Why developers designed different cultures similar？

[stevehoos]

Okay sherlocks, you keep those magnifying glasses busy lol. Dev teams are made from people who like video games and mess with game files. Guess what they did before they learned how to code?

This is pointless conversation. Some of you are just incapable of logic, that's fine though. Not sure where this comes from, some weird personal attempt to justify TW's odd development cycle is my guess. This reminds of people who think government officials have some great knowledge that is not attainable, this stuff is not that hard guys. Just takes work as any other profession.

 

[Sparticulous]

Modders are the only ones who care about the game. Thank god there's troop variety mods.

Yeah. I love the blood, ****, and steel mod

 

[chandl34]

Your not making a distinction between a hired gun Dev who works on base level things and base engine coder. Do you honestly think any of these modders could design these models to fight with this combat system en masse as this game does on their own without the base engine code that lies underneath? Show me.

Depends on the game and what they have available to them. Jagged Alliance 2 modders have access to the full source code. Don't Starve modders have access to the lua code, but not the base engine code. Morrowind modders have the modding tools that Bethesda includes with the game. I'm not familiar with what M&B modders have access to, but I'd guess somewhere between Don't Starve and Morrowind?

If they have easy access, it's a question of skill and motivation. I'm a professional software developer, but I've only been interested enough to make one mod in my life. It was some bug fixes for Don't Starve, that Klei will never fix, that were personally affecting me. I thought about taking it further and making a large bug fix pack, but what's the point? I'm not getting paid for this work, have no idea how many users will actually appreciate it, and working on the game takes the fun out of actually playing it.

 

[froggyluv]

Depends on the game and what they have available to them. Jagged Alliance 2 modders have access to the full source code. Don't Starve modders have access to the lua code, but not the base engine code. Morrowind modders have the modding tools that Bethesda includes with the game. I'm not familiar with what M&B modders have access to, but I'd guess somewhere between Don't Starve and Morrowind?

If they have easy access, it's a question of skill and motivation. I'm a professional software developer, but I've only been interested enough to make one mod in my life. It was some bug fixes for Don't Starve, that Klei will never fix, that were personally affecting me. I thought about taking it further and making a large bug fix pack, but what's the point? I'm not getting paid for this work, have no idea how many users will actually appreciate it, and working on the game takes the fun out of actually playing it.

If your familiar with my postings here on the subject - i make a clear distinction between inventing a 2d strategy game against a genre defining fps/3d world game with realistic gaming mechanics. Its not that insanely difficult to start from scratch and make a rudimentary 2d RTS type game but it is insanely hard to create something along the lines of a Mount and Blade/Arma or SWAT style game from scratch. Armagon and his wife sat down and created this physics base system from scratch in their garage -not off of anyone else's source code. The Spanel brothers came up with an open world crossed armed military simulation written from scratch with no money backing them to create Operation Flashpoint which is now universally known as the Arma series and used by militaries as training tools around the world. Swat series also built from small team albeit larger than the previous 2.

Point being these types of games are insanely hard to build from scratch - there are no modders out there being able to reproduce a similar game on any level comparable to these.

 

[mfuegemann]

Hi frog,
You cannot compare modders (even the good ones) with the creators of a world/framework, that is correct. It is unfortunate with M&B though, that we need modders to carry the inspiration and creativity on to reach some sort of goal, as it seems.

I had high hopes for Bannerlord, but at the moment I would wish, we had asked for a mere graphics overhaul of Warband.
Nuff said.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Armagon and his wife sat down and created this physics base system from scratch in their garage -not off of anyone else's source code.

Coding physics is insanely easy, it's probably the most well documented part of creating a game engine and there are papers dating back to the 1970s documenting every single function you could possibly need for any kind of movement. Pathfinding and Collision detection are more problematic but as with physics, only a handful of people every decade will ever develop their own systems rather than just copying them from existing papers. I can guarantee you that Armagan didn't create the engine from scratch without copying large portions from the huge amounts of free material available online.

Back in the 00s plenty of solo developers used to code their own engines for independent games, but nowadays there's just no need, and by using Unity or Unreal or whatever (both of which are basically the same under the hood) you can cut out the tedium of coding the exact same physics, rendering, pathfinding, collision and other core systems that have already been done 1000 times and are in the public domain. I'm not even that experienced a coder, but if I had the time I could probably make a game engine myself. There are even youtube tutorials on the subject. You don't have to be a savant to do what is essentially straightforward coding.

Do you know what a game engine even is?

 

[froggyluv]

Coding physics is insanely easy, it's probably the most well documented part of creating a game engine and there are papers dating back to the 1970s documenting every single function you could possibly need for any kind of movement. Pathfinding and Collision detection are more problematic but as with physics, only a handful of people every decade will ever develop their own systems rather than just copying them from existing papers. I can guarantee you that Armagan didn't create the engine from scratch without copying large portions from the huge amounts of free material available online.

