Dev Blog 14/12/17 Greetings warriors of Calradia! The Sturgian forests are forbidding and cold, but great wealth lies within. Wild honey can be found, and bog iron, but the real prize has always been fur. For centuries, brave traders ventured there to buy the pelts of fox, rabbit and ermine from the tribes of the woods. As the empire expanded eastward, that trickle of traders became a flood. Great towns sprung up on the rivers. Fortune-seekers came from the coast, from the steppes, and most of all from the Nordlands. Tribal elders made alliances with the newcomers, sealed by wedding vows, and with their share of the trading profits hired mercenaries to subdue other tribes. Sturgia became a collection of principalities, then a kingdom, the great powerhouse of the north. The Sturgians are based on the federation of city-states known as Kievan Rus, located in today's Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Like many boomtowns, the Rus river cities attracted people from faraway lands. Predominantly Slavic communities were forming into states at a breakneck pace and borrowing institutions, religions, and ways of trade and war from their neighbours. Greek missionaries, Finnic foresters, Turkic and Iranian steppe tribes, and most famously the Varangian Norse all left their mark on the aesthetics of Russian art, arms and armour. We think the motifs and styles of Sturgian equipment – gilded and peaked helmets, furs and gold brocade, runes and gripping beasts and folk embroidery and Arabesques -- will make it some of the most spectacular in the game. As with other factions, we let history be our inspiration for Sturgia's politics. The chroniclers weren't shy about expressing their opinions about the different princes. Some rulers, like Vladimir the Great or Yaroslav the Wise, have come down to us as far-sighted rulers. Others, like Sviatopolk "the Accursed," accused of murdering his brothers, or Vseslav, the sorcerer-king of Pskov, were depicted as some of the more colourful tyrants in medieval Europe. Raganvad, the current Sturgian prince, is cut out of the latter mould: he knows how to punish but not how to reward, and he'll put to the test the old dictum that it is better to be feared than loved. The commercial ethic was strong in early Rus, with the town veche or council ensuring that merchants had a major role in state policy. Danger and opportunity went hand in hand. A Muslim chronicler recalls how the Rus father of a newborn boy would show the baby a sword and tell him this would be his only inheritance: the blade would have to win all the rest of it. The Icelandic sagas, though geographically very far removed from the Rus, have also been an inspiration for the Varangians' ideal of businesslike warfare and warlike business, the kind of society where a father could say, "Son, you've been lazing around the fire all winter. Time to get up and show you can take some responsibility for your life. Go pillage someone." The Rus employed both cavalry and archers, but the core of their forces in the early period was most likely formed infantry - also a Norse speciality. We've been working on the close-up foot-slogging side of Mount and Blade. Look out for high-tier AI opponents bashing you with their shield in the teeth, following it up with a blade going into your ribs. Disciplined infantry will be more likely to stay in formation, and will leave a space for a player in their ranks so you don't get crowded too closely by your allies. Now, the Nords were a favourite faction in Warband, and we know a lot of people are drawn to Vikings - the blood eagles, the shipboard funeral pyres, the berserkers eager to join the feasting at Valhalla. Sturgia is Nordic-influenced but it's not really a Viking state: the Nordlands are off of the map (for the present, anyway) and they wouldn't really form the kind of proto-feudal kingdom that the Bannerlord factions represent. But, if players want to have a west Scandinavian-style play experience, the raiding, the companions, the ring-swords, two-handed axes, Valsgarde helmets, hauberks and raven banners will all be there. Among the Sturgian minor factions are the Skolderbroda, a mercenary brotherhood based on the (possibly legendary) Jomsvikings of the Baltic. The Finnic tribes meanwhile are represented by the Sons of the Forest, a semi- nomadic clan that practices swidden slash-and-burn agriculture in the depths of the woods. At any rate, there should be plenty of allies and plenty of enemies for players who want to win their inheritance with the blade, the Rus way, in this cold land of deadly opportunity.
Dev Blog 11/01/18 Greetings warriors of Calradia! To the south of the imperial heartland lies the Nahasa, the Bronze Desert, ringed by mountains, hammered by the sun. A traveller coming over the passes from greener lands would first see fields of dunes broken by gravel plains and volcanic outcrops, shimmering under the heat haze. But there is water to be found underground, trapped in depressions or beneath the wadis where the occasional flash flood rumbles by. And in these oases people have settled. They are divided into dozens of clans and sub-clans, each with its elaborate genealogy, but are collectively known as the Banu Asera or the Aserai after the legendary patriarch Asera, whom they all claim as an ancestor. The Empire even at its heights preferred not to send its legions into the army-devouring wastes. Instead, it projected its power into the Nahasa by cultivating clients and allies among the clans, who competed in an endless dance of power. Those clans that could secure a hold on the oases won an imperial subsidy to protect passing caravans and grew rich. Those who could not were pushed into the desert, left to raise goats and camels and raid caravans until they could plot a comeback. Today, with the waning of the empire offering new opportunities and new risks, the Aserai have agreed to form a confederacy under a sultan chosen from richest of the clans, the Banu Hulyan. But everyone knows that the dance has only temporarily been stopped, and at the right moment it will begin again. The Aserai are based on the Arab tribes just before the great Islamic conquests of the seventh century, which created a diverse tri-continental caliphate whose scale and institutions don't really fit Bannerlord's political system. In the centuries before, the Arabs formed a series of confederations and kingdoms inside and on the margins of the Arabian and Syrian deserts. Many think of the entire Middle East as arid wastes, even though most of the more famous battles, especially during the Crusades, were fought in coastal Mediterranean regions or the highland steppe of Anatolia. The Arab heartland however really is mostly desert. Our landscapes reflect the harsh beauty of dunes, craggy mountains, and oases, along with the less glamorous stretches of wasteland in between, like scrubland and dry wadis. Historians have left vivid portraits of the chieftains, kings, and occasional ruling queens of Palmyra, Kinda, Hirah, and other principalities of the deserts. Some were morally complex characters, managing their domains with a mixture of cajoling, threats, bribes, skulduggery, bravery, and shameless nepotism. The Aserai sultan, Unqid, is cut from this mould. Their task was not made easier by warrior-poets like Imru al-Qais, Antara, and Tarafa. These untameable mavericks wrote lyric verse about the transitory nature of human experience, their memories of liaisons with their beloved in a now-deserted campsite slowly erased by wind and flood, then used it to segue into a string of boasts about the battles they won and the steeds they've ridden. We're using Bannerlord's new events system to create a backstory of grudges and feuds that will test an aspiring sultan's ability to placate and lead. Mideastern armies are popularly associated with horse archers, but in fact those only became prevalent about two centuries after the founding of Islam with the influx of Turks. The Arabs fought with short sword, long spear, and foot bow. Warriors prided themselves on their flexibility, fighting as light mounted lancers or heavy foot, in formed ranks or as individual champions. Javelins, a favourite weapon of the Berbers, made their appearance in Islamic armies fairly early, and we have the Aserai use them as well. All in all it's a mix of good troops, pretty well balanced across cavalry and infantry. The Arabs were famously proud of their horses, and the Aserai breeds - produced by pastures in Aserai lands - will have unique characteristics. Middle Eastern warriors wore a mix of armours, often under richly embroidered textiles. Bannerlord's physics model gives us new options in bringing the pageantry of these armies to life, with banners, horsetails and robes fluttering in the desert breeze. The Aserai, like all Bannerlord cultures, will have minor factions. The Jawwal are Bedouin nomads, like those who plagued caliphs, sultans and kings throughout Islamic history. And though our reference point is late antiquity and the very early medieval era, we've also introduced some institutions that thrived under the caliphs. The Ghilman, a brotherhood of slave-warriors, represent the forerunners to the Mamluks who fought for and later came to dominate the caliphate. Aserai towns meanwhile will be dominated by the back-alley mafias who feature in tales of urban Middle Eastern life, from The Thousand and One Nights to the novels of Naguib Mahfouz. The desert of the south will be hard to rule and dangerous to traverse, but the other realms ignore it at their peril, lest it suddenly throw forth a host capable of bringing empires to their knees.
