Meet the Janissary, Illustrated Edition news

Stuff's getting done, and is getting done surprisingly fast. So what's new? The Janissary.

The thing which makes the military of the Turks so unique, is that they can train 3 different Janissary units: The Janissary Archer, Janissary Halberdier and Janissary Handgunner. They are special in that the Turks can upgrade all of them at once, thus reducing the time and cost involved in upgrading the units. Also, Janissary units are trained from a unique building, called the Ottoman Academy.

What's up with the lack of variations for these units? Peugeot explains: "Another thing you might have noticed is that they all have exactly the same textures. That's not because I was lazy, but to emphasize even more the standardization that the Ottoman military system brought."

The coolest part of these guys? I think it's the Janissary Gunner -- and not his gun, but his sword (which you don't see). When this guy or any of his ranged friends get into melee, they'll whip out scimitars and go to town. That's not to say you should be using your ranged units to charge the enemy, but if the need for a bloody charge arises, any Janissary can hold his own pretty well.

Another thing I want to show off is the concept work going into K&B. The way it works: a texturer will say what units he's going to work on, and which he needs some help visualizing. That's where concept art comes in. The artists search around and dig up information and draw it out, then the texturer makes that conceptualization into what you see in game. The concept artist isn't just drawing a picture, he's pointing out areas the texturer can emphasize, different variations that can be done.

We have some pretty multi-talented staff. The following come from spangopola, pepp, and shadowflame, respectively. All these can be found in our image gallery, too!

(this last one's an early draft)

Neat stuff, eh?