| BASIC GAME INFORMATION |
Release date: 1st quarter 2015
Genre: Realistic open world first person meditative RPG
developer: Warhorse Studios
Publisher: Warhorse Studios
The game with which today we want to introduce you closer is a little-known but very interesting project, namely Kingdom Come: Deliverance – an open-world first-person RPG from the recently founded Warhorse development studio. The studio staff is about 30 people who have collaborated more than once in the past. together and have worked on games such as Mafia, Mafia 2, ArmA, Operation Flashpoint, Crysis 3 and Forza Horizon. The main reason for the little-known nature of the project is that there is no support from large publishing houses; all funds come from individuals on Kickstarter and an unknown investor.
Events in the game Kingdom Come: Deliverance take place in the Kingdom of Bohemia, part of the Land of the Bohemian Crown in our time – the Czech Republic. The first act takes place in a real-life place between the city of Sazawa and the city of Rettei, which were greatly changed in the game. The events take place at the end of the Middle Ages in 1403, when the Great Western Schism occurred and the events that took place in Bohemia subsequently ended with the Hussite Wars.
| GRAPHIC COMPONENT |
A realistic first-person RPG that takes you to medieval Europe during a time of great turmoil and turmoil. The main character is a young blacksmith Henry, who lost his family and home due to the fault of the invading army. Guided by his father’s last will, Henry finds himself in the midst of a conspiracy, he must rescue the kidnapped king and stop the bloody conflict. As you wander the world, you’ll fight like a knight, hide in the shadows like a thief, or win favor with the charm of a bard. You will plunge into the depths of a broad, epic and non-linear story from Daniel Vavre (Mafia designer, Mafia 2), enjoy a unique first-person combat system that makes it equally easy to wield both a sword and a bow in short one-on-one skirmishes and in large-scale battles. All this – and much more – with next-generation visualization powered by the powerful CryEngine.
| Features of Kingdom Come: Deliverance |
Non-linear plot. allows you to choose between being a villain or a savior. Each quest can be solved in several ways.
Revolutionary combat system. Based on inverse kinematics, a one-of-a-kind system created in collaboration with medieval martial arts experts, yet easy to operate, will provide you with a great close combat experience.
Upgrade your character: Different play styles – warrior, rogue or bard – develop your skills, earn perks, mix styles as you like and create your own unique character.
Deep realism, medieval theme, open world dynamic world with a length of 48 square kilometers and 30 hours of gameplay (in the first act, out of 3).
Army Control: Lead your own army in huge battles and sieges. You are not a superhero and in order to fight an army of enemies, it is better for you to enlist support and gather your own army.
Journey through the Middle Ages. Visit sprawling cities, magnificent towering castles, dark forests, and dingy villages. Discover this vast world on horseback or on foot.
Dynamic world. Each resident plays a role in their community, you can observe people, work, help them if necessary, or interfere in their routine and see what happens.
Relationships with characters. Becoming a criminal or a local hero, seducing local women, threatening your enemies or pardoning defeated opponents is all up to you.
Craft. Create your own weapons at the forge, brew potions, or mine in the mine for silver. All crafting in the game takes place through “smart mini-games”, and not boring, soulless menus.
| Game process |
The developers promise interesting dialogues in which time to choose a phrase will be limited, and non-linear tasks with many solutions and significant consequences. A former blacksmith can turn into a well-protected knight, a cunning thief, or a bard capable of convincing others that he is right. However, he will not lose his skill in forging weapons, and will also learn how to cook food, brew potions and mine silver ore. All “crafting” is designed in the form of mini-games, and not just boring “soulless” menus. The detail in Kingdom Come: Deliverance is generally impressive – you will not only have to regularly feed the hero and put him to bed, but also make sure that the provisions in the knapsack do not spoil. There are 16 cells for armor, and you can put it on in 4 “layers” at once. Recently, in a diary, the Kingdom Come developers promised that there would soon be gameplay of the project is shown. Not only did they not disappoint, but they also delivered a full hour of gameplay. The video demonstrates the dialogue system, hero customization, crafting, horse riding, battles and much more.
| Open world |
The area of the world that will be available in Kingdom Come: Deliverance initially is noticeably inferior to that of Skyrim – only nine square kilometers versus forty-eight. These expanses can accommodate a large city, several castles, dozens of villages and farmsteads, mines, dungeons and dense forests. Travel between them will be possible both on foot and on horseback. At the same time, life around will go on as usual: the time of day changes, and residents play their assigned roles in communities. One of the main problems with open world games is the artificial intelligence of NPCs, which must create the illusion of real life. Especially for Kingdom Come: Deliverance The developers decided to approach the creation of the AI system from scratch, trying to make the characters’ behavior as realistic as possible. The new part of the video diary of the Kingdom Come: Deliverance developers is dedicated specifically to the issue of artificial intelligence. The principle of its operation is described in detail, which allows you to assign a behavior model to the NPC, on the basis of which he himself will make decisions about what to do. The topic of quest characters is also touched upon. Unlike many RPGs, they will not stand in a specific location – the player will need to find a person moving around the settlement depending on the time of day.
| Combat system |
During the announcement of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, the developers promised a very advanced combat system, historically accurate, connected to game physics and at the same time easy to learn, using the entire range of medieval weapons. Now the developers are ready to demonstrate what they promised in their video diary.
