Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

[LESS T_T]

This week's devblog is about horse animation (and Q&A with technical artist): http://steamcommunity.com/games/261550/announcements/detail/1448331314909982009

Greetings warriors of Calradia!

Technical Artists perform a unique and challenging role in game development. They are responsible for ensuring that art assets can be integrated into a game without sacrificing the artistic vision or exceeding the technical limitations of the platform. The role demands for them to be artistically talented and to possess a good technical understanding of the tools at their disposal.

In previous instalments of our Q&A blogs we introduced you to one of our 2D/3D Artists, Fatma Nadide Öçba, as well as the Lead Programmer of our Game Engine Team, Murat Türe. In today’s blog we talk with the person who acts as a link between these two individuals and the very different roles that they play in the development of Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord - Technical Artist, Gökalp Doğan.


NAME
Gökalp Doğan

FROM
Ankara, Turkey

JOINED TALEWORLDS
2010

EDUCATION
Visual Communication and Design

OFFICIAL JOB DESCRIPTION
Technical Artist

WHAT DO YOU NORMALLY DO DURING YOUR DAY?
"My duty as a technical artist is to act as a bridge between the graphic artists and the programmers. I work alongside both teams to provide support in solving any issues they face during the development process.

During my time at TaleWorlds, I have worked on various parts of Bannerlord. My involvement includes motion capturing, rigging, animations, visual effects, lighting, the interface for the game editor, as well as designing the user experience. I try my best to help my teammates whenever they need assistance with any of these different aspects throughout the day."

WHAT DO YOU LIKE THE MOST ABOUT BANNERLORD?
"Bannerlord offers much more in terms of richer content, a stronger game engine and a higher visual quality than the previous game in the series, Mount & Blade: Warband."

"But what excites me the most are the editor and tools that we use to develop the game. When designing new tools we aim to provide up-to-date technologies while prioritising user experience. Doing this means that the game will be more user-friendly when it comes to modding."

"I am really looking forward to seeing the content that modders will create using these tools!"

WHAT'S THE MOST DIFFICULT THING THAT YOU SOLVED SO FAR, DURING THE PRODUCTION OF BANNERLORD?
"Before joining TaleWorlds, I used to work on CG animations. I experienced some difficulties in adapting my previous experiences into real-time rendering, especially in my first few days. In my previous job it took 60 minutes to render each frame; at TaleWorlds, we are creating 60 frames per second. I found this process to be quite challenging in the beginning. You need to consider performance while following the aesthetic of the work."

"I overcame this mostly through trial and error, and by closely cooperating with the engine team. I think that we have been largely successful in this and it was great to see the positive feedback on dynamic effects that we received from the videos we shared at E3."

WHAT DO YOU CURRENTLY WORK ON?
"I am currently working on atmosphere and general lighting. Today, for example, I am working on a day-night cycle and toning settings. We also record new animations using the motion capture system every week."

WHAT FACTION DO YOU LIKE THE MOST IN BANNERLORD?
"My favourite faction is Khuzait because they are inspired by Asian nations and culture."

CAN YOU SHOW US AN EXAMPLE OF A SCRIPT COMPONENT?
"I won’t go into detail about script components for now as we are thinking about publishing a detailed guide about modding. However, I will share a simple example for now."

The editor looks pretty advanced.

 

[Iznaliu]

This week's devblog is about horse animation

Do we know anything about how that interacts with horse armour?

 

[Dakka]

This week's devblog is about horse animation

Do we know anything about how that interacts with horse armour?

You mean we get horse armor for no extra charge? What sorcery is this?

 

[Iznaliu]

You mean we get horse armor for no extra charge? What sorcery is this?

Of course not.

 

[Dakka]

You mean we get horse armor for no extra charge? What sorcery is this?

Of course not.

It was a joke.

 

[Iznaliu]

It was a joke.

I was taking it in stride.

 

[Dakka]

It was a joke.

I was taking it in stride.

You must be fun at parties.

 

[Iznaliu]

You must be fun at parties.

There are more important things in life.

 

[Latelistener]

 

[Metro]

Vaporware title of the decade.

 

[Sarkile]

Only because Grimoire finally released.

 

[Dakka]

Remember when Duke Nukem Forever was the big vaporware joke everyone was talking about?

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Is this gonna have a continuous world with fixed perspective, or same as M&B, world map view + battlemap view + town view?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

You must be fun at parties.

There are more important things in life.

The hell's more important to you than fun, you autist?

 

[Iznaliu]

The hell's more important to you than fun, you autist?

If your house is burning down, is fun your first priority?

 

[ColonelTeacup]

The hell's more important to you than fun, you autist?

If your house is burning down, is fun your first priority?

If your house is burning down, you've most likely just finished your fun and are dealing with the aftermath. Now the issue is making certain the fault can't be traced to you and insurance pays for everything, so as to be able to get back to the fun in the most expedient manner possible.