Back in the 00s plenty of solo developers used to code their own engines for independent games, but nowadays there's just no need, and by using Unity or Unreal or whatever (both of which are basically the same under the hood) you can cut out the tedium of coding the exact same physics, rendering, pathfinding, collision and other core systems that have already been done 1000 times and are in the public domain. I'm not even that experienced a coder, but if I had the time I could probably make a game engine myself. There are even youtube tutorials on the subject. You don't have to be a savant to do what is essentially straightforward coding.

Do you know what a game engine even is?

Heres a tip for ya salty as you seem to stalk me on these forums -first off, ive heard all your pseudo coding understanding already as well as your lofty claims that "its all so easy -i'm better coder than Armagon". Trust me kid - ive heard it all before and from modders far more talented than yourself. You think you got such hot stuff? Ok easy -show it. Lets see what you can do. make a nice little fully playable tech demo of a soldier fighting a horse with decent physics. Ill be waiting.

or maybe your issue with me is more personal- well than in that case, ill surely be your huckleberry -anytime.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Lets see what you can do. make a nice little fully playable tech demo of a soldier fighting a horse with decent physics. Ill be waiting.

http://ironchieftain.com/images/links

https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?threads/iron-chieftain-simulated-rts-and-citybuilder.380714/

 

[froggyluv]

Cool -but like i said -an RTS is a dime a dozen as the combat is nothing but dice rolls. True fully realized combat physics is not. Lets see how well the youtube'd learned coder does it

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Bannerlord doesn't have physics based combat though, and neither did warband.

 

[Apocal]

Bannerlord doesn't have physics based combat though, and neither did warband.

BL doesn't?

What do you mean? This is a lie or something else?

Dev Blog 02/11/17 - TaleWorlds Entertainment

www.taleworlds.com

 

[froggyluv]

Bannerlord doesn't have physics based combat though, and neither did warband.

Dude just stop - your embarrassing yourself. Ill tell you what -stay happy in your lil bubble world where your RTS rules supreme -i no longer wanna deprive you of that

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

BL doesn't?

What do you mean? This is a lie or something else?

Dev Blog 02/11/17 - TaleWorlds Entertainment

www.taleworlds.com

Their definition of "physics based" here is extremely generous. A game like ExAnima or qwop is physics based because they actually simulate the animations and player actions, but bannerlord just approximates them like almost every other game. If bannerlord is physics based, so is The Sims.

The system bannerlord currently has is a mishmash of approximations of physics without actually simulating any of it. Warband was something similar, but bannerlord now has tonnes and tonnes of tiny variables like the side that your weapon is currently on, or the direction you're moving or whatever, leading to inconsistent action timing because so many things can alter it. During the beta this was really noticable and was the main sourde of controversy.

That blog post isn't necessarily a lie, but from all the testing people like noudelle and gabby and others have done during the beta it's clear that it's just a few variables affecting the timing. The attack animations are the same no matter what happens.

On the other hand game like exanima is physics based because all the limbs and actions are simulated directly. When you swing a sword it actually swings, and can't clip with anything because it is actively checking for collision with other objects in every frame. When the sword hits something it imparts a force to every part of the object it touches. None of the animations are pre-made, hence why the game is so janky, and why characters trip up so often.
Meanwhile in bannerlord you just have canned animations that play whenever an attack is made, and when the sword is in the approximate area of an enemy it checks the direction the bone is moving in and works out if there was a hit or not. This may seem pedantic but in practice the gameplay difference is huge.

I dont think bannerlord is somehow a worse game for not using a physics based system, in fact the game would be far too inconsistent if the sword swings were actually simulated, but it's not physics based any more than any other game.

Bannerlord also tweaks the animations slightly with a system called inverse kinematics, which is why shields recoil and why both your feet touch the ground even on a slope, but this system is completely detached from the gameplay and is purely cosmetic.

 

[froggyluv]

Examina is EXTREME PHYSICS to the level of the absurd. What i mean by physics based as compared to an RTS like Total war -is that an actual combat mechanic is being calculated in realtime 3d space -that being physical calculations of things like speed of swing, target, attacker and angle relative to target. In M&B if the weapon misses by an inch it misses by a mile -in Total War -these calculations are approximated (except maybe projectiles) -they are not individual swings and blocks being calculated per unit in real time.

Physical calculations. tiresome..

Edit: this reminds me of an earlier thread in which we were debating whether designing this type of combat -especially in mass (1000's of troops) was easily attainable by AAA devs. Melee combat that is expected to be realistic is extremely hard to pull off even in one on one games let alone a war game. M&B was and is considered the flagship of that genre and that goes without dispute. Other areas of the game have been neglected but what theyve achieved on that front is undeniable cept by the lowliest of haters

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

What i mean by physics based as compared to an RTS like Total war -is that an actual combat mechanic is being calculated in realtime 3d space -that being physical calculations of things like speed of swing, target, attacker and angle relative to target.

