An Open Letter to TaleWorlds from the Kingdoms of Arda team, and the Total-Conversion Mod Community about our concerns and frustrations with Bannerlor

[AxiosXiphos]

Yeah, the least we can do is post here to show the devs that we care about this issue and that it needs to be resolved, and that there is mass demand for an update.

Also mass demand for me to be tried as a witch .

no agreed; it's dumb; we have nothing really to talk about here - but we should keep this top of the threads until answered. This is probably the single most important aspect of M&B. The modders need the tools to work - otherwise there really is only limited future for the game . Doesn't matter how good native is or isn't - this game will live or die by its modding community.

 

[Mad Vader]

Yeah, the least we can do is post here to show the devs that we care about this issue and that it needs to be resolved, and that there is mass demand for an update.

It's not even the correct thread, no one serious watches this one.
Here's the original thread that the OP misleadingly failed to mention, if you need to make yourself heard.

 

[AxiosXiphos]

It's not even the correct thread, no one serious watches this one.
Here's the original thread that the OP misleadingly failed to mention, if you need to make yourself heard.

....the mod development sub-forum? No one is going to look there. Might as well be on a different forum for a different game. As with basically any forum ever only the general discussions pages really get any attention.

EDIT - Although....

I'm far from infallible. I guess that is from reddit traffic as it was linked there.

 

[Mad Vader]

....the mod development sub-forum? No one is going to look there. Might as well be on a different forum for a different game. As with basically any forum ever only the general discussions pages really get any attention.

EDIT - Although....

I'm far from infallible.

The guys that matter, the ones with red flags, look and post only there.

 

[AxiosXiphos]

The guys that matter, the ones with red flags, look and post only there.

 

[Mad Vader]

I don't know if you are oblivious or just irrationally obstinate, but the petitioning modders, Callum and modding forum moderators posted in that thread and not this one. Do your research and read the thread before commenting.

 

[AxiosXiphos]

I don't know if you are oblivious or just irrationally obstinate, but the petitioning modders, Callum and modding forum moderators posted in that thread and not this one. Do your research and read the thread before commenting.

What the hell is all this? All I did was post Gene Wilder singing? Typically meant to signify discovering a brand new wonderful world... it's not a negative. I wasn't calling you a liar.

I thought a pun on a 'world of pure imagination' might play nice with the theme of mod development...

Yes obviously I can see that it is the original; thread; no one is denying that. I've seen the thread before multiple times I just didn't believe it was getting as much traction as it clearly is. If it is then good. It's an important issue.

 

[Mad Vader]

What the hell is all this? All I did was post Gene Wilder singing? Typically meant to signify discovering a brand new wonderful world... it's not a negative. I wasn't calling you a liar.

I thought a pun on a 'world of pure imagination' might play nice with the theme of mod development...

Careful with ambiguous reaction media - when someone claims something and you answer with a video titled "pure imagination", there are not many positive ways to interpret that.

 

[AxiosXiphos]

Careful with ambiguous reaction media - when someone claims something and you answer with a video titled "pure imagination", there are not many positive ways to interpret that.

Hmmm... Fine. I feel the context says otherwise... but okay - whatever. ?

Let's just leave it. As you said this thread is redundant anyway.

 

[Apocal]

Not having extensive documentation even internally is borderline insane. Creative Assembly used to be like this too. Its just nuts that a company with literally a billion dollars riding on its success would be too lazy or unstructured to enforce proper code documentation.

I don't even trust myself to remember how my own code works, I couldn't even fathom expecting other people to just work it out.

Wait, this isn't normal?

 

[Mad Vader]

Wait, this isn't normal?

It is, Jacob is having a little docu-drama there. Comments in the code are a reasonable minimum however. When documents get obsolete fast no one wants to write them and update them unless forced at gunpoint.

 

[Fate]

This 100%

I was going to start work on a mod then looked at the code and found spelling mistakes, odd hard-coding practices, very inconsistent naming conventions and that's just the easy stuff to get right. I didn't look any further. It looked like half of it was coded by someone still in school learning to code for the first time.

Are most of Taleworlds developers new to programming?

 

[Nalgasucia507]

This 100%

I was going to start work on a mod then looked at the code and found spelling mistakes, odd hard-coding practices, very inconsistent naming conventions and that's just the easy stuff to get right. I didn't look any further. It looked like half of it was coded by someone still in school learning to code for the first time.

Are most of Taleworlds developers new to programming?

A lot of them come fresh off the university that is right around TW office. They have a lot of interns.

 

[Bloc]

Wait, this isn't normal?

It is. You can't find code documentation in any company anywhere in the world if they are mid-sized. Especially if you are local - and don't work with different remote teams. It's also an overhead as MadVader stated.

A lot of them come fresh off the university that is right around TW office. They have a lot of interns.

