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Wokeg

Former CK3 Experienced Game Designer
May 14, 2018
528
15.153
Welcome comrades! In today’s (not at all late shutup SHUTUP) dev diary, we’ll be going over the new court-type event; many of you will likely have seen them a bit already in a few preceding dev diaries, but for the rest, allow me to formally introduce court-type events:
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This new event type is seen exclusively within the court view, where they replace standard character-type events.

We added these because one of the major design limitations with character-type events is that they’re uhh… they’re small. Really, really, really small, and having comparatively little space to work with means they impose a lot of restrictions on their use.

Those of you who mod, or have dabbled at modding, will likely know what I’m talking about: generally, a character event can only fit about three paragraphs of copy and 3-4 options before it starts to look a little naff. Less if there are characters or titles involved with very long names, or if you have to do a lot of paragraphing.

There are good reasons for them to be this small - they get in the way less when popping up, it encourages concise delivery of information, and it frames the portrait characters in each event nicely.

For the court scene, these considerations are (generally) moot, so we wanted to play around with a more liberal event format. We don’t need to worry about framing characters in the traditional sense since we show them in the scene, the player always opts into a court-type event and thus can’t have one pop-up unexpectedly, and though information (and options) still need to be reasonably concise, it’s nice to have a little room to flex the meaning of “concise” somewhat.

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From a player’s perspective, you’ll mostly interact with court-type events through the not-at-all-confusingly-named court events pool. Similar to random yearlies, court events reflect the life of your court just existing, with all the petty drama and courtly intrigue you’d expect from a medieval monarch’s household. They primarily involve characters consistently within your court (rather than far-flung vassals or guests), and often tie into court grandeur and your different levels of amenities.

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Other than their tone, size, and occasional number of options, the biggest differences that players will notice are their usage of different camera shots instead of backgrounds and portraits…

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… and their optional nature. Unlike yearly events, court events are opt-in, meaning that you don’t have to take them if you don’t want to, in which case their default (neutral-ish) option will be selected after a long-ish time-out period.

To open a court event, you simply click on a button that’ll appear floating over one of your court’s relevant characters. Whenever you’ve got court events you could be checking, you’ll be notified via the Royal Court button in the right-hand panel.

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From a scripting perspective, court-type events share a fair amount of DNA with character-type events, but differ mostly in the form of their court_scene block.

Usually, I’d go on to explain everything in a bit more depth inside the dev diary itself, but since court-type events can be tricksy to script till you get the hang of ‘em, we’ve included an example court-type event inside one of the event files that breaks down their make-up:
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^^ Hopefully, this should be a solid annotated example, but just in case, here’s a few pre-emptive clarifications:
1) Every court-type event must have a button character, even if that character is just your character, so that must always be set up.
2) The group parameter defines which spot in the scene that character stands in. These groups themselves are scriptable (with a bit of work) elsewhere, so you can arrange characters inside the court however you like. The groups shown in the example actually contain multiple different preset positions within the court scene, one of which is selected randomly for each event when it tries to fire.
3) For animations, we can access all the standard ones, plus a slew of new animations created specifically for the court scene.

Finally, just for fun, let’s have some more court events:
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Oh, right, yes, I titled the dev diary “and friend” too, didn’t I? Welp, the new court-type isn’t the only event type we’re adding with this expansion (just the most exciting). We also have the new duel event type!

Duels were added as part of our first flavour pack, but I’m sure you’ve all noticed that the space for ‘em is pretty limited, and the animations don’t work so well for this context. Welp, we’ve revamped both of those with this new type, giving duels a face-lift:
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… Naturally, the weapon held by either character does correspond to their signature weapon type, or whatever weapon artefact they have equipped (if they’ve got one).

And that’s all from me, folks. As ever, I’ll be around in the comments for an hour or so to answer questions, but otherwise, see y’all next diary!
 
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Alright, now if JaLot would kindly put down the knife and release the hostage, we can all move on with our day.
 