Dev Blog 25/01/18 Greetings warriors of Calradia! In this week’s blog we would like to introduce you to an improvement we have made to the dialogue system in Bannerlord: conversational animations. Personalities play a large role in the politics of Calradia; some lords may approve of your course of action while others may find it to be distasteful. Forcing the player to make conscious choices based on this creates an additional layer in the strategy aspect of the campaign and adds overall depth to the roleplay element of our games. Discerning between those who will offer support in times of need and those who are likely to cause issues is a relatively subtle part of our games, but those who pay close attention to their relationships and plan accordingly will often have an easier time when plotting their rise to power. Developing relationships with NPCs was, and still is, quite straightforward: complete a mission for them and they like you more, support their claim and they like you more... However, it was often hard to form any sort of emotional bond to these static and lifeless characters, and ultimately, conversations with NPCs always ended up feeling a little bland. In previous Mount & Blade games, your standing with a lord was shown through an information window which could be viewed during conversations, and, while this worked as a clear and simple way of presenting information to the player, it is something we feel had room for improvement. In Bannerlord, we want players to feel immersed in the world and to become attached to (or despise) the different characters they will meet on their travels. We decided that one way we could achieve this would be to make a small addition to the conversation system to inject some personality into the characters. In Bannerlord, an NPC’s behaviour is heavily influenced by their personality traits, but it is still somewhat dynamic in that it can be affected by their current circumstances. We developed a simple system which sets animations to the characters you are talking to based on their personality (among other things). To do this, the game looks at the NPC's personality traits, some situational parameters and aspects of the NPC's relation to the player to choose appropriate dialogue animations. It isn’t anything too fancy, and it doesn’t include any lip syncing or voice acting, however, we feel that it helps to make the world feel more alive. To give you an example of how this works: Here is a character (let's call him Yaga), who is unimpressed that you were unable to complete a quest he gave you. Here is Yaga again, but after you have successfully completed his quest. Just as with much of the rest of the game, we designed the system to be as moddable as possible. Animations are initiated directly from the dialogue, so modders will be able to easily override the animations used in existing dialogues and use existing animations for any conversations they create. It will also be possible for them to add their own animations to the system which we think opens up a lot of fun possibilities! We feel that this small addition will help to make the world feel more immersive and add some extra character to the various NPCs that populate Calradia. It is only a minor change, but it is something that works for our style of game and we are sure that the modding community will find some inventive uses for it!
Dev Blog 08/02/18 Greetings warriors of Calradia! For the next feature in our blogpost series on Bannerlord's factions, we shall look at the Empire. Because the Empire is in some ways the centre of gravity of the game, we're going to divide this blog into two parts. At the start of the game the Empire is divided into three factions engaged in a civil war. But before we describe the three factions and what they stand for, let us look at how the conflict started.... A thousand years ago, the Calradoi were one of a dozen tribes living in the hill country between the southern sea and the Battanian woods. Over time, they subjugated their neighbours, forcing them into a confederation of city-states. Perhaps they were slightly fiercer than the others, or just lucky, or perhaps it was the one tradition that set them apart - the Calradoi had no kings. Ever since the hero Echerion slew the tyrant Cypegos, the institution of the monarchy was banned, in theory at least. There was an assembly of free citizens that met occasionally, a senate of elders (in practice the largest landowners) that sat permanently, and - when it was absolutely necessary - supreme command could be invested for a short time in the person of an emperor, a title that back then meant little more than the right to lead an army. From their heartland in the hills the Calradoi began to spread outward. As they did so, their political traditions – never written down – began to change. Soon, the army was in the field more years than not, and gradually the emperors stopped retiring at the end of campaigns. The senators meanwhile moved to the conquered provinces and acquired great estates. The capital moved from place to place, and the assembly of the people was called wherever the emperor desired. In practice, this was usually an army camp where his veterans could be relied upon to shout down any opposition. The question of succession was always a potential crisis. Usually, the emperor nominated an heir, the senate ratified his choice, and the people (meaning the army) acclaimed it. But this did not always happen smoothly, and then the succession was settled on the battlefield of a civil war. Twenty years ago, a general named Arenicos donned the purple mantle worn by the emperors, and placed the laurel-crown-that-was-not-a-crown on his brow. His military record, his diligence in rooting out corrupt and inefficient magistrates, and the confidence he could inspire with a single speech made him a popular ruler. He also had the gift of being everything to everyone. He rose to prominence as a man of the people and the army, but he also worked closely with landlords and led them to believe he might restore power of the Senate. He praised the Calradian republican ideals as the pinnacles of human achievement, yet married the daughter of a petty king from the lands east of the empire to shore up an important trade route, formed an elite bodyguard of foreign mercenaries loyal only to him, and turned a blind eye when cults began to worship him as a sacred monarch. He spoke of a revived Calradia but kept his council on the details. There was one shadow hanging over the reign of Arenicos - his reluctance to choose an heir. It was though he was casting around for someone who grasped his vision, but never found one. Traditionally, emperors looked in three places for their successors: their family, the elders of the Senate, and the upper ranks of the army. His one child, Ira, was a daughter. There had been ruling empresses of Calradia in the past, but Ira had a wild and irreverent streak. Her right to rule was championed by her mother, Rhagaea, Arenicos's foreign-born