The fourth part of the Kingdom Come: Deliverance video diary is entirely devoted to the combat system. Using game mechanics, you can deliver different types of blows to individual parts of the enemy’s body. Naturally, there is also a block, and success in a fight largely depends on the reaction. In view of this, it is quite difficult to fight with more than one enemy – in this case, special skills can come in handy, but it is preferable to engage in battles with a superior number of opponents in the company of comrades. Endurance will also be an important factor in battles. For example, fighting a heavily armored enemy may require you to wear down your opponent before landing critical hits. The developers specifically emphasize that Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a role-playing game where the hero gradually becomes stronger. Upgrading his fencing, for example, will allow him to strike and block much faster, and accordingly, finding a gap in the enemy’s defense will be much easier.
| War Horse |
WarHorse devoted an entire section of the video diary to horses
| Supported OS and graphics API |
WarHorse plan to release Kingdom Come: Deliverance on all major platforms PC, Mac, Linux and new generation consoles Playstation 4, Xbox One. Since the game is developed on the CryEngine 3 engine, presumably minimal
operating systems of the Microsoft family will be Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista SP1 or SP2 and the recommended ones will be
Windows 7 and Windows 8 systems are 32-bit or 64-bit.
You can beat the entire game in 70 hours. Versions for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 will appear later. However, the authors promise to release an early alpha version of the game within six months. Those who pay £25 will be able to access it. For £20 you will be allowed into the beta, and the minimum deposit required to purchase the first episode is £15.
| Game engine |
Technical basis of the project Kingdom Come: Deliverance will be the cross-platform engine CryEngine 3. This is a powerful set of tools that works on all major platforms and allows the developer to focus on the game and not bother with the technical part. CryEngine was used to create ped trilogies like Crysis and Ryse. A lot of macro and micro details, unlimited viewing distance, HD textures on all objects, a whole world without additional downloads – this is not a complete list of what CryEngine can provide. In addition, WarHorse are developing their own tools for creating in-game content, including game design, animations, dialogue, and certain clothing, and plan to release these tools to the community. WarHorse also works closely with Star Citizen developers, exchanging their experience and secrets of working with the engine.
CryEngine 3 was officially announced on March 11, 2009, and the official release of the engine took place on October 14, 2009. The first game for which the use of CryEngine 3 was announced is the first-person shooter Crysis 2 from Crytek. At the end of March 2010, in an interview with GameReactor magazine, Cevat Yerli said that developers from Crytek had to face a number of problems when developing CryEngine 3 for consoles: “The most difficult thing was the process of scaling CryEngine 3 for consoles while maintaining picture quality and the proper level of performance. Of course, there were challenges, but we are very proud that our team was able to overcome them.”
Shaders in CryEngine 3 are written once in a high-level programming language, and then automatically compiled for each platform. Shader output is optimized through artist settings and for the XNUMXD environment in which the shader will be used. Thanks to this, it becomes possible to create effects such as the “invisibility effect”, wet, dirty and frozen surfaces, which can be “layered” on top of each other and combined with other shaders that simulate effects such as metal, glass and others.
CryEngine 3 supports real-time per-pixel lighting, reflections, refractions, volumetric heat effects and animated textures to simulate windows, bullet holes, surfaces with sun glare and many other effects. CryEngine 3 shaders use a unified shader architecture that has been available since Direct3D 10.
“Ubershader” is a single shader program with many features: from one to four lights, light types, specular cubemaps, fog, detailed textures, normal maps, specular textures, etc. Millions of Ubershader combinations can be generated. Ubershader uses dynamic branching, splitting into multiple passes, reducing combinations, and accepting options with less functionality and lower performance requirements. Uses asynchronous shader compilation and a distributed task system to compile the shader cache.
| Gameplay video |
Below we publish the gameplay video itself from the official website and the developer diary video Kingdom Come: Deliverance.
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| Estimated system requirements |
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SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS ASSUME BY GAMEGPU “Kingdom Come: Deliverance”
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Based on the above material, we will draw some conclusions. Since the game is based on CryEngine 3 and has an open source, we can conclude that it will be very processor-dependent. Apparently, for a comfortable game you will need at least eight computing threads (subject to the direct hands of the developers). Also, for the game to run smoothly, it will require about 6 gigabytes of RAM in the system, but it is unlikely to require more.
Well, if we think about the graphics subsystem that will be needed for Kingdom Come: Deliverance, then in our opinion, video cards starting from the level of NVidia GTX 770 or AMD Radeon R9 280 will be able to provide sufficient performance. Optimal performance, taking into account all activated maximum settings, will be possible expect from NVidia GTX 780 Ti or AMD Radeon R9 290X. Although, judging by the videos presented, the developers themselves have problems with performance, so it is quite possible that only the next generation of video cards will be able to fully cope with the game.
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