Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord Developer Blog Q&A

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord’s multiplayer will be powered by dedicated servers. So, in this week’s in-house developer Q&A, TaleWorlds Entertainment’s software engineer Koray Kıyakoğlu tells us what he’s doing in order to make Bannerlord’s multiplayer a smooth and stable experience. Have a look:

Greetings warriors of Calradia!

When you are playing online, communication is vital. Players must be able to interact with and respond to what their teammates and opponents are doing at that very instant in order to succeed. And before we proceed, no, we aren’t talking about VoIP or text chat (although those can be important too!). A dropped packet, an increase in latency or a high ping could be the key factor which results in defeat…

There are two options available when designing the online multiplayer aspect of a game: peer-to-peer and client-server. Both have their own advantages and disadvantages. For Bannerlord, we feel that the client-server model (using dedicated servers) helps to make the combat more consistent and allows us to put players on a level playing field (with the help of a few little tricks, such as latency tools). We think that this will make for an overall fairer and more enjoyable experience for players.

But of course, none of this magic happens on its own! The client and the server need to be coded to communicate efficiently and effectively. And this is where Software Engineers like our very own Koray Kıyakoğlu step in, ensuring that the client and server can exchange data quickly and accurately to provide a fluid multiplayer gaming experience to players.

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WHAT DO YOU NORMALLY DO DURING YOUR DAY?

“During my early days at the company I mostly focused on tasks on the multiplayer side of Bannerlord, such as game mode prototyping, online services and organizing internal gameplay tests.”

“As the studio expanded, I found time to focus on the other parts of the game, such as refactoring gameplay code, redesigning GUI middleware, making different aspects moddable etc. I have always been the developer who addressed the .NET related issues and I eventually ended up as “the C# guy” in our studio.

Besides work, our studio has a very casual environment. From time to time, we organize social events like barbecue parties or steakhouse runs. I can say to our community with great confidence that if any of them end up working here, it will become their second family.”

WHAT DO YOU LIKE THE MOST ABOUT BANNERLORD?

“Even though I like most of the new features the game will bring, as an engineer, I like it’s technical side more than anything. And the thing I like the most is its advanced modding support. I’m sure Bannerlord will become one of the most modded games out there.”

WHAT’S THE MOST DIFFICULT THING THAT YOU SOLVED SO FAR, DURING THE PRODUCTION OF BANNERLORD?

“When I first started working at TaleWorlds, I saw that our game engine was heavily integrated and dependant on game code. It was making our development process difficult and slow. I suggested that we draw a clean abstraction between the engine and the rest of code. With the help of the engine team we’ve managed to separate those systems, opening up the possibility of making different games using the same engine.”

WHAT DO YOU CURRENTLY WORK ON?

“Well, unfortunately I’m unable to answer this question because it will ruin the surprise for our community! But from a technical point of view I can say that I’m about to finish removing the unnecessary parts from our dedicated multiplayer game servers. That way it will include less code, which will make it easier to port to different server operating systems.”

WHAT FACTION DO YOU LIKE THE MOST IN BANNERLORD?

“I actually don’t prefer one faction over any of the others.”

WILL BANNERLORD BE ABLE TO SUPPORT MORE PLAYERS ON A SERVER THAN WARBAND COULD?

“The final player numbers for multiplayer haven’t been set just yet, however we are aiming for even higher numbers than Warband ‘unofficially’ supports.”