If your definition of "physics based" is this broad then pretty much every action game is physics based. I think you're grossly overestimating how difficult this stuff is, and how complicated the maths is. Qwop is a flash game and it already has more complicated physics and collision than bannerlord.

To give you an example, the first thing I did when I was learning C++ was to make a system for calculating object velocity and inertia in 3 dimensions. I only have a high school level understanding of maths but it took me about 20 minutes. Meanwhile coding a dropdown menu made me want to blow my own brains out.

I can guarantee that if you looked this stuff up you would realise how easy and straightforward most of it is. So much has been written about vector maths in the last 30 years that even if you hate maths, you can find the solution to any spatial problem you can think of just by googling it.

When warband clones fail it's not because they couldn't figure out skeletal collisions, it's because they are ugly unbalanced cashgrabs. You'll notice that even the crappiest games can imitate warband's combat fairly accurately even if the rest of the game is hot steaming garbage.

 

[eddiemccandless]

How about we go back to talking about the original topic?

I think OP has a point, factions feel pretty similar, and I think that is caused mostly by the fact that it is difficult to notice a big difference between skills, plus the fact that units seem to have very similar weapon/armor loadouts. I don't think that the Swadian Knights were necessarily the supreme evil that some people seem to think they were, once you had an army of full elites you could steamroll no matter if they were knights or huscarls or rhodok sharpshooters. Perfect balance makes for a very boring game.

 

[Terco_Viejo]

I think a certain balance is good in MP environments because basically we are in a chess game scenario; one player has the same possibilities of winning as another, only the strategy that each one applies for that purpose changes.

On the other hand in SP environments, for my taste I prefer a game scenario where there is asymmetric warfare and where the player is given the possibility of specialization (specific strengths and weaknesses)

---
This is physics ? :

 

[babelfisch]

http://ironchieftain.com/images/links

https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?threads/iron-chieftain-simulated-rts-and-citybuilder.380714/

Nice work! It's based on Unreal Engine though, isn't it?

 

[Apocal]

I don't think that the Swadian Knights were necessarily the supreme evil that some people seem to think they were, once you had an army of full elites you could steamroll no matter if they were knights or huscarls or rhodok sharpshooters. Perfect balance makes for a very boring game.

Just to make my position clear, the only reason I think Swadian Knights were bad was because they (and Mamelukes, to a lesser extent) broke the balance and I think that other high-tier units couldn't necessarily compete as well. Meanwhile, the high tier units were kinda bad in isolation (Sharpshooters), less blatantly overwhelming (Huscarls) or just plain bad (Veteran Horse Archers).

It made for a less interesting game because there were extremely few fights that 100 Swadian Knights wouldn't win on an F1 F3.

 

[froggyluv]

If your definition of "physics based" is this broad then pretty much every action game is physics based. I think you're grossly overestimating how difficult this stuff is, and how complicated the maths is. Qwop is a flash game and it already has more complicated physics and collision than bannerlord.

To give you an example, the first thing I did when I was learning C++ was to make a system for calculating object velocity and inertia in 3 dimensions. I only have a high school level understanding of maths but it took me about 20 minutes. Meanwhile coding a dropdown menu made me want to blow my own brains out.

I can guarantee that if you looked this stuff up you would realise how easy and straightforward most of it is. So much has been written about vector maths in the last 30 years that even if you hate maths, you can find the solution to any spatial problem you can think of just by googling it.

When warband clones fail it's not because they couldn't figure out skeletal collisions, it's because they are ugly unbalanced cashgrabs. You'll notice that even the crappiest games can imitate warband's combat fairly accurately even if the rest of the game is hot steaming garbage.

Jesus man ok this is my last response to you because i either get warnings or your asking me to take my shirt off but let me simplify this:

First point: No not "every game has physics" as in relation to M&B especially when we are talkin about RTS. Sword and and fantasy games from M&B's circa most certainly did not have that amount of calculations for their warfare -look at a skyrim as an easy example.

Yes other games can easily replicate a physics based combat system today -at the time of Mount and Blade that was revolutionary especially for a poor couple in their garage. Add to that the ability for the hundreds of these AI calculations to go on inreal time -not just one on one. Add to that horse and all the complications they bring *(Kingdom Come couldnt figure out how to add them to the combat system) and on top of that a rudimentary strategy game. You have to look at the entirety of the product - not just keep extracting one point and saying "this is so easy - i could easily do that". Everything your learning real quick in C++ manuals is built on the shoulders of giants -people who innovated this stuff when you were just a pup.

Back to the context -an RTS simply does not have to worry about individual swings, horses in a realtime 3d calculations way -are you seriously not getting this? You can show all the crappy knockoffs of Warband combat (still the gold standard) and proof of tech physics promos but in the end -it is the final product that matters. And simply no other game can do and especially no modder can create -what they have done.

Now im done with ya -if you wanna keep spewing out "how easy it all is" etc be my guest - but like i said - show me with a real modders work not crappy directional combat knockoffs -that this type of combat is "insanely easy" to create.