The folks at ‘Mount & Blade’ have released a video from the Game Developers Conference presenting some of the features of their upcoming expansion pack entitled ‘Warband’:
In addition to this Paradox Interactive (M&B’s publisher) sent out an e-mail to subscribers with more information:
Mount&Blade: Warband demonstrated publicly
Multiplayer expansion to the critically acclaimed medieval combat game debuts at GDC
Following on from the recent announcement that a Multiplayer expansion was in development for the widely lauded Mount&Blade, Paradox Interactive have today revealed the first detailed information for the newly titled Mount&Blade: Warband.
Demonstrated publicly for the first time at GDC in San Francisco by the development team at Taleworlds, the expansion introduces a number of features that players have specifically requested and which will vastly improve the gameplay experience.
The key features revealed:
- Multiplayer – previously announced, the ability for up to 32 players to play simultaneously on a single map in Team Death-Match style battles
- Faction Rulers – A new in-depth system allowing the player to gain followers even as a rebel and to become the ruler of their own faction and recruit Lords as their vassalals
- Accessibility – Improved and additional detailed game information for players.
- Improved Graphics and optimisation – The introduction of state-of-the-art rendering technologies including HDR (High Dynamic Range), as well as significant improvement in the level of detail on characters, armour and weapons
- Increased interactivity – New interactivity implemented in the environments that the AI will recognize and adapt to, directly impacting the Siege mode
Commenting on the development of Mount&Blade: Warband, Armagan Yavuz, Producer at Taleworlds Entertainment said, “As a development team, we are used to short development circles, fast feedback from our users and the ability to have our gamers in the development loop. That is why we decided to create this expansion. We have received a large amount of requests from players for multiplayer and when we had published the game we saw an opportunity to explore this as well as additional improvements that our gamers requested. I feel that the multiplayer mode adds tremendously to the game experience.”
A summary of additional features includes customizable quick battles, extended diplomatic options and new weapons, armor and animations. Other aspects introduced in Mount&Blade: Warband are improvements to the combat system with more physically accurate horse archery, a variation in horse sizes, and more options when embarking on sieges.
Mount&Blade: Warband is scheduled for release in Q3 2009.
Tags: Expansion Pack, Game Developers Conference, GDC, M&B, Mount & Blade, Paradox Interactive, TaleWorlds, Warband
‘The Peninsular War’, the highly anticipated Napoleonic mod for ‘Mount & Blade’, has a new video out entitled «The Life and Death of an Officer»:
Read more about TPW here.
Tags: M&B, Mount & Blade, Napoleonic Wars, TaleWorlds, The Peninsular War, TPW, Video, Wellington
The Creative Assembly recently posted a blog post detailing how modders should approach ‘Empire: Total War’ in these early days when there are no official modding tools and little documentation. They also talked about a «modding dev kit» which is to be released sometime in the future.
«Since the mod community seems to be moving full speed ahead and you’ve already got some basic mods up and running I thought I’d explain the way the Empire modding system is intended to work. This should enable you to work with it, not against it, and hopefully avoid breaking things released by CA in the future.
First of all, the ETW data is meant to stay packed. The pack file system and the virtual file system that it builds internally within the game are central to the patching and modding systems, so please don’t ask users to unpack their data in order to run with your mods.
So how should you mod the game? Well, it works like this. Empire loads files of type .pack in the data directory in a certain order determined by the pack’s type. There are three basic types – release, patch and mod. The fifth byte in the pack file header is an numerical id which tells the game what a pack is, boot packs are 0, release packs are 1, patch packs are 2, mod packs are 3. The game then loads release packs first, then patch packs, then mod packs.»
Read the rest of the post at the official Total War Blog.
Tags: Creative Assembly, Empire: Total War, Empire: Total War Modding System, ETW, Modding
«Ever wondered what might happen if a legion of Rome got lost and found itself in Middle-earth? Well, wonder no longer! Play as Rome – or any of the Middle-earth factions – and find out what happens to the brave Julii!»
‘The Lost Legion’ is the semi-retired master modder Palantir’s (also known as MasterOfNone & Dol Guldur) latest foray into the modding field. The mod is an addon to the ‘The Fourth Age: Total War’ version for ‘Rome: Total War’ v1.5, which lets you play as a Roman legion mysteriously stranded in the world of Middle-earth. The entire premise for the mod can be found in the screenshot below:
Find out more about ‘The Fourth Age: Total War’ at thefourthage.org, and grab ‘The Lost Legion’ here.
