Timothy the Knight
Sergeant Knight at Arms
Some of you might remember my previous suggestion on this very matter. Well, after seeing the sig that KoS members have...
...I got to thinking about expanding my original idea of an in-game banner editor. Why should we limit ourselves to just banners, when we could have a whole range of heraldic items?
So, I propose; The Heraldic Editor. It will allow you to customize not just your banner, but a number of other items in-game. Here, I've made some basic illustrations:
This is the banner editor, the most fundamental one. You'd get to chose what pattern and colours the background would be and then add stuff from a large selection of items, and pick the number, position and colours of those as well, as illustrated here. Clicking on one of the bars on the right side would allow you to edit the given item, and clicking on the big buttons on the left would take you to other editors.
This is what the menus for individual items would look like. In addition to the colours and pattern of the background, you'd get to select the trim at the bottom, but this wouldn't affect how the banner is displayed on shields.
The editor for charges is a little more complex. In addition to type and colours, you'd also select the general position, number and size of the items. If you're not happy with the standard position, you could offset it a bit, and rotate and flip the items around. When dealing with multiple items in the same charge, the X offset would affect the distance between the items. The colours wouldn't be limited to four of course, I'm just lazy here and didn't bother to put any more in there. The first colour here would be the outline colours, and the rest for different bits of the item. You could also opt to not have a colour in any given area, in which case that bit would show whatever is behind it (so you can get rid of, say, outlines if they don't look good).
Next, the surcoat editor. Those of us who've played the original M&B (most of you, I hope) remember how the heraldic armour worked by pasting the whole banner onto the surcoat. This looked very bad in some cases, so this screen allows you to pick from either having it on a shield on the chest, having it pasted on the whole surcoat (the original method) and not having the banner on the surcoat at all, if that takes your fancy.
Now, the colour and pattern you put on the surcoat are independent of the banner, so you technically could have completely mismatched looking armour, if that floats your boat. You also have the option to pick a different base model for your armour.
The ”extra fluff” options give you the ability to put extra charges on the surcoat, or add some decorative pieces of armour as a cosmetic extra.
The helm editor. Here's some examples of decorative, heraldic helmets if you doubt the validity of such items:
Of course, you could argue that these sort of helms were never used in battle, but eeh... why not? It's not like we can't justify them somehow. Calradia isn't completely historically accurate, after all.
But, onto the screen details: You get to pick the basic model of the helm as you do with the surcoat, and it wouldn't be limited to great helms only. Ideally, there should be at least a few variants of styles that would suit each faction, as well as some neutral designs (the one in this example is just one I fished out of a mod for old M&B, the hundred years war to be specific). You could also opt to have either the standard metallic texture, or a variety of colours in a variety of patterns.
Then, you can pick a crest from a variety of different types and styles, including beasts both real and mythical, as well as items like arms holding swords or fake axes that look embedded in the wearer's head. And you could pick the colour scheme, the standard being ”natural” meaning that the colours approximate the real thing, or divide the crest in half with different colours, for example. You could opt to not have a crest as well.
The torse would offer a more limited choice of styles, as it really isn't much anything other than a circle of cloth wrapped around the meeting point of helm and crest, but there should be enough variety to satisfy most customers.
The wreath would offer a larger variety of options, from tattered to decorative styles, which you could have different patterns and colours, as with most everything else. And of course, the option to not have it if that's how you like it.
The extra bits would allow for things like the wings of the winged great helm, or horns, crowns, decorative patterns on the various pieces of the helmet, and so on.
And the last one, the horse editor. This allows you to modify the barding on your horses (model used for demonstration is again courtesy of the hundred years war mod). This works a lot like the surcoat editor, since you get to select the basic model of the armour and how your banner is applied.
For the saddle, you get to pick the style, pattern and colours. Nothing too new to discuss here.
Background is the same as with most other things as well.
Now in this screen there's some demonstration of how the extra fluff in the form of decorative patterns would work. But aside from that, you could pick some decorative pieces of armour for cosmetic purposes.
