New version of Warsword Conquest mod is out. Extracting now.
Do all the races still have all the typical features of a Warband game, such as orc peasants working their orc fields, the undead demanding food for morale, and other anti-immersion stuff that result in projecting Warhammer onto Mount&Blade?Also, the mod is overall more polished, less exaggerated in some sense. I can't really put my finger on it. Also a lot of the models are looking pretty nice, nicer than I remember.
Do all the races still have all the typical features of a Warband game, such as orc peasants working their orc fields, the undead demanding food for morale, and other anti-immersion stuff that result in projecting Warhammer onto Mount&Blade?Also, the mod is overall more polished, less exaggerated in some sense. I can't really put my finger on it. Also a lot of the models are looking pretty nice, nicer than I remember.
Will there be dynasties/families in the game?
Players will be able to have family members and children. Time flows faster in Bannerlord (when compared to Warband) with a year currently set to 84 days (we will probably fine-tune this further before release). Also, you can start the game with siblings, nephews and nieces and they serve as potential heirs as well.
Can the player and/or AI lords permanently die?
Our current plan is to have this for both players and NPCs, but we will add an easy mode option to disable it for the player character. Players will be able to continue with a family member if their main character dies.
New version of Warsword Conquest mod is out. Extracting now.
People underestimate the value of text and writing in mods. It’s hard to show off and is less glamorous than pretty 3D models. For non writers it’s also difficult and frustrating to do. So they mostly don’t.. A lot of the old MB vanilla dialogue is still in, I don't know why they keep it.
I hope AI can handle very short people. In reckoning mod children zombies are impossibile in melee for the ai and also very good to avoid bullets.So they've got child models, do they have child soldiers?
Dev Blog 06/12/18
Greeting warriors of Calradia!
Becoming a noble is a major milestone in Mount & Blade games. It is the moment that your dedication and hard work is recognised and rewarded with land and title. In most cases, this will be in the service of a liege lord, however, we know that some of you prefer not to bend the knee and would rather carve out your own path in Calradia! But, regardless of how you obtain your own holdings, it is what you do with your new found gains that truly matters.
So, what makes obtaining your own fief such an important event in the game? Well, settlements are very much at the core of Bannerlord’s singleplayer campaign, and the majority of actions and events that take place in the sandbox revolve around them. They are the places where recruits are hired, wealth is built, and ultimately, what wars are fought over.
But, other than using them as a source of income, what can you actually do with your settlements?
Settlement Projects
Settlement projects are a way for players to improve their fiefs in a number of different ways. We can separate these upgrades into two categories: military and civic.
Military buildings, such as upgrades to the walls or the addition of a barrack, are all directly related to the settlement’s ability to play an effective role in times of war. Upgraded walls make the settlement harder to assault and a barrack enables the settlement to maintain a larger garrison to man those walls!
Civic buildings are focused more on the production and economic capabilities of the settlement, with buildings such as a carpenter’s hall, which helps to increase production in the settlement, or a vegetable garden, that provides a steady supply of food. However, some civic buildings offer bonuses which you could consider to be more military focused. For example, a granary allows the settlement to store more food, which will help it to hold out longer during a siege.
Settlement projects can be constructed in both castles and towns, with villages receiving bonuses from the castle or town they are connected to. With the massive increase in settlements that we have in Bannerlord, we felt that having to micromanage settlements all the way down to the village level would, over time (as your territory grows), become overbearing and tiresome to manage.
Settlement projects require manpower for the construction phase. We use a formula that determines how much progress is made with the construction each day based on the population of the settlement. And for those with a large purse, you can draft in some additional manpower to help speed up the construction!
Projects can be queued, meaning that you don’t have to worry about losing time with production if you are preoccupied with other tasks when the current project is completed. And if you manage to complete all of the projects in a settlement, or feel like you don’t need certain ones, you can invest this manpower into daily projects which will slowly develop different aspects of your settlement. The daily housing project, for example, will increase the population of the settlement by 1 each day.
Overall, we feel that settlement projects are a great way for players to tailor their fiefs to perform specific functions within the kingdom. Settlements deep within your territory might be better suited to producing food or bolstering your finances, whereas a castle bordering a hostile faction might be better suited to becoming a military stronghold from which to protect your lands and project your strength. Ultimately, we think that they give the player more tactical choices in terms of gameplay, and much greater control over (and hopefully a more engaging connection to) their fiefs than what we had in previous Mount & Blade games.
Governors
Our final point of discussion regarding settlements is the addition of a Governor role. The governor role allows you to offload the burden of managing your fiefs to a trusted clan member. They will handle all aspects of managing the settlement, providing the fief with small bonuses in the process, leaving you to focus on crushing your enemies!
In next week’s blog, we will be talking to Gameplay Programmer (Campaign Team), Selim Çam. If you have a question you would like to ask him, please leave a reply in the comments and we will pick one out for him to answer!
Dev Blog 13/12/18
Greeting warriors of Calradia!
