Sneak Peek

[Crax]

The warband port will be awesome, only the added feature of vanilla warband are making the port worth it.

 

[tragos]

This mod is the reason that Warband gets the minimum of my gaming time, POP3 being one of the most time-consuming and enjoyable games I've ever played in my life. And at the age of 41, believe me, I've played LOTS of games.

Here, too, apart from the fact that i like m&b classic more than warband.
Once you go POP you never look back.


Saxon , head coders are masochists or something ? It is a mod project without dead lines and you don't have to sign any contract .

 

[SXIII]

You might call them that, butit's more about the satisfaction in creating something great - you can draw some comparisons with why people like rpg games - lots of ''grinding'' (coding) and a big smile when you finish.

 

[littlemikey]

Hello everyone,

(I posted this once before some time ago.. I think it deserves to be reviewed).

I would like to help everyone understand what is going on, and what this takes and why, under no circumstances, is it in your best interest to ask for a time-frame. 

Please do not take this as anything negative on your part for asking Templar_fan. 

I just want to take this opportunity to educate everyone on what is happening “behind the curtain” so-to-speak.

MadVader is the project lead with the Port to Warband.  This is not easy work even for a very talented and disciplined coder which MV happens to be.

As the lead in this project and the other projects (mods) like this, you wake up in the morning around 5:30 because you cannot sleep.  You grab a cup of coffee and open up the computer and respond to the messages from team members that are in different parts of the world and who are ending their day as you are beginning yours.

You eat, rush to your day job where you are lucky if you only work 9 hours.  You come home, say a cursory “Hello!” to your family and then sit down at the computer, take care of the messages that came in for the day while you were working, then start coding for five or six hours.  You are lucky get to sleep by midnight and are still wired because of everything you need to do.

You look forward to the weekends as you can put in 18 hours on Saturday and another 12 on Sunday to code, communicate, plan, test, recode, retest, rinse and repeat.  You wake up tired, you go to bed exhausted.

You work from a list of "Things to Do". 

You cross off each issue; you get discouraged if more lines are added than you cross off every time you sit down to do work.  You have to manage a dozen or more other people who usually have ruffled feathers about some issue with writing, concept, artwork, features, or that another team member is bugging them and they cannot deal with them effectively.

This goes on for months…maybe over a year in some cases.

At first, your orientation is open, figuring out what to do.  This is the fun and easy part and everyone thinks that to give an idea is all roses and pleasant fragrance.  It is free-form brainstorming and nearly all gamers love to get involved at this point.

This is the illusion of game design.

Folks see the ideas and see the results and do not have a clear concept of how it goes from brain to code to finished product.  It takes a great deal of knowledge, and even more self discipline.

As time goes by the focus of the coding lead is strictly on one thing… getting it done. 

You are keenly aware of Return on investment of your time and effort.  The least amount of effort for the most amount of gain.

The main coder gets defensive when anything causes them more time, more effort or more energy that they do not have to spare to deal with new features, what-if scenarios, and what seem to be unnecessary issues, and time wasting effort.

Once they reach this point, every question of “when is it going to be done?” increases frustration to a person who is usually already at the brink.  What happens is that in a moment of fatigue, the lead will give a time frame.  As soon as that is posted the expectation to deliver heats up and then the lead coder stops sleeping.  This is the point where the coder reaches burnout and makes big mistakes or just gets so fed up with the whole thing that they just “barf it out”, throw out the desire for quality as at this point the only thing on his/her mind is “just make it stop!”

This, dear friends, is why all of the great and respected folks in communities like this eventually leave.  I can list many of them here, people whom I greatly respect, provided amazing value to these communities with their knowledge and skill: They are gone. 

So, the next time you are looking at any mod, and they are working on it, just give them your support and kind words of encouragement.  That is helpful as these words help energize the mod leader and the team members and feel that they are appreciated for the amount of hours they put into a mod of this size and complexity.  It gives them a sense of value for what they are sacrificing their time for. 

