Some Thoughts on M&B2

[Ursca]

Just some of my own ideas for making M&B2 substantially different from M&B1 while keeping the themes and gameplay similar.

1. More Characters.

As far as I can tell, the two main problems with having too many characters on the battlefield are the Poly count and the AI.
The poly count could be remedied by judicious use of LOD models and sprites, like many other games.
In a similar way, the LOD concept could be applied to the AI - a 'Macro' AI could apply to all the troops far away from the character, calculating them as units and turning combat into a purely mathematical affair. As troops pass close to the Player's character, the 'Micro' AI kicks in, and they start acting like they currently do in M&B. These two techniques should allow a good number on the troops on the battlefield without too many problems.

2. Substantially Larger Battlefields.

By this, I mean Total-War scaled. Most tactics were based not around the maneuvering troops in combat, but rather by using the landscape to your advantage. M&B has a certain amount of this already, but the ability to position your troops on a large hill, behind a wall or across a ploughed field would give a lot more depth. This is largely linked to suggestion 3.

3. More Detailed, Realistic Battlefields and Terrain Advantages.

At the moment, battlefields in M&B are quite dry when it comes to details. There are lumpy hills and rivers but that's about it. In reality, trees would be loosely clumped together into copses, there would be fields with crops and fences, farmhouses, roads, reed beds, bridges and rocky outcrops instead of fairly arbitrary boulders. With a larger battlefield, this would be even more important, as you would need to make choices as to where to position your troops. Should I set up a fortified position at the farmstead? Will my soldiers manage to reach it before the enemy arrives? Should I send my horse-archers out to harass the enemy to buy them more time?
Obviously, Ikisoft doesn't have the manpower to make the amount of maps necessary by hand, but perhaps a significantly more detailed terrain generation algorithm would work.
In common with some of the current terrain types, reed beds and ploughed fields should be slow to move through, heavy foliage or fields should be similar but also provide cover from missile weapons and similar.

4. Formations

A more advanced system to that already in place. The ability to split your troops into multiple formations of whatever composition and give them orders.

5. In-Depth Orders

Giving your troops orders is difficult at the best of times, and being in the heat of battle yourself just makes it more difficult. In reality, soldiers would have an initiative that is impossible to replicate in M&B. I propose a kind of time-freeze, 3rd person view that would allow you to order individual solders to specific positions and then allow you to unfreeze with the knowledge that the men will carry out your orders.

6. An AI Better Suited to Melee

At the moment, the M&B AI work quite well in a fairly open, spread out battlefield, but it starts to break down with more troops in close quarters. Polearm use links into this, because spears are pretty useless at the moment.

7. Different Movement Types.

Swimming, climbing siege ladders, crawling to avoid detection. Sprinting. Also things like grappling or shield bashing - I hate getting mobbed by peasants. It would be nice to have a way to break them up a bit or to get away from them.

8. Morale

As an extension to the Morale that is already in M&B, battlefield morale would be a great addition. Each character might have a personal Morale attribute that is affected by his own experiences as well as the morale of those nearby, making him flee from a difficult fight or fail to hold his ground against a cavalry charge. An excessively positive morale might be a problem too. A character with positive morale might be susceptible to feigned retreats by the enemy. There should be a certain amount of positive feedback from feedback that would turn a trickle of fleeing soldiers into a full-blown rout, or a couple of over-zealous chasers into a pursuit.

Hopefully these ideas combined would give M&B a lot more tactical depth and realism.

9. Multiplayer

It's a bit hard to see how one of M&B2's anticipated features would fit in - multiplayer.
A head-to-head battle between two commanders would be obvious as would a cooperative mode with two or more players commanding the same army up against the AI. Many combinations of players and AI commanders could work.
A skirmish mode would also be good, setting players against each other in a purely combat-orientated arena, perhaps with persistent characters.

