Battle Brothers - a turn based strategy RPG mix for PC, Mac and Linux.

Get some more insights into the game with this new dev blog article:

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Dev Blog #25: Battle Brothers FAQ continued

As we were not able to cover all questions in our last FAQ posting we decided to do another one. You will definitely learn something new about the game when reading through them. If you have any questions not covered, have a look at the full FAQ here or just ask here in the forums!

Also, you might want to try our tactical combat demo to see how the game plays! Get it from here: Download.

General

Q: What is the general setting of the world?

The setting is an unnamed middle european medieval low fantasy world wherein magic exists, but is rare. The classic fantasy races of Elves, Dwarfs and Halflings don’t exist in this world, but a few other intelligent humanoid races do. We’ll flesh out the setting more once we’re further along with development of the strategic worldmap. Variations of the setting, such as a middle eastern themed expansion, might also be added at a later date.

Q: How does the game deal with the passing of time? Do characters age and get physically weaker over time and age?

The whole game takes places over a period of several months, not years. Aging isn’t a part of the game and most of the Battle Brothers will die before having the chance to grow old anyway.

Q: Will the game have flavor content or extra content like background stories for characters, areas, special weapons, statistics and so on?

Yes! We’re big fans of all those little details that come together to give a game that extra bit of atmosphere, sense of wonder and exploration. It’s one of the reasons we liked both the original X-Com and Jagged Alliance 2 that much. There will be short, proceduraly generated backstories for all Battle Brothers that also influence a Brother’s combat stats and traits.

We will also have unique named weapons that come with a paragraph or so of backstory (similar to how it is in Icewind Dale and Baldur’s Gate), and we’ll keep a healthy amount of statistics (like the number of kills, battles, injuries, special foes killed, and such) for every Battle Brother in the history tab. Every Battle Brother also has some character traits with a gameplay effect (like being craven or ambitious) of his own and may earn additional ones based on what he experiences.

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Strategic Worldmap

Q: Are there multiple groups of Battle Brothers on the worldmap?

There will only be one group of Battle Brothers.

Q: Will a campaign feature parts of all the factions?

Yes, all factions will be featured on the worldmap in every campaign. Even if the invading force isn’t orcs, there will be an orc encampment here and there and orc raiding parties travelling the lands. The invading faction, though, will act more centralized, will be much more prevalent as time goes on and may have a few powerful units that don’t normally show up.

Q: Will there be multiple nations in the game each with their own diplomatic ties to each other?

Different towns, cities and strongholds have their own pool of resources. They also have their own banner, which is carried by all their units so that they’re clearly identifiable as being from a stretch of land all the way across the map. They’ll be somewhat selfish on occasion, offering the player coin to protect them over other lands, but they won’t fight each other. There won’t be multiple nations that conduct in diplomacy and intrigue for now, and the player won’t be able to resort to banditry and the like. It’s something we’d like to explore, but something that, if done, should also be really fleshed out. We just had to draw the line here as the game already is quite ambitious as is. For now, we try to keep a tight focus on the player leading a band of mercenaries and have clear fronts on who is on the players side and who isn’t.

Q: Will there be “events” on the worldmap that the player can run into?

Indeed we plan on having events. Events are a great tool to bring some variety for gameplay and support the atmosphere. On the other hand, we have to make sure that they’re no hindrance to our open world gameplay and replayability; randomizing them to some extent seems a good option. At this point we’re still pretty much at the “it would be cool to have events” stage and just bouncing ideas, so we can’t tell how our events will work exactly yet. They probably won’t be very dialogue-heavy heavy, though.

Q: Will the player be able to take prisoners?

Good question. Unfortunately we don’t have a good answer yet. We’re still in the process of designing the strategy/worldmap part of the game as we implement it, and we’ll see where it takes us. We like the idea of being able to rescue captured Battle Brothers, though, assuming the enemy you’re fighting is taking any prisoners at all. It’s something we may want to consider once we’re further along with the strategy part and see if it would fit well with everything else.

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Tactical Combat

Q: Are there other enemies than zombies and skeletons in the game?


Definately! Those opponents were a good starting point because zombies didn’t require a sophisticated AI to feel convincing. We’ve since added other undead opponents to the game, such as vampires, ghosts and ghouls, and we’ll soon expand to other factions. You’ll be able to fight a variety of human and humanoid opponents in the final game, from different types of bandits to orcs and goblins that all come with unique skills, equipment and AI behavior. In addition, there will be some unique beasts and monsters that haven’t been in other games.

Q: Regarding morale, will there be an active ability to rally Battle Brothers or is morale all about passive skills and traits? Will the player be able to specialize one Brother as a leader or captain?

We’ll have a few accessory items that offer morale-related skills. For example, a battle horn that, when blast, triggers a positive morale check for all allies in the vicinity. It’s not guaranteed that blasting the horn will rally fleeing men, but there’s a chance it does, as well as a chance to lift the morale of all the others.

Also, we currently have a few perks that support the idea of tailoring leader characters. One, called “Captain”, adds a percentage of the character’s bravery to all allies in the vicinity. Another, “Inspiring Presence”, improves the efficiency of nearby allied troops directly. Since both scale with bravery, having a specialized leader or support character that sacrifices combat skills for high bravery to some extent could be a valid option. Unlike with character traits, we want perks to give a clear benefit and no trade-off (other than not being able to pick another perk), so we won’t add an inbuilt downside to choosing these perks. However, both perks require some investment into the utility perk tree first and therefore a veteran character. A character like this isn’t easily replaced, and losing him could have serious consequences if the players tactics depend too much on having a leader character (e.g. because other Battle Brothers have little bravery themselves but depend entirely on being pushed by a leader).
 
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Thanks for voting! We just hit 55% on the way to getting greenlit so things are going pretty well!

We still have quite a way to make so it would be awesome if you keep sharing and supporting the campaign!
 
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This week we want to share an update on our Greenlight campaign and some info on our "contracts" system that will replace the classical "quests" as you know them from other games. If you have any ideas on the contract sytem let us know!

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Dev Blog #26: Contracts and Greenlight Update

It’s been one week now since we launched on Steam Greenlight, and what a ride it’s been! According to Steam, we’re now 63% on the way to the top 100. Not too shabby for one week, but still a long way to go before being greenlit. Thank you all for your support so far!

If you haven’t voted for us already, please do so here
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=311186565
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Only with your help can we get the game on Steam, which would allow us to work on it full-time and make progress much faster. If you know others who might be interested in Battle Brothers, please do share the link!

So, that’s that. For now, let us take a look at contracts, which in Battle Brothers work much like quests do in other RPGs, and how they shape the game.

