Native Expansion v0.609b has been released!

Instructions:

• Unpack archive into Native Expansion modules folder.
• Enjoy (this is a required step!).

News:
Give a big thanks to Lav who prevented this mod from getting abandoned and dying. He's done a ton of great work, and after contacting me recently, got me invigorated enough to start contributing once more. We'll be working together, and hopefully that means more and better NE. 95% of the work for .609 has been his, but in future versions expect to see a lot of collaboration!

I've also put .609 back on regular, real file hosting owned by me, not some ad-spamming 3rd-party.


Patch 0.609b (Sep 20, 2014) changes:

• Arena is in use. Merged Tournament and Arena menu options. Regular arena is now unavailable during tournaments.
• Town menu reorganization. Moved player's enterprise menu option to merchants menu.
• Town menu reorganization. Moved NE Blacksmith menu option to merchants menu.
• Town menu reorganization. Moved "Manage Garrison" and "Reinforce Garrison" menu options into "Manage town/castle" menu. Might need a different name for it.
• Town menu reorganization. Moved recruitment orders into Manage town/castle menu. In the situation when player can recruit nobles but cannot manage the town, he will still get "Recruit nobles" menu option in the main town menu.
• Safe game start. Changed menu items order in game-starting menus for Brutality and Dark Knight, so the first option is always the safe "proceed forward" one.
• Town menu reorganization. Added new town menu "Talk to locals". Moved talking to guild master and visiting lady to this menu. Also added options to talk directly to tavern keeper, ransom broker (if in town) and book merchant (if in town).
• Skills balance - Persuasion. Recruitment relation requirements modified somewhat for peasants and nobles: player's allegiance, status and persuasion are taken into account. Foreign nobles will require at least some positive relation to be recruited.
• No elites for scoundrels. Elite troops now require Honor to be recruited, modified by player's persuasion. Regular lord needs Honor >= 20 - Persuasion, faction marshal needs Honor >= 20 - 2 * Persuasion, while faction leader needs Honor >= 10 - 2 * Persuasion.
• Interface arc - Settings. Module Settings presentation: it is now possible to change player's kingdom color, name and nobility title set. Other options will be added as time goes along. Currently available nobility title sets: Byzantium (default), Arabic, Persian, Polish, Spanish, English, Japanese, Soviet and American . Contributions are welcome.
• Interface arc - Settings. Completely moved all game settings to new settings screen and replaced the camp settings menu.
• Interface arc - Settings. Companions Overseer now can be turned on and off as looting interface.
• Interface arc - Settings. Implemented key configuration in Settings screen. Settings screen is now officially complete except for any future changes in the game design. Note that all key-activated features (including Overseer) will become unaccessible with this patch unless player defines keys for them.
• Interface arc - Settings. Turning wounding system on and off now has an immediate effect on active wounds. Also, severity of wounds is affected by brutality mode (attributes are affected by 1 point without brutality and by 2 points with it).
• Better logging. References to lords, locations and factions should now be proper links in all log messages. Older log messages will remain as they are.
• Better management. If player is marshal or king, he now can sponsor constructions in other lords' fiefs by paying 50% of the cost. Note that the price and time is calculated using the average of the best engineer in player's party and the royal engineer (level 1 normally, level 2 for player's kingdom with logistics advisor hired).
• Map visual enhancement. Tweaked default colors for player's party (yellowish white), player's kingdom (blue) and outlaws (red). Existing games will be unaffected. These colors can be changed easily now anyway in the Settings screen.
• Better dialogs - patrols. Expanded dialog with patrols a bit when player is marshal or king of the same faction. It is now possible to relieve patrols of their prisoners, and to point them to a different area within the kingdom.
• Bugfix - correct numbers. Noble troops price could be displayed incorrectly sometimes.
• Bugfix - you can't eat barrels. Removed food bonus modifiers from Ale and Wine as these are not really food items.
• Bugfix - no need to tell twice. Removed display of extra screen with results of last combat round when using Companions Overseer for looting.
• Bugfix - bandits? what bandits? It was possible to rest at village manor despite village being infested by bandits.
• Bugfix - once is enough. Removed duplicated dialog option to give troops to your lord.
• Bugfix - I said once is enough! Village militia quest will not be offered if the village already has a militia.

