Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord
From July to October I did my internship at TaleWorlds Entertainment (based in Ankara, Turkey), unfortunately because of the Coronavirus, I had to do my internship remotely. (Note: It was my first internship in a Video Game Studio and it was a great experience despite the distance).
What did I do during my internship?
I joined TaleWorlds Entertainment as a Level Designer Intern and I work on Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, especially on the Modding Kit before its release on Steam.
I worked on three maps during this internship. For the first and the third map I had to choose one of the six factions and adapt all the characteristics of the chosen faction on my maps. For example : Sturgian are a North Faction so the environment has to match with Northern nature (such as wet (dark) grass, snow-covered mountains) etc...
I worked on three maps during this internship. For the first and the third map I had to choose one of the six factions and adapt all the characteristics of the chosen faction on my maps. For example : Sturgian are a North Faction so the environment has to match with Northern nature (such as wet (dark) grass, snow-covered mountains) etc...
First Map : Sturgian Village
For my first task, I started from the first building, which is a logger's house on the edge of the forest, so I looked into many references. I then gradually added some details to make the house credible, however, this area was not to be overloaded because it is just there to decorate and has no real gameplay interest for the player.
In Bannerlord the villages produce a type of resource, so the next area I worked on is the farm and the wheat fields, which take a big part in the composition of the village, because here it reflects the real production of the village, which is wheat, so when the player arrives he has to understand directly that it is the main source of income of the village. |
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Second Map : Battle Terrain
My second mission was to create a battle map linked to a potential mechanic for the game (cancelled). As the mechanic was not yet in the "Go" phase, I first had to analyze the mechanic to know how to adapt a map to make it work. I also had to analyze the other cards already in the deck to see if some of them could be quickly reworked to make the mechanic work on them. This task allowed me to put into practice and improve my Level Design analysis skills.
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Third Map : Battanian Castle (Siege)
In Bannerlord this is one of the new mechanics implemented is the Siege (Singleplayer/Multiplayer). So for my third task, I had to create a Siege map. First of all I analyzed maps already existing in the game, but also Saxon and Celtic castles that exist to understand how the defenses are organized.
After the defenses I worked on the attackers, to merge realism and balance I had to sacrifice a bit of realism by giving the attacker three usable paths to attack. On the single-player, the castles can evolve on three different levels, the levels impact the difficulty for the attackers and the Level Design. |
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