Greetings warriors of Calradia!

Mods have always been a huge part of the Mount & Blade experience. Over the years, our talented and dedicated modding community has created some amazing mods which have expanded on concepts and features in our game, such as Diplomacy and Pre-Battle Orders and Deployment, or completely overhauled the game to create unique and engaging gaming experiences, such as Brytenwalda and Prophecy of Pendor. Some of them have brought RPG elements and character progression into a multiplayer setting, (Persistent World, cRPG) while others are just plain silly and fun, (Gangs of Glasgow).

In this week’s blog we would like to reach out to our modding community by answering a selection of questions from our official forums which were compiled by a key member of our community, our modding moderator “Duh”.


We are using C# as the scripting language. Data files are generally formatted in XML.

You can use any version of Visual Studio 2015 (e.g. Community edition)

Scene editor
Mesh editor
Material editor
Model/Animation viewer
Skeleton editor
Replay editor
Particle editor
Atmosphere Editor
Cloth editor
Path editor
Resource Browser

Also, the runtime performance profile tools that we use will be available for modders. They will be able to check the performance impact of their changes.


Cloth Editor

Not decided.

We will share a documentation site and we are planning to make some tutorial videos. Also, we will be taking feedback and engaging with users on our forums.

Most probably.

We will provide a replay editor.

The game will support multiple mods at the same time.

You can use any number of folders for resources but it is a flat system, so we don’t support subfolders within folders.

Unlike Warband, the vanilla game scripts will not be directly modifiable by modders. However, it will be possible for modders to add new scripts as plugins and also have modifications for XML data files. In Warband, we had the problem that, whenever we released a new version or patch, almost all existing mods would immediately become incompatible with the new version and modders had to go through the lengthy process of reapplying their changes on the new version’s scripts. Moreover, it was impossible for players to run multiple mods in conjunction. The new system will make modders’ lives much easier and also support multiple mods.

By changing XML files, it will be possible to modify or add/delete most types of game objects such as items, characters, factions etc. Of course it will also be possible to add new assets such as meshes or textures.

Modders will be able to add new campaign behaviours, mission behaviours and quests. Campaign behaviours are executed while the player is spending time on the campaign map, whereas mission behaviours are executed when the player is in a scene. For example, if you want to create some extra bandit parties every few days, you can do that with a campaign behaviour.

Modders will also be able to change most of the formulas used in the game. For example, if you want to add a special item that makes you move faster on map, you will add the item through an xml file, and also modify the formula for campaign map speed so that it returns a higher number if a party is in possession of the said item.

Modders who want to change an existing behavior (like party members deserting when morale is low) will have two options: Either they will modify the default formula, or if that’s not adequate for some reason, they will be able to disable the default behavior entirely and add a new one from scratch.

You can use random seeds and any kind of random number generator.

There is a very powerful string processing system, (you can pretty much embed programs into the string itself.) Dialogs, game menus, and everything text related can make use of that.

You can add as many factions as you like. Technically, creating factions is just a method call, but of course making them interesting would be the harder part!

Lowest-level troop AI is hard-coded, but you can customize it somewhat by changing aggressiveness, maximum speed etc. You can also give AI target movement points.

Formation AI and overall battle AI is extendable and modders can add new tactics and AI behaviours.

Pathfinding will be hardcoded. You can turn faces on/off in a navigation mesh though, so there are ways to control path-finding behaviour.


Scene Editor

It will be possible to draw graphical primitives on screen. Also, one can render multiple scenes on the screen for other uses. (As long as they are lightweight, they won’t affect the overall performance that much).

It will be possible to change certain variables, but a lot of constants may remain hard-coded.

You can give them an entity to target.

Of course. Script components can be used to add, alter or remove stuff from the scene. Materials, other scripts, physics and polygon attributes can be changed at run time.

Yes, scene makers will need to create navigation meshes. The scene editor has a tool to create the nav-mesh automatically but results vary and we generally prefer to create them manually.

No.

You can definitely preview what the scene will look like in different seasons and different atmosphere settings in the editor. You can set alternative terrain materials and alternative foliage for different seasons. It’s all very customizable.

