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“Challenge” mode day 1

Today I introduced end game statistics for the Challenge mode on individual server maps. These include:

• fastest time
• fastest team time
• individual times
• most kills
• and so on

This is all done in scripts so anyone interested in modding can see how to do their own stats system. These stats can of course be expanded later into other game modes.

I started making a small parkour map by copy pasting an old jump map by splittingred :). I’m still testing out ideas for this. The thing I know is that I want parkour maps to have a time limit of 1 minute not longer.

To make these climbing/running maps more fun I fixed a big issue with walljumping which is – too much pushing backwards when you don’t intend to (especially when jumping around corners). In place of that you can now essentially run a wall matrix style by pressing movement key in the direction of the wall and tapping jump.

I’m not sure this should stay so don’t be surprised if it’s not there on release :).

Max was strangely missing today, I hope wild dinghos didn’t kidnap him. He should post an update tomorrow.

MM

New cooperative game mode “Challenge”

This is MM, as promised I’ll explain a bit what I’m working on this week.

We’re in a bit of a hurry (typical), so we decided to split work with Geti (not typical), so he makes CTF and I make a completely new cooperative game mode.

The “Save the Princess” mode was pretty well recieved and we decided to go along that line. This new mode is:

1. cooperative multiplayer or singleplayer
2. it’s called “Challenge”
3. it’s like a condensed version of the Princess mode
4. it’s meant for 4-8 players
5. very small maps
6. rounds will be fast – ranging from 30 secs to 2 mins maximum
7. no spawning after death
8. every map in the cycle should be a unique Challenge
9. typically every Challenge trains a particular skill used in the game (but not necesarilly)
10. not all Challenges are combat ones

Some types of “Challenges” that you will encounter are (not all will be available in first release of course):

• Kill all Red
• Save the Princess/Hostage
• Escort the Migrant
• Retrieve the flag
• Capture the hall
• Capture the boat
• Cross canyon as fast as possible
• Escape the flood!
• Parkour and climbing…

Will keep you updated,

have fun!

MM

CTF Progress, Day 2 – Interruptions

There were some hiccups that swallowed a fair bit of today moving some fairly large tilemap changes into the main branch. They wont cause any outward change of appearance but performance and  Caused a few “hilarious” bugs, like being able to build tiles “into” dirt for digging.

We also updated the version of angelscript – leading to a lot of the more “fiddly” scripts having a few bugs and crashes. Hopefully the overall fixes and performance improvements help out in the long run though.

CTF so far has been mostly fixing bugs in the gamemode and adding intended functionality to the flags and their holders, which I won’t bore you with a gif of.

More progress to be made tomorrow with most of the interruptions dealt with tonight, sad to have a slow day but glad to have these two large elements off the TODO list as well.

Will keep you posted, MM should go into the details of what he’s been working on tonight as well – a cooperative slant on the game :^)

Max/Geti

CTF Progress, Day 1 + Other news

So, this week we’re splitting the workload between MM and I – He gets the cooperative multiplayer side of things, I get to make Capture the Flag.

This isn’t a carbon copy of classic. I want to address the myriad issues that were present in classic’s CTF, the largest planned changes being

• Spawn point and flags separate objects – eliminating stalemate at the tent.
• Layout of number of flags, location of flags up to map maker
• Saving the flag takes time (no more 1 frame flyby returns)
• Compatibility with low and high player counts via clever map design.

Here’s an animation of how progress is going so far. It also shows one of the large things changed about archer – he now has a grappling hook for getting around the map.

Note that the work is very rough, but you can already take and capture flags (without interrupting your own flags). Turtling the flag points will likely be standard practice, but note that to cap and therefore win, you need to have a way in and out. This should prevent entombing without being to restrictive on fort design.

I’ll talk more about the archer changes as it’s nearer to release, we’re aiming for the end of the week for at least the archer changes (and the usual slew of fixes) if not a playable CTF + co-op as well.

Stay tuned, and tell your friends :^)

Max/Geti

How & why to stay in touch

This week we have planned to add some amazing features. So let’s stay in touch. The best way to do it is to subscribe to this blog or just like our Facebook.

We’ll keep you informed about progress and patch releases.

B847 – Shark noms, Balance Tweaks, Map Changes, Installers and More!

This build encompasses a few tweaks we’ve wanted to make for a while, as well as a few more experimental things which may be redacted quickly, haha.

Clearly most importantly, the shark now has a chomp animation. More work needs to be put into polishing it, but it helps make the shark feel at least a little less static.

