narrative him or herself.”

Bannerlord is set 200 years before the events of Warband, in a period inspired by the fall of the Roman empire. When you come to it, Calradia is in crisis, and it’s up to you how or even whether that’s resolved.

“It’s a really interesting period in actual world history and one where I’m sure there are lots of lessons to be learned,” Yavuz explains. “You have this civilised empire with a large sophisticated army and democracy and everything, and then it’s under a lot of internal and outside pressure. What are you going to do about that? I think for the modern audience it has a lot of interesting discussion topics.”

As you’re moving about the overworld, sieging castles and carving up territory, others are doing the same. AI warlords are making their own way, and you’ll witness their rises and falls.

“It’s like a reality TV kind of thing,” says Yavuz. “As human beings, we really care about other human beings, and in the game world it’s really important to emphasise all these NPCs by making them smarter and have more organic AI.”

By way of example, the co-founder and designer describes the bartering system TaleWorlds have set up for Bannerlord. AI characters will silently search for deals in the game’s background, making decisions based on their unique priorities. That means there’s no pattern of behaviour to recognise, no safe, set approach; when you come to make a trade for an important prisoner, you’ll need to think carefully about what goods or arrangements that faction wants.

“It creates a lot of interesting situations that make a lot of sense,” Yavuz reckons. “As we add more features, the potential to get more interesting behaviour from the AI just increases exponentially.”

There’s a peculiar quirk to Mount & Blade: Bannerlord’s sieges. If, once the gates are broken down and the ramparts reduced to rubble, you’re knocked out cold - well, the battle will conclude without you. And why shouldn’t it? You aren’t the centre of some cinematic universe. You’re just one agent of change in a medieval career simulation.

 

[Metro]

Do they actually give a release date?

 

[Alienman]

With the coup and all, who knows...

 

[Metro]

Well they're still releasing videos.

 

[Bubbles]

We tried to book Bannerlord for Gamescom last year, but we never heard back from TaleWorlds. But this year, things are different!

I've never played any of the Mount and Blade games, but they sound pretty fun. Any questions for the devs can be directed here.

 

[LESS T_T]

 

[Hoodoo]

They still can't come up with a decent interface to control these troops that doesn't require keyboard piano in the middle of an already control intensive game. Can't they do a tab menu for a start?