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Berserker Pride

Grandmaster Knight
Alright well I realized that I am cluttering the suggestions topic with my maniacal ramblings and diluting it's purpose as a place for everyone else to make suggestions.  So I am making this.  Here I post stuff that "will" or will likely be going in the mod in the future.  You can talk about it or argue against it whatever.  If it isn't released yet it isn't set in stone in my mind.  I will also moves preview pics to this thread instead of the other one and leave it for ingame screenshots and models from other people.
 
So first post is about the new kingdom management system and the whole plot behind it. My whole idea is to have a story driven kingdom management.  Aka you won't be able to have a proper kingdom with lords until the right time in the story.  I won't punish people who take a couple castles to get a headstart on their kingdom however.  Those properties will transfer over when your kingdom begins in earnest.  So far here is what I have been thinking about.  Depending which campaign you are playing the first town you get will be given via quest and quickbattle campaign.  As Gutts here is a brief synopsis: 

After healing Casca you gear up to start fighting Griffith.  But sometime before that you return to the Snake Baron's old stomping grounds now rebuilt.  You witness a duel in progress between the legendary Dueler Karl Tronsbergen and his greatest rival the current champion("Insert a good name here").  Karl wins once again and as his defeated opponent lays in the sand covered in his own blood and sweat.  He thinks back to the time that the gypsy woman told him that he would be the greatest in the world as a child.  Now he realizes that he has passed the peak strongest years and that this man before him was beyond his strength to beat.  He of course became the proud owner of a behelit at a young age.  Covered in his blood the behelit activates.  He was in fact the mentor of the man who just defeated him and the two were once friends.  He doesn't hesitate to sacrifice Karl at Void's prompting.  He demands to have greater strength than anyone else and receives it instantly.  Then he turns to his former student and charges.  Karl now the champion dueler of all the lands near Midland is afraid.  His old mentor strikes at him with enough power to smash a house. Karl instinctively remembers the move and dodges out of the way easily.  Karl quickly realizes something.  His mentor was always one who put too much emphasis on strength.  He has made a fatal mistake.  During the duel when they were both human Karl dodged every blow.  He hadn't beat him because he was stronger, but because he was simply better.  Karl draws his famed Obsidian Falchion and crushes his old mentor for the last time.  Now after this  the various undead spirits and lesser apostles that can be drawn to a sacrifice storm into the stadium.  Fortunately Gutts just happens to be watching the duel and intervenes.  Karl Tronsbergen becomes the first Black Struggler.  It is he who suggests that Gutts stop the rampant pursuit of Griffith and form a kingdom of likeminded people with Gutts survivor mentality. 

It is the players choice to do this but whatever you decide Karl will go with you.  And you also have the option to go back and start your kingdom at a later time.  It is only after this point that you can hire black strugglers.  Survivors of apostle attacks who have pushed their bodies to the very limits.  From there you can revisit Slug Count's old town for a battle against Theresa and her mentor(an apostle of course).  I'm thinking that perhaps Theresa's mentor could be the Big Sister character that MorrisB wrote about in the suggestions thread.  Either campaign can end up with control of Slug Count's old town.  Either through conflict when Gutts meets Theresa or by freeing her from Big Sister as a regular human.  Now if you are a regular human Big Sister loses her behelit to you after this.  If you are Gutts this clues you in to Big Sister's existance and she becomes your next target and your second town.  In either campaign Gutts will form a kingdom at the Snake Baron's town.  So Gutts will become a kingdom in his own right even if you aren't him in future versions of the mod.  I'll call it the Branded Kingdom I think. Come to think of it you should have to deal with Big Sister first if you aren't playing as Gutts.  After that Theresa will thank you for removing her from the control of Big Sister and give you the keys to the city.  So in either campaign you lead a coup against Big Sister and her brainwashed masses.  The order is different for each though.  If you are playing as Gutts you won't be able to do anything about big sister until your confrontation with Theresa.

Now here is where things get interesting.  When you aren't playing as Gutts once you have control of these two towns if Griffith hasn't already returned he will then.  And this will in turn trigger the Beasts of the Interstice to show up.  In a fit of cruelty I will make them target your kingdom first.  At some point you will run into the king of the beasts which will trigger the Downfall quickbattle.  You will be mortally wounded by Wem(definitely a placer name!) their leader.  From there the Behelit will activate and you will have a choice:
Become an apostle(which sacrifices your two starter companions) or lose to Wem and likely be devoured.  If you choose A) You transform for the first time and go to another quickbattle to defeat Wem.)
B)You await your likely death.  Fortunately you have already met Gutts and he shows up at the last second with Skull Knight for support.  But of course you are Gravely wounded and Puck brings you back from the brink of death. And in this path you never gain ungodly powers.

