Comments: 3.0 Released

[phlpp]

all the solutions i have for the hair problem have been terrible so far. the problem really is that topknots poke out of the hats and helmets. someone had a way of preventing the hair from being rendered when it poked out, but it caused really ugly problems with the shaders and even caused non-hair objects to become invisible if you looked at them in certain angles.

one solution would be to model hairs with the helmets themselves, but it'll get weird since bald people will instantly get hair and blondes will instantly get black hair. but no matter -- those particular hats you posted plus hachimaki will probably be fine with hair enabled because they lend themselves well to topknots unlike the sugegasa and jingasa

as for the religion system -- both individual characters and whole clans can choose to have a specific religion or to be non-religious. the different sects of buddhism and catholic christianity are among the religions that can be chosen. shinto will obviously be present, but it won't be something you can "choose" because it had a complicated status before the separation order of 1868 -- it will be treated as a folk belief system as opposed to an organized institution that can raise armies and wage wars. protestantism might or might not be present, but it won't have a lot of features because it wasn't a missionary religion in japan -- it would be a flavor thing so you could more immersively play as an anjin miura-like character

the way i intend to have the ashikaga shogunate and emperor set up will be that you can't really interact with them until you gain enough rank, and you won't be able to do much for them until you first take over kyoto. once you do, you would then have two options available -- support one of two ashikaga heirs to become shogun, or to support the emperor (whereby you could either become kampaku like hideyoshi or shogun like ieyasu). by "support" i really mean "puppet", but if you piss them off enough they will assert their independence and bring other allies against you

there's also a third option of  the status quo (such as with the miyoshi, the hosokawa before them, and the matsunaga afterwards), which might be the only one available if you're not powerful enough.

once you've chosen the ashikaga or emperor option, you will then have to do quests to pacify kyoto and fight off an alliance of clans that will try to destroy you. the difference between the ashikaga and emperor options is that the ashikaga option doesn't allow you to be shogun or kampaku and will eventually limit the amount of conquest you are allowed to do, but will be an easier path. the emperor path potentially gives you more power, but will be much harder. at any point on the ashikaga path you can move over to the emperor path

 

[Yemeth]

phlpp, these are some really cool things you are working on!

BTW, you asked a few post back, what features would we like. I would like, if it is possible, more quests and a more deep interaction with companions (maybe even implement things like quests to get them at all etc.).

More companions would always be nice, but only if the workload ratio is not too off...

Some kind of a implementations of some of the "ninja clans" etc. would be cool.

Any way, thanks a lot and as soon as I get my salary some drink/nerd book money will come your way.

Cheers,

Mijo

 

[GrizzlyAdamz]

I currently roll with a helmetless samurai. Would love to get a headband, or perhaps even this. The only problem with helmets and hats in this game is that they seem to always remove the hair with them. Is there a workaround?

Are you tired of being crowned by arrows, but can't stand shaving your head? Well worry no more! Now, with our patented Hairy Helmet, you can have the best of both worlds!

 

[oppai]

wonder if you could make the more weird helmets like

and for the horses??

 

[11sparky11]

WANT MUSTACHE. NAW.

 

[WrathzRevenge]

Just wanted to express my great fondness for this mod. I love Samurai. So this for me just made my gaming life even better xD I mean, I like Warband, but to play a Samurai!? omg yes! Anyway, I also do the youtube thing so of course i'm making videos of me playing this Mod. Youtube username is wrathzrevenge. Yadda yadda.

SAMURAI!

 

[t1tg]

Is there some ninja type troops\armor in mod?Or will be?

 

[Donzekalone]

shinto will obviously be present, but it won't be something you can "choose" because it had a complicated status before the separation order of 1868

Well I think shinto should be bigger religion, especialy casue when samurai calss are created, later was created a Bushido, codex of the samurai who was together with Shinto, fulfilled everything about samurais. It have a big role in samurai class.

Weapons are great, looking foward for updates.

I have questions about ninjas. Did you played mod Brytanwelda? There you can hire Spy as mercenary and it gives you some new option, like skrimish, or send it to some town, prepare an ambush and thing liek that. That would be cool to add them as shinobi, and ofc they should be very expensive.

 

[Clone1710]

I just stumbled over this mod a few weeks ago, and I just want to say: THANK YOU.
This mod is AWESOME.
I can't remember playing any other sengoku era mod that has this much detail put into it.

Really looking forward to the future updates!

