Creating intriguing, enjoyable, first-person melee combat systems has been a real challenge for developers. It's hard to mix easy, intuitive controls with a first-person view and sufficient variety of moves. Many have tried and failed.
Our combat mechanics are the most challenging feature of our game. They’re based on actual 15th century techniques and designed in cooperation with medieval martial arts experts to be as authentic as possible. The controls are as intuitive as in first-person shooters and, thanks to a few tricks, we have a large amount of different moves and combos. On top of that, the whole thing is based on real-time physics and inverse kinematics, so when you hit something, your hands and weapon, not just your target, react accordingly, which is something that was not possible on last-gen hardware.
Weapons
You can specialize in different fighting styles and weapon classes and will constantly learn new moves and techniques, as well as unlock new weapons and armors. Every weapon has its own uses, pros, and cons. The sword is universal, but weak against plate armor;hammers are ideal against plate armor, but weak against sword; the longsword is strong, but slow, and cannot be used from horseback, etc.
We will have several weapon classes: swords, longswords, daggers, sabers, axes, hammers, shields, bows, and crossbows.
Battles and castle sieges
You are no superhero - fighting multiple enemies at the same time is very difficult. It is often a good idea to have allies at your side (and, at times, a lot of them). Our goal is to have as many characters in fights as possible and to offer players big battles and castle sieges to take part in. Not many battles, mind you - more like one or two in the first act. For us, a battle is a climax, not a ‘wow’ moment that needs to happen every two minutes. The precise scope of these battles and the amount of characters on screen are still things we are evaluating – they are complicated feats to pull off even on next-gen hardware.
Horses
Horses are your primary means of transportation in our sprawling world, but you can fight from horseback, as well. War horses can be used as living weapons with special moves and attacks (strafing, running backwards, several different kicks, etc.). Horses also serve as a secondary inventory for the player. We’ll have three types of horses in-game (courser, destrier, rouncey), and each offers different abilities, stats, skills, and perks. Your steed levels up on its own throughout the journey, and even comes with five slots for armor and attachments.
What would a role-playing game be without character development and customization? Your character in Kingdom Come: Deliverance will have STATS (Strength, Speed, Agility, Vitality, and Speech), CONDITIONS (Stamina, Health, Hunger, and Sleep), SKILLS (Swordsmanship, Archery, Alchemy, and many others), and PERKS (special combat moves, crafting abilities, or varying advantages). Conditions change as you become injured, exhausted, etc. Stats and skills will increase when you use them. Perks can be unlocked or learned. Stats and conditions can be temporarily or permanently modified by alchemy. You must also eat and sleep - you need to keep your character alive, after all!
Character customization
Thanks to our clothing system, you can create the ultimate armored knight. We have 20 slots for weapons, clothes, and attachments, as well as 4 layers (!) of clothing or armor on every character. That’s a lot of customization options! Different types of armor are effective against different weapons. Your clothes and their state affect your charisma and reputation, which, in turn, influence NPC reactions toward you. They also affect your visibility and the noise you produce, which affect your stealth skills
We are using CryEngine to power our game. It’s a powerful, out-of-the-box toolset that runs on all major platforms and allows us to concentrate on the game instead of technology. It's been used to create cutting-edge games like the Crysis trilogy and Ryse, as well as the crowd-funded project Star Citizen. CryEngine affords us with unparalleled macro and micro details, including unlimited viewing distance, HD textures on all objects, and a functional day/night cycle with varying weather patterns, all set in a vast, beautifully lit, seamless world, free of cumbersome load times.
On top of that, we are developing our own proprietary RPG-MAKING TOOLS for easy development of this and any future content, including custom support for game design, animations, branching dialogue, clothing definitions, et al. We plan to release these tools to the modding community in the future.
Key Lead Developers:
Dan Vávra
Director and Design Lead for Mafia, Designer and Screen Writer for Mafia II. Over a decade of industry experience, starting as a 2D artist on 16-bit computers. Nominated for a Game Developers Choice Award for Excellence in Writing for Mafia. Mafia won Game of the Year and Best Screenplay awards in a number of countries and has an 89.5% score on GameRankings. Dan’s games have sold more than 5 million copies combined. He also contributed to Hidden & Dangerous, among other projects.
Martin Klíma
The author of fantasy pen-and-paper RPG Dragon's Lair. In 1997, Martin founded ALTAR Interactive as an Executive Producer. After releasing Fish Fillets in 1997, the studio created the real-time strategy game Original War three years later. ALTAR then published the trilogy of UFO: Aftermath, UFO: Aftershock, and UFO: Afterlight. Martin later moved to Codemasters in the UK to work on Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising.
Viktor Bocan
Designer and screenwriter of computer games for 17+ years. Started with self-published text games for Atari 800 and then he worked as a lead designer in Bohemia Interactive (Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis, OFP: Resistance). Later Viktor helped to produce ArmA, a spiritual successor of Operation Flashpoint, and then worked in 2K Czech on new, not yet announced title. In his spare time, Viktor creates games for 'smaller' platforms, including Nintendo DS, XBL, iOS, etc.
Tomáš Blaho
Tomas was a Senior Graphics Programmer at Illusion Softworks (later 2K Czech), where he worked on multiple games, including Mafia 1 & Mafia 2 and Hidden & Dangerous 2. After finishing Top Spin 4 for 2K Czech, he moved on to Playground Games in the UK, working as Senior Graphics Programmer on Forza Horizon. He has a great deal of experience with development on non-PC platforms, having worked on Dreamcast, PS2, Xbox, PS3, Xbox 360, and iOS.
Roman Zawada
One of the most accomplished 3D artists in our country. Roman started at Bohemia Interactive working on Operation Flashpoint and later ArmA. He then moved to 2K Czech to work on Mafia 2, and later to Crytek to work on Crysis 3. His intimate knowledge of CryEngine is especially valuable to our current project.
All credit, and for more information go to their kickstarter:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1294225970/kingdom-come-deliverance
