University Visit Update: Still No Release Date :(

Heya folks,

I'm the guy who posted about a Taleworlds dev visiting his uni. Well guess what? Not one, but TWO devs visited yesterday. Gökçen Karaağaç, a level developer, apparently was in Istanbul and also attended. There were about 40-50 people attending, I'd guess. I took some photos, but my phone's camera is pretty bad (or I just suck at taking photos), so the text of the slides isn't very clear. The lads who organized the event also put a photo on their Instagram account. They actually took more photos. One may even include ME with the devs, so be on the lookout! Apparently they'll upload it to a Google Drive, so I'll update this topic when they share it. Gökçen is the one on the left, while Burak is on the right in the photos.

As for the content, there isn't much new as far as I can tell. This was organized by the Computer Engineering Club, so the beginning of the talk was more technical. Burak talked about AI and AI techniques in general in the first half. They talked about Mount & Blade and its development in the second half, which is when I started taking photos (the text is blurry, but you can at least read the titles from the slides). Apparently the battle AI is programmed at 3 levels: individual agents (basically every soldier in battle), formation (what the army as a whole must do to accomplish its tactics) and tactic (a meta-strategy to win the battle). Burak said especially the third level was lacking in Warband, and that's what they've been working on for Bannerlord. He also emphasized the modding aspect and that's what basically kept Mount and Blade alive (also that it was pretty amusing to see some of the stuff), so making as much as possible moddable was a priority. Finally, Gökçen talked about designing castles and siege levels and what priorities they had (making it appear large, but also small enough to be traversable, making sure AI doesn't get stuck, etc). Hopefully when I get the photos the slides will look clearer, sorry about that :( They also had some photos and a few gifs on the slides, but as far as I can tell, that was from already released blog content (and Warband, for pages introducing the Mount & Blade series in general). So, no new info I guess, unless there's a photo that's actually new that I overlooked.

When they received questions, literally the first one was "Bannerlord when". They said they were working on it, and they followed comments about it with some guilt ("vicdan azabı") but they weren't allowed to give any info about it. I had the opportunity to have a quick chat with them after the presentation. Apparently, they weren't allowed to give any info about it even when faced with an implied threat of physical violence and kidnapping. They had actually read my thread (hi! ^.^) and asked me when I'd kidnap them, there or when they leave the building. Maybe the "bring 2 attractive female friends and get them drunk" could've worked, but alas, logistical difficulties... Finally, I asked about events and they said they'll be attending Gamescom, but not E3 this year.

Sooo that's it I guess?

Submitted May 06, 2018 at 06:32PM by gvm40 https://ift.tt/2FOiCMu