Mercenary Contracts
Contracts fulfill an important role in Battle Brothers. You'll lead a band of mercenaries, after all, and contracts are what you do for work most of the time. Since the game has an open world, contracts are also important to give the player a sense of direction. You'll be able to freely travel and explore the world at your pace, and you won't have to take up any contracts as long as you can afford to pay and feed your men with the spoils you find. However, you should also never feel lost, not knowing what to do next; in a world torn up by war, there should be plenty of work available for a mercenary company.

Just as the worldmap and all the tactical battle maps are procedurally generated and will never look the same, so are contracts procedurally generated and don't follow a scripted linear order. Importantly, though, contracts aren't just random missions thrown at you. They are the result of what really is going on in the world; if a caravan travels on a long journey through dangerous lands, it will offer an escort contract. If a village is constantly being raided by bandits, it will offer a contract for protection. The bandits won't be spawned just for the duration of the contract and to entertain the player - they'll really be raiding the village beforehand, and the contract being offered is a reaction to them. Defeating their raiding parties will really lower bandit activity for a while, and burning down their camp may end it completely.

It's important for us that all contracts are embedded into our dynamic open world and allow the player to really make a change, to have a real impact on the world, and not just grind random missions one after the other. At least for now, you’ll also only be able to accept one contract at a time - we want to avoid that feeling of having an endless list of quests which you just work through, not even remembering where you got it and why you’re doing it. If you haven't seen it already, this blog post explains in more detail our open world mechanics.

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It can be hard for procedurally generated contracts to compete with a linear campaign in terms of pacing and atmosphere. Contracts need to offer enough variety and change to last a whole campaign, and not grow boring and repetitive after a while. Our contracts are generated from a variety of variables which hopefully will offer virtually endless combinations together with the different locations they take place at. Contracts can vary from short time assignments, like escorting a person or caravan, hunting down a group of beasts, scouting an area or destroying an encampment, to long time assignments, like protecting a whole region for two weeks. Even changing a little thing like the payment modality could change how individual missions play out; if you're promised 10 silver crowns for every orc head, you might want to take more risks to hunt down every last one as opposed to when you're promised a flat sum for destroying the orc raiding party, no matter if a few orcs can get away.

Furthermore, we will present each contract offer with a paragraph of story to set the mood. Contracts will never just be a few bare bulletpoints, a price and an accept button. Instead it will be villagers telling you of their ails, or a lord with a proposition.

If you have any questions or ideas for contracts we should include, let us know here in the forums!
 
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Dev Blog #27: AI in Battle Brothers, Part 1

By popular request, this week we dive into the world of Artificial Intelligence and find out how it works behind the scenes in our turn based tactical battles.

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Dev Blog #27: AI in Battle Brothers, Part 1

This week things get more technical as we shine a light on the Artifical Intelligence, or AI, that controls opponents in the game.

If you’ve played the later scenarios of the combat demo, you may have found the AI serviceable already. Once we have all the core mechanics of the game in place and things won’t change around all the time anymore, we’ll invest more work into the AI in order to have it actually stand out. Let’s find out how it works exactly.

Our goals

As we stated before, our goal is to have different enemies feel distinct to fight against. We don’t want enemies to differ merely in a few stats, such as having more or less hitpoints. There are two ways to achieve this, as we see it; the first one is having unique skills that give enemies tools to challenge the player in different ways, and that require the player to formulate different tactics to overcome. The second one is having enemies behave differently, as determined by their AI.

With the AI we take a simulationist approach, meaning that we try to tailor the behavior of enemies to simulate a behavior befitting what they are in the context of the game world.

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Zombies, for example, have an intentionally gimped AI. They don’t care if they’re stuck in swamp, have a height disadvantage or are outnumbered. They’ll just charge into the nearest opponent and won’t even make use of the more specialized skills of their weapons. In other words, they’re stupid. By being this stupid, however, they also feel more unique an opponent and more like you would expect the typical zombie to behave. If you play your cards right, you can outsmart a group of zombies much larger than your group.

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On the other hand there are skeletons, their undead relatives. We decided that skeletons should have more of a cold and efficient intelligence, governed by faded memories of long gone battles and military exercise. Skeletons do care about the terrain they are on and about height advantages. They also make full use of their equipment; they form a shieldwall if pelted with arrows from afar or if outnumbered, they use axes to split shields if they can not hit their opponents otherwise, they use their shields to knock down opponents from elevated positions to claim them for themselves, and they might even decide to hold a defensible position instead of charging into the fray.

What skeletons don’t do is lying in ambush or do long-winded flanking maneuvers. Such tactics, for us, don’t really fit the undead. Instead, it will be the living opponents who’ll employ them. Goblins, for example, will put great emphasis on setting up ambushes and doing hit-and-run tactics.


How it works

Battle Brothers has a utility-based AI with relative utility. I’ll explain what the hell that means below, but if you’re really interested in the technical details, I can recommend this great presentation from Kevin Dill and Dave Mark explaining the concept in detail.

Every type of enemy has a bunch of potential behaviors to choose from whenever it is his turn to act. As an example, let us consider this hypothetical scenario: We are a skeleton, armed with an axe and a shield, and face a Battle Brother who has his shield up.

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For simplicity’s sake, we can choose between the following three behaviors:

  • Doing a Chop attack to injure or kill our opponent
  • Using Split Shield to get rid of our opponent’s shield
  • Using Shieldwall for protection

So what behavior do we choose? We’ll look at each possible behavior to determine how much sense it makes to use it in this very situation, how useful it is to us, or in other words, how high its utility is. All these considerations need to be quantified so that we can compare between numbers. For the sake of this example, let us rate any behavior in our situation on a scale of 1 to 10. This number is our relative utility.

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Do we do the chop attack?
The higher the chance to hit and the more damage we can do, the more we want to just attack. On the other hand, if our chances to score a hit are low, then we aren’t that enthusiastic about doing an attack. We have a low chance to hit our opponent here because his shield is up, so the utility score of an attack would be relatively low, let’s say 3.

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Do we split our opponent’s shield in two?
The harder our opponent is to hit, the more we want to get rid of his shield. If his shield is poor or battered already, that’s even more reason to get it out of the way. On the other hand, if we have but a small hatchet and our opponent has a knightly shield, attempting to split his shield may be a waste of time. Because here our opponent has his shield up and makes it difficult to hit his body, the utility of destroying his shield and thereby increasing our chance to hit with following attacks is high, let’s say a 9.

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Do we use shieldwall?
If we are at any kind of disadvantage, whether because of terrain or because we are outnumbered, we want to give ourselves more protection. Using shieldwall is helpful in our little duel, but we could just as well do another attack instead – we’ll give it an average score of 5.

