Blog

Build 228! Finally!

Restart your game to auto-patch!

We’re probably happier than you guys to see this one out the door, haha. It’s taken way too long.

First thing you’ll notice is the different menus and the awesome menu music by David Pencil (in-game music coming soon), but that’s not all that’s changed:

Collapses are the largest in-game alteration – we’re working to make them more predictable at the moment (short on time…) but I think most players will like the extra residue and danger of a large collapse, as well as limited ability to ride atop blocks in a collapse – we’re hoping to get a proper rubble system happening soon too, I’ve got a few ideas there. I’m planning on adding to the effects first chance I get, been watching a lot of building demolitions.

(be goddamn careful)

Customisation is now done in the settings menu rather than in-game – we think this makes a lot more sense but might easily confuse people.

There’s now a quick-join feature in-game! We’ll probably have to tweak the selection algorithm a little with real-world

There’s now some access to the internet in-game, allowing you to browse the forums, chat on IRC and read the KAG manual without opening your browser! This seems to have issues with older graphics cards, which we’ll look into.

A bunch of smaller fixes have been snuck in as well – it no longer says “his” when girls kill people, autobalance should be less retarded and less rude, physics should be less CPU intensive, bridges aren’t so cheap, doors aren’t so expensive, resources are lost in ripping out bridges and doors, there’s clear terms of service, see the changelog for more!

For server hosts, you can now specify overrides for the number of slots, IP and port number on the command line, as well as a break_time_static variable that lets you set the building time at the start in seconds that’s independent of the number of players, due to popular request. See the changelog for details.

Needless to say, there are probably some very strange bugs that’ll only become apparent through the heavier testing of a public build so we’ll be running bugfixes as needed. Hit up bugs.kag2d.com to report issues to get them dealt with sooner!

Changes build 203-228:

– added pre-game launcher
– added (windows only for now) ingame web browser with links to:
  (manual, wiki, IRC chat, creating account)
– added server favorites
– added in-game Manual by SirSalami
– removed player name mouse hover chat
– clicked server in server browser updates ping meter icon
– improved first ping performance in server browser
– added double click join to server browser
– added building time/match started information in server preview
– added menu music
– changed collapse physics
– fixed ambient sounds
– fixed screenshot folder on Linux
– fixed crash in editor mode when jumping on bridge
– fixed builder can’t pick 3rd heart
– fixed door pick sound being wood
– builder has to stand still to build
– autoupdater does not require restart
– changed collapse physics
– console accepts and / for commands
– bridge takes 20 wood
– bridges and ladders can’t be built only against dirt background
– optimized all game object collisions
– icons in scoreboard are double size
– class icons point in same direction and builder is distinguished from sword more
– can’t shield against falling blocks
– can’t destroy rooms after match has started (anti-griefing)
– fixed far view on fixed camera for lower resolutions
– added disclaimer after server startup for sv_allow_globals_mods variable
– rooms require 5 hits to destroy
– changed some HUD fonts (including above head chat)
– added command-line option to start server with specific ip,port,slots eg.
  ip 123.124.125.126 port 50213 slots 32
– added break_time_static for a build time that doesn’t change with number of players

Geti + MM

Discuss on forums!

More voting to do!

Oh god so many buttons to press I know, but we’re really hoping for your support on this one. Be sure to check out the other indie titles vying for the top-100 (after you’ve voted for KAG of course 😉

2011 Indie of the Year Awards via Indie DB

(scroll down to the area with the nice trees after clicking)

Geti

Bug Reports!

So, we get a lot of bug reports, naturally, as the game is in alpha and we simply don’t have time to fix everything when it comes to making a release. Problem is, a lot of those reports are duplicates and reading through them burns precious fun development time!

We’ve decided to implement mantis bug tracking (same thing Bay12Games use for tracking all the bugs in dwarf fortress, so at least we know it scales well) so that duplicate reports are minimised and bug reports are separated from the discussion on the forums.

Check out bugs.kag2d.com!

If you find something screwy in-game, search for it first and then if it’s not there, report it. We’ll be addressing them in any spare time we can muster – do note however that as we’re more or less about to make a release many of the 203 bugs are fixed!

A story about my recent experience with EA.

Excuse me while I vent a little.

You know that game that came out about a month ago, Battlefield 3?

Pretty fun right? With the shooting and the giant maps and the tanks and explosions and marksman headshot +500…

I assume so, anyway. I played and enjoyed the beta, but insofar EA haven’t actually let me download the game ever since I pre-ordered. This wasn’t some $10 indie alpha pre-order either. This set me back 80 bucks.

Here’s how the last month has gone:

Day -1, I try to preload: It’s there in the menu, it has a nice shiny download button just like the beta did, and it’s going to be fucking awesome. Come to papa you tasty slice of shooting heaven… Now, to wait 5 hours while it downloads…

*windows “warning” sound*

For some unknown reason at some point towards the end of the 11GB download for the full version, I disconnected from EA’s “activation server”.

As a precautionary measure, Origin deletes the entire download.

…The entire, mostly done, 11GB download.

I’ve seen some bad, un-user-friendly DRM, but this is the first time I’ve had to deal with something this heavy-handed. I told myself “It’s likely some issue with preloading, Origin is quite new, it’ll be sorted after release week”.

Release week came and went and I tried again.

Same thing. Another 10GB wasted.