For tunnels and caves you need meshes, the terrain system does not support them. We do not currently support dynamic changes to terrain height-maps during the game.

Depends on the power of the computer and available RAM. Our typical scenes are not too large because we want scenes to load quickly and not take an excessive amount of hard disk space. We experimented with larger scenes on a few occasions but this is not something that’s a priority.

No. The editor does not support that.

The physics objects for dynamic rigid bodies will have some polygon count restrictions.

The atmosphere system is not designed to update in real-time, so you cannot simulate that without stutters. Maybe you can darken the screen, change the atmosphere and then do a fade in.

We divide scene files into two groups. One is the editable data for the scene editor (some binary, some text) and the other one is loading time optimised binary files.

The crafting system only works for melee weapons. Armour, shields, bows and crossbows cannot be crafted.

Crafted and non-crafted items are added in different ways, but modders can add both. For crafting, modders can easily add new crafting parts. They can also add new weapons by editing an xml file only, specifying which parts the new item is made of.

Yes, you can add custom skeletons to meshes.

Poly count is very varied but we use LOD meshes heavily.

Average texture size is 2k. You can add 4K textures to the game.


Model and Animation Viewer

Not every piece probably, but modders can add it to all types of equipment. Weapons can have them as cosmetic only, so no flails with cloth system.

Not decided.

We have good variety of post effects, and you can probably add new post effects. We have SSR. It should be possible to add dynamic GI in theory but in practice it can be very hard or even impossible.

Sorry, the game engine does not support that.

For basic polygonal modelling, our artists use mainly Max, Maya and Blender and we will document work flows for these. We also use a ton of other tools for sculpting, painting textures, viewing etc.

We have some script components, which can add simple looping animations to entities in any scene. It is not as complicated as the animation system of characters in battles.


In next week’s blog we will be talking to Meriç Neşeli, QA Lead and Game Designer. If you have a question you would like to ask then please leave a reply in the comment section and we will pick one out for him to answer.

Discuss this blog post HERE



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Twitter


Website
Facebook
Twitter
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Greetings warriors of Calradia!

Mods have always been a huge part of the Mount & Blade experience. Over the years, our talented and dedicated modding community has created some amazing mods which have expanded on concepts and features in our game, such as Diplomacy and Pre-Battle Orders and Deployment, or completely overhauled the game to create unique and engaging gaming experiences, such as Brytenwalda and Prophecy of Pendor. Some of them have brought RPG elements and character progression into a multiplayer setting, (Persistent World, cRPG) while others are just plain silly and fun, (Gangs of Glasgow).

In this week’s blog we would like to reach out to our modding community by answering a selection of questions from our official forums which were compiled by a key member of our community, our modding moderator “Duh”.


We are using C# as the scripting language. Data files are generally formatted in XML.

You can use any version of Visual Studio 2015 (e.g. Community edition)

Scene editor
Mesh editor
Material editor
Model/Animation viewer
Skeleton editor
Replay editor
Particle editor
Atmosphere Editor
Cloth editor
Path editor
Resource Browser

Also, the runtime performance profile tools that we use will be available for modders. They will be able to check the performance impact of their changes.


Cloth Editor

Not decided.

We will share a documentation site and we are planning to make some tutorial videos. Also, we will be taking feedback and engaging with users on our forums.

Most probably.

We will provide a replay editor.

The game will support multiple mods at the same time.

You can use any number of folders for resources but it is a flat system, so we don’t support subfolders within folders.

Unlike Warband, the vanilla game scripts will not be directly modifiable by modders. However, it will be possible for modders to add new scripts as plugins and also have modifications for XML data files. In Warband, we had the problem that, whenever we released a new version or patch, almost all existing mods would immediately become incompatible with the new version and modders had to go through the lengthy process of reapplying their changes on the new version’s scripts. Moreover, it was impossible for players to run multiple mods in conjunction. The new system will make modders’ lives much easier and also support multiple mods.

By changing XML files, it will be possible to modify or add/delete most types of game objects such as items, characters, factions etc. Of course it will also be possible to add new assets such as meshes or textures.

