What happened to map position based battle terrain?

[Mad Vader]

Do you want me to play the saxophone? ? Come this way.

Don't go quietly into the night playing saxophone and violin! Justice for Sargoth!

 

[Terco_Viejo]

I'm looking forward to reading that answer in that support thread .

Spoiler: ?

Thanks for the promo, again!

 

[FlowDream]

That's not what I asked though - not directly. I always asked for Procedural Battle terrain. I explained why I think it's the only proper solution for this mess in many other threads before so I won't explain again.

I think you are referring to this discussion where Piconi said he would like to have something like this, and I told him that it's possible but also saying

And I thought it could be done as a mod until TW decides to take any action on this. We didn't even suggest that as a suggestion to Dejan if I'm not mistaken.

I'm pretty sure no one would say anything if they had plans like "We know that battle maps are not sufficient right now but we will bring procedural generation before the release" but instead they choose to continue with this extremely inefficient battle terrain system, and they decided to do that while one of the core functionality of the game is broken ( Sieges )
Now you can say "Sieges are AI issue not scene" but that's not entirely the case, since they claimed that it's also a scene issue. If they had plans to have procedural generation, then the engine team or any other team that is not environment artists, would pick this task and start working on it while environment artists were working on fixing the scene issues of sieges to make them less unplayable. So at the end you would have a proper battle terrain and also semi-fixed and/or finished town scenes.
But with this approach now they piled tons of work to environment artists. They have to fix scene issues on Sieges, they have to create more towns, villages, castles, and they have to create battle maps for 150 regions ( and some of the existing maps are already hilariously simplistic and low-quality ) - so if they will make a sloppy job, it will result in really bad and terrible battle terrain at the end.

But in the end, literally every solution, including this terrain system, would be better than what we currently have. So I'm okay with this as long as they can make it properly ( which I, unfortunately, don't have faith in because it seems like maps are scaled down too much in terms of real/map ratio )
"Lets have maps and pick them randomly based on type" is one of the laziest decision TW took and whoever suggested this should reconsider his knowledge in game design because it's not just lazy but also completely against to Game UX principles.

This is professional speak of true programmer. As to me, random map system is the best choice, the map system now they use make this game fully battle simulator, when I join a battle after 20 times in one same terrain, I feel I am a stupid guy that why not I just do it in battle simulator page? It is boring and destroy immersion.

 

[Lusitani 5th Empire]

This is professional speak of true programmer. As to me, random map system is the best choice, the map system now they use make this game fully battle simulator, when I join a battle after 20 times in one same terrain, I feel I am a stupid guy that why not I just do it in battle simulator page? It is boring and destroy immersion.

(IIRC) You won't start always in the same position and orientation even if the map is the same, it will depend on your coordinates in the campaign map. I think this will attenuate the problem you mention, hopefully to the point it isn't a problem.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

I just hope they make them BIG, if you're going to have a mechanic like armies that created 1k+ size battles all the time you need BIG BIG maps!

 

[High Solar]

HYPE

 

[Mad Vader]

I just hope they make them BIG, if you're going to have a mechanic like armies that created 1k+ size battles all the time you need BIG BIG maps!

Since they need to cater to whole range of battle sizes, it's best if they can scale the map somehow according to number of troops in the battle.
If the maps can be dynamically resized, they could resize the soldiers to be smaller when there are many of them.

 

[MostBlunted]

If the maps can be dynamically resized, they could resize the soldiers to be smaller when there are many of them.

They´ve already experimented with this feature:

You could fit double the amount of soldiers in the same place, that´s just brilliant! Would be nice if you could throw this soldier type like an ultra javelin. Maybe use it as a siege weapon too?

 

[NPC99]

Since they need to cater to whole range of battle sizes, it's best if they can scale the map somehow according to number of troops in the battle.
If the maps can be dynamically resized, they could resize the soldiers to be smaller when there are many of them.

I would expect a battlefield system that reflects the campaign map to use standard size maps. I doubt that Main_map's 4k heightmap is adequate to procedurally generate decent mission scenes, but it might be used to create outer meshes so the horizons resemble the campaign map. Town and castle map icons were manually constructed to reflect their settlement scenes, suggesting battle scenes might also be manually crafted to reflect sections of the campaign map. I hope not, as thats tons of work for TW or any full conversion mod team. My guess would be ordinary battle scenes (letting TW reuse those already made) with recognisable outer meshes and campaign map orientated starting positions.
Any sea, lake or mountain has to be at a map edge or in the outer mesh or there would be no room to fight on an optimally sized battle map - 2Km x 2Km (10 x 10 nodes, 200m node length, 128 x128 resolution per node).

 

[Philozoraptor]

We have to take a lot of things into consideration when creating a scene, and especially with this new system that looks to mirror the campaign map, so I think you might be underestimating the work required.

Please look into reinforcement points while you are reworking maps. Specifically troops should come "from behind map" not teleport into middle of map, its both immersion and gameplay breaking at the moment.

Also try to avoid big rocks in the middle of the map, I know they are artistic and stuff but they are really bad for AI unless you are overhauling pathfinding and formation location calculations of AI too.

 

[Bjorn The Dead]

You won't start always in the same position and orientation even if the map is the same, it will depend on your coordinates in the campaign map. I think this will attenuate the problem you mention, hopefully to the point it isn't a problem.

This is what I thought when they first announced the new map system in one of their devblogs at 2018 or 2019. After 400 hours, I think I was dump back then.

 

[Roy1012]

I've commented on it countless times in the past... ??

Mod Calradia Expanded since its release on 9 May 2020 already fixed that problem (adding high doses of beautification which Taleworlds seems to be putting on the TODO list indefinitely) and that to this day Sargoth is still in that wrong location is the epitome of the Bannerlord experience™...

...things of "easy implementation" take ages to be revised and corrected because the planets have not aligned in the monthly meeting.



... Taleworlds priorities™... I guess... ???????????

Its funny when, despite taleworlds hostility towards mods and their active attempts to subvert and delay their ability to produce, they STILL get things done like this and a co op campaign (bannerlord online) done in weeks, when taleworlds can’t get it done in years. Really makes you wonder.

 

[Terco_Viejo]

Its funny when, despite taleworlds hostility towards mods and their active attempts to subvert and delay their ability to produce, they STILL get things done like this and a co op campaign (bannerlord online) done in weeks, when taleworlds can’t get it done in years. Really makes you wonder.

Certainly few things surprise me anymore in what has become the Bannerlord experience™... that Sargoth thing is remotely explainable.

Then we've talked about the spawns in the SP scenes, always in the same spots and thus increasing the dejavu effect. Why didn't they apply the random spawning that custom battle scenes have where each mission load is randomized under a certain coordinate as bandaid till BT arrives?.

This is what I thought when they first announced the new map system in one of their devblogs at 2018 or 2019. After 400 hours, I think I was dump back then.

This

In line with Philozoraptor's comments, I am concerned about the final implementation of the long awaited battle terrain system. Spawns and reinforcements will play an important role in the game with this system... if done well though.

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This "simulated miniaturisation" of a pure battle scene (not settlements) is interesting to me, to say the least.