how about a mockup single player strategy map as a future stretch goal

[agweber]

You can get altitude at varying levels of accuracy, then take a high level sample map of terrain imagery and generate it from there. It wouldn't be hard to make a game covering the entirety of Europe or even Earth given that all of the data already exists.

I agree on that there should not be a 1:1 scale though, that's just silly and boring. You could potentially make it playable by making time crazy fast and just using fast travel-like abilities between points of interest, but then you lose the feel of scale of the maps.

[ManOfWar]

We need to attract people who like singleplayer which is a huge demographic. Just look at all the singleplayer mods for Warband!

Think of people like Yahtzee who don't like playing with other people

[Sigibert]

I said "about"!

Actually:

Anyway, it felt big enough.

M&B2 is touting 225km² battle maps - I can't remember if M:BG map size has been revealed, but I expect they'll be comparable. You'd need to line up about 30 of those maps on each side of a square to get the size of the UK (so ~1000 maps all up) - or a few more than 200 on each side (say ~50 000 all up) to get the size of Europe.

I'm a bit lost on the decimal places here.
I thought it was 244820 km² for the UK (not 244 km²); while Daggerfall being only 161 km², which would be an enormous difference. But you're saying it's actually 161600 km², right? Anyway, hand crafted 3D worlds won't be that huge. It would be totally boring to ride for hours without seeing anything. Bannerlord's map size will be more than sufficient for any gaming purpose.

[MeevarTheMighty]

Yeah, it was about 3/4 the size of GB.

I've never tried Euro Truck Simulator, but I suspect it's probably not my type of game, however, a lot of people love it.

I think whether scale translates to "boring" or "exciting" depends on how you handle it in the game. Is trapsing across the barren waste a major part of the game, or something you can automate and do in the background? Is there pointless filler or does it all have the potential to be a place of interest if you stop and start to build?

For a Europe map for stronghold PW mod for or more realistically, for M:Epic, I think huge scale could work really well for this type of game, but it does need an approachable auto-travel system - like strategus - you don't generally sit there and watch your guy travel all the way across the map. In M:Epic, this could be an alt that you occasionally check up on and set new waypoints, while most of the time you're playing with your other characters.

[Sigibert]

Well, I would prefer to have no fast travel options apart from respawning at your home base or the nearest next spawn point. Traveling is a major thing in games like this imho.

[Smoothrich]

You know Warband has some excellent city maps and Strategus was the perfect way to experience them.

With enough resources I bet people could design a dozen high quality epic siege type maps of historical or fantasy places whatever the Melee setting is. Release good map making tools and maybe one of the cRPG mapper pros will show real potential as a Melee mapper too.

Need good maps for a good game. And the devs could do cool scripting with friendly merchant NPCs getting owned by heavy cav at the start for immersion on high quality maps suitable for MP.

Not even a strategy map required except for flavor and just fight an army as attacker or defender with pre designed spawns and gear. Maybe culture themed so the AI does a full gimmick like DTV. And let players drop in and out of the rotating maps or just single player. Like Titanfall does in concept.

That was honestly a leading theme in comment chains and feedback on the Kickstarter, only interested in single player. Cut them in on the fun so they pay in.

The DTV noobs too. But it's more Defend the Keep and you with optional Co op bros slaughter AI armies of escalating strength with Stronghold type defenses between waves. Wave defense is casual gamer crack, DTV is already popular, rethink it bigger and better as a core Melee mode.

Like cod Zombies but upgrading your walls boiling oil repairing walls getting corpses out of the spikes so the enemy can't use its dead as cover or climbing between waves. And chill out time of the enemy archers showering arrows or catapults between infantry assaults as you loot gold and gear between waves to be real immersive and fast paced. Let ranged my old friends get boners headshotting bots instead of kiting in MP to cum.

The Siege of Ahmmerad for example could be presented like the movie 300 with Day 1 2 3 etc as the increasing difficulty with bombardment and Stronghold repair every day. Show Kesh at his tent pushing a knight chess piece and zooming in on his raging yet scheming face and switch to Huey leading a suicidal cavalry charge into the breach all patrioticly at dawn for effect.

I understand the game mechanic limitations but demos of gametypes and engine scripted crap seem very doable for you guys. Maybe whip up you walking in a pike phalanx towards a smoking rubbly wall gap to an opposing shield wall with people hammering their shields and taunting.  End with a united war cry charge by both sides while directed Arbalast spam from a contested siege tower melee in the background instakills with attention to deadly bolts piercing armor and blood spewing feedback and an arrow getting stuck in your armor that you shrug off before rearing a horse and dodging a lance all dramatically.

Eventually us fans and fellow modders should get some early tools to animate crap like that to show off your engine. Who doesn't love historical warfare reenactments? And good ones you curate on YouTube. The shit people do in the Total War engine can be amazing but you could be better for personal combat.

Honestly just using the engine for cool looking shit would create interest and probably be fun. Be sure to experiment a lot and look to community members for help on engine tests as a loyal shitty pre alpha group whenever you want playtesting!   

You should also promise to sponsor community made gametypes and maps on dedicated servers to reassure your pc gaming credentials.

[djavo]

Daggerfall: 62 km²
UK:  244.820 km²

Not quite...

Slovenia 0.2 km²

[Smoothrich]

Slovenia 0.2 km²

This mmo scale talk is stupid. I think an arcade focus would be superior for the Melee game. On deep dueling and army battle mechanics with high quality maps and epic sieges. Just add some single player and Co op modes to those good maps. And casual shit like spawning as cav in a large bot filled server to slaughter peasants like evil DTV.

All the talk about massive scale battles would need solid maps and bots. Another good innovation from Titanfall was the Moba styled trash bots to feed xp from. That should be considered for a game mode with Moba influences that I always dreamed of for Warband where you level and gear up over the rounds with peasant creeps and real players always fighting.

[Sigibert]

Slovenia 0.2 km²

 

Rather 20.273 km²

[Vibe]

Slovenia 0.2 km²

haha

(click to show/hide)

cry evrtim ;_;

[Mr_Oujamaflip]

I hate the idea of gigantic maps. If there's 1000 people on then maybe but it would suck otherwise. It's like DayZ, you spend half an hour trying to find anything, just fields and houses no action. That's fine for survival I guess but this is a war game, needs battles.

Perhaps scale the maps dependent on the players online?