Dune mod for Mount&Blade Warband (tryout)

[MrFlibble]

Well... thing is I want to expand the armory a bit. I know FH didn't go beyond the fighting knives but, frankly, I think it's too restrictive and will annoy the hell out of players.

Well, there were projectile weapons: stunners, maula pistols. The melee weapons were quite diverse too, not just "fighting knives" as you put it.

Besides, at least for fremen, why on earth wouldn't they have throwing knives, spears and swords made out of sandworm teeth? I know it's not "canon" but I will introduce a bigger array of weapons.

IIRC most crysknife blades were unfixed, meaning that they had to be near the owner's flesh most of the time. I'm guessing this is why Fremen did not use crysknives as throwing weapons. They had spring-loaded maula pistols for ranged attack though, if memory serves. As for spears, I think this was just merely impractical in the desert conditions.

Think about it! It's almost comical to imagine a fight between thousands of sturdy fremen with thousands of huge sardaukar all having these 20cm blades in their hands. It looks like they're fighting with toothpicks. and besides, can't I get a bit or "artistic license" here? :D

Dunno how much comical this would be, considering that most fights in the books were indeed carried out with short and medium blades. Which, by the way, can be more effective and versatile than large swords, especially since combat involved lots of movement and tricks (e.g. change of knife hand), rather than of relying on heavy armour.

BTW, I kinda' recruited a guy for modeling and texturing, especially for the armor/clothes stuff :D So it might work a bit faster and better from now on... hopefully.

That is certainly good news :)

[Davidu]

Well... that's the thing: short and medium blades. Not only knives and daggers ;) so I can insert blades from 20cm long (the "classical" crys) to around 40-50-60 cm long blades (kindjal for Atreides for example).

About the knife fight... it would really take out tactics and strategy (most of it though) and rely mostly on the abilities of the fighters. I'm thinking that would be chaos. No chain of command, etc. I know that FH kept the whole military stuff to the knife, but for now I'll keep it down just to blades (though I'll go more for short blades rather than just daggers). Also the crys would disintegrate after a certain period away from flesh, right? I mean not right away. Also fremen were not under empire laws of military conduct, and as on Arrakis shields were not being used, this gives way to a whole array of interesting speculation. Technically you could have modern-era weapons in the hands of the fremen (machine-guns and such) as they would make sense on a planet not using shields. I'm not gonna put that in, obviously, as it would destroy the whole game concept.

I know what I'm discussing here is not "canon" but M&B is quite a close&personal type of game so a certain variety in weapons might give a sole fighter (or understrengthen party) a fighting chance. Anyway, that is too advanced discussion, as game balancing comes after all (or most) of the game aspects are done. Right now I was just wondering on the dimensions of the blades I already modeled. Hopefully I will dump the modelling (and mostly texturing) on the other guy. Hopefully :)

Anyway MrFibble, thanks for hanging around and helping me with the info. BTW, did you play M&B? I mean the Warband expansion. It's quite addictive, haha.

If I have enough time this week I hope I can have some more work done. Besides the modelling.

[MrFlibble]

BTW, did you play M&B? I mean the Warband expansion. It's quite addictive, haha.

Well, actually, no, I haven't. I've tried a demo of Mount & Blade some time ago, and it was very slow on my dated hardware, so I quit.

[Davidu]

I got a lot of work at the office lately so I haven't even had time to finish the last blade I did, a gladius. That will go to the Harkonnen 'cause I imagine them liking stabbing people.

[Davidu]

A bit of bad news as the guy I talked to for the 3D modelling didn't actually do anything by now. He's been threatening me with some handsketches for a month.

I will organize myself a bit and wrap up what progress had been made by now and advertise it on the taleworlds forums in the modding cathegory. I have been paranoid about the copyright infringements and stuff, and that's why I kept it quiet. As I don't really have time for this right now (late January - early February will be the next free period for me so more time for this project) I should try to get more people involved so it will still move, or crawl. So by the end of this week I will announce the Mod on the main game forums.

Wish me luck.

(also I am to finish a villa for work, fireplace for my parents, window blinds for my parents, website logo for a friend, and eventually start the new tourist area project at work. i really wish it was summer with nothing to do :) )

[Davidu]

Ok, I finished the Harkonnen Gladius

As I said, I imagine the Harks more of the "close and personal" kinda' guys, who like to look deep into the eyes of the man they stab. And what better weapon for stabbing than the Gladius? I tried to make it look bad-ass in the dark Harkonnen way: carbon blade and hard-rubber handle.

This is the ingame lowpoly version as seen in the openBRF editor.

Blade - 398 polys.

Blade & Scabbard - 450 polys.

Scabbard - 70 polys.

Now I'm working on its scabbard. Scabbard done

 

 

[THE AQIB]

this is something awsome. i would like to see this come to life.

[Davidu]

Thanks. Sorry for the slow progress though :)

[Davidu]

Harkonnen Infantry Helmet

work in progress

 

[THE AQIB]

woah... nyc....

[Davidu]

Harkonnen Trooper

 

So here you have you generic HK trooper. I will be trying to make him a custom armor, though each troop tier should look kinda different. He's wearing the (resized) HK helmet and is armed with his HK gladius while wearing native Mount&Blade armor and boots. As i will have time and as i will gain more experience these items will look better and better and will be produced faster. Cheers!

[THE AQIB]

nice.... do keep up the good work...