10. Modding

I'd love to see the same level of modding available for M&B2 as it is for M&B1 with the addition of multiplayer mods.
It would be great to have it as open as possible, with almost anything possible in single player also possible in multiplayer. Changing scenes, item vendors, perhaps even the ability to store a character on a server somewhere to keep them consistent through games. The ability to play a game online, have some brief post-battle calculation and then the ability to purchase new equipment and spend experience before you character is saved until the next game would be brilliant.

So there we go. Quite a lot of reading, but hopefully it's food for thought. I might add some diagrams to break it up a bit.
Any thoughts?

 

[Ilex]

I think M&B2 should have better graphics. If not that, then HDR and bloom.

 

[italiano]

1. I agree with the stronger implementation of LOD. Only small number of items make great use multiple LODs, with most only using a distant LOD or not at all. You could even swap in 2d sprites at a certain distance. The main problem with the numbers in battle is really the amount of troops quite close to you, as massed troops are generally the only time I've ever experienced stutter (even with hi-res textures and troops using the more attractive items). I have no idea of the offscreen AI and physics calculations, but I'm sure similar improvements can be made.

2. Larger battlefields and a slower-paced battle. Time to position our troops and for missile troops to fire effective volleys. Size is important, although the organisation and behaviour of battle is of significantly more importance to me.

3. The maps are generally ok. It's not the battlefields themselves that need to be more detailed, but the border terrain. All it would take is low poly or 2d forests, distant settlements etc, and of course it needs to be much flatter in order to give an expansive feel.

4. The current system is ok, it just needs to be tweaked.

6. The main problem with melee AI is their failure to block unless attacking, the hesitation in their backswing, their slowness to counterattack and their inability to following up on successful strikes. In an effect to keep greater distance in combat (to solve them wanting to fight in your face), it seems they have also been made far too cautious. At times these problems weren't an issue (before the gap I remember counterattacking and following up as fine, and I remember one fairly recent build had no backswing hesitation).

7. I would suggest march and running, with marching being used up until the fighting starts.

8. Of course.

10. Of course, and as I'm sure you are aware a number of the points here have or will be addressed with M&B mods.

I think M&B2 should have better graphics. If not that, then HDR and bloom.

And put me out of a modding job?

 

[bob505]

don't get ur hopes up because there might not be a M&B2 but i could be wrong

 

[Dindi]

don't get ur hopes up because there might not be a M&B2 but i could be wrong

Epic fail

Some more ideas:
In battles with allied lords I would like to see each lord order his own troops, therefore one lords army could take the charge while another flanked the attackers.

Also I would like more atmosphere in towns, time should pass in town and guards could have shifts and shops could close at a set time , people should interact with each other, maybe introduce a number of talking animations??

 

[Inukshuk]

The ability to play a game online, have some brief post-battle calculation and then the ability to purchase new equipment and spend experience before you character is saved until the next game would be brilliant.

I'd say that this should be in native multiplayer. You should be able to create a character, and calculations are carried out to see how much money you win each game. This is based on how many other players you killed, and how much better or worse those players were (for example, if you are level 12 and you kill someone who is level 28, you'll receive a relatively decent amount of money. If it was the other way round, you would recieve a small amount of money). You can then spend this money on new equipment. Bear in mind though, that the money you recieve for each game should not be huge. We don't want people wearing full reinforced plate armour and wielding balanced great swords after just a few games. Also, if killed in one game, you should re-spawn, instead of being taken back to a lobby and having to join the same game again, or a different game. Games should have rounds as well, and after so many rounds, the server goes to the next map. Rounds could be ended by a set time limit or kill limit (who ever reaches the kill limit or has the most kills at the end of the time allowed wins), or when killed, you become a spectator (like using edit mode in a battle, but with the ability to 'follow' others) until the new round starts. This way, the last team or man standing wins.