We’ve dropped quite a lot of bedrock into the vanilla maps to help with the massive erosion we’ve been seeing, though other measures will obviously need to be taken.

Installers are now automatically generated every build, so there should be less/nothing to patch after installing the game for the first time!

There have been several balance related tweaks

• Removed satchel from knight – we felt like the satchel was the “odd one out” and very unsatisfying to use of the knight weapons. Fire is now reserved for archer use only, with knight’s unique mode of destruction still being exploding things with extreme prejudice (kegs).
• Slashing a shield now results in a slightly shorter stun – meaning you can double slash a shield to harm it, or slash and then jab to cause damage, but not chain slash after slash. This represents a move away from simply chaining slashes as long as possible to win, and hopefully improves the depth of the mind games knights play as they hack each other apart.
• Builder now gets mats from breaking solid constructed blocks – this should help encourage battle builders to get out there and help get over or through enemy constructions.
• Archer fletches 2 arrows from trees – pretty self explanatory.
• Minimum 30 wood for builder and 5 arrows for archer on respawn. This should help with the wood drought just a little and prevents archers being helpless while a hall is getting taken..
• Bombs change team when picked up – this lets you save team-mates and kill enemies with thrown-back bombs and means theres a little bit less “wtf” when an enemy throws a bomb at you for zero damage.
• Fixed mines going through doors – as if there wasn’t enough silly stuff going on :^)
• Boats do more damage on collision – experimental, makes it very very hard to board an enemy boat while it’s moving but feels kinda janky. Will need to be tweaked.

Many more changes in the log of course, see below and enjoy!

[fixed] vaulting is broken
[modified] archer fletches 2 arrows from trees etc
[modified] moved warboat to its own folder in boats
[removed] satchel
[fixed] knight can cut tiles he shouldn't be able to
[modified] background image for installer
[modified] kag.ico has updated knight in it
[modified] bombs and water bombs change team when picked up - so you can toss bo
mbs back and damage enemies
[fixed] getting out of water
[modified] changed jump anims a little
[modified] a bunch of war maps have more bedrock now as temp measure vs extreme
terrain erosion
[modified] updated PNG loader to include everything again (thanks jackitch)
[modified] boats make much more damage when hitting enemies from all angles
[added] attached vehicles convert too on capture
[fixed] archer climbing trees newly grown trees on network
[modified] easier to get out of water against wall
[added] shield sliding (point mouse down and use shield while dropping at high s
peed)
[added] visual indicator of vehicle capture
[added] logs can be used as catapult ammo against infantry
[removed] debug mode from regular players
[fixed] crates not unpacking in water and on boats
[fixed] autoupdate_ignore_custom.cfg (1231)
[fixed] able to log into someone elses account on a shared PC (1232)
[fixed] mine goes through doors
[added] shark chomp anim
[added] getDistanceTo(CBlob@ other) in CBlob

Max/Geti

EDIT: Forgot to say that shield sliding has started being implemented, knights can now slide around on their shields (aim at the floor with some speed). We’re looking at how to fit this into combat to ensure everything is balanced and most importantly FUN, stay tuned!

Changes to User Panel at KAG2D.com, Desura keys!

As you can see there are few new options available in the panel.  I’ll describe them briefly (most of them are self-explanatory).

“Get your Steam Key!” * – mainly a placeholder for the future. When we’ll release KAG on steam this will be the place to get your Steam key from (if you have bought the game from our website and not Steam, that is).

"Get your Desura Key!” * – here you can get your Desura key.

"Download Art Booklet” * – it speaks for itself.

There are also old options which were available all the time. You are able to change your account credentials, e-mail and delete your account completely (be warned though, this action cannot be reverted). Additionally, we have set up in place way to tell us if you agree to receive e-mails from us. We don’t have any newsletter yet – but it will come in its time.

* – options available only to paid users.

Cheers,
Lucas/Furai

B844 – Cleaning up, Knight digging, Graphical tweaks

B844 is incoming, fixing everything introduced last build by untested changes and adding some much needed intuitiveness to knight digging among other things.

Knights can now dig in dirt and break damaged wood blocks by simply jabbing or slashing at them, no precise close aiming required.

Knight throwables are now shown behind their sprite rather than in front, which should make it easier to tell what they’re doing while throwing things. Small tweak, but it worked well in classic. Knight throwables also don’t swap selected type at the wrong time.

As a bonus, attacking inside ballistas, catapults etc should work fine now.

