[review] Impressions, List of [bugs] encountered, list of [ideas] suggested

[zykox]

First of all, thank you for making a really fun mod for Warband. I had a lot of fun trying out this mod.
Played as honorable player.
____________________________

I. Bugs:

Spoiler

*Game Crash
It seems that any town where I hired guildsmen (I believe the lumberjack to be the source) made me unable to enter its tavern afterwards. A game crash occurs.
This seems to be true, no matter who is in my party, or even if I'm alone, and has so far happened with Veluca and Wercheg.

*Crafting
Crafting bolts or steel bolts never yielded any item for me.

*Strange reports
-The seems to be a frequent report on ironflesh soaking damage? It was almost always 0, or never appeared in some battles, so I don't understand what this is about.

-A frequent report of "she dodged the blow", even if it were all male soldiers. How does this mechanic work anyway?

*Minor thing
Villages sell their own specialty...and cheaper. In other words, I could buy wool in the same village, and use their specialty to sell it back to them for profit.

*Sound problem
Female attack sounds seem to be switched with getting hit sounds. In battles or bandit lair missions, my female companions were always making sounds as if they werehit.

*Map spawn point reversed
If I was attacked while camping, it was always the enemy who spawned in camp, while I spawned on the field.

*Dissappearing Companions
Departed companions (because of unhappiness) never respawned in any tavern in-game. Even after 2-3 months, no traveller can tell me where they are.

*Herboristery is French
Not really a bug...in English it's Herbalism.

II. Improvable features / questions-raising-features

Spoiler

a) Crafting
Sometimes it was possible to raise the guild rank, without having the ranks for it (e.g. rank 1, becoming companion rank).
Similarly, once, "Master" rank was achieved, it was almost impossible to raise the rank (lessons don't do anything to raise skill rank).

b) Skill Treshold
At which skill ranks to I get what features? Becoming "master" at rank 15, but still not being able to craft everything...is strange.
How much do I actually need? Even without listing all exact items and numbers, there should be a few pointers.

c) Remaining questions
smithing: no morningstars? lamellar armor?
woodcrafting: no crossbows? mauls or hammers? spears / polearms?

d) Shaman skill
...how to get a dream, how to improve the skill?

e) Neanderthals
Talked to loads of Neanderthals...supposedly learned some of the language...what now? A little more in-game feedback please.

f) Ammunition and refill
Don't really like how it's done at the moment, and it's also a bit buggy and incomplete (works only on player and only for arrows & bolts; error messages in battle when re-equipping)

III. Review & Balance issues

Spoiler

1) Review
It is a very engaging mod, with loads of extra features that add to immersion.

I didn't really mind the absence of new troops or items, because I believe that improving a lot of other points of the game will automatically make the game more interesting and challenging.

The concept of knowledge & skill techs is really well executed, and I could spent hours just exploring and gathering.
Also, the village specialties were also a magnificent addition.
All the above made for a really engaging early-to-mid game...but similarly once the features are exhausted, because I am superrich or have already crafted all I needed, the mod starts losing flavor.

Another feature I really liked, was that all parties would "rest" at night.

Overall, I really like the mod, but can't help but think that it needs a lot more work on the basics, before adding "extra / luxury" features.
It's definitely a mod I'd like to see improved though. Please keep working on the mod!

2) Balance
*Crafting
Crafting is really nice in RIGALE, and I love it. But unfortunately it's not really balanced either...
Considering the products, it's obvious that "smithing" heavy plate armor is much more useful than "leatherworking" on a nomad armor or fur shield.

The amount of raw materials needed for crafting is also a bit ridiculous...using up whole wagons of iron or wood just to craft 1 personal armor...
This is even more unrealistic, when crafting wooden items, or leatherwork, where the raw materials are several times the price of a masterwork finished product.

*Knowledges & Skill Techs
Knowledges are nice, but there should be a limit to how many can be mastered. Also, random knowledge discard is a little bit strange.

