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RapKeymasterYeah. I mean, it was a conscious decision to go with fatigue over stamina. It’s not like doing it the other way never crossed our minds. A chief reason was a better differentiation between the action point resource on one hand and the fatigue resource on the other. The way it is now, just by having one work backwards, they feel all the more different, and as you put it so well, fatigue has that certain thematic elegance to it. Nevertheless I’m of the opinion it’s worth re-examining this in light of how the game has evolved.
RapKeymaster12. February 2015 at 15:24 in reply to: Suggestions for how to make perfection even more perfect #1577RapKeymasterRapKeymasterA core element of the Battle Brothers setting is that regular humans, not even necessarily ones with fighting experience, have to overcome challenges with the means available to them. There are no over-the-top attacks for your Battle Brothers, like your archer shooting 3 arrows at once, just those you could realistically pull off with a real medieval weapon. Sometimes those guys happen to have to fight non-humans or even supernatural foes, which makes for even more of a challenge. This asymmetry between your regular humans, limited by what a human can do, and, for example, a necromancer wielding dark magic, is very much intended; your enemies should feel special, alien to a degree. It’s a great ingredient to many a horror movie and key to the atmosphere we want to build. But it would get lost in your run-of-the-mill fantasy mishmash if your guys started flinging fireballs or were, in fact, Elves or Dwarfs themselves.
That being said, if we get the opportunity, we’d love to expand the world with other human cultures eventually, e.g. one based on medieval Arabia – including weapons and armor of that area, unique cultural backgrounds for your characters, etc.
RapKeymasterRapKeymasterRapKeymasterThat’s weird. Most of the time it’s the video card that is responsible for the game failing to run, but your Radeon 6900 should do fine (I have a Radeon 6870 myself). I don’t see anything else out of the order. Hm.
It shouldn’t really be necessary, but can you try starting the game with admin rights and see if that solves things?
If that doesn’t help, can you also post the logfile here? Navigate to the Battle Brothers start menu group and select the “Logfiles” icon. This will take you to a directory containing the “log.html” file. Just copy the content here or send it to me at contact@overhypestudios.com
Thanks!
RapKeymasterWe’d very much like to provide mod support, and I agree that it could add a lot to the longevity and appeal of the game. However, since our resources are quite limited at this point, our priority has to be to our core game first. Depending on how things go and whether there is sufficient demand by the community, mod support is something we could also add post-release.
RapKeymasterDo watchtowers generate money? I was thinking about them collecting some tariffs from trade caravans passing by.
Yes, they actually do collect tariffs, though the income from this is low and we mostly added this for flavor back when we first started with the worldmap. Watchtowers get reinforcements and supplies from strongholds via supply trecks which can be intercepted by opponents and also escorted by the player. Supply Trecks are basically well-guarded caravans more able to defend themselves than the civilian caravans sent out by villages.
Sounds good. But how information gonna spread? If say village is overrun by undead then anybody instantly will know this or say some refuges will arrive to the nearby town or stronghold or other village and from this place information is spreading by traders, tax collectors, patrols, wandering monks or adventures who visit other places.
Well, we simulate the spreading of information throughout the world to a limited extent, mostly as it concerns the sighting of opponents. For example, if a patrol discovers a bandit hideout it has to actually return to the stronghold in order for the stronghold to gain knowledge of it and to be able to send either an assault party to take it down or offer a contract to the player.
Although the player has exact information only in a small radius around their position (the size of which depends also on whether it is night or day, terrain, and such), events with global significance have visual clues which can be seen from across the map. For example, a village being raided will burn and have smoke spiralling into the sky – so even though the player won’t know who is raiding the village and what exactly is going on, they’ll be able to see that there is conflict on the horizon.
We won’t have a general simulation of the spreading of information by individuals taking news from one place to another over a period of time, but, like I mentioned, we’ll have a rumor mechanic eventually which will also mention refugees and the like for flavor as it fits the events. Knowledge about events such as a city being razed will spread more or less instantly.
Finally, see the next point.
I was more about their presence on world map. Something like villagers send plea to their feudal lord for protection when they are threaten by bandits orcs or monsters but in case of undead or some heretical activity they first ask local bishop to send a company of Witchhunters.