[MrFlibble]

Looks pretty cool! I like the Star Wars-esque/Japanese design of the helmet :)

(On another note though, the Harkonnens are implied to have Mamluk ancestry in Heretics of Dune. I wonder if it were appropriate to reflect that somehow in the design of the House?)

[Davidu]

Technically it's an east-german helmet design :D i will make also a desert-camo version of this.

 

Well, I don't know right now how i could insert that detail (mamluk ancestry) while the names are more nordic: Harkonnen is more finnish while Vladimir is slavic. Also the Harkonnens' home town is called Harko, a stone's throw from Harkov town in North Ukraine. I will have to think about this. I feel like FH wanted to mix a few identities into the Harkonnens: brutal empire + slavic names resebles USSR (remember it's the '60s in the US) while the titles and structure resemble Norman barons in England, much hated by the local saxon population. So for an anglo-saxon he was constructing a perfect anti-hero faction of old and present adversaries. 

 

Also Mamlukes were slave soldiers particulary in Egypt that rose to have huge power and eventually rule the land (see Praetorian Guard and Janissaries as well). So they are not an ethnicity but a mix of bought slaves trained as soldiers. The closest cultural reference would be the 13-14th century Mamluke Sultanate so a middle-eastern society.

 

You gave me an interesting thing to think about now... hahahahaha, consider it noted :D

[Davidu]

Some screenshots from the finished map. I will have to replace the green ground texture with some desert rock texture and the vertical mountain texture with some other desert colored one :)

[Davidu]

More world map screenshots

 

[THE AQIB]

they look awsome!!!

[Davidu]

It's mostly the "bloom" effect that comes with Direct X 9 in Mount&Blade Warband. I used to keep it turned off and on DX7 because I thought it would slow down the game, but it doesn't :D

 

I really want to redo the Botanical station map icon and do specific map icons for Arrakeen (underway already) and Chartag, and possibly for other places as well...

[THE AQIB]

keep on going i like it already!!!!

[Davidu]

BUMP!

 

A few code fixes!

 

 

12th March 2013

 

31. added option to see the world map with faction borders (similar to Cryo's Dune) (credits Rubik on Taleworlds Forum) DONE

32. added code for "crouch animation fix" and "pistol" (credits Xenoargh on Taleworlds Forum) DONE

33. fixed an indictment code for lords in game (credits Zsar on Taleworlds Forum) DONE

34. switched Botanical Station back to "castle" status and under Harkonnen control. DONE

35. fixed error regarding castles without any bounded villages (prosperity calculation script). DONE

36. inserting script for attacking people in towns, villages and taverns (start brawl script). WIP

37. fixed Harkonnen Gladius scabbard animation. DONE

38. Sardaukar Maula Pistol WIP

[Davidu]

Hey guys, big question: are there rockets/missles in normal, canon FH's books? I remember there was some talk about them (pillar of fire, etc.) That would be mounted on vehicles so owning a vehicle might help you in battle (also orni). Also any other explosive devices (grenades)?

 

Technically the horses in M&B will be changed to vehicles, but riding a vehicle in the battle scene with no weapons is kinda' useless unless you want to run everyone over. Using some medium-ranged rockets or grenades might make the vehicles a bit more useful. I want to settle this before I start sketching up the vehicle concepts.

[vota dc]

Surely Harkonnen have cannons in the book.

[THE AQIB]

update soon and i wanted to know what the game will feature??

[Davidu]

@vota dc: Well they have artilery they took out of the museums, so it was a one-time only...

 

@aqib: I'm very busy at work and did not progress much. Just implemented the models for a maula gun and a new world map icon for the travelling party (it's now a ground vehicle not a knight on horse) but I have no time to properly texture them. I will post some screenshots soon, but it's not much to look at.

 

Edit: well, my idea is to start 6 months - 1 year before the Atreides takeover of the planet. And then go through the story in the book: Atriedes come, get attacked, destroyed, then Fremen unite under Paul and start an attrition war against the Harkonnen. Eventually the Atreides-led Fremen will conquer the planet. 

 

The player will not be Paul. You will have free movement. You can join the Harkonnen, Atreides, Smugglers or even the Fremen.

 

The whole fighting concept is still in the making... I mean of course there will be knives and such but exactly HOW it will work I will do in while I'm going on. For exemple I consider knives too short to make sense in this type of game, so it will be more short swords. I will put in the shields as well... There's a lot of work and I only have a limited grasp of the programming language. So one little thing at a time. Right now I'm trying to work a bit on the world map icons for travelling and some others also. I want to change the Arrakeen map icon to something rsembling the Arrakeen palace in Dune 1 for example. Also I want the vehicle icon to have a simple animation to look like it's wheels are spinning :) If I had one week off JUST FOR THIS it would be great hahahaha, but got work, social life, girlfriend and my parents will come visiting in 3 weeks.

 

Also my texturing skills are quite low. Because I have not been able to succesfully UVW unwrap my models or render to texture as it should. The thing is in architecture we don't give a sh*t about the method we build our 3d models, mostly we're fine with nurbs and solids... while in gaming you have to go for low-poly 3d mesh. Which is all welded together, and all normals unified :) 

 

Anyway... I'll post the images for the Maula gun and the Quad map icon later, when I get home.

 

Cheers!

[Davidu]

Maula Gun

 

Arrakeen map icon and ground car map icon

 

My inspiration for the car was this:

but I'm not sure how much I managed to make it look like that. Also the texture for the car is temporary.