Modders will be able to add new campaign behaviours, mission behaviours and quests. Campaign behaviours are executed while the player is spending time on the campaign map, whereas mission behaviours are executed when the player is in a scene. For example, if you want to create some extra bandit parties every few days, you can do that with a campaign behaviour.

Modders will also be able to change most of the formulas used in the game. For example, if you want to add a special item that makes you move faster on map, you will add the item through an xml file, and also modify the formula for campaign map speed so that it returns a higher number if a party is in possession of the said item.

Modders who want to change an existing behavior (like party members deserting when morale is low) will have two options: Either they will modify the default formula, or if that’s not adequate for some reason, they will be able to disable the default behavior entirely and add a new one from scratch.

You can use random seeds and any kind of random number generator.

There is a very powerful string processing system, (you can pretty much embed programs into the string itself.) Dialogs, game menus, and everything text related can make use of that.

You can add as many factions as you like. Technically, creating factions is just a method call, but of course making them interesting would be the harder part!

Lowest-level troop AI is hard-coded, but you can customize it somewhat by changing aggressiveness, maximum speed etc. You can also give AI target movement points.

Formation AI and overall battle AI is extendable and modders can add new tactics and AI behaviours.

Pathfinding will be hardcoded. You can turn faces on/off in a navigation mesh though, so there are ways to control path-finding behaviour.


Scene Editor

It will be possible to draw graphical primitives on screen. Also, one can render multiple scenes on the screen for other uses. (As long as they are lightweight, they won’t affect the overall performance that much).

It will be possible to change certain variables, but a lot of constants may remain hard-coded.

You can give them an entity to target.

Of course. Script components can be used to add, alter or remove stuff from the scene. Materials, other scripts, physics and polygon attributes can be changed at run time.

Yes, scene makers will need to create navigation meshes. The scene editor has a tool to create the nav-mesh automatically but results vary and we generally prefer to create them manually.

No.

You can definitely preview what the scene will look like in different seasons and different atmosphere settings in the editor. You can set alternative terrain materials and alternative foliage for different seasons. It’s all very customizable.

For tunnels and caves you need meshes, the terrain system does not support them. We do not currently support dynamic changes to terrain height-maps during the game.

Depends on the power of the computer and available RAM. Our typical scenes are not too large because we want scenes to load quickly and not take an excessive amount of hard disk space. We experimented with larger scenes on a few occasions but this is not something that’s a priority.

No. The editor does not support that.

The physics objects for dynamic rigid bodies will have some polygon count restrictions.

The atmosphere system is not designed to update in real-time, so you cannot simulate that without stutters. Maybe you can darken the screen, change the atmosphere and then do a fade in.

We divide scene files into two groups. One is the editable data for the scene editor (some binary, some text) and the other one is loading time optimised binary files.

The crafting system only works for melee weapons. Armour, shields, bows and crossbows cannot be crafted.

Crafted and non-crafted items are added in different ways, but modders can add both. For crafting, modders can easily add new crafting parts. They can also add new weapons by editing an xml file only, specifying which parts the new item is made of.

Yes, you can add custom skeletons to meshes.

Poly count is very varied but we use LOD meshes heavily.

Average texture size is 2k. You can add 4K textures to the game.


Model and Animation Viewer

Not every piece probably, but modders can add it to all types of equipment. Weapons can have them as cosmetic only, so no flails with cloth system.

Not decided.

We have good variety of post effects, and you can probably add new post effects. We have SSR. It should be possible to add dynamic GI in theory but in practice it can be very hard or even impossible.

Sorry, the game engine does not support that.

For basic polygonal modelling, our artists use mainly Max, Maya and Blender and we will document work flows for these. We also use a ton of other tools for sculpting, painting textures, viewing etc.

We have some script components, which can add simple looping animations to entities in any scene. It is not as complicated as the animation system of characters in battles.


In next week’s blog we will be talking to Meriç Neşeli, QA Lead and Game Designer. If you have a question you would like to ask then please leave a reply in the comment section and we will pick one out for him to answer.

Discuss this blog post HERE



Facebook
Twitter


Website
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
Twitch

Greetings warriors of Calradia!

