AstroZombie
Arcane
FI hope this means it's easier to make mods :D
-
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Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord
- Thread starter Turisas
- Start date
- Joined
- Jul 29, 2011
- Messages
- 4,376
This is what I've been hoping to read about instead of improved hair and lighting.
Oesophagus
Arcane
This. Really hoping they make the game interesting for more than a few days
Merlkir
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 12, 2008
- Messages
- 1,216
This one was about map making possibilities for mods more than graphics wankery. Having used the old scene editor before, that's some good shit for me.
Space Satan
Arcane
I doubt they have anything to show in terms of gameplay. Most probably just tweaking engine to handle a lot of models and adjusting physics system.
Space Satan
Arcane
Inventory screen!
Mount&Blade II: Bannerlord Developer Blog 3 - Unexpected Parties
To all interested and uninterested parties, let it be known that we at TaleWorlds are making a new game, by the name of Mount&Blade II: Bannerlord. It is the next in the Mount&Blade series and a prequel to Mount&Blade Warband. This is the third entry in our Developer Blog, talking about making the game to whoever wants to listen. Thisweek we're talking about the campaign team, developers of the game's single player mechanics and gameplay. The team formerly known as “Team 3”...
It is tradition in the blog, to discuss the relative location of the teams' rooms in the office. The campaign team is directly opposite the engine team (mentioned in blog 2) and again very central. This is equally as useful as it is for the engine team but not because the campaign team receive a large number of wanderers, it's because they do the wandering. By focusing directly on the gameplay itself, oftentimes additions or changes are needed from the engine team, the artists or whoever to make a planned game mechanic work. It doesn't matter if it's a tap on the shoulder, a lean from the side or an instant message; a campaign team member always wants something from you. A variation of a map icon perhaps, or a piece of your soul.
Due to restructuring earlier in the year, team 1 absorbed team 3 (now known as the campaign team) much like an uncontrollable super fiend in a B-movie, creating the largest team in the office. With development handled using a variation of the widely utilised SCRUM system, this means that despite separate rooms, the team is together every morning for the scrum meeting and every two to three weeks for the sprint start and end meetings. The idea behind this was to improve communication between both groups, particularly in the design meetings, to create a clearer effort towards completing the game. The morning meetings are attended by all members of both teams, as well as additional members from other teams, to keep everyone informed about the activities of the whole office.
The campaign sub-team focuses on the systems within the sandbox game that take place on the world map and in the settlements, as well as the interface and the campaign AI, with work on the in-game missions (such as tournaments, battles, sieges) shared across both teams. Much work has been put into the behaviour of the campaign AI, meaning that lords make more sensible decisions with unique influences simulating personal motives and faction obligations. Lords and ladies will sometimes group up into multiple armies, rather than Warband where it was always a collection of all the lords. Not only is the system more realistic but it will create much more variety in the campaign gameplay, fighting in multiple locations on multiple fronts, leading to more interesting choices and depth to the player's actions.
Development of this kind is incremental and behaviours need to be gradually corrected and improved over time, to include new actions. An example of this is ambushing. The mechanic and gameplay of ambushing itself needs to be developed but for a real implementation into the game, the AI needs to be programmed to make sure that lord and bandit parties also make use of ambushing in realistic ways. This adds extra layers to the development of a non-linear game like Mount&Blade, obviously creating complications but a necessary part of creating the games that we want to create and our players enjoy.
One area that could be called lacking in previous installments in the series is the interface. In the new game, most screens have undergone a complete revolution both graphically and functionally. The approach is to have graphical interfaces that are attractive, informative and simple to use with drag and drop being the most natural and intuitive method usable in almost any situation; combinations of control, shift, left and right clicking will allow acclimatised users to maximise efficiency and speed. During meetings, we go through and discuss the details of all these operations, taking care to make sure that the final product will offer a completely smooth experience.
What you can see in the screenshot is simply a test screen so that we (the developers) can buy any item but the same screen is used for traders and general inventory management. One key piece of streamlining is the ability to directly equip your companions without having to open the conversation screen, switching between the main player and hero characters with the top centre arrows. Whilst this is a nice time saver, there will still be additional reasons to engage your companions in conversation and keep you immersed in the game world.
