Friday Updates

I just looked through all the updates, and all I can say is... AWESOME

Thank you very much! ...and I should think Nero will enjoy having another Aussie on these forums.


peugeot407

As one could conclude from the poll, this week's Friday Update, posted conveniently just two days before I go on holiday, is about Barbarian settlements in K&B. I haven't got much time for this update, so I'll let the pictures do the talking...

Ah, before you start facepalming, those pink things only appear in the editor... They're the pathblockers that make it so that units can't march straight through subciv settlements, and ingame, they'll be completely invisible.


As you might be aware, subcivs are called "Barbarians" in K&B, in the same way that they were called "Natives" in unmodded AoE3. Like AoE3, there's a different grouping for every few subcivs, but there's a twist. We took an ingenious yet simple thing from AoC, which is the addition of a flag. These are both aesthetically important and user-friendly, as they make it so that one no longer has to select a settlement or hover over the Trading Post Socket to know exactly which subciv it belongs to, but can see this straight from the flag. Once one's learned which flag goes with which subciv, that is. This particular grouping will for example also be used for the Avars and Goths, but their flags will be different.


As you can probably see in both the Sicilian and Frankish settlements, we used the possibility to import new models to great extent, and delved right through the stack of models that comes with AoM. These obviously don't have destruction anims or models (unlike our own Town Square model), but for a subciv settlement, that doesn't matter anyway... Oh, and I'm well willing to award the first person to guess ALL AoM models that were used in these two groupings a spot of Chivalry...


Something that I've been working on recently is improving some of my older textures, as proven by this rather elated remark in the team forum:

AOE_Fan wrote:Oh, I love the new textures for Crossbowman and Light Cavalry!

K&B salutes... The summer holiday. It may be a time of inactivity on our forums as almost everybody is either gone or has recently been, but It's lovely nonetheless...
K&B refutes... The Syrian Civil War. While we're well in favour of more freedom in Syria, it is a bit cringing to see fighting among the historical monument-laden city centres of Aleppo and Damascus


peugeot407

Amazing looking textures. but what is that circular thing in the Sicilian grouping?

I would think it's some kind of plaza.

Great!

I'm glad I discovered this so late, when it's almost finished

Those settlements look beautiful, and that is not me being cheesy. The textures are brilliant (it is not easy to tell that some of those models were once ancient Greek or Atlantean), and the detail is amazing, especially with the plazas, stalls and Ancient Greek ruins.

I think I recognise most of those AOM models:

- Atlantean Economic Guild
- Atlantean Manor (with multiple model variations)
- Greek Granary
- Greek House (with multiple model variations)

I think that's all, though you may have used models for some smaller objects as well.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: I think Robert's Barbarian settlements are the most beautiful textures in the game.

As the quote indicates, though, the new Crossbowmen/Light Cavalry and our generic Spearmen are definitely up there.

(At times like this I feel like saying awesome wasn't enough!)

As always, incredible work. I was actually not aware that models from AoM could be imported, so I learned something new today. Lanny, as Peugeot said, I am happy that there is another aussie on this form.

Are you the only Aussie here?
I learned that too, I was always hoping to do something with both games...

Thank you all for the positive remarks...

@super7700: Close, but not a full banana. Oddly enough, you did name the remaining models in your post...


peugeot407

So the other models are the Frankish stalls and the ruins?

...and the Plaza, which used to be a Titan Gate...


peugeot407

Which nations gate is it?

Hello everyone! Apologies for the tardiness and brevity of this Update, we've all been quite busy here at K&B. I promise Sunday Updates won't become a common occurrence. As a small apology, I'll give you a sneak peek at several new textures! Pepp is quite a wonderful texturer, and the latest Peppic contributions to the Barbarian sub-civilisations and our mercenary corps are quite beautiful!


The first two units will become available at Trading Posts built near their respective communities, as is the norm for barbarian units, and the Galloglaich will be available to some Northern civilisations through their home cities' mercenary companies, as well as having the possibility of being available to every civilisation in the Tavern when a game is being played on a map based in the British Isles or the northern European subcontinent.