A game engine is one of the core components of a computer game. Licensed game engines tend to offer a flexible approach to game development by providing a variety of options and features for a wide range of genres. However, developing your own game engine allows you to create exactly what you need for the task at hand. Granted, it is a monumental task to undertake, but we feel that the benefits far outweigh the time, energy and financial investments required to produce something which will allow us to achieve our goals and ultimately improve the quality of the final product. Our engine, which was built entirely in-house, focuses on the crucial needs of Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord. It is tailored to helping the game reach its full potential, which is something that would be hard to accomplish with another engine. This is what our engine team tries to achieve. Smooth gameplay, big battles and great visuals are their primary ambition. Murat Türe, Lead Programmer of the engine team, works on making Bannerlord optimised, moddable and huge, while retaining all of the key features which made our previous games so successful.


Murat Türe

Ankara, Turkey

2013

Computer Engineer

Lead Programmer (Game Engine Team)

“When I arrive at the office, the first thing I do is check my mail. I am in constant communication with each department of the development team to ensure that any issues relating to my work are highlighted. Then I proceed to check any newly opened reports from the QA team, who work tirelessly to find any problems with the game and the engine. Following that I check the previous night's automated performance test reports, which we use to gather data over a period of time to help us monitor game stability and to check the impact on performance that any recent changes have had. After gathering all of this information I relay it within my team so that we can resolve any problems and make improvements to the engine.

Throughout the day, I attend code design meetings, work on code reviews and write additional code in my spare time. I also create my own performance profiles for the game using various configurations. For example, I will test huge infantry sieges to record the performance of a very specific situation. I will then repeat the tests using cavalry or ranged units to track any changes.”

“My happiest moments while developing the game are when a new optimisation is working and I see the FPS counter rise. We are striving to make the game run as smoothly as possible on a wide range of systems and it gives me great satisfaction and pride in my team to see how the game is constantly improving.

Visually I really enjoy our new cloth simulation system, but I must admit that the particle effects in big battles are my favourite.”

“Improving stability, performance and visual quality at the same time, without sacrificing any of them. We devised a way to handle this using a detailed integration system, lots of automation, and with our hard working QA team!”



“Currently, I am checking and improving the performance of medium to very low hardware configurations. It is important to us that players get to experience a smooth and enjoyable gameplay experience. We are constantly trying to refine the engine to ensure that this is the case.”

“My favourite faction in the game would have to be Khuzait, for cultural reasons.”

“I will try to explain the major improvements with respect to the old engine.

The rendering and postFX system has been revamped. We have a Physically Based Rendering engine which ensures that the materials in the game are visually appealing and consistent. Better Depth of Field, High Dynamic Range imaging, Screen Space Reflection and Ambient Occlusion techniques have been added and optimized. A GPU simulated cloth system has been introduced, (which has a general material system that supports different kinds of meshes,) enhancing the animations and visuals of the game.

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord relies even more on CPU usage than Warband. Hundreds of characters, more advanced animations, an Inverse Kinematics system, individual AI, formation AI, combat calculations, (which do not change in respect to distance or visibility,) and many other requirements really increase the burden on the CPU. In order to accommodate this, our optimisation efforts are more heavily focused on the CPU. We generally try to use Data Oriented Design, which enables us to achieve high amounts of parallelism and core usage. Currently, 60-70% of the frame is fully parallel, which means it can, and will, use all of the cores of current and next gen CPUs for the foreseeable future, (the old engine generally used to use 1, or at most 2 cores.) This means that as new, higher core count CPUs begin to emerge, Bannerlord will scale well with the new hardware and players will be able to test bigger and denser battles. Currently our aim for battle sizes on current generation high end gaming CPUs is at 800 characters, at 60FPS.

The size of scenes is generally around 4 km square, which is much larger than in Warband, and scene creation is much faster. We developed lots of new editing tools for objects, terrain and flora for the scene designers to use. We have an advanced terrain system which can support up to 16 layers per scene, with no restriction on layers used per node. Also, the designers now have access to a scene upgrade level system, (a scene masking system which is used in siege scenes to allow level 1-3 castles to be placed in one scene,) and a new weather system, (which is used for creating different weather versions of the scene.) With all of the CPU and hard drive optimisations we try to achieve <1 second loading times on these bigger scenes.”

