Update log
Full Crusader Kings III update
The complete published notes, normalized for clean reading and source attribution.
Repeated intro
Hello everyone! Today's dev diary is written by two separate authors, and covers the art and music of Khans of the Steppe. There's a good bit to cover, so let's dive right into it.
Extracted changes
- Gameplay
- Events
Art & References
Salve,
Lucas Ribeiro here, 2D Art Lead at CKIII. I’m here to share with you our efforts to bring to life the beautiful open splendor of the steppes and the blood-stained battlefields of the east through our humble artwork.
Loading Screen
To start off, let’s talk about our new loading screen. We began by sketching out some ideas and running them through the team to get impressions. There was not much debate on what the theme was here, mostly how to represent it.
From these 4, we picked the one with the charging band of warriors against the stormy sky. We felt that this composition had a lot of dynamism and looked unique compared to the other loading screens we’ve created so far. The juxtaposition of the riding band of warriors against the stormy skies suggests the strong connection between nature and the lifestyle of the steppe nomads.
As a second step, we created a few different color sketches. We opted for the one where we could see a stormy sky against a calmer golden haze. This served two purposes: To correlate the riders with the encroaching tempest and to show the gameplay feature of the changing seasons.
For our nomad dynastic legacy we thought we could use the opportunity of a horizontal layout to display a big migrating wave, stretching towards the horizon.
Event Backgrounds
While we had a few steppe themed event backgrounds, we made sure to cover every sort of event theme with new and appropriate steppe backgrounds. Amongst these are Oovos, A camp at night and day, the inside of a nomadic tent, Karakorum, Hunt, Throne Room, An eastern village (and their burning version), different versions of a steppe background and many more.
We also have new holding illustrations for nomadic and herder governments:
Activity Types
We have added 2 unique activity types for Mongols. A new type of feast, the Tsagaan Sar. And a new type of hunt, the Nerge.
For the Tsagaan Sar, we wanted to show the participants wearing white, as is customary. The plentifulness of food is represented by the bowls and baskets of treats. And the tradition of bringing the Khan gifts is also present in the image.
In the Nerge hunt, riders would work together to round up animals from all across the region for their ultimate slaughter once surrounded by a veritable army of hunters. We tried to represent this encirclement by how the characters occupy the composition. The animals are seen in desperate flight, while the men are positioned on both sides of them.
Men-at-Arms
The nomad experience is closely associated with warfare, as such, we knew we had to give them a significant variety of men-at-arms. We also have many different steppe cultures and the men-at-arms gave us the opportunity to make them a bit more unique.
Character Art
While we fortunately had some Mongol culture clothes and headgear in the game, the variety was quite small. With Khans of the Steppe we had the chance to greatly expand this repertoire.
As with every expansion, we dedicated a significant amount of time to collect references, preferably accounts or representations closer to our
Source