Trampolines are now very directional, which means there’s more engineering involved in making a knight-o-pult from one tower to the next. Should cut down on the number of 90 degree sideways trampolines being used to circumvent normal defences (at least somewhat). Balancing will be needed of course, but we’ll see how the public reacts first.

We’ve done some cleaning up of a few scripts and some engine code as well, nothing too drastic but should help reduce the number of bugs in the future.

Still outstanding is that bug with ladders through blocks and a lot of more miscellaneous stuff. We’ll see if we can make that before the weekend but it’s not super likely as its quite a complicated issue (tilemap containing actors overlapping other tiles).

As a small note, a few of the fixes made are not fully optimised, especially the one about hitinfos – these will be optimised more in coming days.

[fixed] trampoline not bouncing objects online
[fixed] server crash for real now
[fixed] possible to cross red barrier in vehicle
[fixed] chat colors in console
[fixed] hitinfos missing some times, need to optimise a lot though
[modified] trees no longer hurt players when they fall on them
[modified] trees hit ground earlier to prevent logs jammed in walls etc.
[added] tags for things that block knight attacks instead of some obscure check - fixed #1096
[modified] knights can break dirt without having cursor too close
[modified] back ladder zone on warboat is visible
[fixed] knight can attack through doors/traps
[modified] fixed water not going to the edge of the map
[modified] satchel sprite to be less like bread, needs complete overhaul 
[added] behind when attached script for blobs to appear behind parent when attached
[modified] bomb, satchel, keg appear behind character at shoulder (like classic) 
[modified] keg fuse is easier to see
[added] autoupdate_ignore_custom.cfg to default installation
[modified] water bomb behind when attached too
[added] more smoke effects when stone and wood destructed
[modified] pick spawn menu is in lower part of screen
[modified] pick spawn menu vanishes after clicking
[fixed] server LAG warnings not appearing in console 
[modified] trampolines are much better for construction and still allow big jumps, might need TDM maps etc modified though.
[modified] trampolines have controlled height - press down for less bounce up for more. 
[fixed] annoying knight bombs changing when you still have some of the currently selected one
[modified] chatcommon can summon scrolls with names that have spaces
[fixed] incorrectly handled non-truncated links from twitter - launcher bug

Have fun!

Max/Geti

Make a KAG Beta Trailer and Win!

Click HERE for the forum thread!

General Point of This Contest: Make a Trailer/Video of KAG Beta Gameplay. The person who makes the best video will receive 5 codes to give out to whoever they want. Winner will also get a custom title if they so wish. Second Place will get 3 codes and third will get 1. One additional code will be given out to the best post in this thread.

That totals 8 codes to win and 8 happy friends or family around the world! I guess you could technically do it based on the DRM Free Singleplayer part of the game too to win yourself access to multiplayer!

Click HERE for countdown to the contest end.

Be sure to read the rules in full.

Have at it, video dudes!

Max/Geti

B840 – New maps and Fixes

To start off the week we’ve shaken up the maps for Take The Halls – we’ll continue to modify them as the balance shifts around but they should help address things like constantly flooded halls, too much distance between halls and the like. Be sure to give feedback on the new maps and the changes to old one in the forum thread.

We’ve also fixed the majority of the movement issues, but there are still a few like getting out of water being a bummer and it still being possible to eek your way up walls by jumping. These will be dealt with as soon as we can, but we figured this build would help with the overall balance of the game enough to get it out.

Changelog as normal below

[fixed] trader material exchange
[modiifed] boats more reliably destruct doors
[fixed] spectator chat not being gray
[modified] blademire ridge has smaller distances between halls and is less jagged
[modified] more map tweaks and shortening
[modified] most maps have shorter water and distance to halls
[modified] shark and bison regens a bit longer
[added] EarthMoving WAR map
[modified] jungle map has lower halls, is smaller, has 2 underground halls (total 5)
[added] new map Voyager to WAR mapcycle
[added] first team hall added on WAR map has research
[fixed] reverted knight animation optimisation stuff, hopefully fixed "stuck" wallsliding anim
[fixed] infinite walljumping while shieldgliding
[modified] dinghy can be picked up when not on map if it's out of the water
[modified] cant pickup dinghy with someone in it
[modified] cant pickup dinghy unless its touching the map (ie at side of lake or on ground)
[modified] warboat ladder area now visible on sprite
[fixed] boulder breaking bedrock/other natural tiles
[modified] cant climb on held ladders (too many issues)

Max/Geti