Knowledges & Skills are not really balanced...comparing a "shield +4" to a "polearm wpn prof +30", it's not hard to figure out what's better.

Lastly, Knowledges & Skills could better reflect the character's background or actual stats...e.g. starting out in Khergit Khanate territory might give "steppe lore".

*Starting Char Background
I loved the added part of "heirloom" item or knowledge, though here too, a balance issue occurs. Going for skill boni like "athletics + ironflesh" or " CHA & INT, persuasion" is definitely better than going for a heirloom item, that will be replaced by better items by early mid-game, or skill knowledge & guild rank that can easily be achieved by ongoing play.

IV. Ideas & Suggestions for the future

Spoiler

a) Mod Popularity
Not sure how popular/unpopular exactly this mod is...I get the feeling it's still a niche mod, unfortunately.

First, I think implementing features that are considered elemental (or are at least popular) by the whole community, will help a lot.
e.g. like:
-Diplomacy mod
-Freelancer mod
-auto-loot  (not so important for me though)
-battle formations (not so important for me though)

If implementing those submods is too much work, then alternative features should be done.
As it stands now, Warband without extended diplomacy options is really bothersome to play.

Other basic things that are needed are extended fief options/quests when you become a lord.

Other features that need improvement over vanilla:
*arena battles, betting & price system, maybe even tournament system
*battle continuation
*meet guildmaster / village elder dialogue
*bodyguards in town or villages
*changing quest fails into quest cancels for: track bandits
*(as already said above) A loooooooooooot of other fief improvements.

b) Custom Settlements
I like how custom settlements have been done, and I also think many suggestions on this by the other posters are great...
BUT...
I believe "RIGALE" needs a lot of work elsewhere, before going for custom settlements.

c) Improvements for Rigale features
*Starting Char Background
*Knowledge & skill tech use for lords / fief improvements
*Crafting
Crafting is currently very personal, and at the most only useful for companions as well.
Isn't there a way to implement use for armies?
For example using woodwork for faster / better siege engine building?
Or smithing to improve all troops' armor or weapons?
Leatherwork could be used to create unique/special attires
(like "Merchant clothes, bonus to trade", or "Noble's garments", bonus to leadership, etc...)

d) Companions
Allowing companions to provide knowledge or skill bonuses, to make them more unique.
If possible, fix some broken companions or companion skills (like inventory management, or Katrin).

e) Food & Raw Materials
Different qualities, and for food also different quantities.

V. Personal Wishlist
Because Cernunos might just do it.

Spoiler

a) More RPG?
I for one would really love the idea, if Rigale became more of an open RPG, rather than another battle sandbox.
The reason is, that I believe that "Gathering, Exploring, Crafting" are only really interesting with a small party, or while going with a story plot.
As soon as I became a lord, they became pretty obsolete or even a waste of time, as the time needed to gather and explore and craft is simply not there when you need to feed an army or go to wars.

Another part...story quests (even if it's as simple as in "Fire & Sword")

b) More siege options
-Use "Woodcrafting" to siege faster, or give battle bonuses (like xtra ladder, xtra ammunition etc.)
-Block a town, and stop sieged lords from healing or getting more troops
-Some strategies that reduce enemy morale, or bombardment (by building catapults), that causes some casualties at the beginning of the battle.

c) List of quests to choose from
Just a list from lords, guildmasters or village elders, so you won't have to run around and wait for a different quest to appear.

d) More quests or different quest solutions
However you like.

e) More companion interaction / dialogue
However you like.

 

[Cernunos]

Amazing page, thanks a lot for feedback

 

[zykox]

Amazing page, thanks a lot for feedback

Any time, any time... ^^

I am usually quite vague about my suggestions, but if you prefer to have some more detailed ideas (e.g. specific quests and how they work; list of additional fief improvements and how they might work, etc...), I can certainly make them.
_____________________________

By the way, having a more presentable MAIN-download and info page should help too...just take a look at some of the "popular" mods like Perisno or Prophecy of Pendor.