 

[phlpp]

shinto was definitely bigger, but it wasn't really organized in the sense the buddhist sects and christianity were until the separation order of 1868 and the start of the state shintoism of the meiji to showa eras. its status in the sengoku period (and before and after) was complex, and you couldn't really declare yourself "shintoist" to the exclusion of anything else -- the only thing that would make you not follow shinto practices, other than personal preference, would be to be a devout catholic. but even then not always so, as we can see when native folk religions syncretized with catholicism among the laity in many places outside of japan

 

[ginto]

Is there some ninja type troops

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oniwabanshu the only ninja-related troops in that i saw in this mod.

 

[WrathzRevenge]

Has anyone mentioned Duels? Where you could either send in some guy or yourself for some extra honor and glory? Maybe even have it so each side watched the duel...  I have no idea if this would even be possible but, it would be so awesome. xD

 

[Jozen]

Here's a solution, I'm really bored of tournaments but I feel forced to do them because the payoff is so great. How about instead of tourneys we had a difficult duel.

 

[Talinoth]

Haha, phlpp, I just noticed something.

I was browsing through some Touhou music (because YOU got me hooked to it by putting it in this mod...) and I just discovered thaaaaat...

You seriously named pretty much more than half the female heroes in the mod - all of them except for Kaguya and Shih after Touhou characters didn't you? Marisa, Meiling and Youmu are all from Touhou... 0.0

You sly bastard

Speaking of the companions... how would I put it? I think I've grown more attached to them, in a strange kind of way. Companions in Native didn't have much happening for them (Katrin, Bunduk and Nizar were the only ones even remotely interesting - and in Nizar's case, hilarious) but Gekokujo is a bit different.

Spoilers ahead?




- Enrique refuses to tell you exactly what happened when he first came to Japan and it's strongly implied he brutally murdered his captors.
- George greets you with "Howdy", a typical southern United States greeting... in Sengoku era Japan. He apparently quotes lines from his old friend "Arnold" in battle, and when you tell him you want to rule Japan, he mentions something about not knowing anything about Japanese history. Hmmm... why not have a random time traveller in the party?
- Enrique and George both love a good pork roast! Because really, who doesn't?
- Yoshio SAYS he's simply a samurai who was dismissed by his master for killing a man in a duel, but his insanely high combat stats - his absolute mastery of two-handed swords AND bows - suggest that he is not just any mere samurai. but something far greater. I suspect he is not human.
- Tojiko is probably immortal - she was supposedly a consort of one of the old Japanese emperors... and that emperor apparently died at least SEVERAL HUNDRED years before.
- Mandukhai may be the  first person in the history of the world to travel the whole way around the world - she has gone from Central Asia to the Middle East, to Europe, to the Americas and across the Pacific Ocean and ended up all the way over at Japan.
- Kaguya is probably Kaguya-hime, the main character of the legendary Japanese folktale The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter that gave Mt Fuji it's name.
- Musashi is very likely to be Miyamoto Musashi, one of the greatest swordsmen in the history of mankind, killing Sasaki Kojiro (Kojiro is ALSO one of the companions, lol) in a single strike, with a sword carved from the spare oar of a boat he used to travel to the dueling place.
- Gonnosuke knows Musashi, and in real life Miyamoto Musashi and a man named Muso Gonnosuke fought in a duel. Muso Gonnosuke was the master of the five-foot-staff - and in Gekokujo, Gonnosuke is VERY good at using polearm weapons.

The fact that so many of the companions have such interesting backstories is just another plus to this mod, I think. What can I say? I like that sort of thing, it establishes an atmosphere.

-

I do have a couple of questions though.

+ Yoshio's STR stat might be only 6, but having Two-Handed AND Archery at 420 (that's higher than almost all the top-level units in Prophesy of Pendor!) means he might as well be a Shinto god of war. For all I know, he COULD BE. And he scales SO well - the more Strength points you give him, and the more points you give him in Ironflesh, Power Strike, and Power Draw, the stronger he becomes.

Who is he? Why is he so incredibly good? I just want to know who Yoshio is. Splash some cash to pick up a Masterwork War Yumi for him, and it's like he's MADE for ripping apart enemy Hatamotos like wet toilet paper. I haven't seen this much ownage since I gave Lethaldiran the Strange Rune Bow in PoP. And then, when an enemy actually gets close to him... he still rips people apart like wet toilet paper because if you give him General's Kozane Armour and a good sword nobody can touch him.

