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March Devlog Update
Hello!
Another month past, and new content has been developed. As usual we want keep you updated on recent things we worked on.
Lore of Metal
We are pleased to announce our new Magical lore, the lore of metal. Baltasar Gelt would be pleased to hear that in the next update, we will introduce the new magic lore. The lore will provide several spells and buffs that provide fire, and physical and magical damage as well as slow down enemies due to the heaviness of metal.
We will provide the following 7 new spells:
Gehennas Golden Hounds – Vortex spell
Gehennas Golden Globe – Projectile Spell
Final Transmutation – Ground Effect
Quicksilver Swords – Buff
Plague of Rust - Debuff
Gleaming Arrow – homing missile spell
In addition, we worked on a few of our new maps. The Castle Reiksguard.
And yes… We are working on them. Don’t worry ;)
Monthly Update (February)
The Witch Hunter
We introduce our new Career, the Witch hunter. Even the vilest creatures of the old world fear the hunters. As any other career, the swift melee and ranged hybrid provides iconic advantages in form of the career ability, and passives obtained via the tree.
Accusation:
The player selects a target on which a debuff will be attached which increases the damage against the target. The debuff gets modified by several choices made in the career tree, like slowing down the enemy or increasing the taken damage further.
Apart the witch hunter will gain the options to recruit a new unit type the “retinues”. Retinues are the personal guard of a witch hunter and allow for magical attacks using their silvered weapons.
Environment
Our Environment Team made significant progress on the world map. We finished up the whole north of the empire and even gave Altdorf a little facelift, to better connect to the new territories.
We also have a new battlemap and a siegemap implemented
Marienburg
Middenheim
Reworked Altdorf (Northern exit)New 3D Assets
New Weapon types and reworked weapon effects
- Goals
- More interesting weapons and therefore combat
- Adding mechanics to weapons (ex. weapon flags)
- All weapon types have a strength and a purpose
- More crafting opportunities
- Merging vanilla and TOR parts
- Better balance
- Wholesale rebalance of melee, ranged, and armor
A new initiative being undertaken is what we are calling the Weapons Overhaul Project. The primary goal is to add more variety to melee combat. In addition to this primary goal we will also be doing a sweeping balance pass on melee, ranged, and armor items. The last goal is merging TOR melee weapon parts and vanilla parts so you can craft them together in the smithy.
Since it is still in its early stages, we will give you two examples that we have got working to some extent.
Maces (includes hammers, flails, and just about everything blunt)
- Knockdown
- All weapons in this type (one-handed, two-handed, and pole) will have the ability to trigger Knockdown. If you hit the enemy hard enough they will fall right over and you will have an opportunity to wail on them as they try to get back up.
- Knockdown for weapons is a vanilla Bannerlord function, but it was only enabled on a few weapons and weapon pieces.
- Crush Through
- Flails will have an additional ability called Crush Through. Being as flails were designed to wrap around weapons and shields we thought to simulate that here. Crush Through allows you to deal damage to a blocking enemy if you meet certain conditions.
- Crush Through is another vanilla Bannerlord mechanic that can be done with certain two-handed weapons. We will not be removing Crush Through from weapons that already have it.
Poleaxes (includes halberds and most bladed swingable polearms)
- Two-Handed Axe Mode
- Default usage mode is Polearm Mode and will use your Polearm skill and perks. You can hit your alternate weapon usage key (same key as couch lance or spear brace) to switch to Axe Mode, which will use your Two-Handed skill and perks.
- Currently, Axe Mode will not have access to thrusting attacks even if the Polearm Mode does.
- Bonus vs Shields
- Like one and two-handed axes weapons in this polearm category will have the same bonus against shields as those weapons.
- Can Dismount with Swing Attacks
- Dealing enough damage with a swing attack will dismount enemy cavalry.
- Require Two Hands
- Whereas it was previously possible to craft a polearm that you could limply swing with one hand you now need to use two hands to wield items in this category.
Stay tuned over the coming months as we talk about how the overhaul is progressing.
We are proud to showcase the new ambient music for the empire region. We thank Jalrick for his awesome contribution
Monthly Update:
First of all we want to apologize for the missing update for the current released version. Not only were the features like the snow flow map and the preloaded shader cache unexpectedly complicated, the testing and side effects we were trying to investigate started to affect the development of the new content. After a few days we decided then, to not release any update, until we have enough content that makes it worth playing and all desired features work stable enough. Which most likely means that an updated playable version of the mod will take a long time.