Alternatively, there could be troop pre-sets. For instance you start as a militia, and if you do well in the game, you get promoted into a better unit. If you do really well as one of the best units available, you can chose to use your customised character. There could be a lot of different game types as well - siege battles, team field battles, free for all, capture the flag etc, all from a selection of maps like 'old ruins', 'Grunwalder castle" "Tahlberl", "Forest" etc. There could also be randomly generated maps, whereby the host just chooses terrain (grassy plane, mountains, forest, snowy wasteland etc).

Anyway, just my thoughts, next person:

 

[bob505]

if multiplayer was in M&B2 or in another version this is how i would want it

first u create an account and then at the start u automatically get 10 troops free but then once u start winning battles against people u get denars or point etc. then u could use the danars or points to buy equipment and troops and to get bigger party sizes etc.

this is just how i want it

 

[Inukshuk]

The thing is though, if someone new joins when not many new people are joining, there going to have a very hard time indeed.

 

[Merlkir]

Ursca, you must be my soulmate or something! you named everything I could think of. Good job.

edit: one thing I would expand a bit is the combat system. While it's easy to understand and easy to learn and hard to master, it's very simple. Ursca already said "more moves". I'd say "more complex". Not blade physics or anything. Just..more realistic and making sense. More moves is one thing - Secondary attacks, grappling, shield bashing, all that. More complex - more complex calculations and behaviour. One of the things suggested a lot is breaking blocks with heavy weapons. Sabre blocking a mace would give as would a dagger trying to block a couched lance. I'd personally like to see more realistic animations (but I get it there's hope for that with the mocap) - no hard blocks, but parries etc. Basically, having a lot of custom animations helps making the fight look more real. If I get tired or wounded, the walking (maybe even fighting) animation should change. That brings me to wounds and bleeding. So far we have headshots and some other body parts that can take damage (judging from armor ratings on legs and such). It would be neat if my character walked with a limp after being hit in the leg with an arrow or if raising the shield with a cut arm was slower.
A perfect tool for that is Euphoria physics/AI engine.  I'm afraid it's too expensive for Taleworlds to implement. But something along those lines - characters having rules set for reactions to different situations and physical events - character hit in the shoulder bounces a bit back, holds the shoulder and moves like he's dizzy..etc.
http://www.naturalmotion.com/euphoria.htm

One of the things that please me most in Ursca's list is the AI  LOD system. Because I feel that AI eats a HUGE portion of power in MaB engine. If TW managed to scale it's impact depending on distance from the player, it might really allow for much larger scale battles.

edit II :  after watching the Euphoria video again, I think this is truly the future of gaming AI. It really looks SO much more believable and human-like, without previously made animations..

 

[italiano]

Because I feel that AI eats a HUGE portion of power in MaB engine

It does. Each soldier has to consider target, distance, when to block, when to swing, finding their way around etc. Not only that, but the damage and health of every attack and soldier must be calculated. I imagine that melee battle is probably the most stressful situation for a cpu. I have no idea whether off-field action is calculated as on-field action is, but obviously simulating it with a formula if possible would remove quite a lot of the demand. 'Faking' combat at distances further away from the player might be another possibility, using sprites and formulas instead of models, AI and physics.

one thing I would expand a bit is the combat system

I'd like to see improved animations (stepping animations rather than gliding) and secondary attacks would do it for me. Proper parrying would be nice, but when I play M&B, everyone in the game has a shield and one-hander.

Euphoria would be amazing, but even if cost wasn't an issue, wouldn't it have a massive impact on performance? GTA 4 doesn't have to calculate hundreds of bodies and weapons flying around.

I'm not really interested in multiplayer to be honest. For me it would feel like Total War without the main campaign.

 

[DamienZharkoff]

second life has a feature called "Avatar Imposters" which turns 3d images into 2d spirtes when far enough away to reduce lag and engine stress

 

[Ursca]

That Euphoria thing is ridiculously good. To be honest, I think good, smooth animation is more important for realism than HDR and Bloom or even good models and textures. It's one thing that really lets M&B down at the moment. Even smooth and realistic turning would add a great deal.

