Bloc

Complex Characters - Patreon Release

                           (Vlandian lord getting pissed off at Sturgian lord on the battlefield)

Hey folks!

I hope you're all doing alright!

Well, sorry for being silent for a few weeks, but I'm guessing you all read the previous post(s) already so that shouldn't come as a shock to you. Scroll down to the about section if you just care about the mod and see the download link :)

During this period, I actually tried to check out a few old projects I had in mind to see if I could revive them or not. One of them was Battle Speeches, a mod where you, as commander, give battle speeches before the battle, just like in Total War. This was one of my first mods which I had to take down to avoid copyright issues because I was literally using Total War's battle speeches for that. After releasing that mod, I had a team of Voice Artists to replace the lines manually (this was like 3 years go), but we never had the chance to actualize the mod because of their schedule, real-life issues, and whatnot. So, given that we are in the peak of AI nowadays and Elevenlabs announced their voice-generation model a few months back, where you could generate real life-like voices with just a prompt without requiring copyingy the source voices, I thought perhaps I could revive that mod. Unfortunately, all the conditional cases we created for that mod, such as Faction vs Faction lines, environment like woodlands, hills etc. lines, and overpower/underpower type of variation lines were all super-duper long, and this means I had to pay for Elevenlabs just to get more credits (since all variations need to be run for each faction). Which is actually fine, thanks to you all, that was pretty much possible, so I was planning to pick the 100K characters plan from Elevenlabs, but then I noticed a big issue. Elevenlabs' voice generation doesn't support accents. Meaning that all the voices, Battanian, Aserai, Vlandian, Imperial, sound like Yorkshire lords or US Civil War commanders. Hence, I decided not to go through with this idea. Perhaps soon I can try to revisit that but it's a no-go for now.

So, I decided to revisit another idea I had in mind instead. The "Nemesis" type of system. Actually, I was planning to go with the name Nemesis for this but since that name is taken by some other mod a while ago, I decided to go with the name Complex Characters, even though I'm well aware that it doesn't fully reflect the capabilities of the mod.

About the Mod

Ever felt like NPC Lords and Ladies in this game are a bit... robotic? Like you execute one of their loved ones, next encounter they are all like "Mhm so what is it?" as if nothing happened. Or even legitimate kills, where you kill their family members in battle, and they don't even bother mentioning that as if they are cool with that? Or you bust your ass off to win a battle and no one gives a damn about that? So this mod aims to solve that problem.

This mod brings new lines to dialogues and also adds ambition mechanic for the NPCs. Let's focus on dialogues first.

This mod introduces 467 new lines (yeah you read it right!) to Lord/Lady dialogues. All of these dialogues are totally situation-related. For example, from now on, if you executed anyone, all of their family members will remember this and will comment on that next time they see you. Their line will depend on parameters like if you are engaged in battlefield, if they started the conversation (i.e. they are attacking you), relation of the family member (son, daughter, grandchildren, wife, etc.) and relationship status during the moment of your execution (i.e. if you betrayed and killed someone who knew and liked you, etc.)

Here is an example between me and Raganvad / or Asta:

 (Picture shows Simir, the son of Raganvad, after meeting his end with my axe)

As you can guess, all these cases require a huge amount of lines to be considered and properly created. I won't go over all of them but I believe I covered all the potential cases for maximum immersion.

These are the situations NPCs will pay attention and comment on:

• If you executed any of their family member.

• If any of your family member executed any of their family member

• If any of their family member has been killed in battle by you or against someone you know (like your clan members)

• If NPC ever fought against you before in battlefield. If yes, they will remember the outcome, they will remember when it was, where it was close to (approximately) and they will even remember if you were overpowered or not.

• If NPC has been taken as prisoner by you or someone you know before. Or if they ever defeated and took prisoner someone you knew or you before.

• If anyone NPC knows ever fought against you or not, they will remember the outcome, location, time and unit situation. This is larger than just family members though, they will know and hear about battles of their faction members too. If they are in immediate state of battle with you, they will also make comments based on their traits.

• If you ever lost a major battle. Major battle in this context is any battle that has more unit count than 250. If battle was against their own faction, their line will reflect that but if they heard other factions, they will also talk about it broadly. Like Battanian General will hear about your defeat against Aserai and might choose to mock you

• If you ever lost battle to bandits/looters before, NPCs might choose to make fun of you by remembering that if they have nothing else to say.

All the lines also come with very intricate parameters and variations that will make them sound more natural. The system is set up in a way that you won't be able to hear the same sentences again from the same NPCs, because there is no point in saying the same thing over and over again. But it is likely to hear the same sentence from different NPCs because variations work based on a random value at runtime. All the bullet points I listed above also come with a small possibility of NPCs commenting about the situation even if it's not directly related to their family. But it comes with a small chance, so that you don't get roasted by every single NPC when you lose a battle; instead, only a small subset of them will care about that.

NPC Ambitions

This is a small extra feature I wanted to add to make NPCs feel less robotic. NPC Lords now can gain or born with certain ambitions which will reflected their actions on Campaign Map.

Ambition types are:

• Vendetta: If the player or any NPC executes someone, their loved ones are likely to gain this ambition. NPCs with this ambition will try to chase and fight the executor on the campaign map. They will do this as their number one priority, meaning that if the player is at war with Sturgia and executed someone from a family, one or more family members can start riding their party (or even armies!) just to chase and kill the player. To make this more fair for the player, I'm not having NPCs target the player's location directly but rather using the same system you would use in the game to find someone—the Encyclopedia "last seen at" feature. The AI also uses this and tries to pinpoint your location, and once you are in their visual cone, they target and attack you. This can only happen if you are already at war, of course. But they will never forget the ambition until they get their hands on you at least once.

• Rival: If any NPC is beaten by someone (NPC or player) five times in a row, this will cause them to think of that person as a Rival or Feared. The Rival ambition will grant NPC parties the drive to target the player when they see them nearby. This means that even if you are overpowered or they have another objective, they won't care and will face you as a rival.

• Fear: Similar to Rival, this will get triggered based on battle wins in a row. In both cases, there is a 50% chance to be assigned either. Meaning that some NPCs might have the Rival ambition while others have the Fear ambition. Those with the Fear of ambition will do the opposite of Rival. They will run away like hell. Even if they are extremely overpowered, they will do everything not to face their feared rival.

• Throne: This ambition is a bit slow and tricky one. The NPC lord with this ambition will desire to become a ruler and prioritizes actions that increase their power and influence.

• Wealth: The lord with this ambition will prioritize accumulating wealth and minimizes expenses, such as maintaining smaller armies or buying supplies. They will also try to snatch cheap items from settlements they visit to sell afterwards - if they can.

• Fame: The lord with this ambition will seek fame. In time of peace, they will travel between tournament settlements to gain renown. They won't do that in battle/war times though, they will instead try to chase glory of battle in such times.

These ambitions are not assigned to every lord or lady, but rather they get assigned to them with a very low chance after the system checks it each week.

I also added a small cheat so that you can see all the existing "ambitions" of the NPCs in a list and their reasons.

 I tested this mod for multiple game-years and tried multiple actions. I didn't notice any issues with performance or crashes. So I'm hoping that it will all fine for you too. Also want to note that mod doesn't use anything related to Harmony etc, so it should be pretty lightweight to play with.

I also translated each line to Russian, Turkish, and German. They are all AI translations, so they might not be great but believe me, it was a pain in the ass to translate all those lines because it's surpassing the limit for every non-commercial AI LLM out there. So I wrote my own AI Translator system for that alone. I hope it's not too horrible.

I believe that's it! You can download the mod from here (should be attached, I believe; if not, let me know).

At some point in the future, I will release this to the public too (could be next week, can be next year god knows) Although as usual, I want to give my patrons an advantage. That's something I can do for you folks at least.

Let me know what you think about the mod!

Tiny Update

Hey folks,

Sorry for the overall silence, but I think that's expected since I explained it in a previous post. However, just in case, I want to let you know about two things:

Two things:

• I'm still alive, haha.

• I updated the Warlord mod to the latest game version and fixed a few bugs along the way. I know this is probably the most used mod nowadays, so fixing the issues was quite important.

Let me know if you notice any game-breaking bugs in the mod or if you have any favorite mods from me that need an update (excluding mods like Freelancer, where support has been stopped, of course! =) )

Update on Current Status and Future Plans

Hey folks,

I hope you're all doing great! Apologies for going radio silent these past few weeks. I had some vacation days saved up, and I decided to spend them with friends and family. Now that I'm back, I’m glad I took that time—it was great to be off the grid for a bit and hit the reset button.

