Hello and welcome to Dev Diary 85 for Crusader Kings III!
This is Areysak, Content Designer (some of you might remember me from Imperator).

As the release date draws nearer and nearer, I’m here to talk to you about Artifacts.
Again?! - you are probably thinking.
YES, because artifacts still have more to offer! Let’s take a closer look.

► Read our Dev Diary #85 - An Artifact's Life

💡 Enjoy the FAQ Royal Court and read all there is to learn about our upcoming Expansion




First, you probably know by now that artifacts are an investment that requires time and gold. An inspired character makes them for you, but how can you make them feel like they are really yours?

… Why not inscribe your name on them!

While an inspired character is hard at work making a fancy artifact for you, they might ask for your input on dedications: do you want this artifact to preserve the glory of your name for posterity? Or maybe you want to impress your lover, memorialize your deceased soulmate, or even make the artifact testify to your faith. A dedication is forever!


Event to add dedications to artifacts in the making


Event to add dedications to artifacts in the making


Dedicated artifact


Occasionally, an inspired character might also seek your input on what functionalities you expect out of their artifact. Should your armor shine so bright that all your knights are inspired to greatness on the battlefield whenever you lead them, or should it favor practicality and make you more effective in mountain areas? You can choose an angle for your artifact that will make certain modifiers more likely to appear at creation.


Event to set the artifact’s focus


On a separate topic, artifacts don’t exist in a void, but are living items in a living world, meant to be used, exchanged, stolen… and damaged. With use and time, an artifact’s durability lowers. What happens when your grandpa’s armor gets rusty, or your sword loses its edge? You need an expert! The Antiquarian at your court specializes not only in maintaining but also in repairing your artifacts. With just a couple of clicks (and some gold) your artifacts will be as good as new!


Repair interface


Sometimes, however, just repairing an artifact doesn’t really strike your fancy… Grandpa’s armor has seen its fair share of adventures, but it’s ancient, and you have newer and cooler stuff to wear! Before you hit a flea market to get rid of it (and possibly have Grandpa curse you from his grave), you have another choice: reforge! By reforging an inventory artifact, you change it into a pedestal artifact to expose in your court. Of course, its modifiers will change accordingly - wearing armor might make you tougher to kill, but it will hardly be of any help if it stays on a stand by your throne! On the other hand, your courtiers might be impressed by its fine decoration.


Reforge interface


Reforged armor


Reforged weapon


In some cases, however, you might not care enough about an artifact to repair or reforge it… When artifacts reach 0 durability they get destroyed and disappear from the game. Before that happens, however, other possibilities might open up for you through events. Perhaps a scrap collector will offer to buy it in exchange for some gold (don’t expect too much, though, they collect scraps, not riches!), or your antiquarian might find a way to repurpose it.


Event for decaying artifacts


Event for decaying artifacts


Finally, some artifacts gain a reputation or a story through time! The sword of an often-triumphant general will be remembered as a fearsome weapon, while the crown that sat on the heads of your dynastic predecessors for generations will be recognized as a symbol of your people. But be careful, because if either you or your artifact gain an ominous reputation, your artifact might be known as a cursed item!


Crown with a reputation


Event from an artifact's life


Armor gains a reputation


An artifact can gain a reputation


That’s it for today! I hope you enjoyed this DD, and are looking forward to next month’s release as much as we are!

Welcome comrades! We’ve not got anything major on the docket for the day’s dev diary, so we’ll be taking a little peak at a cultural tradition that’s dear to my heart instead.
Just to whet the appetite for more content a little.

💡 To fully experience our Teaser on the forums and share your thoughts, you can click the link below.
► Read our Winter Teaser #5 - Mendicant Mystics Making a Mess

💡 Enjoy the FAQ Royal Court and read all there is to learn about our upcoming Expansion






Mendicant Mystics is a moderately uncommon tradition, one that synergises well with faiths that already boost the mystic lifestyle. Moreover, though, there’s something that just _speaks_ to me, personally, about the idea of impassioned people wandering the world, sharing their wisdom and message.