Zaro - I do think that battlefields need to be a bit more... No random. I mean, this is the site of the battle of Hastings -

It's probably changed quite a bit in the intervening years, but I'm sure most of the key places remain. The copses, hedges, paths and ponds would make a great battlefield to fight over, but at the moment M&B only really handles tree amount, terrain roughness and river placement.

Ursca, you must be my soulmate or something! you named everything I could think of. Good job.

edit: one thing I would expand a bit is the combat system. While it's easy to understand and easy to learn and hard to master, it's very simple. Ursca already said "more moves". I'd say "more complex". Not blade physics or anything. Just..more realistic and making sense. More moves is one thing - Secondary attacks, grappling, shield bashing, all that. More complex - more complex calculations and behaviour. One of the things suggested a lot is breaking blocks with heavy weapons. Sabre blocking a mace would give as would a dagger trying to block a couched lance.

I agree. I think the key is to keep it as intuitive as it is at the moment, while adding more depth. Like all the best games it needs to be easy to learn and difficult to master (Dwarf Fortress excepted).
At the moment, the head is really the best place to aim an arrow, whether the target is wearing a great helm or not. Certain parts of armour could be weaker than others - under the armpits for instance.
This is perhaps a little too complex though. The most important thing, I think, is to make combat smooth and believable. It's a bit choppy at the moment.

Making animations more contextual is one idea. A high blow while running forwards turns into a charging animation, while the same thing while moving backwards makes you step backwards with your weapon ready to strike.

Swimming and climbing would be contextual too. You start swimming when you reach a certain water depth, or you start climbing when you move forward onto a ladder. Attacking could be linked in too, with attack animations having their own variant whilst climbing.

One thing I did have some more ideas on is morale. Tracking morale for each character kind of defeats the object of having a LOD AI. Instead, you could link troops within a certain radius of each other into 'swarms'. These would probably correspond with a unit, but not always.

A swarm would share morale values. Troops killed within the swarm radius would have a negative effect on the morale of that swarm. Charging cavalry within a swarm radius would have a similar effect.
When two swarms meet, morale diffuses/averages between them. A fleeing swarm with negative morale that meets a swarm with good morale would lower the second swarm's morale but raise the first's. If the second swarm had morale close to the breaking limit, meeting the fleeing swarm would tip them over the edge into fleeing too.
There might be some problems with long strings of troops being grouped into the same swarm, so it might be worth limiting the swarm to units within a certain distance of the swarm's centre point.

Of course, this might all be even more CPU intensive than just working it out for each character. 

 

[italiano]

Better animations certainly, I pointed that out myself as I'd especially like to see soldiers step instead of glide. Euphoria though I imagine is pretty demanding, as is far more than just improved animations. For me, Euphoria on a large scale would not lead to more attractive battles than improved animations, hdr, models and textures. It's great and dynamic, but the game just isn't going to look good. However, I don't see why we can't have everything if it's done efficiently. Heavy use of LODs, mipmaps, offscreen calculation etc with localised Euphoria-type physics. Basically, maximise that close to us and minimise/remove everything else.

Battlefields, oh ok. For some reason I started going on about size, rather than detail. I agree but I'd start with making more heavy use of 3d grass (much of the ground is bare), to remove the hilly border terrain and make it a vast plain, and populate it with fake forests, castles and towns (simply like a billboard). If done right it would look great.

Tracking morale for each character kind of defeats the object of having a LOD AI

Chel's script seems reasonably efficient in that it just uses things that are already tracked and judges it as a force.

 

[Merlkir]

my note about Euphoria was meant as you suggested, keeping it very close to the player in the AI lod.

 

[Ironic]

I have an idea about what Ursca said that he was getting surrounded by peasants,(the idea is for M&B2), and I have thought of this myself too, that when you're on the ground and surrounded by whoever and your character should have a power, something like deadly swipe that would wipe away like two or three people in front of you, if you had a sword, if a spear it would stab through two people.  Some powers not to fancy. Would also need stamina for that.