 

[Cernunos]

I was replaying and rereading my V0.11 code today. I still feel like doing so many "merry X-mas" things. If only I was a pro coder, modeller, web master, and didn't have a full time job and kids to care about every other week (you know, the mom got bored of me spending to much time coding Rigale, maybe...)...

And I can't decide myself, and set clear limits. Maybe this is why Rigale will never be "done"...

However, I think the custom settlement/civilisation faction construction has potential, and this is probably what I want to expand more now. I reallly like what I have done in V0.11 about the custom settlements system. I might Just focus on this, set aside more things I wantedd to add for now (forbidden/forgotten knowledges, like necromancy, gunpowder, artefacting, and so on), release a "V0.11 custom faction/settlement system".
So: improve what I have, not add any new features beside reworked customm settlements/faction system, balance it, and realease, on steam eventually.

 

[gsanders]

on bugs:

  I wanted to up my level in bard and was taking lessons.
  Eventually I was skill 8 or 9 and ready to become "compagnon" at the guild.
  But actually that isn't an option.

So looking at the code (thanks for that) it looks like to get compagnon it checks the last crafting guild WORKSHOP I visited so
I can get compagnon for any guild that has a WORKSHOP but not for ones that don't do things this way (Hospital/Medicine guild would be the other one I could think of).

  I thought, ok maybe medicine guild skill goes up by volunteer to treat epidemics, and bard skill by singing in taverns/for nobles.

  Well, it does but guild still does not show an option to spend 1000 and become compagnon in guild level (skill level gets capped without guild level higher, at least for lessons).

  Is this as it should be, or should I put a test to see if I am in the bard / medical guild (probably set a global variable like
$visited_guild  and have the guild name updated each time I select that guild in the "visit guilds" menu inside the town menu.

  Have I missed something?

  - GS

 

[Cernunos]

Indeed,

Is this as it should be, or should I put a test to see if I am in the bard / medical guild (probably set a global variable like
$visited_guild  and have the guild name updated each time I select that guild in the "visit guilds" menu inside the town menu.

the variable is "$type_of_crafting_guild_visited"
All guilds should work the same, actually, as you might have seen, the corpus is the same, only variable changes in the game menus. So probably a copy/paste mistake, I will have a deeper look into it today. Thanks for taking the time to play, report, and help me fix this, and make Rigale a better place 

 

[Cernunos]

I am a little confused, maybe because guilds are confusing.
So from what I learnt since I first coded the guilds, I will improve the code and feedback in some situations, and hopefully make things clearer.

 

[sidhos]

Ok, so I toughed through the learning to walk and learning to sleep phase of the game.  Here are a few things I have bumped into.  Forgive me if they have already been reported.

1.  When entering the hunting scene, at some point my inventory management opens up and I have the option to grab meat and a hide on the left. I assume this is my hunting reward.  Except when I take it and hit the button to leave, it just gives me another hide and  meat.  Over and over, endlessly in a loop. You can't leave it.  I had to cancel the application to leave the game.

2.  This has only happened once, but once when I got the random event of finding an ill man and I took the option to try and help him, it just kept giving me the option over and over.  After about 30 times, I had to cancel application to leave game.

3.  I don't know how to duplicate this, but it has happened 3-4 times.  When I click on the "leave" button to leave a town, it does nothing, just keeps the town menu on the screen.  In this case, I go into the tavern, save game, quit game, then reload and it is fixed.

Last one is more of a question.  When I go into the crafting area of a town and cook bread, I get a success message that says I cooked a/an bread.  So is that literally ONE bread.  For example if I had a stack of bread in my inventory with 20/40 value, would I then have 21/40 value?  Or am I supposed to get a full bread stack? 