Regarding the "black texture" bug.

Certain items or world elements sometimes display as pitch black. This issue has only been noticed on 1.160 Warband patch and it is currently assumed that some less polished-up module resources are causing this issue. Attempts to fix the black texture bug have been successful, however each computer that has this bug manifested apparently has this issue with different items.

So a major cleanup of all game visual resources is in order. This is a time-consuming task so it was not included into the latest version.

However, do expect a resource patch in the future, because we're working on it.

Currently my computer isn't working so when it gets fixed, the first thing I'm going to do is play the mod again.

Town menu reorganization. Added new town menu "Talk to locals". MOVED talking to guild master and visiting lady to this menu. Also added options to talk directly to tavern keeper, ransom broker (if in town) and BOOK merchant (if in town).

when you make stuff like this you make me hot and bothered

Native Expansion 0.609b Resource Patch.

You can download the resource patch as:

• 7Z archive (7.8 Mb file size)
• RAR archive (9.3 Mb file size)
• ZIP archive (16.8 Mb file size)
• TAR.GZ archive (16.8 Mb file size)

Unfortunately, I can give no guarantees that it will fix the black texture bug. So I would be grateful for all reports from users who have experienced this issue. It is possible that the bug will be fixed, fully or partially, by the resource patch. It is possible the patch will have no effect. It is even possible the patch will make things worse (however unlikely I find that to happen).

The patch does the following:

• Replaces visuals for several items in the game which were extremely memory-intensive. The list includes: Ivory Bow, Ivory Arrow, Dao, Jian, Khan's Supremacy, Royal Kite (unused), one variant of Broken Swords, Golden Company Short Sword (unused), Knightly Blade, Two Handed Knight Sword, Cruel Sword.
• Model for ivory arrows in flight has been replaced by a white version of standard model.
• Low-poly LOD models have been added to many game items where it didn't require 3D modelling expertise.
• All unused resources have been scrapped from the loading lists.
• Entire resource storage model has been re-done from scratch, which should result in noticeably improved game performance (at least it did for me).

Credits.

I had to borrow items from several publicly available OSP item packs to replace the models with their visual equivalents (well, more-or-less). Special credits for Native Expansion resources now go to:

• Addonay, for the new Ivory Bow and Ivory Arrow models from the Addonay's Elven Weaponry OSP. Note that the arrow model is not representative of Addonay's modelling skill as it's been crudely hacked by yours truly to bring it down to manageable poly count.
• Rathos, for several models from Rathos Weapons OSP and Rathos Shields OSP.
• Runico, for several models from Runico Swords OSP.

Installation instructions:

• Download the patch.
• Unpack it's contents into Native Expansion module folder. If you're notified about module.ini and item_kinds1.txt files being overwritten - agree. You don't have to backup anything as the patch includes reserve copies of the original files. There shouldn't be any other conflicts except these two files, if there are - please let me know.
• Enjoy (as always, this is a required step).

Uninstallation instructions:

• Post in this thread, explaining what issues arose from the Resource Patch. Your feedback is extremely important, as the mod team can only test the mod on so many computers.
• Go to Native Expansion module folder. Rename module.bak to module.ini and item_kinds1.bak to item_kinds1.txt. Agree to overwrite.
• You will have some unused files remaining in your Resource and Textures folder (32M total), but they won't be included into the loading lists and shouldn't affect anything.

UPDATE.

A couple of visual issues were found in the patch: ivory arrow in flight was too bright and looked like some sci-fi laser shot, and ivory quiver had some luminescence issues. Patch has been reuploaded with this issues fixed.

Well I finally got around to trying this stuff today and well... It's fixed 

What solved it for me was basically that I just followed the advice for turning on "Load textures on demand". And so far it seems like everything is fixed just by turning that on.

While I am at it I can give a heads-up of some "bugs" I have encountered.

1) When you bring back the wheat for "Bring wheat for village" you will retain all of the wheat you had when you complete the quest. Example: If you are to bring 5 packs of wheat and bring that you will still have 5 packs of wheat when you have completed it.

2) When trying to give companions whom do not have sufficent shield skill a shield the message "I can't use that item" will not pop up. You will just not be able to place it in their inventory.