We've seen in the comments that there is a large demand for more things to do in the towns and villages, as well as for them to feel more alive and busy. Hopefully we'll have more to announce on that subject in the future.
P.S. At the time of posting this, there is around 5 hours left to vote for Mount&Blade II: Bannerlord in the IndieDB Upcoming Game of the Year category. Please help us out with your vote!
Mount&Blade II: Bannerlord Developer Blog 3 - Unexpected Parties
To all interested and uninterested parties, let it be known that we at TaleWorlds are making a new game, by the name of Mount&Blade II: Bannerlord. It is the next in the Mount&Blade series and a prequel to Mount&Blade Warband. This is the third entry in our Developer Blog, talking about making the game to whoever wants to listen. Thisweek we're talking about the campaign team, developers of the game's single player mechanics and gameplay. The team formerly known as “Team 3”...
It is tradition in the blog, to discuss the relative location of the teams' rooms in the office. The campaign team is directly opposite the engine team (mentioned in blog 2) and again very central. This is equally as useful as it is for the engine team but not because the campaign team receive a large number of wanderers, it's because they do the wandering. By focusing directly on the gameplay itself, oftentimes additions or changes are needed from the engine team, the artists or whoever to make a planned game mechanic work. It doesn't matter if it's a tap on the shoulder, a lean from the side or an instant message; a campaign team member always wants something from you. A variation of a map icon perhaps, or a piece of your soul.
Due to restructuring earlier in the year, team 1 absorbed team 3 (now known as the campaign team) much like an uncontrollable super fiend in a B-movie, creating the largest team in the office. With development handled using a variation of the widely utilised SCRUM system, this means that despite separate rooms, the team is together every morning for the scrum meeting and every two to three weeks for the sprint start and end meetings. The idea behind this was to improve communication between both groups, particularly in the design meetings, to create a clearer effort towards completing the game. The morning meetings are attended by all members of both teams, as well as additional members from other teams, to keep everyone informed about the activities of the whole office.
The campaign sub-team focuses on the systems within the sandbox game that take place on the world map and in the settlements, as well as the interface and the campaign AI, with work on the in-game missions (such as tournaments, battles, sieges) shared across both teams. Much work has been put into the behaviour of the campaign AI, meaning that lords make more sensible decisions with unique influences simulating personal motives and faction obligations. Lords and ladies will sometimes group up into multiple armies, rather than Warband where it was always a collection of all the lords. Not only is the system more realistic but it will create much more variety in the campaign gameplay, fighting in multiple locations on multiple fronts, leading to more interesting choices and depth to the player's actions.
Development of this kind is incremental and behaviours need to be gradually corrected and improved over time, to include new actions. An example of this is ambushing. The mechanic and gameplay of ambushing itself needs to be developed but for a real implementation into the game, the AI needs to be programmed to make sure that lord and bandit parties also make use of ambushing in realistic ways. This adds extra layers to the development of a non-linear game like Mount&Blade, obviously creating complications but a necessary part of creating the games that we want to create and our players enjoy.
One area that could be called lacking in previous installments in the series is the interface. In the new game, most screens have undergone a complete revolution both graphically and functionally. The approach is to have graphical interfaces that are attractive, informative and simple to use with drag and drop being the most natural and intuitive method usable in almost any situation; combinations of control, shift, left and right clicking will allow acclimatised users to maximise efficiency and speed. During meetings, we go through and discuss the details of all these operations, taking care to make sure that the final product will offer a completely smooth experience.
What you can see in the screenshot is simply a test screen so that we (the developers) can buy any item but the same screen is used for traders and general inventory management. One key piece of streamlining is the ability to directly equip your companions without having to open the conversation screen, switching between the main player and hero characters with the top centre arrows. Whilst this is a nice time saver, there will still be additional reasons to engage your companions in conversation and keep you immersed in the game world.
We've seen in the comments that there is a large demand for more things to do in the towns and villages, as well as for them to feel more alive and busy. Hopefully we'll have more to announce on that subject in the future.
P.S. At the time of posting this, there is around 5 hours left to vote for Mount&Blade II: Bannerlord in the IndieDB Upcoming Game of the Year category. Please help us out with your vote!
