As a preamble to this blog entry, we
would like to extend our sincere thanks for the incredible response to
the previous blog. We expected excitement and we know (because you
rarely take a break from telling us, which is great!) that you want
information from Bannerlord but the feedback certainly exceeded our
expectations. The blog was our most liked, shared and far reaching post
on Facebook, the forums went crazy (more so than usual), on Reddit we
had a great interest on /r/mountandblade as well as reaching the front
page of /r/Games and on Twitter... well predictably everyone had a lot
of fun with caps lock.
Avid blog followers and newcomers to the
series, in this, our second blog, we're talking about our team of engine
programmers and their role in our development process. It is fitting
that the engine team sits in the centre of the office, developing the
core of the game. The room is generally busy with the comings and goings
of demanding developers, the hardware is powerful and the attitude is
relaxed and open. Inside dwell the gremlin exterminating gremlins. The
light masters. The engine engineers.
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A game engine is effectively the
framework behind the game itself and its development. The workload of
our engine team covers the development tools used by our artists and
programmers, graphics programming (lighting and shading) and control of
various core behaviours like collisions between objects and physics
simulation. Things beyond the comprehension of lower sentient beings.
One delight of Bannerlord's development
toolset is the scene editor, which is used for placing all the objects
like trees, and houses in a scene, editing the terrain, sky and
lighting. It has taken large strides in the new engine and now has all
the workings of a professional application with a great degree of
control and polish. Not only does this massively improve the efficiency
and quality of the scenes that artists can produce but it will be
completely available for modders. As something that became a huge part
of the previous games, modding is a primary consideration when
developing Bannerlord.
Much of the engine team's work is done on
a request basis from the artists and other programming teams, so the
tools progress alongside the game. Developing our own tools and engine
in this manner means they can be catered for our specific needs. A
simple example of this is flora painting. In Warband's scene editor, all
objects including plants had to be added one by one but in Bannerlord,
clumps of grass and small rocks can be painted with the sweep of a
virtual brush stroke. They'll automatically sit nicely on the ground and
rotate/rescale randomly within changeable parameters for a natural
flow.
The images you are seeing are the engine
running in DirectX 11. The final release will also support DirectX 9.
This will make sure that the game makes the most of your PC and runs as
smoothly as possible on high and low end systems. Of course, running the
game in DirectX 11 will allow for tesselation and other advanced
techniques to optimise performance and visual quality.
In the screenshots you can see examples
of different atmosphere settings used in the same scene. It's not
possible to list here, the extensive improvements and additions that our
atmosphere settings have seen. What is worth noting though, is that
although in the examples here we have created realistic visual effects,
all of the variables of the fog and the lighting are completely
customisable with effects, giving endless options to those interested in
playing around with them for their mods or maps.
Enjoy looking at the pictures and
scouring the writing in the editor for hidden treasures. Keep up with
the blogs for more details on the other teams in the office and some
juice about the gameplay itself.
