Posts on Jan 2015

[KAG] Pre-Build Summary – Simple Join and New Maps!

Hey guys, another pre-build update here to keep you posted on things coming some time next week. We got a good response doing this last time, so hopefully keeping you in the know beforehand can help each update go smoother.


Hopefully there will be fewer furrowed brows all around with the new simple join system!

Done:

  • Simple Join:
    The existing “quick join” buttons have been replaced by a full “simple join” menu. The server browser remains as an option for more advanced players.
    The simple join menu lets players quickly set parameters for a game size and mode to play, and then join the best match.
    The default settings are “dont care” for both size and mode, resulting in joining the best ping, active game.
    Simple join also allows joining modded servers by default, which will hopefully help boost the population in modded servers and alleviate modders concerns of the server browser “blocking” people from trying mods.
    Note that this whole system is still an interim measure, as Norill is working on new menus that will eventually replace this, but if you have any quick suggestions for it feel free to bring them up in the thread. A more sophisticated scoring system may be developed if needed, but the previous (five pass) system was very “opaque” to players, which is something we’d like to avoid.
    A screenshot of the new system is provided here.
  • Maps:
    Multiple maps have been added and removed from the CTF and TDM map pools. Most of these are community sourced and some of them have issues, so we’ll be looking for feedback on which ones should continue to be included, and any possible changes to be made.
  • Bug Fixes and Small Changes:
    A few bugs have been fixed, most notable ones being more server crashes in the vote system, a server “lock up” issue, and “command missing” spam in vote scripts.
    Trampolines were changed to do slightly larger bounces for a few things (most notably spikes), and digging at the edges of TDM maps was removed.

Still To Do:

  • Controls/“Desync” Fixes:
    While these issues are actually ongoing, they’ve become much more common with all the control handling rework from trench run, and can cause synchronisation issues for some players among other bad things.
    Michal will be looking into this and we’re working with testers to try to find all existing cases that cause trouble. This has been hard to find and fix because its a result of multiple systems interacting, not just simple errors in one part of the code.
    We’re hoping we’ll have at least handled the worst of it by early next week.

As always, we look forward to bringing this build out as soon as possible!

Have Fun,

Max/Geti

[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.

image

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

King Arthur’s Gold is now available on GOG.com!

You can get the game for 24% OFF 🙂 Also, if you like KAG, we’d be grateful for a review on the product page on GOG.com. Thank you for all the reviews and ratings so far!

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