Just ideas

 

[Shik]

I have an idea about what Ursca said that he was getting surrounded by peasants,(the idea is for M&B2), and I have thought of this myself too, that when you're on the ground and surrounded by whoever and your character should have a power, something like deadly swipe that would wipe away like two or three people in front of you, if you had a sword, if a spear it would stab through two people.  Some powers not to fancy. Would also need stamina for that.

Just ideas

No.

Hitting multiple people in one swing does not belong in M&B. That belongs in some ridiculous fantasy game.

 

[Archonsod]

In a similar way, the LOD concept could be applied to the AI - a 'Macro' AI could apply to all the troops far away from the character, calculating them as units and turning combat into a purely mathematical affair. As troops pass close to the Player's character, the 'Micro' AI kicks in, and they start acting like they currently do in M&B. These two techniques should allow a good number on the troops on the battlefield without too many problems.

Running two AI routines would actually be detrimental to performance under most circumstances, although I'd guess if you start with a dual core baseline it would be a non-issue.

3. More Detailed, Realistic Battlefields and Terrain Advantages.

The problem is more that the AI doesn't know how to use the terrain rather than a lack of features. You can put in as many hills as you like, they're not going to do much unless the AI understands that the hill allows it to shoot over the heads of the troops in front, and responds accordingly. The current battlefields would be fine if the AI was a bit more tactically aware, although having more natural tree clumps and the like would be nice (and good cover against archers...)

In reality, soldiers would have an initiative that is impossible to replicate in M&B. I propose a kind of time-freeze, 3rd person view that would allow you to order individual solders to specific positions and then allow you to unfreeze with the knowledge that the men will carry out your orders.

Initiative is a non-issue really; both your own troops and the enemy are under the same AI after all. Given a larger scale I would prefer a different command system altogether; something similar to Take Command would be nice - rather than ordering individual troops, you assign troops to commanders and issue your orders to the commander, who then seeks to fulfil them to the best of his ability.
Assuming the commanders are the NPC hero's it then you could bring both skills and personalities into play -  a character with poor leadership or tactics may screw up the orders somehow, similarly an aggressive persona may pursue the enemy rather than holding back, or a timid character may hold his ground rather than press the attack.

As an extension to the Morale that is already in M&B, battlefield morale would be a great addition.

Only tweak I would make is to have a character's leadership ability affect those around him. Troops near a character with high leadership would have higher morale due to his inspiring presence, while a character with poor leadership capabilities may be detrimental to morale

A head-to-head battle between two commanders would be obvious as would a cooperative mode with two or more players commanding the same army up against the AI.

One of the things which I think would work well is to "instance". Basically, rather than having every player running around the same world map, each player is basically playing their own instance of the game for most of the time. Set up some "rankings", perhaps the ten most honourable knights, the ten most dishonourable soundrels, the ten most famous warriors of Calradia for bragging rights. Chuck in a faction listing (Top five greatest Khergit warriors) so everyone can see where they are in the pecking order.
All you need do then is make specific towns as 'hubs' where players can meet and interact with each other, usual stuff - trade, PVP duels, participate in tournaments, challenge each other to battle and the like, and you've got gold. The best part is that most of the time the lion's share of the work is being done on the individual player's PC's, which means lower server overhead, allowing more players per game to be supported (in fact, ideally you could have it establish a peer to peer connection for duels and the like, with the machines reporting the results back to the server, thereby limiting server traffic to a minimum).
This would allow a dedicated server to be run by the players since the actual demands shouldn't be too high. You can therefore get a persistent world / character effect by having the files stored on the hosting machine rather than needing dedicated servers (bit like Freelancer did, for those who've played it) and of course if you give some decent admin tools alongside it the player hosting the server could chuck in their own events, tournaments et al for fun. Oh, and a nice touch would be to provide html export of character sheets or world rankings for even more bragging rights.

 

[DamienZharkoff]

I still want to see a dead rising style aim and order, with a shout of "Over there!"