Consequently, I’ve spruced it up a little bit, adding some flavour to the idea of living in a culture where wandering know-it-all is a valid career choice. To reflect this, the following events will all _try_ to grab characters from the pool first, so wandering characters of such a culture are often at risk of deciding to become a mystic once they hit the road, and if a mystic breaks in to annoy you once, there’s every chance the same mystic might come knocking a second time down the line...




After all, who better than a stranger covered in twigs and mud to teach your children some valuable life lessons?


Or, indeed, yourself.


Really, they’re altruists...



… of course, for some folks, the wandering may get too much eventually.



Hmmm, can’t really put my finger on why I like the idea of mendicant mystics so much. Something about them just seems delightfully familiar to me, I guess. Ah well.

Thanks for reading folks, and we’ll see you next week for the first dev diary of the year!

On the First day of Christmas
My good lord brought to me
A sword with a gilded filigree.​

Hello and happy holidays! Hope you’ve had a grand time celebrating, or maybe you’re already preparing for the new year?

💡 To fully experience our Teaser on the forums and share your thoughts, you can click the link below.
► Read our Winter Teaser #4 - Artifact Weapons

💡 Enjoy the FAQ Royal Court and read all there is to learn about our upcoming Expansion




With the Royal Court a plethora of new weapon looks will be made available.
They can be carried into duels, or shown off in your courts where they will be placed prominently on weapon stands for all to view. In this teaser we’ll be showing off a few more of them up close.​



The King of France, Charles II, trying to live up to his ancestor Charles Martel “The Hammer” name in battle, wielding the signature weapon.​



When they are crafted or generic weapons are wielded the game will pick an appropriate weapon from either the culture of the character's origin. So any weapon a character has acquired and equipped in their personal inventory will be wielded.​


Swords and sabers, elegant and a way of showing off one's wealth


Daggers may not have reach, but they’re much more up close and personal. Et tu, Brute?


What self respecting berserker would be caught without his axe?


Mace, for chasing off attackers since before recorded history.


For the experienced spearman.
​
And with that its a wrap for this short teaser, hope your holidays have been a great one and until next time, Happy new years!

The Steam Winter Sale is here! ❄️
Up to -20% on Crusader Kings III, treat yourself with a royal gift for Christmas and invite your friends to play as your vassals! 😏
► Buy Crusader Kings III

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1158310/Crusader_Kings_III/

Hello and welcome to another winter teaser :)

In this short teaser today I bring you more cultural traditions as well as previews of some cultures we haven’t shown you before.

💡 To fully experience our Teaser on the forums and share your thoughts, you can click the link below.
► Read our Winter Teaser #3 - Cultural Traditions

💡 Enjoy the FAQ Royal Court and read all there is to learn about our upcoming Expansion



Chanson De Geste

In some cases cultural traditions are regional variants on more generically available one. Instead of the more widely available Martial Admiration tradition that we’ve shown previously the cultures that have a Frankish heritage will have access to the Chanson de Geste tradition. This both grants access to the Valets innovation when the Late Medieval era comes around and highlights the role of troubadours in the French region.


Performative Honor Cultural Tradition
​
For those that have Flavor Pack 1 Northern Lords, the Shield Maiden related content is now connected to a new cultural tradition called Performative Honor, which is available for cultures of the North Germanic Heritage.


Persian Culture

Image of the Philosopher Culture tradition

One of the traditions of Persian culture highlights the prevalence of philosophical thought among its members, another gives access to a royal gardener court position. :)


Butr Culture

Image of the Butr Culture and traditions

Cultures with a Berber heritage and a presence in desert or dry lands will have access to the Desert Ribats tradition, which unlocks the Mulathamun Man at arms type among other things.


Catalan Culture

Image of the Catalan Culture and traditions
​
Maritime Mercantilism is a tradition that makes coastal holdings more useful to a culture, as seen here in the lineup of Catalan Traditions.


