Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord News

Greetings warriors of Calradia!

One part of game development that is often overlooked or undervalued is Quality Assurance (QA). Testing a game is an integral part of the development process, and with a game of the scale of Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, the testing process is paramount in ensuring that the many different features and systems, that more often than not are intertwined and dependant on each other, work as intended to provide players with a fun and enjoyable experience. In this week’s blog, we talk with one of the people responsible for making sure that the game meets the standards that both we and our players expect, QA Tester, Onurcan Dönmez.



Onurcan Dönmez


İzmir, Turkey


2015


Aviation Management


Game QA Tester


“I play Bannerlord from morning till night... At least my friends think so. But, this is not the case of course. As the QA team, we have a specific workflow and test scenarios. My main task is to perform them and to improve them when necessary. Apart from this, I follow the other tasks by attending the daily/weekly meetings of other teams, emphasize the priorities, and share my team’s feedbacks with them. In the evaluation meetings we have held daily in the past few months, I share my comments about the current state of the game and share my design ideas. Our job is not just about finding bugs and reporting them, but also to make sure that the game is of high quality and fun. So in summary, I normally test the game, follow the tasks, attend meetings, and share feedback during my day. ”


“What I like about Bannerlord is to have the title of the person who plays Bannerlord the most and the incredibly funny bugs we came across :)

What I like the most is the richness of the game in terms of features. I have played lots of games across a number of different genres for over 20 years, but only some of them have such richness. If you take the list of Bannerlord’s features, it would take a day or more to shallowly test just one of them.”


“Something I try to keep on top of and is probably my most challenging task, is to encourage a healthy level of communication between the teams. I came to the following conclusion as a result of my experiences, thanks to my current position in the company: working in a QA team requires you to recognise other teams, individuals and their working methods, to build good relationships and to ensure that different teams work in collaboration with each other. Our responsibility is to act as a filter in terms of accuracy and quality of the work. Therefore, we need to keep a good channel of communication open with everyone.

In order to help you visualise this, I can give an example: Before implementing a quest to the game, I check the algorithms and dialogues of the quest. If I find a problem, I talk to the designer of the quest to get it fixed. Following this, the design of the quest is approved and sent to the programmers, which means that I need to communicate with the programmers at this stage and test it after the implementation. The drafts may not be suitable to implement, may not be fun, or may cause some unexpected problems. We need to collaborate with the designers, programmers, and even graphic designers or game engine team to solve these problems. In such instances, positive and healthy communication is essential to solving the problems within the shortest amount of time.

Improper work can be done due to a lack of communication and it can hamper the speed of development. To avoid this, I am trying to do my best to provide a continuous flow of information. ”


“Multiplayer tests are taking most of my time recently. As we have already announced, we are preparing to enter a beta process soon and so we are working hard on this to present the game in the best way possible.”


“Empire. We were testing the multiplayer Captain mode that we introduced in the summer of 2017. Late at night, I won a very exciting game with 20 heroic Empire legionnaires. That epic victory is the reason why Empire is enshrined in my memory. And another motivation is the fact that no one else in the company likes Empire except for me!”




“I have some favourite bugs which I find to be interesting and funny.

• The creepy winks of the dead warriors lying in the battlefields.
  
• The transformation of swords into lightsabers as a result of an excessive flare bug, turning the game into Star Wars mode.
  
• Naked people walking around as a result of another bug.
  
• The reduction of the height of the siege tower model into half the size of a human and the transportation of it into the castle by the soldiers.
  
• Everyone turning into a child as a result of a bug we had after implementing the child model for the first time. It was really funny to see tiny people swinging huge swords in battles, but it was very disturbing to actual kill child enemies... We are working under really harsh conditions! :)"

“It is a nice question but difficult to answer. Many problems about various issues are fixed and improved thanks to our feedback and comments, but I can give army AI as a specific example. Previously, armies scattered quickly and misused their time and supplies as a result of ineffective decisions. But now, thanks to the improved AI, they are more effective at making sensible and consistent decisions.”