Now if you choose A)Gutts will become your eternal enemy.
If you choose B)You and Gutts will form an alliance against everyone else.

My idea for the Kingdom management is that in order to create a Lord for your kingdom you need
A)A companion with 5 or more leadership skill.
B)A castle or town

I intend to tweak leadership values for all companions so that only a couple can become lords right away.  This will force you to train all your companions in order for them to become candidates to lead an army.  These castles and towns will be under their command from that point.

And I will have to code that if the companion loses their town they lose their army and return to your main city alone.  You will be able to hire your kingdom specific troops from any of your towns.  I am also thinking of creating 3 unique troop trees.  One for each of the choices of character.  For example as the Female character spent time with the Bakiraka they join your kingdom and form part of the troop tree.  Not sure what track to take with the male character for troop types and MorrisB wrote up a great troop tree for Gutts Kingdom.
 
How about for troops trees instead of having male/female/Gutts have allied to Gutts/against Gutts/playing as Gutts. For example if you are allied with Gutts you have access to the Bakiraka tree, if you're against Gutts you have access to a demonic/daka style tree and then whatever you've all been working on as Gutts?
 
That is a pretty good idea too.  I actually forgot to write it here but I would give the apostle player the ability to turn any five fifth lvl troops or elites into his own pseudoapostles in the same vein as your apostle form.  This would actually open the door for an apostle form that was weaker but could create more than five pseudoapostles.  I suppose it makes sense that your troops would change depending if your were an apostle or not.  The Bakiraka led by silat wouldn't join you if you became an apostle.  Sweet good idea.
 
Ahh, very good Berserker Pride ! Finally generic characters can be involved in the story too. Will be a lot of fun !  :grin:

Though I'd like to share some comments:

- I imagined the Snake Baron's, Slug Count's and Big Sister's towns completely separate, relatively far from each other (so the player can/must decide where to start his/her kingdom). Imagine them in a sort of triangle on the map, each lying in a different country (Snake Baron: Tudor, Slug Count: Midland, Big Sister: Parmenia). If the player conquers all three, he/she can access reasonable resources and manpower BUT the distance between the towns would make kingdom management a bit hard without conquering other lands lying between the three towns. On a different note, yeah, Theresa could be "controlled" by an Apostle, but I'd employ some other than the Big Sister: I have an idea for an Apotle called "Whisperer" who talks via telepathy and "implents" thoughts into others' minds, thus manipulating them without them knowing. So Theresa is under the Whisperer's control and raises a smaller army in order to hunt down Guts (or, more likely, go on a killing spree driven by her lust for revenge, fueled by the Whisperer), BUT Guts/the player disturbs the process and returns/goes there when the army isn't finished yet. Some mudering later, Guts/the player notices the Whisperer and realizes he's the one who messed up things. Kill him, and Theresa returns to normal. If playing with Guts, she forgives him but wants to keep the town. Guts can decide to allow Theresa to lead the town (in return gaining Honor, Renown, a sweet deal of money and the town will become an allied state) or conquer it anyway (resulting in even more murder as Theresa rallies the townsfolk for one last stand). If playing with generic male/female, Theresa immediately agrees to join the player's cause once the Whisperer is down, even joining as a Companion.
- regardin the troop trees, I think I'll create two more: one "all-around one" where units have dedicated purposes (making mixed armies a must rather than aiming for bands made of 1-3 troop types), with "special units" accessable depending on the character's background (Kushan origin -> Bakiraka female assassins; Pamerian origin -> dragoons or fusiliers; etc.). The second one will be an "Apostle" troop tree starting with lowly servants, slaves and the like up until presudo-apostles and/or lesser monsters.
 
You had the same idea for the layout of the three neutral towns as I did.  I envisioned Snake Baron town being south of Midland Territory and due north of Godo's mine.  This prevents the player from hiding away with his three towns.  Slug Count's town should be south of Tudor territory near the monster's start point.  The main reason I was thinking Big Sister or her pseudoapostle(which I guess whisperer could be) was that would make it easier to tie the two quests together.  And that would make you have to go back and forth between Big Sister's town and Theresa's to solve the quest.  As a normal human you won't be able to break through to Theresa without dealing with Big Sister first.  Actually it makes more sense if Big Sister uses a pseudoapostle as she doesn't want to leave her town.  Her being the controlling type and all.  I could rig the quest so once you defeat this Whisperer character Theresa helps you defeat Big Sister.  Of course I don't want to make it too easy to get a town under your control.  These quickbattles would kick you back to the main menu if you lose.  You would be free to try them again but you wouldn't be forced to win.  Theresa going after Gutts with an army would be a good segway into the main quest.  And of course you would still need to run into Karl to form the Black Strugglers.  If you leave the town under Theresa's control she could become your first kingdom lord under the new script that I am currently working on.  Good idea about not making a cure all type of troop.  I don't want this to be like native where you get an army of swadian knights and instantly dominate everyone.
 