Cisalpine Culture

Image of Cisalpine Culture and Traditions
​
Any culture that has the Roman culture somewhere in its ancestry can adopt the Republican Legacy tradition which is a special version of the more generally available Parochialism cultural tradition. This highlights the special Republican heritage in the italic sphere and will let you create a number of Republican vassals out of your counts who will become overseers, or Podestàs.


Mongol Culture

Mongol Culture and traditions
​
The Steppe Tolerance tradition highlights that for some cultures what your subjects believe was not as important as it was for others…


And that was all for this short winter teaser. These are some of my personal favorite traditions in the update, I hope you found them as interesting as I do!

Today, PC Gamer published an article sharing their impressions on Crusader Kings III: Royal Court. You can read the article here!

If haven't already, add it to your wishlist now!

In the meantime, you can catch up on all the previous points in our Royal Court FAQ!

Greetings!

By this point most of the team is on vacation (including me, this is a scheduled post!). However, we still want to tease something that we think you’ll like!

With the Cultural Rework we’re making it more viable to rule a large and culturally diverse empire, as you all surely know. To enhance this playstyle we’ve devised a new Dynasty Legacy that focuses on strengthening multicultural realms! If you own the Royal Court expansion, you’ll get access to the new ‘Customs’ Dynasty Legacy!

💡 To fully experience our Teaser on the forums and share your thoughts, you can click the link below.

► Read our Winter Teaser #2 - Dynasty Legacy

💡 Enjoy the FAQ Royal Court and read all there is to learn about our upcoming Expansion


[Image of the Legacy Track Art]


Let's take a look at the Legacies themselves:

[Image of the first legacy]


The first legacy reinforces the link between learning languages and acceptance by adding a Cultural Acceptance bonus on completion for members of your dynasty. Quite a powerful opener, as it gives you a tool for improving acceptance with cultures outside your own realm (albeit a small one, though depending on how spread out your dynasty is it can be more or less powerful!)


[Image of the second legacy]


The second legacy improves the effectiveness of the Council Job, simple but effective. Having an extra slot for Learn Language schemes means that you can always have one running, while keeping your ‘normal’ personal scheme slot open for Swaying vassals or Seducing siblings.


[Image of third legacy]


When you land a ruler of a culture in the lands of their culture, you already get a Cultural Acceptance bonus. This legacy makes it an even more viable strategy to do this, as you also get a hook that you can use for all kinds of things. This pairs well with the new grant options that you’ll find at the end of this DD.


[Image of fourth legacy]


The fourth legacy unlocks a special Court Position, the Cultural Emissary. This isn’t a cheap position to fill, but it brings great benefit to realms with a diverse cast of vassals as it increases Different Culture opinion by up to 20! It also grants a lot of prestige, as an additional bonus.


[Image of the Cultural Emissary Court Position]


Here are some details on how the position itself looks.


[Image of fifth legacy]


The last legacy focuses less on building acceptance, and more on reaping its benefits! It gives you access to a decision that, while expensive to take, improves the lands of all your realm; presuming the culture has 75%+ acceptance with yours. This can be a truly massive bonus for a large realm. Not pictured here is that it also gives you prestige.


[Image of the main modifier from the Side-by-Side decision]


The main modifier of the above decision, in its current incarnation.


[Image of the new Grant To buttons]


Now, one of the hardest things to do if you want to have self-rule in your lands is actually finding someone of the correct culture. To remedy this problem, we’ve added two new buttons to the ‘Grant to…’ window. When giving away a County or Barony, you can now choose to grant it to a noble of your culture, or a noble of the local culture (faith, for now, always follows your own). If you choose either of these options, the game will firstly look for an appropriate wanderer, and if it can’t find anyone, generate a new character.

If you grant land to a local noble, you will clearly see just how much acceptance you’ll get for the act.

Salutations, I am Carlberg, the 3D environment art lead on CK3 and today we have a small teaser for that button you may have spotted down in the right corner on a lot of dev diaries. It is the button that will bring up the Photomode of the court, to make it easier to take memorable pictures of the events and happenings of your court! Along with this preview we also thought we’d show off some more artifacts in their natural habitat.​

💡 Due to the nature of this diary, many of the images are much too large to have on Steam. To fully experience our Teaser on the forums and share your thoughts, you can click the link below.

