Blog

Help out on the Wiki!

Are you an experienced KAG player with a bunch of free time and a drive to help new players learn the game?

kagwiki.com needs more love!

Hit up this thread for pages that need updating and to learn the system that everyone’s using, then either click here (or join quakenet’s #kag.wiki if you’re IRC savvy) to get organised and start putting together some quality knowledge!

The wiki (and hopefully the ability to edit it) will soon be accessible from inside the game so it’s important that it’s in tip top shape before then but we can’t get it in shape without you guys! It’d be great to see more people lending a hand there, so hop to it!

Geti

Main Menus overhaul

This has been something that I have been postponing for a long time and there never is a good time to do it. Well now it is because I think the benefits are worth it. I am completely redoing the main menus as well as the auto-update launcher.

Players on Linux and Mac OSX don’t see the autoupdate in the black console that’s why the next version will have a nice graphical interface. (btw. haven’t yet found the reason for the crashes on OSX, working on it…)

Main menus will be completely new, much more intuitive and easy to use. There will be a couple nice things added like a “Quick Join” button if you don’t want to bother with the server browser and just quickly join the estimated best server.

These changes should be ready for next week.

MM

Some Changes to run by the Community regarding Builders and Bridges

So you know that point in the game where you’ve just got your tower repaired from the last wave of enemies, cleared away any mess and you’re back inside? I can’t think of anything that ruins that more than spammy enemy builders.

I’ve just come out of a game where we spent 40 minutes or so repeatedly clearing drawbridges and ladders from our base, only to have an enemy builder come back and spam another 10 or so before getting killed. It’d then take us time to clear those ones out again by which point the builder would be back, spamming bridges at our wall.

Now, this doesn’t strike me as fun. At all.

As such, a few proposed changes:

• Builders would only build while standing still (ie on solid ground, not pressing any buttons, not getting attacked) – this means no more jump building, no more spamming stones while running away in tunnels, etc. Ladder or bridge scaffolding would probably be more or less necessary to build a big castle or even a tall wall.
• To compensate for castles being harder to build, the builder’s construction radius would be larger, perhaps almost double what it is now. Ideally you’d be able to build quarters and a roof for it without having to move.
• Constructed Blocks would no longer get support from background dirt, only natural blocks would – this means castles in caves can fall down if they aren’t held together with background stone walls like outside. Basically, tiles underground would work the same way tiles overground do. The background dirt would just prevent overhangs of dirt from falling down.

I think this will make battles involving builders far less frustrating, and will make structures underground far less overpowered, as well as drawbridge- and ladder-spamming being less effective because the builder in question will have to actually be standing still at the bottom of the wall, not jumping at it spastically.

That said, I might have overlooked something, so I figured I’d run it by you before we make the changes. What do you think?

EDIT: A revised #1:

• Builders have to charge up to build (based on the block they were building, ladders would take less time than stone blocks) and have limited movement while charging (much like a knight when charging their slash) (the time taken would be based on a serverside variable so that you can have instant building in some servers).

The build radius would still probably be increased to prevent the need for jump-building.

Geti

KAG Minecraft Art

I thought this was funny enough to repost here (from the forums):

MM

And finally, he’s also done the archer:

Glad to have such a keen community!

Geti

Some updates!

This has been a fairly hectic weekend!

Both days (which aren’t even finished yet, barely beginning in some parts of the US) have seen record traffic with a anywhere between 200 and 1000 logins per hour! This has seen the masterserver throw occasional tantrums and server owners complain of a hard kick in the bandwidth. Cheers to TotalBiscuit for the feature and to all those who’ve bought the full version over the last week!

On that note:

The Aussie servers went down at some point today and it’s still not quite clear what the issue is to me – I knew we were getting close to pushing the bandwidth cap over but I’ve heard tales of memory leak issues and I cant even ssh into the server at all to check, so sorry to any australian players! We’ll try to find a solution over the coming week, but it’d be great to see some fan-run servers pop up in the mean time so we can have some low latency fun.

There’s a guide to hosting a server here for those interested: http://kagwiki.com/wiki/Server

More news coming this week about our plans for the next release. Sadly, we’ve had to put off those undead things again for more pressing matters – getting the game more friendly for new players.

OSX build on the horizon too, had some… enormous bugs that’ve slowed the release.

Geti

Hello new players!

We see a new big wave of new players again. Greetings to all of you! I hope you stay and enjoy the game because I promise you incredible fun times!

The game currently has limited tutorials and no introduction. So if you get right into the game and figure it out congratulations. It’s definitely worth it so give it a try. We’ll be adding new tutorials and single player challenges in the near future (like zombie mode!).

It’s worth reading what this game is about and seeing what you can get when you buy the full version of KAG. It’s a good idea to do it now, since this is a pre-order and you get a 60% discount!

KAG is a work-in-progress. If you run into trouble head on to our friendly forums. You can ask for help or post your own game idea suggestions. The forums use the same account and password as the game so it’s easy!

You can also directly talk with the devs, that is me (MM) and Geti on IRC.
Server: Quakenet
Channel: #kag

You should subscribe to the blog feed or join the KAG FACEBOOK PAGE and come back frequently because we have new updates every week on average!