It's not related to that. As long as you have company coding style guidelines, any intern would require to follow that. You can enforce that even in IDE. But question is, why would TW need that anyway? They are not Google or they are not developing a customer-facing game engine. They are developing a game. According to them, as long as it works - it works. And that's not entirely a bad thing in my opinion.

I was going to start work on a mod then looked at the code and found spelling mistakes, odd hard-coding practices, very inconsistent naming conventions and that's just the easy stuff to get right. I didn't look any further.

So you gave up because you found some spelling mistakes? Not sure if you are joking or not but if you think modding is hard, you can just say it. Bannerlord have extremely messed up architecture that doesn't follow any known game design pattern but complaining about spelling mistakes and naming conventions is just pointless.

 

[Fate]

So you gave up because you found some spelling mistakes? Not sure if you are joking or not but if you think modding is hard, you can just say it. Bannerlord have extremely messed up architecture that doesn't follow any known game design pattern but complaining about spelling mistakes and naming conventions is just pointless.

Spelling mistakes and naming conventions are literally the easiest thing to get right and give a good representation of the quality of the code. They showcase whether a proper coding style guide is in place, linters, automatic testing etc. as they would be caught by this. I didn't look farther into the architecture because it was pointless to do so. They couldn't do the absolute basics correctly and creating a mod off this foundation would be a waste of time (as it's shown to be for a lot of modders).

I understand if you've never developed anything before and wouldn't know this.

 

[Bloc]

They couldn't do the absolute basics correctly and creating a mod off this foundation would be a waste of time (as it's shown to be for a lot of modders).

No one in the modding community is complaining about pointless things like that. Would it be good to have it? Yes. But that's not a showstopper for anyone. It's not a showstopper for any software project or any developer.
Bannerlord was under development for more than 11 years and throughout the years, it faced a lot of changes in its codebase. If internal teams are granulated enough, you may not need to have coding guidelines at all because no other team will see another teams' code and internal teams can align easily. And this is what you can see from the code and their style. Enforcing style guidelines is not easy and time-wasting, especially if you are trying to catch some deadlines. This is the sole reason why many of the companies around the world do not have codebase looks like it's written by a single team/person. Even in FAANGM, not all products have enforced style guidelines - so expecting this from a mid-sized company with heavy startup roots for their internal game engine is pointless beyond reason.

I understand if you've never developed anything before or worked in any company and wouldn't know this.

 

[Fate]

Ah so it wasn't ignorance but you just needing to make yourself feel like a big man? lol

Having a consistent coding standard is one of the easiest things to enforce even across teams. It's very easily automated and not having one is just lazy and leads to much more time spent on correcting issues in the future. A proper code base should look like it was coded by a single individual. You should be able to move team members around as need be without having to reintroduce them to an entirely new coding standard.

 

[Fate]

Also, I'm not concerned if others are complaining about this. TW couldn't do the absolute basics correctly, why would I assume they have a well thought out and implemented architecture etc.? What I listed are just symptoms which generally mean much larger issues are at hand (which you already confirmed is true with the messed up architecture)

 

[Bloc]

Easiest things yet no company is properly doing it in the world.
Also, you don't have to explain the benefits of having coding standards to me, I know that already. But I'm also not living in Fairyland with Unicorns. In real world, it's not as easy as you think to have coding standards. Especially codebase is too prone to change by multiple people over years - or if you are crunching for EA/Gamescom and need to show something as quick as possible.

(which you already confirmed is true with the messed up architecture)

Because no naming convention/standards == bad architecture correlation is not correct. There are thousands of projects out there that don't have naming conventions internally but with proper architecture. They having messed up patterns is not 1-1 related to this.

 

[Fate]

Easiest things yet no company is properly doing it in the world.
Also, you don't have to explain the benefits of having coding standards to me, I know that already. But I'm also not living in Fairyland with Unicorns. In real world, it's not as easy as you think to have coding standards. Especially codebase is too prone to change by multiple people over years - or if you are crunching for EA/Gamescom and need to show something as quick as possible.

Because no naming convention/standards == bad architecture correlation is not correct. There are thousands of projects out there that don't have naming conventions internally but with proper architecture. They having messed up patterns is not 1-1 related to this.

I can't speak for gaming development specifically as I don't work in it, but for my work I'm contracted out to companies to assist with a development project at crunch time, standardize or update old codebases, or to ensure a new project starts off the ground with all the proper checks and balances in place.

I work with a lot of companies, a lot of codebases, a lot of sperate teams and very large number of them (even very new startups) do this properly, or at least properly enough (you can always get more sophisticated with it). This is not some unheard of unrealistic myth. The ones who don't do this properly have very consistent issues and see very noticeable gains in development output once the project is standardized.

Again, the issues I listed are just a representation of their coding mindset and environment as a whole. This type of development environment often leads to much larger issues as we've been seeing.