Discuss this blog post HERE



Facebook
Twitter


Website
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
Twitch

Greetings warriors of Calradia!

A game engine is one of the core components of a computer game. Licensed game engines tend to offer a flexible approach to game development by providing a variety of options and features for a wide range of genres. However, developing your own game engine allows you to create exactly what you need for the task at hand. Granted, it is a monumental task to undertake, but we feel that the benefits far outweigh the time, energy and financial investments required to produce something which will allow us to achieve our goals and ultimately improve the quality of the final product. Our engine, which was built entirely in-house, focuses on the crucial needs of Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord. It is tailored to helping the game reach its full potential, which is something that would be hard to accomplish with another engine. This is what our engine team tries to achieve. Smooth gameplay, big battles and great visuals are their primary ambition. Murat Türe, Lead Programmer of the engine team, works on making Bannerlord optimised, moddable and huge, while retaining all of the key features which made our previous games so successful.


Murat Türe

Ankara, Turkey

2013

Computer Engineer

Lead Programmer (Game Engine Team)

“When I arrive at the office, the first thing I do is check my mail. I am in constant communication with each department of the development team to ensure that any issues relating to my work are highlighted. Then I proceed to check any newly opened reports from the QA team, who work tirelessly to find any problems with the game and the engine. Following that I check the previous night's automated performance test reports, which we use to gather data over a period of time to help us monitor game stability and to check the impact on performance that any recent changes have had. After gathering all of this information I relay it within my team so that we can resolve any problems and make improvements to the engine.

Throughout the day, I attend code design meetings, work on code reviews and write additional code in my spare time. I also create my own performance profiles for the game using various configurations. For example, I will test huge infantry sieges to record the performance of a very specific situation. I will then repeat the tests using cavalry or ranged units to track any changes.”

“My happiest moments while developing the game are when a new optimisation is working and I see the FPS counter rise. We are striving to make the game run as smoothly as possible on a wide range of systems and it gives me great satisfaction and pride in my team to see how the game is constantly improving.

Visually I really enjoy our new cloth simulation system, but I must admit that the particle effects in big battles are my favourite.”

“Improving stability, performance and visual quality at the same time, without sacrificing any of them. We devised a way to handle this using a detailed integration system, lots of automation, and with our hard working QA team!”



“Currently, I am checking and improving the performance of medium to very low hardware configurations. It is important to us that players get to experience a smooth and enjoyable gameplay experience. We are constantly trying to refine the engine to ensure that this is the case.”

“My favourite faction in the game would have to be Khuzait, for cultural reasons.”

“I will try to explain the major improvements with respect to the old engine.

The rendering and postFX system has been revamped. We have a Physically Based Rendering engine which ensures that the materials in the game are visually appealing and consistent. Better Depth of Field, High Dynamic Range imaging, Screen Space Reflection and Ambient Occlusion techniques have been added and optimized. A GPU simulated cloth system has been introduced, (which has a general material system that supports different kinds of meshes,) enhancing the animations and visuals of the game.

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord relies even more on CPU usage than Warband. Hundreds of characters, more advanced animations, an Inverse Kinematics system, individual AI, formation AI, combat calculations, (which do not change in respect to distance or visibility,) and many other requirements really increase the burden on the CPU. In order to accommodate this, our optimisation efforts are more heavily focused on the CPU. We generally try to use Data Oriented Design, which enables us to achieve high amounts of parallelism and core usage. Currently, 60-70% of the frame is fully parallel, which means it can, and will, use all of the cores of current and next gen CPUs for the foreseeable future, (the old engine generally used to use 1, or at most 2 cores.) This means that as new, higher core count CPUs begin to emerge, Bannerlord will scale well with the new hardware and players will be able to test bigger and denser battles. Currently our aim for battle sizes on current generation high end gaming CPUs is at 800 characters, at 60FPS.

The size of scenes is generally around 4 km square, which is much larger than in Warband, and scene creation is much faster. We developed lots of new editing tools for objects, terrain and flora for the scene designers to use. We have an advanced terrain system which can support up to 16 layers per scene, with no restriction on layers used per node. Also, the designers now have access to a scene upgrade level system, (a scene masking system which is used in siege scenes to allow level 1-3 castles to be placed in one scene,) and a new weather system, (which is used for creating different weather versions of the scene.) With all of the CPU and hard drive optimisations we try to achieve <1 second loading times on these bigger scenes.”