There could also be an editor for heraldic cloaks and whatnot, but I was too lazy to make illustrations on those.
The items would work in a similar manner as the heraldic items (shields, surcoats) we currently have, as in there's a basic item that takes a new form when someone with a banner takes it. but instead of just pasting the banner on them, these would look like what the player designed in the editors.
These are, of course, just some basic ideas and basic illustrations, but it should give you a general idea of what I'm trying to get at here. And, of course, those who don't like it could just opt to disable viewing of these for multiplayer.
These would probably work best with singleplayer, but why not have them in multiplayer as the best, most expensive items as well? Wouldn't be too easy to get them, but it would certainly be a nice extra reward for the dudes who manage to scrounge up enough gold for the best stuff.
...I got to thinking about expanding my original idea of an in-game banner editor. Why should we limit ourselves to just banners, when we could have a whole range of heraldic items?
So, I propose; The Heraldic Editor. It will allow you to customize not just your banner, but a number of other items in-game. Here, I've made some basic illustrations:
The editor for charges is a little more complex. In addition to type and colours, you'd also select the general position, number and size of the items. If you're not happy with the standard position, you could offset it a bit, and rotate and flip the items around. When dealing with multiple items in the same charge, the X offset would affect the distance between the items. The colours wouldn't be limited to four of course, I'm just lazy here and didn't bother to put any more in there. The first colour here would be the outline colours, and the rest for different bits of the item. You could also opt to not have a colour in any given area, in which case that bit would show whatever is behind it (so you can get rid of, say, outlines if they don't look good).
Now, the colour and pattern you put on the surcoat are independent of the banner, so you technically could have completely mismatched looking armour, if that floats your boat. You also have the option to pick a different base model for your armour.
The ”extra fluff” options give you the ability to put extra charges on the surcoat, or add some decorative pieces of armour as a cosmetic extra.
But, onto the screen details: You get to pick the basic model of the helm as you do with the surcoat, and it wouldn't be limited to great helms only. Ideally, there should be at least a few variants of styles that would suit each faction, as well as some neutral designs (the one in this example is just one I fished out of a mod for old M&B, the hundred years war to be specific). You could also opt to have either the standard metallic texture, or a variety of colours in a variety of patterns.
Then, you can pick a crest from a variety of different types and styles, including beasts both real and mythical, as well as items like arms holding swords or fake axes that look embedded in the wearer's head. And you could pick the colour scheme, the standard being ”natural” meaning that the colours approximate the real thing, or divide the crest in half with different colours, for example. You could opt to not have a crest as well.
The torse would offer a more limited choice of styles, as it really isn't much anything other than a circle of cloth wrapped around the meeting point of helm and crest, but there should be enough variety to satisfy most customers.
The wreath would offer a larger variety of options, from tattered to decorative styles, which you could have different patterns and colours, as with most everything else. And of course, the option to not have it if that's how you like it.
The extra bits would allow for things like the wings of the winged great helm, or horns, crowns, decorative patterns on the various pieces of the helmet, and so on.
For the saddle, you get to pick the style, pattern and colours. Nothing too new to discuss here.
Background is the same as with most other things as well.
Now in this screen there's some demonstration of how the extra fluff in the form of decorative patterns would work. But aside from that, you could pick some decorative pieces of armour for cosmetic purposes.
There could also be an editor for heraldic cloaks and whatnot, but I was too lazy to make illustrations on those.
The items would work in a similar manner as the heraldic items (shields, surcoats) we currently have, as in there's a basic item that takes a new form when someone with a banner takes it. but instead of just pasting the banner on them, these would look like what the player designed in the editors.
These are, of course, just some basic ideas and basic illustrations, but it should give you a general idea of what I'm trying to get at here. And, of course, those who don't like it could just opt to disable viewing of these for multiplayer.
These would probably work best with singleplayer, but why not have them in multiplayer as the best, most expensive items as well? Wouldn't be too easy to get them, but it would certainly be a nice extra reward for the dudes who manage to scrounge up enough gold for the best stuff.
