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Reprisal will be released properly in December. As well as a new game mode (the 'experiment' they've been hinting at).
Tomb Kings will be January (were meant to be December but slipped due to issues with Norsca).
Norsca implementation into Mortal Empires will be in May. Essentially, they fethed up, and rather than port over the content for Norsca they need to completely re-implement them from scratch into the Warhammer 2 engine. They made too many changes to how the race functions to make them a unique experience that it's causing way too many problems once inserted into the Warhammer 2 engine.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2017/12/05 21:52:31
Dev Update wrote:Because the content in Norsca didn’t exist in WARHAMMER II, even though a long time had passed, the merge should have been quick and easy.
Eh? Are computer years like dog years? Because the gap between TW1 and TW2 isn't anything close to 'long' (one went right into the other), let alone the gap between Norsca specifically and TW2.
No question that it's a complex task, but this piece of the explanation just bugs me.
On the other hand:
We also wanted to make Norsca really interesting and unique to play as, so there was also more in the way of bespoke code for Norsca than we originally intended. The first attempt to integrate Norsca in the routine way caused an immediate tsunami of bugs.
This, on the other hand, makes more sense. It sounds like the TW1 team for Norsca was a bit... sloppy... when it came to code. Too many non-standard approaches.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/12/05 23:13:16
Thing is Warhammer in itself is a huge experiment for them and they are trying a LOT of new things with it. Heck the combat in itself is a vast departure from the styles that they've worked with in all their previous games.
So its no shock to me that they are still learning a lot of things or finding that the code throws up oddities with how they change things around.
Voss wrote: This, on the other hand, makes more sense. It sounds like the TW1 team for Norsca was a bit... sloppy... when it came to code. Too many non-standard approaches.
I would imagine that they were busily figuring out just how far they could twist the Warhammer I engine, and assumed that their changes would be compatible with Mortal Empires.
And you know what they say about assuming.
Oops...
I do find it amusing that the race that's causing them fits is the one that was essentially offered as the inducement to pre-order the second game.
The delay is a shame for fans of Norsca. But on the positive side, it's not one of the tabletop races, so the fallout with fans will be more limited. I, on the other hand, am overjoyed that we'll finally get my Tomb Kings in January.
Overread wrote: Thing is Warhammer in itself is a huge experiment for them and they are trying a LOT of new things with it. Heck the combat in itself is a vast departure from the styles that they've worked with in all their previous games.
So its no shock to me that they are still learning a lot of things or finding that the code throws up oddities with how they change things around.
Oddities are one thing, this sounds like a different problem. Since they transitioned so quickly from 1 to 2, the idea that the last DLC for 1 would be fundamentally incompatible with 2 on a data storage level is... weird.
Especially since TW1 to TW2 isn't a vast departure, at least on the surface- it's mostly graphics tweaks and a UI functionality layer for rites. Character trees are slightly different, but still function in the same way, armies are built the same way, cities have a different number of slots, but that was true of some races in TW1 as well
I think this is a drawback for their isolated team strategy. Having the TW1 team not be the Norsca team not be the TW2 team allows for faster output of products, but they should be communicating far more often on the basics of their approach if their code is diverging this much.
The Laboratory (or, as you may know it from the free-LC array, The Experiment) is a free brand new game mode for Total War: WARHAMMER II, designed with Intel. It introduces a custom battle playground with 16 different sliders to push your battles to new and ridiculous levels of mayhem. The Laboratory game mode will be available in a free update for Total War: WARHAMMER II on the 14th of December. It will automatically be added into the game in an update on that day, and you can access it from the main menu, under ‘Battles’.
IMPORTANT: While all players will be able to play in The Laboratory, it is entirely free of any minimum or recommended specification guidance. As a result, sliders that effect GPU or CPU performance can easily override your main performance settings unless you have a very high-powered PC. This can negatively impact your frame rate or likely cause gameplay behaviours you won’t see in the main game.
So... uh... be careful not to melt your video card when you're experimenting with it.
I really love the idea of it! Sure I'd need a new PC to run some of the stuff (or turn everything to low) but seeing SWARMS of skaven is great.
From CA's point of view this is a great way to stress-test their engine and also the average home computer and see how the results tally up. I'd love to see CA move the TW series toward those real swarmy sized groups. Having thousands upon thousands of units on the map would make for some epic games.
Heck it could see the return of the old larger siege maps since with vastly more units attacking more than one side at a time would be viable.
Eh. Seems like a waste of time and resources for a mildly entertaining video clip. They've got real stuff to do- a formal system for enabling cheat codes isn't exactly compelling.