► Read our Winter Teaser #1 - Photo Mode

💡 Enjoy the FAQ Royal Court and read all there is to learn about our upcoming Expansion



The camera might not have been invented in the dark ages, but don’t we all want clean screenshots?.

We’ve been confident for quite some time that our players would want to take some pictures of what happens in their court, the interesting courtiers interacting or from finally seeing your rival and vassal arrive to bend the knee. So for that purpose the Photo mode will give everyone the ability to pick what camera is currently active out of a curated selection. Some of these are camera angles that you’ve seen depending on different interfaces and some camera angles only available in the photo mode.

In the photo mode you can select cameras from a dropdown, turn off courtiers for decoration focused shots, or the UI to get a clean picture with no interface.​

And following, here are a few more court shots taken with the photo mode.​
[Please see forum post [b]here[/b]]
​
Trivia:
Did you know that the natural camera, camera obscura, is an optical effect that can occur in a dark room with a small hole for the entry of light. This light causes a projection of the outside to occur within the dark room and has been observed and mentioned in Chinese written texts as early as 400 bce.

We'll be back again next week with another teaser!

Hello and welcome to Dev Diary #84, I’m Carlberg , the 3D environment lead artist and today we will be having a closer look at the development of the Royal Court rooms.

This is a feature that we’ve been working hard on and it represents a great new step in bringing this historical era to life. Big thanks to Alien-47 (code), Stella (3D environment art) and Linus (tech art) who's perspectives they've written down for this Dev diary, drawn from their experiences from both code and art in the making of this feature.

💡 Note that there are way too many images to add them here, so please visit our forums this time to see all the pictures from this Dev Diary.

► Read our Dev Diary #84 - Building a Court

💡 To experience the full threads and comments, please visit our forums or website.
💡 Enjoy the FAQ Royal Court and read all there is to learn about our upcoming Expansion




Heads up! - A lot of the pictures in this post will be of old prototypes and iterations intermixed later with more recent images towards the end. So no need to worry about issues you may spot in the older images.​


With the new 3D character systems implemented in CK3 we wanted to show the characters of the middle ages in a whole new dynamic way. So as we started laying down the foundations of the Royal Court we also wanted to bring the very courts to life and find continued use for these 3D characters. This new feature was a major step in that direction.

The inspiration for the feature was partly scenes that hearken back to throne rooms seen in games of old where we wish they had been livelier, with more interaction and chances for us to impact the people and objects in them. We drew upon these concepts and ideas of our own to weave together a visualization of the courts hosted by the most prominent royal titles.​


At the beginning of the court development we knew that we were in for a challenge to stake out a new visual workflow within the engine that previously had not had any instances of contained 3D scenes and shared lighting systems within it. So we decided that to start off we needed a working prototype - laying a foundation and gradually adding more and more graphical features and complexity. Moving forward only when we’re sure the previous step succeeded.

A natural starting point of exploration were the characters. We could already show beautiful animated portraits and the courtroom had to be able to show the same people so players could easily recognize their appearance. Could we reuse the same system that assembles characters - show appropriate body, apply transformation to show age, height, weight, apply the same clothing, hair, set the same animation? First step - success. The people in the courtroom look exactly the same as in portraits.

