SP Fantasy Verendum Arenapyxis - The Ultimate Sandbox Mod for Warband

On the back on this and this, which we're my ideas for a robust, immersive sandbox action/strategysandbox mod that's comparable with modern gaming, I've decided that the best option is to sprearhead the design of a new mod myself.

Help needed!
Much of the simple tweaking I have already done, however I'm going to need someone interested in this project and to tackle the big stuff. This of course, is a collaborative project and I am completely open to input, suggestions and feedback once a playable beta becomes available.

I will mostly likely set up forums for this mod, to group tasks together and track progress. I'm also a big fan of IRC, and anyone interesting in chatting about the project can find me on;

Server: rizon.net
Channel: #VAP

Anyways, here's a quick overview of how the mod will eventually look, and I've grouped them in terms of priority/type.

Typical/Common Tweaks

Critical Additions


Ideal Additions

Spoiler

These additions would really complete the experience I'm at aiming for, but are assumed to be complex changes.

You can be King or a Lord, right from the get-go
- Sure it's not as challenging, but in true-sandbox style, why not try your luck as King Harlaus of Swadia, or his vassal Count Haringoth?

"Approach Enemy" order for troops
The difference between approach and charge is shielding. The approach manoeuvre is for armies to close the gap between each other for the purposes are ranged attacks and tactically deciding when to charge. "Approach" will work much like walking for the player, with the ability to reload a ranged weapon or remain shielded.

However units on foot will not be able to hold up their shield or reload a ranged weapon while charging. This will place more emphasis on the timing of the battle and make the battles a little more deliberate in their tactics.

Play as a Bounty Hunter
Much like being a Merc, except your focus isn't on winning battles - it's about killing or capturing your target. The King has many enemies, some even within his own Kingdom, and someone can eliminate them, for a price!

And now a quick update on what I've been working on today...


The logo, which I think is pretty polished, and the signature that you can see at the foot of my posts.

That all aside (while it's quick and easy to get done, visual stuff is something I want to just have done quickly, efficiently and then put aside), my focus is the Merchant Module and the Map overhaul.

I've made a screenshot map of Calradia and have started logging 'trading lanes' between towns. From here, I will determine what villages to move to exist along trading lanes, and change forests and mountains to create choke points along these trading lanes. Here's a quick example of how it will work;


Legend
Black dot - Town
Blue dot - Castle in correct position
Green dot - Village in correct position
Green arrow -> Red dot - Village to moved to new position
Green shading - new forest
Yellow shading - forest to be removed
Red line - trading lane between towns

As you see, between Ichamur and Khudan (so a major trading lane between two factions), simply moving Bhulaban a little and moving Ulburban from it's 'nowhere' position to the other trading line, you can create a forest in the middle.

The finished product would convince the player why the trading lanes exist in that way - to navigate around the forest, and for a bit of realism, two villages sprouted up along these trading lanes!

EDIT: Actually, moving Yruma Castle to where I placed Ulburban makes more sense... creating a well-defended frontier for both factions.

I like where this heading towards. Good luck.

i look forward to its release

Certainly interesting, I do hope that you manage to pull this off.

'- Total battle size to be increased to 200 v 200 at a time with less reinforcements (larger numbers).'

There's a battlesizer for this, this change is unfair to those who can't handle it on their computer. If you want 400 troops in a battle, just launch battlesizer, move the slider around and close it.

this is by far the best idea i seen so far i wish u good luck and i hope u can pull it off

@ Austupaio: I want to make the mod "high-end", in terms of it's mechanics. It made more sense to have the battle size on the high side, and have players on low-end machines use battle sizer, as opposed to the other way around.

BTW - I've played 200 v 200 on a mid-level 1 y/o desktop. There's only a slight slowdown initially for a few moments when both opposing armies clash. I'm talking 17-19 fps for about 5 seconds.

This of course happened because I didn't employ any tactics. 200 men literally charged against 200 opposing men. This can easily be avoided by holding back archers, making cavalry charge at different times .... which is simple tactics that I'm sure anyone can apply.

I tested this on high graphics, and found by switching to medium the fps only went down to 25, even not applying tactics.