The positive from this is : we put all our efforts into producing new content and there is ALOT to cover.
Environment:
Progress on the World map
As we mentioned we are working on the map expansion, and so far were able to expand up to the very north of the empire, working on the area for middenland, Nordland and co.
The lore team is assisting our map artist with references and map material but also we're writing out the clans we will introduce in the next update.
Apart from that we also worked on new maps you will encounter:
Coding
For the next big release, the coding team intends to make overall the game more enjoyable with more QOL improvement, introducing more balancing factors and providing more playable content.
Spell selection and casting Rework:
Internally, as work in progress we are working on a more straightforward UI for the spell casting. The spell selection will now take place via a radial menu. Internally we still need to fine tune factors, yet we already see a lot improvement in the way how our mod plays
Career reworks
All 6 existing Careers were and still are under rework. All Careers got a 7th perk line. The maximum Career points are set to 30 though, so the player has a pool from which he chooses.
Most noteworthy a significant buff to the Blood Knight which now Slowing down the time during his ability, but also gets a perk for life leeching and extending the career ability duration.
New Career : The Necromancer
We want to present our first implemented new Career : The Necromancer!
The Necromancer will be provided with lots of perks benefiting his summoning spells and spell casting behavior, without having him to fall into melee combat and highly benefit arch type - typical behavior.
His career ability is very unique to him : Summoning a Champion!
The Ability allows him to summon an undead champion, which is upgraded by the several final perks in his skill tree groups. The clue however is: The player controls that champion.
This makes the player not only extremely strong but also extremely vulnerable for the duration. The Necromancer needs to actively shift his consciousness into the Champion, which leaves his body vulnerable for attacks. In all means you need to make sure that your real body is not dying. There are perks to disarm that situation, but the player has to make tactical decisions for making most of this ability - in combat and in decisions on the used perks.
Game balancing: Waging wars and bandit population:
Yes we hear you, the bandit density is too high, and the game rather feels like “peacehammer”. We put a lot of effort into sweet spotting the densities for bandits, but also provide configurability, for anyone that wants to have either more or less bandits.Apart we try to make wars more frequent and lore friendly, so arch enemies are more likely to wage wars, while neutral factions wait for opportunities their neighbors are weak.
Custom currency:
In the upcoming update we will introduce for factions a new global currency or resource, that is used for accessing high power units. All of these resources work a little bit different, and provide unique play styles in each culture. This resource is used for upgrades, but also can in some cases act as an upkeep alternative to gold - which is a lot harder to obtain or to keep due to new forms of upkeep of new units. We will use this system for example to balance out very powerful units like wraiths, Grail Knights or demi-gryph knights.
Dark Energy:
As our first example we will take Dark Energy. Dark Energy is a new form of resource used for the maintenance and upgrade of undead troops. It is obtained by not taking prisoners after a combat (and using those prisoners for sacrifice). In turn , your obtained Dark energy can then used for the maintenance of high power troops like wraiths or vampires or upgrade undead units ( gold costs are removed). We hope with this change to make all factions and their specifics more interesting and increase the replayability.
The coding team currently has a lot of things in their works which we will show once the time comes. Among these: A lot of new Careers, new magic and a lot of mechanics that improve the overall enjoyability of the mod. We probably can show new things in february.
2D:
3D:
Our 3D team made some shiny new assets for the wood elves , we want to show our progress we made in December and January.
It feels like an eternity since we created our last blog post. We are sorry about it! It’s been a busy time as we continue to maintain our mod, push updates and during that time time new complications led to us not being able to progress on new content and not being able to produce meaningful status updates here on moddb.
We have a lot to talk about, and a lot of good news. With of course a look into what we have in our works and will be soon released (December) as well as what we are doing in future.
Changes that are coming soon:
Shader loading Improvements
A huge shout out to Taleworlds for their 1.2.5 beta update. They allowed us to create a prebuilt shader cache. After some internal testing, we feel we can give it out to the community. For those who already downloaded and built their shader cache not much will change, but in future the second shader loading process will be gone! Unfortunately, we can’t get rid of the first loading screen. But in our testing, a usual 20-minute shader cache loading on the first screen and a 40-minute shader compilation from the menu went down to 20 minutes loading plus 1-minute loading in the shader cache sack. Meaning: The Shader loading is cut to 1/3 of the previous time.
Snow map
With the same update of Taleworlds, we will also manage to implement the snow map. Very fitting for Christmas time.