That being said, I’m currently feeling a bit of an "idea void." In other words, I don’t have any mod ideas at the moment that feel both worthwhile and doable. Some ideas do come to mind, but they’re usually either too small to make much of a difference in the game or too large and time-consuming to tackle. As a result, I don’t have any active projects or plans right now that I can confidently say I’m working on. So, if you’re expecting something "shiny and new" from me soon, the next few weeks might be a bit boring on that front. I want to express my deep gratitude for all the support you’ve given me over the months, whether it’s $1 or $10—it all means a lot to me, and I appreciate every bit of it. And while I know most of you support me without expecting anything in return, I still feel it’s important to clarify that this long silence isn’t because I’m secretly working on something big. Unfortunately, that’s not the case right now. I feel a responsibility to be upfront with my patrons, so if you’ve been supporting me in the hope that I’m cooking up something major, I completely understand if you want to check back another time.

I’m also aware that the Bannerlord modding scene is quieter than ever, and overall interest in the game seems to be declining significantly. However, I’m not completely done with the game yet. Despite its shortcomings, I still enjoy playing it, and I continue to have ideas for improvements. I’m particularly eager to bring better AI into the game, but I need some time to figure out the most optimal way to approach that. In the meantime, I’ll do my best to support my older mods and may even consider reviving some classics (like Freelancer), though I haven’t made a final decision on that yet.

So that’s where things stand! I hope this clears up why I’ve been quiet lately, and why that might continue for a bit longer. If you have any ideas you’d like to pitch, feel free to share them here or on Discord. I’m trying to stay active and check in almost daily.

Oh, That Stinks!

Hey folks,

I hope you're all having a great weekend. This week, I want to talk about something I was planning to implement after I watched the gameplay of KCD2. I initially thought it might be a good idea, but then I realized it might not be worth the effort because it doesn't seem all that fun.

What is it?

So, I had the chance to watch the Kingdom Come: Deliverance II gameplay two days ago. While it was a really good showcase, one very minor feature caught my attention, and I thought, "Huh, something like that could be added to Bannerlord too." But yesterday, as I started thinking about it while staring at the compiler, I realized the gaps. The feature I'm talking about is, of course, the "Smell/Dirtyness" of NPC characters, as you probably guessed from the title.

If you haven't watched the Kingdom Come: Deliverance II gameplay, this part is mentioned at this moment (6:44) - https://youtu.be/5VP6bjlger8?t=404

Feature:

The basic idea was to add a smell/dirtiness mechanic to Bannerlord. Technically, it would have been a simple feature. Each day, you'd get dirtier by default when on horseback. If you stay in towns and pass the day, you won't get any dirtier, but it also won't reset your stink stats. Battles would significantly increase your stink because of sweat and blood. There would be bathhouses in all cities where you could clean up for a small fee, like 100 denars. If you pay more, you could get perfumes, which would make you smell attractive and noble. (I'll explain why this is important in the following sentences.) Your smell/dirtiness would have a visual representation whenever you visit scenes, like seeing stains on your face or armor. When interacting with villagers or citizens, they would comment on your current state, and more importantly, if you smell like a pile of dung and try to talk to a noble, they might comment on your smell. With some random variation, this could even affect your relationships. The same goes if you smell great; you could gain relationship points with the opposite sex, with some cooldown and randomness.

Challenges and Why I Didn't Move Forward with This Idea:

• Based on what I could gather, creating visuals on the "agent" in the game is either not possible, or I couldn't find a way to do it. I asked someone to check with TW on this, but I'm not sure if they'll have the chance to ask and get a clear answer. This is different from creating decals on static meshes like terrain, as it needs to be applied to the agent, similar to blood decals. It's certainly possible somewhere within the engine, but I'm not sure if it's accessible to modders. So, there wouldn't be any visuals unless I come up with something creative.

• To track your stinkiness, you'd need something displayed somewhere, most likely on the map view (where you see the day/night cycle, etc.). However, making even a small change to that map screen is unnaturally time-consuming and might raise some performance concerns.

• The feature itself seems to provide little to no "immersiveness" to the player, given that almost no one uses scenes anymore. Relationship bonuses, etc., are nice in campaign map encounters, but requiring players to visit a bathhouse every week in the game and spend money might be too annoying for such a small, random benefit.

Anyway, that's it, folks! I'm aware that I haven't been able to share anything but "failed" attempts to add stuff to Bannerlord lately, but this is the cost-benefit game of being a modder, and I don't want to make the same mistake I did with the Plague and Diseases mod (which people didn't play because it was too much of a hassle).

If you think this mod is worth pursuing, let me know. If enough of you agree, I might try to find a way to address the glaring issues!

Defense of the Bannerlords

Hey folks,

As you might remember, a few days ago, I mentioned I was working on something else and discovered a hidden feature from TW. Today, I want to show you what I was working on and explain why I’ve decided not to continue with this project.

Behold, Defense of the Bannerlords, or in other words, DotB!

So, what is this exactly, and how did it come about?

Defense of the Bannerlords is basically a MOBA-like game. I was experimenting with different genres for Bannerlord modding, just for fun. After trying out things like a space game or Age of Bannerlords, I had the idea to create a MOBA-like game with Bannerlord mechanics. Now, full disclaimer, I’m not a MOBA player myself, so I didn’t know all the details. I played DotA and similar games for a while, but honestly, I suck at them, and I don’t even remember the last time I played DotA. In some ways, this is more like For Honor than DotA I guess, so maybe I should’ve named it For Banner. Regardless, the idea is very MOBA-like.

As you can probably tell, the mod is far from finished. But I’ll still try to explain what I was planning. First, let’s talk about the basics. I needed a classic MOBA map layout—two bases, three lanes, towers in between. So, I went into the editor and created a map. But, since I’m terrible at map-making (and because the tool is complete crap and crashes every 3 minutes), I did my best to create a map. However, during implementation, I noticed the map was too big. You’ll probably notice this in the video too. And because I was lazy, I didn’t set up the towers on the side lanes—only the mid lane is completed. Most of the mechanics are missing as well.

Here’s how the game mode works:

You start as a “hero” on either the Battania or Imperial side, and your goal is to capture the enemy base. Heroes are special units compared to the minions. Minions come and go—they’re expendable—but heroes are important. Heroes are significantly larger than the minions (as you’ll see in the video). They’re also incredibly powerful, and minions usually don’t stand a chance unless they swarm the hero and overwhelm them with spam attacks. Chunk by chunk, they can manage to defeat a hero. You also have towers that can give you a little boost. Every tower you capture grants you reinforcements, and each tower has its own internal ballista that attacks nearby threats, though not always very accurately. You capture towers by standing next to them, and every minion group always targets the closest enemy tower to their base.

What’s missing?

Well, the endgame is actually missing. Right now, there’s no way to destroy the enemy base. I couldn’t figure out what would be entertaining to do in that scenario. I was planning to add different armors and weapons to the map that the player or enemy hero could capture and use. I also planned to include boosts/skills that you could purchase with gold—for example, killing each minion would earn you gold, which you could then use to buy better armor, explosive arrows, and so on.

Why did I discontinue this?

MOBA games are popular because they’re... online. As you might’ve guessed, I don’t make multiplayer mods, and converting this mod to multiplayer would take an unnecessary amount of time. While I could write my own server logic to make it multiplayer, it would still be an extreme amount of work for something I’m not very confident in. Even if I were okay with all this extra work, I’d need an actual mapper to create a proper map, rather than relying on my lousy map-making skills. So, I decided to stop working on this, but I still wanted to show you what I’ve done so far.

Anyway, that’s all! I hope you enjoy this short video showing the unfinished version of the mod. If you think I should continue with this project, feel free to let me know—I’d love to hear your thoughts. Or if you think I should edit this video (or record another one) for public for YouTube Channel, let me know that too!

**Music is from Udio, by the way. Absolutely amazing tool for creators like me. I'm not affiliated in any capacity but I just like it :)

"Up Next" from Taleworlds in Next Update

Hey Patrons,

I hope you are doing well. I was working on something fun (which I will showcase quite soon), and while I was checking it out, I noticed something in the game files which will likely to come as patch in the future :)

I managed to get it working and visualize it. Since you guys enjoy seeing me tweak the code, I thought you might also find it interesting to see what Taleworlds has been hiding up their sleeves for the next update.

It seems like my Banner Editor inspired Taleworlds to include a similar feature in the game. I would say they were two years behind me, but admittedly, their implementation looks much cleaner.

Basically, they added almost all the features from the Banner Editor mod. Now, you can change the background, add more layers/icons, and edit their colors. It also allows you to change the icons' positions by dragging them and scaling them by dragging the scale pointers.