 

[v4nnz]

first of all i would like to say congratulations for implement such decent, creative and unique mod. honestly perhaps this is the one and only warband mod which has no similiarity to another mod that i've ever been tried. good job and well done. my respect as well for you too.

secondly, i would like to give some suggestion about world map.

♦ Player icon at world map would much more excellent if it could transform from a man riding horse (with banners sometimes) into a caravan IF their inventories loaded with some numbers of trade goods. speed and exhaust point shall be implemented into it as well.

♦ NPC (bandit, king, vassal, etc) at night would be better if they transformed into a camp icon as well, this would be great i think.

just it from me, hope it wasn't too much bringing troubles.

thank you,
best regards

 

[zykox]

first of all i would like to say congratulations for implement such decent, creative and unique mod. honestly perhaps this is the one and only warband mod which has no similiarity to another mod that i've ever been tried. good job and well done. my respect as well for you too.

secondly, i would like to give some suggestion about world map.

♦ Player icon at world map would much more excellent if it could transform from a man riding horse (with banners sometimes) into a caravan IF their inventories loaded with some numbers of trade goods. speed and exhaust point shall be implemented into it as well.

♦ NPC (bandit, king, vassal, etc) at night would be better if they transformed into a camp icon as well, this would be great i think.

just it from me, hope it wasn't too much bringing troubles.

thank you,
best regards

Light and Darkness is not well known, but it is pretty unique too, the only story-driven RPG-like mod I know. The English is a bit bad though, though I find it hilarious.

Rigales...is still in the works. Gsanders is merging it with Diplomacy, but we don't know whether Cernunos (the creator) will continue Rigales. He's been out of the forums for a while due to some problems with an admin.

 

[gsanders]

If Cernunos drops out I plan to continue repairing it up to my "standards",
if only because if v11 does go OSP I want it to be as clean as I can make it in a short period of time.  The code does some unique things but formatting is inconsistent and that hides a type of technical error Lav's WRECK was useful in finding.

I'll clean those errors and organize the code so entry level modders (like me 4 months ago) can better see the flow (and I can make sure the flow the compiler is making matches what our eyes THINK it does).

  As for game flow, Empires III took Rigale (v9) and Diplomacy (4.2) and made Rigale flow smoother in towns and while moving around.  I'd like to see this code change a little to do stuff like that over time, with permission from the two, who I consider as colleagues AND friends.  Lor Dric isn't interested in having his code as an OSP, but I like the way he broke the too full town menu into a  "downtown" section and a "normal" section, so when the cheat menu is enabled you can still find the "leave" menu item and the guild crafting selections.

  The Feb 13th build I put up in my thread actually was meant as a technical preview and isn't really ready to do much game stuff, due to no soldier hirelings.  I'll add mercenaries at the tavern and put back town recruits in 2 days; at that time I'll use whatever the newest files I've cleaned for the compiler and maybe it will be smoother.  I also have to get to the bottom of an animation / skeletons resource file issue from mixing Diplomacy 4.3 resources and Rigale resources.  I had to turn off horses which is just plain silly.  Thus I was saying "Friday" as the likely next build.

  I've put many thousands of keystrokes into reformatting the source code and I think its starting to look like it should for scripts, the largest file within the sources.  Next I'll do game_menus, which is the second largest and for this merge the hardest of all the files to work with.  After that I'm tempted to leave the code as is except for bug fixing, as the other modules aren't as critical from a code standpoint; maybe simple_triggers and dialogs can get a quick going over but they're not in bad shape.  Most of the "action" is scripts and game_menus.
 