@ the rest of you - Thanks! I'll post a screenshot of an in-progress map tomorrow - I've already got a good idea on how the land Vaegirs and Nords are going to look

It sounds good.

For trading xp might i suggest its based off of profit rather than mearly selling? (No profit = no xp)

I say this because I can see it being easily abused, although it depends on how much xp you get i guess.

I dont think starting as a king will be too hard to pull off, I'm assuming it would be King of the player faction but the thought occurred to me that you would want to be able to play as king of nords/swadia too which might be a little more difficult.

For trading lanes I think there should be some long, windy roads as they would have to follow the lay of the terrain and sometimes cut a path thru a forest.

If a castle is used as a "frontier" defender like the one you mentioned then you would expect the other faction to have one too as a response.

Another good idea would be to make forest battles a little less hilly, and if you can model and texture, revamp it to look a little like Polished Landscapes.

Perhaps, rather than start as the king of an existing faction, start as a claimant to the throne, with around 800 renown, and a few companions (whom can be promoted to lords)

This is the most promising modification I have seen in a long time.

Map Overhaul Update
This should now show exactly how trading lanes work and how I will change the name to have forests, hills and lakes to be built around trading lanes.

For proper effect, save each of these files and view them as a slideshow.

1
2
3

Map1 is a mapping of the trading lanes. That is, how Warband makes your party and AI parties travel "non-stop" from one town to another. The dots indicate settlements.

Black: towns
Green: villages
Red relocated villages
Dark blue: Castles
Light blue: relocated castles

Map2 then adds a quick overlay of me playing with the map. Again,

Yellow:forest to be cleared
Green: forest
Black: hills/mountains
Blue: water

Of course, all I'm really doing is looking at blank space and filling it with something, as it's an area not used for common travel.

Map3 removes the trading lanes, which to be hopefully provides a better map, and the important this is to provide a map of Calradia where the player can see that trading lanes exist because of the way the map is, which is course isn't true!

@robbyg

Interesting point about profit. Let me nut this out...

Just say 1 unit of successful trade is 1 xp per unit.

So trading 20 units at a profit of 5 denars per unit would provide 20 xp, and 100 denars. Of course, this mentality means not worrying about profit, and just trading for the hell of it.

And here's the problem: Every (and I mean every) time you venture out into the wilderness in between towns, you are at risk to bandits. To counter this, you'll need some soldiers in your party to fend off any attacks. If you need a lot of these soldiers to fend off large groups (say, 50) of bandits, then you're going to need plenty of denars to pay them!

So by all means, you could take this option... but it's highly unlikely you'll be able to maintain a sizeable squad of defenders.

The only reason I'm considering this option, in just in case it's the only option, in terms of altering the games code. Ideally, I'd like to see profit as the xp modifier.

You'll see on my map example above, I'll be making a few cuts in the forest above Suno. Since it's a bandit spawn location, I want to make the forest as big as possible, with cuts into it representing all the trading routes.

And again with the castles, I want to have "no-mans land" areas between opposing factions castles. A good example is between the Nords and Swadians, between "old" Jelbegi and Ryibilet Castle. The blue dot where Jelbegi used to be, will be the new location of Jelbegi Castle, and the other blue dot south of it, on the hilly pass will be Ryibilet Castle, and Kelredan Castle to the south-east, on the other hilly pass.

@UnboundZero

That's definitely an option - I've seen these areas, where the maps appears like it's comprised of a cluster of circular hills, and it looks unrealistic. I'll look around and see if anyone else has been able to correct this.

@bgfan

It appears I completely overlooked playing as a claimant. Sure, why not? Play as King, Lord or claimant!

I just started following this thread a little while ago, and thought I'd toss in some of my own thoughts on the sandbox matter.  These are tossed in willy-nilly, and just as I've read and thought about them.  At the present, i'm only vaguely starting to learn how to mod Warband, so my skills are crap, and I've no way of knowing how feasible some of what I'm suggesting might be, but here we go:

Village/Castle/Town related

- The ability to Manage any place in your control with a full set of options, including holdings overseen by Lords under your control.  Frankly, as a ruler, it's been my policy to hold off on giving out fiefs until I've developed them because my lords are all lazy buggers with no real ambition.  It'd be nice to be able to order them to develop their lands.  Also, it'd be nice to take the big cities and castles and give them some of the village options for addons, and let them become something other than boxes to hold soldiers and prisoners.  You could perhaps make this option only work if you have a positive relationship with the Lord you've got overseeing the place.

