List of Current Features news - Explorer! mod for Mount & Blade: Warband

Hello everyone,

It's been a bit longer than I'd hoped since my last update, I think it's about time we get into something a little more detailed. ;) I've been really thrilled with the amount of people that have shown their interest in the project, this game is getting a little old now so it's nice to know you're out there!

One of the reasons I announced this mod pre-release was because I thought it was important to get feedback as early as possible, to make sure I was covering the features players expected. However, it is damn near impossible to speculate if all you ever get is one feature article and a bunch of over-indulgent replies to your nice comments!

So let's solve that problem right away.

Current Features:

As of right now, the mod is only in a semi-playable state. Luckily, most of the "core systems" have been made and tested, so adding features can be done relatively quickly. Current features include:

- Travelling system with worldmap as scene borders

- Locations such as towns, castles, bridges, ruins, bandit hideouts, training grounds, secret locations

- Full-size towns, improved castle + village scenes, new random scenes based on region (eg plains near Praven look different from plains near Tihr)

- Land features such as rivers, mountains, shorelines.

- Mountain and river terrain is passable, though often it is still faster to go around mountain ranges. No ocean travel yet.

- New shaders, darker shadows, more ground types

- Weather effects include wind, moving clouds, thunderstorms. Weather is dynamic in scenes, cloud amount will increase/decrease in real-time, with rain/snow and storms able to start and stop within the scene.

- No more "regular recruits", every recruited NPC is given a name and treated as a companion, with player party size maximum of 140

- Persistent names for all NPCs

- Improved town walker/villager AI, larger crowds in towns

- Hunting, around 12 different animal types can appear based on map region/terrain, animals avoid player, but can be gotten nearer when dismounted and/or upwind.

- Real-time looting, NPCs killed by the player can be looted for their armour by striking the corpse

- 18 factions: The 6 Warband factions have each been subdivided into 3 "provinces" that begin as allies yet are fully unique, independent kingdoms. 6 faction troop trees still need to be completed.

- 6 types of encounter parties unique for all 18 factions/regions: Kingdom Patrols, Merchants, Mercenaries, Manhunters, Farmers, Bandits.

- Unique soldier type for all towns and castles: Using the same unique soldier templates from Nysne - every castle and town has a single unit type specific to that location that can only be recruited by the Lord. (e.g. Radoghir Foresters, Distar Guards, Praven Knights, Hrus Spearmen, etc...)

- Weapon/Armor/Horse merchants sell region-specific equipment

- Combat AI improvements, better blocking/target picking/pathfinding

Note that this list does not include features that are half-finished, everything I mentioned here is fully functional, though they could all use more polish.

Works in Progress

Right now, I am focusing mainly on two areas:

- Party interactions in the "wild"; conversations, hostilities, capturing prisoners, party morale

- Populating towns/locations in towns (tavern, marketplace, prison...)

I hope to follow this up with another article setting out more definite future plans, though it might be wiser to wait a bit for that. Hopefully this is enough for now. :)

Thanks for reading!

Ruthven