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Greetings warriors of Calradia!

In the words of Omar Bradley, “Amateurs talk strategy. Professionals talk logistics”. So buckle up for some serious professional talk, because in this week’s blog we'll be covering supply in Bannerlord -- both how to get the food and other materials that you need, and how to deny them to your enemy!

The party inventory in Mount & Blade games serves as your logistics stock, and Bannerlord makes quite a few improvements on this front. Not only is your food consumption more detailed and realistic, but you need to carry and make use of other types of resources too.

As in real life, you’ll be more likely to have logistics problems as the size of your forces grows. Extremely small parties with a few people may not even require food, as you can live off the land with the right skills. Mid-size parties will definitely require food, however, they can purchase (or loot) their needs relatively easily from villagers or nearby farms. Larger armies going on protracted campaigns need to prepare and plan much more thoroughly. They’ll need large quantities of food, mules, livestock, extra horses, and various other items (for example, tools, which are used for crafting siege weapons).

Even with all the preparation though, you may find yourself out of food after a daring campaign in enemy territory or during a long siege. This can be disastrous for a campaigning army. Your men will start to die or get too weak to fight (being marked as wounded in the game’s system), and even those that are in fighting condition will spawn in battle with reduced morale and hit points.

Luckily, army commanders have options to avoid such a situation. Firstly, different parties in the same army pool their food together, with those that run out of food spending influence in exchange for supplies. This avoids cases where some parties in the army are starving while others are lugging sacks brimming over with grain.

While sharing may mitigate the problem for a while, you may need a better method to replenish your food reserves. Commanders can send out forager parties which will scour the countryside for food, confiscating any resources they come across. They can also send out raiders to attack villages directly, which will not only loot resources but also wreak havoc on the region and damage its economy. Once the enterprising parties re-join the main army, their spoils will be shared among parties in the army, and they will earn extra influence for a task well done.

On the other hand, if you find yourself defending against a superior force who is happily sustaining itself from your fields, you have the option to implement scorched earth tactics, destroying your own fields and denying the enemy the chance to help himself to your grain at the cost of losing the income and food for yourself. Don’t expect any gratitude from villagers, however, who expect their taxes to pay for the defence of their fields rather than their destruction!



In next week’s blog, we will be talking with QA Tester, Onurcan Dönmez. If you have any questions you would like to ask him, please leave a reply in the comments and we will pick one out for him to answer!

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Greetings warriors of Calradia!

In this week’s blog, we want to take a small step back from the game to tell you about our plans for this summer’s Gamescom, something that we’ve been asked about many times in the past few weeks. Yes, we will be attending Gamescom in Cologne, Germany this August (no surprise there, eh!).

However, there is one key difference in our attendance this year. For the first time ever, we will be making the game available for people to play in the public area of the show. This means that anyone with a ticket will be able to visit our booth and experience Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord for themselves!

As you can imagine, this is quite a huge deal for both us and (hopefully) our community. We want to be fully prepared for this momentous occasion and ensure that players get to enjoy the game in all its glory. That’s why we’ll be showing one of Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord’s exciting multiplayer modes in our public booth.

For obvious reasons, play sessions in these events need to be time-limited in order to accommodate as many people as possible – and because of that, and because of the huge scope of the single-player mode, it would be impossible for visitors to experience even a glimpse of what the sandbox has to offer. However, multiplayer modes are more intense and concentrated, and allow you to experience first-hand the very core of the game: the combat system.

With that being said, we will still be taking along the singleplayer sandbox campaign which we will be showcasing in the business area of the show, so you can expect to see a wide range of screenshots and videos covering most aspects of the game around that time.

This is clearly a massive undertaking for us, so we are devoting most of our time and effort into ensuring that things go as smoothly as possible at Gamescom. Thankfully, all of the work being done on this front brings us ever closer to the release of the game, so it is time well spent! To prepare for this, we are currently running daily meetings. The purpose of these meetings is to discuss the key features of the game which will be showcased at the event and in the multiplayer beta while providing our team with a clear and efficient way to communicate with each other and provide live feedback on the current state of the game.