Discuss this blog post HERE



Facebook
Twitter


Website
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
Twitch

Greetings warriors of Calradia!

Mount & Blade features a unique single player mode: instead of closely following a storyline, we want players to experience their own unique adventure on each playthrough. This presents us with a great challenge on both the narrative and technical fronts. We have to make different places, missions, characters and systems capable of responding dynamically to what the player wants to do, creating a rich and deep emergent narrative. As the lead programmer of the Campaign Team, Berat Ceren Üstündağ’s job is to implement these systems to create a campaign that can truly react to the player and allow them to be the captain of their own destiny.


Berat Ceren Üstündağ

Ankara (Turkey)

2012

Computer Science

Lead Programmer (Campaign Team)

“Mostly, I’m working on non-battle scenes like tournaments, towns, villages, taverns etc. For NPC agents, I work directly with the animators – we are trying to make them feel as real as possible so that you get the sense of a living world while walking around the streets of towns and villages. I also collaborate with the artists - I prepare scripted entities for them, and then they use these entities to prepare a scene for a game mission. Apart from that, I implement quests and work on some other campaign features.

I have short meetings twice a week with the rest of the campaign team, and there are times when I attend design meetings to discuss the technical details of game features.”



“I think I like the randomness of the world the most. There are factions, nobles and notables, relations between them, settlements with different specialities... All of these aspects change from game to game and we cannot know exactly where players will be and what they will face in that kind of unstructured gameplay. For example, our common quests are dynamically created by the current state of the world. This means that we don’t just spawn in characters or create the conditions for a quest, but rather that the game looks to see what is currently happening and offers a mission based on what is available.”

“I think the most difficult part is trying to keep every feature moddable. This is something that we have to constantly keep in mind while we are adding a new feature or maintaining an implemented part of the game.”

“Currently I’m working on quests.”

“I like all of them, but if I had to pick one it would be Battania. I enjoy the atmosphere of that faction's towns and villages.”

“There have been many changes to the recruitment system. First of all, players can recruit base troops only from notables of fiefs. Some notables even provide higher level troops, such as archers or infantry, rather than just recruits. Depending on the relations with that particular NPC, they can provide a reduction in the recruitment cost or offer more troops for the player to hire.

Some special troops, such as Vlandian Knights, represent minor nobility. These kinds of units have completely different troop trees. In the instance of Vlandian Knights, they can only be upgraded from Vlandian Squires, who in turn can only be recruited from NPC nobles. With this in mind, it is wise to maintain good relations with Vlandian nobles if your eventual aim is to have Vlandian Knights in your party.

However, that’s not to say that you are restricted from acquiring heavy cavalry if your relations with the Vlandian nobility is too poor. You will still have access to Vlandian Men-at- arms, who are almost as skilled as Knights but aren’t as heavily armoured.”


In next week's blog we will be talking with Murat Türe, Lead Programmer of the Game Engine Team. If you have a question you would like to ask him then please leave a reply to this post and we will select one for him to answer.

Discuss this blog post HERE



Facebook
Twitter


Website
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
Twitch

Greetings warriors of Calradia!

Mount & Blade features a unique single player mode: instead of closely following a storyline, we want players to experience their own unique adventure on each playthrough. This presents us with a great challenge on both the narrative and technical fronts. We have to make different places, missions, characters and systems capable of responding dynamically to what the player wants to do, creating a rich and deep emergent narrative. As the lead programmer of the Campaign Team, Berat Ceren Üstündağ’s job is to implement these systems to create a campaign that can truly react to the player and allow them to be the captain of their own destiny.


Berat Ceren Üstündağ

Ankara (Turkey)

2012

Computer Science

Lead Programmer (Campaign Team)

“Mostly, I’m working on non-battle scenes like tournaments, towns, villages, taverns etc. For NPC agents, I work directly with the animators – we are trying to make them feel as real as possible so that you get the sense of a living world while walking around the streets of towns and villages. I also collaborate with the artists - I prepare scripted entities for them, and then they use these entities to prepare a scene for a game mission. Apart from that, I implement quests and work on some other campaign features.