Next step, is it possible to show many people at the same time in the same scene? This is quite different from portraits in the interface and events - those always have 1 person per image, even if the UI tries to combine them nicely together. With some optimization the room could now handle about 20 random characters, and even some objects. So the scene finally resembles a courtroom. Although a bit dark.​


The scene could now show several people and items in the prototype​

But what can we do with lights? The ambition for the court scene and requirement for lighting is much higher and more advanced than for regular portraits. We needed more simultaneous light sources. At the same time shadows naturally become much more complicated as well. People and objects can interfere with lights and it needs to be visible. Another issue was making sure characters and objects apply the lighting and shadows in the same way, so it’s easier for artists to manipulate the scene and develop the assets. After a bit of time and several iterations we had upgraded and made many improvements to the lighting system.​

Lights and shadows in a shared scene — Proof that multiple lights work and blend as intended, if a bit rough still.​

It was roughly at this time we felt we had confidence that the goal was within reach, and all technology was working as we intended. It was also clear that we could afford the desired complexity of the scene from a performance point of view. After all, players should have an enjoyable experience both on the map and in the court. We had built an understanding of how many people the scene could handle efficiently, how many light sources, and how many shadows we could allow (this is one of the most expensive parts).

And so the prototype has been integrated as a proper feature of the game.

Scene with better lighting, assets, materials, people positions​

From this point on work on the court room continued with multiple people from different disciplines working very closely together. More and more features waited to be implemented, so you can now see the beautiful results of all this effort.


Concept art and vision​
Being worked alongside the prototype was the vision we had for the Royal Court-rooms. We began by looking at the four main cultural areas we would be covering in the expansion. The west European, Mediterranean, Middle-eastern and Indian courts. We wanted each of these areas to be distinct, having their own visual style through architecture and lighting so to give their own unique feeling.

Concepts of the different walls aesthetics of the courts, Mediterranean, Western, Middle-East/North Africa and India. ​

The west European court draws much of its inspiration from courtly interiors of England, Germany, France and neighboring areas. Darker rooms lit by fiery hearths, candles and chandeliers. In the Mediterranean more inspiration comes from the Byzantine courts and those found in Italy and other heirs of Rome. The rooms hint back at this grander past with larger roofs, domes and columns supporting the walls and arches.

In the Middle-eastern courts we have a wider spread geographically, as these courts draw inspiration and cues from the courts all the way from Arabia to the architecture of Andalusia. In India we encountered an interesting split, as influences in architecture were pushing in from the west while there were still distinctly Indian courts. This was one of the reasons behind adding more court variants so that we could cover more of these visual flairs.

Style variation exploration, more on those further down in the Dev Diary.​

Each scene was broken down into components like walls, roofs, floors and key assets like thrones, chandeliers and fireplaces. While these were being designed from a plethora of references gathered from each culture we also created variants in the concepts. This was done both as exploration but also to add variance to the courts so that they don't all look the same all the time. You will most likely have seen some variants of these when we’ve shared screenshots in past dev-diaries.
​
Different courts, different architectural styles, different lighting setups.​

But the concept art phase did not end after the initial stages however, because once the scenes were being put together we returned to the concepts to try out the different lighting setups to help in the lighting of the rooms, giving our artists more ideas of where to focus the light and accentuate the scene further. Since the lighting system was being built alongside this in the prototype, the concept art took inspiration from contemporary game engines to help guide the prototyping, and not just the visual development.


When starting the modeling of the actual assets for the throne rooms there were several constraints to keep in mind. We had decided to go with a modular workflow so we could easily swap out wall-types and materials, so the dimensions would have to be consistent and work with the plans and concepts we had decided to pursue. We were also making several visual variants for each culture, which meant that we had to try and keep the details of the walls and materials equally interesting for each different type.

Another big limitation was the fact that we had never before made a scene within our engine like this, so that meant that there were a lot of uncertainties when it came to how much we could push the graphics and where the limits were. Since we were also going to have the artifact system we had to make sure we left enough room for the artifacts and banners without having the environment taking too much attention. This became a trial and error phase to find a good baseline for each throne room.