+ Musashi, despite being easily one of the best swordsmen in the history of mankind - and perhaps getting close to being, if not actually THE best - has surprisingly low Weapon Masteries. He has One-Handed & Two-Handed above 200 so it's nothing to sneeze at, but if Gonnosuke gets 380 in Polearms and Youmu gets 380 in Two-Handed, why aren't his skills higher? If I remember correctly, he mastered one-handed weapons, two-handed ones, dual-wielding the one-handed weapons AND he was also fairly proficient with throwing weapons. Cut the guy some slack

+ Kojiro is much the same. Obviously, he's not as good as Musashi, but he's also supposed to be a master of two-handed weapons, but he doesn't really seem like it. At least he's fairly tough.

+ Mandukhai, despite apparently travelling across the entire world, serving as a condottiero (mercenary) for an Italian lord and seeing many interesting and wonderful places has nearly no weapon profiencies or other combat stats, making her comparatively one of the very weakest companions you can find. She's a decent enough INT slave, but why would I get her when Hoshi has better Pathfinding AND is better with a gun?

+ I know Sessai spent most of his life as a monk, but he also trained troops for a lord. Shouldn't he have some degree of skill in combat instead of just being a simple INT slave?

-----

I love these companions. I really do. They're like my own band of medieval-era-Japan merry men. I have a time-traveller, an immortal lady, The God of War, the Filipino dude who loves pork and murders pirates, a sniper, a former monk who is the son of a samurai warlord, a gardener/sword mistress, a wandering martial artist who is a master of the staff and a hilariously racist Korean archer.

I have everything I need

 

[Osric]

I like to aquire my companions that are at least relevent to the period. Its why i recruit only male characters besides George and Francisco. Not a fan of the Tohou fantasy characters.

When the next patch comes out ill be making a party that solely consists of companions with a few ronin mercenaries.

 

[phlpp]

I could have sworn I gave musashi an insane level in power strike to give him incredible damage, with only decent-high weaponmaster/two-handed skills. Do weapon proficiencies affect damage? I assumed they improved speed, accuracy (if applicable), giving a chance to get past parries, and giving a chance to parry automatically when you attack at the same time as your enemy. It's a little backwards, but I wanted to give Musashi brute force while Yoshio got finesse. Same with Tojiko vs. Kaguya (who was inspired by the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter and a Touhou character of the same name -- though I was aware of the tale of the bamboo cutter first)

That's how I do Murasame vs. Masamune swords in the next update, at least. Murasame get a moderate increase in damage, Masamune get a significant increase in speed

 

[Talinoth]

Increasing Melee Proficiencies will result in
- Increased damage
- Increased attack speed

Increasing Ranged Proficiencies will result in
- Increased accuracy
- Increased attack speed

The problem here then, is that Musashi can hit hard - but Yoshio hits just as hard, and hits faster. What Musashi has going for him is that his Power Strike with his relatively good STR keeps him alive for long enough to dish out damage - but he has disputes with two of the other best companions in the game, has no skill with ranged weapons and can't rack up the same kind of PPM (peasants-per-minute) slaughtering ratios as Yoshio or Gonnosuke.

Also, weapon proficiencies may look like the kinds of stats that scale infinitely into uncontrollable levels of awesomeness, but I'm afraid that it's probably easier to get Yoshio to 30 STR than it is to get Musashi to 400+ in Two-Handed . The weapon proficiencies of companions go up VERY slowly unless their Weapon Master is insanely high, and, while not fast, you can always count on being able to get experience level-ups on your companions over time.

So essentially, the weapon proficiencies of companions are to an extent almost capped, while you can keep bumping up STR as much as you like. This is why Yoshio even further surpasses Musashi over time.

---

As for getting past parries and parrying automatically, I can at least tell you why you're parrying automatically when you're attacking at the same time as your enemy.

You can do that, manually, at your own discretion, if you have the skill and timing to pull it off.

CHAMBER BLOCKING TUTORIAL

When an enemy is swinging at you from (for example) the left, you can ready a swing to the left, and readying your swing if done correctly can parry the enemy attack without you having to block it in the normal way.

This is amazingly advantageous if you can pull it off because you can launch an immediate counterattack at your enemy which they usually have next to 0 chance of blocking - because you've ALREADY readied a swing for an attack!

You can immediately follow up on a strike in half the usual time it takes to block and counter the enemy. This is an incredibly useful trick when using big and slow weapons, because you can hit an enemy that would normally be attacking too fast for you to get an attack off on.

If they are attacking your right, ready a swing to your right. If they're attacking from above, ready a swing above your head. And if they're trying to thrust attack you, you can either reply by readying your own thrust OR readying an overhead attack. For some reason, readying an overhead attack blocks thrusts - and because overhead attacks deal more damage than all the other swing types, you can simply walk around butchering enemy spearmen without a care because most of the time they only use stab attacks.

