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[Tack]

You might just have to cancel the mission. Seems like you screwed the pooch.
Or in this case your client.

In other news, any chance we'll be fighting anything in the "few and beefy" category?
Trolls or Giants or whatnot?
(Can't access the roadmap on phone)

[PanH]

What are the skulls on a mission meant to represent ? Difficulty ? Or pay ? Because I found some pretty easy on 3 skulls (maybe it was because goblins are overrated) and hard on 1-2 skulls (direwolves and orcs mostly). Anyway I got the hang of it, and my company has now maxed companions.

Anyway, i had some pretty cool quests lines, and good events. I'm getting in the phase where pretty much every combat goes smoothly tho.

[Tack]

Go find some vampires before the patch goes through.
That'll shed you some archers.

[Neonivek]

What are the skulls on a mission meant to represent ? Difficulty ? Or pay ? Because I found some pretty easy on 3 skulls (maybe it was because goblins are overrated) and hard on 1-2 skulls (direwolves and orcs mostly). Anyway I got the hang of it, and my company has now maxed companions.

Anyway, i had some pretty cool quests lines, and good events. I'm getting in the phase where pretty much every combat goes smoothly tho.

It is difficulty and sometimes "Potential difficulty" for some missions.

But yeah the difficulty doesn't always match the actual difficulty because the game doesn't weight things intelligently a lot of the time.

[Tack]

Haha, and three pages ago they were reminiscing about when goblins were terrifyingly overpowered.
I think the key to goblins is their ranged advantage, which can be tough to deal with at times.
Put ambushers on wolves and I bet everyone would hate them again.

[Jaysen]

Thanks for bringing up that problem! We will have a look into this specific setup. For now i am afraid you will likely not be able to finish the patrol mission. The relations to a faction normalise over time so given some time the city should not be hostile anymore.

[PanH]

Thanks for bringing up that problem! We will have a look into this specific setup. For now i am afraid you will likely not be able to finish the patrol mission. The relations to a faction normalise over time so given some time the city should not be hostile anymore.

Thanks, good to know.

[Jaysen]

We just reworked our key visual to reflect better the armosphere and style of the game, let me know what you think!
Cheers

Dev Blog #88: The Key Visual

This week we present to you our final key visual for Battle Brothers and dive a bit into the visual evolution of our game over the last four years. Why did we create a completely new artwork and why does it look the way it does? Find out!

The visual evolution of Battle Brothers

Battle Brothers has come a long way since its conception and has seen some significant changes in development. It started as a hobby into which we invested many an evening on top of our day jobs, and turned into our full time jobs. The original art assets had to be created in short sessions late at night, and as we gained the means to invest more and more time into the game, we eventually redid most of the assets in order to bring them up to a higher standard of quality. As the game design evolved, so did the art style from a light-hearted comic approach to a somewhat more serious and gritty, but still exaggerated one.

The different iterations of both the key visual and ingame assets illustrate the changes over time pretty well.



Why do a new key visual?

The key visual is of some importance for the success of the game, as parts of it are used all over; in the game itself, on Steam, on our website, in social media and as press material. It’s what catches a potential player’s attention first, so it really has to get people interested to learn more. Many of you want the development of Battle Brothers to continue beyond its initial release, and for this to work out, we need the game to be a success, which the key visual plays a part in.

So what’s wrong with the old key visual and why did it need to be redone? There are a couple of points we wanted to address.

Quality - The previous artwork lacks in overall quality. It’s more than two years old already and has been painted over countless short late-night sessions.

Design - The character looks don’t match our ingame assets anymore, raising memories of back when box cover art showed things not even in a game. Some characters also have a certain ‘knightly’ vibe about them, which may lead to wrong expectations for players. Finally, it still looks kind of light-hearted and the enemies are borderline cute, which is more commonly associated with casual mobile games and not a complex and challenging game like Battle Brothers.

Composition - Now we’re getting to the core of what's wrong with the old artwork. It's never a good idea to have a center-focused composition in a landscape format picture, especially if you need some space to show your logo. This puts you in a position where your main character and your logo have to compete for space and attention on the canvas.



Guiding the eye is very important in any artwork to help the observer find the focus point and not get lost while exploring the picture. As you can see, we used a variety of elements to emphasize the focus on the main character in our old key visual. Unfortunately, this absolutely excludes the logo from holding any meaningful position in the picture.



The Solution

Here is what we came up with to remedy all the above issues and add a good amount of additional awesomeness on top: the final key visual of Battle Brothers.



As you can see, the rendering quality of the picture is a lot better now. The whole picture features a broader format and an off-center focus, creating a more dynamic and visually pleasing composition. Additionally, a lot of space has been freed up to place the new Battle Brothers lettering where it doesn't collide with the main characters. Designs are inspired by actual ingame assets, and the characters look more like mercenaries now and less like knights. The whole atmosphere is more serious and less light-hearted, while still retaining an over-the-top heroic battle style.

Another important point is that the landscape setup facilitates easier creation of header graphics and other assets for secondary websites like Steam, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. To complete the visual rework of our assets, the Battle Brothers logo also got an overhaul.



Everything could be improved further, of course, but that’s always the case. We’re quite happy with our new artwork, so it’s time to move on to the next important items on our todo-list. Next week we’ll take a look at a new worldmap mechanic!

[Ludorum Rex]

I continue to be impressed by your updates, and I'm still very having a blast with the game. Really looking forward to the new content.

One thing I would really like to see, and I think it's been suggested on your forums as well, would be for opponents to (when it makes sense) have a bit of damage already. Ie permanent injuries, damaged weapons/armor, or even being wounded from recent combat. But you probably have this in you backlog already, just wanted to chip in my vote for bumping it a bit up the list.

Apart from that, keep up the good work, and I look forward to the release and any future patches/dlc/expansions coming down the road. It's a really a gem of a game, and deserves so much more attention than it has gotten so far.

[Retropunch]

One thing I would really like to see, and I think it's been suggested on your forums as well, would be for opponents to (when it makes sense) have a bit of damage already. Ie permanent injuries, damaged weapons/armor, or even being wounded from recent combat. But you probably have this in you backlog already, just wanted to chip in my vote for bumping it a bit up the list.

Second this - even if it was rather minor stuff (so as not to skew the balance) it'd add a bit of flavour and could influence tactics. Say a goblin's lost a leg before the battle starts - it'd make them advance a bit more slowly.

I know you're on the final stretch, but I think even some minor injuries (glossed over by the fact that they wouldn't field soldiers with bad injuries) would help immersion rather than everyone coming to the field sparklingly clean

[Neonivek]

Well most of them do heal quickly or don't really suffer wounds.

[Tack]

If some wounded get away I guess you just haven't done your job right!
But it would be interesting to see the enemies you missed come back like Weasel.

Actually there's no assassination missions in BB after the first at all. Could be fun.

[ventuswings]

If some wounded get away I guess you just haven't done your job right!
But it would be interesting to see the enemies you missed come back like Weasel.

Actually there's no assassination missions in BB after the first at all. Could be fun.

Yeah, I remember liking the Nemesis system on Shadow of Mordor. At least we have unique characters for each noble houses. Although it would be fun to see the same system get expanded to Goblin Tribes, Orc Clans etc. so you cross paths with special named monsters occasionally.

While aforementioned system may be too late to implement this late into development, I hope assassination missions can make the cut as one of the late-game missions!

[Neonivek]

One reason assassinations might have been removed is because they might require a system that allows unique enemies.

[Tack]

Well there's already the "raider leader" event.

Could just have "kill this necromancer/raider leader/bone priest/Orc warlord/goblin chieftain" etc