Space Satan
Arcane
At last they made horse armor separate!
illuknisaa
Cipher
- Joined
- Dec 23, 2013
- Messages
- 686
Why return grid when list is better?
- Joined
- May 25, 2006
- Messages
- 8,363
Because grid is better, you can have many more items on the screen at once.
Metro
Arcane
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2009
- Messages
- 27,792
This ain't ConsoleDex, bro. Though sometimes it feels like it. At the very least the UI looks polished visually versus some shit that was thrown together in a weekend on MS Paint.
Abelian
Somebody's Alt
- Joined
- Nov 17, 2013
- Messages
- 2,289
The instant I saw the screenshot I thought of Oblivion's inventory. It's even got the yellowish parchment-like background. Personally, I favor the grid-based since it was so easy to transfer items around and sell them off using the Ctrl key. If it ain't broke don't fix it.
Gregz
Arcane
The only value of a list is if it's sortable, and that one isn't.
Hellraiser
Arcane
But grids can be sortable as well!
Eh, making the list sortable should be doable, and it looks fine, really. The grid was pretty shitty too, anyway, especially if you had more than 1 or 2 points in inventory management. I also think that the black background in the grid squares was a poor choice, making some items easy to miss, when selling off loot.
But really, it's nitpicking for me, I didn't really give the inventory much thought.
But really, it's nitpicking for me, I didn't really give the inventory much thought.
Space Satan
Arcane
I see no problem with sorting of lists. At least now they are implementing much needed number of items. So no more 18 slots of bread. It is already sorted as we see in the screenshot - clothing\armor is selected so they combined all marketplaces in one screen - which is a clear incline for me. So far I can't understand if they removed gold limit for merchants or not.
Metro
Arcane
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2009
- Messages
- 27,792
Eh, that wasn't a particularly significant mechanic. By the time you got to the point where you could 'bankrupt' all the merchants in a given city it didn't matter if you just junked items. Hopefully they address this by fleshing out the fief/empire management portion of the game. Industries, in particular, were utterly worthless.
Space Satan
Arcane
Industries failed due to micromanagement hell. You had to manually deliver all goods for processing. And fiefs provided you with meager income. 20-30 days to build something meant that you had to practically babysit your village to prevent raiding and pillaging. I always preferred to act as a landless warband - much more freedom and you could always pillage more loot and gold than you could gain from your fief in a year. And with agressive marauding merchant gold was an issue mostly because after large battle selling the loot could drain very rich merchants of all their gold.
illuknisaa
Cipher
- Joined
- Dec 23, 2013
- Messages
- 686
http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/21/20175/6.jpg
You can't see more items and the items you can see have less info.
Borelli
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 5, 2012
- Messages
- 1,305
Main problem with M&B's grid was that it was only 3 tiles wide, increase that, maybe reduce the size of individual square and that part of the game is solved forever. It's not like scrolling the list is infinitely better than scrolling the grid. M&B shops were never large enough to require a list to sort through it. The list in the screenshot may seem huge enough to warrant it but that's because they put all their items in one pile for testing purpose. Because hopefully i won't have to buy a dress at the same place where i buy a mail.
Anyway in M&B you do not have to equip common soldier in your band, only yourself and your companions whose numbers generally go only slightly above the standard RPG fare.
My ideal way would be that since you lead an army and not just a group of companions like the rest of them RPGs they should add carts. They would take the function of inventory management skill except you would increase it by buying more carts. After battle dump loot on them, every cart is expensive, requires its own horses to pull, and slows you down on the world map. During combat they would spawn on the map and could be used as a makeshift wall. This way the characters themselves would carry only the bare minimum(aside from what they're wearing) and thus the grid could be saved.
Anyway in M&B you do not have to equip common soldier in your band, only yourself and your companions whose numbers generally go only slightly above the standard RPG fare.
My ideal way would be that since you lead an army and not just a group of companions like the rest of them RPGs they should add carts. They would take the function of inventory management skill except you would increase it by buying more carts. After battle dump loot on them, every cart is expensive, requires its own horses to pull, and slows you down on the world map. During combat they would spawn on the map and could be used as a makeshift wall. This way the characters themselves would carry only the bare minimum(aside from what they're wearing) and thus the grid could be saved.
Space Satan
Arcane
WTF their faces
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