Posts on Aug 2011

Damn, this release was tough. I’m constantly fixing stuff and there’s still a bunch of issues.I have to postpone gold servers and editor doesn’t quite work. Sorry about this, all will resolved in the following days. I should do releases more frequently in the future so problems don’t pile up.

On a side note: surprisingly skybridges prevent stalemates and push the gameplay forward. Because there are 3 paths (underground/ground/sky). I have to think of a better way to do that (balloons?).

MM

“Eyecandy” Build Released!

The “eyecandy” release is finally here! Although it is much more than that!

It’s been a long time coming, with a lot of hiccups along the way but we’ve decided it’s clean enough around the edges for a public release. 

Large changes include:

• The graphics changes, as you’ll soon see.
  
• Knock back on all actor-actor combat and colliding with enemies, which makes combat less of a lottery and more dynamic.
  
• KAG is now Unlagged. This means there is code that takes into account your ping. Collisions on server are calculated by stepping back in time according to the roundtrip time between you and the server. Furthermore sword hits, blood, damage and knock backs are fully synced between server & client.
  
• Fall damage on by default, making crazy skybridges less useful and duels atop mountains more interesting. It can be turned off in the server config for those of you who hate this change ;). Also requirement for building support has been removed because of this.

  

• Rendering optimisation, which just make the game more enjoyable for all. If you have issues with low framerates, update your graphics drivers before reporting it on the forums, we’ll try to sort you out if you’re having issues.
• Last but least: Challenges! These started out as tutorials and serve as such. So you can train movement and Knight combat in a little singleplayer mode (movement challenge map, credits go to Vig). Please bare in mind that these are not finished so forgive us if they don’t work fully.
  

(See the bottom of this post for a full changelog. Feel free to discuss these tweaks below or on the forums.)

More chit chat and a big old download link after the break:

This release also marks the dawn of Gold Servers – people with a gold account can start playing on the gold servers. Please allow 24 hours, after the version release, to start running official Gold Servers. If for some reason the game does not recognize your account as Premium please e-mail MM directly at mm [at] thd.vg. Set the e-mail topic “No premium!” and in the message body add YOUR GAME ACCOUNT NAME and PAYPAL E-MAIL.

We’re also pleased to announce the inclusion of in-game moderators. They likely won’t be able to keep an eye out for everything but they’ll be hanging out in the more popular servers whenever possible to aid in tossing out unwelcome types. 

If you notice any players griefing be sure to get screenshots and report them immediately  here especially if they’re in a gold server. We’ll take their account access away from them as quickly as possible so you can continue to enjoy the game.

There’s no doubt a few bugs here and there and a probably lot of tweaking needed for combat on a larger scale to work out well (it’s been tested online but not in the volumes that the public build gets) so be sure to let us know on the forums.

Still no bison in sight, I’m afraid.

That’s enough rambling from us, have at it: DOWNLOAD NOW.
Please note that the game autopatches also.

Linux version will be available in a couple hours, sorry.

Changes 90-123:

– only builder has ground sight
– new tree leaf sprites
– fixed leafs not appearing from non destructed trees
– new ground tile graphics
– gold blocks glitter
– added big dirt pieces fallout of dug ground
– fixed mapcycle maps loaded on load map in menu
– fixed floor in window castle tile
– door has floor if castle block underneath
– new castle background blocks look different in different context
– added castle top bricks ornamentation
– recoded tile rendering to use mesh buffers (much faster)
– fixed clantag bracket
– separated foreground from background map layer (trees, spikes, solid blocks etc. are drawn in front of players)
– added clouds
– HUD can now display names and health after death
– new minimap icons
– fixed minimap not appearing on zoomout
– fixed enemy outposts and flags not appearing on minimap
– fixed minimap out of border icon positions
– fixed infinite loop caused by setting score_limit to 0
– added possibilty to load gm script file in mapcycle (useful to change game rules or add entities)
– fixed multiple tents saved on map
– outposts, hearts and catapults are saved on savemap
– fixed hearts dissapearing if full health archer or builder pick them up
– game rules can now limit classes
– game rules now define default materials count on respawn
– added tree branch destroy effects
– trees properly drop
– added ambient sound
– added smoothness variables to map generator files which determine the steppiness of the map
– gold now concentrates in middle of map
– move map scripts to Maps folder
– added natural background dirt tiling
– added semi-procedural ambient piano music when lonely
– tree block takes 3 hits to chop
– new png map format colors
– unified minimap colors with png map
– added team colored bridges and door to minimap
– change door open mechanics (doors react to direction keys)
– power bar loads up/down continously
– power bar stays at maximum position longer
– knight can only jab or hit with full power
– knight power slash adds speeds
– added sword hit knock back
– improved actor sprites
– removed dead actor collisions
– charged arrows knock back
– louder charged “pop” sound
– knock down lasts until fallen on ground
– all players collide
– fixed team kills giving points
– changed screenshot format to .png
– screenshots can be taken with PRINT SCREEN button too
– archers can duck with crouch button to hide
– added damage heart indicators
– added bloodsplat on hit
– fixed bottom of map collision
– map cycle is reloaded every map (can be edited while server is running)
– block can be dropped by builder only while holding crouch
– fixed outpost giving 3 hearts
– added default fall damage
– temporary fix for camera going bananas
– players retrieve their points and statistics on rejoining a server
– even more votes needed for players with good score
– builder earns points only by placing similar blocks next to each other
– increased running speed
– archer releases arrow if killed
– added console variable /v_fastrender (set to 1 to increase FPS)
– new combat move: jumping on enemy stuns him; or shield down causes damage
– increased falling max speed
– fall damage has 3 stages depending on fall velocity: slight stun, 1 heart damage; death
– knight max charge time increased slightly
– knight slash takes 1.5 hearts
– added small blood splat for 1 heart damage; big blood splat for more damage
– new combat move: double slash
– out of screen sprites rendering optimization
– sprite depth sorting is based on y position
– spikes give more damage at fall damage velocity
– removed menu vote kick
– fixed spikes not spiking dead bodies
– added server variable sv_gold_only (aka Gold Server; allow only premium account players to play)
– added server variable sv_allow_globals_mods (i set to 1 global KAG moderators and admins can kick/ban players)
– added player colors in scoreboard (green – moderators; yellow – premium)
– tree gives 2 arrows now
– knockback makes you fall from ladder
– servers browser now shows gamemode, passworded and gold server info
– fixed server not loading next map in map cycle after round won
– fixed clients disconnecting while server map generation
– bridges don’t open from beneath
– title image stretches on different resolutions
– ladders save from fall damage
– fixed blood particle steppy offsets
– fixed multiple resupplying on tent
– removed resupply timer / resupply only works until moved off tent / healing works always
– bomb is dropped on knockback
– fixing giving materials on tent/outpost
– outposts are 2x tougher
– added wall bump sounds
– no spawning on tent in capture
– shield pushes everyone not shielded
– pushing shield against enemy with high velocity causes knockback
– fixed gibs emitting blood
– added new main menu items:
   [Video->Smooth shader] hq2x pixel smoother;
   [Video->Less effects] for faster backgrounds;
   [Sound->Volume] type the volume between 0.0 and 1.0 (sorry for not adding a gauge yet);
   [Sound->Ambient music]  
– added block labels in menu
– requirement for support while building removed
– fixed admin menu cmds on localhost

