What happened to map position based battle terrain?

Users who are viewing this thread

I think this might work in a samurai mod or similar, since some cultures actually did fight that way at certain times. But it shouldnt be the default thats for sure.

The only people for whom battlefield duelling would make sense are pacific islanders or masai warriors or whatever, where the warfare is on a tiny scale and is just a ritual, not a battle. Having 30+ guys somehow become completely intermingled and then fight 1v1s is ridiculous and never happened historically. The only reason people think it's real is because it's the easiest way to make a fight look cool in a film.

I definitely think fights should be way less cramped though, because currently most infantry attacks just bounce off, cavalry can barely kill anything in melee, and you can walk around a formation easily.
 
I think viking conquest had a very nice system in that matter, though the individual AI was lacking and the movement were a bit sudden, it got the grasp of it and tried to do it.


 
I think viking conquest had a very nice system in that matter, though the individual AI was lacking and the movement were a bit sudden, it got the grasp of it and tried to do it.

Absolutely, imagine that same thing with the Bannerlord engine and full control of AI behaviours with no hardcode road blocks. The ball has always been in Taleworlds' court...

I'm sorry to offtopic again, but I'm just " irked " by this situation.

Here's a quick test. Notice:



- Cohesion and how rows work
- Agent swapping positions in rows
- Control over spacing
- Follow me order with relative positioning
- Aerial view (this in Bannerlord could perhaps be introduced by unblockable perk no higher than that distance height (rts mod is too much imho))
- Correct use of fallback both automatic (follow me) and ordered (fallback 10 paces)
 
Absolutely, imagine that same thing with the Bannerlord engine and full control of AI behaviours with no hardcode road blocks. The ball has always been in Taleworlds' court...

I'm sorry to offtopic again, but I'm just " irked " by this situation.

Here's a quick test. Notice:



- Cohesion and how rows work
- Agent swapping positions in rows
- Control over spacing
- Follow me order with relative positioning
- Aerial view (this in Bannerlord could perhaps be introduced by unblockable perk no higher than that distance height (rts mod is too much imho))
- Correct use of fallback both automatic (follow me) and ordered (fallback 10 paces)


These fights are incredibly better!
 
Absolutely, imagine that same thing with the Bannerlord engine and full control of AI behaviours with no hardcode road blocks. The ball has always been in Taleworlds' court...

I'm sorry to offtopic again, but I'm just " irked " by this situation.

Here's a quick test. Notice:



- Cohesion and how rows work
- Agent swapping positions in rows
- Control over spacing
- Follow me order with relative positioning
- Aerial view (this in Bannerlord could perhaps be introduced by unblockable perk no higher than that distance height (rts mod is too much imho))
- Correct use of fallback both automatic (follow me) and ordered (fallback 10 paces)

It's really fascinating how real the combat feels in VC compared to Bannerlord... whole other level.

And all of that despite the inherent clunkyness of the warband engine... ?
 
Bloc and a few others asked for it here, and a few streamers mentioned it would be cool.
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
Would that work? Yeah. But could be too much effort.
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.
 
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.
What I recognized to be the problem in the developer philosophy if TW is that it seems they chose the "easy" way out in designing battles, and that can be evident in both siege battles and field battles. It seems to boil down to one factor - "we cannot force the AI to naturally do this, so we will make it artificially do it". Soldiers dont use the walls and barricades in sieges properly? Just put down predesigned "shooting spots" which they will try to get to even if there are enemies in the way. This leads to bots running past you and ignoring you just to get to the catapult or one spot on the wall, while turning your back to you completely. Problem solved. We cannot make procedurally generated randomised maps to increase replayability and battle variety? Well just make them yourself. Even in those same maps, this problem is evident. Cannot make your AI use hills and other obstacles (such as large rocks) naturally? Well just make an artificial ridge and code the AI to stand there in a shieldwall and circle formation.

The second problem is that some people do not understand what procedurally generated meant, and so it became apparent that many people here were opposed to it or in favour of it without knowing what it is. It is essentially a system of map randomisation, such as in Warband. It seems to me that people are against randomised maps because in warband they were wonky and not good. This was offset by many mods, such as polished landscapes. Other mods too made the randomised terrain flatter and the hills heights more nuanced. Some avoided the tree clutter that put some people off Polished landscapes, even though maps in that mod were often times superior than some we have currently. I mean, whats up with the birdge crossing maps we have? They are small and clunky, bots cannot navigate them and they are full of obstacles to horses. Other maps suffer from this too.

So my opinion is that it wouldve been a way better solution for TW to instead invest the resources into a better program of map randomisation. As in to not include wonky hills, janky rivers and rocks, avoid tree clutter etc. This would improve replayability, performance and make modding miles easier. We could already "choose" our battlefield by going to a hill/plain/river in warband and the map would be different. It does not need to, and probably should not have been, done in this way
 
All these VC videos makes me cry that bannerlord isn't like this ?. But my question is, did they had a different team when developing VC than what we have today? ? Kinda obvious but
 
arent they replacing a map with a Zoomed out one in battle map ? I think its the only way to do it correctly.
What ? They'd need a very high detailed Strategic map for that. I've create high detailed strat maps with satellite grey scale height map data but TW don't use this, they have a lower scale map.

Cannot wait to see the Bridge battle map, hope it's like the Medieval 2 Total War bridge battle map .

.
 
It wasn't made by Taleworlds they only produced VC. It was made by Brytenwalda.
I don't want to sound like I'm taking one iota of credit away from the Brytenwalda guys; my respects, always. However with these comments (I've read them before, - I don't mean to verbally attack you with it black_bulldog ? ? ) it seems like there is a desire to somehow "exculpate" or shift the spotlight away from Taleworlds.

