Status Update and Other Information

Hey folks,

I hope you all are doing fine. I know I didn't post anything for a while. As I previously mentioned, I was having a somewhat long vacation.

But I was also working on some ideas for Bannerlord in the meantime. However, I didn't feel like finishing (or even starting) any of them because they seemed like too much work compared to how much fun they would be, and some of them simply weren't fun enough. But I still want to share them so that you can show your interest if you think they make sense:

Randomized Sandbox Starting: I was planning to have a mode where you start in Sandbox, but it would begin in a random year with settlements exchanged (perhaps even factions destroyed) and clans changed as well, with new members and old ones dying, and so on. As you can imagine, this is quite a challenge. Exchanging settlements is the easiest part because they don't depend on much, but killing members, creating members, and artificially speeding their age up is a bit problematic in some cases. Even settlement exchange is tricky if I want to support other mods because, with this, I can't have a set of settlements that can be exchanged between factions. Instead, I have to create boundary points for each and then decide if they will be exchanged or not. A lot of work, for sure, but I believe it can be done. I still haven't trashed this idea; I just shelved it. I think it's the true sandbox experience for a game like Bannerlord.

Mercenaries: I was planning to add a fully fleshed-out Mercenary system for the game. This will be different from the mercenaries that the game currently offers. Instead, there will be multiple mercenary companies in the game with a set of soldiers. Some will have special minor faction units, some will be just ragged soldiers, and some will have noble faction units. When you go to town, you will be able to hire them for a fixed amount of time. This means that when the term is over, they will leave the party (assuming they haven't fallen). Moreover, I thought it would be good to allow you to create your own mercenary company as well. For that, you would need to buy a lounge in a town and start setting up your company. The company will get contracts each week, and you will need to approve or reject them as a player, or if you put your companion there, they will do it on your behalf. Contracts will take units from your mercenary unit pool and send them away for a fixed time. Once the contract is finished, depending on the risk, you will lose some of them and need to supply the mercenary lounge with more soldiers. There will be other companies as well, so you will compete with "fame," which will determine your contract amount and gold. So the better soldiers you put in your contracts, the better fame you will get. As you can see, at first glance, it looks very straightforward and might make a nice mod. But it is also not easy to create all these things, and it requires a lot of effort, as you may guess. Hence, I stopped working on it.

Mini Games: I thought about adding small mini-games, like "press this and this key in sequence in time to get something," which was something I had in mind for a while while working on Hot Butter. This usually comes with some animation requirements, however, so I believe I need to spend time creating animations and whatnot, which I don't hate, but I also don't want to learn just for Bannerlord, I guess. But aside from Hot Butter, this could actually be used for other mods like small-job mods as well. For example, being a baker, a woodworker, or a fisherman, etc. I'm not fully convinced any of these would be fun after you do them 10 times in a row, but if you think they would be, let me know. I might spend time on that.

Lore Items: This one is probably the most time-consuming on my list. I thought about creating 5 lore-related items in Bannerlord with great stats that you can find only by doing certain quests. These quests will be given by regular citizens initially. For example, when you are talking with people in settlements, based on their culture, they will tell you a story about an item if you like, and then direct you to clues. Someone might say go to X village, you go to X village and talk with someone, and that someone will mention sand dunes. You will go to a location, fight with desert bandits, spend time in the desert, find a chest near an oasis, and get the spear of Aserai. As you can see, this requires me to create quests for all factions and very detailed maps for each story as well. I'm sure it would be great fun for some people, tracking these myths and seeing them become actual items (I got this idea from Ghost of Tsushima), which you can use. But it comes with a hefty effort tag. Hence, I believe I won't pursue this idea.

Other ideas also include more grand-scale things such as a planet-to-planet space game, a fully open-world Calradia where you play the game like Skyrim (on foot or on horseback, but you see everything), or a Blight: Survival-style survival mode. But these are way more complicated to discuss in one post.

So let me know if any of these sound interesting to you or if you would like to see them. I'm genuinely curious about your thoughts on this.