Here's how it works: when you click on the background, you see only the background types and options to change the color. When you click on a sigil/icon, you can add one based on pre-selected categories of sigils (like Animal, Flora, etc.) and change their color. In the large overlay on the left, you can press and hold to change the banner icon's position and scale it. They've also added a handy copy button for copying the code.

As for the missing parts I noticed, it seems you can't "paste" the code, which is a bit odd, but I'm guessing they will add that feature too. Another missing feature from the mod is the ability to use premade banners. This omission might be fine since it could potentially cause issues on consoles.

Overall I say that this is a really good implementation, and it's way cleaner than my lazy UI hacks. I especially like the feature that they added to the right bottom corner where you can see how your banner looks like in certain different banner visualizations within the game. I think that's a very nice detail too.

While this feature update most certainly makes my mod obsolete and, in a way, makes my work on it redundant, I'm quite happy to see it being added to the base game. This means that everyone, including console players, will have access to this feature. Honestly in a game called Bannerlord, it was kinda weird we didn't have this in the release, but it's better late than never. I hope that Taleworlds does something similar for other features added by modders in the future as well :)

Anyway, that's all I wanted to say, I hope this "hacked preview" to Bannerlord's next update was interesting for you all. I will try to share a small project/test I did (which is unrelated to banners) soon once I have time. It drives me crazy due to the Editor being horrible, but I have something that is short to show at least.

Sandbox+ Game Mode

Hey folks,

I hope you are all doing fine. As you can remember, around a week ago I shared some ideas that I had in mind but didn't finalize due to the complexity of the features. This weekend, I wanted to give another try at one of the ideas, and I believe I finally have something that you can test out. Hence, I present: Sandbox+

A more randomized, more unique experience for each playthrough.

What is Sandbox+?

Sandbox+ is basically an extended Sandbox for a bit of unique gameplay. Both Campaign and regular Sandbox always start in the same year, with the same clans, factions, and so on. I find this very boring, and I don't think it reflects the Sandbox feeling as it should. With Sandbox+, all of your campaigns will be unique to you. You will see different lords, different balances, and even different kingdoms. You will also have the opportunity to have siblings and even nephews at the start. I think this type of gameplay offers more uniqueness and more fun. Honestly, this "mode" is something I would expect from Taleworlds as well, but well...

When you click on Sandbox+, you will be welcomed with an options page before proceeding. I know most of you like to have some control over your gameplay, and this page does exactly that. I think most of the options are self-explanatory, but let me explain each one very quickly.

Years to Fast Forward: This setting fast-forwards the years. The maximum you can advance is 500 years, and the minimum is 60 (though I haven't enforced a minimum yet). Every year will affect the family trees. This is something I spent a lot of time on. Unfortunately, real simulation (i.e., moving the game day by day under the hood) causes an insane startup delay (sometimes up to 8 minutes), so I had to use a different technique. The current system doesn't cause any delays.

Allow Border Change: Enabling this will allow border changes between Kingdoms. Basically, I'm creating a Convex Hull for each faction and finding the "border" settlements between factions. Based on the aggressiveness, these border settlements change owners based on some random value. Increasing aggressiveness will result in more variable borders than you are used to from the normal Campaign. This system is designed in a way that - rather than me putting the border settlements by hand, it simply checks the map and creates the change based on that. This practically means, it supports any mod that changes the campaign map.

Allow New Kingdoms: This is something I designed for quite some time, but then I decided the most logical version would be branching out a clan and becoming independent over time. Finding the banner color for these new kingdoms was the biggest challenge. For that, I searched through all colors, took their "distance" from their original color, and selected the color that was slightly different. This avoids having funny banner colors and helps players understand which faction is a "spin-off" of which real faction.

Allow Family Members: This enables the generation of family members for your clan. The count, age, and gender will be totally random, and there will be a chance to have nephews as well.

Here is a screenshot from my initial start. As you may notice, the borders have changed. For example, Chaikand is captured by the Southern Empire, Epicrotea is captured by Sturgia, Omor is captured by the Northern Empire, and so on. But I believe the most noticeable changes are in Rhotae and Husn Fulq/Razih. This is because they are now owned by two new Kingdoms in the game that are generated randomly, unique to this gameplay.

 I think names speak for themselves but as you can see we have two new Kingdoms. Banu Sarran Emirate - which owns Husn Fulq and Razih. And Lonalion Empire, which owns Rhotae. Of course, changes are not limited to this, if we look at the existing Kingdoms, we won't see the old leaders such as Caladog or Monchug Khan.

  And if we have a look at our clan, we will see a nice surprise. For this gameplay, we will start with our brother and sister, whom both have more or less around the same age as we are and share the same culture with us as well. With this, you will be able to play with your family, fight as an united clan.

Anyway, this is all that I can write up about related to this game mode I think. I tried to did some long-lasting testing for a few years and didn't notice any crashes or issues. Balance didn't seem to be affected as well but I don't have a huge mod venue like most of you guys, so feel free to report in case if you encounter any problems. It comes in English, Turkish and Russian right now. I will add more languages in the future. I will also probably create a short video about it soon and share it with other folks through Nexusmods too but for the time being, this is obviously exclusive to Patrons :)

Download Link:

https://drive.proton.me/urls/DC6WVC4EFM#prr5TadHMtsb

Password:

PlusSandbox

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.

Battle of Blackwater Details And Some Information

Hey folks,

I hope you are all doing great.

I realized that I forgot to share the video here, assuming that everyone had already seen it on the YouTube channel. But in case you haven't, here it is. (somewhere in the main post I believe)

I also want to provide a little bit of insight on this. This is actually a much simpler version of the ship battle system I showcased a while ago. In this version, you or the AI do not control the ships. It is technically a predetermined system where each ship knows where it will go, creating a ship-battle bridge regardless of the number of soldiers in the battle. The system is dynamic, meaning that it will scale up and down the count of the ships, but it will always consistently preserve the ship bridge for pathfinding. This means that even if you have 5 soldiers and the enemy has 500, you still have the same number of ships as the enemy, but they will be empty and there just to provide potential gaps in between. So soldiers at the end of the ship will always have a direct path to the other side of the fleet. This ensures that every soldier in the battle will participate in this one way or another. Now you might ask why this system is used and not the other one. For one, this one is created for actual player usage and it was the easiest option to create that won't cause lots of bugs, because although I tried a lot of combinations in the previous video with ship AI and boarding system and targeting system, it still potentially can cause issues because Bannerlord is clearly not designed for this, and debugging such issues in real mods could take a lot of time. This form of predefined battles is much more manageable and makes more sense in the actual game, I believe. Another part I want to mention is, you might have seen these pre-production GIFs in another GoT mod's Discord. That's because initially this was created for that mod, but then the owner of that mod backtracked on his word. Another mod wanted to have it, I made some changes, and they are happily using it. And they even integrated this into their campaign so now they probably do support sea battles on the campaign map too, which is probably the first of its kind at the moment. For the video, I wanted to keep the Battle of Blackwater theme alive though, and it was in custom battle form. But still, if you go to the Realm of Thrones Patreon, you can play this before it gets released to the public.

As for some updates on the upcoming weeks, I want to say that I won't be able to share anything or respond to anything due to the fact that I'll be taking a leave for at least two weeks off the grid starting from Monday. This means I won't be able to reply to any of you in case you want to reach me, I most likely won't be online in Discord too. But I'm not completely gone of course, and I'm still planning a few more improvement mods to Bannerlord if I can. That being said, if you have any mod ideas, I would love to hear them.

Anyway, that's all I wanted to share for now. I know it's not much, but still... I thought I should mention this.

Voice Acting Mod is Released

Hey folks, the mod is released. Check out the video and links for more details.

Voices of Calradia

Hello folks,

I hope you are doing all fine. Today or tomorrow (depending on where you are) I will release a new mod and a video, but I wanted to give a short and quick quick-peek to you all before that happens. The reason I'm releasing this mod in short notice is because I actually just spent ~2 days on it tops, and it doesn't really feel like a huge mod for me. So I think it's better if I release it to public as soon as possible to get more bug-reports from the users.

Basically mod uses Elevenlabs API to generate speech from the text on Bannerlord dialogues. This removes the annoying heavy-british accent greeting voice lines and replaces it with FULL voices characters. System is using a smart way to manage conversations. Every voice generation is saved in a folder with {voiceid}_{text unique id}.mp3 and if a new lord/lady/character is assigned to use the same voice id and require generating the same text, it simply reads it from the existing clips without spending any of your credit.

Each character is using a dedicated randomly assigned voices from pre-set voice pool for that culture. Or if you wish, you can also set a specific voice ID for the lords/ladies as well (which will be shown in Youtube video) In this video, Rhageae is using a random female voice from Empire voice id pool.