But, why are we announcing this to you so early? Well, we have received quite a few messages from community members asking us if they would get to play the game if they were to attend this year. We are well aware that it can be quite difficult to make arrangements to come to an event like this, both in terms of time and money, so we wanted to give you all a heads up well in advance so that you can make an informed decision about whether or not to attend.

We will talk a little more about what to expect from us at Gamescom in a future blog, as well as, discussing our plans for the upcoming beta. But for now, thanks for taking the time to read this short update!



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Greetings warriors of Calradia!

Conducting trade runs between towns as a merchant has always been one of the most fun and profitable activities for players in our games. Bannerlord’s trade system improved on this aspect of the game in many ways, by displaying trade rumours on the inventory screen, tracking player profits, awarding trade XP accordingly to characters, etc. which makes playing as a merchant much more fun and rewarding. However, we still had the feeling that something was missing, so we decided to dedicate more care and attention into the economy and trade system.

We like making everything in the game connected to each other, however, trade and item prices felt like it was only there to make the game playable as a merchant (and to be honest, it kind of was). We had implemented a rather thorough production system where everything in the game, from food to weapons to cows and horses, were produced in villages or town workshops. This created an uneven distribution of different trade goods in the world, and consequently, there was sufficient price variation across the map. However, we had a rather simplistic system for the consumption of goods where each town consumed a certain percentage of all available items, regardless of scarcity. This, of course, was quite unrealistic. (When faced with a shortage, people don’t tend to politely reduce their consumption to a lower level, they rush to hunt for and grab the last item on the shelf, prying it from the hands of a nice old lady if needs be!). So, while the system was suitably connected to other mechanics, it was grossly unrealistic. We needed a new system!

For our new system, we started by creating a table outlining how much a typical town would spend on different categories of trade goods and items. For example, a town with a prosperity of 5000 will allocate, say, 500 denars to spend on grain, 400 denars to spend on meat and 200 denars to spend on butter each day. The town then uses the budget allocated to each category to purchase items of that category from the market and consume them. Moreover, every time an item is consumed, it will give a bonus to one of the town stats. Consuming food items, for example, will increase towns food stores, consuming tools will increase productivity, consuming cheaper weapons and armour will increase the number of militia, while more expensive arms will improve the garrison. This mechanism means that low prices are quite beneficial to the town’s development and consequently its lord since towns with cheaper goods can obtain much higher bonuses with their budgets.

This system nicely ties town stats and management to the price of goods, but it is also great for merchant gameplay as it allows us to gauge prices in a realistic way. Instead of the rather simplistic price model we used to have, we now have a rather detailed model that determines prices based on supply and demand for each category in a given town. Higher demand from town consumption, workshops requiring raw materials, etc., will increase demand and push prices up, whereas the availability of higher quantities of items will increase supply and deflate prices. As a trader, you will hopefully feel that prices behave realistically during peacetime, as well as, in response to actions such as wars, village raids and sieges.

During the development of the new trade system, an interesting point came up. As you probably know, in Warband, as in many other trading games, the price point changes every time you purchase an item from or sell an item to the market. This sometimes feels counter-intuitive since as soon as you purchase a desert horse for 100 denars, you see that the price jumps to 106 denars. And once you pay that for the second horse, the price now becomes 113 denars. You were perhaps expecting a discount for buying multiple items in one go, but instead, you got a price hike.

We considered whether we should keep using the same mechanic for Bannerlord, and in the end, we decided that this was actually entirely realistic and therefore opted to keep it. Think of this not as how the price of goods change in a single shop (with a particularly annoying shopkeeper!), but rather as prices of the same type of good in different shops across the town. One horse merchant may have a pack horse for sale for 106 denars, another could offer one for 113 denars, and yet another who perhaps needs cash urgently will let you buy his pack horse for a mere 100. Being a wise shopper, you, of course, choose the cheapest offer. However, if you want to purchase a second horse, you will now need to take the next best offer, and so on.