I have short meetings twice a week with the rest of the campaign team, and there are times when I attend design meetings to discuss the technical details of game features.”



“I think I like the randomness of the world the most. There are factions, nobles and notables, relations between them, settlements with different specialities... All of these aspects change from game to game and we cannot know exactly where players will be and what they will face in that kind of unstructured gameplay. For example, our common quests are dynamically created by the current state of the world. This means that we don’t just spawn in characters or create the conditions for a quest, but rather that the game looks to see what is currently happening and offers a mission based on what is available.”

“I think the most difficult part is trying to keep every feature moddable. This is something that we have to constantly keep in mind while we are adding a new feature or maintaining an implemented part of the game.”

“Currently I’m working on quests.”

“I like all of them, but if I had to pick one it would be Battania. I enjoy the atmosphere of that faction's towns and villages.”

“There have been many changes to the recruitment system. First of all, players can recruit base troops only from notables of fiefs. Some notables even provide higher level troops, such as archers or infantry, rather than just recruits. Depending on the relations with that particular NPC, they can provide a reduction in the recruitment cost or offer more troops for the player to hire.

Some special troops, such as Vlandian Knights, represent minor nobility. These kinds of units have completely different troop trees. In the instance of Vlandian Knights, they can only be upgraded from Vlandian Squires, who in turn can only be recruited from NPC nobles. With this in mind, it is wise to maintain good relations with Vlandian nobles if your eventual aim is to have Vlandian Knights in your party.

However, that’s not to say that you are restricted from acquiring heavy cavalry if your relations with the Vlandian nobility is too poor. You will still have access to Vlandian Men-at- arms, who are almost as skilled as Knights but aren’t as heavily armoured.”


In next week's blog we will be talking with Murat Türe, Lead Programmer of the Game Engine Team. If you have a question you would like to ask him then please leave a reply to this post and we will select one for him to answer.

Discuss this blog post HERE



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Twitter


Website
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Twitter
YouTube
Twitch

Greetings warriors of Calradia!

In this week's blog we would like to reflect on our experience at Gamescom 2017 and discuss our new multiplayer game mode, Captain Mode, which we invited visitors to play in a hands-on demo in Cologne. We are becoming quite the regulars at Gamescom, with this being our third time attending, however each visit has acted as a completely unique learning experience that has helped us to refine and improve both the game, and the way we go about approaching these kinds of events.



At this year's Gamescom we showcased multiplayer in Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord for the first time. This is an aspect of the game which we have been working very hard to improve on. We recently announced that Bannerlord will feature a matchmaking system for the first time in the Mount & Blade series, with our aim being to offer players a fairer and more challenging multiplayer experience. We hope to expand upon and improve the existing game modes featured in previous Mount & Blade titles, while still offering something new and exciting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ditLixWjMTs
Captain Mode puts players in command of their own detachment of AI troops in multiplayer team-based PvP battles. We designed the game mode to leave room for individual player skill to shine through, however teamwork and strategy will always put a team at a massive advantage on their path to victory. There are two ways in which teams can win the game: either through eliminating the entire opposing force, or by dominating the battlefield by holding flags. Flags are removed from the battlefield over time, the order in which can be influenced by the players, until there is only one flag remaining, which really concentrates the combat in to a climactic finale.



The feedback we got from our guests at Gamescom was amazing! Players really seemed to enjoy the pace of the combat and the tactical options on offer. We were also overjoyed to see how some players naturally started to communicate between themselves, organising strategies and coordinating team builds in an effort to win. This is precisely what we had hoped for when designing the game mode and it was really exciting to see the players respond in this way.

As with many other areas of our game, this game mode is still very much a work in progress. The UI for example is something that we are still working on and we are aware needs some improvement. We settled for something that would provide the players with all of the basic information that they would need for the demo and allow us to focus more on the actual gameplay.



It was amazing to see so many familiar faces at Gamescom, from our friends at Warhorse Studios (thanks for the beers guys!), to a couple of people who are a little closer to our hearts, and who we personally invited to come and test the game: “Purzelblume” and “Peter”!