Voice generation is almost instant in most of the scenarios, and it might take a few seconds for longer text (as can be seen in the video), but after generating it once, that clip can be used again and again if requested. 

I think this mod increases the immersiveness of the game greatly. Frankly speaking, I never cared about the background stories of the companions in this game until I start listening them explaining it with their own voice. 

This also works in 29 languages. Here is a simple Turkish version

https://streamable.com/a1kylb

I included step by step guide how to get a voice setup right in mod description page and you can all go there once it's published. But you either way need Elevenlabs account and if you don't have it, please create an account here

Good part of this is that people can replace the voices they want with anything they like. For example, in Youtube video I used Benedict Wong's great Kubilai Khan performance from Marco Polo to replace sound for Monchug Khan. And you can do much much more as long as you don't commercially release anything (or perhaps you can even do that, I'm not too into laws and whatnot)

Baldur's Gate 3 - AI GPT Mod

Hey folks! Not sure if have seen it or not but I just recently released AI Mod for Baldur's Gate 3 that lets you have free-form conversations with your companions using AI, deepening your immersion in the world.

You can watch the video here to see it in action or the idea behind it.

Set Sails!

Hello Patrons,

Today I would like to share a little bit of information about a small project I have been working on over the past last two weekends. (Also last Thursday but mainly weekends) 

Scorilo, from the Ancient Civilizations mod, was kind enough to offer to make a ship model for me for my small tests. And he created a really great looking bireme ship for me.

Now you might be saying "Yeah, it's just a model. Nice one, but it is still a model; many other mods have added such things to the game," which would be correct. 

But, some of you who like to look at things in more detail might have already noticed that soldiers are on the ship. And yes, that's exactly what you're thinking - this is a ship designed for battle! I know some of you don't like long texts, so I won't go into details of what this is, but I will just mention what I have done so far with the visuals! :) 

• Ships have full animation on their oars, along with splashes and other visual elements. I know some of you like visuals, so here it is.

And these small animations are not just limited to the oars, no - I also added a sail mechanic that opens and closes on demand and during boardings.

• Full semi-spherical camera controls and the ability to switch back and forth with the game camera.

It is really nice to see all these animations from this angle, as it gives the feeling of battle commanding on another level.

• A completely new engagement and boarding system. Once you get close enough, you can initiate boarding and your soldiers will immediately go and fight with the enemy. And you can also join them! This is exactly the same for AI ship commanders as well.

• A completely new boarded troop AI system for full-on battles on boarded ships, regardless of their orientation. Under normal circumstances, AI does not work on such elevated non-navmesh surfaces, but with this new system, they fight like they are fighting on the ground (this took an enormous amount of time)

• A sinking mechanic. Now ships that are fully boarded and taken over will sink after a certain time once units are moved back to their places. Due to the crappy nav-mesh in the game, I simply wait 10 seconds before initiating this. This means some troops can go down with the ship, which is fine. Also, this does not happen when you board the ship as a player (so that we don't force you to rush back to your ship). When you take control of the steering, it gets triggered.

• A completely new AI system for ship commanders that finds their targets, pathfinds (sort of), and boards enemy ships. Even if you are down or not commanding a particular ship, the AI will do their job and engage with the enemy.

• Reactive new UI for seeing your fleet and enemy fleet. Colors of the unit cars change based on the color of the banner of the faction. If I wouldn't alter faction banners in here, for example, Imperial would be pink/purple and Aserai would be lighter yellow tone. Unit cards are taken from Rome II: Total War. Barbarian, Persian, Roman and Hellenic units have all their different types (also ballista units..)

I also added ballistas to some ship types, so that your troops can use fire ballistas to other ships while moving. That is not fully done yet though. I'll finalize it before showing anything.

So I believe that is it! Now you might be wondering why this is not a video but a post, because I really didn't have time to record and create a video yet, but video will come soon when I have some free time. And once I can iron out some of the small bits, I'm planning to share this with the Patrons as well so that you all can try this. No ETA on this though since I don't know how much time the bug fixing will take.

Weather Indicators

Hey folks,

Today I want to share a small QoL improvement mod with you that I made in a couple of hours today. This is something I suggested to Taleworlds ~3 years ago actually, but even the dev who replied in that thread doesn't work in Taleworlds anymore, so I have zero hope that they will add such thing to the game.

You probably had this experience as well, especially after the recent weather update in the game. You see some rain clouds on the campaign map but when you enter the battle, it's not raining because you are not in the rain "zone," which isn't obvious to players. Aside from the center of the rain clouds on the campaign map (which is also hard to detect because of the perspective), there is no clarity on what type of weather you will see on the battle scene. Will it be clear? Or if there is a blizzard, or if the rain is light rain or heavy rain? Or maybe it's just snowy? Anyway, you got the point. This mod is simply adding an indicator to the campaign map that shows the weather at that specific coordinate where you are standing.

It looks like this:

And full picture:

I have mapped all the weather events in the game,  Clear, Light Rain, Heavy Rain, Snowy, Blizzard (and a bit of extras like fog, storm etc that doesn't exist in the game) - I think icons are quite clear but in case if you are unsure what icon means, you can just hover over them and get the information:

This is using the exact system that the game passes the weather information to scenes. So it is a 1-1 matching, but I have experienced in some scenes that it says it's heavy rain, but it's just muddy and nothing is raining etc. This issue existed in the old version of the game as well, and I believe Taleworlds hasn't fixed the issue still. Just to clarify, this is not a bug related to this mod because this mod literally changes just the UI. I also added a check for Ancient Calradia, so it doesn't cause the Ancient Calradia UI to look bad or anything like that, hopefully.

You can download from here:

https://drive.proton.me/urls/RJ88VZGZ6M#CDfGtd9R0rxj 

Password:

ButterStorm

Let me know what you think!

Ancient Calradia - Custom Battle

Hey folks,

I did a bit of change on equipment for the Ancient Calradia units to balance it out. While playing around, I wanted to test stuff on Custom Battle as well, updated all the characters that you can select for the custom battle but during that I noticed something off on Ancient Civilizations mod, so I fixed the SubModule and informed the Scorilo about it (he will fix that in next update(s)) but for the time being, you can get it from attached here.  If you don't download this and replace it with Ancient Civilizations' SubModule.xml, custom battle soldiers will be naked.

So I thought, why don't I created a Battle of Thermopylae map for this mod. And that's exactly what I did in this weekend.  You can download the updated mod from here:

Link: https://drive.proton.me/urls/APCJE4SE74#eEb9ARtrjndc 

Pass: thermo

Simply head over to Custom Battles and select the Thermopylae battle map. I would highly advise selecting Spartan unit (under Empire, special unit for this map) but if you want to play around with Romans to see the outcome, why not? :) Map should support all times and seasons, at night if it's not winter, it will always rain, if it's winter it will snow in this map. Excuse my mapping skills by the way, this was more of a test project which I later wanted to share. I also plan to create a form of Battle of Teutoburg, but I haven't decided yet. If you have any suggestions, feel free to let me know

I will most likely going to create a video for this but till then, here are some screens:

Ancient Calradia - Release

Hey folks!

I will dive straight into the topic. After watching both 300 movies back to back two weeks ago, I was in dire need of a mod that adds Hellenic units to Bannerlord for some fun. About a week ago, I found the Ancient Civilizations asset mod on Nexus. It not only added Hellenic units but also Roman, Dacian, Celtic, and Persian units as well. It was an absolute gem. Unfortunately, it was just an asset mod, so technically, you had no chance to use it without anything else. Anyway, after realizing this, I thought, why don't I do it? That's how I decided to create this mod.

Last Friday, I started thinking about the mod's structure. I wanted to create something that doesn't heavily rely on stupid XLSL files or add new cultures that often cause compatibility issues with other games and save game problems. After a little thought process, I came up with creating my own faction injector system, which does sound slightly fancy but, in action, is actually pretty simple.

Basically, I divided the "characteristics" of the Empire culture into three distinct-looking empires and updated their systems at runtime whenever you load the mod. This is not separated as new cultures like many other mods do but rather still preserves the exact same culture object in the game. I revamped all unit tree equipment with their corresponding factions. I did not touch any unit ID or unit structure because I want this mod to be as compatible as possible with other mods.

Currently, the mod is exactly like vanilla Bannerlord, but with changed unit equipment and a few other small adjustments which I will mention. Before we delve into that, here is some information about the factions, their aesthetics, and their troop trees:

(Scroll allllll way down if you just wanna get it)

Western Empire

I envisioned this Empire as remnants of the Roman Empire. So you will find all Roman Empire aesthetic in this faction.

Southern Empire

Technically I wanted to make this mixture of Roman and Greek but then I decided to go full on Hellenic, because both mod had quite good armors for that faction and also I wanted to have full on Hellenic faction in the game.