Wandering monks can be used to gather resources and information and spread rumours. Pilgrims mostly bring offerings to the holy places and spread rumours.We’ll have wandering pilgrims and similar that act as a source of information, though mainly regarding lore and background flavor. They won’t be depicted as actual units travelling the map but rather via events happening as the player travels the world. If you’re familiar with Crusader Kings 2, you’ll have a rough idea of what I mean by events that have you meet a group of pilgrims on the road.
In the world of Battle Brothers there are no official institutionalized witchhunters to be sent a company of. We may eventually have independent groups of witchhunters roam the world, and we already have a witchhunter background for hireable characters, but those aren’t necessarily professionals as part of some institution, and they aren’t necessarily all that efficient in their work. Individual witchhunters can be on a power trip, paranoid and deluded or outright mad and will leave a trail of falsely accused victims just as they may do actual good. People will call on them for help in their desperation, but they’re often despised as much as the original problem for the collateral damage they do. They’re not above the law either and may see themselves hanged, justified or not, depending also on how the local authority judges their doings.
Speaking of which how much you would charge for final version?
We don’t know yet since the final version is still a long way to go. It will be in the usual price range of a high quality indiegame with a niche audience.
RapKeymasterThanks a lot for your encouragement and appreciation of the work we do! :)
Other thing is women soldiers in game. When I originally hoped for some female followers I notice that you plan add them now as line soldiers or Battle Sisters. Personally I don’t think that it fit a theme but I really don’t mind them if they are rather rare. Female soldiers were not common in any of know era and low tech low fantasy medieval setup is not exactly fitting for them. Also don’t like idea of slaughtering female bandits – but that is just me. I think the best option is to add possibility to customize this on start with either slider or handful of options so it will be possible to generate world when only men or only women enlist or their ratio is what player want. I know that is additional work so its low priority but maybe its a thing worth considering.
A slider to adjust the ratio of male to female characters in the game is not something we’ll do. Rather, we’ll build a world wherein both male and female characters exist but – keeping in line with history – the majority of the fighting profession is filled by males. Female characters come with their own backgrounds that take into account how a quasi-medieval world treats them, so they won’t just be male characters with different heads either. Just like their male counterparts, some will be more and some will be less suited to the hard life as mercenaries. It’s your perogative as a mercenary commander to hire or not to hire whoever you want (and can afford).
I agree with you about your look at difficulty levels. Scarcity of funds will directly affect how strong and equipped band is and also make mistakes or losses more hard to recover. Changing statistics is no good. Although maybe you can look into changing enemy group structure. Adding additional necromancer to band of undead will make harder to fight them without changing stats or gimping AI.
More options mean more fun. And even some crazy broken setup might be great for a story(like fighting against powerful enemy in kingdom infested by bandits and seeing world burn around you with little to no possibility to stop them – its fight not to win but to survive how long you can – it be fun in different way).Changing enemy group composition was the original plan, but as we moved onto a simulated world this isn’t as straightforward a thing to do. Opponents now create parties to move about the world based on the actual resources they have available. Handing out more resources for them to create bigger/meaner parties would unbalance the world as a whole, not only as it concerns the player. Adjusting the scarcity of funds is one of the few things that only applies to the player – and is easily done. I suppose we could “cheat” and give the AI extra units in tactical battles with the player only on harder difficulties. We’ll see.
We’ll look into different starting options in the future. For now we want to concentrate on just getting the core game done.
How exactly economy will work?
We’ll start with a relatively simple economy based on the idea that every location has finite resources, ways to spend them and often multiple ways to acquire them, all to the ultimate end of presenting the player a dynamic world which they can actually influence. We’ll do a video soon to explain the world simulation (and present the new visual style of the map) which will probably do a better job showing how the economy works than I could do explaining it here.
I read about generation of wealth and health but if there will be something more? Like villages supplying town with food and resources and town producing goods etc?
Yes, villages do supply towns, watchtowers and strongholds. And also each other.
Also how strongholds will be funded? Is they belong to named nobles? Do they send tax collectors and supply wagons to settlements to get funds and supplies?