"Lord Dingleberry!  I'm tired of wandering through that track of mud you call a village!  Let's get some mills running, maybe a school, and oh yeah, a swish manor for me to stay in when I'm out on the trail."

'...uh, right, Majesty.  I'll get right on that.'


Hero/Lord Related

- Ennobling ceremony for commoner followers - Requires a certain amount of Right to Rule, but once performed, makes a follower a noble for the purposes of avoiding controversy when handing out fiefs.

- OFF WITH HIS FREAKIN HEAD!!!  *ahem*  Simply put, an option to execute a noble or king upon capture (or if the duel option is made, upon defeating the other party).  Costs a certain amount of Honor, but permanently removes the executed party from the game, the way a king is removed when the faction is defeated. (A natural issue is what happens if some wiseguy manages to take out the King while leaving the fation largely intact.  Probably causes relationships with the executed noble to drop, with the added penalty of a bunch of the Lords jumping ship.)


Kingship/Lordship

- Making a character king from the get-go seems massively clunky to me, BUT - starting out as a secondary Claimant sounds like a good possibility, possibly addign in a rivalry with the faction's primary claimant before the King can be challenged.  A secondary Claimant could start off with 25 to 30 Right to Rule, and perhaps 500 Renown.


Feminism for the Win

- This last set of notes is based on some earlier posts in other threads.  The whole 'boy's network' aspect of the game rankles me a bit, though I can see the cause for it.  The current method of dealing with the issue is extremely shallow, in my opinion.  Some setting that balanced a female player character's experience would be more interesting, perhaps adding more Constroversy to her actions while not limiting them as much.

- Better Sword-Sisters.  Give them all helmets and Chargers or Warhorses instead of Coursers.


Deeper Marriage Options

-Yeah, you heard me.  Something a little deeper than 'Go see a Lady and Read her some Poetry, lather, rinse, repeat'.  Some sort of gay marriage option (although I would attach some HUGE Controversy penalties to such a thing, as a nod to how singular it would be, and your relationship with the betrothed's parents would have to be phenomenal to even allow such a thing.  I expect the relationship might still take a hit, as well.)

Yes, I know the last two may have people up in arms, but this isn't a game set in our historical times, and I have suggested ways to make such options fit in with the general feel of the game.  All in all, I'd rather have some options with a few hurdles to jump than play a game where it's not even permitted because 'it's Medieval times, omfg!'

Anyway, that's as much as I have at nearly 3:30 AM.  I'm not making any demands here, merely adding some suggestions to the melting pot, but needless to say, I will be following this thread eagerly.

Thanks for the reply there AdriRaven - sorry for the delay, every time I've attempted a long-winded reply I've needed to leave or attend to something... so here goes again.

I think you fully and utterly get the sandbox nature I'm aiming for, and will take your considerations completely on board. I like the idea of attempting to encourage AI lords to improve the feifs, since hey, it's utterly crucial to the success of the Kingdom, right?

If you've played Medieval II: Total War (not sure if it's in the first one), it has the option now and then of those of noble (and not noble) blood to join your Kingdom.

And yes, the idea of execution would be awesome - and tie in perfectly with the death and bounty hunter themes. Perhaps as the bounty hunter, you are a mercenary for hire to capture troublesome Lords within a Kingdom, and bring them alive to the capital for execution?

Deeper marraige options would indeed be good too - but this is where I hit a crossroads... should women be historically correct, and be used as "collateral", to be married off to rival Lords or Kings? I think this would be great, but with a modern twist where women do actually have an opinion and there is an increased chance of the Lady going rogue and doing as she wants.

