Mount&Blade: Warband > Floris Mod Pack [S]

Dev Diary

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monnikje:
Hello everyone!

In this topic I want to share with you my experiences as a developer of the Floris Mod Pack. I know that I'm not the most active person on the forum, so with this I want to show you that I'm still alive and kicking, and what I'm working on at the moment. I won't post on a regular basis, just once in a while.

Without any further ado, let me tell you what I've been working on the past time.


After the release of 2.4, I didn't immediately start working on the next version. Instead, I participated in an AAR contest on the Paradox forums. For the game Hearts of Iron 3 I made an AAR about the Governator travelling back in time to help Hitler send paratroopers to Paris to fight Belgian terminators in order to free Iceland from the evil Danes. Not only had I to learn the game (in which I suck, by the way), but also write ten chapters. I managed to do that in time, and now the judges of the contest are taking their time to come to a good result. Hopefully I won't do too bad :mrgreen:. Since I finished the part for the contest I put all my spare time in the development of version 2.5.

The upcoming version will be quite different from the previous ones. First of all we're not going to maintain the savegame compatibility, as was decided in a poll. In previous versions we couldn't rearrange things neatly: the code became a cluttered mess due to that. This is one thing we're fixing right now. It's important to do, since this not only makes coding easier, but will also fix some bugs and opens up new possibilities previously not possible.

Another thing we're about to do different, is the different packs we'll be releasing. Until now there were two packs: the Floris Basic mod pack, which is basically just a bunch of extra items and improved graphics, and the Floris Expanded mod pack, which is the real deal with everything. For version 2.5 we're going to release three packs: the two I made before, plus a new pack with all the code but without any fancy graphical features. Both this pack and the Basic pack can be combined to one 'Expanded Lite'. Hopefully, with this setup, more people will be able to enjoy the mod. Let's call this third pack for now the Code pack, until I - or someone else - comes up with a better name.

Now, what have I done the past two weeks? I first started with rearranging the troops. All Swadian troops are now together, All Rhodoks, all... you get the idea. Until version 2.4 they were spread out over the file, which was pretty difficult to edit as anyone who made their own troop tree can tell. This wasn't that much work. But also all those troops had wrong id's. This is not per se the same as the name of the troop: an id is an internal name the source uses to identify that certain troop. It has nothing to do with the name displayed in the game. Some troops had pretty strange id's compared to their names, making it pretty hard to see in the code what soldier we're actually talking about. For example, the 'Swadian Skirmisher' had the troop id 'swadian_5b2'. To make things easier, I renamed all these id's to reflect their names. So this 'swadian_5b2' became a 'swadian_skirmisher'. That should make things a lot clearer for everyone diving in the Floris source. Unfortunately I thus had to rename all the id's used in other parts of the source to reference. I had to go through thousands of references to check them and rename where necessary. That took quite some time as you can imagine.

This rearranging of troops has immediately opened up some nice features. I finally added the custom troops! I know quite a lot of you wanted them in, but unfortunately adding them would break savegame compatibility. Since that's no issue anymore, I added them. I designed a new troop tree for them, but I still need to go over that a few more times before I'm fully satisfied. Another thing I added, are the Troop Heroes. Troops of tier 6 - that have no possibility to upgrade to tier 7 - will now have a chance to become a companion, with a maximum of 4 of such companions. Another reason to go for these troops in the tree. This code still needs to be checked for bugs etc, but at least I'm now able to implement this.

Another thing I did was adding different town walkers, village walkers and spy walkers for each faction, giving local villages and such more coloure locale. There were already different ones for the Khergit and Sarranid, but the other four all had the same kind of villagers, with the same equipment and the same faces. That will be different now. I still need to tweak them (giving them items, stats etc), but at least they are now present in the code.

While I did this, I also added 5 new companions. Quite a while ago I had made a poll to see how many new companions people would like to have. The result was split between just a few, and really a lot. Since really a lot is going to take quite a lot of work, I went with just a few. There is more to do than just adding zillions of new companions :mrgreen:. Anyway, I didn't just add them: I incorporated them. Remember the Companions Circle, which points out which companions (dis)likes which? I basically redrawn it, incorporating all new companions, including Floris. The old companions now acknowledge the new ones. I still need to rewrite some of their lines to match the new relations tho. Even more, I still need to write all the lines of the new companions... But at least their code is done.

