Mount&Blade II: Bannerlord Developer Blog 5 - Virtual Skeletons

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Happy Friday to avid readers and passers by. It has been a little while since our last Bannerlord Blog. In this entry we are once more decreasing the number of unblogged rooms in the office by one. Although some animations are made and polished in various parts of the office, many are captured in our very own motion capture studio near the main door of our offices. The animation hub and thus the associated blog room for this episode.

Read more at: http://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/6
 
LordCorbin said:
jacobhinds said:
true dat. It always bothered me how you could march an entire campaign army in a straight line right past a neutral castle and not piss them off. kind of made castles a bit pointless if you couldn't prevent an enemy army and its supply trains from just trudging by.
I agree to a point. But you cant have a turn base map work for an RTS map. Like the borders. If they are going to do that they're going to have to put in some sort of veiw radius for each castle. Obviously just because you carve out a border don't mean you can police it all the time. I always hated that about the TW games. You even set foot in a claimed area and you have insta negative relation.

Well, you have an army that threatens your kingdom in your borders, and most likely foraging from your peasants' fields and other dubious bull****, I would imagine one would get scared.

In total war games, I raise troops anytime I see someone in my borders, ally or enemy. I can't trust them.
 
Kadoken said:
LordCorbin said:
jacobhinds said:
true dat. It always bothered me how you could march an entire campaign army in a straight line right past a neutral castle and not piss them off. kind of made castles a bit pointless if you couldn't prevent an enemy army and its supply trains from just trudging by.
I agree to a point. But you cant have a turn base map work for an RTS map. Like the borders. If they are going to do that they're going to have to put in some sort of veiw radius for each castle. Obviously just because you carve out a border don't mean you can police it all the time. I always hated that about the TW games. You even set foot in a claimed area and you have insta negative relation.

Well, you have an army that threatens your kingdom in your borders, and most likely foraging from your peasants' fields and other dubious bull****, I would imagine one would get scared.

In total war games, I raise troops anytime I see someone in my borders, ally or enemy. I can't trust them.

But all that 'dubious bull****' is just hypothetical in TW games because it's all turn based. It's assumed you're posturing for battle with armies on the border in the TW games. Gearing up for that blitzkrieg is the point of the game. While in M&B it's real time, and more than just an Army vs Army game. You actually have to raid, raze a village, or do some sort of hostile action before it impacts you negatively. I'm not saying borders are a bad idea. I'm just saying that if they're going to do it, it needs to fit into the RTS map playstyle. Exmpl- If you are in a 'neutral' Lords/Castle/Towns view radius while in his territory, then the Lord/Garrison Commander/Town Marshal should ride out and warn you to remove your host from their lands. Or something to that effect. Not instant negative relation. It'd be quiet brutal to play as a wandering mercenary host, nomadic trader, or even complete quests, if you constantly had to worry you were about to damage a positive relationship with a faction/Lord. Besides, its a bit far fetched to assume that any host (large or small) is instantly seen upon entering into territory.
 
I don't remeber if I asked something like this before, but how about walking on regular stairs? Are we going to have proper animations for that or will the players just surf on them?
 
The Bowman said:
I don't remeber if I asked something like this before, but how about walking on regular stairs? Are we going to have proper animations for that or will the players just surf on them?

I thought it was rather cool to see a guy floating in the stairs  :mrgreen:
 
Cookie Eating Huskarl said:
Admiral Nelson said:
some people don't play Call of Duty
Wait, there are people who don't play Call of Duty? Call the senate, we need to set up legislations to declare these people endangered. Artificial insemination here we come.

Who says it needs to be artificial?  :wink:

Nobleman said:
The Bowman said:
I don't remeber if I asked something like this before, but how about walking on regular stairs? Are we going to have proper animations for that or will the players just surf on them?

I thought it was rather cool to see a guy floating in the stairs  :mrgreen:

Remember when LA Noire came out, and it was thought to be revolutionary that the animations for going up and down stairs were actually quite realistic?

Yeah... I don't think the Bannerlord engine is going to be *quite* that good.
 
L.A. noire came out years ago. Since then a lot of games use a system where the walk animation changes based on the slope - sort of like the horses currently. It looks decent enough.
If they were going to do a dedicated stair animation, all the stairs would have to be the same steepness and size...nah, can't see that happening.
 
Antar said:
The Bowman said:
Antar said:
reiksmarshal said:
Looking forward to when the map is revealed, it would be pretty cool if it would take on more of a total war look.

I would rather have the game stick with the Mount and Blade look. After all, it's Mount and Blade, not Total War.

Let's just release Warband again...

How the **** can one not want a ******** improvement over the ******** previous game? It's a new ******** game. NEW. I don't get you, people. ©

How about you calm down. I have nothing against improving the M&B map with better looks, more detail, borders, etc. But changing the map to a game-board-like system in the Total War games is not an improvement, it is a complete change.