wife. “It is good for the children of emperor's to succeed their fathers,” her partisans said. “If we unite in loyalty to the imperial family, the civil wars will stop.” A faction of powerful nobles under the honourable but stiff-necked aristocrat Lucon demanded that the Senate choose the next emperor. "We understand politics and law,” they said. “Return to the old days; return power to us." Meanwhile, the wildly popular Garios, victor of wars against Battania and the Aserai, let it known that he expected his veterans be allowed to acclaim a new emperor. "The corruption of the powerful saps our strength," he told his men. "Let you, the soldiers, who bleed for this land, choose its rulers." Time was running out. Arenicos was getting older. He needed to make some sort of decision, and soon. And then, returning to his palace in the southern town of Lycaron after his latest victorious campaign on the borders, he asked for some time alone in his chamber to nurse a splitting headache; when his guard checked in on him a few hours later, he was lying dead in a pool of blood. Immediately, Lucon convened a gathering of senators in his power base in the north and had himself declared emperor. Garios, campaigning on the Battanian frontier, stood before an assembly of his soldiers who cried out for him to don the purple. And Rhagaea emerged from the palace and addressed the throng that had gathered at the reports of the emperor's death. She raised before them the slain emperor's robe, drenched in his blood. The crowd cried out that she should be the empress, that the emperor's family must rule from this day on, and that she must take vengeance on his murderers - although who exactly that was, at this point, was mostly a matter of rumour. Civil war again loomed - and this time, with three equally balanced and determined factions eager to fight, it looked as though it might be more terrible than ever. The Empire is the last faction - or rather, the last three factions - to be looked at in our series. It is based on the classical tradition of Greece and Rome and their medieval successor, the Byzantines. There was a lot of change in over 2000 years of history, obviously. Although the Roman Republic became a de facto empire under Augustus, vestigial remnants - like the Senate - persisted to the 1300s. Meanwhile, what started as a bureaucratic state, with prefects and governors appointed for very short terms, evolved into a de facto feudalism by the 11th century with Byzantine magnates ruling fiefs and having military obligations like any count or duke in the West. The rules of succession meanwhile were never set in stone, which suits our purposes in the game very well. If a player has his or her eye on the purple, there are lots of different ways of gaining legitimacy. The waning years of the Roman Republic, the time of Caesar, Antony, Octavius, Cleopatra, Cato the Younger and Cicero, have had a huge impact on Western political thinking and are a major inspiration for literature, so we've drawn a few characters from that era. But Byzantine rulers like Justinian and Alexios Comnenos who brought the empire back from the brink are equally fascinating personalities, as are the ruling empresses like Zoe and Irene.
Dev Blog 15/02/18 Greetings warriors of Calradia! Last week, we had a look at the politics, history and personalities of the three imperial factions. Now we'll see how they'll be represented in-game. Militarily, the Empire's troop types and equipment is drawn from ninth to eleventh centuries, a period of Byzantine resurgence. The Byzantines' best-known troops are their cataphracts, fully armoured cavalry who rode into battle with an arsenal of lance, sabre, and long-handled mace. But the Byzantines also had a full complement of medium and light cavalry, plus spearmen and skirmishers, not to mention whatever mercenaries they could get. They were masters of combined arms, authors of military manuals like the Strategikon that counselled patience over glory-seeking, pioneers of a more scientific approach to warfare. The Empire will also deploy powerful heavy cavalry, sturdy spearmen, and skirmishers, and our upgraded command system should give players a chance to experiment with combined arms. Improvements to the morale calculations, such as a shock effect from taking down a large amount of troops at once, can make tactics such as flank charges more effective. Imperial cataphracts are also designed for opportunistic attacks that benefit from being timed more carefully than the Vlandian steamroller. We've given them two-handed kontos lances - a slight anachronism, as these are more late ancient than early medieval weapons, but we think it will add interesting variety. Without the shield, a frontal charge by cataphracts might more easily be disrupted by missile fire, but if the enemy doesn't have supporting missile troops, then the extra reach of the kontos can be devastating. Their heavy maces, swung from a fast-moving horse, can also deliver a crushing blow. As with the Romans, the Empire is assumed to have imposed a form of Pax Calradica - at least on its heartland, if not on the ever-embattled frontiers. Peace and stability has allowed cities to grow, so the empire is assumed to be slightly more developed than the outer kingdoms. In Bannerlord we've introduced a number of new ways to show this kind of accumulated investment. We can vary a city's economic muscle with the amount of workshops it has, and its defensive might is shown by outer walls that can be one of three levels, with different scenes for each. As in all the realms of Calradia, regional variation throughout the empire will be shown largely through minor factions. Imperial border areas tend to be rougher and more chaotic than the heartland, and in the game are represented by frontiersmen. Though fiercely loyal to the empire, they adopt many of the ways of the warrior-tribes they face, from weaponry to a preference for blood feud over courts of law. The Watchers, in the northern hill country, represent the Akritai, the famous Byzantine borderers of Anatolia. In the south and east, colonies of fugitives and free-spirited wanderers have learned to live and ride like the steppe peoples they fight, forming the Eleftheroi. These are based on the Cossacks -- Third Rome rather than Second, admittedly but probably not much different than those who guarded the Byzantines' Black Sea frontiers. And of course we have a faction based on the Varangians, the fearsome Nord guardsmen of the Emperor, who in the tumult after Arenicos' death have formed a mercenary outfit. An adventurer may make his or her name in the outer kingdoms, but to rise to the pinnacle of power in the game, a player will need eventually to deal in one way or the other with the Empire and its legacy. You may be an Attila who humbles it, a Justinian who restores it, or a Charlemagne who remakes it in a new form in a new land. Don the purple robe, or trample it into the dust under the hooves of your horse: that is your choice.