And I can throw in a few suggestions as well

1) Is there any chance that the "Nord Valkyrie" could be changed to something which is slightly more... useful? I have no idea if I am alone on this, but when I personally try to use a Nord only army I just feel like the Valkyries are utter useless. Mostly just because they don't really fit in with the rest of the units of the Nords at all in my personal opinion.

I guess you could say that a good tactic would be to create a shieldwall with my infantry and archers behind while the Nord Vikings and Valkyries distract the enemy, but honestly... They just get slaughtered for no good. Vikings are fairly useless fighting enemy cavalry and the valkyries are just way too fragile in my personal opinion.

Of course, if someone where to tell me how to utilize the valkyries to their full potential then I would be grateful, but I would personally like to have them replaced with something akin to the old school "King's Berserker" where basically the only thing they do (and they do it really well) is to hack through the enemy.

2) Is there any chance that we could get some more buildings for castles? At the moment we got LOTS of buildings for villages, a decent amount for cities, but almost none for castles. Personally I would have liked to see something like the blacksmith in the cities, but other things like "Fortifications" that would make the enemy go through a labyrint of spikes in order to get to the walls or something akin to it. Something like a building to increase the amount of patrols your kingdom can have would also be welcome as the only way to get more patrols atm seems to be to just get more cities.

In any case: Thanks for this fix and good luck with further development of the mod.

- Mensch

EDIT: A third suggestion would be that I would really like to see a custom battle option for this mod where you can play around with the new units.

And a fourth would be that I would really like to see the Noble and Elite troop trees for all the factions included in the "Factions Troop Tree" overview, just so that i could familiar with them faster. I am still massively confused about the Khergits line up here 

1) When you bring back the wheat for "Bring wheat for village" you will retain all of the wheat you had when you complete the quest. Example: If you are to bring 5 packs of wheat and bring that you will still have 5 packs of wheat when you have completed it.

Click to expand...

Noted.

2) When trying to give companions whom do not have sufficent shield skill a shield the message "I can't use that item" will not pop up. You will just not be able to place it in their inventory.

Click to expand...

That *might* be the engine itself. I recall not getting the message for my own character either. Do you get the message for yourself?

1) Is there any chance that the "Nord Valkyrie" could be changed to something which is slightly more... useful? I have no idea if I am alone on this, but when I personally try to use a Nord only army I just feel like the Valkyries are utter useless. Mostly just because they don't really fit in with the rest of the units of the Nords at all in my personal opinion.

Click to expand...

Given the Valkyrie is an elite soldier, it should be highly useful. I intended for the Valkyrie to be a highly-mobile siege unit, used offensively. If it's not effective in that role, I can certainly adjust it. I'll try it out sometime soon. That's why they had throwing spears, so they could charge up the wall while still taking out some of the defenders.

2) Is there any chance that we could get some more buildings for castles? At the moment we got LOTS of buildings for villages, a decent amount for cities, but almost none for castles. Personally I would have liked to see something like the blacksmith in the cities, but other things like "Fortifications" that would make the enemy go through a labyrint of spikes in order to get to the walls or something akin to it. Something like a building to increase the amount of patrols your kingdom can have would also be welcome as the only way to get more patrols atm seems to be to just get more cities.

Click to expand...

Seems like an interesting idea.

And a fourth would be that I would really like to see the Noble and Elite troop trees for all the factions included in the "Factions Troop Tree" overview, just so that i could familiar with them faster. I am still massively confused about the Khergits line up here 

Click to expand...

I don't understand, all the troop trees are listed. Khergits are there, I just checked.

soulmata said:

And a fourth would be that I would really like to see the Noble and Elite troop trees for all the factions included in the "Factions Troop Tree" overview, just so that i could familiar with them faster. I am still massively confused about the Khergits line up here 

Click to expand...

I don't understand, all the troop trees are listed. Khergits are there, I just checked.

Click to expand...

(Never mind this, because I was utterly wrong.)

And no, I don't get the message for myself either, but I kinda know my own stats good enough for that to not be an issue for me.

Ah, I see you guys have sorted this out. Good luck with the project going forward; I look forward to playing the mod in Mount & Blade 2 

We'll see.

Meanwhile, a brief dev status as usual.