And it would be a complete change for the worse. Maps are fine as they are in Warband. Moreover, I think Rome 2 is a horrible game, despite its beautiful shinny graphics. Engaging game-play is what really counts for me at the end of the day.

Even Total War's battle mechanics are in my opinion boring and outdated. Babysitting 40 oblivious units on the battlefield map is not exactly my idea of having fun. Admittedly, this sort of battle mechanics could be rightly considered as cool and innovative back in 2004. Not anymore.
 
The Bowman said:
How does a shiny map destroy gameplay?

It doesn't.

As long as it will not unnecessarily drain TaleWorlds's resources in that direction, and as long as it will not sacrifice game-play, I'm ok with it. What I meant is shinny graphics shouldn't be a priority.

If, however, the developers can accommodate all of it, then it will be all for the best.
 
And to think, all I wanted was a little outline around cities/castles that included the villages attached to them. :neutral: You could color them to reflect your relation with that faction similar to Total War, but beyond that I don't think many Total War campaign map features would translate well into M&B.

The "diplomatic features" I had in mind were an expansion of the random border dispute event that can occur in M&B. Essentially, this event would mark a village as contested territory on the map and it would break off from the faction that owns it for a while, becoming neutral. It wouldn't provide any tax income during this period. After a while, the village will randomly (?) assign itself to either faction. If the faction that had it before gets it back, nothing changes diplomatically, but if they lose it then the relations between the two factions will take a hit and they're more likely to go to war.

Of course you wouldn't want a "border dispute" to occur at a village that isn't situated geographically between two cities/castles, so you would need some sort of selection process for deciding which villages are valid for border disputes. It could be a simple list system, where each city/castle has a list of "nearby" villages, and these lists would have some overlap for all cities/castles. Detecting if it's a valid dispute would simply require a faction ownership check of both cities to make sure they're not owned by the same faction and not at war, and then finding a village that is in both of their influence lists.

This could probably be modded into Warband, really. I haven't updated my Diplomacy mod in forever, so for all I know it could already exist (minus the village ownership reassignment, as I don't know if that's possible or if they're just tied to the larger settlements permanently).
 
Actually, it could be even developed further to allow some inner movements, as villagers tend to tell you that this or that lord is especially cruel to his men. I like it already when in game rescuing fellow lord from tight spot makes other one cringe. Some frictions inside faction that would escalate in the time of peace might be interesting and could give then something to do for war-thirsty players.

But that aside, some kind of borders would be nice to have, yeah. Although I'm not sure about colourful lines looking right on the world map.
 
Do not look here said:
Actually, it could be even developed further to allow some inner movements, as villagers tend to tell you that this or that lord is especially cruel to his men. I like it already when in game rescuing fellow lord from tight spot makes other one cringe. Some frictions inside faction that would escalate in the time of peace might be interesting and could give then something to do for war-thirsty players.

But that aside, some kind of borders would be nice to have, yeah. Although I'm not sure about colourful lines looking right on the world map.
Speaking of war-thirsty players and things to do when not ruling a kingdom. I think it would be great to see them implement some sort of jousting tourney. They already have the grand melee, and the Sarranids have their huge missile tourneys. But there's just something about knight charging down the list toward one another. One on one. A shattered lance and unhorsed foe just screams epicness. I think it would fit perfect right into the Swadian Kingdom. But there's no reason a Nord couldn't get good and win the day. xD
 
Do not look here said:
But that aside, some kind of borders would be nice to have, yeah. Although I'm not sure about colourful lines looking right on the world map.

Orion said:
To be fair, Total War has more detailed maps than M&B now, and I for one wouldn't be opposed to Total War-style borders being (optionally) marked on the campaign map.

You can't go wrong with options. Those that want it, have it. Those that don't want it aren't forced to deal with it. Win-win for just a few lines of code.
 
Jesus has almost returned!
A few pretty pictures, or even moving pictures of the Bannerlord to celebrate the occasion, would be awesome (why do i have the feeling that i will be disappointed?  :cry:).
 
Sorry for posting a suggestion here, if admins deem it necessary, please move it to an appropriate thread.
Anyhow, one (small) feature that would really be great is the ability to make unique, "legendary" weapons fit for heroes. Nothing fancy, really. You just name the sword and, depending on the amount/quality of resources used, the stats are decided. Yeah. Thought it should have been said.
 
Volkodav said:
Sorry for posting a suggestion here, if admins deem it necessary, please move it to an appropriate thread.
Anyhow, one (small) feature that would really be great is the ability to make unique, "legendary" weapons fit for heroes. Nothing fancy, really. You just name the sword and, depending on the amount/quality of resources used, the stats are decided. Yeah. Thought it should have been said.

yeah maby a sword given by a king or something like that would be cool.
 
I'd like to see the ability to find blueprints and forge your own weapons with materials (like skyrim for example). that way even a poor soldier can get a decent weapon if he finds the right material
 
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