Posts on Aug 2013

B847 – Shark noms, Balance Tweaks, Map Changes, Installers and More!

This build encompasses a few tweaks we’ve wanted to make for a while, as well as a few more experimental things which may be redacted quickly, haha.

Clearly most importantly, the shark now has a chomp animation. More work needs to be put into polishing it, but it helps make the shark feel at least a little less static.

We’ve dropped quite a lot of bedrock into the vanilla maps to help with the massive erosion we’ve been seeing, though other measures will obviously need to be taken.

Installers are now automatically generated every build, so there should be less/nothing to patch after installing the game for the first time!

There have been several balance related tweaks

• Removed satchel from knight – we felt like the satchel was the “odd one out” and very unsatisfying to use of the knight weapons. Fire is now reserved for archer use only, with knight’s unique mode of destruction still being exploding things with extreme prejudice (kegs).
• Slashing a shield now results in a slightly shorter stun – meaning you can double slash a shield to harm it, or slash and then jab to cause damage, but not chain slash after slash. This represents a move away from simply chaining slashes as long as possible to win, and hopefully improves the depth of the mind games knights play as they hack each other apart.
• Builder now gets mats from breaking solid constructed blocks – this should help encourage battle builders to get out there and help get over or through enemy constructions.
• Archer fletches 2 arrows from trees – pretty self explanatory.
• Minimum 30 wood for builder and 5 arrows for archer on respawn. This should help with the wood drought just a little and prevents archers being helpless while a hall is getting taken..
• Bombs change team when picked up – this lets you save team-mates and kill enemies with thrown-back bombs and means theres a little bit less “wtf” when an enemy throws a bomb at you for zero damage.
• Fixed mines going through doors – as if there wasn’t enough silly stuff going on :^)
• Boats do more damage on collision – experimental, makes it very very hard to board an enemy boat while it’s moving but feels kinda janky. Will need to be tweaked.

Many more changes in the log of course, see below and enjoy!

[fixed] vaulting is broken
[modified] archer fletches 2 arrows from trees etc
[modified] moved warboat to its own folder in boats
[removed] satchel
[fixed] knight can cut tiles he shouldn't be able to
[modified] background image for installer
[modified] kag.ico has updated knight in it
[modified] bombs and water bombs change team when picked up - so you can toss bo
mbs back and damage enemies
[fixed] getting out of water
[modified] changed jump anims a little
[modified] a bunch of war maps have more bedrock now as temp measure vs extreme
terrain erosion
[modified] updated PNG loader to include everything again (thanks jackitch)
[modified] boats make much more damage when hitting enemies from all angles
[added] attached vehicles convert too on capture
[fixed] archer climbing trees newly grown trees on network
[modified] easier to get out of water against wall
[added] shield sliding (point mouse down and use shield while dropping at high s
peed)
[added] visual indicator of vehicle capture
[added] logs can be used as catapult ammo against infantry
[removed] debug mode from regular players
[fixed] crates not unpacking in water and on boats
[fixed] autoupdate_ignore_custom.cfg (1231)
[fixed] able to log into someone elses account on a shared PC (1232)
[fixed] mine goes through doors
[added] shark chomp anim
[added] getDistanceTo(CBlob@ other) in CBlob

Max/Geti

EDIT: Forgot to say that shield sliding has started being implemented, knights can now slide around on their shields (aim at the floor with some speed). We’re looking at how to fit this into combat to ensure everything is balanced and most importantly FUN, stay tuned!

Changes to User Panel at KAG2D.com, Desura keys!

As you can see there are few new options available in the panel.  I’ll describe them briefly (most of them are self-explanatory).

“Get your Steam Key!” * – mainly a placeholder for the future. When we’ll release KAG on steam this will be the place to get your Steam key from (if you have bought the game from our website and not Steam, that is).

"Get your Desura Key!” * – here you can get your Desura key.

"Download Art Booklet” * – it speaks for itself.

There are also old options which were available all the time. You are able to change your account credentials, e-mail and delete your account completely (be warned though, this action cannot be reverted). Additionally, we have set up in place way to tell us if you agree to receive e-mails from us. We don’t have any newsletter yet – but it will come in its time.

* – options available only to paid users.

Cheers,
Lucas/Furai

B844 – Cleaning up, Knight digging, Graphical tweaks

B844 is incoming, fixing everything introduced last build by untested changes and adding some much needed intuitiveness to knight digging among other things.

Knights can now dig in dirt and break damaged wood blocks by simply jabbing or slashing at them, no precise close aiming required.

Knight throwables are now shown behind their sprite rather than in front, which should make it easier to tell what they’re doing while throwing things. Small tweak, but it worked well in classic. Knight throwables also don’t swap selected type at the wrong time.

As a bonus, attacking inside ballistas, catapults etc should work fine now.

