Art Blog - Combat

[Skitnik]

Looks fantastic !

[Tego]

Looks awesome. Keep it comin mateys.

[Kimberly]

That is an amazing screenshot, now I'm even more excited about the game.

For the record, I think the bear's name should be Jojo. Or, as to be more Viking-themed, Jojomungar.

[jkalos]

Love the bear. Call him Ásbjorn?

[Eberict]

I love that the tutorial combat is around the fire of the great hall! That's seriously awesome and very thematic! Great update guys

[faxmaster]

Man you guys are good. What a beautiful game this will be.

I really like the foreground thing you have going on. Will that be something you'll be trying to get into most maps? I assume that some areas will work better then others--you're not always going to have a roof to peek through. Awesome way to immerse the player more, and it must look even better with parallax.

EDIT: On that note, here are a few questions. You guys have obviously decided not to go the traditional "lop off the top third of the building" method for showing indoor fights--which is great, you'd have killed the atmosphere of the game if you did--but what problems does this pose? Will we just peek through holes in the roof, as you do here? What about smaller structures?

I'm not trying to point out issues or anything, by the way, I'm just fascinated by game-play problems like this. How do you show the interior of a building from above without cutting down walls? How do you deal with things like columns so that the player never sees the tops of them? I think this stuff is much trickier then it looks, but you've figured it out for this scene quite well .

[Troll]

Man you guys are good. What a beautiful game this will be.

I really like the foreground thing you have going on. Will that be something you'll be trying to get into most maps? I assume that some areas will work better then others--you're not always going to have a roof to peek through. Awesome way to immerse the player more, and it must look even better with parallax.

EDIT: On that note, here are a few questions. You guys have obviously decided not to go the traditional "lop off the top third of the building" method for showing indoor fights--which is great, you'd have killed the atmosphere of the game if you did--but what problems does this pose? Will we just peek through holes in the roof, as you do here? What about smaller structures?

I'm not trying to point out issues or anything, by the way, I'm just fascinated by game-play problems like this. How do you show the interior of a building from above without cutting down walls? How do you deal with things like columns so that the player never sees the tops of them? I think this stuff is much trickier then it looks, but you've figured it out for this scene quite well .

Logically speaking, smaller structure would be too small to hold a fight would they ?

[Arnie]

Man you guys are good. What a beautiful game this will be.

I really like the foreground thing you have going on. Will that be something you'll be trying to get into most maps? I assume that some areas will work better then others--you're not always going to have a roof to peek through. Awesome way to immerse the player more, and it must look even better with parallax.

EDIT: On that note, here are a few questions. You guys have obviously decided not to go the traditional "lop off the top third of the building" method for showing indoor fights--which is great, you'd have killed the atmosphere of the game if you did--but what problems does this pose? Will we just peek through holes in the roof, as you do here? What about smaller structures?

I'm not trying to point out issues or anything, by the way, I'm just fascinated by game-play problems like this. How do you show the interior of a building from above without cutting down walls? How do you deal with things like columns so that the player never sees the tops of them? I think this stuff is much trickier then it looks, but you've figured it out for this scene quite well .

Thanks for the great questions! We're going to be working in foreground elements as much as possible. Not only do I like them from a purely aesthetic viewpoint, but also it helps, once again, to push the old style of Disney films.
To answer your question about interiors and how we'll handle seeing through roofs: We will not be fading roofs. 90% of our battles take place in exteriors so this is not a problem. We do not have "dungeon crawls" in the game because huge caravans rarely roll through a dungeon. That being said there are times when, like in the above screenshot, players will battle in great halls but we will always have to make the rooms large enough to fit a battle grid, so the rooms will always be large enough to pull the camera back a bit.
Does this help?

Bear. I love Jojomungar!

[faxmaster]

Thanks for the great questions! We're going to be working in foreground elements as much as possible. Not only do I like them from a purely aesthetic viewpoint, but also it helps, once again, to push the old style of Disney films.
To answer your question about interiors and how we'll handle seeing through roofs: We will not be fading roofs. 90% of our battles take place in exteriors so this is not a problem. We do not have "dungeon crawls" in the game because huge caravans rarely roll through a dungeon. That being said there are times when, like in the above screenshot, players will battle in great halls but we will always have to make the rooms large enough to fit a battle grid, so the rooms will always be large enough to pull the camera back a bit.
Does this help?

Bear. I love Jojomungar!

Yep, makes sense. Not a lot of time to hang out and rummage around in buildings when the end of the world is on your heals.

[Pwarky]

I rather liked in the rough pass how the banners had the win conditions for the encounter. IT may break the immersion, but it is nice to know what the objectives are also.

[Ratatoskr]

I rather liked in the rough pass how the banners had the win conditions for the encounter. IT may break the immersion, but it is nice to know what the objectives are also.

I need to pay more attention as I hadn't noticed that at all. But I like it cause it lets you see the requirements without having a really distracting separate menu up.

[belamoor]

I rather liked in the rough pass how the banners had the win conditions for the encounter. IT may break the immersion, but it is nice to know what the objectives are also.

I am thinking they would have to put "condition banners" in every map in order to make it consistent. Than it would feel like part of interface anyways.

[asafe]

Looks amazing! love the polar bear chained to the wall

[Arnie]

I rather liked in the rough pass how the banners had the win conditions for the encounter. IT may break the immersion, but it is nice to know what the objectives are also.

Hah! Very good eyes and yeah, that could be a cool idea, but I didn't mean it. In the spirit of openly talking about game development I'll say that those banners are taken from our great hall UI and dropped in as placeholder. The great hall UI is where people will go to interface with the 4 different modes in The Banner Saga: Factions. Versus (multiplayer-battle against a random player online), Friend (multiplayer-battle against a friend), Skirmish (single player-battle against random AI opponents) and lastly Story (battle through the narrative). So now you know the context of what those banners represent. Also of note, those banners may not be readable as they're clipping out of the scene when you play this combat. I made the art much taller than is needed for our combat camera to account for parallaxing down into the scene during a cinematic.
Thanks for all the feedback!

[agris]

I was searching Eyvind Earle earlier today, and look what I found



Look a little familiar? I thought this was pretty cool, I wonder if it is an accident or homage?

[Arnie]

Wow, cool, I've never seen that shot. I'm guessing it's concept work for Sleeping Beauty? Although this shot wasn't on my mind, the opening pan-down on the Sleeping Beauty throne room scene was definitely being leveraged.

[Angelo Jr]

It's impossible saying that's less than beatiful