Blog

Build 130 Released!

Most critical issues fixed and improved slightly. More to come. Run the game for autoupdate. Have a fun weekend!

Changes 129-130:

– added “small hud” option (mainmenu -> Options -> Player )
– added knight charge cursor over head also
– changed archer charge cursor
– minimap is smaller
– HUD fade happens closer to screen edge; removed block menu fade
– fixed password saving issue
– fixed case sensitivity in master logins
– fixed some chat console color errors
– fixed chat console overlapping text
– disabled team bridge opening with up/down
– fixed playerslist staying scrolled after switching servers
– no resupply happens only if left a certain distance from spawn location

I see a French community emerging. I’m very happy about that. If you want to translate news from this blog I can link your site (this applies to you Russian folks as well). Let me know.

Gold Servers are running (including a builder sandbox). You can get a premium account to access them in a couple minutes here.

Known issues: small hud presents larger area; text overlap in block menu; knight slash push into wall

We’ll be tweaking the HUD some more. I agree we need more space for game screen, so don’t worry about that. Also bridge opening has some unexpected results. Patch will be either today or after the weekend, cause I need to rest. Be sure to read the post below KAG’s Direction if you haven’t already!

Also: our partners at hostedgameservers.com have just added a German wing of their servers. So if you want your own European or US KAG server check it here.

MM

“New HUD” Build Released!

This is second part of a big update that involves improving the game graphics. The old HUD was just something quickly scratched so now we introduce a completely new redrawn HUD. We hope you enjoy it.

There are of course other changes and fixes. Worth mentioning is that:

• You can now hug the wall to prevent fall damage. But be careful, hitting the wall while falling at big speed will also result in death!
• Updated gibs!
• Team bridge works like a 2way platform: press down to drop from it, press up to jump through it

Changes 127-129:

– new HUD cursors
– new HUD chat window
– new HUD resources & health bar
– new minimap window
– added dust animation on big fall
– minimap player icons indicate team color
– added minimap ground edge shading
– added variable “v_drawhud” useful to disable HUD when making screenshots or recording videos
– chat colors are team colored
– new team colored gibs
– castle back wall uses 2 stone
– message boxes replaced with graphics
– new menu buttons
– fixed menu inverting on smooth shader
– help texts only show up when toggled with F1
– added wall hugging to prevent fall damage
– fixed smaller fall damage not working
– fixed infinite resources from collapse prevention
– fixed tree stumps in front of players
– name labels above head use premium & admin colors

KAG’s Direction.

I got asked about this on the forums recently and decided I’d have a short ramble here as a break from a coding assignment.

Note that nothing here is final and we’re still playing around with feature ideas and a roadmap, but it seems some of you have different ideas about where KAG’s going than we do.

In the short term, we want to get the basic, free version of KAG together and more or less finalised. That means:

• Some more structures (Rock pots, stockpiles, hall buildings, bomb and siege workshops)
• Bug Fixes everywhere oh god so many bugs.
• Making the HUD more presentable.
• GUI overhaul + Server lobby.
• Bison + Normal cows.
• Game modes: WAR, CTF, INF (as in soldat), TDM (first team to x kills wins), BLD (creative only servers, inf resources). ZOMBIES if halloween falls within that time period.
• Tutorials
• Maybe farming
• Maybe customisation

At that point, free KAG will be “done”. We’ll update it from time to time but that’ll be the point where we start working on a more in-depth game. As it is, KAG is fairly simple. We’ll make it as easy to get “into” as we can, with tutorials and maybe a button to turn on a more advanced HUD showing up later with all the complicated bits turned off.

Gold servers will exist throughout so you can still play safe from the stingy griefers out there 🙂

Once we’ve done that, with the assumption that free KAG will be played as a demo, paid KAG will get a lot more content. It won’t get too much more complicated (we still like the idea of simple, fun elements put together into something with emergent complexity, rather than elements that are complex in their own right) but there’ll be more stuff to do and a wider set of roles (which may or may not mean more classes). We’ll worry less about making the game idiot-proof as well.