Trampolines are now very directional, which means there’s more engineering involved in making a knight-o-pult from one tower to the next. Should cut down on the number of 90 degree sideways trampolines being used to circumvent normal defences (at least somewhat). Balancing will be needed of course, but we’ll see how the public reacts first.

We’ve done some cleaning up of a few scripts and some engine code as well, nothing too drastic but should help reduce the number of bugs in the future.

Still outstanding is that bug with ladders through blocks and a lot of more miscellaneous stuff. We’ll see if we can make that before the weekend but it’s not super likely as its quite a complicated issue (tilemap containing actors overlapping other tiles).

As a small note, a few of the fixes made are not fully optimised, especially the one about hitinfos – these will be optimised more in coming days.

[fixed] trampoline not bouncing objects online
[fixed] server crash for real now
[fixed] possible to cross red barrier in vehicle
[fixed] chat colors in console
[fixed] hitinfos missing some times, need to optimise a lot though
[modified] trees no longer hurt players when they fall on them
[modified] trees hit ground earlier to prevent logs jammed in walls etc.
[added] tags for things that block knight attacks instead of some obscure check - fixed #1096
[modified] knights can break dirt without having cursor too close
[modified] back ladder zone on warboat is visible
[fixed] knight can attack through doors/traps
[modified] fixed water not going to the edge of the map
[modified] satchel sprite to be less like bread, needs complete overhaul 
[added] behind when attached script for blobs to appear behind parent when attached
[modified] bomb, satchel, keg appear behind character at shoulder (like classic) 
[modified] keg fuse is easier to see
[added] autoupdate_ignore_custom.cfg to default installation
[modified] water bomb behind when attached too
[added] more smoke effects when stone and wood destructed
[modified] pick spawn menu is in lower part of screen
[modified] pick spawn menu vanishes after clicking
[fixed] server LAG warnings not appearing in console 
[modified] trampolines are much better for construction and still allow big jumps, might need TDM maps etc modified though.
[modified] trampolines have controlled height - press down for less bounce up for more. 
[fixed] annoying knight bombs changing when you still have some of the currently selected one
[modified] chatcommon can summon scrolls with names that have spaces
[fixed] incorrectly handled non-truncated links from twitter - launcher bug

Have fun!

Max/Geti

Make a KAG Beta Trailer and Win!

Click HERE for the forum thread!

General Point of This Contest: Make a Trailer/Video of KAG Beta Gameplay. The person who makes the best video will receive 5 codes to give out to whoever they want. Winner will also get a custom title if they so wish. Second Place will get 3 codes and third will get 1. One additional code will be given out to the best post in this thread.

That totals 8 codes to win and 8 happy friends or family around the world! I guess you could technically do it based on the DRM Free Singleplayer part of the game too to win yourself access to multiplayer!

Click HERE for countdown to the contest end.

Be sure to read the rules in full.

Have at it, video dudes!

Max/Geti

B840 – New maps and Fixes

To start off the week we’ve shaken up the maps for Take The Halls – we’ll continue to modify them as the balance shifts around but they should help address things like constantly flooded halls, too much distance between halls and the like. Be sure to give feedback on the new maps and the changes to old one in the forum thread.

We’ve also fixed the majority of the movement issues, but there are still a few like getting out of water being a bummer and it still being possible to eek your way up walls by jumping. These will be dealt with as soon as we can, but we figured this build would help with the overall balance of the game enough to get it out.

Changelog as normal below

[fixed] trader material exchange
[modiifed] boats more reliably destruct doors
[fixed] spectator chat not being gray
[modified] blademire ridge has smaller distances between halls and is less jagged
[modified] more map tweaks and shortening
[modified] most maps have shorter water and distance to halls
[modified] shark and bison regens a bit longer
[added] EarthMoving WAR map
[modified] jungle map has lower halls, is smaller, has 2 underground halls (total 5)
[added] new map Voyager to WAR mapcycle
[added] first team hall added on WAR map has research
[fixed] reverted knight animation optimisation stuff, hopefully fixed "stuck" wallsliding anim
[fixed] infinite walljumping while shieldgliding
[modified] dinghy can be picked up when not on map if it's out of the water
[modified] cant pickup dinghy with someone in it
[modified] cant pickup dinghy unless its touching the map (ie at side of lake or on ground)
[modified] warboat ladder area now visible on sprite
[fixed] boulder breaking bedrock/other natural tiles
[modified] cant climb on held ladders (too many issues)

Max/Geti

B837 – Saturday Patch

Sorry for the issues from yesterday folks – fixed almost all of them below as you can see. Not too many changes because it’s the weekend, just spent 2 hours testing it and it seems much smoother than it was, with any big issues like infinite walljumping especially nipped in the bud.

The new knight doubleslash physics are pretty quick, so might take some adjusting to, but I think they’ll be a fun addition for parkour and stop double slash feeling “useless”.

