Posts on Jan 2015

[KAG] BUILD 1373 – Tidying Up

This build has quite a bit of minor tidying work here and there to make way for the fun new additions coming down the road (see the recent post on single player and menus for more info!). It also has some balance tweaks and a couple of new features, as well as crash and regression fixes.

Some messes are easier to tidy than others.

A reminder of the major changes this time around:

• Siege Engine “HUD”
  Thanks to makmoud98 for a nice addition that’s been missing from KAG since classic – charge meters on the siege engines.
• Trampolines back to Full Power!
  This was a small script mistake, sorted out now.
• Smooth Shader Fixed
  See below for a caveat, but the smooth shader should work again, for those missing it.
• No AngelScript Console on Client
  This seems like a minor change, but is a really important security measure. AngelScript code entered into the client console will not be executed. Will still work fine over rcon of course, for players with seclev “ALL”.
• No Gold Droughts
  Gold now “drops” from shops that require it when they’re destroyed, including tunnels, to prevent “Gold Drought” and enable late-game tech and tunnel building again.
  Materials of all sorts now fit through 1 tile gaps as well, to prevent them blocking things so often.
• Archers (very slightly) faster while charging shots
  We changed the speed modifier to 75% instead of 70%, nothing drastic.
• Camera rotation works with tiles
  This small (but tricky) fix is important for some new mods, especially Shiprekt mods that add islands using the tilemap!
• Scripts limit raised
  The amount of unique scripts you can have per-server has been raised to 2048 – this is a crazy amount of content to be syncing to the client but we’ve had people reach the previous 1250 script limit, so its been upped to 2k.
• Custom Heads
  With the addition of these heads, we are now “out” of custom head slots for donors (the last 2 are reserved for our current interns). Thanks to all the supporters who donated or contributed so much over the last few years, it means a lot. Enjoy your heads! Everyone else: be sure to congratulate the generous in-game.

Notes on the smooth shader: Some people have reported graphical glitches in the bottom right while using this. We’ll look into why this is happening once we can reliably reproduce this on our machines – for now those people will have to play with smooth shader off. PLEASE let us know what sort of machine you’re running if you’re affected by this glitch, if it happens for you all the time, and so on.

Full Changelog:
[added] archer shop allows you to buy special arrows into inventory + displaces normal arrows down to a single stack. Thanks to makmoud98 for idea and partial implementation.
[added] charge bar to catapult + angle bar for ballista (thanks makmoud98!)
[added] connecting to server message on top of screen
[added] gold does not decay, and shops using it (in CTF) drop a gold stack on death
[added] progress bar for precaching files
[added] progress bar when building downloaded scripts
[added] progress bar when building md5 hashes ("Be nice to each other...")
[added] Sasquash, Mek7/The_French_One (shared) and TheDirtySwine heads, Congratulations!
		We are now officially out of head slots, all remaining slots have been reserved.
		Thanks to all the donors and contributors!
[added] vote fixes from norill: crashes, better seclev support, better menus, fixed broken cooldowns
[added] warning when a config file isn't saved cause the location is unsafe
[fixed] broken screenshot key
[fixed] crash when player to be kicked leaves the game
[fixed] fire rendering with rotated camera
[fixed] helpful death tips too low on screen and dont show long enough
[fixed] login window appearing after joining game from command line and going to menu
[fixed] mines not being assigned owners reliably
[fixed] missing collisions on tiles on bottom of map (they're still ugly though)
[fixed] modded filter state being set to screwy values at times
[fixed] no objects on localhost for the first map
[fixed] non-bomb ballista hitting no-build/indestructible tiles
[fixed] scripting interface not saving to manual/interface
[fixed] shaders making the game render too light during any fade (was alpha-blending)
[fixed] smooth shader not rendering
[fixed] standard folder creation on first run (crash on first run)
[fixed] tilemap rendering wrong when screen rotated
[fixed] tiles on bottom of map have no collisions - they're still ugly though
[fixed] trampoline "too weak"
[fixed] various "help" bugs (showing when it shouldn't, not saving help settings...)
[fixed] water rendering incorrectly for rotated camera
[modified] archer is (very slightly) faster while charging shots (75% speed instead of 70%)
[modified] materials fit in 1 tile holes
[modified] Script Send limit is 2048 now - we wont go higher than this, optimise your script counts for heaven's sake!
[modified] scripts send limit increased to 2048
[modified] security seclevs example files to include vote_cancel
[modified] TDM menu is 3-wide instead of 4 (looks better with the header)
[removed] scripts access through console as client
[script] bound CBlob.wasOnLadder
[script] bound int getJoysticksCount()
[script][fixed] debug messages not appearing from script debug() and printInt.