Early blocking out of the different artifact and furniture slots to be able to see where in the environments we had to make space.​

To create variation we made sure to have the materials contrast with each other while still fitting together aesthetically so no culture would have throne rooms that all felt exactly the same. This along with changing some architectonic aspects helped the scenes be more distinct. We also worked on adding variation to the the grandeur levels, here we wanted the difference to show in the cleanliness and brightness of the environment textures, as well as in the richness of detail in the geometry and amount of decorative props. (Visual examples of this are shown in the final chapter)

Making sure the different materials work together to create a cohesive feeling for each culture, but still looking different from each other. Example images taken from the MENA culture throne rooms.​


A lot of our visual tech usually involves considerations for a top-down map, and since we didn’t have much need for full scale 3D room rendering & lighting in the past, we had to do a lot of rethinking to get this to work - we went from previously having 4 lights, moving up to 20 total light sources and expanding the light types available with new ones like area lights - adding sphere & disc area lights. This helps illuminate areas such as room filling bouncing light (seen to great effect in Mediterranean courts) and helps us with light coming in from the windows and other openings.

A cozily lit interior.​

Another technique we used was animated lights. They move a little, flicker in intensity - very useful for making the fireplace feel like it’s actually on fire and heating up the room a bit. To sell the atmospheric feeling in the room, we added some transparent particles with a little light fade on the sides of the windows and other select places. Even though it isn’t adding to the “real” light of the room, it helps give it that last piece of convincing magic touch. We also used particle systems for effects like the fireplace, candles and torches.

The concept art helped us find the vision of what we wanted to do. Starting with just the room geometries, we used the color hues and general light level from the concepts to create a lit space that felt cohesive, which we then could tweak and modify until they felt comfortable to look at.


One of the hurdles throughout the development of the court scene were tools - a means for developers to manipulate the scene contents more efficiently - edit objects, characters, lights, change their positions, add or remove to have a toolset that allows more quick iteration and direct interaction. It took time to develop a solution that made this part of work less tiresome. One of the downsides of not having readily available tools - you have to do those yourself, and sometimes reinvent a wheel multiple times. But we’re lucky to have an internal tools team that came to rescue us, and it improved the processes immensely.

We had plenty of funny bugs over the court of development, resolved by now of course.

It's not a cult! — Sometimes visual bugs can be quite fun

Baby Bighead bug.

They say you shouldn't lose your head in court, but this is ridiculous​


With a working feature, concepts drawn and all the parts built we got to compositing together the scenes. There were a lot of iterative steps working on the textures, lighting and positioning to get all pieces to look their best. The environment team has made a set of three different variations of each cultural court type that each has their own architectural and/or decorative flair and visuals, the scenes differ more in geometry and configuration or the construction materials used. So there may be more windows and ample light, or a fireplace castings its warm light into your court.

The western European inspired courts, with stone and plastered walls.

The Mediterranean courts, drawing inspiration from the Roman past as well as the melding of surrounding cultures.

The Middle Eastern courts, drawn on from architecture found in Arabia to Al-Andalus.

The courts of India, greatly varying interiors.​

Grandeur variants was a further change we added later in the development cycle, which helps give a little extra flavor to the progress of your court's grandeur. Lower court grandeur has less fancy details and furniture extras in the court than the higher level which sports more of them. The surfaces of the room have also been made to look more worn and less taken care of at a lower grandeur level, compared to the high grandeur which look their grandest.


The Pomeranian kings court has seen better days, its painted plastered walls worn and peeling, the floor tiling tired, scraped and just slightly dirty.
Little decorations or extra furniture have been afforded the kings halls.


After much investment in upping the level of grandeur, the court's floors are fresh and polished, extra candles and seats added to the court, and a long finely woven rug lines the path up to the throne.​


And with that we’ve come the full way from inception all the way to the finished scenes. We’ve been continuously tweaking and polishing stuff like camera angles, lighting and textures, and we do hope this is a great foundation for a feature that we can grow over time. So a big thanks from the court and environment team for checking into this Dev Diary, which will be the last one of the year, but fret not! We will still be bringing you weekly teasers all the way through December to the start of next year. These teasers will be smaller in scale and focus on some minor features and things we still want to show off, so keep your eyes out for it next week.

The Steam Autumn Sale is here! 🍂
Up to -20% on #CK3, your chance to gift your rival a nice mushroom 🍄😏
► Buy Crusader Kings III

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1158310/Crusader_Kings_III/