During my work on the troop tree and such, I also played a little Warband. To be exact, I continued my game for the Me, Floris AAR. But six months have passed, and I still haven't got enough material to write a new chapter. So I'll need to continue to play a little more, since I intend to make chapter 51!

I also tried to do some mipmap fading: this would give a really great graphical effect without any extra load on the cpu. Unfortunately, I haven't found a way to do this in the Gimp. The tutorial shows how it easily can be done in photoshop, but unfortunately I don't have that program. I tried to find a tutorial, add-on or anything to show me how it's done in the Gimp, but I haven't found it. So for now I'm leaving it. Too bad.

Right now I'm working on the items. I already put them in the right order (which took me a few days to do... 2000+ items are a lot), but now I'm doing something even better: I'm checking each item and see if I want to keep them in the pack. In previous versions I couldn't remove items due to savegame compatibility, so there are still some ugly or useless items that need to be removed. While I go through them, I'm making sure that each faction has a completely different style, even more than they currently have. So women of different factions should have different dresses, farmers should wear something different, soldiers should fight with other weapons, and so on. I already had done this to a certain extend, but right now I'm checking it all and doing it better.

While I do that, I immediately sort out items for two different packs: it's my goal to have around 600 items in the code pack, and around 1800 in the expanded and basic packs. These 600 are as much as there are items in native, but mind you: they won't necessarily have to be native items.

I started sorting the books. That wasn't much work: with two I changed the mesh (I had to change the texture of one of these two for this), but for the rest it wasn't that much work. I also enabled another screen at the 'View items', displaying all food and books and such goods. It won't show the details for now. Maybe I'll figure that out one day, but for now it has no priority. Here, let me show you an overview of all books:



This reminds me that I should check some textures on overly darkness. I'll do that later.

Quite a lot of people have asked me about a dress I once made for Arwa the Pearled One. But that one was made in gimp, a photo editor. I now made a more revealing dress for her in-game, as can be seen over here:



I'm not yet sure if I should let her keep these big boobies, or that I should reduce them a little bit. I'll keep playing with them until I'm satisfied :mrgreen:.

And not only I worked on Arwa's dress after the books: I'm now sorting out all dresses so that each faction will have 2 commoner dresses, and 5 royal dresses. If there aren't that many present in native, I'll create them. There will be mainly colour variations, since I'm not that good in creating 3d-objects. But that can give a lot of fun too! Here, let me show you a newly coloured khergit dress for our noble ladies:



This is what I'm doing right now. I still need to do the dresses for the other factions. once that's done, I'll move on with the next objects, probably the horses. I estimate to work for at least another two weeks full time on the items. but, knowing how I always make too optimistic estimates, this will probably be more like three or four weeks work...

I would like to thank you for reading this long text, and hope to tell you more on the development of 2.5 next time!

monnikje:
I'm back for another dev diary. The past week I've been a little ill, so I didn't do much during that time. But last weekend I worked hard, as I did yesterday. Even tough I finished the dresses, I didn't do much more on the items. As some might have already noticed in this topic, I decided to do some work on face textures. I searched the forum and the Repository for mods having new face textures, and found quite a few:

Face Improvement Project v1.0: Awesome mod which I added. There were two low-resolution textures I replaced.
Female face model and textures replacer v1.30: Unfortunately the faces can't be combined with the rest (I tried). I did add the jewellery tough, which is displayed at female faces instead of the 'beard' option. Unfortunately I didn't discover yet how I could rename that button for females.
More textures for Broken_one's female faces v1.2: More faces for the previous Female face pack. I couldn't use them either.
Brytenwalda 1.3 - Alternative Women Faces: Beside the fact that this is a facepack for Brytenwalda and their painted faces don't suit the setting of this mod, they are like the previous two, so I couldn't add them without getting deformed faces ingame.
Face and UI textures v1.2: Awesome faces. Unfortunately there are just the younger faces, not the old ones: I need both to add them to the mod. I used two faces from this pack to replace the low-resolution textures from the above mod. And there was one face with both a younger and older version in this mod: I added it.
Face Textures v1.0: These are reworked native faces. I replaced the native ones by these.
Thel's Face Pack v3.0: I'm sorry, but I don't like these. A personal taste I guess. So I didn't use them.

