Diversity of weapons?

Gameplay
#1

Hello everyone. I would like to ask your opinion on something regarding weapon diversity, and maybe get an answer from the team (that would be awesome !).

I found this image thrown around in some threads discussing weapons to show the different weapons available for the player. My question is : will there be different models for each weapons (I’m talking about purely cosmetic changes) ?

One thing that often break immersion for me in RPGs is when NPCs all use the same sword. You travel around the world, you encounter maybe 5 or 6 different blacksmiths producing swords for different towns, and yet everyone has the same exact sword. I would love to see some variance. Maybe the militia from one town will have a different hilt or pommel than another town. Maybe a NPC will have a sword with a blade shape slightly different.

I’m not talking about having a tier-based system (for example steel sword is superior to iron sword), although that could be nice, or having some classic fantasy weapons that are unrealistic, just having subtle cosmetic differences to add some realism and diversity into the world for each weapon.

I might be asking too much, but I think it could be done without too much trouble. Instead of having just one sword model, create 4 different hilts, 4 different blades, and voila, you have 16 cosmetic variations for the same sword. Add 2 different pommel and you get 32 variations of the same sword.
It could even be done with re-texturing, having the same 3D model but different wood texture for the axe for example. Or having different colors for the leather on the grip of a sword, or something like that.

Anyway, does anyone know if this is planned ?

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#2

yes, obviously there will be different models and textures.

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#3

And modders will always add more skins and models, so don’t worry about this. i.e. In skyrim there are mods that do this, and some of them do it pretty well and i’m sure there will be tons of historically accurate mods for KCD.

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#4

Skyrim (which I played a lot, with tons of mods) is actually what drove me to write this post.

Weapon mods in skyrim added new weapons. That means different stats, reach, price, level etc… for each new swords. They weren’t just cosmetic changes, they were new weapons all together (as viewed by the game engine). Some mods reskinned the vanilla weapons, but by replacing it with another unique skin for all instances of this weapon.
What I mean is that you could add new weapons, you could change the skins of a particular weapons, but every NPC that has an “Iron Sword” has the same exact replica of every other iron swords. You can travel from riften to solitude and find the exact same sword made by two different blacksmiths.

This is was I meant when I wrote that it breaks immersion for me. I don’t necessarily want to see 120 kind of sword. I would prefer just 3 or 4 kind of sword, each sword with specific characteristics, but with different skins/models. So that every “iron sword” (or equivalent) is handled the same way, with the same stats, but with subtle variations.

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#5

I don’t know, if it’s going to be that simple.
In some games you can’t just add things. For example, in GTA IV you replace cars in existing “car slots”. As of yet, we don’t know how it’s gonna be in Kingdom Come’s case. Let’s hope they make it easily extensible so we can really “add” new variants of items of the same type. :smile:

#6

Yeah, but they had in mind mod support from the beggning, that’s why I guess that will be that easy. Maybe I’m wrong, who knows. We’ll see.

Oh, so you want the possibility of a, let’s say, container of textures for each object and a random texture selection every time one is created/loaded?

I don’t know, maybe it will be possible.

#7

In GTA it’s possible, so I don’t think it would be hard to do it in KC as well.
For example, in GTA, you have different textures for police cars.

#8


try this, lots and lots of different models there :stuck_out_tongue:

#9

That’s the idea.

Not necessarily with a completely random selection though, because I think it would make sense if, for example, all the guards of a castle have the same outfits and therefor the same swords that would have been mass-produced by the local blacksmith. But I would like to see a hunter all the way across the country having a different one.

It’s kinda like the NPCs management (I guess). You can have 10 copies of the same peasent (as in, the same AI, for example a fisherman) in different towns and cities, but they each have a different body and different clothes.

As for the modding part, even if the game provides modding tools, we’ll still be limited by what the tools allows us to do. So like Cerberus said, we’re not sure modders would be able to implement this themselves if this is absent from the vanilla game. That’s why I would love an answer from the team on that subject.

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#10

I want to point out that there is no such thing as ‘iron swords’, not ever. The difference between iron and steel is the amount of carbon. If you would make a sword out of iron (low carbon) you wouldn’t be able to harden it properly. This would result in a blade that you can’t sharpen, looses it’s edge fast, bending the blade, no flexibility at all.
So you can have differences in steel quality and such, so even when you give ale your guards the same type of blade from the same smith, they will be slightly different in balance, weight, and durability and so on.

#11

Not sure if it’s planned but it would definitely be a good idea. Quite like what Gearbox did with the plethora of guns they’ve got in Borderlands.

#12

Yeah sorry about that, I’m not a blacksmith and I knew it would be more complicated in real life (and hopefully in KCD) than in many RPGs. I just used the term “iron sword” because it’s the name of the basic sword in skyrim, but I don’t except to see this kind of naming scheme in KCD.

#13

Actually, I am not etirely sure but I think most late medieval swords wer made out of iron, but the Surface turns to “steel” due to quick cooling in water. The core however remains “soft” iron since it does not cool as quickly as the Surface. I can check that with a friend of mine which is a swords smith…

#14

I am into some blacksmithing myself, one part that I didn’t say was that steel is actually seen as an alloy of iron and carbon, there are also other metals that can be added to change the properties of the steel (chromium in steel makes it stainless, but this was not known around the time).
The amount of carbon still influences the hardening, witch is a very complex process that I’m still learning about. But shortly explained is when you heat up a piece of steel the molecules expand in a certain way, by rapidly cooling it down the molecules don’t get the time to set in the place they were, thus changing the crystalline structure. This makes the piece very brittle so tempering is required, by heating up your piece again to a certain temperature and letting it cool slower so the molecules can settle a bit better giving the metal more flexible qualities.
I also must admit that I might have made some mistakes in my explanation, but steel is not just hardened Iron.

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#15

I´d say the difference is going to matter only if weapons will have durability ingame?
Unless it´s bound to general quality or something.
If i were to wish for a weapon, it would be the seax. I do some reenactment myself and just love this thing.

#16

I also was a bit careless in the Words chosen. The whole sword would offcourse be made of steel (iron mixed with coal) with soft steel in the middle and hardened steel at the Surface.

#17

Hello again. I found this while diving deeper into the subject. Maybe not entirely 15th C, but nevertheless relevant and interesting.

#18

Sorry, forgot the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXbLyVpWsVM

#19

I saw it already a while back :slight_smile: wonderful documentary! All I wanted to say was that iron weaponry and armour is kind of useless and therefore would it be wrong if they would use it as a measure of quality in the game.
in another topic I read about an idea to use description like, good/bad/great balance, heavy/light in weight, based on the skill of the player. So would a player with a high smithing skill and/or weaponskill recognize a good weapon better than someone with bad skills.

#20

I think that if food will spoil over time and clothing gets dirty, that we can assume that weapons and armour will have durability.
I also like seax’s but unfortunatly they are from another period and region.

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