In reality, there are a lot more considerations going on, of course, but this is the basic idea. As you probably already figured out, there isn’t just one single behavior that viably applies to our situation. In fact, often there isn’t even one behavior that can be said to be the best for a given situation.

After all possible behaviors have been considered and given a utility score like above, they’re entered into a pool. Everything with a utility of 2 or lower is thrown out so that we don’t pick a behavior that really makes little to no sense in our situation. Then, we pick one by weighted random. Every behavior in the pool could be picked, but the higher the utility, the more likely it is to be picked. Think of throwing a dart on the pie chart below; it’s most likely to hit the Split Shield part, but you could hit any of the other two as well.

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This way, we always have an element of unpredictability in how the AI behaves. The AI won’t always do the same in every situation, and it can on occasion surprise you. But it will attempt to do what are the most sensible things to do in the very specific situation it is in.


There is more?

Yes, quite a lot in fact. This part covered the basics and should give an idea on how the AI works on a basic level and why it doesn’t do the same thing all the time. In a possible later article we may look in more detail at specific parts of the AI and how they contribute to enemies that feel unique to fight against.
 
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Music in Battle Brothers

Let's talk music!

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Dev Blog #28: Music in Battle Brothers

With our Steam Greenlight campaign still running and us busy working on the strategic worldmap, this week we’ll get some insight into how music is created for Battle Brothers and how it helps to shape the experience of playing the game.

We’ll give the floor to Dennis and Patrick, our talented musicians from Breakdown Epiphanies, who will give you a tour of the music in Battle Brothers in their own words and even reveal several brand new tracks for you to listen to. If you want to be always up to date regarding new tracks for Battle Brothers, you can also follow them on Soundcloud or Twitter. But for now, let’s listen in..


Introduction


Hi there! Today we, Dennis and Patrick from Breakdown Epiphanies, get the opportunity to talk about our musical background and give you a little insight on the music we’ve been writing for Battle Brothers. On top of that we’re happy to share some new tracks that offer a first impression of the games’ upcoming features like the strategic world map, the Orc faction and villages.

We have been making music together for more than ten years now, mostly in rock/hardcore bands but we always experimented with more electronic sounds and production on the side. The other thing we did a lot of since our childhood was playing video games. We share dear memories of some themes from games like Terranigma, Secret of Mana, Unreal or Shining Force.

Early this year we decided that it was time for a leap of faith, to put us out there and talk to game developers all around the web. Luckily, we ended up meeting the awesome guys from Overhype Studios who not only work on an incredibly promising game but also live (for the most part) in our hometown, Hamburg. Battle Brothers immediately struck a nerve with us due to its charming art style and its reminiscence of the old X-Com and Jagged Alliance games. So we stacked up on new digital instruments, orchestra- and scoring libraries, started learning about orchestration and began composing.

As Battle Brothers’ gameplay revolves mostly around desperate battles to the (perma-)death, the soundtrack has to convey a sense of danger and tension. So the general mood we aimed for was reasonably dark while still evoking a notion of adventure and exploration. The first thing we came up with ended up to be the main menu theme which already points in this general direction.


Worldmap


At the moment, the guys from Overhype are working overtime on the game’s strategic world map layer so we are happy to present our first track for this slice of gameplay. We really wanted to emphasize the feeling of exploration and discovery on this one. The player should immediately recognize this as a part of the game that has its own pacing and set of choices. For the sake of continuity the harp used in the menu theme plays a role in this one, too, starting out with a short, memorable cue that can be identified with changing screens to the world map.

https://soundcloud.com/breakdownepiphanies/battle-brothers-ost-world-map-theme

We plan on having several tracks playing in this section of the game, so certain themes can be put out of or added to the rotation depending on the players progress, i.e. the music will become more dramatic and sombre as the threat of the “Greater Evil” conquering the lands becomes more imminent.


Tactical Combat


The music accompanying tactical combat has to be a totally different beast. Players will have to focus and concentrate on small decisions over a long period of time and the soundtrack isn’t supposed to dominate the experience and to distract from the core-gameplay. Nevertheless battles are supposed to feel tense and hazardous and each faction will have it’s identity reflected in the choice of instrumentation and style.

https://soundcloud.com/breakdownepiphanies/battle-brothers-ost-orks-battle-track

Regarding the Orc faction we had a lot of established tropes to play around with: Orcs are perceived as chaotic, fierce, almost savage-like opponents, yet they usually maintain a sort of military hierarchy. Our track ended up being a mix of soundscape and score, dominated by menacing drums but interrupted by swift tribal percussion. Generally we went with a lot of low end on this one, from the staccato celli and upright basses to deep drone-sounds and a (hopefully memorable) brass cue.


Villages


Last, but not least, you can have a listen to the first village theme. It will play in the background as our fellow Battle Brothers stack up on equipment and hire new recruits. We grabbed our guitar for this one and came up with a classical medieval sounding finger picking piece. The time that players spend in villages and towns will hopefully be a welcome opportunity to relax between all those deadly battles.

https://soundcloud.com/breakdownepiphanies/battlebrothers-ost-town-theme-master


Also..


We hope you enjoy the tunes! If you want to be kept in the loop regarding new tracks for Battle Brothers, follow us on Soundcloud or Twitter. We’ll be regularly sharing our new compositions up to the game’s release.
 
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Dev Blog #29: Greenlight, Greenskins and Persistent Campaigns

Things are moving along well.

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Dev Blog #29: Greenlight, Greenskins and Persistent Campaigns

It’s been one month now since we’ve launched on Steam Greenlight. Time to give you an update: we’re at 91% of the way to the top 100. So close and yet so far. Unfortunately, daily votes for us have slowed down considerably by now, so if you haven’t casted your vote yet, please do so here and share the link with your friends. Thanks!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=311186565


On the bright side, we’ve made great progress on the game itself these past two weeks. We now have actual persistent campaigns and no longer just separate combat scenarios. Also, Greenskins!


Persistent Campaigns


Battle Brothers consists of two major parts, the tactical combat and the strategic worldmap. So far, both of those have been existing more or less on their own. The tactical combat was prototyped first and tested by many of you in our combat demo to get the fighting right. The strategic worldmap simulation has also had a life of its own over the past few months – villages trade, bandits raid and militia struggle to keep order, all without much player involvement. Now, finally, we’ve connected both of these parts.

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We’re now able to play an actual campaign and take the same band of Battle Brothers from battle to battle as we roam the world. Whether we’re engaging our opponents in a forest, in a swamp or on a road leading over plains on the worldmap, the procedurally generated tactical combat maps reflect this. They also change their ambient lighting to match the time of day on the worldmap. Weather isn’t in yet, but it will soon follow!