• Implemented resource patch to improve performance, reduce memory requirements and download size.
• Bugfix: Finally fixed Brutality starting menu.
• Updated horse merchants inventory regeneration.
• Updated regular merchants inventory regeneration.
• Made horse merchants inventory vary noticeably between kingdoms.
• Implemented town prosperity effects on general and horse merchants inventory quality.
• Bugfix: books were not marked as merchandise, resulting in Bookstore building not having any effect. Fixed.
• Bugfix: Grain delivery quest did not remove grain from player inventory. Fixed.
• Improved grain delivery quest: partially consumed grain sacks will not be taken if there are full grain sacks available. If village elder is forced to accept partially consumed grain sacks, quest will result in reduced rewards.

Native Expansion 0.609b Downloads.

Full list of download URLs for Native Expansion, major patches and add-ons.

Native Expansion 0.609b.

This is the latest official release of Native Expansion.

• ZIP archive (173.8 Mb file size).
• Nexus Mods mirror download.

Resource Patch for Native Expansion 0.609b.

Resource Patch reduces memory requirements of Native Expansion and optimizes graphical performance. It will be integrated into Native Expansion starting from version 0.610, but due to it's critical importance was made available to players ahead of schedule as a separate download.

• 7Z archive (7.8 Mb file size).
• RAR archive (9.3 Mb file size).
• ZIP archive (16.8 Mb file size).
• TAR.GZ archive (16.8 Mb file size).

Native Expansion 0.609b + Resource Patch.

This is the "cleaned up" version of Native Expansion with pre-installed Resource Patch. All unused or deprecated resources have been removed from the mod, reducing the download size drastically.

• 7Z archive (61.4 Mb file size).
• Windows installer (96.5 Mb file size).

Native Expansion Siege Scenes Pack.

Scenes Pack improves all battle scenes, adding a second ladder to many of them, making sieges more tactical and detailed. It is a recommended add-on to Native Expansion mod.

• ZIP archive (7.4Mb file size).
• Siege Scenes Pack forum thread.

Other Downloads.

Download links to previous versions of Native Expansion, both for Warband and Mount&Blade, can be found under the spoiler tag.

wow impressive work

Not bad, not bad at all.

Is there any ETA at the moment for version 0.610? Are we talking days (you guys seem to be highly effective ), weeks or months?

Also a few other things (my deepest apologise for mentioning a town of suggestions, I am just kinda full of them atm...).

1) Would it be possible that you could rename the different nobles for the six kingdoms? Wondering because at the moment the player can choose to have a lot of different nobility presets, but none of them are in use by the other kingdoms. I just personally feel like it's a bit weird that the player has got a Arabic nobility preset which is not actually used by the supposed Arabs/Sarranids in the game. Same for the English/Swadian preset.

Basically what I want: Remake the presets for the different nobles of Calradia (I find the current ones to be quite confusing and some are outright wrong like the nord one) with partly the presets available to the player and partly new presets (I can offer some help if you want, especially on the nord preset) and add a few more for the player.

Don't make this a priority though since it is really just nitpicking from my side.

2) Would it be possible to re-work the code for what the DK's target and how they distribute their fiefs? Because at the moment the way they seem to do it is like this:

a) Invade and declare war on two kingdoms close to each other.
b) Derp around for a while before going after a random city.
c) Take the city with no losses, move on to another city, take it with no losses etc. a couple of times.
d) Meanwhile they distribute their fiefs where Larktin gets 2/3 of the cities (1st,2nd,4th,5th,7th) and a heap of villages, 3 of the DK vassals gets a ****ty village each and the 4th one (seems to almost always be Purin) gets 1/3 of the cities and a few villages around the place.
e) After taking the 6th city or so (effectively their 6th fortress in general) they do nothing and just gets bulldozed when everyone else makes peace with each other to unisonely declare war on them.

This means that they never take any castles (and therefore just have these annoying pockets of resistance all over the place) and in general just do not use their power effectively. Any way to change this?

I'll probably remember more later, but another quick question: Will we see a buff to the Khergits in 0.610? Because atm they are to be perfectly honest...Useless. Fighting Swadians: Steamrolled. Fighting Vaegirs: Serving as arrow quivers. Fighting Rhodoks: Hits the wall (literally) and pays for it. Fighting Sarranids: Not that bad. Fighting Nords: Gets butchered is Nords use tactics at all.