 

[Iznaliu]

If your house is burning down, you've most likely just finished your fun and are dealing with the aftermath. Now the issue is making certain the fault can't be traced to you and insurance pays for everything, so as to be able to get back to the fun in the most expedient manner possible.

What if the fire has spread from your house to your body?

 

[ColonelTeacup]

If your house is burning down, you've most likely just finished your fun and are dealing with the aftermath. Now the issue is making certain the fault can't be traced to you and insurance pays for everything, so as to be able to get back to the fun in the most expedient manner possible.

What if the fire has spread from your house to your body?

Then make certain that the fire inside you burns brighter than the fire around you.

 

[Dakka]

The hell's more important to you than fun, you autist?

If your house is burning down, is fun your first priority?

Unless your house is perpetually burning down, that isn't an excuse. People can have different priorities for different situations. What do you play games for, if not for fun?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

If your house is burning down, you've most likely just finished your fun and are dealing with the aftermath. Now the issue is making certain the fault can't be traced to you and insurance pays for everything, so as to be able to get back to the fun in the most expedient manner possible.

What if the fire has spread from your house to your body?

In your case I recommend oil.

 

[Iznaliu]

Unless your house is perpetually burning down

Who's to say that it isn't?

 

[Dakka]

I now regret making that joke.

 

[LESS T_T]

This week's dev blog is about physical properties of weapons: http://steamcommunity.com/games/261550/announcements/detail/1448331873874783364

Greetings warriors of Calradia!

Mount & Blade’s deep and intuitive combat system is one of the core features of our games. Our directional attacking and blocking mechanic is intuitive in the sense that it is easy to pick-up, and deep in that it allows players to continuously develop and adapt their own fighting style through the use of feinting, chambering and good footwork (including a well-timed kick!).

In previous Mount & Blade games, there is, however, an element of randomness in combat. Damage is calculated using a number of variables and weapons are hardcoded to deal a randomly selected amount of damage from a predefined range (before other factors are added to the equation, such as the attacker’s weapon proficiency, the speed of the combatants and the armour value of the unlucky soul on the receiving end of an attack). We feel that, for the most part, this system works well, but, there is still that one part of the damage calculation that can’t be controlled or reliably predicted by the player.

In Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, we wanted to improve this aspect of combat to make it both fairer and easier for players to understand, especially in a multiplayer setting. We decided that the best way to go about this would be to make a physics-based system which would take into account the physical properties of a weapon and use a simulation to derive the combat stats, such as weapon speed and damage. We hope that this system will balance weapons in a more natural and realistic way.

Another advantage for the physical stat calculation is that it can be used in our new weapon crafting system. The physics-based system fits naturally with crafting because all we need to do is to acquire the physical properties of crafted weapons and then feed these into the stat calculation system. This will, in turn, provide us with the stats for the weapon.

When crafting a weapon, the player first selects a template. A sword, for instance, is made up of a blade, a guard, a grip and a pommel. Each of these parts may give the weapon certain bonuses or penalties outside of the physics simulation (a particularly large guard may increase the wielder’s hand armour, for example). Each part also has certain physical properties that are used for calculations. Once the player selects each part, we combine the physical properties of the parts to make up the overall properties of the weapon.

These properties are:

• Length: Determines the reach of a weapon.
  
• Mass: This is important for thrust attacks and is used to determine the speed and power of thrusts. Light weapons are faster, but have less energy and cause less damage. Making the weapon heavier will slow it down but also make it more powerful, up to a point. If too heavy and too slow, a weapon will make contact with your opponent before it could reach its full speed, making it feeble and ineffective.
  
• Weight Distribution and Inertia: This is important for swings. Unlike thrusts, swing speed is affected not only by weight but also by the distribution of weight around the pivot point of the swing. Increasing the weight may increase the damage (within certain boundaries), but, it will also increase the inertia, meaning that more energy would be required to achieve sufficient speed on impact. Thus, these weapons will typically be slower and increasing the weight will only positively affect damage up to a certain point.

After deriving these physical properties, we then use them to determine the weapon’s swing and thrust speed. Doing this with perfect precision would be rather difficult, since we would have to take into account all the motions a fencer goes through, all the muscles that are involved, their performance limits, etc. We simplify all of this with a basic model where we assume the fencer is made up of three simple motors. One motor representing the legs and hips, one for the chest and shoulder, and one for the arm and wrist. We then run a simulation where the motors work together to speed up the weapon until it hits the target. (Actually, we run two simulations, one for swing and one for thrust.) After these steps, we get the length, mass, swing and thrust speed of the crafted weapon. But, there is still the rather interesting problem of determining its damage...

 

[LESS T_T]

And thank you guys for discussing about the meaning of the joke and pushing the above post in a new page, so I could copy and paste the entire thing without making one page damn long.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Will weapon crafting be available in MP? Because reading this post made me think about glorious power builds made by physicists
Silly me