It was great to be able to let two of our key community members test the game and give us their feedback in an honest and open dialogue. If you want to hear what they thought of the game then you should make sure to check out the interviews we conducted with them at the event.

Purzelblume Interview
Peter Interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kcwGFWTxpc
During the event we were invited to take part in a livestream with GameStar and Twitch which we thoroughly enjoyed. The videos from those streams can be found below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0cBJjpm5QM
Twitch VOD

Overall we feel that the event went extremely well. The feedback was great and players really seemed to be enjoying themselves while playing. This was the first time that we let players record their own footage from the game and we are confident that there will be some videos coming out in the near future which will show those of you who were unable to visit our booth just how exciting and fun Captain Mode is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaUBg7Ynmwk
In next week's blog we will be talking to Ceren Üstündağ, Lead Programmer of the Campaign Team. If you have a question you would like to ask her then leave a reply to this post and we will pick one out to feature in the blog.

Discuss this blog post HERE



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Greetings warriors of Calradia!

In this week's blog we would like to reflect on our experience at Gamescom 2017 and discuss our new multiplayer game mode, Captain Mode, which we invited visitors to play in a hands-on demo in Cologne. We are becoming quite the regulars at Gamescom, with this being our third time attending, however each visit has acted as a completely unique learning experience that has helped us to refine and improve both the game, and the way we go about approaching these kinds of events.



At this year's Gamescom we showcased multiplayer in Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord for the first time. This is an aspect of the game which we have been working very hard to improve on. We recently announced that Bannerlord will feature a matchmaking system for the first time in the Mount & Blade series, with our aim being to offer players a fairer and more challenging multiplayer experience. We hope to expand upon and improve the existing game modes featured in previous Mount & Blade titles, while still offering something new and exciting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ditLixWjMTs
Captain Mode puts players in command of their own detachment of AI troops in multiplayer team-based PvP battles. We designed the game mode to leave room for individual player skill to shine through, however teamwork and strategy will always put a team at a massive advantage on their path to victory. There are two ways in which teams can win the game: either through eliminating the entire opposing force, or by dominating the battlefield by holding flags. Flags are removed from the battlefield over time, the order in which can be influenced by the players, until there is only one flag remaining, which really concentrates the combat in to a climactic finale.



The feedback we got from our guests at Gamescom was amazing! Players really seemed to enjoy the pace of the combat and the tactical options on offer. We were also overjoyed to see how some players naturally started to communicate between themselves, organising strategies and coordinating team builds in an effort to win. This is precisely what we had hoped for when designing the game mode and it was really exciting to see the players respond in this way.

As with many other areas of our game, this game mode is still very much a work in progress. The UI for example is something that we are still working on and we are aware needs some improvement. We settled for something that would provide the players with all of the basic information that they would need for the demo and allow us to focus more on the actual gameplay.



It was amazing to see so many familiar faces at Gamescom, from our friends at Warhorse Studios (thanks for the beers guys!), to a couple of people who are a little closer to our hearts, and who we personally invited to come and test the game: “Purzelblume” and “Peter”!

It was great to be able to let two of our key community members test the game and give us their feedback in an honest and open dialogue. If you want to hear what they thought of the game then you should make sure to check out the interviews we conducted with them at the event.

Purzelblume Interview
Peter Interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kcwGFWTxpc
During the event we were invited to take part in a livestream with GameStar and Twitch which we thoroughly enjoyed. The videos from those streams can be found below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0cBJjpm5QM
Twitch VOD

Overall we feel that the event went extremely well. The feedback was great and players really seemed to be enjoying themselves while playing. This was the first time that we let players record their own footage from the game and we are confident that there will be some videos coming out in the near future which will show those of you who were unable to visit our booth just how exciting and fun Captain Mode is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaUBg7Ynmwk
In next week's blog we will be talking to Ceren Üstündağ, Lead Programmer of the Campaign Team. If you have a question you would like to ask her then leave a reply to this post and we will pick one out to feature in the blog.

Discuss this blog post HERE



Facebook
Twitter


Website
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
Twitch