This is part of the reason why using a spear on foot in Mount & Blade is just a dumb idea most of the time - the A.I is also quite good at chamber blocking attacks. Spear users typically only use thrust attacks, making them highly predictable. And thrust attacks are the fastest, but also have the LONGEST recovery times (aka, the time before you can perform another action, such as blocking the enemy counterattack) if they miss, or are blocked. Get chamber blocked once, and you'll have no time to block the enemy counter, resulting in you taking massive damage without being able to do a thing about it.

---

As for getting past parries of enemies who are blocking, either they dropped their block for you just at the right time (you have to get lucky eventually, right?) or you're using a weapon that's capable of "Guard Crush" - where, if your attack would do enough damage to go past a certain threshold (usually when your attack would instantly kill the enemy if not for the block), your attack goes THROUGH the enemy block and hits them for heavily reduced damage.

It also could be that somebody hit them from behind and left them open for your own attack, or that you kicked them and it opened their guard, or you were fighting them from horseback and you ran into them with your horse just before hitting them with your weapon, thereby quickly opening their guard AND hitting the enemy in one swift movement.

 

[phlpp]

hm, i'll keep that in mind then, and rebalance them a little better next time around. thank you talinoth, that was very very illuminating 

 

[Talinoth]

You're welcome, I try.

Here's a better, more visually oriented version of what I was trying to explain.
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,243074.0.html
It's glorious, but be careful, the GIFs are large.

---

It's not that the companions are BAD - not by any means. It's just some of them are so good that they overshadow the others.

It's not like Musashi's weak. Not at all. And it's not really like Yoshio can take on entire armies by himself - it's just that some companions are a bit more effective than others. Having people like Isosangemat, Marisa, Francisco, Goemon, and a few others in my party could be fun, but they clash with other companions who do their jobs better.

Honestly, I think the companions will become relatively balanced for the most part if you add more one-handed and throwing weapons. The only thing stopping Meiling kicking an absurdly large amount of ass for example (get a load of that base STR + Power Strike, DAMN) is the fact that the best weapons she can pick up are a Masterwork War Kama and Masterwork Kunai. Which really pale into comparison to the options of bows and katanas/nodachis.

Did the samurai have throwing spears? Maybe the Jurchen, Mongolians or Chinese did? I know you're already adding Shuriken, but that's also another good option .

I don't know if they're period accurate, but you could also add some Chinese one-handed longswords like the Jian if you're looking for options in that area. Also, Daos and other curved sabers should be period appropriate. Saying that, we wouldn't want Japan to be overflowing with Chinese weapons either! What to do?? 0.0

---

On a different note, I'm really liking where you're heading with the idea of individual schools of blacksmithing applying different buffs to weapons. I REALLY like this, a lot. Especially the part where you mentioned they'd be visually distinctive. I can imagine most of the lords and some hatamotos (rarely, probably) sporting "brand name" katanas and other goodies

"Pffft, you're using a Muramasa sword? Only pussies use Muramasa swords, REAL men use Murasame (don't know who that is, maybe you meant Muramasa?) swords!"

Actually, I've been a bit excited about a lot of the ideas that have been thrown out.
I like;

- Having an optional story/campaign/quest sequence where you either fight for the Ashikaga or the Emperor, pacifying Kyoto and smacking down samurai rebels and upstart samurai warlords alike. This sounds very fun.
- Weapons from the traditional schools of Japanese bladesmithing - "brand name" weapons just sound really fun
- A direly needed rework of Warband's old and now a bit boring tournament system.
- More armour and weapons.
- More mercenaries.
- Ninjas!

Also, some people have mentioned duels. I like this idea, whether it is in the street against random ronin, or against enemy lords.

OMFG, AWESOME IDEA. It's kind of stolen from With Fire & Sword though. Sort of. Why not have a bunch of Ronin drinking in a Town's tavern, that you can go up and talk to? Because talking to random, threatening looking men in bars and challenging them to fights is fun! One of the interactions would be challenging them to a fight, and you get taken to a different scene where you spawn in samurai robes with a generic katana against an opponent using the same, and you go and kick their asses, take their money AND take their pride.

Or there are a bunch of soldiers drinking in the tavern, and when you talk to them they ask you whether you support the Ashikaga Shogunate or the Emperor (the right answer depends on the allegiance of the lord who owns the town), and if you give them the wrong answer they ambush you in the street and try to kill you?

All kinds of fun possibilities! Oooh, this post got too long again, I'll stop now.

 

[phlpp]

murasame!? i just had to check my files just now to make sure i didn't use that -- thank god, it was only a typo in that forum post of mine above