Of course, we can also keep the equipment we loot between battles and the experience our Battle Brothers gather from battle now has actual meaning. The campaign can now also be saved and loaded at any time on the worldmap. So, milestone reached. The next step to a complete game.


Greenskins!


While all of that was going on, we also finished the design on Orcs and Goblins. We’re very happy with how they turned out – they have a lot of unique mechanics, their own equipment and behavior. Orcs and Goblins fight very different from each other, and very different from the Undead. Also, just like Battle Brothers, they are subject to fatigue and morale. We’ll give a proper introduction to Orcs and Goblins in separate blog posts, including some of their lore, units, skills and equipment. For now, have a teaser of a goblin with and without heavy armor.

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Also, if you’ve played the combat demo in and out, feel safe in the knowledge that our upcoming Early Access version will allow you to fight a dozen different Greenskin variants and no longer just the Undead!
 
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Great news everyone: Battle Brothers has been greenlit! Here is some info on the campaign and on what to expect next:

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After just a little more than a month on Steam Greenlight we made it - Battle Brothers has just been given the green light!

We are extremely happy and excited about how fast things went down in the end and we want to take the time to give you guys a big THANK YOU for all the support, comments, votes, encouraging messages and of course for spreading the word!

Without the engagement, effort and enthusiasm of you guys this would not have been possible!

Now we can again point all our resources towards game development itself.

Next stop: Early Access in January

With the latest Greenlight success we can now look ahead to the upcoming Battle Brothers Early Access version. If all goes to plan you can expect it in January 2015 on Steam. The EA will contain a fully playable campaign with all core mechanics in place. Of course, it will still miss content from the full game and some secondary features. As we get nearer to release, we’ll let you know in a dedicated article what exactly is going to be in the Early Access version and what will be added later, so you can get all hyped up about it ;)


Indie RPG Developer Reddit AMA on Sunday, October 19th

Want to learn more about the guys behind Battle Brothers? Want to know how Indie RPGs are developed in general? Have a question for us about anything? Want to get to know other great games?

Then don't miss the Ask Me Anything, or AMA, we're doing on reddit together with the bros from Graal Seeker, That Which Sleeps and Dungeon Kingdom.

The AMA will be on Sunday, October 19th at 4pm GMT (17:00 CET, 11am EST). We'll let you know about the link on our Dev Blog, on our Twitter Channel and on Facebook in a few days.


Thank you all again and keep reading the dev blogs - we have a lot more stuff up our sleeves!
 
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Tired of the old same undead? Here you go, a completely new faction for the game: The Orcs!

Dev Blog #30: Orc Faction Reveal
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We’ve gotten many a question regarding the enemy diversity in Battle Brothers. Until now we always had to put off these questions - but not any longer. We present to you the first major faction after the Undead: The Orcs!

The Orc faction has unique characters, skills, weapons and most of all tactics compared to the Undead and will force the player to challenge everything learned before. Lets get into some details.

Introduction
As long as humans remember there have been tensions with the wild Orc tribes that roam the surrounding lands. Orcs live as nomads, constantly on the move to support themselves by hunting, gathering and raiding anyone weaker than their tribe. They do not possess knowledge of agriculture or mining, relying instead on taking what they need from others. Indeed, Orcs are quick to take up weapons, and in Orc culture, he who spends time gathering, crafting or building when it is easier and faster to just take these things away from others is considered simple-minded. Life for an Orc, then, is to a large part establishing dominance over others and taking things for him or herself.

Although there are many distinct Orc tribes out there, they have a lot in common. They usually are ruled by the most powerful Orc in the tribe, a Warlord, that ascends to leadership by brute force and has to defend his claim also by leading the tribe to greater spoils. Therefore, different Orc tribes are constantly feuding each other and any alliances are usually short-lived.

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As human settlements began to spread out, confrontations with the Orcs started to escalate quickly from smaller skirmishes into a full-out Orc invasion and subsequent war. The war ended with a costly human victory which had the Orcs withdraw from the settled lands and back into the wild. There, it didn't take long for the Orc tribes to begin feuding each other again and lose sight of the human lands. This is where they stayed until now, except for occasional raids on outlying farms and villages. Yet, many a man and woman live in fear of the day that the Orc tribes unite again and start an invasion, leaving nothing but burning rubble in its wake.

To make matters worse, Orcs are technically just one half of a larger faction, the Greenskins, with the other half being the Goblins. However, both Orcs and Goblins are highly autonomous and you'll only see them work together on rare occasions. One such occasion is an invasion, with the Greenskins being the Greater Evil in your game of Battle Brothers.

In battle Orcs tend to rush at the enemy and overwhelm them with the sheer power of their assault. Those who still stand after the initial onslaught find themselves disoriented and in a complete chaos. After the battle line has been dissolved, Orcs that put themselves in a battle frenzy by meditation and drugs rush in and finish what is left of the disorganized and shocked defenders.

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Orc Physique
In Battle Brothers, Orcs are physically stronger than humans. An adult orc towers a human and has the strength to use weaponry and wear armor with great effect that would quickly tire out any human. With their strength, they also gain a percentage damage bonus to every attack - less for young Orcs , and more so for adult ones. While Orcs are subject to fatigue and morale, just like your Battle Brothers are, they have plenty of both, and it takes a while for an orc to run out of steam or realize that a battle has turned against him.

For many Orcs , their physicality is also expressed in their Charge skill. With this skill, Orcs can charge a Battle Brother over a short distance and hurl themselves against their target, stunning it for one turn. A Spearwall can repell charging Orcs and a Shieldwall can offer some protection against being stunned from the impact - but shields don't have a high life expectancy against Orcs, as their damage bonus also applies against shields.

Orcs focus entirely on the offense, where they excel. They use their skills to crush the player's battle line with raw force and have it quickly dissolve into a chaotic frenzy where they generally have the upper hand. For this reason, meeting an Orc warband head-on in open battle is usually a bad idea and will leave you at a disadvantage. On the other hand, Orcs neglect defense; while some of them will carry shields, they seldom make active use of them, prefering instead to attack. Due to their reckless fighting style and just physically being big targets, they're also easier to hit than other opponents. In prolongued engagements, or in up-hill battles, where defense matters more than offense, Orcs may suddenly see themselves at a disadvantage.

Orc Weapons and Armor
Orcs have their own distinct weapons and armor they wear, which matches their physique. They do know how to craft metal but are not particularly good at honing and refining their works. This is why Orc weapons are usually very heavy and lack balance - although the player can loot and use these weapons, they’re clearly not made for use by humans and are hard to use effectively but for the strongest of Battle Brothers. Orcish armor, however, can not be used by the player. The physiology of Orcs is just too different from humans, so no helmet or piece of armor would actually fit.