Dev Blog 01/03/18 Greetings warriors of Calradia! Hump day is behind us and the weekend is in sight; Thursday is upon us and it is time for another of our weekly updates! Grab a cup of camel-mile tea, sit back and let us introduce you to a new addition to the Mount & Blade series. Humphrey Superbly adapted to the desert regions which they populate, dromedary camels have contributed a great deal to both trade and warfare since their domestication thousands of years ago. Their strength, stature and ability to survive for extended periods without food or water make them an invaluable asset for anyone looking to make an arduous journey through a desert. The Nahasa: the vast desert in southern Calradia, and home to the Aserai, makes for the ideal location for the inclusion of these magnificent beasts. Players can expect to see camels commonly in this region, working as pack animals in trade caravans or as camelry in battles. Although they are slightly slower and less manoeuvrable than horses, camels are able to withstand greater punishment – which is reflected in the game. The rider’s elevated position gives them a height advantage over horse cavalry, but limits their options when dealing with foot soldiers and makes them more exposed to missile units. Camels also receive a small bonus to their speed and manoeuvrability while travelling through the Nahasa, so players may wish to consider enlisting some of these animals into their service during any extended campaigns in the desert. The process of making the camel required 4 steps: modelling, texturing, rigging and animating. For each step we searched for and analysed reference images and videos of camels, working closely to the sources to get the most realistic result. We created a detailed skeleton which contains a number of systems (like dynamic joints and a jiggle system) which made the rigging process take up most of the time, however we think the end result was worth it. Our animator gathered a lot of reference videos of camel movement and behaviour and wanted to note that he really enjoyed working on this project, because – in his own words: “camels are funny animals”. Camels are just another example of some of the small additions and improvements we are making to Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord. They aren’t ground-breaking or game-changing, but they do add some additional diversity to our troop roster and give players more tactical options for both the campaign and battles.
The game looks great but I wish they would at least give us a projected release date, like Q4 2018. I know they have said they want to get this right and are not going to be rushed but....come on, its been years and feels like its been longer.
I think it's' good that they haven't given out a projected release date. It's all to often believed to be the final release date and riots start when they miss it. I have seen it all to often. It's been over 5 years since they announced it. So it should feel like a long time. Now I don't post everything that appears on their website or forum but they do alot of dev interviews. Through these you can get a bit better of a feel of where they are. It definetly feels like a release this year is possible but I have no idea of how much work they have remaining. Now, I'm gonna blame Magnus for why the game isn't released yet. IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT!!! On the other hand you have almost graduated so that means release soon.
Dev Blog 08/03/18 Greetings warriors of Calradia! In this week’s blog, we would like to talk about the newly introduced engine version 1.4 which consists of many graphical improvements as well as a number of performance updates. We develop engine features in separate branches with each one labelled as a version. This allows us to test new features extensively and efficiently without decreasing the stability for the gameplay programmers. Global Illumination We introduced a new global illumination system to the engine which can correctly illuminate both static and dynamic objects. It is based on a pre-baked system called "Precomputed Radiance Transfer". It is independent from the atmosphere, which is a must for a game like Bannerlord where you will enter a scene at different times of the day. The system saves the illumination data to probes inside a regular grid. We developed lots of automatic placement tools so that the work required by artists to bake the scenes is kept to a minimal. Modders will be able to bake GI to their scenes using these tools. Compute Shader Skinning By using profilers we have learnt that in large-scale battles the majority of the GPU time is spent on the skinning of agent meshes. Normally, the skinning process is repeated every time a mesh needs to be rendered (shadow pass, gBuffer pass, special passes for custom hair shading etc.). To combat this, skinning calculations of skeletal meshes have been moved from the vertex shader stage to a separate compute shader stage. Despite both stages running on the GPU, executing a separate stage for skinning and storing results in temporary memory enables us to do skinning calculations only once per frame and use special optimisation mechanisms that are exclusive to compute shaders. This results in the rendering time of skinning meshes being reduced by 60% which enables us to achieve 60FPS in huge battle scenes on a wide range of GPUs. Particle Shading Atlas Particles are now shaded in a separate compute shader stage. Each visible particle is assigned a rectangular region (2x2, 4x4, 8x8, 16x16 or 32x32) in a big global texture atlas according to its screen space size. Shading is done on these tiny quads with a compute shader stage. During the actual rendering, we just sample the lighting result from the atlas texture and skip any complex lighting computation. Separating shading and drawing stages enables us to reduce the fill rate costs of particles since the amount of shaded pixels are extremely reduced. This reduces the high GPU cost of the desert-like scenes. This technique also eliminates the sharp shadows on the particle quads, further increasing the visual quality of the already beautiful particles of Bannerlord! At this point we feel it is important to stress the fact that while yes, we are still developing the engine and making new additions: this work is running entirely parallel to the development of Bannerlord. Our dedicated engine team are constantly striving to give us a better optimised engine which allows us to have larger battles, higher frame rates, greater visual fidelity and faster loading times. This work doesn’t hold back the development of the game in any way, shape or form and will ultimately improve the overall quality of the final product.
Dev Blog 15/03/18 Greetings warriors of Calradia! For many people, Mount & Blade: Warband is a singleplayer experience which lets them rise from the rank of a commoner up to the ruler of an entire kingdom, developing their character and fighting in epic sieges along the way. For others, it is an opportunity to run around naked with a two-handed sword and test their combat skills against players from all around the world. In this week’s blog, we talk with the person responsible for making these equally epic (and sometimes silly) experiences a reality in Bannerlord: Korneel Guns. NAME Korneel Guns FROM East-Flanders, Belgium JOINED TALEWORLDS 2014 EDUCATION Digital Arts and Entertainment (DAE), Howest OFFICIAL JOB DESCRIPTION Gameplay Programmer WHAT DO YOU NORMALLY DO DURING YOUR DAY? “Most of the time I work on multiplayer features, optimisations and bug fixes. What I actually do varies from day to day, depending on what we're trying to achieve that week. Lately, I don't get to write much code at all and instead most of my time is spent preparing our internal playtests, monitoring the sessions, gathering feedback from the participants and planning for the next test.” WHAT DO YOU LIKE THE MOST ABOUT BANNERLORD? “There are many things… Sometimes, I just open a custom battle, put the troop count into the many hundreds, give command over my troops to the AI, and just watch as the armies clash. There's something very special about seeing this many troops doing their thing. Lately, I've also been trying my hands on the scene editor and I'm just blown away by how easily I can make something that looks pretty nice. I believe we're going to have a lot of mods with an amazing visual quality.” “Look: If I can make this, anyone can make something nice.” “But I have to say that I’m mostly excited for the multiplayer part of the game. Before joining TaleWorlds, I spent a lot of time playing Napoleonic Wars and I regularly attended line-battles. It was always such a thrill to be a part of these huge organised battles, with disciplined regiments moving around in formation (only to be struck down by a single cannonball), the smoke from the musket fire, the surprise cavalry charges… It was an amazing experience. I can’t wait to see what the modding scene comes up with for Bannerlord as the possibilities are much greater than they ever were for Warband.” WHAT'S THE MOST DIFFICULT THING THAT YOU SOLVED SO FAR, DURING THE PRODUCTION OF BANNERLORD? “One of the hardest moments was definitely when we were starting out with serious, regular playtests to check both the game modes and combat. At the time, we didn't have any of the automated tests we have