We’re keen to explore:

• Mechanisms. I love the idea of hooking up a pressure plate to spike traps, or pulling a lever to open doors. Conveyor belts and lever-activated-crossbows and manually detonated explosives and water towers!
• Non-vanishing dirt (ie digging out dirt makes a pile of dirt that you have to deal with) for more realistic mining logistics.
• Moving castles/siege towers.
• Fluids in general (can you say Island Fort? Water tower? Magma-Dam?)
• Bots to give the boring tasks to. (Don’t feel like mining? Pay Urist to do it for you!)
• Population based play (ie permadeath per-unit)
• Unit progression and upgrades
• Religious buildings (area of effect buffs and nerfs eg. Shrine to Epona = all nearby team units get a speed boost)
• Flora and Fauna – being able to get food from picking fruit and hunting bison is a start, but fireflies, cave monsters and stinging plants could be fun too.
• …This list is getting long. Suffice to say we’ve got more than enough ideas for now and a long road ahead 🙂

As for large scale direction, we’re aiming for a sort of fortress mode being the main way to play KAG, with elements of dwarf fortress in there but designed to be much more accessible than ASCII only and from a side-scrolling perspective.

In other words, at the moment we’re thinking Free KAG = Demo, Paid KAG = Dream game. We’ll be actively encouraging people to play the free game because that’s where new players are most likely to go, and for those wondering we will almost certainly allow paid users to access free to play servers from the paid program.

So, that’s where we’re thinking of going. The list will likely be reordered and changed over time, but we want more fortress creation and proper warfare, and less spamming suicide bombers and knights digging with swords. Figured we may as well give you some insight into where we’re going.

Sorry for the lack of accompanying art, I’m not at home at the moment so can’t draw.

Geti

Building Ideas.

We think something like this will make building catapults, rock pots, stockpiles, halls, workshops and outposts (as well as anything else that gets added) a lot simpler and more intuitive than the current tile based system.

It also means we can make catapults cost some stone to make as well 🙂

We’ll likely use the little resource bubbles for interaction too, so you can click a bubble to fill up the catapult stone by stone (or later, item by item -> bomberpults) rather than using E for everything and loosing all your stone.

What do you guys think? I’m more or less set on this idea (it frees up more space in world.png for me to go nuts with the environments :D) but I’d like to hear your thoughts on potential improvements or flaws.

Geti

Build 127 released!

I’m quickly patching the game as well as adding new server commands.
Biggest change here is an anti-griefing solution which prevents collapses near your tent/outpost. This is a test so please report how it works. Basically you can destroy everything but the server won’t allow you to destroy that last block that makes a collapse if it is about half screen distance to your tent.

Changes 126-127:

– fixed menu sound on Linux
– fixed constructions not giving support
– new anti-griefing method: automatic collapse prevention in radius around tent/outpost
– fixed infinite tree chopping
– fixed point frame dissapearing when chat text above head
– added scoreboard scrolling
– fixed bot kicking from console
– new server commands:
  kickhost [host] [minutes] – kicks and/or bans host (host number can be found in logs when player joins)
  unbanhost [host]
  swapid [player id]
– fixed ground background tiles
– mods can freely change teams
– fixed player-bomb force when on ground
– possibly fixed other team spawning on captured outpost

Build 126 Released!

Fixing most important issues:

Changes 124-126:

– fixed game crash 1
– fixed game crash 2
– fixed editor not working
– clouds don’t render on “Less effects” option
– fixed doors not opening on ladders
– fixed bot kicking
– fixed player leave game message
– support required on very high constructions (near high map border)
– increased team unbalanced respawn time difference
– increased crouched hitbox
– fixed tents falling
– fixed tree stub not regrowing
– fixed weird block behaviour on trees
– fixed tree regrowing bugs
– fixed shadows appearing on trees
– added server variable “sv_deltapos_modifier”
  (higher than 1.0 uses less bandwidth but game will be more laggy;
   less than 1.0 will use more but will be more accurate)

Changes 123-124:

– bridges require support
– removed immunity on tent
– fixed premium ban spam on server
– Linux dedicated server performance version released
– Linux client version out

Judging by the amount of simultaneously playing premium account players I decided to bring back the ability to buy Gold Servers Access. I think it’s impossible for more than 10 of 100 players to come play at once (due to various reasons like timezone). So you can buy Gold Servers access now! The price is a bit higher than on pre-orders, it is 10$.