  The true value of Rigale isn't just as a stand-alone mod, but as a starting point for do-it-yourself mod making.  That is why I wanted to put a merged latest Rigale and latest Diplomacy together, clean the layout as best I can, and make it easy to read the flow.  It turned out this has been a lot more work than I expected, and taken much time from Perisno.  On the other hand, I think Rigale ADDS value to "blockbuster games" like Perisno, so I wanted to prepare it to be a useful layer -- which means testing it first OUTSIDE a big mod so that THIS part is clean before importing it.  I cant even imagine how much trouble there would be if 200K downloaders got stuck in a city and couldn't leave.  I'd never hear the end of it.  But doing homework now and cleaning it up, putting a few frills in to make it more fun for players to test out, and generally porting layers to fuller featured mods like Empires III -- and a month, even two months (its been a month already!) spent on Rigale at the cost of my other commitments -- well, it's a "strategic investment".  I think in the long term the players benefit.  I keep seeing little snippets that I wish *I'd* written, and shake my head that its so ignored for lack of a little "glitter". 

  OK well, Cernunos knows I intend to do something and I intend to do all I promised him.  Now all I have to do is type fast, which I "can do"...

  - GS

 

[zykox]

What Empires III mod? Did I miss something? 

Actually, there has been such a sudden surge of new mods recently, I'm totally baffled. If you make a Rigales + Diplomacy mod OSP, there should be even more coming up! 

Heck, I don't have TIME to play so much! Warband mods are becoming a very guilty pleasure! 

That said, I just started doing a "Let's play" series with "Light and Darkness" and "Prophesy of Pendor". I am definitely not going to be a pro youtube channeler, but I should consider doing a video on one of the blockbuster mods, lol. Not that I think a lot of people would be interested...

gsanders, you could do a "let's mod" series for Warband! Entry level modder 4 months ago? So you had no idea of coding before? 

 

[gsanders]

I last coded seriously 25 years ago in what was then Borland C++
  which was neat because I was tech support once upon a time (1983-84) at Borland, starting when their USA group had 6 employees (and 3 overseas coders).

  I had a 13 line BBS in 1990-93 running 120K lines of licensed source code from MajorBBS and a number of games that I tried to heavily mod.  I felt I really didn't have the "right stuff" to make the one game in my mind back then, which STRONGLY resembles Perisno.  So imagine me 25 years later trying to be a tester for .70 Perisno, and when nothing I reported was fixed and that team dissolved, playing Phantasy Calradia, Brytenwalda, and Floris.  Even a few weeks of PoP, which I felt really was needlessly grinding.  I wanted to cruise through the beginning game and get into the mid game quickly, a concept I forced onto Perisno, which had a vacuum for coders 4 months ago when I begged to join them.  It turned out I was the only "serious" coder for fixing bugs; the others wanted to do R&D or flat out play other games that weren't broken.

  Thus a frantic 4 months of love-hate with more bugs than I knew what to do with and no support from anyone else.  I think that grew me.  Perisno isn't bug free yet, but I'd say its "bug lite".  Nearly every quest is broken and if it was my mod I'd just cut them all out and dump them.  Most of the other sections DO work correctly.  There was a serious issue with other races having flipped dialog for genders, all males got the female lines and vice versa, and every test was backwards.  I fixed that first, and it took 6 weeks to do it in depth.  I had to remake the aristocracy families as there were many new kingdoms than the native 6, and now there are 180 kingdom ladies, of which only 4 give problems -- two "orphans" without fathers or brothers and 2 princesses - female lords that preceeded me and have been no end of trouble.  I finally have those straightened out for the upcoming .74"final" patch.  And when that hits I'm under-employed again.  I did fix beacoup script issues in that time, and my skills greatly improved.  Perisno is a pretty hot property, not the least because it has some of the top art, sceners, musicians, and modellers working for free with all their heart and soul.  I just do coding, the boring stuff between cutscenes if you're a graphics oriented person.  Its also got a huge amount of OSP works spliced into it, and the intersection between those and the rest of the non-native things are where most of the other issues come from.

