Version 1.150 - 1.151 - 1.152 - 1.153 - 1.154

[DavidMF]

About the special characters in names;
Added support for: []*- and ~

Oh thank you based God.

Now my dreams of pWning n00bs as ~*~Xx720n0sc0p3XBOW420L1ghT1UPH0MiexX~*~ can be realized!

Too Late, Thats me.

(click to show/hide)

[Green Knight]

+1 for sound cutting in and out all the time. It's brutal.   

Don't want to play the game like this at all. Not only does it wreck the immersion, but you're pretty gimped when you can't hear shiz.

I have reinstalled, rebooted, made virgin Native folders and played with the game's sound settings. Still no love.

[Merlkir]

The sound engine has been rewritten from scratch.

Once again, sorry if this is a stupid question, but why exactly did that need to be done? What was wrong with the old sound engine?

I am only guessing, but the sound engine in both Mount and Blade and Warband was a surprising wall which many larger mods hit. Adding sounds, or playing additional sounds that weren't already played by the game itself caused huge problems to the CPU. It also tends to overload RAM. Setting Warband to work with more than 2 GB of it helps somewhat, but it's a crude fix.
Anyway, I don't think it's been much improved in Warband over MnB and adding music to the 3.1 patch of TLD was a huge problem for many people. We're still not sure how to fix it, if we ever do. So any improvements to the sound system in Warband should be welcome, not sneezed at.


Also, I'd like to take a bit of space here and write down my thoughts on the whole "paying for a mod" issue which pops up everywhere nowadays.

It's a strange sense of entitlement that seems to be prevalent here, one that I do not understand. "Mods should be free". "I shouldn't be forced to pay for something that I had for free up till now.". "I won't pay for a barely polished mod."
I'd like to explain why these sentiments are entirely false.

1) Mods should be free.

Possibly. It's kind of the definition of a mod, that it's usually made by fans in their spare time and that it's free to be downloaded by everyone. If you need to pay for it, it's become a paid DLC. It may seem there is no difference in the actual product, but there is, or at least should be. For one, the developers should now try harder, it's in fact their job now and they have customers to answer to. It's both positive and negative motivation for them. By working directly with the developers of the game itself they should be able to lift their product above the "just a mod" level and create something new.
(which they've done, they managed to have Warband updated after months of stagnation. Updated with many cool sounding features and modding possibilities. Sadly, you bitch about that too, which baffles me even more.)
So yes, mods are and will always be free. No conflict there.

2) I won't pay for a barely polished mod.

I admit, the experience we have with WFaS is bitter. As I'll comment in the third part, it IS your choice NOT to pay for this product. If you enjoy this type of gameplay, I don't see why you wouldn't.
Let's see, some of you were absolutely shocked to see the DLC will cost nearly 10 EUR! Yes. Admittedly, it's something like a third of the price of the actual game it's expanding. Also, it is roughly the price of a nice dinner.

How much are games worth? How many hours of entertainment will you gain for this dinner money? Food for thought.

Today we have a few pricing modes, there's something we're used to paying for AAA games, something we're used to paying for indie games (oh the bloody bundles), something we're used to paying for online apps...

Somehow paying a dinner for a fun DLC seems too much to you.

Also, I'm not sure if you realize this, but by this you're also telling modders their work is worth NOTHING. Certainly not 9.99 EUR.
We get people praising TLD quite often, who tell me they'd buy TLD as a game if they could. Is it just in the "what if" land? IF we get the chance, we take it as an insult? IF we get asked to pay, we realize mods are worthless?

You seem to be confusing the privilege of having mods for free with their actual value. You are all so fortunate there are many modders who'll do this for fun and share their work with you for nothing. Does that mean it's worth nothing? No.

That gets me to the last point -

3) I shouldn't be forced to pay for something that I had for free up till now.

You're not forced to do that at all. You have a free choice to make. Buy, or not buy.
Again, the fact you were able to enjoy this wonderful and fun mod before was entirely dependant on the modders' good will. It's not a RIGHT, it's a PRIVILEGE.