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The rough and big Orc hands do not allow them to use ranged weapons like bows to great effect, and neither does it fit their mentality. They resort therefore to throwing weapons like javelins that have limited range but can inflict high damage also to armored targets and may even damage shields if they hit those.

Young Orc
Young Orcs make up the back bone of Orc society, as Orcs usually don't have a high life expectancy but are quite reproductive. They have relatively bright green skin because Orc skin tends to start out bright and gets increasingly darker over the years. Young Orcs are ferocious fighters that make up for their lack of experience and skill with pure strength and recklessness. You'll find them armed usually with one-handed weapons and sometimes light shields. Since they've yet to prove themselves and lay claim to spoils of battle, their equipment will consist of different types of leather armor that Orcs have the resources to produce themselves, and sometimes no armor at all. They're armed with lighter Orc weaponry and human weapons and shields they've scavenged from the fields of battle.

young.jpg


Orc Warrior
If a Young Orc survives long enough to grow to adult age, he may eventually become an Orc Warrior. As evident from their darker skin color and collection of scars, these seasoned fighters have a lot of combat experience and skill in addition to their great strength. Years of gathering spoils from raids and battle have allowed them to collect enough metal to have it melted and made into heavy metal armor, large Orc weaponry and often very heavy and durable metal shields.

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Orc Warriors, perhaps also due to the massive armor they wear, do not charge opponents. Instead, they simply march into enemy ranks with their shields in front, pushing enemies out of their way and walking through an enemy battle line unimpressed in order to break it. It takes a formation two ranks deep to push against an Orc Warrior doing this, as one or even two humans alone can not compete in pure strength with an adult Orc Warrior.

Orc Berserker
Berserkers are Orcs that put themselves into a battle frenzy by taking drugs, potions or by hypnosis - and some of them are just straight up crazy. They can occasionally be found wandering alone on what could be described as pilgrimages to slay particularly dangerous beasts. If they succeed, they may wear parts of the slain beast as decoration, possibly also in the belief that it confers powers to them. However, other than these trophies, they don't wear any armor. Instead, some of them cover their body with war paintings that are supposed to channel the energy of spirits to protect them. Due to this, many berserkers have their bodies littered with scars telling of their exploits.

ber.jpg


The unique ability of the Orc Berserker is that each time he hurts or kills an opponent, he gains "battle rage". With increasing battle rage, he gains damage to his attacks, increased bravery and initiative, and damage resistance. Each turn he loses some rage again. A berserker that can repeatedly hit or kill opponents and become enraged can spiral out of control and be very hard to take down.

Berserkers use a variety of Orc weapons, but no shields. Their most fearsome is a long and heavy chain with a big weight or striking head at the end that they swing recklessly around, mowing down foe and friend alike. Other Orcs respectfully prefer to stay clear of them if they can, especially if they swing around one of those chains. This often leaves Berserkers to fend for themselves at the flanks of a battle, just as they appear to hold a special position in Orc society outside of battle.

berserker_chain2_flag.jpg



To be continued..

Those have been just three types of Orcs, but we have several more in store. Also, we’ll present the Orc faction in action in a commented gameplay video soon!

Until then let us know what you think about them so far and if you have any ideas for any additional Orc weapons, skills or classes!
 
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We have been busy and added a lot of new stuff to the game, take a look at our write up:

Dev Blog #31: Progress Update - Orcs, UI, New Weapons
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In this week’s update we have a lot of big and small additions to the game. The largest part was implementing all the skills, graphics, weapons and characters of the orcs into the game and to teach the AI how to make good use of all that. On top of that, we added a bunch of new weapons that have been outstanding for a while, and we implemented new UI features and elements. Lets go into some details…

Orc implementation

After last week’s faction reveal we’ve been busy putting all the orc assets into the game. Most of the work was not adding our greenskinned friends to the game themselves, but improving the AI to make the best use of all the nice and shiny new weapons and skills. The AI had to learn how to effectively manage and account for fatigue and morale which the undead did not have to do, as well as a lot of other tactical considerations to allow for the orcs to behave just like we want them to. As a nice side effect, the AI of the undead also benefitted from this and now has some new tricks up its sleeves.

We now have a line battle scenario in the game where a band of Battle Brothers faces off against a bloodthirsty band of orcs lead by a fearsome Orc Warlord. Hopefully we can show the ensuing battle, or massacre, in a commented gameplay video next week. As mentioned before, the orcs will require a drastic re-thinking of the tactics that were effective against the undead. Of course, in the full game campaign where you meet both orcs and undead, you’ll have to adapt quickly to any new enemy or you’re going to have a hard time.

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UI - Drag & Drop and Combat Statistics

Another big chunk of work has been done on improving the UI and adding new features to it. A thing we’ve been working on for a while is the drag & drop mechanic for managing all your armor, weapons and equipment. This is actually more work than one might expect, but we’ll spare you the tricky details and just let you know that its in the game now ;)

A completely new feature that we can now check off our list is the combat result screen that shows after tactical combat. The screen shows two tabs: Statistics and Loot.

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The statistics show all Battle Brothers that participated in this particular encounter. For each Brother you’ll see the damage dealt, the damage received, the number of enemies killed, the experience gained, the number of days a Brother will be wounded if he received any injuries and whether he gained a new level. All these stats are not only great for the player to see but they also help us evaluate the combat performance of various equipment set-ups.

tactical-screen-combat-result_small.jpg


The second screen shows the loot you found during that battle. Here you can directly drag & drop all the equipment into your stash from the battlefield. In the loot screen all equipment that has been dropped by enemies during combat will show up - so don’t worry about picking all the stuff up during battle. Also, you don’t have to run around the map after combat looking for any drops you might have missed.

New Weapons

As you all know there can never be enough weapons to cut down your enemies with, so we added a bunch more. Besides the orc weapons we added the Greataxe to the Battle Brothers armory. Even more exciting, we now have the first throwing weapon in the game: The Javelin. We have a whole bunch of throwing weapons on our backlog that will be added in time, but we’re happy to finally have the first of its kind working in the game.