Northern Empire

I wanted to give feeling of a shattered Empire by giving some characteristics of Dacian and Celtic while preserving the Romanesque feeling of the Empire. So this was inspired by Gallic Roman Empire.

Battania

I guess it goes without saying but it was based on Germanic/Celtic factions.

Vlandia

I used Dacian items and aesthetic for the Vlandians, even though I'm well aware that it would be better to pick something else but asset mod do not have too many options unfortunately.

Aserai

Well.. Persians. However, I had an issue with this, unfortunately mod was out of armors when it comes to Persians, so to balance the units, I branched out from Persia and mixed hints of Carthage to this faction as well. Because if I would stick solely to Persian armors in the mod, they would be basically a pajama army, which would be butter to a knife for other factions.

Sturgia

This was mixture of Sturgia in game, Celts and Dacians. It still looks distinct enough I believe, but occasionally it does look super similar to Battania or Vlandia. Once mod adds more stuff, I'm planning to add more variety to this faction.

Khuzait

This was the most problematic one for me, because mod does not have any distinct armors for this faction. I wanted to go with Saka route for Khuzaits, so current version is mixture or Greco-Linothorax and Khuzait armors. It looks rough on some edges but more the mod adds new armors, more I will bring armors to this when I have time.

And this mod updates all caravan guards, mercenaries, noble troops, faction leaders and even companions. Some images from different leaders:

Moreover, this mod also alters the arena equipment only for Imperial tournaments and make everyone to look like Gladiators:

And I also changed the UI a bit to give it a little Rome Total War look - which looks like this:

So how to use/install?

1- First go and download amazing mod from Scorilos (Ancient Civilizations) And it's only 2GB, (I know, crazy!)

2- Download this mod from here:

Link: https://drive.proton.me/urls/APCJE4SE74#eEb9ARtrjndc 

Password: thermo

And load this mod after Ancient Civilizations, and voila!

Notes:

- Mod should work in mid save. Yes, you can simply use this in your existing save game. BUT, once you save with this mod, you cannot remove it, because it's adding new items, new characters and all.

- Mod should work with Europe map mod without any issues at all. Though, it can be slightly weird since Lemmy added Southern Empire to Italy, so if you want to replace which Empire to be Hellenic which one to be Barbarian/Gallic, open SubModule.xml and change names (empire_s = southern empire, empire_w = western empire, empire = northern empire)

- If you don't like gladiatorial equipment, just change that in SubModule.xml before loading the mod.

- Mod can and most certainly isn't balanced for all units. Please let me know if some things are too OP or such. I can take a look at that.

- I will probably release this to public this weekend since more people play, more improvement we get for the mod. (Also because it depends on a public mod)

Some image dump:

About Ludus: Blood & Sand

Hey folks,

I hope you had a great 2023, and I hope 2024 has started off well for all of you already.

Today, I want to ask something to all of my Patrons. As you might recall, a while ago (in July 2022), I shared this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRxCSIiGZuU

It was about Ludus: Blood&Sand. A mod that was almost completely separated from the actual Bannerlord, following a storyline with cutscenes and so on. The main idea was for you to play as a gladiator, ranking up through a series of fights in arenas, buying gear and food to continue that progression, and eventually triggering a riot and escaping from your Ludus. It was a mix of Spartacus' and Arminius' stories. However, when I was working on that, it hit a major blocker on the engine side, and I had to stop. The issue was related to not being able to have a proper 24-hour day cycle - because the game was resetting the terrain, and it was breaking the cutscenes. A few months ago, while I was experimenting, I did find a workaround for that, and technically, it can be completed. So I went ahead and fixed all the issues this weekend, and now it's running on the latest Bannerlord version, more or less identical to the one in the video. However, I have my reservations. I had this hesitation when I first planned the story as well, but right now, given the amount of effort it requires to finish, I feel like I should make sure that it will be something that is fun to play.

The question I want to ask is this: Do you think it would be fun to play with?

Because after the introductory mission that you saw in the video, the rest of the game will basically consist of rest will be basically waking up -> going to doctore for request to fight in arena or sparring with other gladiators -> each will spend some daily stamina, and you can either participate 2 fights in a day or have 4 sparring with others -> when stamina is depleted you have to go back to bed and iterate over next day -> repeat the same until story continues. As you might guess, this becomes repetitive very quickly, which is not exactly a formula for fun. And if I shorten it by creating a finisher story epilogue like a breakout mission, then the entire mod becomes a very short mod gameplay-wise as well, and I'm not sure if all that effort is worth it or not. And to be clear, this is A LOT of effort. This is not a standard mod; it requires me to handle a lot of things, even basic things like the dialogue system, which is written from scratch for this purpose. So if this does not have long-term replayability, then I feel like the effort will be wasted (and could be used on another mod project instead).

Hence, I want to ask what you all think about this. I know as Patrons, you guys usually choose to go with a hands-off approach to my work, and I truly appreciate that, but in this instance, I would like to hear your thoughts.

Horses. Horses. Horses.

Hey folks!

I hope you are all doing well. As you know, I still work on other projects, but I try to implement certain features for Bannerlord whenever I have time. This time, it's about horses.

After replaying RDR2 and coming back to Bannerlord, I realized how mechanical it felt to ride the horses. I also noticed how much extra attention I was giving to my horse in RDR2, because you feel a connection with that animal (also, they're not cheap). So I thought, why don't I create a similar system in Bannerlord, where you can bond with your horse based on how much you use them and so on. I also wanted to address something that was bugging me since day one - not being able to select the coat of your horse. So I decided to create this mod.

What is this?

It's a mod that brings more control over your favorite companion in the game.

Why?

It's strange that in a game called "Mount&Blade" - mounts are treated like an afterthought. They seem unimportant, you barely feel bad after your mount gets killed in battle and so on. So I said, why not make them better? Why not make them feel like actual companions?

How does it work?

By default, your mount is a simple mount. No name, no connection. You need to take your horse to a stable in any town and give it a name. Or, you can also buy any horse you want, with any coat color you want.

After initial naming, your horse will be unique. Once you name your horse, you will immediately create a connection with that horse. You will be able to see that name on the horse in everywhere (scenes, inventory screen, etc.) and you will specifically have a relationship with that horse.

Every day you spend on your mount in your campaign map days will increase the bond progress with your horse. Once you reach 100, your bonding level will increase. This will increase the speed, maneuverability, and charge damage of your horse depending on your bonding level. Higher bonding you will have, faster it will go and so on. You will also be able to track certain information about your horse in stables, such as your progress, how many days you used the horse, how many battles you participated in. Joining battles in person with your horse will also increase your bonding progress.

It also works very nicely with other horse mods (I only know one from Terco)

Future Features that I'm planning but unsure about

Please let me know if you desire any of these features. I didn't want to go ahead and implement something that I wasn't sure if it would get the attention of the players.

• Ability to call your horse: After a certain bonding level, holding Q will whistle your horse and allow it to run to you on the battlefield.
• Ability to refill arrows: After a certain bonding level, you will be able to approach your horse and refill arrows (or perhaps I can just duplicate the amount you have)
• Ability to kick with your horse: I need to check if this is feasible, though.

Anyway, let me know if any of these features get your attention, and I might try to implement them before I release this publicly. You can comment here or just give your other ideas in Discord Questions channel.

Bugs? Let me know from Discord channel.

Tested for v1.1.6 - seems to be working fine.

Languages:  Turkish, Ukrainian, German, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Spanish (all of them LLM translation so might be wonky) 

Download From:

https://drive.proton.me/urls/3FVGR5QW9C#uhzbpLgVyOLB

Password:

MyLittleHorsie

Bloc Newsletter #1

Hey Patrons!

I hope you're all having a wonderful weekend. 

As you may know, I often try to give a "heads up" before I start working on anything. Instead of writing it in a random manner, I thought perhaps I should compile it into a "newsletter" format, like this. 

So, here is the first edition of the newsletter about the things I'm working on. I'm not sure how long I can continue with this format since I'm working on things in a very unordered manner, but we will see!

• More Raiding V2 will be released next week. I created a trailer-like video and plan to release it sometime next week, possibly in the mid-week or so. I also made a few changes and fixed a few bugs, so if you are playing with More Raiding V2, feel free to let me know if you want to get it before the NexusMods release.
• I've started working on modding for Baldur's Gate 3! I'm planning to create a mod where you can talk to all the companions in the game with your tadpole using your voice (it's GPT, of course). However, this will be quite a challenge for me, given that BG3 doesn't have mod tools at the moment. Nevertheless, I'm doing my research to bring the most fun experience possible to players without breaching any laws (such as voice cloning of existing voice actors, whom which did excellent work on this game)
• I have plans to revisit some existing Bannerlord projects and revive them. This will be a tedious project, given that most of the old mods are in deep trouble with outdated code, but I will take a look. If you have any preferences, feel free to let me know.

