In-Game Heraldry Support

Armagan, if you read this, it would be REALLY nice to have some support of personal heraldry in-game.  Specifically, I need the ability to change and layer textures on objects in the game.  Additionally beneficial would be the ability to overwrite colourings so that each picture could be in four colours (black outline, colour1, colour2, and transparent) and the colours could be assigned within the game.

I started working on a mod to use a dialogue-based system to allow players to create their own personal coat-of-arms in the game, where selecting your own coat would swap certain in-game items so that your arms would appear on your units and on special shields and armour for the player and heroes, which you could get from the herald.

Yeah, not gonna happen.

At least not how I'd like.  I could offer them a choice of certain pre-made devices, but customizable coats-of-arms are simply unfeasable if you have to create each and every possibility first.  I compiled a list of common fields and charges that I'd like to make available, and before I was even finished, I decided to count how many individual textures I would need for all the possible emblazons.  Currently, this mod will require 43 554 individual textures, and I hadn't even started to consider different positions for animals or blazons more complex than "Field colour(s), a charge colour"!  If I could layer all the individual charges in-game, I'd need maybe a hundred or two seperate images, but even the simplest of heraldic options requires tens of thousands of images if you want to provide for all possibilities.

Armagan, I'd be more than happy to help you work out a simple system to allow an accurate and in-depth heraldry creation procedure.  Heraldry is pretty specific and, if you know how to break it down, could be easily translated into a computer program.  It would certainly be as revolutionary to find in a computer game as your combat control system was.


For the interested heralds, my list included:
14 fields
-Plain
-Per pale
-Per fess
-Per bend
-Per bend sinister
-Per chevron
-Per saltire
-Quarterly
-Barry
-Paly
-Bendy
-Checky
-Gyronny
-Fretty
(I just realised that I didn't consider line variations for shield divisions, though I did for the Ordinaires.  Using the 7 basic heraldic colours, this gives us 61 different possible fields for each charge.  Hmm... I also didn't count charge-less fields:  add 61 to the number of required textures.)

11 Ordinaires
-Fess
-Pale
-Chief
-Base
-Bend
-Bend sinister
-Chevron
-Pile
-Cross
-Saltire
-Bordure

The ordinaires would have allowed 7 line variations:
-Indented
-Dancetté
-Embattled
-Engrailed
-Invected
-Wavy
-Rayonné

10 Beasts:
-Lion
-Dragon
-Tyger
-Wolf
-Bear
-Boar
-Horse
-Stag
-Eagle
-Raven

8 Simple Charges
-Lozenge
-Mascle
-Billet
-Roundel
-Mullet
-Fret
-Annulet
-Label

14 Other charges
-Tree
-Rose
-Foil (as in trefoil, quatrefoil, or cinqfoil, though I counted this as one item.  Bump the number of textures up by 122.)
-Tower
-Broad Arrow/Pheon
-Grenade
-Beacon
-Sword
-Spur
-Crescent
-Bow
-Harp
-Spear
-Sun in its Splendour.

As I said, I hadn't even begun to consider animal positions, different forms of crosses, or orientation of charges, or any colouring beyond the 7 primary metals and tinctures.  With all the possibilities here, a true herald could find hundreds of thousands of different blazons, which would all be possible with a proper heraldry-designing procedure in the game.)

Sounds pretty cool. That would be awesome.

I've been hoping for an in-game heraldry generator for a while, with the capability of both customisable and random heraldry.

A bit more thought needs to be applied how said heraldry will be placed on different types of shields, and on surcoats and draped on horses, because it can be quite easy for the heraldry to not fit properly and cause wierd artifacts at the joins of the mesh.

In your list Eogan, i see some terms I'm not familiar with. Notably Barry, paly, bendy, fretty, dancette, rayonne, mascle, fret, annulet.

I'm sure someone could write a third party program that can do this with shields and the like, which would make it convenient for modders.

Good idea anyway. I hope to see it getting done.

Yes! This is a MUST!

It was mentioned somewhere else, and this is the best form of it so far!

Ingolifs said:

A bit more thought needs to be applied how said heraldry will be placed on different types of shields, and on surcoats and draped on horses, because it can be quite easy for the heraldry to not fit properly and cause wierd artifacts at the joins of the mesh.

Click to expand...

Surcoats shouldn't be a problem.  So long as it's applied without distortions when the model "folds", there should be no problems adapting it to square, rectangular, diamond, or round fields.  The trick with horse barding is to "tile" the field, and have the actual device appear on only specific areas.