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The Greataxe is a two-handed battle axe that can be used both to devastate a single target as well as be swung around in a circle around a Battle brother, potentially hitting every adjacent tile. Another thing it excels at is destroying enemy shields. Most smaller shields wil be destroyed with a single strike of this heavy axe. Because the Round Swing attack hits friends and foes alike, the Greataxe is best used by separated Battle Brothers at the flank of a battle line so that they have enough room to use their axe to full effect. The attack also isn’t particularly accurate, so the Greataxe is best placed in the hands of an experienced man and not a freshly recruited farmhand who never held a weapon before.

javelins.jpg


Javelins are small throwing spears that can be carried in one hand and are usually thrown directly before close combat to weaken the enemies’ battle line. They come in small stacks of four but can be easily used and carried along a shield and one-handed weapon. This makes the javelins a great and flexible addition to most Battle Brothers’ equipment. Their range is rather short compared to arrows and bolts, and they are exhausting to throw. However, their damage is high even against armored targets. What is more, they can also damage enemy shields if they hit those, weakening them or even rendering light shields outright unusable. This makes them great tools to be thrown at the enemy battle line before engaging. Of course, the AI will now use Javelins as well, especially if you set up a nasty defensive Spearwall it has little interest in engaging head on.
 
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Want to see the Orcs in action? Have a look at this commented gameplay and watch me struggle against the green terror ;)

Dev Blog #32: Orc Line Battle Video

We’ve talked a lot about the Orc faction so far. Now it’s time to see the greenskins in action!

Our new gameplay video covers a line battle against the orcs with full commentary from one of our devs. Expect a lot of carnage and get properly scared of the green menace! Also, we have a lot of new stuff in the video: Two-handed axes, javelins, battle statistics, and more. Go ahead and check it out:

ORC LINE BATTLE VIDEO

 
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We are making good progress in the road to early access, here is what we managed to implement this weeK:

Dev Blog #33: Progress Update - Character Generation, Hiring and Shopping

With the Early Access release coming up early next year we try to step up our game and make a lot of progress each week. This week we have for you a complete rework of how Battle Brothers are generated and rendered. Get prepared for uniquely looking Battle Brothers with no less than 80,640 possible combinations for heads currently!

On the worldmap we also added two more core features - hiring new Battle Brothers and the buying and selling of equipment. Let’s take a look…

Character Generation Rework

We took a step back and reworked the whole process of how Battle Brothers are rendered in the game. First, all heads have been separated into hair, face and beard and made freely combinable. Second, we added a massive amount of faces, hairstyles and beards in different colors so that we ended up with a staggering 80,640 possible combinations of unique looking Battle Brothers - and that isn’t even counting in all the different equipment they can wear. For every campaign, all Battle Brothers will be randomly generated so that every player will get their very own set of mercenaries. Let’s take a look at this in action:

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As we now have hair and beard on separate layers, helmets no longer need to be extra large to cover all hair. This allows both for more creative hairstyles and also to decrease helmet size by roughly 10%, resulting in more realistic proportions.

helmet-classification.jpg


What is more, we also separated the armor from the bodies so that they also have a layer of their own and are rendered ontop of bodies. This makes it easier to show broken or damaged armor with parts missing and also allows Battle Brothers to have unique skin colors for more variety.

Hiring

A core mechanic in a game about mercenaries is hiring them, of course, which we just finished implementing.

When approaching a village or city you can visit the local tavern and have a look at all the volunteers offering their swordarm for coin. Each volunteer comes with their own background, like being a farmhand or a retired soldier, a procedural background story, and their own equipment. Both the hiring fee and the daily wage they request depend heavily on the character’s background. A skilled and seasoned sellsword who brings a chainmail and sword with him will cost as much as 10 times or more compared to a sickly beggar with a club. We want you to make some tough decisions here when deciding which volunteer to hire. Would you rather hire a few well equipped and battle hardened fighters, or a wild bunch of cheap beggars, thiefs and outcasts with no combat experience?

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Like everywhere else in the game we don’t want to reveal more stats here than necessary. You won’t see any numbers besides the costs, but based on the background you’ll have a good idea of what to expect. Want a strong and sturdy Battle Brother? A farmhand or lumberjack is a good bet. Want someone good with ranged weapons? Try to hire a hunter. Need someone with combat experience? A sellsword or a retired soldier should do, although the latter might not have the stamina of a young man anymore. What is more, all characters come with traits, good and bad, which are also linked to backgrounds. Characters used to hard work are more likely to have the “strong” or “tough” traits, and while you won’t find any insecure adventurous nobles, they can be as brave as they can be cocky and overconfident.

There is also a chance of characters having a title based on their traits, like an especially large and sturdy character being known as “the Mountain”, which should give you a hint. You’ll have to hire them to find out what hidden traits they have exactly. If you want to know more, you can read up on character backgrounds and traits in an earlier dev blog article.

All in all, our goal is to have all the characters have a lot of, well, “character” despite them being randomly generated. Their unique looks, their background stories and their traits all come together for this. Some players won’t care about this, but if you don’t want a fisherman who strangled his wife to death in your band of mercenaries, you better take a close look at who it is that is applying to join you.

Ye Olde Shoppe

What do you do with your freshly hired Battle Brothers? Get them some weapons for bashing in heads of course!

In villages and cities, but also in military locations like watchtowers and strongholds, you can spend your crowns on equipment like weapons and armor and also sell surplus equipment to fill up the piggybank. Shops have different equipment for sale depending on the wealth of the location and the type. A civilian village will sell different things than a military stronghold, and some pieces of weapons and amor will only be available in one of the two.

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The wealth of a location also determines the quality and quantity of available equipment, as well as its price. Villages that are bled dry from bandit raids and lost a lot of wealth will have little to offer you, whereas rich cities will have a great selection of equipment for you to purchase at kingly prices. If you make it your mission to protect a village for some time, even if the village isn’t able to reward you much at first, you can see it grow and stock up on better equipment.
 
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To let you know what features are in the game and what to expect in the upcoming Early Access we published three feature lists on our dev blog. We are also reworking the whole worldmap - read up on it in our latest dev blog:

Dev Blog #35: Worldmap Progress and Feature Lists

Finishing all core mechanics is our top priority right now and a lot of work is getting done on the underlying mechanics of the strategic worldmap. Unfortunately, this also means that we don’t have anything flashy to show you this week.

In the meantime we gathered all the most important information of previous blog posts into 3 detailed feature lists. Each feature comes with a status so that you can see at a glance if it has already been implemented or is yet to come, which should give you a good idea of where we are at with the game.

Worldmap Progress

The worldmap is in the center of our attention right now as we implement all the core mechanics. Most of the work is already done and we now focus on the strategic AI that guides individual factions and the mercenary contracts that will be offered to the player on various occasions.