I believe, at the moment, that's all. Once again, I want to thank you for all of your support, regardless of whether it's a small amount or not; it means a lot!

Less talking, more raiding!

Hey folks!  (Download link is at the end of the post if you don't want to read all these)

As I previously mentioned, I was still working on some Bannerlord things. I was planning to add Zendar and some lore-friendly places as neutral locations. I realized it would take more time than I anticipated, so I moved on to fixing and improving the "MoreRaiding" mod. Hence, I introduce MoreRaiding v2.0.0!

It's basically the same as the More Raiding mod, but it works for the latest 1.1.6 version of Bannerlord with some improvements. Here are the features you can play around with:

• Fully functional raid system: This system allows you to go into villages and start raiding them. You don't need to press anything beforehand; you can simply attack someone on the road and it will trigger the raid. If you successfully raid a village, it will also be raided on the campaign map, which was not the case before.
• Militia and garrison system: In the previous mod, only the town garrison would arrive at the scene, and the data was not pulled from the actual garrison data. This time, the actual units from the garrison are deployed, along with some local resistance. For villages, the militia arrives at the scene and tries to fight you.
• Formations/Unit controls and such: In the previous mod, you were only able to give a few commands. Now, you can fully control your raider units during the raid. Only in interior scenes do they simply follow you all the time, like in a tavern. In the previous mod, you were not able to bring your companions into the raid, but this is now changed. You can raid with your companions.
• Attacking under black banner: Now, you can attack caravans under a black banner. This is great for earning and raiding caravans without facing the consequences of relationship drops. I will explain this further in a future post.
• City lockdown system, escape locking, and so on: In the previous mod, you could simply kill people and still leave by pressing TAB or changing your location by going into a tavern, for example, to avoid any bad situation. Now, once you start the raid, you need to physically leave the area or complete your raid. In towns, after a certain time, the city gates are closed and you are locked in. This means that if you don't want to fight and want to flee, you will need to jump from the city walls and make your way out.
• Imprisonment: In the previous mod, if you were captured during your raid, the game simply acted as if nothing had happened. This time, when you are captured during an unsuccessful raid, you will be put in jail or a barn, depending on your location.
• Bug fixes, natural flee system, and children: In the previous mod, TaleWorlds disabled killing anyone under the age of 18. This is somewhat understandable, but it's also not good since it wasn't part of the game anyway. Now, you can actually kill the children in the villages and cities as well. I also fixed a bunch of bugs from the previous mod and added a proper flee system. Although it's not perfect (the AI is still getting stuck in some areas), it's still good in some sense that not every AI is simply waiting for you to kill them. Instead, they will take action or simply find the best position to run away.

Attacking Under Black Banner

Now you can attack caravans under a black banner without facing any consequences for your raiding. The higher your Roguery level, the higher your chances of success. (Usually, having a Roguery level higher than 110 will give you a 100% success rate.) If you fail, you will face the same consequences as for a regular caravan raid (declaring war, etc.). Your entire warband will carry a black banner, regardless of your faction. You can even attack your own faction's caravans under a black banner, as long as you are not the owner of the caravan.

You need to trigger battle menu in dialogue with saying "We are not here to talk, prepare to die"

City Lockdown

This is before the lockdown, when raid isn't started:

As you can see on the below, when raid is started, city doors are completely shutdown. And if we wanted to leave the scene, we had to use the walls and jump (and most likely we would die due to low health in this case) hence you should plan your raid properly.

Imprisonment

As I explained above, you can be taken as prisoner after your unsuccessful raid. Relation and crime impact of your raid will remain same and serving your "time" won't remove these negative effects.

---

I believe that's all! Some parts might be rough around the edges, but if you have any improvement ideas, please feel free to pitch in; I would love to hear them all. I also had some other ideas for extra features, such as slave trading between cultures to earn money or "kill" missions from gang leaders to kill notables within the city, but I wasn't sure if these would make sense for the players. If you like them, or have suggestions, please let me know, either on Discord or here!

As my patrons, you have full access to this mod now. You can download it from here:

Link: https://drive.proton.me/urls/77KMEXN704#J85bi0C7MvsE

Password:

MoreRaiding

Let me know if you have any questions or encounter any bugs!

Guide for Modding with LLMs

Hey folks,

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was getting a lot of questions about how to start modding using large language models (LLMs). So, in order to address all of these questions, I created a kickoff document for everyone who wants to start modding with LLMs (whether they are services or local models).

You can find it here:  https://bloctheworker.github.io/llm-modding-guide/ 

Since it is impossible to give details that can be applicable to all games, I wanted to keep the document as general as possible. However, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask away.

If you want to contribute and expand the knowledge in here, you are encouraged to do so by creating a Pull Request. Translations are also welcomed, currently it's only in three language (English, Russian, and Turkish) but I also tried to explain how you can add more languages. 

Dialogues In Bannerlord

Hey Patrons,

The last two weeks, I spent time with Baldur's Gate III. Even though I thought turn-based dice roll games were never my thing, I'm really hooked on it. What I noticed in the game is that the skill-based dialogue system is actually a nice touch and brings great dynamicity to the game. So, I thought perhaps adding such variety to Bannerlord would spice things up.

What I had in mind was adding certain dialogue options to specific places based on a character's skill, and reactions from lords/ladies based on that. Like, during a greeting, if your Charm skill is high, you will say something charming like "[CHARM] some charming stuff" and the AI lord will reply accordingly if your skill check is successful.

This will either bring some extra relationship points or decrease relationship. If your companions have good skills in that, they can approve/disapprove of your words as well. In theory, it sounded like a good idea. However, after a little experimentation, I realized that adding such differences is only possible in one or two places, and that's it. For example, this was the system for greeting:

And you see this dialogue only for lords that you meet once; then it uses another dialogue that skips this entirely, so even this effort will be used very rarely. I thought this might be just too much to work on, so I put this idea on ice. But I want to ask, what do you guys think? Do you think this sounds like a good thing to work on? If so, what would be a good way to spice this up? 

Let me know either from patrons only channel in Discord or comment here! :)

PS: I'm back on fixing More Raiding mod. I'm adding functionality to attack caravans under black banner without losing relationship with the people or getting into war.

Patreon Dark Mode

Hey folks,

Here is something totally modding-unrelated, Patreon dark-mode.

I noticed that, for some strange reason, Patreon still doesn't have a dark mode, which is not very easy on the eyes, especially if you're a night owl like me. So I thought, why not create a simple CSS file for this? You can find the CSS file attached here.

How:

Download any client-side CSS extender plugin you like to your browser. I'm using: Stylus  (no affiliation)

I believe there are some mobile versions of this as well, but I haven't used it myself.

Install:

On stylus, just either import the JSON file or copy and paste the CSS file to patreon.com's adjusted theme.

Edit: Updated on 04.10.2023 since Patreon updated something. New version work as intended.

Modding Guide - Let me know your questions

(image generated with SDXL)

Hey folks,

Sorry for the cricket sounds over the last couple of weeks. I was on my personal break with my family, and then I started spending time playing Starfield, which I'm still having a blast with, so I didn't have much time to check on side projects.

During my break, I received a bunch of messages from people asking if I could create a guide on how to create mods with AI and explain my general approach. Hence, I've decided to create such a document/page where I explain what I consider when I'm planning to integrate AI into mods. It will mostly focus on how to use GPT/AI, but even though I've used Inworld in the past, I'm planning to provide an analysis of why I choose Inworld and what are the other options you can consider as well. Also, I will talk about the aspects that are required for games, and for things that don't exist, I will try to explain workarounds. But don't expect a hands-on tutorial because it will be a generic one (because each game has its own modding system in place), but hopefully, it will be useful for anyone who is starting with this type of stuff.

If you have any questions regarding modding in general, please post them here so that I can address all of them in the document.

If you prefer, you can ask your questions on Discord as well. I've created a "Questions" channel. Feel free to visit there too.

---

Moreover, I'm still planning to make some minor improvements for Bannerlord (even though I haven't launched the game for months). I have a few ideas for sieges, but if you have some ideas that you would like to see in Bannerlord, let me know.

GTA V Sentient Streets - AI Story Mode

Hey Patrons,

As I informed you all before in my previous posts, I was working on something new for Grand Theft Auto V. And wait is over, release will happen today!