New servers will come as the demand goes up. Right now I put up a BUILDING SANDBOX server for premium players just to test out how it works.
I’m in the process of renting new servers to launch proper CTF ones. The one thing I don’t have handled is Australia/Asia/Oceania servers. If you have a server there that you can lend it would be awesome! I’ll give you premium account for that. If not, do you know any good dedicated servers hosts there?

Attention server owners!
If you do not want your settings to get overwritten during autoupdate do the following:

1. Create your own dedicated_autostart.gm and dedicated_autoconfig.gm
2. Create your own copies of rules files (eg. Rules/CTF)
3. You can set your custom rules file in dedicated_autostart.gm
4. Make your own dedicatedserver.sh start script and edit this line:
   ./KAG autostart Scripts/CUSTOM_autostart.gm autoconfig Scripts/CUSTOM_autoconfig.gm

Damn, this release was tough. I’m constantly fixing stuff and there’s still a bunch of issues.I have to postpone gold servers and editor doesn’t quite work. Sorry about this, all will resolved in the following days. I should do releases more frequently in the future so problems don’t pile up.

On a side note: surprisingly skybridges prevent stalemates and push the gameplay forward. Because there are 3 paths (underground/ground/sky). I have to think of a better way to do that (balloons?).

MM

“Eyecandy” Build Released!

The “eyecandy” release is finally here! Although it is much more than that!

It’s been a long time coming, with a lot of hiccups along the way but we’ve decided it’s clean enough around the edges for a public release. 

Large changes include:

• The graphics changes, as you’ll soon see.
  
• Knock back on all actor-actor combat and colliding with enemies, which makes combat less of a lottery and more dynamic.
  
• KAG is now Unlagged. This means there is code that takes into account your ping. Collisions on server are calculated by stepping back in time according to the roundtrip time between you and the server. Furthermore sword hits, blood, damage and knock backs are fully synced between server & client.
  
• Fall damage on by default, making crazy skybridges less useful and duels atop mountains more interesting. It can be turned off in the server config for those of you who hate this change ;). Also requirement for building support has been removed because of this.

  

• Rendering optimisation, which just make the game more enjoyable for all. If you have issues with low framerates, update your graphics drivers before reporting it on the forums, we’ll try to sort you out if you’re having issues.
• Last but least: Challenges! These started out as tutorials and serve as such. So you can train movement and Knight combat in a little singleplayer mode (movement challenge map, credits go to Vig). Please bare in mind that these are not finished so forgive us if they don’t work fully.
  

(See the bottom of this post for a full changelog. Feel free to discuss these tweaks below or on the forums.)

More chit chat and a big old download link after the break:

This release also marks the dawn of Gold Servers – people with a gold account can start playing on the gold servers. Please allow 24 hours, after the version release, to start running official Gold Servers. If for some reason the game does not recognize your account as Premium please e-mail MM directly at mm [at] thd.vg. Set the e-mail topic “No premium!” and in the message body add YOUR GAME ACCOUNT NAME and PAYPAL E-MAIL.

We’re also pleased to announce the inclusion of in-game moderators. They likely won’t be able to keep an eye out for everything but they’ll be hanging out in the more popular servers whenever possible to aid in tossing out unwelcome types. 

If you notice any players griefing be sure to get screenshots and report them immediately  here especially if they’re in a gold server. We’ll take their account access away from them as quickly as possible so you can continue to enjoy the game.

There’s no doubt a few bugs here and there and a probably lot of tweaking needed for combat on a larger scale to work out well (it’s been tested online but not in the volumes that the public build gets) so be sure to let us know on the forums.

Still no bison in sight, I’m afraid.

That’s enough rambling from us, have at it: DOWNLOAD NOW.
Please note that the game autopatches also.

Linux version will be available in a couple hours, sorry.

Changes 90-123:

– only builder has ground sight
– new tree leaf sprites
– fixed leafs not appearing from non destructed trees
– new ground tile graphics
– gold blocks glitter
– added big dirt pieces fallout of dug ground
– fixed mapcycle maps loaded on load map in menu
– fixed floor in window castle tile
– door has floor if castle block underneath
– new castle background blocks look different in different context
– added castle top bricks ornamentation
– recoded tile rendering to use mesh buffers (much faster)
– fixed clantag bracket
– separated foreground from background map layer (trees, spikes, solid blocks etc. are drawn in front of players)
– added clouds
– HUD can now display names and health after death
– new minimap icons
– fixed minimap not appearing on zoomout
– fixed enemy outposts and flags not appearing on minimap
– fixed minimap out of border icon positions
– fixed infinite loop caused by setting score_limit to 0
– added possibilty to load gm script file in mapcycle (useful to change game rules or add entities)
– fixed multiple tents saved on map
– outposts, hearts and catapults are saved on savemap
– fixed hearts dissapearing if full health archer or builder pick them up
– game rules can now limit classes
– game rules now define default materials count on respawn
– added tree branch destroy effects
– trees properly drop
– added ambient sound
– added smoothness variables to map generator files which determine the steppiness of the map
– gold now concentrates in middle of map
– move map scripts to Maps folder
– added natural background dirt tiling
– added semi-procedural ambient piano music when lonely
– tree block takes 3 hits to chop
– new png map format colors
– unified minimap colors with png map
– added team colored bridges and door to minimap
– change door open mechanics (doors react to direction keys)
– power bar loads up/down continously
– power bar stays at maximum position longer
– knight can only jab or hit with full power
– knight power slash adds speeds
– added sword hit knock back
– improved actor sprites
– removed dead actor collisions
– charged arrows knock back
– louder charged “pop” sound
– knock down lasts until fallen on ground
– all players collide
– fixed team kills giving points
– changed screenshot format to .png
– screenshots can be taken with PRINT SCREEN button too
– archers can duck with crouch button to hide
– added damage heart indicators
– added bloodsplat on hit
– fixed bottom of map collision
– map cycle is reloaded every map (can be edited while server is running)
– block can be dropped by builder only while holding crouch
– fixed outpost giving 3 hearts
– added default fall damage
– temporary fix for camera going bananas
– players retrieve their points and statistics on rejoining a server
– even more votes needed for players with good score
– builder earns points only by placing similar blocks next to each other
– increased running speed
– archer releases arrow if killed
– added console variable /v_fastrender (set to 1 to increase FPS)
– new combat move: jumping on enemy stuns him; or shield down causes damage
– increased falling max speed
– fall damage has 3 stages depending on fall velocity: slight stun, 1 heart damage; death
– knight max charge time increased slightly
– knight slash takes 1.5 hearts
– added small blood splat for 1 heart damage; big blood splat for more damage
– new combat move: double slash
– out of screen sprites rendering optimization
– sprite depth sorting is based on y position
– spikes give more damage at fall damage velocity
– removed menu vote kick
– fixed spikes not spiking dead bodies
– added server variable sv_gold_only (aka Gold Server; allow only premium account players to play)
– added server variable sv_allow_globals_mods (i set to 1 global KAG moderators and admins can kick/ban players)
– added player colors in scoreboard (green – moderators; yellow – premium)
– tree gives 2 arrows now
– knockback makes you fall from ladder
– servers browser now shows gamemode, passworded and gold server info
– fixed server not loading next map in map cycle after round won
– fixed clients disconnecting while server map generation
– bridges don’t open from beneath
– title image stretches on different resolutions
– ladders save from fall damage
– fixed blood particle steppy offsets
– fixed multiple resupplying on tent
– removed resupply timer / resupply only works until moved off tent / healing works always
– bomb is dropped on knockback
– fixing giving materials on tent/outpost
– outposts are 2x tougher
– added wall bump sounds
– no spawning on tent in capture
– shield pushes everyone not shielded
– pushing shield against enemy with high velocity causes knockback
– fixed gibs emitting blood
– added new main menu items:
   [Video->Smooth shader] hq2x pixel smoother;
   [Video->Less effects] for faster backgrounds;
   [Sound->Volume] type the volume between 0.0 and 1.0 (sorry for not adding a gauge yet);
   [Sound->Ambient music]  
– added block labels in menu
– requirement for support while building removed
– fixed admin menu cmds on localhost

NEW/OLD MAP COLOR FORMAT 

I wanted to just make a graphics upgrade release but I’ve dug too deep into the network code and found too many issues with it. My conscience doesn’t allow me to not fix it :). There are numerous things I am fixing that affect hitting other players. I’ve implemented “unlagged” collision detection (which is something that works in Soldat; if you want to geek out on this concept google “quake unlagged”). I have also fixed the long time disconnection of all players after map restart. Test version hopefully today.

-EDIT-

New test version released. Information how to get it here. Let’s play it now!

MM