Master Playing Up

The master server that controls kag2d.com, kagforum logins and the ingame logins is playing up so KAG mightn’t work until we can get it fixed. Sorry for the delay, we’ll get it working again as soon as possible.

Geti

Unfortunately this happens whenever there is a big spike of new players. Master authentication is temporarily turned off. This means you won’t see yourself as a premium player nor guard until this is resolved.

MM

Build 203 released!

A quick patch hopefully solving some most important issues. Also added the long awaited server name on scoreboard and all players have a little class icon next to their names so you can quickly see how much of a given class is in the team already.

Changes build 200-203:

– added server name and address in scoreboard
– added class icons next to player names
– sword strike knockback is half power
– removed semi-stun from hit
– clash doesn’t work on slash
– less stun on fall
– game is not rendered after alt+tab
– unit_count can use floating point variables
– unit_count = 0 – no respawns; unit_count = -1 – unlimited respawns
– added sv_deltacompression variable (set to 0 in dedicated_autoconfig.gm to improve performance at the cost of bandwidth)
– sv_compression temporarily disabled (always true)
– limited CPU usage

MM

Build 200 ‘Player Customizations’ released!

Good news for anyone who’s paid for the full version – you’re getting new stuff for your money now!

Remember this?

I’m sure you do 😉

Gender swapping is available to everyone using the Misc [BACKSPACE] menu.

Head customisation is now available to all paid players in-game in all servers. Enjoy wearing flashy hats, helmets and haircuts in-game! For those that have been hoping for a more custom (Do-it-yourself) form of customisation – patience! We’re contemplating adding that but will need to figure out a way of making it ergonomic for you guys…

Knight combat has been changed fairly significantly:

• Two colliding hits will now bounce off each other!
• Getting hurt interrupts charging (this applies to archers too)
• Jab no longer stuns but does push away (this applies to builder hits too)
• If two knights jab or slash at each other they clash!
  
  Not actual game footage.

Other key changes include bridges being two way platforms and not blocking arrows (allowing for quite complicated team-only structures and elaborate traps, not to mention disguised pathways and more intuitive elevators than doorladders as well as being pretty crap for skybridging now as you can be shot with ease).

Just press [S] (crouch) on a bridge to fall off it.

The camera is now fixed on the player. You can scroll by moving your mouse to the edge of the screen. This change is mainly for new players (especially ones that never played Soldat). You can easily return to the old camera system in main menu -> Player.

An arrow indicating bomb throw direction, many UI improvements (catapult menu especially), a bunch of things to assist in making guards lives easier including the name of anyone causing a collapse in the console, and the usual pile of tweaks likely to garner a thousand complaints 😉 (although we tested these for nearly a week to make sure they are good)

Changelog B190a to B200:

– added female characters (player customization) ([BACKSPACE] in-game)
– added head customizations ([BACKSPACE] in-game)

– Misc menu (backspace) doesn’t require to hold key
– bridges are now two-way platforms (drop from them with down key [S])
– arrows go through bridges
– removed Advanced Movement tutorial
– fixed arched not falling from top tree
– all objects now fall through bottom of map (flag respawns after falling there)
– increased pick radius of pie menus
– pie menu items are also selected with left mouse click
– fixed collapsed blocks not disappearing at the bottom of the map
– fixed not being able to build castle background over spikes
– fixed spiked castled background not giving support
– catapult fire progress is always displayed when in fire mode
– fixed catapult not changing team on fire
– fixed shield ladder not working on ladders
– removed “test” name above head
– tweaked bomb throwing
– added throw direction arrow on HUD
– fixed bomb wall bounces
– fixes in fast moving player/map collision
– optimized map collision code
– misc menu (BACKSPACE) doesn’t require holding the key
– fixed bridge open/close glitch
– rcon commands are logged in console ([RCON FROM PLAYER_NAME])
– admin/guard : [F3] key freezes [F2] key unfreezes player
– added “COLLAPSE by PLAYER_NAME” in console log
– can’t switch to team with units depleted
– removed tutorial box and emoticons from tutorial display
– fixed joining game errors
– added fixed camera on/off option in main menu (Player tab)
– lowered bomb jump velocity
– bridges can be built on dirt background
– removed material dropping when overloaded
– hovering mouse on player and pressing chat adds his name to chat (works for chat menu too)
– tweaked jumping
– help UI improvements
– 30% of fallen coins is lost (not dropped) on death
– near spawn respawn multiplier multiplies half the time for outpost
– HUD doesn’t fade out if typing in chat
– break time is now set based on a multiplier (lowest team size)
– unit counter is now set based on a multiplier (lowest team size)
– added 1 archer discharge frame
– fixed loadmap [name] command – loads the map from the folder Maps/[name].png
– added sword blocks when hot other sword
– bomb sparks turn red when approaching explosion time
Combat:
– you lose charge on being hit
– fixed slash on team player
– fixed knight hitting after being hit
– fixes in knight double slashes
– can’t hit or shield for 0.5s after being hit

Zombie survival is next on the TODO ( 😀 )

Geti