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At the same time, we’re doing a rework of the worldmap visuals. The look we had for the worldmap wasn’t entirely satisfying to us, and neither was it flexible enough for our more ambitious goals. We’re still experimenting with a new style, but it will look something like in the image above. Instead of trees and similar being painted directly onto tiles, those tiles now only cover the ground while objects are independently placed on another layer ontop. This allows for more natural and less repetitive looking landscapes and transitions between different terrain types. More importantly, it also gives us more flexibility for dynamically changing the world, such as forests slowly becoming corrupted or fields being burned as the nearby village is raided. We should be able to share the final look with you in the next few weeks.

Detailed Feature Lists

With no less than 34 blog posts to read so far, gathering information about the game can be quite a bit of work. Since our Early Access release is also coming closer we think this is an opportune time to get all the most important information in one place.

We’ve therefore extended the “Features” category on our website with three additional feature lists containing more detailed information about aspects of the strategic worldmap, the tactical combat and the factions in the game. Even more importantly, you’re also able to see what feature has been implemented so far and what is still to come. The feature lists will always be updated when a new feature is implemented so that you can follow the progress we make. Every feature that is marked as “implemented” will be in the Early Access release guaranteed, so the list can also help you to decide whether to get the Early Access version or not.

Head over to the three feature pages to learn about where the game is at and what is still to come:

Worldmap Feature List

Tactical Combat Feature List

Factions in Battle Brothers

If you have any questions or ideas we are always looking for feedback
 
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Finally we can present the first video of our worldmap part of the game! We reworked all the tiles to make the environment look as natural as possible.
In the video we also explain the core functions and mechanics of the strategic gameplay and how the other factions and AI impact the world.

Check it out: Strategic Worldmap Presentation Video

 
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We just implemented village and castle screens and the essential mercenary contracts, read more on them in our latest dev blog:

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Dev Blog #37: Progress Update - Village Screen and Mercenary Contracts

We hope you all had a great holiday time and a happy new year!

After the holidays it’s back to work - and we’re happy to announce that our last missing core mechanic, the mercenary contracts, has now made it into the game. From now on it is adding meat to the bones, that is content, polishing and eventually secondary features. Read up in our progress update on villages, castles and mercenary contracts to learn more.

Village and Castle Screens
As your mercenary company roams the land there are a number of friendly locations you can interact with. Both civilian locations, such as villages and larger cities, and military locations, such as watchtowers and mighty strongholds, can be entered.

As you enter them, you’re presented with a screen that acts as both an atmospheric backdrop, giving you a sense of where you are, and a hub for all actions there. From here, you can reach the shop to stock up on equipment or sell surplus items, you can hire new men to fill your ranks, and you can bargain with potential employers over mercenary contracts and collect your pay for done deeds. Of course, depending on where you are, you’ll have more or less options. For example, the selection of goods is far greater in a rich city than in a poor village - but so are the prices. Castles will offer different equipment, more suited to professional war, than villages which often have to use improvised weaponry and armor - not any village smith will be able to forge you a masterwork armor, afterall. On the other hand, you’ll find potential recruits more readily at villages and cities than at a lonely watchtower along the road.

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This is how the new village screen looks. You can see the merchant on the left, mercenaries for hire in the middle and potential employers on the right, each with a contract offer of their own. The people are placed on a different layer and only shown as there is a reason for them to be there; the mercenaries are only shown as there are actual people to recruit, and the number of potential employers shown depends on the actual number of contract offers available at that location.

castle_screen.jpg


As you can see, castles use the same general layout, but have a different backdrop for atmosphere. In addition, we aim to have different soundscapes for individual locations to convey the vibe of a living and breathing village, or a busy castle readying itself for war, respectively.

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During night time, both villages and castles will close their shops until morning. Ultimately, we want to have more and different backdrops for a number of locations, so that villages and cities feel noticeably different not just by the options available there but also in atmosphere. For the time being, however, villages and cities share a backdrop, while castles and watchtowers share the other.

Mercenary Contracts
A core mechanic of a game simulating a pseudo-medieval mercenary company is the idea of mercenary contracts. Basically, your men being hired to fight for coin. We’ve talked quite a bit about how contracts are issued and how they work in the past, and even if your’re familiar with the details, you might want a refresher at our previous blog article here: Blog Post on Contracts.

With the basics out of the way, we can announce that mercenary contracts have finally made it into the game. We’ve started with a few simple ones to ease us in, such as the classic errant (someones hires you to safely bring an item to another location) and the less classic discovery of a location (someone hires you to venture out into the wild to find a particular location, with varying degrees of clues to point you into the right direction). Now, let’s take a look at how the whole contract process works by using the example of another contract type, the hunting down of wild beasts.

As a party of werewolves roams across the worldmap and dwells in the vicinity of a village for a time, snatching a villager as meal every so often, that village will get alarmed and try to get rid of the looming danger in the area. It can muster a militia force if it has the resources to do so, but militia fights poorly and is ill-suited to tracking a pack of dangerous werewolves in the forest. A better course of action is thus for the village to offer a mercenary contract to exterminating these beasts, that is, offering payment for the player to track down and destroy the party of werewolves which has a very real effect on the village by slowly draining its resources.

exterminate_beasts_2.jpg


As the player enters the city, an individual will offer the contract to the player in the form of a short story, looking something like in the image above. The details of all contract offers are proceduraly generated, making use of a variety of interchangeable pieces. Two contracts to hunt down beasts can therefore have very different descriptions - different employers, motivations, payment and potentially helpful details, such as where the beasts were last seen heading. A poor village may not be able to pay you much in terms of coin, but may instead offer to pay with bread and dried meat - is it still worth it for you to risk the lives of your men? Although, realistically speaking, we can’t really avoid repetition here, our aim is to provide enough variety to have these texts be interesting, informative and succinct enough to be read well into a campaign and provide atmosphere, context and light roleplaying opportunities. We purposefully decided not to go with a bare billboard list of tasks with nothing but rewards attached but want the player to pause if only for a brief moment and consider what his or her actions mean in the context of the world.

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Upon confronting the beast party and killing the werewolves the player has to return to the village to collect the promised pay. Here again we use the same screen with a short procedurally generated story to give closure to the contract, pay out the player and provide a bit of atmosphere.

At this time we have four different contract types in the game, all relatively straight-forward. We aim to have several more for the initial Early Access release, including escorting caravans and defending a location from raiders. After the initial Early Access release, we aim to experiment with more complex contracts, including contract chains where one fulfilled contract can sometimes lead to another. We feel that a large number of varied contracts, both simple and complex ones, will go a long way to keeping things entertaining and diversified.
 
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We are looking for some UI programming support, so if you know a guy tell him or her about the project! In other news, youtuber Writing Bull just published a great Battle Brothers preview/interview - unfortunately it is in German. Here are some more details:

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Hiring a UI Programmer & Game Preview (German)

Due to a recent change in our team we are now looking for a UI programmer to support us in the development of our project. If you are an experienced UI programmer, this can be a chance for you to become a part of Overhype Studios and develop Battle Brothers together with us! See below for more information.