The mod will be called Inworld Sentient Streets - AI Story Mode, and it will allow you to play as a police officer in Los Santos, and it will follow a storyline. However, mod will also come with full integration of Elevenlabs for the characters as well as Inworld's powerful AI system. It will also include speech-to-text, so that during your playthrough, you will only need your own voice and will to immerse yourself with gameplay.

You can also watch the video from here

Downloads:

nexusmods and gta5-mods (might take awhile for approval)

And for Installation and Setup: Guide Page

Big thanks to all my awesome Patrons for supporting me on this journey! Your support means everything, and I wouldn't be diving into the fascinating world of AI x Game without you. You rock! 🙌

Introducing Warlord Mod for Bannerlord

Hello folks,

This one is for Bannerlord fans. As I mentioned before, I'm wanted to release a module that includes all the missing Warband features, and here we are. Warlord package for Bannerlord for all the Patrons.

Warlord mod brings the old features from Warband, but with Bannerlord flavor added to them. These features include; Feasts, Manhunters & Deserters, Nobility, Books(Scrolls), Reactive Companions, Ambushes, Tavern Drunks, Claimant Quests, Standard Arena Equipment and classic voice lines. All of them can be disabled via config.

Skip all the information and reach to download link! :)

What does this package include?

Feasts

We all know you were waiting for this feature

- Feasts can be organized by both AI and player if conditions are met. You cannot organize a feast under these conditions: If you are at war with a Kingdom ( not minor or clans ), if there is already a feast hosted in your Kingdom at that time if you don't have enough money. All conditions are applied for AI lords as well.

- AI Clan leaders check the conditions above every day, and if conditions are good for feasting, clans ordered from high influence to low start evaluating their financial situation - calculate how many days they can host a feast and after the decision. a feast announcement gets sent out. Hosting feasts give influence to the host. Also every day, they get stewardship skills and leadership skills at the end of the feast if everyone attends.

- Each AI Clan leader can reject or accept an invitation. This depends on their distance and relationship with the host. This means that if they are too far away, they reject, if they don't like the host clan they can reject. If they reject the invitation, they lose their relationship with the host. If they accept, they gain a relationship with the host. If they accept and do not attend ( because of distance etc ) they lose both relationship and influence. If the clan accepts, they will also be shown on the message board ( also good for players to track/see ongoing feasts) - If the player hosts a feast, the same is applied as above. However, players won't lose relationships when lords reject ( so you have to keep your grudge personally ) Player also earns a little bit extra influence than AI to keep things balanced.

- When feasts are happening, you will notice leaf/confetti falling on cities. This is an indication of the feast. You can barge in to feast like in Warband as long as you have permission and/or bribed the gate Marshall.

- Almost every feast also hosts tournaments in town. - When you enter the scene, you will see that there is a musician entertaining the lords and ladies and they clap/enjoy/get drunk, etc. depending on their characters (if he/she is calculating, reads a book rather than being drunk, for example)

- If a war breaks out during the feast period, feasts get canceled, and you get a notification ( if you are in the kingdom ) and every AI does what wartimes expect them to do. The host would then get refunded its gold, minus some random cost back since the feast didn't happen completely.

Claimant Quests

Brings a completely new roleplaying way to play the game

- On startup, the game generates 6 claimant heroes for each culture with a unique look. Their names are dynamic and use the same pool as the heroes use but their backstories are depending on their culture.

- At startup, they are all randomly placed into towns but during the gameplay, they change position ( they never go to towns of the faction that they have a claim on ) - You need to fulfill certain conditions to support them. Otherwise, you cannot select that option. Your clan needs to be Tier 2 or above, you should be in the Kingdom that they have a claim on and your clan needs to have at least 2 supporter notables as a sign of power ( Notables in-game automatically support you when you have good relationships with them )

- Once you give your oath, you will be part of that Kingdom, which will be at constant war with the claimed Kingdom. You will get a quest notification. - I didn't want to make it too grindy - so the only winning condition is holding more towns than the old Kingdom. In such a case, your quest is completed. Old kingdom's name gets a new postfix "Secessionists". And "Separatists" postfix on your kingdom gets removed, and you become the main kingdom. In the video, I gave all the towns via cheat, so that's why it looks awfully weird to have so many leftover clans in Secessionists, but that's not something you will experience.

Books & Scrolls

Allows you to engage yourself with passive educational activity

- 7 scholar gets randomly generated with different items. Each starts in one random settlement and later moves to the closest random settlement every week randomly. They cannot be seen on the menu so you have a reason to visit tavern scenes if you seek education.

- 32 different readable materials were added to the game ( 3 books, 29 scrolls ) Each of them is a unique item in Calradia and can be possessed by one person only. I will list them in the comment section with their names if you are interested.

- Each of them has a unique effect, which is indicated with skill and + sign. Upon successful reading, you will gain (value * 100)XP on that skill. In the video, we get 3000 Roguery skill points from reading the material. This value also defines their difficulty, which basically means 30 ~= 300 hours of reading. But it's an approximate timeframe because reading speed changes with your skill levels.

- Players can read materials only if they are stationary. While moving on the campaign map, you cannot read the scrolls. If you are stationary and waiting, you read the top available material each hour, and the reading rate is directly liked to our character's Intelligence level. If it's maxed out to 10, you will read materials faster.

- If you have multiple written materials, you can only read one at a time and it's the top one. Once it's finished, it will be labeled as Read

- AI lords can obtain and read the materials as well - which you can also obtain after defeating them in war. Though, AI interactions require some polishing for balance

- Scholars can obtain/introduce new written materials each week - only if there are written materials that are not in circulation.

Deserters and Manhunters

Makes Calradia to feel more alive and dynamic

- Every unit that is routed during battle and ends up on the loser side will become a deserter. In simulations, every unit that isn't wounded or dead but also on the loser side will be a deserter. Not every unit becomes a deserter army though - it's tied to some random value. Routed winner units rally back to their armies. ( which probably can be tied to some skill )

- Each week, towns will assess the surrounding situation (count of bandits and deserters on the loose) and generates manhunter parties.

- Manhunters do have their own troop tree and can be only obtained if you release them from imprisonment. Like in Warband they only have blunt weapons to take them alive. They hunt every bandit around them as long as they can keep going. Once they have enough prisoners, they sell them in towns and buy food with the gold.

- If you want to cause some chaos, you can also attack manhunters by selecting the aggressive option.

Nobility

Brings the "you are no one" experience back

- If you don't pick the noble (first option) in parent selection, you start as a commoner. This means you won't have your unique banner and won't carry it on the Campaign map. You cannot change it in any way during the gameplay. You have to stick to commoner color.

- Once you become Tier 1, you gain recognition, and the system will prompt you to edit your banner. From that moment on, you will continue having the banner.  - As a Commoner, you can still gather recruits and companions. Your clan name/tab still exists and is usable.

- If your parents were nobles, it acts as a regular Sandbox game that starts with a banner. - Since in the game Tier 0 clans already cannot join kingdoms or become mercenaries, as a commoner you need to fight with bandits and resolve quests to gain recognition in Calradia

Reactive Companions

Hear stories from the locals

- Added 10 unique location and culture-dependent stories and 5 praise or complain dialogues. All of them are from Warband but Bannerlordized with faction and location names changed.

- They now understand where they are and they will give share some stories with you depending on their culture as shown in the video.

- After the battle, depending on how the battle went,  they will also share their complaints or praise other companions. Picking sides will affect your relationship with companions. Which makes them look more human with some form of a character.

- Killing villagers, raiding villages also trigger certain dialogues based on their traits ( Example: if they have roguery, they even approve and you get a relationship increase )

- You won't hear the same story again from another companion, so increasing the story pool would be the best choice for immersion.

- I also had another idea to bring into this, which wasn't part of Warband but something I thought could bring more immersion. But I didn't have time to finish it up so perhaps in the next cycle I can check it.

Belligerent Drunk

Who doesn't like a small brawn in tavern

- Randomly generates belligerent drunk in taverns, like we had in Warband.

- Dialogues are exactly the same as what we had in Warband as well,

- If your renown is more than 350, you also get "Do you have any idea who I am?" option which is later responded by a drunk with line "Emmmm... Actually... Yes, yes, I do know who you are, sir. Please forgive me, your grace -- it must be the drink. I'll be leaving, now" to avoid unnecessary conflict.

- I didn't make agents flee on purpose so that it would give you the feeling that this is something happening rather regularly.

- Tavernkeepr responds in the same way and gives you drunk's sword.  You also gain small roguery skills after successfully removing drunk.

Bandit Ambush

Nights are full of terror (if you are rich and wandering in low security town)

- Bandits/thieves can attack you if you visit villages or towns at nighttime. It can happen when you wanted to walk in the street or when you are entering a tavern.

- This event can only happen at nighttime. You are totally safe in daytime.