Have Fun!

Geti/Max

King Arthur’s Gold behind the scenes – single player features, controller support?

The new KAG build is just around the corner, so I thought meanwhile I’ll update you on some exciting things that are happening behind the scenes of King Arthur’s Gold development.

Currently we’re concentrating on single player, the menus and the engine. And how does controller support and local co-op sound? More info below 🙂

SINGLE PLAYER

a) Mechanisms
Skinney is working on mechanisms to be used in Sandbox, Challenges and TDM. This will allow us to create even more interesting castles, traps and the like for single-player missions, without having to code everything manually. Also, the mechanisms will be available for use in community maps as well, so fun is to be had by all 😉

b) Missions / Campaign
The single-player will consist of separate campaign missions to complete with a set class and feature an overarching story. You will be able to learn how to play (so that we can make the game friendlier for new players), improve your skills and play bonus missions after you finish the campaign.

c) Unlocking heads
We may hook single-player progress up to a set of unlockable heads so you can show off your expertise in multi-player. We’d love to hear your opinion on this.

CONTROLLER SUPPORT AND LOCAL CO-OP

How cool would it be to plug in some controllers, invite your friends over and play KAG in your living room? We’ll try to make it reality, but keep in mind that it will take some time.

MENUS

Norill is moving them to a fully scripted system before they get a full layout redesign. He’s about halfway there. We plan to have a poll on the official forums about the menu layout, so that you can tell us what works best in your opinion.

ENGINE

We’ve been fixing long term bugs related to modding, evalutating optimisation possibilities and improving access to a lot of components. Work from Trench Run is continually being ported over as well, so the more we work on TR, the more features can appear in KAG 🙂

Hope it’s sounds good to you. We’d love to hear your opinions and suggestions (via Facebook/Twitter)!

Maciej/trainchaser

[KAG] Build Next Week, Feature Summary

Hey everyone,

We’ve got a new build but it didn’t receive enough testing before this weekend for release, so we’re holding it until next week rather than have to try to monitor it over the weekend.

This will mostly be a “fix” build, but contains quite a few long time coming fixes, some nice little features (some from the community!) and a few small tweaks to balance. An overview of what you can look forward to next week:

• No Gold Droughts
  Gold now “drops” from shops that require it when they’re destroyed, including tunnels, to prevent “Gold Drought” and enable late-game tech and tunnel building again.
• Siege Engine “HUD”
  Thanks to makmoud98 for a nice addition that’s been missing from KAG since classic – charge meters on the siege engines.
• Trampolines back to Full Power!
  This was a small script mistake, sorted out now.
• Archers (very slightly) faster while charging shots
  We changed the speed modifier to 75% instead of 70%
• Camera rotation works with tiles
  This small (but tricky) fix is important for some new mods, especially Shiprekt mods that add islands using the tilemap!
• Scripts limit raised
  The amount of unique scripts you can have per-server has been raised to 2048 – this is a crazy amount of content to be syncing to the client but we’ve had people reach the previous 1250 script limit, so its been upped to 2k.

There are a couple more fixes but you’ll have to wait til next week for the full changelog :^)

Have Fun!

Max/Geti