Also, the venerable Writing Bull was nice enough to sit down with our very own Jaysen yesterday and do a guided Let’s Play while interviewing about the game, our development and our future plans. The interview is in German only and well worth a listen. Take a look at the first of three parts here:


Also, you may want to check out his Blog (German) on game culture and strategy gaming. Thanks again!

Hiring a UI Programmer - HTML5/JS/CSS, C/C++ a plus

Join us to work on Battle Brothers - a turn-based strategy RPG mix developed for PC, Linux and Mac. The gameplay and setting are inspired by such classics as Mount & Blade, Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat and X-Com.

We are Overhype Studios, a small indie company based in Hamburg, Germany. The three of us, an artist, a programmer and a producer, all have previous professional experience in working on games. Now, the first game we’re developing as a team is Battle Brothers. You can find more information, including gameplay videos and a developer’s blog, at www.battlebrothersgame.com.

Battle Brothers is close to ready for an Early Access release, scheduled for the end of February 2015. The game was successfully greenlit on Steam back in autumn of 2014 and has received press coverage from several online magazines, including Rock, Paper, Shotgun where it made the Best Games of 2015 list. We have a fully playable combat demo available here which was met with very favourable reviews.

What we’re looking for in you is a programmer mainly responsible for the game’s UI. The game is based on our engine written in C++, using Squirrel for scripting most of the gameplay and Awesomium for a HTML driven UI. As such, you’d need advanced knowledge of HTML5, JavaScript and CSS to create the UI for Battle Brothers. A good part of the game’s UI is already done, but as our former UI programmer will be unable to continue his work, you’d have to take over and work with an existing code base. Further, knowledge of C/C++ would be a huge plus and would allow for possible other programming tasks beyond the UI in the future.

We’re interested in a longterm relationship with you, a professional and reliable individual, for the development of the game for the whole Early Access period and also beyond. Although we can not offer much compensation up-front, with the game close to public release, monetary compensation is not just an idle promise. Currently, only one of us works fulltime on the game, the other two doing it in their spare time, and we’re flexible in discussing with you how much time you can invest into the game at this point and how best we can compensate you.

Requirements
  • Advanced knowledge of HTML5, JavaScript and CSS
  • Experience in UI Development
  • Experience in Game Development
  • Ability to quickly learn new C-style languages
  • Ability to quickly get your bearings in an existing code base
  • Fluency in English and/or German
  • Advanced knowledge of C/C++ would be a huge plus
  • Knowledge of Awesomium is a plus
  • Knowledge of the Squirrel Scripting Language is a plus
  • Knowledge of Linux and Mac development is a plus
What’s in it for you
  • Valuable experience from working with a professional team
  • The opportunity to work on a great game that actually gets finished
  • The opportunity to have creative input on the game
  • Monetary Compensation
If you feel you are the right man or woman for this job, send us your résumé to contact@overhypestudios.com - we look forward to hearing from you!
 
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Here is the latest progress we made, a lot of additions to the worldmap:

village_night_header.jpg


Dev Blog #38: Progress Update - Bandits, Militia, Rivers and more
We’ve been busy this past week adding a whole bunch of smaller features and new assets to the game. Bandits are now available for you to fight in tactical combat - our first opposing faction that consists almost entirely of humans. Also, militia is now desperately defending their homes in tactical combat as well. But that’s not all.

The Bandit Faction
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The first almost entirely human enemy faction is now in the game to cause mischief and terrorize the poor civilians until they cry out for help to the Battle Brothers. The Bandit faction consists of society’s dropouts, reckless outlaws, desperate refugees, wanted criminals and all those that want to make a quick crown by taking what is not theirs.
Bandits *Battle Brotthers tactical rpg

They usually hide somewhere in the woods, be it abandoned huts, old ruins or makeshift encampments. When they head out they look for trade caravans und unaware travellers to rob them of their belongings. If they’re strong enough, they may even raid whole villages for valuables, supplies and prisoners.

In combat they have access to the same equipment, weapons and perks that Battle Brothers do, so be prepared for a match at eye-level. They usually rally behind an exceptionally strong, skilled or brutal leader and have some really experienced archers in their ranks. Their melee combatants range from poorly armed and malnourished thugs to battle-hardened raiders.

Bandits will usually be among the first enemies you encounter on the worldmap as they tend to stick close to settlements and trade roads.

Militia

Militia is the makeshift fighting force of civilian settlements like villages and cities. These are basically citizens that arm themselves with whatever weapons and tools available to them as soon as danger approaches. That is why they will only show up on the worldmap when there is an enemy party closing in on a settlement.

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As these are not professional soldiers they lack in equipment and experience compared to other forces - but do not underestimate their determination to defend their homes and their loved ones against whatever enemy.
In combat, militia are usually led by an experienced militia captain, perhaps a professional soldier or sellsword when he was younger, that coordinates all the fighters and distributes weapons and armor among them. The militia captain boosts the morale of all others by some margin, and if he falls, it can spell disaster.

Cities and Trading Caravans

Besides the small villages we’ve shown before, we’ve now implemented cities into the game. The city is a civilian settlement like the village and has a militia force defending it. However, the city is much bigger and presents better opportunities for a mercenary commander. More potential recruits are available for hiring, more and different contracts are on offer, and a larger variety of weapons, armor and supplies can be found. As prices in general tend to be higher in larger settlements, everything may be a little more expensive here, though.

city.jpg


Cities are important hubs for trading caravans and for your mercenary company to restock supplies. Speaking of trading caravans, we’ve replaced our placeholder caravan with an actual asset of a little wagon pulled by a donkey also pictured above.

Worldmap Additions

The worldmap has seen some other additions, as well. Rivers have made it into the game, snaking through the lands and creating some natural borders, much like mountains do. Rivers can not be crossed unless at bridges or natural crossings. They still need a polishing pass but look like this now in the game:

river_and_guardtower.jpg


Also, the orc faction got new assets for their hideout and warcamp - finally they won’t have to share the sprite with the bandits anymore and have a style of their own.

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Tradeable and Lootable Supplies

Mercenaries are a needy bunch. You need to feed them so that they don’t starve or desert you, their armor needs repair after battle and their quivers need to be refilled. The supplies necessary for this can now be bought at allied locations - villages, cities, watchtowers and strongholds. Of course, food is more readily available at villages that live off of farming, and tools to repair armor with are easier to find at a military stronghold or larger city than at a small and peaceful village.
supplies_in_shop.jpg
 
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I can already see that this game is a labor of love - well done!
 
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