- This event isn't entirely random. If it's a town, the system checks the town's current security level - meaning that if the town has low security, it's more likely that you will experience such unpleasant moments. For villages, if there is an active hideout nearby, it's very likely that this will happen. If not, it's linked to some random value.

- This gives another reason for players to clear out hideouts, keep their towns' security high, and also creates an incentive for players to invest in their civilian outfit. Because if you get knocked by bandits, you can lose quite a lot of gold.

Classic Voice Lines

IT'S ALWAYS HARVESTING SEASON

- Voice lines are from Warband and I used the same categories for encounters. Also added the beloved "Away with you vile beggar" line in case you encounter a lord while you are a commoner ( check the other video for understanding commoner status )

- This doesn't remove existing voice lines added by Taleworlds, it simply adds new ones for certain cases. You can disable this from config if it's not something you want.

I don't like feature X, what can I do?

Well all the features are tweakable. Just go to ModSettings.json and make true part to false for corresponding feature. Save it and you are all set. Some features are not possible to turn off or on in mid game though, due to their nature (like nobility)

What about errors/bugs?

I did my best to eliminate most, but it's very possible to cause unwanted effects. It's kinda loosely tested with new version so I can't confidently say it's bug free.

Feel free to report any bugs you encounter during your gameplay. If you see any errors, it should produce a error.log file in the

Fyi: after a week or so, I will release to everyone in nexusmods

WHERE CAN I DOWNLOAD

Here is the download link

https://drive.proton.me/urls/V4Y44F55QR#zXx4lRAFesEc

Password is:

blocpatrons

More? Ask me away from Discord. Enjoy warriors!

Some News and Updates

I want to start off by giving a huge shoutout to all the newcomers joining our modding journey. Your support means the world to me, and I can't thank you enough for being a part of this adventure!

Let me start by giving the news about what I'm working on and the reason why I was being silent (than usual) lately. Well, that's because I've been working tirelessly on a mod for none other than GTA V. 

Thanks to you all of your views and likes on Skyrim video, we got the attention of Inworld team, and after discussing with them several things, they granted me to play around with their early-access features that will help me on this mod. And boy, they have fantastic things coming up for the players soon. 

This means, GTA V mod won't be just an "approach the random person and talk" type of mod. This will be one of its kind mod, that includes AI in its core mechanics. Furthermore, I'm planning to have multiple missions scattered throughout your day with have some background plot/quest line. I had zero GTA V modding knowledge until two weeks before, so I'm expecting to have some bugs, but in overall currently it works very good. I'm trying to create interesting missions and such. Now, I know you're dying for details, I can't share all the details yet. I promise I'll keep you in the loop and share any exciting changes or updates that come along the way. But I can answer one big question, "Will it be playable?" and the answer to this is "Yes"! It will be playable by everyone that owns GTA V.

And hey, let's talk Skyrim for a moment. I know some of you are very much wondering if there are any updates on Skyrim or not. 

I'm determined to make a playable mod for Skyrim. And I was already working on some improvements on the lip sync of characters for Skyrim mod, along with other improvements and more characters. To be honest, at the moment, the Skyrim mod is a bit unstable, and it requires a fair amount of integration effort.  

But fear not, once I've wrapped up the GTA V mod and given it the attention it deserves, I'll be diving headfirst into the world of Skyrim to bring you a mod that's stable, exciting, and ready for you to download and play.

So, there you have it, lads. I hope these are exciting for you as well! I hope seeing the first glimpse of AI getting integrated into gameplay and role-playing is excited for you all as well. 

In case if you have any questions, feel free to ask in Supporters-only discord channel or if you are not signed up in Discord, you can ask it in here as well and I will try to reply it best to my abilities. 

About Skyrim Inworld Installation

Hey Patrons,

First of all, thank you very much for the newcomers. I appreciate your support! 

I know some of you came here for Skyrim mod, but as I stated it there, it's just a source code and not a playable mod. However, if you are crazy enough and have minimal experience in modding, you can try to run it on your local. I will give some basic instructions for those who want to run it. I will give instructions on how to setup everything but if you feel like you can just try out debug version (untested, possibly buggy) then go to third point.

Before begin to anything you need these mods to be installed on your game.

Hard Requirements

You need to install some hard mod requirements to make this run properly as a mod. You will need the following:

• UIExtensions
• Skyrim Script Extender
• Address Library for SKSE Plugins
• SkyUI
• iWant Widgets
• Inworld Account - Free or Paid

1. C++ Part

You need to compile a ".dll" file from the source code. For that, you need proper env setup with Visual Studio, etc. Check SkyrimScripting's requirements section here https://github.com/SkyrimScripting/SKSE_Template_HelloWorld. 

You can just get this template try to run it, if you are able to run it, you can then replace it with the source code and try to build and see if you are getting any errors etc. If you follow that and press build, it will generate a debug InworldSkyrim.dll, and this should go to your Data\SKSE\Plugins folder (create if it does not exist).

2. Papyrus Part

Papyrus is a bit tricky because it's the native scripting language of Skyrim and cannot be altered outside of Skyrim tools (aside from some open-source compilers). For this to work, you require Creative Kit to be installed. There are plenty of resources out there on how to do that, so I won't go into detail for that. Basically, once you are able to open Creative Kit, you need to create a mod. Ideally, call it InworldUIHelper because this is what I used as the name, but the name doesn't matter much. 

Now you need to create a "quest" and attach our script. Again, the name doesn't matter because the system doesn't communicate with the quest name directly but rather uses a system of event push. Create a quest as an "other" quest and select it to be activated at game start. 

Now, for creating and attaching the script, you need the sources of SkyUI and iWant widgets, and you also need the entire scripts folder that comes with Creative Kit. Unpack all these to data/scripts - it should have a Source folder and a bunch of .pex files. When you download iWant Widgets, it should provide the sources as well. And SkyUI sources can be found online as well. 

Once you set up all of these, go to your quest and create or attach a script. If you are using Creative Kit and this is your first time adding the script, just create a new script InworldConversation and copy-paste the code I added and save it. It will automatically compile it, and you shouldn't see any errors (hopefully). If you are seeing errors like source, psc couldn't be found, it means it couldn't find the source. Make sure that you set up everything right.

3. NodeJS Part

This part is unavoidable. You need to install Node.js on your computer, along with npm. If npm is not installed, install it as well. Then, go to the client folder and edit the .env.example file. Rename it to .env and change all the required parts. Check my previous video to know where to put what (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEnh9YsoZAw).

Once you've set up everything, open a terminal in the client folder and type npm install to download the required packages. Then, type npm start to start the process. Let it stay open as, for the first initialization, it will take time to generate all the characters. Once it's done, it will notify you that all characters are ready to use. You can also go to the Inworld portal to see the characters created there.

That's all, you can now start the game and talk with characters mentioned in the JSON there.

If you are unable to try the first two parts, I'm attaching the SkyrimData.zip, just unzip this, it will include a mod .ESP and .dll. (You still need to download all the requirements!) and run the Node.js part, and you are set. 

VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: None of these have been tested. There is no guarantee that they will work with other mods or even with your version/edition of Skyrim. I only tested this with Skyrim AE version 1.6.640. Gamepass Skyrim, for example, doesn't work at all because SKSE isn't supported, and so on. 

This is the main reason why I didn't bother making it playable; it's a huge pain. Especially for complex mods like this, it's a nightmare to chase down each user to understand what the problem is. 

If you are totally rookie about these things and never installed Visual Studio in your life before, please don't try this, you would be sad and waste your time.

Future of Elder Scrolls & RPG - Skyrim NPCs & Inworld AI

It is HERE 🎉

The following video demonstrates the use of Inworld AI to power NPCs in Skyrim with a custom-built story engine for dialogue interactions. With Inworld's powerful AI character platform, you can now chat with NPCs in Skyrim on your own terms. Get almost instant responses that stay true to each character's unique personality, and immerse yourself even further in the game's universe. This is like ChatGPT in Skyrim but it's even better. No ChatGPT API required, and it can be used for FREE. Check the source code in the description if you are interested in this

Fus Ro Dah

Hey all!

As I mentioned in the Patreon before, I was working on a Skyrim mod that brings the power of AI and voice generation. 

Frankly speaking, it was a little too painful to work on something I'm totally inexperienced with and Skyrim modding resources are surprisingly very scarce. It was quite a bit journey, but I finally managed to create something I can showcase. 

Given that I'm not an experienced Skyrim modder myself, I will release the source code of it as well so that talented Skyrim modders can take it and turn it into something playable in no time. 

Have questions? Ask away, I am available for questions in Discord.

Curious about video? I hope so! If all goes well, you will see the lengthy uncut video tomorrow. 

Stay tuned!