now, so the game broke pretty regularly (and in many different ways). Since I was organizing these playtests, I felt very responsible for the failure or success of these tests. We would get a dozen people to stop working and help us playtest, only to find out that the game wasn't playable anymore and it was a waste of everyone's time. We've improved the stability a lot since then, with the help of the QA team in combination with automated testing. Soon after, I could finally hear the cries of people getting killed in-game throughout the office, which certainly made me feel a lot better.” Skirmish Playtest WHAT DO YOU CURRENTLY WORK ON? “I'm currently writing some extra tools that allow us to better monitor server network usage. We're aiming to have a potential maximum player limit that is well above Warband's, so it helps to be able to visualise data with real-time graphs and stats to find out about possible bottlenecks. We already have a very efficient networking system because of some great programmers on the team. I'm just making sure they can do their job even better!” WHAT FACTION DO YOU LIKE THE MOST IN BANNERLORD? “I struggle to choose between Battania and Vlandia. The Empire may be in decline and crumbling, but Battania has long lost its glory. Its castles and towns are old and ruinous and each visit to a settlement tells a story of a faction just desperately trying to stay relevant. I find it fun to become part of such a faction and help it to rise up. I guess my Belgian roots may have something to do with that. And Vlandia, because it's just a classic done well: majestic and dominating castles, chivalric knights and, of course, the crossbowmen! Fighting at range is by far my favourite thing to do. Both Battania and Vlandia excel at this, but the crossbow is definitely the coolest.” WILL MULTIPLAYER BE LINKED WITH STEAM FOR INVITING FRIENDS? “We have a full Steam integration, so you'll easily be able to join friends' games, or invite them to your party.” WILL WE STILL BE ABLE TO CHOOSE WHAT SERVER WE JOIN, OR WILL IT BE PICKED FOR US? “We will still have the server list, just like we have in Warband. It will contain both official and unofficial (community-run) servers. On top of that, there is also a matchmaking system which ties in nicely with our more competitive game modes (see question below).” WHAT KIND OF GAME MODES CAN WE EXPECT? “Siege has received a full overhaul. It is still all about attacking and defending an entire castle, but now with a full range of different kinds of siege weapons (ballistae, catapults, siege towers and battering rams). Then, there are some game modes that are entirely new, such as Captain Battle: a team-based mode where each player gets command over a regiment of AI troops (just like in singleplayer). You win by either eliminating the other team, or by controlling the battlefield. There is also Skirmish Battle, a more competitive game mode that is designed to be played 6 vs 6. You have multiple lives per round, but each troop has a different cost, which means you have to make a choice between fielding a greater number of poorly equipped troops or fewer more specialised ones. Good communication and managing your lives are key in this mode. We also have a Duel Mode for those who want to test their skills in a more controlled environment.” HOW DO YOU PLAN TO PREVENT CAMPING? “The solutions to prevent camping are different for many games. For us, we realized it's a serious issue and we have designed our new game modes so that they make camping a bad choice: for Skirmish and Captain Battles, you have to be active and either fight the enemy, or move to different locations on the battlefield to control them. It's also not enough to just move to one location and hold it: you will constantly be encouraged to move and adapt until the very end of each round. We have noticed in our internal playtests that this is working out very well.”
Dev Blog 22/03/18 Greetings warriors of Calradia! In our efforts to make Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord a visceral experience, we are constantly looking at different types of systems which will elicit an emotive response from players. By aiming for a certain level of realism, it becomes easier to make a game more relatable and immersive for players. However, striking the balance between realism and gameplay is a tricky subject, and we are firm believers that gameplay should always trump realism. Thankfully, there are other methods that we can use to draw players into the game and offer players a more realistic experience, without detracting from the gameplay. In this week’s blog, we would like to show you how we make use of inverse kinematics to make strikes in combat feel a bit more immersive. What happens when you block an attack or an arrow with your shield? In real life, you get the obvious positive result of not having your arm chopped or a lung pierced, but you would still feel the force of the impact. Previously, we would show this through a standard animation which would play, regardless of where your shield was hit. This provided some visual feedback to players when they blocked an attack, but ultimately it wasn’t to the level of immersion that we are trying to achieve for combat in Bannerlord. Old System To improve on this, we implemented an inverse kinematics system for shields so that they react differently depending on the direction of the impact. For instance, if your shield gets hit on the left side by a weapon or an arrow, both the shield and arm will absorb the impact and bounce back on that side. The system takes into consideration the force of the impact, meaning that the visual feedback from a cleaner strike or a heavier weapon will be more prominent. New System When combined with the stagger animation of the body, this new system provides a greater level of feedback to players and helps to make combat feel more immersive and engaging. And while minor details like this may not exactly be game-changing, it helps to add to the overall feeling of realism in our game, which is important to us because our combat system isn’t simply about mashing buttons. So watch your shield, because losing that nice head you have on your shoulders will surely ruin your day.
Dev Blog 29/03/18 Greetings warriors of Calradia! Built in strategic and highly defensible locations, castles enabled lords to exert power over the surrounding populace and protect their lands against any would-be invaders. Towering parapets gave the defenders vantage points from which to rain down a hail of missiles on anyone foolish enough to try a direct assault, and thick, sturdy walls provided ample protection for those within. But, castles were not invulnerable to attack. As with any sort of arms race, for every type of defence developed, an equally ingenious counter was conceived. In this week’s blog, we take a look at some of the impressive tools of warfare that were used to overcome a castle’s defences and discuss the role that siege engines will play in Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord. Siege Ladder Siege ladders offered the simplest form of assault to a besieging army: escalade. Naturally, this kind of direct assault put the defending forces at a great advantage, with the top of each ladder acting as a choke point. The purpose of this kind of assault might not have necessarily have been to overrun the defenders, but perhaps to capture a vital strategic point, such as a gatehouse, which would allow the main assault to commence. In Bannerlord, they are used in much the same way. Siege ladders act as a way for troops to scale the wall, spread the defending troops thinly and exploit weaknesses in the defence. However, units are completely exposed when deploying ladders and ultimately that risk could be all for naught as ladders can be pushed away from the wall by the defenders. Siege Tower Siege towers worked on a similar principle to siege ladders in that they allowed attackers to negate a wall by climbing over it. Siege towers offered one distinct advantage over ladders though; their partially enclosed design offered some level of protection to attacking troops and would allow a greater number of warriors to assault a wall at the same time. In Bannerlord, siege towers work in exactly the same way. They provide protection to troops as they make their way towards a wall before lowering a drawbridge for the attackers to rush across. However, siege towers can be destroyed by the defending force, so players should make sure to suppress any defensive siege weapons before committing a tower to an assault. Battering Ram Battering rams allowed attacking armies to take a more direct approach when assaulting a castle and worked through a mix of momentum and good old-fashioned brute force. The idea was fairly simple: attach a metal head to a tree trunk, then swing it repeatedly at a door, gate or wall until it gave way. In Bannerlord, battering rams are only effective against the outer gates of a castle and, like siege towers, they can be destroyed. They have a roof to protect against light missile fire from above, however, defensive siege weapons can destroy this cover, exposing the troops within. Ballista Ballistae worked like a kind of giant crossbow by using torsion to launch a spear sized arrow or bolt at such a high velocity that it would pierce any type of armour and decimate anyone unlucky