  Well, don't get me started on Perisno.  My interest in Rigale?  I have two goals: one is to add a meta-game that isn't just "killing stuff for experience and loot".
In order to break the dependence on slavery, the entire economy needs to be rebuilt, layer by layer.  Players need a method to get gear, early game income, and especially if I can move it to coop "shared campaigns" then some interaction among players that ISNT PVP driven.  To me that screams "player crafting".
Being a lazy spud I'm happy to take it from OSP if it does what I need, but I don't really like to be shackled into doing everything some other person's way.
I need to be able to rearrange as needed, change something deep if I feel it needs it, and extend layers that first may not seem all that useful, to create support for things that just don't exist yet among the mods here.  I've had more than 30 years to think about what I want -- I was imagining the needed steps at Borland, as I was being interviewed, and at the time my PC at home had 1/64000 times less bandwidth for CPU, system RAM, video bandwidth, and video graphics processing.  The algorithms of 1980s are still in use today -- but perhaps 10,000 times bulkier than the recursive descent assembler and 32K library used by Turbo Pascal in October 1983.  The IBM PCjr had 48K RAM, and could compile 16000 lines of Turbo Pascal in about 40 seconds, with a 4.77 Mhz 8-bit, single core, single threaded CPU that needed an average of 12-20 clockes per instruction.  I spent about $1300 USD in 1983 and it didn't even have a hard disk; I had to borrow $1000 more to get a 10 MB HDD.  The same budget spent Christmas 2013 got me a 4 Ghz I7-4820K with 4 cores / 8 threads processing 64-bit memory and using an average 1.2 clocks per instruction.  My 192K RAM is now 16 GB.  My CGA 320x200 == 64K pixels is now 2 megapixels with 640 CUDA cores to offload 3D graphics calculations, using PCI-e v.3 signaling for 16-bit lanes moving at greater than gigabit per-lane speeds.  Node to node grid PC communication changed from 300 baud modem to gigabit Ethernet.  I have 5 PCs at home, down from a 1992 high of 8 PCs, and most of them are well built up.  The world has changed.  Your cell phone has thousands of times the bandwidth of a 1983 PC2.

  So basically, I'm a new programmer from old school, and the chief coder for Perisno 7-series during the last 4 months.  I'll be less active for Perisno .8, but I do hope to correspond with interesting layers.  Rigale has many layers of interest as a base for a smooth RPG, and I want to use that and some resources from Perisno as a first stage "sub mod", with experimental features and ideas that haven't been done yet.  After I exited coding I studied hardware -- I know systems architecture extremely well now.  I'd like to eventually have a coop campaign by summer, running something quite a bit different from Perisno as it is now.
Something I don't need permission to change around; so probably I'll have to make my own way "soon" (TM). 

    I thank Cernunos for having faith in me enough to loan me his quiet little project, and it's my philosophy not to take unless I can trade something of equal value.  Thus work on Perisno I gained much and gave much.  I plan to do the same here and with Empires III.
(Empires III link):
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,293561.0.html

  I plan a 3 part trilogy: "the Prince" is stage 1  SP only with eventual magic and a 2-layer map.
                                  "Phosphor"  adds LAN sockets and changes the static SP campaign into a virtual array of player instances, with all SP scripts losing the presumption that the only player of interest is called "trp_player".  I have a scene to allow grid based processing across multiple nodes to drive many concurrent players as peers, each being both a server and a client and not really using Warband server.  If I use messaging as warband server its just to put messages between nodes, but there is too much overhead for most of the things that need doing.  I'd also like to manage savegames differently to stop having savegame issues as patches are made.  And of course I have to have each node check itself for cheats and hacks to its local files, both at start and on demand, as its not always clear who will attempt to copy altered .txt files from Morghs after joining a coop session.

                                this leads to "the Pearl", which does need a traditional server to store all characters and lets me do savegame migrations transparently to the user.  I have about $30K USD to fund these layers, but I'm now old and in poor health, so it remains to be seen whether I can make it happen in time to see the 3rd layer.  If not, its been fun anyway. 