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Awesome look into the new events! No new poses though? It'd be awesome to see more, as well as new and more elaborate animations for characters in court scenes. Maybe some walking around or talking?
We *do* have new poses, but I'm afraid I've been a bit selfish and not shown them off here. ^^' I suspect Art might prefer to be the ones to show of their gorgeous new animations.
Nice, I welcome the chance to look at 3D character models more often.

But the semi-bird's view is a bit weird, wouldn't mind a more conventional perspective.
This is fair: perspective are all still somewhat WIP, and I expect we'll adjust at least a few a bit in future after player feedback. Naturally we're trying to get them as good as we can before release, though.
questions that only make sense in CK3: is that a problem of perspective or is that archbishop really a dwarf?
He is, indeed, a dwarf.
"… and their optional nature. Unlike yearly events, court events are opt-in, meaning that you don’t have to take them if you don’t want to, in which case their default (neutral-ish) option will be selected after a long-ish time-out period."

I immediately thought of two things. What about
1) A game option/decision to let your regent (or any other designated title) handle these matters if you don't? That way, their personality/skills/opinion plays into what decision is made.
2) What about asking specific characters for their thoughts on the matter? Again, the default could be the regent, where it's high-lighted to you what they'd do and it's your decision to take their suggestion or not.
1) I'm afraid that'd be pretty far out of scope to add, though live the spirit.
2) That actually does happen in the petition events last week's diary covered, but it'd be a prohibitive amount of extra time to add it to all of these events.
Niiice!
But big question I have is, when will you talk about the patch notes? I am also very interested in seeing if GHWs are fixed, AI is more potent and many more things.
:) I don't set the diary schedule, but traditionally I believe we do those in the last diary before release. Unsure what issues exactly you're having with GHWs, but I did fix a bunch of their broken targeting systems a while back.
The weapons in the duels look great! Also thanks for showing the script for the court events! I'm always one who likes to see how things look scriptwise!
^^ Thanks!
Ooh, how amazing! I love the flavour this will bring! I simply must ask though, shall the court events vary based upon region? It feels like there are some events that are very oriented to Europe but can pop up anywhere in the current game.
Some do, some are more universal. We'd definitely like to vary up our regional content more and more in future.
Glitterhoof has been released to his family relatively stab wound free.
_Phew_, ok, that was a concern.
"I titled the dev diary “and friend” too"
What was the original title?
_Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh, you didn't see anything, no one forbade me to use the *original* title shhhhhhhhhh_.
 
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Would be better with proper armor. XD
Tiny nitpick but can the characters in the duel event be wearing armor seems weird seeing a man dressed in full fancy court clothes about to wack someone with a hammer
1. agree with those saying they should be in armor, not Royal garb.
:) Valid; it's on my list of polish things to sort for the duel system (still haven't added cheating!), but not something I've gotten around to yet, I'm afraid.
Perhaps I missed it in the code… but does the context of the event tie to actual character behavior? If a court event says a particular character is present at every banquet… is that true? Is there a connection? For example was the character present at the last two banquets?
Depends on the event: generally, when writing events, we try to pick appropriate characters through the trigger block but don't set things up to ensure the copy is definitely 100% accurate, only that it seems accurate at a glance/with a bit of casual digging. Sadly, if we were to track such things, it'd likely merc both save game size and a bit of performance.
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It seems that the Christian Iberians are using the Byzantine Court Architecture.
Could it be changed so that Iberian cultures (and maybe North Italians too, Sicilian is just a different thing) use the Western Court Architecture?
There was a very strong influence of French art in Spain during CK3 time period, they too employed the Romanesque and Gothic styles, and sometimes also French craftsmen. The Court here just looks too Byzantine to me in comparison to the experience I have visiting Medieval Castles and Royal Palaces in Spain.
Interesting; we might have defaulted a little bit too much to later medieval Iberian architecture, which (at least, IME) tends to have more of a flourish. I'll raise this internally!
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Makes me wonder if there's the posibility of an Erfurt Latrine Desaster like event.
:p Funnily enough, there is a follow-up event to this one if you ignore the problem and get unlucky...
I'm not... sure about these 3D scenes. I like the event pictures with 3d characters, but this I'm not sure. :confused:

I really hope lightning, camera position, etc could be improved.
:) Lighting, positioning, et al are all WIP. We'll continue adjusting, tweaking, and improving such as we go, but sadly one of the issues with dev diary screenshots is that they mean we're showing unfinished or unpolished work, so it'll rarely look quite as good as the final thing.
Out of curiosity, just exactly what part of the DD took the whole of 3 1/2 hours?
I'm afraid that it was insinuated that if I went into details on that, I wouldn't be writing much script any time soon. Rest assured that the parties responsible are have been dealt with. Permanently.
What's Glitterhoof doing there. Sneaky little horse.
That's uhh... a supervisory horse. Doing. Supervising things. Yeah.
The court events look pretty good judging from the screenshots. I am curious how they will feel compared to the other types of events.

Regarding the duels: I have played a fair bit of CK3 since the duel system was introduced, and so far I have seen one (1) actual duel take place, which I lost because my character wasn't a good fighter. A lot of "duels" in events are still just regular prowess-checks, and there aren't that many opportunities to duel people given by the mechanics unless your character is wrathful or irritable. I hope that there will be more opportunities for duels to happen in 1.5, because then I might actually get to appreciate the new UI a bit more. :)
^^' Aggh, yeah, we do need to go through and do more updating of older content for this. Certainly some duels we're happy to keep as prowess checks (essentially anything that doesn't need a full fight), but some could really use the new system. A handful of the new court events do, FWIW, and there's a bit of cultural tradition stuff related to duelling.
Is there any connection to a player not holding court contributing to faction growth?
:thinking_face: Not as far as I'm aware.
Looking at the dwarf Archbishop, he doesn’t look like a dwarf. Any plans to adjust scaling of body and clothing somewhat to adjust proportions and make them look more realistic or as if clothing is a bit oversized?
^^' Not my department, I'm afraid. Not that I know of, though.
Are the new duel events part of the DLC, or are they included free in the update?
It's just the UI! The duel system came in with the first flavour pack. :) The UI is, however, free, as was the system.
Duel changes look great. A couple thoughts:
2. I would love to see these type of events happening on the battlefield if you are leading your own troops! Duels are rare, so won’t see this new feature often, but having this pop up on occasion in war would make war more interesting and allow us to see this cool mechanic more often. If not for this patch, sure, can’t rush it, but definitely put it on a wish list for later.
I've gone into this a little elsewhere, but essentially it's a deliberate design decision not to have overt battlefield events pop up like this, since they get in the way of army movement and, especially in MP, they'd be an active nuisance.
 
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I really hope the duel screen could show a health bar or something else, thus making it a mini-game, I mean, like Pokemon.;)
^^' Yeah, eventually I'd like to see a more graphical solution for how we represent current status in duels. No plans for that for this release as far as I'm aware, I'm afraid.
So how often do you interact with your vassals in court events? Based on the images released it looks like very rarely, which is disappointing. I would much prefer deeper interactions with in-game characters I should care about, vassals, rather than people who are not terribly important, all things considered. I find it hard to care about random courtiers when you don't really interact with them regularly anyway, which is a real problem with the game right. Its hard to form connections with characters when you don't interact with them or if they don't "matter" to the player, however you want to define that. I would much rather the game improve liege/vassal relationships rather than try and make you care about random courtiers or guests.

Also, are there going to be game rulers involving the court mechanics? Will you be able to turn certain mechanics on and off? Could you, for example, keep artifacts while turning off the ability to hold court?
Generally, court events are more focused on the people who are actually physically present in your court. Vassals aren't ruled out, but they tend to be included more if you'd see them mooching around the palace from time to time; councillors, powerful vassals, that type of thing. ;) I will say that us not providing content for interacting with courtiers or your family might worsen not feeling connected to them.

Artefacts are entirely too integral to be turned on or off via game rule, I'm afraid, and we've not plans make hold court optional via game rule. I don't believe we have any game rules for court mechanics at the moment.
 
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