Dev Blog 14/09/17

[parsehtml]<p><img class="frame" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" lang="en-GB" src="http://www.taleworlds.com/Images/News/blog_post_07_taleworldswebsite_575.jpg" alt="" /></p> <p>A game engine is one of the core components of a computer game. Licensed game engines tend to offer a flexible approach to game development by providing a variety of options and features for a wide range of genres. However, developing your own game engine allows you to create exactly what you need for the task at hand. Granted, it is a monumental task to undertake, but we feel that the benefits far outweigh the time, energy and financial investments required to produce something which will allow us to achieve our goals and ultimately improve the quality of the final product. Our engine, which was built entirely in-house, focuses on the crucial needs of Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord. It is tailored to helping the game reach its full potential, which is something that would be hard to accomplish with another engine. This is what our engine team tries to achieve. Smooth gameplay, big battles and great visuals are their primary ambition. Murat Türe, Lead Programmer of the engine team, works on making Bannerlord optimised, moddable and huge, while retaining all of the key features which made our previous games so successful.</p></br> [/parsehtml]Read more at: http://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/25

 

[AmateurHetman]

Best post until now, and it is the question;

1- How can we control whole army instead of just one class if the battlefield size is 4km square? or are you focusing just the control of one class?

What do you mean? You'll control a whole army like in warband if you are the only commander or other lords join the battle on your side.

 

[FBohler]

Very good devblog, congrats!

 

[The Bowman]

Do we have a chance to know the rig used in that screenshot?

 

[Silen]

As usual, thanks for the interesting blog.

 

[Griefer]

Dev Blogs are really getting better every week. Keep it up.
my fav parts
which means it can, and will, use all of the cores of current and next gen CPUs for the foreseeable future 
800 characters, at 60FPS 
With all of the CPU and hard drive optimisations we try to achieve <1 second loading times on these bigger scenes     

Yeah. I saw that too.

I, like many people, was getting a bit frustrated with the wait. That.... that just soothed the crap out of me.

We all want a good game. Happy to wait for a good game. We dream of an amazing game, something that just blows every other option out of the water. Happy to wait longer for an amazing game. This is really, really looking like it's going to be an amazing game.

I'm okay with inevitable bugs. TaleWorlds has proven that they'll fix them and that mods will handle tweaks and more. However a foundation of a game that's absolutely amazing and this future-proofed to scale with tech advances....

that's just awesome. That's a game I'll get 1,000, 2,000 or more hours of playtime out of like I have Mount and Blade. I'm eager to give them my money.

 

[DanAngleland]

Encouraging news for performance and a decent read, thanks.

"We are striving to make the game run as smoothly as possible on a wide range of systems and it gives me great satisfaction and pride in my team to see how the game is constantly improving"

Q: WHAT'S THE MOST DIFFICULT THING THAT YOU SOLVED SO FAR, DURING THE PRODUCTION OF BANNERLORD?

A: “Improving stability, performance and visual quality at the same time, without sacrificing any of them"

"Currently, 60-70% of the frame is fully parallel, which means it can, and will, use all of the cores of current and next gen CPUs for the foreseeable future, (the old engine generally used to use 1, or at most 2 cores.)"

 

[cherac]

Best blog so far, even better than the released videos . Thank you . I have two questions.

would we get animals? (Flying animals in particular )

Ambush mechanics ?

And please it won't kill to shed some light on the family system or social part of the campaign (Because at this point the game should be in its final stage and your standing on such a major feature should be clear )

 

[Osviux]

I enjoyed reading this. The custom engine was definitely a good choice, despite costing extra time and resources.

 

[reiko23]

I enjoyed reading this. The custom engine was definitely a good choice, despite costing extra time and resources.

Osviuuux. You are back!

 

[Near Toxic Orc]

Hey just wanting to know how the game will run on consoles and how downgraded it will be?

 

[John_M]

Spoiler

This looks great! Finally troops are staying in formation instead of blobbing all over the field!
It does look like this is that commander mode, so hopefully we can see this carry over to fighting AI commanders too.

 

[Mad Vader]

I'm hoping the Captain mode is a side effect of the unit commander AI in SP.

 

[ToyBoat]

now that the game is getting closer to completion, can we get confirmation on the largest possible map size for scene creators?

 

[Looter]

now that the game is getting closer to completion, can we get confirmation on the largest possible map size for scene creators?

They have mentioned an average of 4km scenes, nothing on larger yet though beyond them saying it takes longer to load those

Edit: correction on the size in general

 

[kalarhan]

now that the game is getting closer to completion, can we get confirmation on the largest possible map size for scene creators?

closer is a interesting word

the engine blog talked about 225km2, but that was on a mountain terrain (think combat zone, not a town full of props)


so anything between 4 and 225 km2 

 

[ToyBoat]

I am aware of the original claim of 225 km2, which is why I'm asking for confirmation now. That blog was posted in 2014.

 

[Ki-Ok Khan]

It was not a claim towards scenes being that size. It means that engine can support that no problem.

 

[ToyBoat]

It was not a claim towards scenes being that size. It means that engine can support that no problem.

yes, I'm asking if this is still possible with the most recent version of the engine.

 

[Ki-Ok Khan]

It was not a claim towards scenes being that size. It means that engine can support that no problem.

yes, I'm asking if this is still possible with the most recent version of the engine.

I would assume so. Since they do not show or say anything about the game if they are not 100% sure that it will make it to the final release.
Besides , I would assume that things got better and not worse that they had to cut the rendering power of the engine.

 

[Teggs]

Nice to hear about the multithreaded work in particular.  I never blamed Mount and Blade or Warband for being single-core games, given how they came to be.  And I applaud Taleworlds' forward thinking, which must have come well before Ryzen finally shifted the mass-market's perception this year.

If CPU is under stress, or the 'bottleneck' in Bannerlord, I wonder what their thoughts are on Vulkan.  Aside from an impressive potential for performance increases, Vulkan's main claim to fame is lowering CPU usage to achieve the same result.  What are Taleworlds' thoughts on implementing this?