Well, strongholds would probably send out tax collectors, but we’ve abstracted this to them gaining resources automatically for now.
Will there be independent merchant/traders who travel around world for gain? They can move and generate some wealth for settlements they visit but mostly for themselves(when they get rich they can retire in cities adding their wealth to them).
There are no independent traders currently, every trader belongs to a village (or town or city). The idea is to have a few hidden merchants on the map outside of the usual locations, such as a supposed witch selling you a supposedly magical item. It’s something we’ll tackle after the initial release.
Will there be independent free companies like player Band of Brothers? Who look for contract and possibility to enrich themselves?
We’ve considered neutral mercenary companies before, but they are not currently in the game. Maybe at some point.
How information will flow in this world? Are there will be rumours about contracts and events or it will be passed directly to the player?
We want to have a tavern of sorts eventually where the player can, among other things, pick up on rumors based on actual world events. It won’t make it into the first Early Access release, however.
Do settlements will have some distinct structures? Like great armoury or famous swordsmith for some strongholds or university or cathedrals for cities?
No, settlements do not have distinct structures currently. It’s a nice idea, though, to give them more flavor.
Do you plan adding abbeys or some sort religious settlements with monk who preach and pilgrims to visit and witch hunter to take heretics?
This hasn’t come up before. Maybe. We do already have both monk and witchhunter backgrounds for characters you can hire.
This game have some strong Warharmer vibe. Do you plan adding cultist/heretics faction? Or maybe dirty ratmens?
Yes.
What about bandits? Are they more than maruders and robbers? Do you consider adding some sort of rogue knights?
Also yes. Though probably not at first. We’re a bit short on time, so the first iteration of bandits sadly won’t feature that much unique units or mechanics.
So when will be possible to get hands on this game in making?
Early next year, as in January or February.
Are there is possibility for early access before early access? How much it will cost?
I’m not sure what you mean exactly. If you’re rich, feel free to make us an offer to get immediate access ;)
RapKeymasterThe use of SFML has nothing to do with the fact that a current version of Windows XP is required to install the combat demo. We use SFML precisely for cross-platform portability. SDL doesn’t add anything relevant to our needs that we haven’t already covered with SFML.
Advanced visual effects is a relative term; Battle Brothers makes use of shaders for some visual effects and to add variety to a limited selection of sprites, e.g. by changing their saturation and color, which allows us to get away with drawing fewer variants manually. Since we don’t have the time and resources to add compatibility for all possible hardware configurations, we concentrate on those that most people use (see: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ – also keep in mind the game will be released in 2015). The game requires an OpenGL 3.0 compatible GPU because it made things more efficient for us and allowed us to concentrate more on the game itself rather than trying to get it to run using different rendering paths for different GPUs on OpenGL 2.1. It was a conscious decision to potentially forgo compatibility with video cards released before 2008 this way.
I’m sorry the game won’t run on your laptop, but as harsh as it sounds, we have to set priorities with our limited resources. Having the game run on old laptops with an OS that was released in 2001 and isn’t updated to a current version can not be one of them.
RapKeymasterRapKeymasterRapKeymasterThank you and welcome to the forums!
1) When towns get raided by barbarians is the only outcome eventual destruction. I think it would be awesome if this group of barbarians tool over the town, then some of the fleeing townsfolk could give you a contract to get it back for them.
Bandits (which I assume you mean by barbarians) are out to raid villages, take any valuables, supplies and the odd villager, and then leave. Their aim is neither to destroy a village and rob themselves off their future income, nor to take over a village and take up farming themselves. Only the Greater Evil will completely burn villages and cities to the ground. Even then, a certain faction when being the Greater Evil will make villages and cities their own. I don’t want to spoil anything, though (:
2) If you lose a battle or if a brother falls is all the equipment on him lost unless you pick it up again? And if you.lose a battle will you loose all the equipment your men wore?
If a Battle Brother falls, you can pick up his equipment after the battle, assuming you win. You can also pick up part of his equipment (not armor) during battle and then get the hell out of there with your surviving men. If you lose a battle, all the equipment dropped is lost, as is the game potentially if you get wiped out completely.
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