Using the extant heraldic field divisions (three rows;  chief, fess, and base, and three columns;  dexter, pale, and sinister), and including basic guidelines for grouping of multiple charges, there should be no problems with altering the field size, shape, and dimensions.

Ingolifs said:

In your list Eogan, i see some terms I'm not familiar with. Notably Barry, paly, bendy, fretty, dancette, rayonne, mascle, fret, annulet.

Click to expand...

Field divisions:
-Barry:  a bar is a smaller fess, usually used when there are more than one.  Barry is covering the field in horizontal bars.  The USA flag is "barry argent and gules, on a canton azure fifty mullets argent".
-Paly: Like barry, but vertical.  Paly + Barry = chessboard, aka checky.
-Bendy:  Meme, but on an angle from dexter chief to sinister base (top left to bottom right).  You can combine this with Paly or Bendy to make extremely annoying fields like 'Paly bendy wavy'. *shudder*
-Fretty:  a weave covering the entire field, with the pattern "on the bias", to use a sewing term.  The following is my friend's device.  It's "Ermine fretty gules", one of the most complex three-word blazons I've ever seen.  But then he's like that.

If the fretty part were outlined, it would weave like celtic knotwork.  The black things are supposed to be Ermine spots.

Line variations:
-Dancetté or Dancetty:  Zig-zagged.  Some say that Dancetty has a larger amplitude and lower frequency than indented, but the real difference is whether the teeth are "in phase".  Basically, if it does this: <> it's indented, and if it does this: > > it's dancetty.  A fess dancetty is known simply as "a dance".  Charlie Brown's shirt is "Or, a dance sable."  My device is "Per fess sable and gules, a Dance Or, and in chief two mullets argent" and looks like this:

-Rayonny:  tall, thin, wavy zig-zags, each point having an S-curve.  Rayonny is usually drawn "out of phase", like indented, and drawings of the sun often show rays which are rayonny.  In fact, heraldic suns usually have 8 points, with the cardinal points being straight triangles and the diagonal points being rayonny.

Charges:
-Mascle:  (pr. maskul) a voided lozenge.  Basically, a diamond with a diamond-shaped hole in it.  A lozenge (diamond) with a round hole in it is called a 'rustre'.  If you want to lay out four objects in a diamond shape, you could blazon it as "four (charge) lying as on a mascle".
-Fret: a fret is a combination of three shapes.  First there are two diagonal bars that overlap as on a saltire.  A mascle is woven with the bars in the over-under fashion of celtic knotwork.
-Annulet:  a voided roundel, aka a ring.

Google searches for them should turn up pretty good examples for each.

What I like the most about you, Eogan. Is that you make a long detailed text which doesn't got any bull**** in it.

Which nobody fully reads but just posts "Awesome, best idea so far!" after the first paragraph. *

(*Not excluding me)

I posted, then began to read. 

So there is a Hallequin and a Hellequin.. wtf?

Yep. I registered a week or so after Hellequin. We were both confused at first but sorted it out, eventually.

Just remember: HEllequin is the amazing modder, while HAllequin is, well, me!

^The person with the best sig ever^

I read half, does that count for anything?

Umm one thing. If this were ever made, I'd prefer that you would have to be promoted to the rank of knight or higher to be able to create and use your own coat of arms. Until then, you would have to use your liege-lord's or faction's heraldry.

As soon as you reach any level of nobility, you'd be expected to have a device.  As soon as you join a faction, you're made a leader of men, so it stands to reason that you are given some sort of right to do that.  The game mechanics are currently kind of self-contradictory in that regard at the moment.

I generally won't carry anyone in my army unless I have the rank for it. Either that, or it's just me commanding a few watchment.

Hmm you made me think of another simple suggestion, that would make ranks even more needed: you couldn't recruit or lead troops that are of higher rank than you are. So if you want to recruit some Swadian Knights, you would have to be at least a knight in the swadian faction, or at least a squire to lead men-at-arms. This would be a much more useful use for the ranks than being just something to brag about.

Yes and no. If you see yourself as a mercenary, they were often not associated with a particular faction. The idea that was put forth of notoriety would make more sense as a limit on the troops you could lead.