-Mensch

Sarranids may have arabic stuff, but they're a Sultanate, and many of the names already used for them made me assign them the Turkish title set (with Sultan as the top title) instead of Arabic. So it's more like an Ottoman Empire than an Arabic Caliphate.

And if you feel some title sets are wrong, you're free to offer corrections - I do not claim to have a great knowledge of governmental structures history, and in fact the only two title sets I'm really sure about are Soviet and American.

Dark Knights are a long-term and quite ambitious goal and that's all I can currently say at the moment. They're mostly soulmata's area of expertise anyway as I've personally never been fond of the Dark Knights. Any fixes I made to them were just stopgap measures until some real development could be done.

Faction/troop/item rebalance is also in the plans, but it's a change that will break savegame compatibility. We intend to accumulate such changes and release them in one go at some later time. Definitely not in the next few versions though. Right now there's plenty of stuff that can be done without breaking savegame compatibility.

Finally, on the issue of next release date. There isn't one, we don't work that way. We just add new features and fix or improve old ones. And then a day comes when we start feeling pangs of conscience for keeping that much new stuff from our players, so we release a new version. At least this was my criteria for the release of Unofficial Patches.

What .610 is will probably be left largely up to Lav. The next update I would like to implement will definitely break savegame compatibility, but should repair the DK faction as well as the bandit trees. Since it will break compatibility, I'm not in any hurry, and want to make sure it's as complete as possible.

In regards to your specific query of...

2) Would it be possible to re-work the code for what the DK's target and how they distribute their fiefs? Because at the moment the way they seem to do it is like this:

a) Invade and declare war on two kingdoms close to each other.
b) Derp around for a while before going after a random city.
c) Take the city with no losses, move on to another city, take it with no losses etc. a couple of times.
d) Meanwhile they distribute their fiefs where Larktin gets 2/3 of the cities (1st,2nd,4th,5th,7th) and a heap of villages, 3 of the DK vassals gets a ****ty village each and the 4th one (seems to almost always be Purin) gets 1/3 of the cities and a few villages around the place.
e) After taking the 6th city or so (effectively their 6th fortress in general) they do nothing and just gets bulldozed when everyone else makes peace with each other to unisonely declare war on them.

Click to expand...

My response is as follows:

The DK faction was originally intended (As I understand: I don't know precisely what the original devs had in mind) as a late-game challenge to a player who probably had a lot of wealth and resources already. Once you reach a certain tipping point in Native, the AI can't provide an effective counter or challenge any longer. A new, powerful faction with fresh troops will provide that, to a degree.

The problem is that the DK are inherently a brick wall, and thus "Fake Difficulty", and all they really do is extend that tipping point out further. You can make them larger, make them more powerful, and continue doing that as long as you want, and all you really do is force the player into a war of attrition that is ultimately settled by how long he or she is willing to play the game.

The concept I have in mind is a total redesign of the faction. To give them a purpose, and to integrate them with the lore of Calradia and mechanics of the game as much as possible. To give the player a motive to stop them or join them, and to give them a motive as well. This would involve things such as the DK taking territory via subterfuge and attacking the economies of other kingdoms, and perhaps them even aggressively targeting a single Kingdom until it is completely wiped out.

How much more dangerous would the DK feel to you if, when they showed up, they immediately targeted the weakest Kingdom, and relentlessly attacked them on multiple fronts until they were defeated, then consolidated their power until they moved on to the next? Like a plague.

This is what I envision the DK becoming.

soulmata said:

Spoiler

What .610 is will probably be left largely up to Lav. The next update I would like to implement will definitely break savegame compatibility, but should repair the DK faction as well as the bandit trees. Since it will break compatibility, I'm not in any hurry, and want to make sure it's as complete as possible.

In regards to your specific query of...