And that concludes this week’s blog. Thanks for reading and hope to see you next week!



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Greetings warriors of Calradia!

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord’s deep and immersive sandbox doesn’t just facilitate an emergent narrative, it actively encourages it. And while the game includes quests and tasks to help guide you on your travels, ultimately, you are free to chart your own course and plot your rise to power using the many different game features at your disposal. In this week’s blog, we talk with, Rabia Adıgüzel, one of our campaign team programmers who is responsible for ensuring that these different features and systems work together, and provide you with an engaging and fulfilling experience during your adventures in Calradia!



Rabia Adıgüzel


Bolu, Turkey


2017


Computer Science, Hacettepe University


Gameplay Programmer



“In the morning, I usually set a daily goal for myself according to my assigned tasks, like “I can finish this today!” or, in the case of major tasks, “I can make that much progress today!”. In general, I’m working on campaign-related stuff like town management, conversations, quests, character system, game menus, etc. But of course, we switch between tasks and help each other, both in our team and the other Bannerlord teams.

We have a short in-team meeting every day where we share information and updates with each other about what we are working on and the progress we have made. Sometimes I join design meetings about campaign-related issues. I also deal with the bugs that our QA team encountered during the day, which often involves a funny bug that I try to solve -- I don't know why, but they always come to me! :D”


“Not just about Bannerlord, but all of the Mount & Blade games; I really like that the game is the combination of different game types in a sandbox setting. Even if you start the game for the hundredth time, it always welcomes you with a different story.

There is more than one thing that I like in Bannerlord for sure. But I really like the little, tiny details that make a feature more powerful and intertwined with other features. For example, when you are in Khuzait territory, you see mounted bandits more often. This tiny detail supports the Khuzait cultural background and lore and is connected to the recruiting system. And another example; we already have quests and town management, but they are separate features as RPG and strategy elements. We implemented a tiny connector named “Issues”. When there is an “Issue” in a settlement, the settlement’s morale, food, prosperity, etc. decreases. If the player wants to solve this issue, he/she solves it with a quest. With this system, quests are not just an RPG element anymore and take on more of a strategic element.”




“I think the most difficult thing that I dealt with is implementing the “Death” feature for the player. But, in all honesty, it was also very fun at the same time! I feel like a Shinigami when I arrange and calculate how and when people will die. I was ok for the NPCs, but for the player, when it came to switching to your heir, that situation generated too many bugs. So fixing those bugs was the difficult part but, *cheers*, thankfully they are all gone.

Another point to mention is that, and well, maybe it’s not the most difficult thing, but when we are developing the game we always have to think about modability. Including modding to the process makes development a little slower and harder, but when I think of all of the fantastic mods for Warband, it definitely makes it worth all of the effort!
”


“Currently, my main focus is the Save & Load system. We are switching to a better Save & Load system, which will be more flexible for updates, so the majority of my time is taken up by preparing the game for this switch.

In addition to this, I am also making improvements to the Death & Inheritance features.”


“What I like doing the most on the battlefield is fighting with a two-handed sword on a fast, strong horse, that my enemies cannot catch. Although I’m not the best of players, I really enjoy this playstyle. And the faction that fits the best for my expectations is Battania!

I also feel like Battania is the most intertwined with nature. I mean, look at their kingdom banner, it’s a druid sign! :D

Furthermore, I like the way that they build their cities with a respect for nature.”


“Yes! In Bannerlord, the player can die because of old age. At first, the player gets sick. Then the player’s hitpoints start to reduce daily. After a certain time, death occurs. During the decline of their health, the player can arrange his/her final wishes then, when the death occurs, the player selects an heir from one of his/her clan members that are suitable and mature. Then, the cycle continues. This process also applies by AI lords too.

Also, every mature hero can die on the battlefield (but this is optional for the player)."


“We have different types of production in the game, like different types of horses, fish, cheese, grain, etc. Villages can choose between a range of these village production types, but the distribution of these production types is based on the region of the village. For example, villages near the sea or a river can produce fish, but an Aserai village that is in the desert can not.”



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