          Enough of me.  All that matters is whether or not something "new" is made.  Almost anyone can fire up canned code and change a name or two.  The test is this:
    :can the dev THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX"?

    It remains to be seen.

    - GS

 

[zykox]

QUOTE: "this leads to "the Pearl", which does need a traditional server to store all characters and lets me do savegame migrations transparently to the user.  I have about $30K USD to fund these layers, but I'm now old and in poor health, so it remains to be seen whether I can make it happen in time to see the 3rd layer.  If not, its been fun anyway. "

You might want wanna save the supergrand plans for Bannerlord...  But it sounds quite interesting. I wonder what world you have in mind.

Anyway, I'll be looking forward to your work, and try to appreciate it as much as a non-coder can. I promise I'll take a closer look at Perisno again soon.
Though I admit that Mels Perisno seems a lot more interesting than just the "base" mod.

Ah well, me and my ranting. If there is anything I can ever do to help you, please tell me. It is a rare experience for me, to get to know someone with so many admirable sentiments and ethics. 

For now, I am looking forward to enjoying my long awaited vacation to Taipei, Taiwan and then Germany. 

 

[gsanders]

I need to make a running head start.  If I didn't code until bannerloard, I'd need to wait until bannerlord PLUS so many years development.
  If I code now for warband, which is out and working, then re-porting to bannerlord will be a small detail compared to making something that can touched before hand.  It needs to have critical mass before asking anyone's help, or paying them.  I live in East Europe now so programmers are a dime a dozen, yet really if I cant do much of it myself then its never going to be finished. I don't have deep enough pockets; I don't quality for a pension and I don't have but the inheritance from my dead parents, and even that wont last.  What I can do is build skills now for a rainy day.

  I envy you a trip to Taiwan, and hope you enjoy that.  I wish I knew Mandarin; my best work was for a series of Mandarin speaking firms so it brings good memories... I'm fair with chopsticks, but that's not the same thing.

  - GS

 

[zykox]

I perfectly understand your thinking g-man, but I don't think Warband stuff will be portable to Bannerlord.

Have you seen the Bannerlord engine? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obO5sbziqjM

It's a completely new engine built from scratch, and graphically on a completely new level, so I doubt even models are worth importing to Bannerlord.

All I'm saying is, don't plan to grand for Warband, while I still think it's perfectly fine to make your own (sub-)mod as I think Bannerlord is still another 2 years away. I simply wouldn't invest big money in such a project though.
IF you get permission to use Perisno sources, though, then it's a different matter. With tweaking and customization, you might even be able to release your own DLC for Warband next year, or at the release year of Bannerlord (which would still be feasible, since Bannerlord has entirely different system requirements, and may not be bug-free).

I didn't know East Europe had so many programmers about...I'll keep that in mind.

You don't need to envy my trip. It's a non-paid vacation, so any savings I had accumulated over the year are practically gone. My hopes are to release my first mini-funky-game this year. I won't promise it's longterm fun, but it should be fun for at least 1 hour xD

On a sidenote, how long would it take for an amateur to learn Warband coding?

 

[gsanders]

I think you could dive in with a very simple tweak in a week.

Recommend adding 1 new troop or item, or change the price of butter, and see if you can compile native warband module
system to save your changed .txt files and copy them to native.  Then if you do see your 1 change, go to modules folder under warband, copy folder "native", paste, rename "copy of native" to "test", and start trying some of the code snippets posted at

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/board,229.0.html

  to understand what each thing does try
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,56798.0.html

  and before you type your first line you probably should know your life is 20 times easier if you grab Lav's
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,324874.0.html

  and copy header_operations.py over whatever Taleworld uses in the module system of your choice.
  The reason is it has the entire syntax for every line clearly defined, including whether your version of Warband still supports that instruction or what to use instead (useful if you are looking at source for a 7 year old Mount&Blade module to run it under Warband).