2) Would it be possible to re-work the code for what the DK's target and how they distribute their fiefs? Because at the moment the way they seem to do it is like this:

a) Invade and declare war on two kingdoms close to each other.
b) Derp around for a while before going after a random city.
c) Take the city with no losses, move on to another city, take it with no losses etc. a couple of times.
d) Meanwhile they distribute their fiefs where Larktin gets 2/3 of the cities (1st,2nd,4th,5th,7th) and a heap of villages, 3 of the DK vassals gets a ****ty village each and the 4th one (seems to almost always be Purin) gets 1/3 of the cities and a few villages around the place.
e) After taking the 6th city or so (effectively their 6th fortress in general) they do nothing and just gets bulldozed when everyone else makes peace with each other to unisonely declare war on them.

Click to expand...

My response is as follows:

The DK faction was originally intended (As I understand: I don't know precisely what the original devs had in mind) as a late-game challenge to a player who probably had a lot of wealth and resources already. Once you reach a certain tipping point in Native, the AI can't provide an effective counter or challenge any longer. A new, powerful faction with fresh troops will provide that, to a degree.

The problem is that the DK are inherently a brick wall, and thus "Fake Difficulty", and all they really do is extend that tipping point out further. You can make them larger, make them more powerful, and continue doing that as long as you want, and all you really do is force the player into a war of attrition that is ultimately settled by how long he or she is willing to play the game.

The concept I have in mind is a total redesign of the faction. To give them a purpose, and to integrate them with the lore of Calradia and mechanics of the game as much as possible. To give the player a motive to stop them or join them, and to give them a motive as well. This would involve things such as the DK taking territory via subterfuge and attacking the economies of other kingdoms, and perhaps them even aggressively targeting a single Kingdom until it is completely wiped out.

How much more dangerous would the DK feel to you if, when they showed up, they immediately targeted the weakest Kingdom, and relentlessly attacked them on multiple fronts until they were defeated, then consolidated their power until they moved on to the next? Like a plague.

This is what I envision the DK becoming.

Click to expand...

I must say that I really like your approach to game development. Doing things on your own premises and when you feel that it's time for it seems to be a very good thing to keep in mind. I look forward to future mod development and will probably come with more annoying contributions later

Oh and one more thing: Was it not so that from version 0.608b6 you could never make peace with the DK's once they invaded and you could never join them?


Well, erm: https://www.dropbox.com/s/t6dn2r9221f4lg3/2014-09-24_00003.jpg?dl=0

I am not only at peace with the Dark Knights, but I am also a vassal of them with Emer as my village... It wasn't really even intended, but how it went down is that from the start of the game (almost) I have been a vassal of Swadia before I decided to leave them because they just got pounded to dust by the Nords, Rhodoks, Dark Knights and Sarranids. It was then announced that I was at peace with everyone (including the DK's) and when I went to Kaiserine Larktin and asked to become a vassal (honestly just out of curiousity) see granted me vassalage.

Maybe this is a bug?

I think that might be an artifact of the fact the player is treated as their own kingdom when not a vassal, and it's the player which is prevented from making peace. When you're a vassal of another kingdom, there's nothing in code (I believe) that prevents the DK and said kingdom from making peace, at which point you could raise rep by doing things like releasing prisoners.

In my redesign, I do intend for the player to be able to assist or join the DK if they want. Don't be surprised when you get what you deserve should you do that, though.

Well the thing is: The Dark Knights never made peace with the Swadians. I just left the Swadians and had my rep with all factions reset and was therefore able to join the Dark Knights without any relations what so ever.

This means I didn't close all the holes as I intended.

Doesn't matter in the long run, soulmata's changes are going to make all that irrelevant eventually.

Meanwhile, some development news.

• I think I have finally nailed the bug with Player Party patrols and scouts appearing (which sometimes could eventually lead to player being hostile with his own kingdom).
• Added a new trading option in town when Companions Overseer is enabled - player is selling his entire inventory except for frozen slots (switched by right click in Overseer). Essentially a one-click-entire-loot-sell option. Might be dangerous for players who are not using Overseer's slot-freezing functionality as this option will sell absolutely everything except equipped items.
• Major changes to militia part 1. Trained militia is no longer dispelled by a few night bandits. Trained militia also cannot prevent night bandits or bandit infestation from happening at first, but then will probably drive them off fairly quickly. Bandit infestation effects on village prosperity have been considerably increased, village militia reduces the effects (though not to zero). Some more changes are coming (building effects and enforced militia training).