Now, I live in Australia. Bandwidth isn’t cheap here (As you might have noticed with how frugal I’m having to be with the Aussie Official Server…) so the combined 20GB pushed me over my download limit for the month. Not only was I without my game, I was also stuck with internet throttled down to dial-up speed.

At this point, naturally I’m less than happy. I give up for a few weeks, then give in to temptation again. I really want to play this game!

Same thing. Another 8GB wasted. I guess at least this time I’ve got 2GB spare…

As such, I’ve given up for now. I’ll see if I can install from a friend’s disk or something, but I’m not going to get my hopes up. I’ve probably purchased some download only licence.

I think the lesson to be learned here is: Let people play your game. I’ve been looking forward to the next “real” Battlefield for years now, but I still haven’t actually been able to play it, even though I’ve payed for the damn thing and downloaded it 2.5 times over!

The ridiculous part of this is that from what I understand, cracked versions of the game are missing the DRM layer. Pirates get the fun bit, without all the bullshit, for free, and thus the only people affected by DRM are people who’ve payed for the game legitimately!

I’ve paid a company 80 dollars to spend about 28GB of download on… nothing. I haven’t been able to play it. However, buying voxatron from lexaloffle as part of last months humble bundle was painless, cost me 15 bucks for a cheerful, colourful adventure and a peek at some very interesting technology. I also picked up two other games as a bonus. When you buy alpha access to KAG, as soon as your paypal payment goes through we send you a code to redeem for full version access to everything we’ve got finished.

What’s so hard about letting people play a game, EA? *grumble*

tl;dr: This is me trying to play a game I’ve been anticipating for years that I’m unable to play due to some borked copyright protection protocol. I wish they’d be less stoogey about it and let me play:

Geti

Aus Server up for testing!

I’ve been trying to find a good hosting partner for KAG in Australia for a long time, hopefully I’ve found a suitable company now 🙂 I’ll be running the server as a trial for the next month to monitor bandwidth usage etc, over the next week it’ll likely stay as 16 players only to make sure it’s not going to explode with traffic, but feel free to give it a shot.

The current settings:

• 12 players
• 512×64 map (long and short, prevents skybridges and overpowered catapults)
• Default generator only
• Default CTF

If all goes well this week I’ll be bumping the player count to 24 and attaching an RTDM server as well for some more low-latency fun! Sorry for the time off the air!

We’re busy as beavers at the moment, hopefully that’s reflected in playable advances soon 😉

EDIT: forum topic here.

EDIT: dropped the players to 12 while we sort out odd networking issues, sorry!

Geti

Oh So Close

We’re pretty much on the home stretch with this build, just sorting out the menu presentation. All things going according to plan, we’re hoping to have it out tomorrow so we can get started on some fun stuff!

Things still on the todo list include:

• Try to get the Mac build up to scratch
• Tweak menu layouts a little more
• Ensure it’s working properly on all systems
• Optimise collapses
• Ensure there are no new nasty bugs.

Sadly, no new test build.

Some of it’s still going to be a bit cut and dry by the time the release makes it out, but we’ll be running bugfixes as normal alongside normal development. We’re very keen to be out of this cycle because we’re a month behind where we wanted to be content wise.

Keep your eyes on the blog!

Geti

Off for the weekend, Quick Update.

I’m going camping, back monday. MM might be around, but be nice to the forum staff while I’m gone, yeah?

Test build coming fairly soon, if Michal can merge all my changes and get it out over the weekend then he will. We might have to drop ingame browser functionality for now which would mean no wiki, or IRC in-game, but less headaches for us. Either way we’re hoping to have this build done and dusted as soon as possible because both of us are sick to death of fixes and interfaces for now.

(translation: zombies, boulders and powder kegs as soon as we can make them)

Geti

I’m working hard on a “one-click” deployment system. Which ideally would allow me to compile KAG for 3 systems (win, mac, linux) at once and instantly upload them for you – available as autoupdate. I’ve been working hard on making the necessary scripts and even made a small tool called Wizard which takes care of uploading all the necessary files. Along with the GUI changes allowing you to see the autoupdate progress bar this will be a really nice addition. We’ll be needing this once we start pumping out content and updating REALLY frequently. I hope that starts happening next week.

Have fun!

MM

Vote KAG! (for serious this time)

OHEY EVERYONE.

http://www.indiegamemag.com/igm-awards-2011-vote/

Vote King Arthur’s Gold for Best Free Game of 2011 in exchange for free internets! Tell your friends for double points!

Discuss the IGM Voting here (including how much you love and want to marry our game)

In other news (and to sway your vote) – new build due out asap with menu fixes and a bunch of bugs slain, to be followed quickly by zombies to redeadinate, boulders to crush those pesky enemies with, and powder kegs because everyone loves dangerous pyrotechnics.

Huzzah! Build successful!

I’ve finally been able to get everything behaving out of the repository which means I can run around doing all the little fixes that Michal doesn’t have time for.

NOTE: this doesn’t mean bug me about every tiny thing you want changed any more than you guys do already!

Geti

Bye bye Disqus!

As good as Disqus is for quick blog comments, we’ve decided to detach it from the devlog.

We’ve decided that we want to cut down on the number of accounts that you guys need to maintain, therefore we’ll be moving discussion of the devlog posts to the forum announcements section from now on.

We’ll be setting up a bot to crosspost from tumblr to the forums soon and potentially auto-link into the devlog post, but in the mean-time we’ll be setting up the links manually, so expect some delay in the posts getting across – If we’re taking far too long feel free to make the copypaste yourself, forum staff 😉

Forum thread here.