Instead of the 8 different native male faces, there are now 23 to mold your character. The female faces are lacking, so I really hope the Face Improvement Project releases a female set soon.

Once the male textures were in place, I had to sort through all faces to correct their skins. The merchants, nobles, soldiers and all other males: I had to check them, and adjust where necessary. Since there are enough faces, I decided to use certain faces for certain factions. For some it was obvious - like the asian and arabic faces - and for some not. I did this only for the male faces. Let me show you some new faces:





Something less interesting for you as a player, but more for me as a modder, is that I renamed some internal facetexture names in the troops file to make things easier.

While I worked on this, Caba`drin released a wonderful patch containing several bugfixes for the current version, upgrading the Floris Expanded Mod Pack to version 2.41. If you haven't seen it yet, you should check it out.

Now it's back to the items. A long road still lies ahead of me.

monnikje:
I told you this would be an irregular diary... Anyway, after two and a half week I finally decided to bring you a new update on the progress of working on 2.5. What has happened in this time?

Let me first point out to you that taragoth has been commissioned by us to do some art work. He's creating some very nice screens for the mod pack, giving it an even more unique touch. Just look at the picture he made here:



I'm very excited about this, especially since I saw some more work he made. But you can also see something else in this picture, something Duh and Caba`Drin have been working on: sea travel. In version 2.4 we already had implemented sea trade, but hadn't enabled travelling over the seas for the player. That's going to change now. We had already implemented scenes and other stuff, but it still had to be tested further. We're still having some troubles with the crew (those lazy sailors don't want to leave their grog and keep staying in the taverns), but the ships are ready to be bought, sent to ports, be fought over at seas and to be (dis)embarked upon. Now we're going to let those big ships loose on you, so that you can finally sail away. And while you dream about the wild and fast ocean, you might want to have a look at the Sea Trade Balance Test. Trading over the sea influences the overall global economics, and should thus be balanced out. But we need your help with that. So if you want to help us improve things and balance the economics even better, just have a look at that topic.

Another exciting thing that has happened in the time since the last dev diary, is the release of With Fire and Sword. I haven't played it yet - like I have the time for it - but still I'm pretty excited about it. That game has some really nice buildings and such. Just have a look at this, isn't it just awesome?



I'm drooling all over the place when looking at these buildings... They are just so awesome, that I'd like to implement them in the mod. I needed to rebuild the towns anyway, so why not with some really awesome buildings in them? But this takes time, so I'm not guaranteeing that they are in 2.5. Maybe, maybe not... We'll see.

I had already hinted on some places that I was working on a new feature for the mod. After 2.5 weeks it's still not fully done, but I can at least show you a screenshot that shows what this new feature is:



Yes, it's true: if I get this feature fully working, you'll be able to choose from different troop trees when you start a new game. That means no separate download for a native troop tree experience, or something like that. For now I'm working on three different trees: the native one, the current one (that I called 'expanded' even before Ikaguia started to work on his tree) and something new that's between those two, which I call 'reworked'. I've been working with Shapic on this reworked trees.

Why didn't I include popular trees like FLTT by pada or the reworked troop tree by Knight0815? Well, for the simple reason that they have different visions on troop trees than I have. When I would include them now, I would have to make decisions that pada and Knight0815 might not agree with. No, let's not go through that again. Let me first finally finish reordering those items, then let pada and Knight0815 and others design their trees to fit in the new system, and then I might implement them (if they want it to be implemented).

While I worked on this new feature, I didn't work on the items. So I still need a few weeks to finish that... And there are quite some other things to do. So 2.5 will still take a while to finish, but at least you now know that once it comes out, it's going to be just awesome :).

monnikje:
The past week I unfortunately hadn't had much time to do work much on the mod. I had to go to work, visit my girlfriend, go to a medieval fair, celebrate multiple birthday parties and gamed a little more for my Floris AAR (I'm still not at a point that I can write another chapter...). I did fiddle around a little bit with the horses, but still I had a lot less time available than I had wanted (I couldn't even answer all pms, sorry about that!). Since I didn't do that much, I can't show you any fancy screenshots today. To fill the gap I'll just tell you some things that might be interesting.