Sadly, good will won't feed you, clothe you, or pay the rent. Believe it or not, modding and game making is a lot of work. It's a bloody full time job.
The NW guys decided they want to keep making this mod in the form of a DLC, they got the chance to work directly with Taleworlds, to do stuff they couldn't with a mere mod. (hopefully)  As they want to make their living by making games, they obviously grabbed that chance.

"But they should keep the mod servers running, it's not fair!" - yeah, it's not fair, it's not fair in the fairytale land where players are the only people who matter in this world. Luckily, they're not stupid and they realize they don't need to create their own free competition.
It's a business decision, deal with it.

There is no great idealistic code of proper and soulful modding, there is no rule that says mods can't be turned into DLC. Objectively there's nothing wrong with what they're doing.

You're angry and bitching, because you're either strangely idealistic, or cheap bastards who can't be arsed to admit someone elses's work has value.

I think this is all from me now.

[_Sebastian_]

I want to report 2 bugs which I noticed with the new parameters in the module.ini

can_crouch = 1
If you crouch down, then the agend plays many different animations in a loop.

disable_attack_while_jumping = 1
If you hold an attack, then jump would not chancel the attack... it will stay untill you block or do another attack.

[hrotha]

About the special characters in names;
Added support for: []*- and ~

That's it? You didn't add support for non-English characters (say, ñ, æ, þ, ø, ð), but for silly haxor names a 15-year-old would use? I can't begin to describe how bummed I am.

[Golradir]

disable_attack_while_jumping = 1
If you hold an attack, then jump would not chancel the attack... it will stay untill you block or do another attack.

Does warband have that now? fml

[hirovard]

Out of your whole post I basically got, you can have the mod for the price of a nice dinner, well id rather have the dinner.

Anyway, on a side note, it would be quite funny if now the sound is messed if the only way to fix was to buy the dl xD

[Ringwraith #5]

@Merlkir: I'm not sure if that massive post was aimed entirely at me. I'll assume not, since most of what you say is not in response to what I said. So I'll just address the bits that are relevant to me:

The sound engine has been rewritten from scratch.

Once again, sorry if this is a stupid question, but why exactly did that need to be done? What was wrong with the old sound engine?

I am only guessing, but the sound engine in both Mount and Blade and Warband was a surprising wall which many larger mods hit. Adding sounds, or playing additional sounds that weren't already played by the game itself caused huge problems to the CPU. It also tends to overload RAM. Setting Warband to work with more than 2 GB of it helps somewhat, but it's a crude fix.
Anyway, I don't think it's been much improved in Warband over MnB and adding music to the 3.1 patch of TLD was a huge problem for many people. We're still not sure how to fix it, if we ever do. So any improvements to the sound system in Warband should be welcome, not sneezed at.

Fair enough. I'm not involved in mod development at all, so I had no idea. Hence why I asked. Thanks for clarifying, hopefully this update fixes those problems.

Let's see, some of you were absolutely shocked to see the DLC will cost nearly 10 EUR! Yes. Admittedly, it's something like a third of the price of the actual game it's expanding. Also, it is roughly the price of a nice dinner.

WB is currently 20 EUR on Steam, so it's in fact half the price. It may well offer a much better cost-to-content ratio than DLC typically does, but damn, half the price of the base game. I balked at that, and I suspect I'm not the only one. Perhaps calling it "DLC" was a bad marketing move. "Expansion" would've made it easier to accept that price tag.

Also, I'm not sure if you realize this, but by this you're also telling modders their work is worth NOTHING. Certainly not 9.99 EUR.

Baloney. That would be true if only a single copy was sold, but that's obviously not going to be the case. I know you're a smart guy, so I'm going to assume you're deliberately setting up this fallacy and know perfectly well why it's untrue; therefore I'm not going to waste my time spelling it out.