here is a idea i thought up out of the blue for the selections for the normal male/female chars why not make like instead of just joining gutts why not make it where your like a black struggerler but more powered similar to gutts since he has his berserk armor make it so you can stay human become a apostle or become something ( or replace staying human with this) like a apostle hunter (just a name to give a idea of what im talking about) with powered stats that are above a black struggerler but lower then an apostle and give a special trooptree or something just throwning this out there.
 
So you are saying that rather than just Gutts being your ally or him being your enemy the player should be able to choose to serve Gutts as a Black Struggler captain after your rescue?  That could work I suppose.  It would probably be the last endgame quest I finish.  And getting superior stats with that path could be cool too.
 
Ok good news.  I have gotten the new Kingdom management to work.  It will be in the upcoming patch but due to the current number of companions you will only be able to create a few armies.  But also included in this new companion based kingdom management will be the random chance for a lord to join your kingdom if their faction is defeated.  If you wipe out the kushan that is 60 chances for a lord ;however so as the game goes on you could end up with a decent kingdom.  This should help balance the fact that The Kingdom of Falconia and the Beasts of the Interstice will get lords from defeated factions as well. 

It will be regulated "when" you are allowed to start promoting companions to lords.  For Gutts it won't be until you heal Casca.  But for the non-Gutts campaign it will be right away.  So get those five kinds of elites in your party and get the five upgradable companions.  Still this will make the non-Gutts campaign more interesting for sure.
 
Is the kingdom management only based around raising lords etc. or is there gonna be expansions to city building construction options, etc? If not then I'll go put that in the suggestions thread for sure  :wink:
 
Interesting. Mind if I ask BP, are you using the same set of lords that exist, when they are defeated that have a chance of joining, or is it a duplicate/second set of troops that have a chance of joining? Is this based off some kit, i.e. Higlander's code, or is it your own original code?
 
The new kingdom management is based off of highlanders code but all the code is in dialogues now instead of menus and editted so companions are lords.

The lords joining you after your faction is defeated was simply a matter of changing this script.
"script_cf_get_random_active_faction_except_player_faction_and_faction"

I should have renamed the script but I don't want to hunt for every instance the script was called.  At a two places in that script it has a neq, "fac_player_supporters_faction" call and I simply tabbed that out.  Now lords should consider your kingdom in addition to the other surviving ones.
 
I am almost done with that code.  You automatically have a slightly different troop tree depending on which starting character you are.  Gutts is definitely sword heavy but the infantry are switched out for bakiraka trainee's leading up to the fearsome Iron Assassin.(Silat's bodyguards) if you aren't Gutts.  Lords take your flag and properly get troops as well.  It should make the endgame more interesting trying to keep your men alive.
I have some picks of the Iron Assassin on the screenshots thread.  So now I just have to tweak a couple things.  Release should be soon.

EDIT:Expect the bigger and badder bosses and monsters to have up to a thousand health in the new patch.  I have tweaked regeneration to be lower to account for this.  This also allows me to reduce boss armor so that more than the dragonslayer can damage them.  I can't wait for the Zodd is overpowered thread.  Previously even with almost 300 health the good old DS could take out even the ogre or Grunbeld in two swings.  But this also makes mobbing enemies a viable tactic again.  I don't know how many of you have faced cyclops yet but previously they were almost invulnerable to weapon damage besides their head.  Now mobbing them will work although slowly.
 
That's good to hear, the fact that even having all your troops swarm some random gribbly would be totally ineffective was a bit much.
 
Very, very much looking forward to the new patch!  Between this and some of the other stuff you've hinted at it's getting hard to play the current version out of excitement. 

I'm especially looking forward to some playable campaigns for the non-Gutts characters. 

Keep up the awesome work!  And keep us informed on that next patch's progress! :wink:
 
New version will have Gutts Kingdom appear when you play as a regular guy. 
I am done adding new heroes.  Their method of joining you will change in 1.00 but for now it works as it should.  Kingdom management is working great.  Now just need to add Gutts kingdom troops to fill out faction 8.  Be warned Gutts will now be a king and will still never lose in autocalc.  Cause he is Gutts.  I'll probably chuck him like 500 strength too.
 
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