Regarding Nord Invasion II

[Terath]

...we would like to hear whether or not the current devs ala Kip, Naozumi, Winter and Terath are prepared to and actually want to keep developing into NI II, and are they prepared to sink time in the future to develop the mod when the tools become available?

Being able to physically do it is one thing, which you say you currently are unable to do, fair enough. But being mentally prepared to do it is another thing, this is the part that concerns me as a lot of devs over the years seem very burnt out and frankly disinterested in pursuing NI II after so much time and the gradual decline of the player base.

You're not incorrect in assuming that we are well beyond burnt out. This mod has been a large part of my, and many of the other developer's lives for a long time. For example, I started playing NI just before I turned 12; I turn 23 this year. I honestly think it's an unrealistic expectation for developers to have the time or place in their life to be able to develop NI II the way we developed NI I currently, as some of us have long since either moved on or grown up, and are now working full-time.

Being away from NI has given me a lot of time to think about what I would ideally want NI II to contain in terms of content, scope, gameplay, balance and how to solve issues that plagued the first iteration, but it also gave me time to step back and decide if I would really want to put myself into another development cycle. I think that I would be willing to work on NI II, depending on what the scope of the mod would be, if it aligns with the mod I would like to develop, if my fellow developers would be willing to provide a similar level of work ethic and care. Right now, I'm currently (luckily) in a place in my life where I can strike a balance between work, school and hobbies, so I have time to develop stuff if I wanted to. I myself don't mind for low playercount, as NI 1 has managed to garner a large amount of inactive players that, I think, would become active if news of NI II were on the horizon. I also don't really care about numbers in that way, as I generally just like to produce mods for games because it's fun to make models and create games for me.

The tools and platform as well would have to be, of course, finished. Bannerlord provides a much cleaner and accessible interface to develop from, as well as being a MUCH better platform for Nord Invasion's gameplay in my opinion. But, the game is updated near biweekly, still isn't released fully, and the tools for multiplayer are, as of current, still unavailable. All we can really do right now is talk about the systems we want baseline and wait for the game and tools to reach a stable state.

So, basically: yes, I would be willing to develop NI2, with certain stipulations, if it ever becomes feasible to do. It really all depends on which developers are willing once things become feasible; I'm certainly not an important part of game development as I only really provide art assets and art direction, so I'm replaceable. Coders, game directors and content leads are the ones you need for a mod to work well.