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,2472.0.html

I do tend to think that heraldry should only be allowed after a certain achievement - either you reach a rank, or complete a quest which was difficult enough to merit you being rewarded (eg, the raider quest if you have a small party and low level).
It is an awkward situation for realism, that you are some farmer's son or noble's daughter with a rusty sword and ragged jerkin, but hardened veterans and arrogant knights will follow you across the country. 
Thena gain (a) none fo them have heraldry! and more importantly
(b) it takes about 20 game days to make a squadron of knights out of a rabble of militiamen....

Eogan - great heraldry ideas.  I don't know half the terms, but clearly the system is no problem:
We already have ONE texture for the THREE Gambesons.

If I knew how this was achieved, I'd copy it and make 'black and white' textures for a score of nice coats of arms.   These would then be available in four or five colour schemes.

Remember that in reality NOT all combinations were possible.
The King of Arms had to approve heraldry: does someone else have the same device (like copyright) and is the chosen device not an insult to someone else's?
(eg, Gordon shows three boar heads in gold on a blue shield.   If my coat of arms was three boar heads in gold, crowned with soft turds, on a blue shield, the King of Arms would probably suggest some improvements.)
Third, there were nationalist considerations.  A French lord would not want a device that LOOKED like the King of England's, out of patriotism.   In Scottish heraldry, there is a distinct lack of St George's crosses in red!

So the game system, for simplicity, could have each town-ruler assigned a pool of say twenty coats of arms, plus 5 generic ones for the nations.   When the player earns the right to bear arms, he is offered these 25 choices by the rewarding ruler.   The ruler would explain that the King of Arms has made a careful search of the Heraldic Deeds, and can offer any of these (show screen with 25 miniatures) for you.

If the player does not like these, he can gracefully refuse the offer, and will receive NO recognition for the action which led to the reward offer - that is, if the offer was made because he captured the enemy nobleman, he will not get the quest points, he will fail the mission, and he will receive no money.   The player is however free to go to another town ruler and the completion of ANY mission after this will trigger the same options.

Obviously this does not give the satisfaction of building your own coat-of-arms, but it might be (a) moddable in the current system and
(b) much easier to implement to native.

what are the thoughts?

It might be worth asking yourself the question of wether it's necessarily important for players to design the coat-of-arms in-game, or wether it's better to have a third-party app to design the coat-of-arms and have the game decide when you can have it available.
This probably precludes the possibility of having a national "pool" of possibly designs, but a free-standing app will have none of the limitations that M&B would enforce due to its user-interface.

Just a thought.

I think it's also important that you achieve the rank of Knight or higher in one of the factions in order to have a coat of arms.  To appease those who want some consistency in design with your faction, perhaps allow only certain colors to the different factions, so at the very least you're somewhat color coordinated with your side.  (For instance, Faction A: dark blue/light blue/d purple/l purple/d green/l green :: Faction B: d red/l red/rose/gold/yellow).  Do not despair however if you choose the full out mercenary route.  When you eventually sack your own city you become the ruler of it, and thus, you're automatically elevated to a status deserving of symbology (this of course ONLY applies if you are not alligned with any faction) and can pick a heraldry (probably without color restricions, or just allow a third color group of all the colors not being used by opponents).

The color group scheme is also quite useful in that if you were fighting with a group of knights from faction A against knights from faction B, they could all have their own unique heraldry and even color differentiation, without sacrificing their recognizability.

As to not being able to have units in your army without having the proper rank.  That's rubbish from a playability aspect.  However, it instantly appears to me that there is an easy compromise without compromising the realistim aspect.  Simply make high ranking units absurdly expensive if you don't have proper ranking over them.  Remember kids, this game is all about MERCENARIES.  A knight may have his honor, but he also has his price.  So for instance, if you're a peasant level but you free some veterans or knights from the vile hands of their enemies, they'll join you, but the shame of demeaning themselves to following a base villein will make their weekly pay extremely high.  Now if you were a squire level, the veterans will proudly accept their normal pay but knights would still feel a bit shamed to be following someone who hasn't yet proven themselves worthy of the honor, but it's clear you're at least somewhat distinguished and so their price won't be as high as before.  Now lets say you finally rise even beyond the rank of knight in Faction A.  Knights (and all units) of Faction A will now serve you for their normal price.  However, units of Faction B will still only serve you for the price as if you were a peasant, no matter your ranking in Faction A.  Traitors and deserters don't come cheaply.

Obviously neutral units become more important then as they only care about pay and not about rank.  So increase their base pay somewhat, make sure that the most elite units of the Factions are slightly better, and never have their pay affected by your ranking in any way.