Wolves and Bears are a must to have in this game

[Simonus18]

I have been playing Kingdom Come for a week now and my main complaint about it is that even if I hear wolves from afar there aren't any.

 

Originally the devs wanted them in the game in early developments, but later they decided to cancel these.

 

Is there anyone working on anykind of mod in this theme?

 

Wolves would be amazing to fight against, and bears appearing in the world would also fit to the whole forest adventures.

 

I don't mind if there were stray dogs also, violent dog-packs or anything.

 

Birds? How about birds?

[GaKnomboe]

It seems like bears and wolves would both be suitable, after a quick check bears were essentially hunted / exterminated in the 17th / 18th century (except for a small pocket) and wolves were roaming around in the 19th century.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong. So, yep, bears and wolves would fit in, and add quite a bit. I'd also recommend wild boars that can charge and gore you.

 

In terms of actually adding these in - wolves should be pretty easy, add a new model for the dog and reuse the animations (although modified animations would make them look unique to dogs).

 

Adding bears would be quite a lot harder - adding in a whole lot of animations for the bear, and if you wanted it to look good, Henry would need a couple animations for getting clawed.

You might be able to reuse the dog animations applied to different skeleton, but it would probably be super glitchy (especially where the limbs meet the body).

You would also be missing a lot things that make a bear look like a bear - like an animation for it to stand up and growl.

 

Not sure how hard it is adding new animations - especially to animals, I've done a heap of animations in the past for first and third person humans for Cryengine 2 and 3.

However, it is likely that Kingdom Come is different and I'm not even sure if it uses same type of .caf and .cal files for animations.

 

The other thing would be the AI - using the dog AI as a starting point should work. However, to get wolves / stray dogs to act like actual packs some group AI would need to be set up, or at least something that gives the appearance of group AI - obvious thing would be having the wolves circle enemies. This could probably be done without requiring the AI to communicate to one another - although it would probably result in clipping. The harder thing would be having packs co-ordinate attacks as a group, (like wolves in Zelda BotW), but this probably isn't necessary since dogs already tend to kick Henry's ass without pack tactics.

[Simonus18]

Oh so these boars won't attack you that we have now in any way? That's a shame. Then we definitely need some wild ones.

Well I hope that there will be a pro-modder, a team even who can add wolves and bears sometime in the future.

[GaKnomboe]

I've punched a couple pigs in game and they don't seem to attack back, but I haven't tested it on ones in the woodlands.

It would also be good if you could encounter bull elk that would attack you.

 

Beyond that you could have foxes or snakes like the European adder that would attack if you walked into a nest, although the foxes would flee 90% of the time.

 

To make proper use of such animals it would also be worth adding more loot other than treasure map items, so there is more use in exploring the forests -

 

I'd personally prefer some permanent stat buff items similar to bobbleheads in fallout, so once a certain item is found a corresponding stat can be boosted by +1,and this boost allows stats to go past 20.

ie - find a recipe book in some hobble in the forest and your alchemy is boosted +1, find a hunting map in a poachers camp and your hunting skill is boosted by +1.

find a barrel of old fine wine in a cellar and your drinking skill is boosted +1.

Others could work similar to perks, still a permanent buff but to a specific situation - find an abacus or a scale and your speech skill while haggling is boosted by +1.

 

Have these scattered about in the wilderness as items you can find once so the player is encouraged to keep exploring new areas, thus encountering more wildlife.

[Simonus18]

These would be fantastic additions!

Hard to get foxes to have tricky and tiring hunts but probably you would have higher chance to improve your vitality/agility, sneaky adders in the nights so you wouldn't be so careless walking in the deep forests, pigs that could actually defend themselves and elks for more special hunts and antlers. And special, really rare version of these that could drop special remains which as you wear them (or any other way) you get extra stats.

 

It's just really apparent that they kinda ran out of time, and even though they had some chance to implement something with DLCs it doesn't seem like they will ever add extras to the whole wildlife yet it feels plain from many aspects.

I would even donate to the person/team that will make any mod around this topic.

Edited February 24, 2020 by Simonus18

[GaKnomboe]

Not sure if they ran out of time in this regard, the game was always focused on medieval life, so whilst hunting would be common, going to battle with a bear or trudging through the wildness to fight animals in search of loot wouldn't really be a common thing to do. That said, I would be totally in support of a wildlife mod to make the wilderness more exciting. Missions are great but exploring can be the best part of open worlds.

 

There are definitely areas where they did run out of time - horse combat was intended to get a larger focus, but apart from scripted missions, and key characters - ie Radzig you don't see NPC's use horses.

Also you can't trample enemies with horses, thus negating pretty much the main advantage of having a horse.

[Simonus18]

Yes, indeed, having absolutely no physical effect with a horse against any NPC - let it be ally, or en enemy - is also concerning. All they do is shout something random scripted text and move on. A mod to that would also freshen up the whole realistic gameplay, I don't even get it how they could not develop that part.

A simple dodge move would be a good start for ally NPCs, but against enemies more animations would be needed; falling on the ground, jump away, dodge, being stomped by the horse while on the ground etc.

 

If we are at it, crippled state would also give layers to the whole combat experience. Like being attacked by a bear or bitten by a snake would definitely affect your movement and your limbs. Ran by a horse would also make really lots of damage to your body, or at least break your legs or something. Being hit by an arrow to the leg would also cripple you etc.

So many posibilities to improve the gameplay

Edited February 25, 2020 by Simonus18