Tags: Creative Assembly, Fantasy, FATW, Lord of the Rings, LotR, Middle-earth, Rome: Total War, RTW, The Fourth Age: Total War, The Lost Legion, Tolkien
Amazonian Agema Archers
SubRosa has just released a new version, 2.4, of ‘Amazon: Total War’, which introduces a lot of changes and improvements. The old faction of New Amazonia, now renamed the Valkyrja, has been completely reworked into a more barbaric culture, with more units and a temple to Freja among the new additions. Other changes include:
There are two versions of ‘Amazon: Total War’: one for ‘Rome: Total War’ v1.5, and another for ‘Barbarian Invasion’ v1.6. The release announcement can be found here, where you’ll also find the download links.
Tags: Amazon: Total War, Amazons, ATW, Creative Assembly, Rome: Total War, RTW
Do you want more smoke on the battlefield when playing ‘Empire: Total War’? What about better sounds, including drums, fifes and marching songs like the famous “The British Grenadiers”? Or perhaps you want the carnage of battle intensified with blood added for musket and cannonball hits? Maybe all of the above? Then look no further than Mech_Donald’s smoke, sound and blood mods. ‘The Battlefield Smoke Mod’ v2.5 includes:
For only some of the features you can download ‘The Battlefield Smoke Mod Light’ v1.2 (for better performance; there is also a version which incorporates the blood mod), ‘The Blood Mod’ v1.0, and ‘The Battlefield Sound Mod’. You can find more information and download links here.
Tags: Creative Assembly, Empire: Total War, ETW, History, The Battlefield Smoke Mod, The Battlefield Smoke Mod Light, The Battlefield Sound Mod, The Blood Mod
‘The Great Campaign Expanded’ mod for ‘Empire: Total War’ lets you play as all the major and minor factions that are not playable in vanilla ETW, such as Portugal, Denmark, the Barbary States and the Pirates. The developer has not included any of the emergent factions, as other mods have done previously, as attempting to choose one of them will cause a crash to desktop. Downloading an additional patch, the ‘American Protectorates Fix’, will, as the name suggests, allow you to play as the 13 Colonies and the other protectorates in the Americas. Read more about the mod here.
Tags: American Protectorates Fix, Creative Assembly, Empire: Total War, ETW, History, The Great Campaign Expanded
The mod which brings the ‘Viking Invasion’ expansion pack for ‘Medieval: Total War’ to life on the ‘Rome: Total War’ engine is back with another patch! Version 1.6 of VI2 adds new Vikingr and Huskarls, better campaign balance and more. Read more about the mod, and download, here.
West Saxons vs. Mercians
Tags: Creative Assembly, History, Rome: Total War, RTW, VI2, Viking Invasion II, Vikings
Everyone’s favourite Viking mod for ‘Medieval II: Total War’ have released another preview with plenty of information and, of course, screenshots! We get a sneak peek at some great new units, Jomsvikingar and Hirðmenn among them, loading screens and concept art for two Pictish units: the Gaemornaghta & the Codaghbanda. Go read the full preview here.
Hirðmenn
Tags: Creative Assembly, History, M2TW, Medieval II: Total War, Preview, Vikings, WotN, Wrath of the Norsemen
Eurogamer just finished a live Q&A session with the Creative Assembly’s Kieran Brigden. In it he revealed a lot of nice tidbits about ‘Empire: Total War’, such as the multiplayer campaign mode which they will release «soon», the reasons for making the game Steam exclusive and how the battlefield AI behaves. But what is most interesting to us Total War modders are the things he said about the moddability of ETW and the other modding-related questions he answered. The whole Q&A can be found here, and the most interesting bits are below:
«filsoofj11 asks: Hey, what kind of improvements have been made on the AI? The recent reviews all say that the AI has been improved by a lot, and you guys have brushed [on] the topic in the past, but can you narrow down exactly what has been done to make the AI better both on the battlefield and the campaign map?
Kieran Brigden:One of the great thing about the TW series is the modding community. There are some very impressive mods out there, from AI enhancements to full-scale total conversions. We always watch the mod community for ideas and indeed talent. Our very own Jack Lusted was a modder prior to joining CA at it was his modding that brought him to our attention.
Anim asks: What will the mentioned modding tools for Empire: Total War contain and when will they be released?
Kieran Brigden: Primarily, and of most importance, Empire is moddable without tools. I imagine a large number of people will write their own basic editors for a variety of parts of the game and its also possible to edit it with other basic apps. Our own dev tool-set isn’t for public release as its not UI friendly and is internal software, so the answer there is ’soon’ but the game is moddable without tools, although there are some functions for which users may want to write their own tools in the short term.
rsslcs asks: Will the game feature a map editor, like the editor that could be unlocked in Rome Total War?
Kieran Brigden: This one links in with the earlier questions on modding tools – we will offer tools in the future and I expect there will be a user-generated map editor pretty soon after release.»
Tags: Creative Assembly, Empire: Total War, ETW, Eurogamer, Modding, Q&A