[Mattressi]

Just wanted to say, thanks very much for the patch. It sounds great! I didn't expect any more patches, but it's really great that you're still supporting Warband so long after release

[hirovard]

They are not -.-'

The patch is for the mod that's being realised for €10

[Orion]

Just wanted to say, thanks very much for the patch. It sounds great! I didn't expect any more patches, but it's really great that you're still supporting Warband so long after release

"Supporting Warband" is stretching it a bit. You do know there's DLC being released today, right? This is more of a preparatory patch with a couple extras. Not that I don't appreciate it, but it's been a long, long time coming and the reason for its release now is rather obvious.

[Merlkir]

@Ringwraith:

WB is currently 20 EUR on Steam, so it's in fact half the price. It may well offer a much better cost-to-content ratio than DLC typically does, but damn, half the price of the base game. I balked at that, and I suspect I'm not the only one. Perhaps calling it "DLC" was a bad marketing move. "Expansion" would've made it easier to accept that price tag.

Fair enough, I was going off of the price on TW's website. But yeah, you prove the point that it's the percieved value of words and names we give to products.

Baloney. That would be true if only a single copy was sold, but that's obviously not going to be the case. I know you're a smart guy, so I'm going to assume you're deliberately setting up this fallacy and know perfectly well why it's untrue; therefore I'm not going to waste my time spelling it out.

I don't actually get what you mean here.
If someone says "I'm not going to pay for it, because it's a mod.", sure, they obviously mean what I describe in 3) - it used to be free and now I should pay for it? My balls!
To the modder it means one thing - their work means nothing to you, certainly nothing you'd value with money.

[Windyplains]

Also, I'm not sure if you realize this, but by this you're also telling modders their work is worth NOTHING. Certainly not 9.99 EUR.

Baloney. That would be true if only a single copy was sold, but that's obviously not going to be the case. I know you're a smart guy, so I'm going to assume you're deliberately setting up this fallacy and know perfectly well why it's untrue; therefore I'm not going to waste my time spelling it out.

His point was quite valid.  The argument you are using here would apply to any product sold on a distribution level so comparing the DLC's price to that of warband is hardly baloney.  Do you have any idea how many hours many mod makers put into their work?  Granted it is certainly something we do for fun, but for those who want to make it a profession it has to become something more.  Most large mods out there contain vastly more "content" then you'll find in an average DLC even if you combined enough DLCs in order to equal the price they are asking for NW.

@Merlkir: Well put.

As for the original topic, folks might want to consider that while bugs like this are annoying, they are likely to get fixed.  In the end you'll have a newer update to Warband with more operations available to modders to create more of the free content you want.  It was certainly a hassle for the Floris group as it broke our newly released 2.52 version in less than a day.  In a week or two the hassle will pale in comparison to what folks come up with over the following months.

[Jezze]

Hah, finally a new patch, and I see so many people complaining about it. True that if you have a lot of bugs, but one would say they would be fixed sooner or later. Was the same case with previous patches from what I recall. Good to see we got the patch that adds quite a bunch of new things, like the new modding operations, module.ini settings,

[Ringwraith #5]

@Merlkir: I was specifically responding to the bit where you said "you're also telling modders their work is worth NOTHING. Certainly not 9.99 EUR." Well of course it isn't, it's worth much more than that. Selling digital copies isn't the same as selling physical goods. A physical item sells for more than it cost to make it because you have to make each one separately, the materials cost something, and you want to turn a profit as well. But software you only make once and then you can keep making copies of it for no cost at all (or an extremely low cost, if you want to be pedantic), so you can sell them for much less than they're actually worth and make up for that by selling a large number. Nobody could afford software if it was sold at a price that it's actually worth. The trick is balancing that properly. Do you price it low and sell lots, or do you price it high and sell fewer? You have to hit the sweet spot that gets you maximum profit. There's no reason to indignantly bellow "you're telling them that their work is not worth the price they're asking". They already are asking much, much less than it's worth. I don't know how much market research they've done, if any, but I find myself unwilling to pay ten Euros for a mod turned DLC for a two year old budget game. Two Euros? Hell yeah. Five? Well if it's really well made and has lots of content, why not. Ten? Nah. Maybe I'm just a cheap bastard, but I don't think they've quite hit that sweet spot with their pricing.

Also, no, even on TW website WB is 30 USD, which is about 22 EUR. </nitpick>