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Crusader Kings 3 Dev Diary #75 - In the Event of Court Events

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:
001.PNG


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.

002.PNG


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.

003.PNG


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…

004.PNG

005.PNG

006.PNG


… 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.

007.PNG


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:
008.PNG


^^ 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:
009.PNG

010.PNG

011.PNG


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:
012.PNG


… 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?
 
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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.
 
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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."

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.
 
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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:
View attachment 760580

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.

View attachment 760581

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.

View attachment 760582

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…

View attachment 760583
View attachment 760584
View attachment 760585

… 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.

View attachment 760586

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:
View attachment 760587

^^ 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:
View attachment 760588
View attachment 760589
View attachment 760590

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:
View attachment 760591

… 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!
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.
 
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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!
 
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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.
99% of the time they do near release.
 
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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.
 
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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.

Courtiers are typically the characters I care about the least, and vassals are typically the characters I care about the most. Game mechanics basically demand this - courtiers are powerless and irrelevant, and vassals are a constant threat. Will this expansion give me more reason to care about courtiers, or will this just be even more events about characters that don't matter to me?

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:

… 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!

A new event interface is not what duels needed. The problem with duels is that we can't duel anyone important to us, we can only duel distant adulterous counts who we've never interacted with. Adding a new UI on top of that half-baked system is just lipstick on a pig.
 
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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?
 
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005.PNG

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.
 
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