Up to the 3.01 release of Prophesy of Pendor we have racked up around 3800 hours of effort.  The vast bulk of this will always be on the main coder.  So far I estimate that the various team members have donated another 1200-1500 hours so far on the Port to Warband.

Do not ask for time frames, do not add any more pressure to the guy or team who is trying their best to finish up a project. 

It is this pressure and the perception that the main coder may have that his effort is not appreciated that will make a project fail.  You, as community members and beneficiaries of the work of people like this, have direct impact on the success or failure of these projects. 

Use this power wisely. 

Kindest regards,

Saxondragon

Thankyou for that explanation SD, I'm sure people will begin to understand the kinds of sacrifices you guys in the Dev team do. Also please give a huge thankyou to your families, they are the ones who seem to get the short straw here. Tell them how much we love you guys

 

[lancer63]

Quality can't be rushed and every new version you guys have delivered is top notch.
It will take whatever amount of time it must take and I for one are happy about it.
Cheers.

 

[Sn0bb]

Certainly the most anticipated mod for Warband. Last time I played this excellent mod was when it was at 2.02 version and even then it was superb. Sadly I moved on to Warband, but im glad to see this mod being ported. Take your time though as I have seen many mods in Warband which have many bugs and it is rather annoying.

 

[Dark Death]

OMD OMD!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What's this!? WARBAND POP RULES!!!!

Will you lend me 30 euros to buy it? XD

 

[noosers]

Yes. Some people have not bought Warband yet.

 

[mr48]

OMD OMD!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What's this!? WARBAND POP RULES!!!!

Will you lend me 30 euros to buy it? XD

30 euros? Just check Steam and other such services (D2D, gamersgate, etc) regularly and you can find it for much less. I for example picked it up on Steam for 10 bucks a few months ago.

And to the dev team, if you guys are matching the description of the work schedule that SD described earlier, you should take a break, that kind of workload is just ridiculous. As much as I want the port to come out as soon as possible, I am seriously worried about you guys. We wouldn't want you to burn out 

 

[Qnevven Zolond]

Yes. Some people have not bought Warband yet.

i'm planning to buy a 3pack released in my country (gold collection) which includes vanilla M&B, "With Fire and Sword" and "Warband"  right now the retail price is about 30 Euro but i have been told there is going to be a sale within next two weeks so i'm hoping to get all 3 games much cheaper (even though i already own a box edition of M&B)

 

[faigulla]

I was a beta player last year and when real life kicked in I stopped playing it. I had a blast at it... I was away for a long time and missed Warband's 10€ sale... I'm not buying it for 30.

 

[Dark Death]

The fun thing is, that I can buy it only online, so its a little bit expensive...
It hasn't come out at stores yet 
Besides, I am having a hard time while at after school lessons (30 hours per week), so I don't have enough time to search at video game stores.

 

[Dark Death]

But the serial key I bought for M&B 1.011, isn't accepted by Warband.
Weren't we supposed to buy another serial key in order to play Warband full?



In warband activation menu, it says"enter your serial key (you can copy and paste it) and click activate."
I enter my M&B 1.011 serial key, but it says "activation denied".


Oh! When at the buying-serial-key-menu, it says "Mount&Blade Warband - 1.101  Electronic    22.42 EUR" so I thought I could use my previous bought serial key.

Hehe... What a n00b...

 

[Fawzia dokhtar-i-Sanjar]

You have to buy a new serial key for Warband.

 

[froggyluv]

Awesome job littlemikey!

 

[Melquiades]

Reading this thread is what finally prompted me to buy Warband. I've played it for a couple of days now and even with some of the great singleplayer mods that have already been released, it still doesn't measure up to PoP for me, so I'll be shelving it until the port is done.

As for beta testing, how does one submit an application for it? (if it's still possible) I haven't seen any threads or such around the board and I'd be happy to sink some hours looking around for bugs.

 

[Fawzia dokhtar-i-Sanjar]

Thank you very much, but we have plenty of beta testers at present for the PoP 3 port to Warband.