The use of Warband and With Fire and Sword assets.
When you look at both Warband and With Fire and Sword, you could get the idea to use some assets from one of these games in a mod to enhance the other. For example, you could see some nice cathedral in WFaS and get the idea that it would greatly enhance Praven. Or you could try to implement some features from Warband into WFaS. I know that some of you might get that idea, since I had it too, as you could have guessed form my previous post. For quite a while now I've been bugging all the devs in order to find out if I'm allowed to do so. In short, the answer is no.

To understand this answer, you'd have to know that Warband and With Fire and Sword are produced by two different companies: the first by TaleWorlds, the second by SiCh. Despite the similar 'Mount & Blade' prefix, there's no trademark relation whatsoever. This means that for all purposes, you should treat them as two completely separate games: not games from the same series or brand. The transfer of content from WFAS to Warband will break the software agreement you have aggreed when installing WFAS. Vice versa will break the agreement with Warband. This means that you are legally not allowed to just transfer anything from one game to the other. The reason behind this is that no one can guarantee that the mod users have a legit copy of both Warband and WFAS. Therefore copying content from one of those games and distributing it as a mod is copyright infringement.

Even tough you can't just do it, you could try to ask the devs for the use of certain assets. I did it, but unfortunately the devs don't want it. Understandable, since if they make an exception for me, why wouldn't they make it for you? Or him? Or anyone else? And if they allow the use of one part of the game (be it a model, texture or part of the code), why not the other parts?

What kind of consequences does this 'no' have?
- Some minimods for Warband might work without any problems in WFaS. But any larger mod that uses native assets might not run on the other game without implementing them into the mod. This is not allowed, so unless you create your own replacements, you can't make your Warband mod compatible for WFaS, and vice versa.
- Features that are present in Warband but are absent in WFaS can't just be brought over, unless you write your own code. So no female faces or tournaments unless you write them yourself in the game. Mind you, all the tournament equipment from Warband is present in WFaS - altough not used as such - and doesn't have to be copied from Warband.
- Assets you might like from WFaS (like nice cathedrals, dresses, map icons, code improvements, bug fixes etc) may not be used in Warband mods.

I hope you understand that the Floris Mod Pack won't become WFaS compatible, and that nice assets like I showed in my previous post won't be used. It's a pity tough, since I still think that it contains some wonderfull stuff.

monnikje:
Lately the question arose when version 2.5 would be finished, and what's still left to be done. These aren't new questions: with every version so far people asked when the next one would come out, and what the new features would be. In a way it's very flattering to know that people highly anticipate the next release (no pressure!). But while we work as hard as we can, we can't do magic: it's all done in our spare free time. To give you an idea of the scope of the project and the time it takes, I want to give you a brief tour through the history of the mod pack. Then you might see why some versions were done pretty quick, while others take a few months.

It all started with my AAR: Me, Floris. Originally I started it on the Paradox forum, where AARs are a regular occasion, but someone asked me to bring it over to the TaleWorlds forum, where it became an instant hit. In this After Action Report, I showed screenshots of my own game. Once I had brought it over to the TaleWorlds forum, I started to look around, and thus noticed all kinds of mods available. It were the early days of Warband, so not that many had been made or brought over from the original M&B yet. I downloaded a few, read the readme's and followed the instructions. I had no clue what I was doing, but hey, it worked! I tried a few simple mods, where the readme's basically said 'copy these files into that directory, and add these lines to the module.ini'. Surprisingly combining a few mods also worked. I made some screenshots of my successes, and showed them in my AAR. Slowly the amount of mods increased, and people saw the results without being able to test it themselves.