NEW/OLD MAP COLOR FORMAT 

I wanted to just make a graphics upgrade release but I’ve dug too deep into the network code and found too many issues with it. My conscience doesn’t allow me to not fix it :). There are numerous things I am fixing that affect hitting other players. I’ve implemented “unlagged” collision detection (which is something that works in Soldat; if you want to geek out on this concept google “quake unlagged”). I have also fixed the long time disconnection of all players after map restart. Test version hopefully today.

-EDIT-

New test version released. Information how to get it here. Let’s play it now!

MM 

More hitches and more good news

The hitches preventing us from releasing right now include:

• A lack of proper testing of the anti-lag code, made worse by Michal losing his lag-simulator program.
• A few graphical bugs here and there.
• The mass-imposter issue (see the previous post)

However, some good news:

• Michal’s swapped over to NetBeans to apparently make cross compiling easier. It took half a day or so to adjust, but he thinks he’s got it working. Basically, for those of you who don’t care how it happens, this means the OSX build should happen soon!
• We’ll hopefully be testing tweaks to the anti-lag code over the next 48 hours in the test build – If you’d like to be a part of that watch the test build thread on the forums. NOTE: this means test build servers will be able to function, again.

We’re keen to get this build through the door so rest assured we’re doing as much as we can to hurry it along. Tentative release date if everything goes swimmingly is over the weekend, otherwise most likely next week some time.

Geti

Impersonation Issues

There’s been a bug discovered and heavily exploited recently that has allowed users to impersonate each other. Apparently, Poe’s found the bug and sorted it out but we still have to track down all the duplicate accounts.

If you suspect impersonation or are having other issues with players please report them in this forum thread. Hopefully we can get this sorted out before the gold server release, though if the exploit works the way I think it does we should be able to identify legitimate gold players next build regardless of impersonators.

Geti

Pre-orders of Gold Servers Access are over

Just in time because I have completed coding the premium account functionality. The premium players count reached 100 (it’s 102 on the users list because admins are counted there).  Thank you very much! This shows we have an awesome community that is willing to pay back for the fun they get. Now wait for the new version to be released and wait for more awesome stuff to be introduced to premium accounts. Payments will be renewed in a couple weeks after we got enough servers running.

MM 

A note to server owners.

In light of a recent flood of complaints from regular players repeatedly getting kicked from the popular servers, some advice:

Server owners can turn off votekick quite effectively by raising the kick % to 100. That coupled with rcon moderation means no-one gets kick-spammed and griefers get removed quickly.

Don’t be stingy with your rcon password, moderation and no votekick makes your server a lot more attractive, especially to those players who are constantly kicked out.

We’ll be removing the votekick this build if all goes as planned, and increasing the visibility of tab-kick to new players. The current issue with knee-jerk voting should be curbed that way.

Interview Over! Also, delays D:

Right here: http://www.qubetubers.com/ Should be saved under King Arthur’s gold review or similar.

Original post:

I’m muted in the channel at the moment, Michal’s having a chat with the guy.

Sorry guys, the official update to the graphics build has been delayed! We’ll be updating the test build thoroughly while we iron out the issues, we want to make certain that it’s presentable to the public before releasing it.

We’re going to find some sort of middle ground, we’re hoping to get a Release Candidate test version out the door asap, but it’s looking more like a week of for the release rather than a few days.