It's very likely they had this in place anyway. Sliders for things like unit sizes, model sizes, spell radius and damage, ranged damage, explosions, etc are all super useful for testing and balancing. Things like gravity can easily be thrown in for fun.
It's not a whole lot of resources to just take their testing system and build a UI around it.
The ability to mess around with this stuff has been in the game engine for quite a while. For instance, back when Napoleon was the big Total War game, someone went in and figured out how to edit some values in a file to increase the manpower count in each unit enough to make the game sort of resemble a real battlefield (albeit a small one). So the ability to do this stuff has always been there, even for the players. It appears that all CA has done here is make it easy and intuitive for the players to get access to that.
-Loki- wrote: It's very likely they had this in place anyway. Sliders for things like unit sizes, model sizes, spell radius and damage, ranged damage, explosions, etc are all super useful for testing and balancing. Things like gravity can easily be thrown in for fun.
It's not a whole lot of resources to just take their testing system and build a UI around it.
No, but it is resources (for the UI, for the new build, for the patch) when they've recently posted they're behind on... everything.
So... finally broke down and got some mods. There are just some things about the campaign that are frustrating. Got rid of the bonus upkeep for multiple army restriction, and the Great Power diplomacy negative.
Tired of being unable to deal with a stronger non-great power faction, because of that stupid negative.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I kind of wish there was a better indicator for the possibility of confederation.
Asides from the big bright green "I want to confederate" thing? Not trying to be snarky, just not sure what you're looking for.
Far too often if just seems like an on and off switch. For a hundred turns I can be mates with another faction and they just never give any hint of wanting to confederate, then one turn suddenly the indicator will turn green and they'll accept it.
There must be some level of granularity behind the scenes that leads to the thing eventually turning green, but more often than not it just seems totally inexplicable. It'd be nice to have some sort of bar that actually relates to likelihood of confederating, even more awesome if it actually included reasons why they do or do not want to confederate.
I know there's the attitude bar, and supposedly their attitude combined with relative strength levels factors in to confederation.... but more often than not it just seems completely bloody random. Like my current game I have Karak Norn just sitting there being a thorn in my bloody side, they're weak, they're good friends and they're sitting there holding 1 settlement that's blocking a bunch of trade routes (they ninja'd it off me after a horde rolled through and razed it) and another settlement that's stopping me from having complete control over a province.
But the bastards just show no sign of confederating. It'd be awesome to know why and how far away they are from it.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2017/12/09 08:03:01
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I kind of wish there was a better indicator for the possibility of confederation.
Asides from the big bright green "I want to confederate" thing? Not trying to be snarky, just not sure what you're looking for.
Far too often if just seems like an on and off switch. For a hundred turns I can be mates with another faction and they just never give any hint of wanting to confederate, then one turn suddenly the indicator will turn green and they'll accept it.
There must be some level of granularity behind the scenes that leads to the thing eventually turning green, but more often than not it just seems totally inexplicable. It'd be nice to have some sort of bar that actually relates to likelihood of confederating, even more awesome if it actually included reasons why they do or do not want to confederate.
I know there's the attitude bar, and supposedly their attitude combined with relative strength levels factors in to confederation.... but more often than not it just seems completely bloody random.
Yeah. I would like it if CA would give us a clearer break down of the mechanics.
-Loki- wrote: It's very likely they had this in place anyway. Sliders for things like unit sizes, model sizes, spell radius and damage, ranged damage, explosions, etc are all super useful for testing and balancing. Things like gravity can easily be thrown in for fun.
It's not a whole lot of resources to just take their testing system and build a UI around it.
No, but it is resources (for the UI, for the new build, for the patch) when they've recently posted they're behind on... everything.
Quite possible what they're behind on didn't need the UI guys.
Plus this has been on the FLC list from Warhammer 2s release. It's not a surprise release.
In other news it seems the earlier patch to reduce the video rendering teams desire to slaughter high elves has worked! Though now they are fixated with dark elves!
Dakka does have White Knights and is also rather infamous for it's Black Knights. A new edition brings out the passionate and not all of them are good at expressing themselves in written form. There have been plenty of hysterical responses from both sides so far. So we descend into pointless bickering with neither side listening to each other. So posting here becomes more masturbation than conversation.
ERJAK wrote: Forcing a 40k player to keep playing 7th is basically a hate crime.
Dakka does have White Knights and is also rather infamous for it's Black Knights. A new edition brings out the passionate and not all of them are good at expressing themselves in written form. There have been plenty of hysterical responses from both sides so far. So we descend into pointless bickering with neither side listening to each other. So posting here becomes more masturbation than conversation.
ERJAK wrote: Forcing a 40k player to keep playing 7th is basically a hate crime.