In video games, game design must come first. It doesn’t matter if a game has awe-inspiring art or wonderful writing if its gameplay is clunky, repetitive or downright boring. In Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, game design is king too – we want it to be as open, full of possibilities, dynamic, and engaging as a sandbox can possibly be. But that doesn’t mean anything if you can make game designers’ ideas come true. Gameplay programmers take care of that: they turn ideas into reality, creating game systems by implementing game features in the actual game. That takes understanding the feature itself by heart as well as writing the code to make it work as it was designed. Today we talk with Selim Çam, one of our gameplay programmers, to find out what he’s working on for the single-player campaign of Bannerlord.
NAME
Selim Çam
FROM
Izmir, Turkey
JOINED TALEWORLDS
2018
EDUCATION
Software Engineering
OFFICIAL JOB DESCRIPTION
Gameplay Programmer (Campaign Team)
WHAT DO YOU NORMALLY DO DURING YOUR DAY?
“"As a Gameplay Programmer on the Campaign Team, my role involves designing and implementing various gameplay features, such as quests, character perks, kingdom decisions, the barter system and so forth. Some tasks require elaborate design meetings to discuss the feature thoroughly, so I spend some of my time attending the meetings if we are having any.
When the game design is decided, the code needs to be designed as well, to define and clarify how it will work. I try to ensure that it meets the specifications of the game design while still maintaining our internal programming paradigms. At this point, if the current design is deemed not feasible, we try to come up with a better solution by making changes. Once I have a clear view of the design, I start programming the feature, which makes up the majority of my time.
For major features, I often discuss the code structure with my team lead where we exchange ideas and try to get a better view of the feature.
Also, throughout the day, the QA Team reports bugs that they've encountered while testing the game. If it is something related to the campaign side and I'm available, I take a look to debug and fix the issue. Sometimes it takes many trips between the QA and Campaign rooms in quick succession. It can be exhausting from time to time but I enjoy the rush!”
WHAT DO YOU LIKE THE MOST ABOUT BANNERLORD?
“I really like the fact that the game presents a sandbox environment to the players in which they are free to choose their path, whether it's fulfilling the fantasy of becoming a king leading vast numbers of men or being a prominent merchant that controls the economy of the realm.”
WHAT'S THE MOST DIFFICULT THING THAT YOU SOLVED SO FAR, DURING THE PRODUCTION OF BANNERLORD?
“In Bannerlord, we are essentially creating a living medieval world in which parties travel from one settlement to another, raid settlements, buy and sell goods, lay sieges and all sorts of things that you would expect them to do. When that's the case, it can be daunting to track down a bug with unknown origins. Also, the trickiest bugs are not always easily recreated due to their indeterministic nature.
One time, the QA Team encountered a caravan party that decided to lay siege on a settlement... while it was inside! Caravans shouldn’t be able to lay siege at all, and they most definitely shouldn't be able to attack a settlement that they are inside of. Nothing made sense!
Luckily we had a way to recreate the bug easily. But that was the only easy part. I remember tracking every step of the involved parties, frame by frame, to find out what caused the issue. Turns out it wasn't that hard to fix, but it sure took enough time!”
WHAT DO YOU CURRENTLY WORK ON?
“"Currently my main focus is on the Children feature we've recently announced. To be more specific, the transition of babies into childhood and children into adulthood, where they will be positioned, how the player will interact with them etc. Besides that, I'm doing some adjustments to the Barter feature.”
WHAT FACTION DO YOU LIKE THE MOST IN BANNERLORD?
“I've always had an affection for Battania since they remind me of the Gauls and I'm a big fan of Asterix!”
ARE THERE ANY STRANGE OR FUNNY BUGS THAT YOU ARE CURRENTLY DEALING WITH?
“Absolutely! While the children were being implemented into the game, the work-in-progress build turned some of the townsfolk into tiny kids with full body armour and battle equipment. It was hilarious watching them walk around with shields twice their size and their tiny arms carrying gigantic spears. We shared a good laugh with the team.”
HOW LINEAR WILL THE CAMPAIGN BE? HOW MUCH FREEDOM WILL WE HAVE TO MAKE CHOICES THAT AFFECT THE WORLD?
“For a medieval game that fuses elements of strategy and action RPG gameplay, the campaign is as non-linear as it can get. Players are completely free to choose their own actions. The game does not force you into a fixed path. You can do any quest that you find enjoyable. If you are not really into fighting, you can play more like a trader than a warrior, establishing productive enterprises, sending out caravans and proposing kingdom policies that support merchants etc. If you are more of a warrior, you can amass a colossal army and conquer the whole realm. You decide who you’ll marry, how your clan will persist through generations and which child of yours will inherit your legacy.
Since there are no exact ways to play the campaign, each player will experience Bannerlord uniquely, which is what we all love about the Mount & Blade series.”
gameplay programmer joined in 2018.
So just another five years and the game will be finished?
I predict that this game will actually release in 2019, with minimal advance warning.