One day someone asked me to turn my little mod experiment into a full-blown mod, available for everyone. At that moment I had quite a few mods working together, but it was all still very bugged. I didn't mind it, but if I would make it available to others, it'd better be working well. So I had some doubts. Would I take the time to get rid of the bugs, or would I just go on playing and writing? In the end I decided to make it available. I asked permission to all the creators of the mods I used (which I got), spend two days to get rid of the bugs and uploaded it all. This was the Floris Mod Pack version 1.0, available on 20 September 2010. Can you imagine now that I had doubts starting this mod?

The mod pack only had 15 mods back then, and it was still made like my earlier attempts: just a bunch of mods thrown together after reading all the readme's. I didn't have the source code because I had no clue on how to edit with the module system. The first version was simple and small. But immediately after the release I started working on version 2.0. There were some things that needed to be improved, and there were some really nice mods that I wanted to add. Also I did see the value of having the source code been made in the module system, so I needed to learn how to work with it. What did I add to the mod pack to go to version 2.0?
- 30 new mods (I thus tripled the amount of mods in the pack!)
- 4 new scripts (I needed to learn the module system for that)
- I updated the mods to the latest versions (a practice I kept on doing)
- I added quite a few items and adjusted their stats. Most of the added mods didn't offer python lines for their items to add to the module system: I needed to manually write really a lot of lines of code to get all these new items working.
- I added the current troop tree: it took quite some time to design it.
- Of course I did some bugfixes.

Adding 30 mods to the pack sounds like a lot of work, but that wasn't the main culprit: making everything work in the module system, while learning how to work with it at the same time, that was what took up most of my time. There were two months between the release of 1.0 and 2.0, and during that time I  worked - on average - 10 hours a day on the mod pack. That's around 600 hours of work to go from version 1.0 to 2.0! If it had been a paid job I probably would have worked 40 hours a week on it, and it would have been finished in 4 months. But now I did it in half that time.

When I released 2.0, it was still very bugged. Logical, when you think about it: I just started to learn how to handle the module system from scratch. Luckily Duh and Caba`Drin joined the team, and together we made every two weeks a new version. 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 were thus created pretty fast after each other. It was necessary to get it out pretty soon to fix all the mistakes I had made. Along the way we incorporated even more mods. But finally, with 2.3, we had a version that worked as intended.

During the earlier versions, people also asked me when the next one would be out. During those times I actually gave a date, which I never made. Every version for which I had given a release date was delayed. No big problem, you would say, but actually it was: the moment the release went past the deadline I had given, it began to stress me out. That's why I decided that I won't give any release dates anymore. If I would give a date and won't make it, I would get mad at myself for not making it, and we can't have that. The next version will come out when it's ready.

Between the release of 2.3 and 2.4 were again two months. This time I didn't work as hard as during those earlier versions: I needed a break. After that I worked in a more 'normal' tempo on the project. A few hours a day on average. Real life was catching up (money needs to be earned, social interactions need to take place, stuff like that). Luckily we were now working with more people then during the previous 2-month period: with 2.4 22 new scripts were added. This of course created quite some new bugs, for which Caba`Drin released a bugfix patch.

Till 2.41a the mod pack had been savegame compatible, even from native (altough with a small adjusted textfile). You could play your game all the way from native through all the old versions to 2.41a. I did that with my own savegame for my AAR. Unfortunately some bugs form earlier versions kept on existing in the savegame, but hey, you could continue your ancient game! But while keeping it savegame compatible is noble, fixing some bugs becomes almost impossible. That's why we finally decided to let this compatibility go. Version 2.5 won't be savegame compatible, thus allowing us to fix quite some issues that otherwise can't be fixed. For example, the items: in order to keep it savegame compatible, I had to add items at the bottom of the item list. This turned that list into one giant mess (as any modder that made a submod can tell). Also, in order to keep it savegame compatible, the amount of items couldn't be lowered: only increased. So the amount grew, while keeping quite some ugly or buggy items. Especially in 2.4 we noticed that we hit the maximum amount of feasible items in the game. This stabs performance in the back. So for 2.5, I rearrange all items logically, and lower the amount by deleting the ugly / buggy ones. But not just that: where necessary I create new textures, or fetch other items to replace the ugly ones, so that a good amount will be available, while not hindring performance.