enough to be standing in its way. In Bannerlord both attacking and defending armies in sieges will have access to ballistae. They provide a way for attackers to pick away at the defending troops before committing to a full-scale assault, or to help open any choke points that might develop as the battle progresses. Likewise, defending troops may wish to use ballistae to dwindle the numbers of the approaching enemy, or they could turn their attention towards enemy siege engines to prevent them from reaching the walls. Ballistae also have a fire projectile variant, which takes longer to build and has less ammunition than the standard kind, but is much more powerful against enemy siege engines. Mangonel Another type of catapult used in siege warfare was the mangonel. The main aim of the mangonel was to create a breach in the castle walls by launching large projectiles from a bucket placed at the end of an arm. They were also used to hurl carcasses and excrement over walls in an attempt to spread fear and disease among enemy troops. As with ballistae, both attacking and defending armies will have access to mangonels in Bannerlord. Players can build a standard version which can be used to target and destroy merlons during sieges, exposing enemy troops stationed on the wall. There is also a fire variant which deals more damage to enemy siege engines and has an area of effect type of damage against troops. Trebuchet Trebuchets were perhaps the most powerful type of siege engine used in ancient and medieval warfare. They used a pivoted arm to throw projectiles over great distances and came in two different designs: Traction, which was powered by people, and Counterpoise, which used a weight at the short end of the arm. In Bannerlord you can expect to see the counterpoise trebuchet being used by besieging armies. They can be used to devastate defending troops from a relatively safe distance and destroy merlons and mantlets with ease. Trebuchets can also be built as a fire variant, which has an area of effect type of damage that is extremely effective against enemy troops. So how do sieges actually work in the game? When laying siege, an army surrounds a castle and cuts off the defender’s supply from the outside world. Prices of goods significantly rise as materials begin to run low, and eventually, the defenders can be starved into submission. This, of course, takes some time to happen, so it can be rather costly for an attacking force not to press its advantage when it has the chance (after all, wages still need to be paid and soldiers still need to eat!). Assuming that the besieging army doesn’t want to starve their opponent out, they can choose to build siege weapons to be used in an assault, with each siege engine taking a set amount of time to build (depending on the type and level). As soon as an engine is built, it can be used to bombard the castle on the campaign map or launch an assault in the battle map. Attacking on the campaign map can create breaches in the wall which will make the final assault easier, however, this will result in casualties for both of the armies involved, so players should weigh up the positives of creating a breach with the cost involved (in terms of time and manpower). Defenders also have a trick or two up their sleeve. They can sally out to meet the attackers at any time or wait for a relief force to arrive to break the siege. In the battle map, they have a well-protected position to hold with an endless supply of ammunition and murder holes from which they can throw projectiles and burning jars down onto the troops below. In the end, sieges are bloody and costly affairs for all parties involved. They are chaotic and brutal… But they sure are a lot of fun.
Dev Blog 05/04/18 Greetings warriors of Calradia! Castles are perhaps one of the most iconic images that come to mind when people think of the medieval era. These large and seemingly impregnable structures dominated the landscape in which they stood and projected an image of power and authority that aimed to impress both a lord’s subjects and peers. In last week’s blog we looked at some of the tools of warfare that were used to overcome the defences of these magnificent medieval behemoths and talked about the different ways that players can approach sieges in Bannerlord. In this week’s blog we would like to discuss the thought process that goes into designing castles for the game, from the historical influences we use through to the gameplay related decisions we make, and show you how this all comes together to make a castle for the game. Historical Influences In our faction overview blogs, we talked about the cultures and peoples that influenced the design of each of the factions of Calradia, and how this provided us with a solid base to build on and create our own take on this period of history. Using real-world cultures in this way gives us the advantage of having a wealth of historical sources and knowledge to take inspiration from and allows us to cherry-pick the parts which we find interesting and exciting to include in the game. This kind of readily available information is extremely useful when it comes to designing architecture for the game, and in particular, castles. (There really isn’t much room for experimentation or running wild with your imagination when your life is on the line, and poorly designed or unnecessary features could end up costing you a lot more than just the gold in your chest!) For most of our factions, this process is quite straightforward. After all, there are many medieval castles that are still standing and in use to this day. However, when it comes to a faction like Battania, which draws its inspiration from the native tribes of the British Isles, things start to get a little more complicated. The British Isles were subject to many waves of invaders and settlers over the years, each bringing their own advancements in architecture and warfare with them. The arrival of these various cultures with their different building methods slowly superseded the traditional earthwork and wooden defensive structures of the Celts and the Picts. This presented us with a choice: do we closely follow the design of the original structures? Or, do we take inspiration from the designs which followed? In the end, we decided to make use of the beautiful extensive hill forts and massive earthwork ramparts of Iron Age Britain, while trying to stay away from the Norman influence on castle building (which we use for Vlandia). We include features like multiple rows of ditches and earthwork defences, while trying to keep the circular forms of the original earthwork with each upgrade level of the castle. This thought process carries over to all of our factions. We try to stay true to original designs to make each castle believable enough as to not break the immersion of the player, but still leave enough room for us to inject some of our own ideas and style into each castle! Upgrade System The castle upgrade system in Bannerlord allows us to have greater variety in our castle designs. Apart from the additional depth to the campaign that this system brings, we try to use it to create different experiences for the player when attacking or defending a castle. The system is quite simple: castles start at level 1 and can be upgraded twice to reach their maximum level. In the example castle below, with each upgrade the castle gets taller, more dominant towers; better positions to deploy defensive machines; deeper walls at critical points for larger troop formations; greater coverage over its gatehouse; and the opportunity to deploy a layered defence. While it may be acceptable (or even preferable in some instances) to assault the gatehouse of a level 1 castle with just a battering ram, as the castle is upgraded this kind of simplistic approach becomes less viable, and by level 3 you will need a well-coordinated attack to be able to breach the defences. However, with that being said, this might not necessarily be the case in every instance. A castle placed on a hilltop or on a plain might grow stronger in more than one way with each upgrade, while one that incorporates some form of natural defence, such as a lake, won’t have the room to expand and will only receive the benefit of taller towers and walls with each upgrade. Gameplay As far as playing styles go, Mount & Blade games offer players a number of different ways to approach battles. In sieges we can simplify this a little and look at it as two main styles: commanding your army to its maximum potential from the rear; or fighting on the front lines and creating opportunities for your troops to exploit. In Bannerlord we want players to be able to experiment and choose their own way to approach sieges, and this is something we take into consideration when designing castles. No matter how large or complex our castles are, we always try to give commanding positions for both the attackers and defenders. A small hill near your siege camp, or the tallest tower in your castle might not be the best position to utilise your character’s combat potential, but it would give you a great vantage point to oversee the battle from and make it easier to command your troops. Meanwhile, shortcuts between battlements and multiple chokepoints built into the map give you the opportunity to move to where you are needed to hold back an attack or break through a defence.