Our team's been very busy since the last update finalizing details on a number of unique gameplay aspects. This includes the Bazaar, a Middle Eastern civilisation building that replaces the Market and represents the Middle East's status as the crossroads of medieval trade from both Oriental and Occidental regions of the "known world", introducing a new dimension to trade in Age of Empires.


Today's quote is a slightly ominous promise of combat variety from iliander, who's busy having a ball designing and balancing unit stats for our Unique Units and Barbarians.

iliander wrote:Don't think you'll only have slightly modified base units running across the battlefield, hehe.

K&B salutes... Peter Jackson, for deciding to make a second trilogy in Middle-Earth with his upcoming interpretation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. Calo anor na ven.
K&B refutes... England, for stealing away our erstwhile mod leader peugeot407 for a few weeks on holiday. At least he's still visiting!

I'm SOOOOO excited for this. You have NO idea. How far along are you guys?All my friends who have played Age of Empires are champing at the bit in anticipation!

I suppose there's no harm in giving a little insight. We're moving along at a pretty steady clip, I'd say. As of right now, pretty much all of the basic Prologue work is completed, with just a few units needing texturing (which Pepp does quite efficiently and with beautiful results, as seen above) and base gameplay all coded and functional.

We're busy right now fixing a number of bugs, tweaking the AI, coding in our renovated and streamlined combat balancing, and various other fundamental tasks. Concept work and brainstorming is, for the vast majority of the mod's features and certainly the Prologue, largely completed, and we're just tailoring the gameplay and completing a lot of "busy work". I've personally been doing a lot of work on flavor text and I'm attempting to help Persian_Fusilier make tech icons for all of our different shipments and civilisations (it isn't easy, especially trying to make anything that looks nearly as good as his productions. They're like tiny paintings.) Overall I'm confident that we'll be able to stick to our timeline of an Autumn release provided we all maintain current levels of productivity.

Is the Autumn release date then for the Prologue only, or for the full game? Either way, I'm stoked, and I wish I was able to mod/code to help out. Best of luck, and thank you all for making such an awesome full-conversion mod!

Hmm, actually the Galloglaich has already been shown in earlier Friday Update. Doesn't really matter though...

The Autumn release will be for Prologue. It's not one of those half-done or buggy "Alpha" or "Beta" things, and although it has only 5 civs, it still has the gameplay features of the full mod.

A majority of the work for the full game will actually also be done when Prologue is released, since most of the base units are done, all of the gameplay-related goals will have been met, and all three of our civsets (Middle Eastern, Crusading, and European) will have a precedent set from Prologue. There'll be quite a lot more artwork to be done for units and portraits, but that will probably be the biggest job. Summer holiday will be over, though, so it will likely still be a decent number of months before we can release the rest of the civilisations, Barbarians, and maps. The civilisation-related Friday Updates were always my favorites, though, and we'll have plenty more of those to look forward to!

Galloglaich was shown? Gah, serves me right for typing an Update while I'm falling asleep. Perhaps I'll show a few of Persian_Fusilier's tech icons later on today to make up for it, I don't think we've shown any before!

I'm okay with this! The crusades are some of my favorite aspects of medieval history, and this only heightens my anticipation!

We are moving to the next topic that was on our poll few weeks earlier and show few in-game screenshots of Chapter House, a building unique for the Crusading civs (only for Crusaders in Prologue). We have talked about this feature in some previous updates too, so you might want to search them up.

To get to the point, here are two screenshots, taken in the editor:


As for a little bonus, Persian_Fusilier has been doing rather fantastic looking icons for our Barbarian techs, and we wanted to show a few of those:


Our Historian/Researcher Synecdoche has been doing some improvements for livestock lately, and I think you will hear more about it someday...

Synecdoche wrote:So, if you've been following my posts lately, you may have heard that I've been reworking the Livestock system to give it a greater sense of viability in K&B than in any other AoE game or mod.

K&B salutes... The starting of schools. It's always nice to become well educated, but everybody thinks school is boring.
K&B refutes... Arresting of Pussy Riot. This shows once again how democratic country Russia is.