I'm too sloppy to keep a list with new features we're working on up-to-date, but for this one time I promised somewhere to post the current status. Here is a short list with all the main points I'm working on (just me, not Duh and Caba`Drin: they work on other stuff):

- Sort all troops, rebalance them and give them items according to the new list. in progress
- Create 5 new companions and write their dialogues. in progress
- Add new face textures. in progress
- Sort, check and reduce all items. in progress
- Use the castle siege fix. done
- Check the sounds again. not yet started
- Normalise the music and add some new songs. in progress
- Add the bugfixes from 2.41 to 2.5. done

Of course, this is very general. Personally I keep a much more detailed list. Some items on that list may be 5 minutes work, while others will take a week to finish. For example, Sort all troops in the troops file was done in an afternoon, while Add multiple troop trees still isn't finished after working for two or three weeks on it.
(click to show/hide)Troops
- Sort all troops in the troops file. done
- Give all troops recognisable id's. done
- Add some extra unused troops for each faction that can be used by modders. done
- Create different village / town / spy walkers for each faction. done
- Add custom troops and give them a troop tree. done
- Add troop heroes. done
- Enable the town crooks and check their faces (no purpose for them yet). in progress
- Add multiple troop trees. in progress
- Give the troops, companions, lords, ladies etc. items according to the new item list. in progress
- Rebalance troop stats. not yet started
- Add stats to the custom troops. not yet started
Companions
- Add 5 new companions. done
- Incorporate the new companions into the relation circle. done
- Design faces for the new companions. in progress
- Write dialogues for the new companions. not yet started
- Adjust the dialogues of the old companions to integrate the new ones. not yet started
Faces
- Add new male face textures. done
- Adjust the male face codes to use the new male face textures. done
- Adjust the faces of the starting quest merchants. done
- Create 4 African face codes. done
- Add new female face textures. not yet started
- Adjust the female face codes to use the new female face textures. not yet started
Items
- Sort all items in the items file. done
- Check the trade items textures for too much darkness. done
- Create a new fancy dress for Arwa (And Isolla). done
- Check all books and adjust / remove where necessary. done
- Check all dresses and adjust / remove where necessary. done
- Check all horses and adjust / remove where necessary. in progress
- Adjust the skin texture for the dresses of Arwa and Isolla. in progress
- Check all axes and adjust / remove where necessary. not yet started
- Check all blunt weapons and adjust / remove where necessary. not yet started
- Check all lances and adjust / remove where necessary. not yet started
- Check all polearms and adjust / remove where necessary. not yet started
- Check all swords and adjust / remove where necessary. not yet started
- Check all ranged weapons and adjust / remove where necessary. not yet started
- Check all armors and adjust / remove where necessary. not yet started
- Check Narf's Rus Armour Pack v1.2 by Narf. not yet started
- Check Crusader Mail Armour Pack v1.2 by Marcel. not yet started
- Check OSP Indo-Persian Armor II v1.0 by drakharios. not yet started
- Check all boots and adjust / remove where necessary. not yet started
- Check all gloves and adjust / remove where necessary. not yet started
- Check all headgear and adjust / remove where necessary. not yet started
- Check WEe's Helmets v1.0 by mr.master. not yet started
- Check all shields and adjust / remove where necessary. not yet started
- Check Various Roundshields v1.0 by BrustwarzenLenny. not yet started
Scenes
- Use the castle siege fix. done
Sounds
- Delete the extra lines and recheck the sounds. not yet started
Music
- Normalise the music. in progress
- Add Warband Live Music v1.0 by Chur. I've got permission! in progress
Bugfixes
- Add all bugfixes from 2.41 to 2.5. done
As you can see, there are a lot of things on my personal list. Nowadays I'm not working 10 hours a day on the mod, something that also isn't going to happen in the near future. Because all things on the list need to be done before 2.5 comes out, it's taking quite a while. And I rather do it well than hastily.

With this dev diary I hope that the following has become clear:
- What are we working on? (well, at least what am I working on)
- Why is it taking so long? (it's a lot of work)
- When will the next version be out? (I'm not telling ya, na na nana na)

Thank you for reading this wall of text, and see you next time!

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