Dev Blog 12/04/18 Greetings warriors of Calradia! If you have been following these weekly updates for some time now, you will know that our aim for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord isn’t just to provide players with bigger, more epic battles, but also to refine existing mechanics from the series and add small details to the game to make it feel more believable and immersive. In this week’s blog, we want to show you another example of how we try to pay close attention to small details by introducing you to a feature which probably won’t catch your eye immediately while playing, but is something which we feel adds to the overall visual fidelity of the game. (And before you read on, we want to make it clear that this isn’t anything big or hugely exciting, it is more of just a curious sneak peek to one of the many small features which come together to make Bannerlord a more visually impressive and immersive experience.) Multiple Scabbards For those of you familiar with Mount & Blade games, you will know that characters have 4 item slots which can be used for equipping weapons and shields. However, in previous games in the series, items equipped in these slots don’t always show on your character. This is because those games have a limited number of visual slots for items, which means that, at times, items conflict with each other and only one of them is displayed. So, for example, if you are carrying a one-handed sword and a one-handed mace, they would both occupy the same visual slot and, in the end, only the sword scabbard would be shown on your character. In singleplayer, this only goes to break immersion a little but overall it doesn’t present any gameplay issues. However, in multiplayer this simplistic system causes a slight issue. With a skill-based game that is as up close and personal as ours, it is important to be able to weigh up your opponent and assess any potential threats before you engage. We thought about this and decided that the best solution is to visually display each weapon type that is being carried on your character. This means that if you are carrying a sword, an axe and a club, as can be seen in the screenshot above, they would all be displayed on your character. But, if you were carrying 4 swords (for some strange reason!) then not all of them would be shown. (Oh, and before anyone comments on the two-handed sword being carried on the back, we are fully aware that this isn’t entirely historically accurate, but we think it looks cool nevertheless!) Scabbard System In a previous blog, we looked at how we use inverse kinematics (IK) with shields to make blows look and feel more impactful. Our new physically based scabbard system borrows elements from the IK system to set rotation and twist limits to scabbards and combines it with spring physics to achieve a natural looking jiggle. This helps us to do away with the static character attachments of Mount & Blade: Warband and allows us to make the scabbard react to the movement of your character (which ultimately help to make your character feel more alive as you are running around the battlefields of Calradia).
Dev Blog 03/05/18 Greetings warriors of Calradia! In previous instalments of our weekly updates, we introduced you to the major powers of Calradia and talked about the historical influences that we used as a foundation for creating our own take on the early medieval period. In this week’s blog, we thought it would be nice to put a face to a name, so to speak, by sharing each of the factions’ banners with you. After all, this is Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord… Drawing inspiration from real-world medieval cultures gave us a solid starting point when setting about designing the faction banners. We were able to research the different ornamental styles, sculptures, carvings, metalwork, heraldry and flags of each culture, which gave us some interesting ideas for the direction that we could take each design. For some of the factions, such as Empire and Vlandia, we had a pretty clear idea in mind for what we wanted to go with from the outset. However, for some of the other factions this proved to be a little more difficult. One example of this is with both Aserai and Khuzait. Initially, we wanted to go with geometric designs for these two factions but eventually decided to move away from this in favour of large shapes and a single focal point. Our reasoning for this was that the banners are displayed in many different places in the game, from actual banners carried by troops into battle to small icons hovering over each city on the world map. We thought that geometric designs could cause too much visual noise when displayed at different sizes and instead we opted to go for designs which would work well at any scale. Something that tied in closely with this design process was deciding the faction colours. We wanted each faction to have a distinctive colour which would make their troops recognisable in the thick of a battle, while also subtly representing the culture of that faction. In other words, we needed to select colours which are unique for gameplay reasons, but still say something about the faction. One issue we ran into while selecting the faction colours was with multiplayer. We use two different colours for each faction in multiplayer: dark as the primary (team 1) and light as the secondary (team 2). The team colours are displayed in various UI elements, items and clothing so we wanted to ensure that players could easily differentiate between the two teams at a glance and that everything is visually clear for colour blind players. Aserai For Aserai we decided to go with a warm colour to represent their homelands: the Nahasa desert of southern Calradia. We looked at a few different options in the orange-yellow range before deciding to go with a deep, almost golden yellow. For the design, we took inspiration from Islamic decorative arts and interiors, going through many different iterations before settling on a cup and horns design, which was heavily influenced by Mamluk blazons. Battania Battania lay claim to the misty hills of north-western Calradia. They are inspired by the Celtic peoples of Western Europe and we felt that an earthy, woodland type of green would be the best choice of colour to represent this faction. We went through a few different design choices for their banner, focussing on animals like boar, deer and rabbits, stylised in a Celtic art style. However, we wanted a more encapsulating image for the faction and decided to go with a design from Celtic culture which is more iconic and recognisable. Empire Empire presented us with quite a unique challenge. The design of this flag was pretty much set in stone from the outset: we wanted to use the double-headed eagle as it is a charge that is associated with empire, especially the Byzantine Empire (which this faction takes its inspiration from). However, because Empire is split into three individual factions that are on the brink of a civil war, we had to decide whether to go with completely different banner designs or to use the same banner across all three factions (after all, each of the three rulers claim to be the rightful heir to the throne!). In the end, we reasoned that we should take a route somewhere in between these two options by keeping the general design the same, but giving each banner its own slight variation to represent the ideals of that particular faction. For the Northern Empire, whose leader was elected by the senate from within their own ranks, we decided to go with a deep purple. Historically, the dye used to create purple garments was extremely expensive and, as such, it is a colour that is commonly associated with emperors, kings and queens. Likewise, for the southern empire we decided to choose a shade of blue-violet. This colour represents stability and nobility, which we think is quite fitting for their leader, Empress Rhagaea, widow of the previous emperor, Arenicos. Finally, we thought that orange, a colour which relates to adventure and risk-taking, would be the best choice for the militaristic Western Empire. Khuzait The horse lords, hailing from the eastern steppe of Calradia, draw their inspiration from the steppe peoples of central Asia. We took the colours for the banner directly from the open plains which they roam, with the main colour being a light shade of sky blue. Our original designs for Khuzait drew inspiration from Turkic and Mongolian illustrations but we felt that these designs looked a little too peaceful and we wanted something a little more impactful and aggressive. We decided to incorporate sun and moon shapes into the design as these shapes are important to Central Asian people. Sturgia The Sturgians populate the cold and forbidding forests of North-Eastern Calradia. They are based on the federation of predominantly Slavic city states known as Kievan Rus, with influences taken from the many different peoples who travelled to and settled in this region. This gave us quite a bit of free reign when choosing the design for this faction. In the end, we decided to lean more towards the Viking style of art, which we felt would be more recognisable. The Viking shield is perhaps one of the most iconic shields we can think of, so using that in the centre of the design was an idea we had right from the start (the sword just naturally fit in with that!). We combined this with a design taken from some Viking jewellery (a torc) which helped to bring the whole piece together. The dark blue of the banner was chosen to represent the cold and harsh environment in which the Sturgians live, and also the seas which they travelled across from their homelands. Vlandia We took our inspiration for Vlandia from the feudal states of early medieval Europe, in particular the Normans. We wanted to use a powerful and aggressive colour for Vlandia, and the natural choice for that was a deep, almost bloodlike red. The lion which adorns the Vlandian flag is a symbol of strength, courage and military might, and was used quite widely in European heraldry. We tried a few different, more complex designs but decided to go with a simpler version that would better suit the early medieval period that the game is set in.
