Back in Business...

[_Sebastian_]

Heyho Guys!
Long time no see, eh?

I just wanted to let you know that we lazy devs are back to work and we'll announce the upcoming revival update(the big one) very soon.

As allways you guys can track the current development here;
https://docs.google.com/document/d/15e4n496jBvKq1fg13KDeBZiIl2Z0Uq0PtyHaDmRZMIw/edit

These posts on the modding board are also related to the update, so it might be worth posting them;

Just a little shader sneak peak of the upcoming Battle of Europe update.
Stormy weather is beautiful isn't it?

That code was what initially got me interested in SSAO, its far from complete though, I cant remember if I could even get it working when I initially tried it. Yoshiboy (the author) did however get it to produce a much much better effect than I have ever been able to reproduce in M&B.

full article here - http://theorangeduck.com/page/pure-depth-ssao

The mentioned code is quite heavy.
You can achieve the same or better quality with less depth lookups and cheaper operations.
Rendering and blurring the SSAO in half resolution would make it 4 times faster and since you blur it anyway, you hardly could see any difference.

So I gave it a shot myself and the result is quite good.

The SSAO shader uses 8 depth lookups (+1 for base depth) per pixel and effects everything within a radius of 4 meters.
The result is blurred by a 15x15 bilateral filter based on depth difference and as I mentioned above everything is done in half resolution, so it's super fast.
It also provides countermeasures to avoid haloing...

The shader is actually a PostFX shader, but applied to a PostFX sampler that is passed to the shaders file.
So you can use it on every pixel shader you like, or not...
This way you're able to avoid occlusion artifacts on surfaces with manipulated vertices or materials that are not affected by the depth buffer, eg. particles, water, fog etc.

So be prepared for a new era...
See yaa!

 

[Jordan_The_Noble]

Looking fantastic, really counting the days to the update.

 

[Perkele_JOPOTINTTI]

Only thing that turns people off from this mod is the bleeding system I have heard from many people.

 

[Spudgun Official]

It's great to see this mod potentially being revived - I really miss it, come to think of it. It was great.

 

[Pszemo]

Great to see that mod again!
I hope there will be more armors to collect. 

 

[OmegaWolfy]

Welcome back! 

 

[Roran 13]

The only thing that stopped me from playing was that everyone else stopped playing  Any update that could get everyone in again'd be nice.

 

[Afa]

@Sebastian, it looks great

 

[_Sebastian_]

Only thing that turns people off from this mod is the bleeding system I have heard from many people.

Well... some love it, others dont.
We will surely rework the bleeding system and add more options to counter it.

The only thing that stopped me from playing was that everyone else stopped playing  Any update that could get everyone in again'd be nice.

True story, but we do our best to revive the mod in order to bring back some people.


I think its time for some new screenshots...

As you may have notices I've worked alot on the graphics, especially on the shaders.
The shaders are almost done now and it might be worth to show off a little glimpse of the current graphics.

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BTW...
A beloved weapon made its way back to the mod. 

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We're going to post news about the revival update more frequently, so stay tuned!

 

[Afa]

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It'll be my desktop wallpaper

 

[Roran 13]

ah mee gawd dah peestol

 

[_Sebastian_]

We got 7 developers back to work and the development goes on!
I'll try to get the entire team back to the development in order to speed up the whole progress,
but even with the additional manpower we would still need atleast a month to finish it.
So please be patient

Anyway we're going to post some more info in the next few days...

 

[_Sebastian_]

Do you guys want to throw firepots at something?

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Or just deploy some ladders to access rooftops?

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We decided to release the update step by step, in order to reduce the possible amount of issues.
Everything needs to be properly tested you know

So you can expect the first release very soon, probably within the next two weeks.

 

[Roran 13]

Actuallyof everything in those screenshots I find that hat the smexiest.

 

[_Sebastian_]

Actuallyof everything in those screenshots I find that hat the smexiest.

Well, we've added a couple of hats to the current version.

 

[Xufrut]

Have you tought about adding Furok's Grim Age mod empire armors? I hink they are OSP

 

[Mamlaz]

Could you update the most recent equipment specs so they can be reassessed for balancing issues?

Or are the stats the same as the ones present on the account site?

 

[_Sebastian_]

Evening lads!
We're doing good progress and if everything works fine you guys can expect the update in a couple of days.

I quickly made some new terrain borders and applied advanced texture tiling on them.
The result is quite good and definitely better than the previous borders.
These borders are 20 times bigger than the actual scene size, that's really huge compared to other mod's terrain borders.
(0.5x0.5km scene = 10x10km border)

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Have you tought about adding Furok's Grim Age mod empire armors? I hink they are OSP

I don't think they would match to the mod since the design of them is not really based on realism.
They also look a bit too "bulky".

Could you update the most recent equipment specs so they can be reassessed for balancing issues?

Or are the stats the same as the ones present on the account site?

Nope.
Almost all item values have been changed.
You can see our item sheet HERE.

 

[YourStepDad]

I don't think you should talk about realism as long as you stick by the decision to keep having the countless number of undesirable, out of place, 400ish years anachronistic vanilla items in the mod.

This mod has enormous potential, easily more potential than any multiplayer mod ever made, and it's scenes were very impressive, as are the new ones, but you really should focus on fixing the very poor balance and getting the items in order, IMO.

If you ask me, the entire cRPG persistent style for items is quite unnecessary and also kills the point of having any faction and with it the diversity, but unfortunately most will disagree with me on this.

 

[AreJohn]

Holy scrotums, it's alive.

Add a feature where you can level a pike so it acts like a couched lance/braced pike against infantry and cavalry, though more effective against infantry. Make sure it gives a drain on stamina though to balance it. Pikes are heavy.