The gay marraige is not bad an idea, although again, I'd like to keep a little of historical element to it, and have it as a challenging task - if it were to succeed, you'd suddenly have a lot of sights set on you, and it should make the game extremely difficult (for both player or AI in it's event).

Anyways, as I'm once again pushed for time - a quick update.

While I disagree with some of it's approaches, Rockstar Games certainly know how to make a sandbox game. With Red Dead Redemption just released, I decided to give it a try and hopefully it would win me over, where GTA couldn't in the past. I've never played a game where I actually feel like I'm living in a different time than it RDR - it's utterly immersive and rediculously deep and vast.

For example, you can earn your living as a hunter/trapper, living off the land. You hunt and skin mammals and birds. It really feels authentic.

Or you can be a bounty hunter, working for the law and capturing criminals, helping damsels in distress and so on.

Or you can be an outlaw, and as you can imagine, is quite like the GTA model where lawmen will pursue you after a crime is committed - however in  this game if you get away,the bounty sticks with you and the higher the bounty, the harder it is to merely show your face in a town.

There's many many other things to the game, some of which I'm thinking are useful to the mod... it's just an example of how I envision the mod - to make it feel authentic, and to have the player write their own story, instead of it being told for them.

And quickly...

NEED BETA TESTERS (AND OF COURSE I STILL NEED A CODER!)
If coding or modding isn't your thing, then sign up as a beta tester. Once I get a team of testers going, I'll create some off-site forums to track progress better (1 thread aint going to cut it). The map work I'm doing is quite extensive and I just keep adding and adding to it. Soon, I'll require people to test the trading routes between towns (as I did earlier in previous posts) to see what kind of results the alterations to the map are producing, and if their faithful to the goal I have.

Note: It would be small level testing, spread amongst a group of testers, but would just give me those handful of extra hours to work on the backend of the project.

Just saw your post and I would be interested in doing banners, shield and armor artwork and background artwork BUT if I may suggest abandoning the idea of dividing the banner into king/lord format because:

1. The space on the heraldic armor and shield is scarce and in order to get a descent resolution you need to aim for one idea per banner (thing I found out the hard way )
2. The kingdoms are already divided into color code so there is no need to identify them by banner.
3. It would be a better idea to group them by themes, color patterns, back ground patterns or style.

I would love to help. Check out by banner package and let me know if you are interested:

http://www.mbrepository.com/file.php?id=1959


Just a couple of other things I wanted to suggest:

1. Promoting Companions to lords of your own kingdom. A much better idea in Fire Arrow then hiring random lords out of obscurity.

2. Ability to rename Companions.

3. Ability to outfit your units based on the different items in their inventory based on the troop txt. There is definitely an older Mod that done it and I can probably dig it out.

4. Periodic Hordes of invaders. I think its a MUST so players don't run out of steam in the middle of their game play.

4.1. Longer deeper quests that will greatly influence the relationships between kingdoms and lords.

5. Fractioning each faction  so there are about 8-10 kingdoms that can be united or split by AI or Player.

6. Diplomatic system where relationships can be influenced through gifts of money expensive armor troops or fiefs.

7. Division of troop trees into common and noble with an option of *ennobling* (I like this idea) the last teer of common troop into first or mid teer of noble, which will cost you not only money but renown and any other kinds of acquired abilities for example it can be done only with high leadership, INT and high morale.

8. Have a mix of male and female lords with realistic names not some gibberish nonsense. 

9. Different types of arena fights not only wall on wall but one on one jousting, footmen only melee, etc. I can do research if needed. Also there was another older Mod that did that as well. The compensation for different fights also need to be appropriate. When you get only 250 coins for withstanding assault of 20+ enemies and a decent sword costs 6k that's just idiotic. I always change the won amount to at least 10k then when I have 200 upgraded troops I can at least feed them.

10. The economic sistem with taxes needs to be updated so the player even while having lets say 2 cities, 2 castles and a handful of villages still chokes in supporting a modest army.

10. Weapon smithy with an option of weapon upgrades also a must. When you look for this one specific sword or shield that you like and it only comes in rusty and battered it's lame.

I would love to help just let me know.

why no one replying

I love most of these new ideas... keep it up!