I mean... one example.... Did Call of Duty stopped being Call of Duty because it was once developed by Sledgehammer games, Infinty Ward, Treyarch or the rest of the developers? Absolutely NO. Well the same with VC with Brytenwalda team and NW with flying squirre team, those are as M&B despite being a dlc as the other titles because officially in the eyes of the fan/consumer VC is the last title in the list of games in the M&B franchise.

By this I mean that all the mechanics and other features that belong to the M&B franchise together with the heritage obtained from the mods (quite essential for the players) should have been the primordial base from where to build Bannerlord with steel foundations... yes, it's not the first time I talk about it . :lol:
 
The second problem is that some people do not understand what procedurally generated meant, and so it became apparent that many people here were opposed to it or in favour of it without knowing what it is. It is essentially a system of map randomisation, such as in Warband.
No, It is not essentially a system of map randomization. Procedural Generation by default has nothing to do with randomness. It essentially a system of creating something with a known creation procedure.

By design, procedural generation should be deterministic. This means, if you previously put ABC and got 123 as result, after ten years, someone in mars will also get 123 if he/she puts ABC as input.
Now how you find ABC and how you translate that into 123 is your business. 123 can be a planet or terrain or simply a character. ABC can be biome, a random number or coordinate. Many games, including No Mans Sky, is using the coordinate or POI-based system. Based on your "coordinate" ( doesn't have to be X-Y only, could be your exact solar location in NMS universe as well ) system knows how many planets it should create. It knows how many of them are inhabitable. Because it's all hidden in the hashcode that your coordinate generated. But the planet itself is created in run-time when you enter the solar system of that planet. Not before, not handcrafted, created solely based on that complex hash or something similar. And all players enter to same solar system will see exactly same planets with exact same biomes.
Now you can have a generator function, that generates ABC-like hashcode, randomly, based on that second and you would still have a terrain/planet after you put that into your Generator. Of course since hashcode was randomly generated, now you will have unique maps - because you combined deterministic function with a nondeterministic process.

Rome Total War, on the other hand, is doing something different because it's based on a campaign map. Each time you go into battle, it takes a square of pixels out of it's heightmap and generating the map out of this texture snippet. Because it's terrain generation function takes an image, and creates the terrain with that heightmap image. Now can you create a completely random heightmap image? Yes. And if you create it and feed that to the terrain function, it will generate random terrain. Swyter knows it better I think but I'm guessing that's what Warband was doing. It was creating a seed based on your position and it was randomizing the features. Seed itself is not random and fixed, though it's just too hard to find exact same seed because it's too sensitive to change. That's why when you fight battles in 0.00001m away from your previous location, you were seeing a different map but still with similar features.


Although your first statement is correct about Taleworlds, they are choosing a no-brainer type of work over intellectual work when it comes to features. In Turkish, there is a word for it, called "Amelelik" which basically means manual labor where you don't need any qualification to do it, you only need a lot of free time. It seems like Taleworlds loves amelelik
 
Swyter knows it better I think but I'm guessing that's what Warband was doing. It was creating a seed based on your position and it was randomizing the features. Seed itself is not random and fixed, though it's just too hard to find exact same seed because it's too sensitive to change. That's why when you fight battles in 0.00001m away from your previous location, you were seeing a different map but still with similar features.
Yes, this is what I was talking about. English is not my first language and I'm sorry that I cannot fully express what I want to say in concise sentences. In no way do I mean complete randomisation in the full sense of the word. Thank you for the explanation too
 
Yes, this is what I was talking about. English is not my first language and I'm sorry that I cannot fully express what I want to say in concise sentences. In no way do I mean complete randomisation in the full sense of the word. Thank you for the explanation too
No worries, I explained that not for you but for others actually. Since I have seen a lot of comments like "Warband maps were terrible, procedural generation is bad" etc.
Well, Warband maps weren't the nicest, that's for sure, but it's because Warband's terrain generator was bad. Not because of the procedural generation idea itself. And it's more than fair to say that Warband did a good job back then. Because that same generation was used in the first MB too, which makes this entire generator algorithm ~12-13 years old.

What I find really funny is that, if Warband had a random scene system as we have in Bannerlord now and if now TW announces that they will bring a new feature to Bannerlord, generating terrains on the fly in one of their feature update blogs I'm 100% sure that all YouTubers would create videos like "AMAZING UPDATE COMING TO BANNERLORD OMG". But everyone is absurdly cool about this feature being missing in the so-to-speak better version of Warband. It's a huge step back from the previous title. The title that has been done 10 years ago.
 
I don't want to sound like I'm taking one iota of credit away from the Brytenwalda guys; my respects, always. However with these comments (I've read them before, - I don't mean to verbally attack you with it black_bulldog ? ? ) it seems like there is a desire to somehow "exculpate" or shift the spotlight away from Taleworlds.

I mean... one example.... Did Call of Duty stopped being Call of Duty because it was once developed by Sledgehammer games, Infinty Ward, Treyarch or the rest of the developers? Absolutely NO. Well the same with VC with Brytenwalda team and NW with flying squirre team, those are as M&B despite being a dlc as the other titles because officially in the eyes of the fan/consumer VC is the last title in the list of games in the M&B franchise.

By this I mean that all the mechanics and other features that belong to the M&B franchise together with the heritage obtained from the mods (quite essential for the players) should have been the primordial base from where to build Bannerlord with steel foundations... yes, it's not the first time I talk about it . :lol:
Yes Taleworlds made the engine, but they didn't make this game, tbf you're splitting hairs with this argument. It's like saying any game made with UE4 engine and assets was really just an Epic game.
 
Back
Top Bottom