Dev Blog 10/05/18 Greetings warriors of Calradia! The ultimate goal for most players of Bannerlord will be to carve out their own piece of Calradia through bloody conquest, however, Mount & Blade games are about more than just raising an army and leading it into battle. A big part of the game revolves around plotting your rise to power and building up a war chest that is capable of making your ambitions a reality. In this week’s blog, we will take a look at one of the ways that Bannerlord’s deep economic system enables players to raise the funds needed to equip themselves, gather an army and set forth on a military campaign: productive enterprises. For those of you that have played previous Mount & Blade games, you will already be familiar with productive enterprises, but for those who are new to the series, allow us to give you an overview of what they are and how they work. Productive enterprises are business which players can set up in towns across Calradia. They provide a way for players to earn a steady income by taking the raw materials created in villages and producing crafted products to sell to merchants. As with real-world economics, prices fluctuate according to supply and demand, so a good knowledge of the supply chain is essential if you want to maximise your profits or prevent your business from grinding to a halt. There are a number of different productive enterprises in Bannerlord, which are: Brewery (produces beer from grain) Butcher (produces meat from livestock) Linen Weaver (produces linen from flax) Mill (produces flour from grain) Olive Press (produces oil from olives) Pottery (produces pottery from clay) Smithy (produces weapons and armours from iron) Stable (produces horses from… well… horses!) Tannery (produces leather armours from hides) Weavery (produces cloth and clothes from wool) Wood Workshop (produces weapons and shields from wood) One of the key changes that we made from Warband is that productive enterprises are now linked to physical locations in each town. Players can enter a town and walk around to find their preferred location for their business from a number of different rentable buildings. Not only does this help us to achieve our aim of improving the overall immersion of the game, but it allows us to expand on productive enterprises as a gameplay mechanic as a whole. Having various locations for productive enterprises in each town means that players and AI lords can establish multiple businesses, which actually has a wider implication than it may seem at first glance. By allowing both players and AI lords set up multiple businesses in a single town, they can act in direct competition with each other and have a negative impact on each other's profits. This can be quite useful if you already have a reliable source of income and you want to ensure that a rival lord doesn’t gain a financial upper hand, but it can be quite a nuisance if you are struggling to make ends meet and production is halted because your business can no longer turn a profit. Likewise, crafty players can monitor what businesses their rivals own and buy up any raw materials or flood the local market with crafted goods to influence market prices, effectively putting a choke hold on rival operations. As a side note, expanding this feature of the game was actually quite a big task. We had to create a huge number of interior scenes to match the architecture of each different region of the world map and then decorate these scenes to match each productive enterprise. To decorate the interiors, we used a system that allows us to tag objects and automatically replace the default entities placed in a scene using the properties of a new shop. In Warband, the simplest way to do this would have been to create a new scene for each shop, but we think that the current method we are using for Bannerlord is a much more elegant and practical solution (and we are sure that modders will find some inventive uses for it). And finally: In the past few weeks, some people have asked us if we plan to attend the next E3. After careful consideration, we have decided against it, and we won’t be going to Los Angeles this year. The preparations needed to attend an event such as E3 takes a lot of time, effort and resources, and right now we think it is better to focus on the development of the game. However, that does not mean that you won’t see anything of Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord during the summer: Gamescom is on the horizon!
Dev Blog 21/06/18 Greetings warriors of Calradia! In Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, whether you are trading goods or taking part in a military campaign, a large portion of your time will be spent traversing the campaign map. The campaign map acts as your portal to virtually every other aspect of the game: the diverse array of settlements, the huge and epic sieges, battles, trade, diplomacy, etc. In this week’s blog, we would like to show you some of the work we have been doing to improve this core feature of the game. For Bannerlord, we are using a fantastic scene editor that our engine team created for our artists. We were, however, using a different method for the campaign map that was a relic of Warband’s system. This was practical in some aspects and had its advantages, but as time went on we realised that the limitations were too many and we decided to redo the campaign map system built on the new scene editor. There are a lot of advantages to the new design. Apart from being able to create a map that is of a much higher quality, it is actually a huge change that opens up a ton of possibilities. By creating the map directly in our editor we are able to quickly and efficiently edit the map, with one of the key benefits being that we can now place settlements directly in the editor (rather than with coordinates in a text file!). This leads us on to possibly the coolest change we have made with the campaign map: the city icons on the world map now visually represent the actual city scenes. This means that, given some time, seasoned players will be able to recognise a city just from its map icon alone. Likewise, players will be able to see what kind of resources a village produces and the level of a castle’s walls visually represented on the campaign map. The new system requires a bit more work in certain areas. Making city icons that match the scenes is an additional task, and we also need a separate navigation mesh so that path-finding is fast and efficient for the many parties roaming the map. However, we think that the benefits justify the extra effort. Finally, we would like to expand a little on what Gökçen told us in last week’s blog regarding terrain types. Designating areas of the campaign map with different terrain types allows us to do more than just match battle scenes to parts of the map, it also allows us to control AI behaviour (for example, limiting the areas where certain bandit parties can roam) and affect party modifiers (such as movement speed). We think that modders will find these terrain types to be quite useful as they can be used in a number of inventive ways.
