Dev Blog 14/06/18

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[parsehtml]<p><img class="frame" src="https://www.taleworlds.com/Images/News/blog_post_44_taleworldswebsite.jpg" alt="" width="575" height="290" /></p> <p>Should you enter, let’s say, a castle for the first time, you would get lost in minutes. The debris of that ruined tower would not have fallen so handily as to be climbable to the top. The path to the Lord of the castle would not be perfectly illuminated with torches which leave empty, useless halls in darkness. And, should you enter a real battle, there wouldn’t be overturned carts conveniently distributed so you can move from one cover to the next. This is because there is a big (and obvious) difference between real life and video games: life doesn’t have to be fun. A level designer’s work is to create these set pieces where you live your great adventures: places and landscapes that present just the right amount of challenge, which, at times, guides you like an invisible, subtle hand, and evens the scales so that every fighter on the battlefield has a fair chance. In this week’s blog, we talk with Gökçen “Cuce” Karaagaç, one of our level designers, who will explain more about his job and what he is doing for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord.</p></br> [/parsehtml]Read more at: http://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/64
 
Nice blog, I like the pics.
I suspect that, to prevent a feeling of repetition, they'll make a lot of maps. Every faction's starter geography will probably have its own maps, like steppes for the Khuzait and forests for Batannia. Since the battlemaps are probably quite empty, I think they'll be able to make a lot without it really impacting the size of the game files. And if they nail the custom map maker, making maps for total conversion mods shouldn't be that hard.
 
BayBear said:
The fence is only passable by cavalry for game balancing purposes.

I understood the purpose of those fences, what I am objecting to is that it looks silly for soldiers capable of hacking down doors and gates to be blocked by a stick at hip height (as it is in Warband). An iron fence or a solid stone wall would make a more believable obstacle.


Or as a different type of obstacle, how about water? There could be a weight threshold (which could be influenced by strength and a swimming skill) that lets the lightly armed swim while the heavily armed drown. For balancing purposes, I think it can be just as good, and unlike an unbreakable stick, it does not break immersion.
 
great blog

if they can create those huge (think 100km2 scenes) to represent portions of the world map, so what you see on the campaign is what you see in the scene, and use your world location to tag you into a position inside the scene... no need for random maps.

it is not like Warband with small ish maps, which would require thousands of scenes.

take the world, divide it into grids, create scenes for those grids, use them for battles.



question tho: is the random map mechanic out, or just not in use for Bannerlord? Will mods need to create those battle scenes too (think of a GoT, LOTR, Britannia, Japan, ... a different world map)?
 
kalarhan said:
great blog

if they can create those huge (think 100km2 scenes) to represent portions of the world map, so what you see on the campaign is what you see in the scene, and use your world location to tag you into a position inside the scene... no need for random maps.

it is not like Warband with small ish maps, which would require thousands of scenes.

take the world, divide it into grids, create scenes for those grids, use them for battles.



question tho: is the random map mechanic out, or just not in use for Bannerlord? Will mods need to create those battle scenes too (think of a GoT, LOTR, Britannia, Japan, ... a different world map)?

I’m also concerned about the workload for new world maps. How do you read the following quote?

We designated areas on the world map with biomes and tagged our battle scenes according to their features.

Is that just each terrain type has say ten handcrafted maps from which a random selection is made (reusable in mods) or the handcrafted map is specific to that map location and reflects the different terrain types within that grid section (less reusable in mods)?
 
I will definetly not miss randomly generated maps. Allways bothered me, all those bad scenes with hundreds of small steep hills. Or the steep mountains that took forever (literally 2-3 mintutes, even 5 for a big army) to climb, all those bad spawn positions etc. No more ****ty maps, yeah!
I also hope that the terrain won't be as painful on some castles and some villages (only 1 castle and 1 village I remember with really bad terrain). But I wonder, will there be unique scenes for every village? I guess and hope so, that will be cool.
What would also be amazing is, if when encountering another party and battling on the campaign map, if the hand placed spawn positions differ, according to which side the party got attacked from. Would be a small (maybe medioker) detail to put it that could make battles even more interesting, as in the Total War series.
 
The cities on the screenshots are beautiful. Especially the city in the desert.
blog_post_44_taleworldswebsite_02.jpg

But ... Judging by the last two blogs - no one paints the trees again. It is very a pity, if so.
Or I'm wrong?
And yet I'm very curious - who painted the trees? Callum, please introduce me to this person.
blog_post_43_taleworldswebsite_04.gif

blog_post_43_taleworldswebsite_02.gif

blog_post_44_taleworldswebsite_03.jpg

And how's the global map going? I really want to see her. I hope she was beautiful!
 
favorite faction question is pretty much always khuzait (or empire) so why not leave this out in the future posts in place for another picture :wink: ?
 
inox_ionizer said:
Or as a different type of obstacle, how about water? There could be a weight threshold (which could be influenced by strength and a swimming skill) that lets the lightly armed swim while the heavily armed drown. For balancing purposes, I think it can be just as good, and unlike an unbreakable stick, it does not break immersion.
this sounds like a really good idea
 
Honestly the random maps in WB get really samey too when you play long enough. Most of, say, desert maps are impossible to tell apart anyway. Hand crafting at least allows for balancing and making sure that the map will support several play styles reasonably well. I`m especially looking forward to mountain maps that have been hand made. All the rocky maps in WB are horrible to fight at.
 
I foresee two main "pros" about handmade battle scenes.

1) Getting rid of generic locations with no connection with the world by, for example, adding important landmarks either in the scene or at a distance (mountain chains, towns, villages, rivers, sea, etc.).

2) Making a really HUGE single scene to represent a "tile" of the overworld map, and then just placing the troops at different locations each time the player joins a battle to make it look/play different as many times as possible.
 
BayBear said:
The fence is only passable by cavalry for game balancing purposes.

but if you change it from a static blockage to a dynamic one you can also improve the gameplay.

-> limit who can destroy the fence (types of weapons). A spear, as a example, wouldnt work (or be super slow) versus a axe.
-> make it take time, so whoever is trying to take it down is vulnerable for some time (risk x reward)
-> if you are the horseman you need to choose to risk going the quick way (where the fence was suppose to protect you), or the long way around. As you have no idea if the fence is still there (could be one minute, and gone 5 minutes later), you are never really sure/safe.
 
Wouldn't another solution to this be to allow soldiers to jump the fence by climbing it, though clambering over would be slow as in games such as KC:grin:, whereas cavalry could simply jump over without slowing down much at all.
 
i like the map decision, sound like town or village can have good strategical terrain so it matter.

i hope the biome is not generic, i want to see some biome variation like swamp or marsh.
 
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