We’ll work more on balance with slashes and archers over the next week, for now – Enjoy

[fixed] flooding in murkshire hills
[modified] autoupdate occurs before reading the news
[modified] knight super slash throws like regular slash
[modified] knight movement with sword is less slow (fixed old code)
[modified] double slash movement less restricted - allows lots of parkour
[modified] archers slightly faster while drawing arrow (0.7 slow instead of 0.6)
[removed] almost all slowness in air
[fixed] infinite walljumping

Max/Geti

Fixed Launcher bug and Flooding

The launcher freeze bug should be fixed in the next few minutes or so, whenever the patch is made ready by the build server.

Also fixed flooding on murkshire hills as players seem pretty determined to ruin that map, so now it’s at least harder.

We’ll be looking at the issues with knight combat soon, can’t give an exact time estimate though.

B836 – Performance improvements & Movement polish

Working hard on the beta yeah! (playing a bit too! :). We gotta take a break for the weekend though after this patch. After that we’re back to code more fixes and probably CTF.

We optimized the code a lot. 32 player servers should be smooth now, if not we’ll work on it more.

Movement is polished a bit: more drag, less sliding on edges, more like classic. Still not finished tweaking it though.

[modified] increase bomb tech time and decreased pyro tech time

[modified] boats now have specific icons in minimap

[fixed] boat sprite goes skew when turning around and probably more related bugs

[fixed] fall damage and sounds

[fixed] stomping

[fixed] other issues because of getVelocity() fix in scripts

[added] keg explodes on impact when lit and launched from cata

[modified] lowered warmup mats a bit

[fixed] other builders not auto-picking dropped builder mats

[removed] trading mats for gold in TTH

[modified] boats dont collide with mats

[modified] faster decaying

LOTS of optimizations in scripts, physics and network code performance. 

Official Servers

There are currently 4 official servers up, running 16 slots each, one Team Deathmatch and one Take The Halls in both EU and US. Furai is currently in charge of managing them. Eventually these servers may hopefully be properly integrated with the kag support systems allowing calling for a guard with chat commands and will be properly moderated like any good server.

We’ll be monitoring and improving the gameplay state of these servers as much as possible, looking to the community for comments with regards to settings and map cycles.

This should help bear a fair bit of beta traffic, but we’re missing Aus and Asia coverage, so the community will have to cover those regions.

For the moment, they’re just 100% vanilla TDM and TTH

As far as I know, the Aus server hosting should be mostly covered by the Server hosted by Kaizo and Lavalord, I’m not sure of demand in Asia for the time being, though I’ve seen Filipino players on Aus servers so I presume they’re undersupplied.

If anyone is wondering how to set up a server, we’ll be working on updating the documentation for this soon, but for now it does actually work more or less “out of the box”, hosting a TDM server on port 50301 by default.

Feel free to discuss the finer points of server hosting and coverage in the thread, some discussion on that now that the beta is public is probably overdue.

Max/Geti

B835 – Fixes and Mapcycle Changes

Hey guys, another patch to deal with some of the strange things from last build and some annoyances people have been having 🙂

We’ve reshuffled the map cycle because we’re as sick of the maps as you. We’re going to work on some more maps taking into account the finer points of the gamemode fairly soon as well. Feel free to do your own experiments on your servers to figure out what works, would be nice to have a bit of variety. We’ll be incorporating anything excellent that we see into the vanilla maps as well.

Fixes include the workshops bug, placing spikes in hall, archer arrows damage and appearance bugs, and much more, full changelog below, big changes in bold as usual.

[modified] necromancer orbs more dangerous
[modified] challenge level bugs fixed
[fixed] arrow does only 0.5 damage or sometimes none, and sometimes misses shield
[added] special case ignore parent facing code for layers that shouldn’t turn when parent sprite turns
[fixed] arrow turns wrong way when shot blob turns around
[modified] stun from arrows only when they’re full charge (less flinch from weak arrows)
[fixed] cata rocks doing piss weak damage
[fixed] workbench expiring in 2 seconds
[modified] trees dont clip tilemap so much (or at least look nicer while doing it, and provide more places to hide)
[fixed] walljump fumbling
[fixed] building spikes in no build zone
[script] fixed crash in sprite onTick when blob had an error
[modified] faster hall capture in single
[modified] hopefully better boat collisions
[added] easier access to warboat rear
[fixed] bomb destroying bedrock
[added] camera centers to middle ofmap on map change
[modified] reshuffled default map cycle
[fixed] unable to pack catapult
[modified] can’t pack catapult with ppl inside of it
[fixed] drill sound in inventory

As you can see we’re working hard at the moment, we may have another patch before the weekend or may hold it for a bit longer if there’s no issues preventing play like the workbench and arrows.

See you ingame!

Edit: MM would like to add that if you could run the server though gdb and provide any backtraces from crashes to us that’d be very helpful. Server admins take note.

Edit Two: I just found and fixed an issue with TDM where it would constantly restart, it also fixes a lot of console spam in affected servers. The patch will be a short while after the release of B835 so be sure to repatch any TDM servers you have.