Translatability
We are aiming to provide the ability to have our mod translated into any language using additional translation modules. Everything like popup texts or the adventure texts you see from time to time in-game have the required codes. We suggest those who are interested in providing translation into a foreign language, should use the template we will release together with the update.
The mentioned changes will roll out soon on Moddb, and the steam workshop.
We also worked on several maps, here of our environment team.
Blood pine woods.
Shrine of ill omen.
The Future.
We are pleased to announce, we finalized the sketching of new plans for the next big update targeted somewhere in the future.
Summarizing our big goals for the next update: Season of Doom.
- Introducing the new faction: the woodelves
- Fill troop rosters, assets, and scenes for existing factions.
- expand the world map and finalizing Empire and Bretonnia.
- Adding at least 2 new lores of magic.
- Adding several new careers for the TOR Career system, for existing and new factions.
- balancing and gameplay improvements as well as QOL improvements.
Is this a lot? Yes. How long will it take us? We can’t make any comments. Changes of plan? Maybe. But we are progressing, and we will deliver it.
In the following, we want to show a few creations that are already in the making as well as concepts.
And a big Shoutout to Samuel Alexander-Ford for profiding his Ghorgon model to use for the mod.
Artstation.com
Concepts
Finally, we were confronted with a big problem. There is not a lot of material, that describes or even depicts the way of living of the forest elves of Athel Loren. More problematic, for the proper depiction, we are lacking many custom environment assets. So we started on conceptualizing how Wood elf halls could be represented.
We are thrilled to work on the new content and hope we can keep you up to date more frequently again.
We are excited to make an announcement! As we teased before we are coming close to our next major update and we are now comfortable enough to give you an idea of when it’s going to be, the update will feature the content that we have shown off in the last few blog posts and more!
Without further ado, it will hit Steam and ModDB around the last week of August, as ever we will try our best to ensure that the experience is as bug-free as possible but do not hesitate to provide feedback if anything goes awry! We look forward to everyone getting their hands on our new mechanics!
3D
With the mysterious powers of the Lady, the Damsels will join the fray and are ready to serve alongside Bretonnia to fight back against Mousillon! Their potent spellcasting is at the hands of both the Ai and players.
Our fair knights and warriors of Bretonnia are nothing without their steads or lances! The pride of any true Bretonnian Noble.
The pilgrims, another part of our religious system, will also be found across Bretonnia ready and dedicated to fight until their last.
Environment
As for the Environment team, we have a big chunk of content to show off, so keep a hold of your well-oiled moustaches and take a look below, both the Empire and Bretonnia will feature a range of cities, castles and villages that are partly reworked vanílla maps, and partly custom made for our mod!
Where the Empire might be dour and foreboding, Bretonnia is of course far more mystical in its appearance:
Code
Prophetess & Warrior priests classes
Career Showcase: Warrior priest of Sigmar and Damsel of the Lady
We are very aware that the warrior priest needs more love and we’ve started that process by introducing a ‘priest’ career that will work with, or towards, having priestly powers. The current healing ability the Warrior Priest has will be replaced with 4 different battle prayers, as well as it’s own unique progression tree tied to our new Career system.
Prayers are unlocked differently to magic, it requires you to increase your ‘faith’ skill until you are considered worthy of the abilities. If you start the game or are following a ‘priest’ career (which for now includes the Damsel & Warrior Priest) then you will automatically unlock them.
Also unlike magic, prayers don’t require a resource, like winds of magic, to function. Instead, they have a cooldown to keep them balanced as they can be quite powerful.
The Damsel of the Lady will give you the opportunity to become one of the strongest magic users and priests at the same time, which is ideal for those who want more magic to play with. While the Damsel of the Lady does not have a Career ability, she will instead be able to learn a total of 3 schools of magic; and has options to buff herself and her troops in combat.
RPG text adventure events
We also wanted to add a little more flavour to the overworld part of Bannerlord, we thought one of the best ways to do this was through text adventures! We wanted to introduce this so that as you travel events can happen, both randomly and sometimes triggered by something.
When these events pop up, they will require you to interact and make decisions to reach a variety of outcomes. This can be affected by character skills or traits, such as being a vampire, and a range of options in an interactive dialogue will become available, it could result in treasure, unique weapons or something more dangerous!
Credits: 3D : Merlin, Shawmuscle, Ragnar
2D Art: Tino EshNazg
Environment: Capt Cole
Programming : Hunharibo , Z3rca
Gamedesign: Mungo Overkill, Z3rca Lore directors: Kriegan , Ecthelion, Jax
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