Knights Province devblog

Alpha 11 is nearing its completion and is looking for beta-testers.

It is the most worked-on version of the Knights Province yet (except for Alpha 1, of course). Last release was 7255 and this one is going to be at least 8930. Means that a whole 1600+ bits of changes and improvements went into it.

Main features of the new version are:

• Manned towers. Now each tower can be manned with 1-3 warriors who will pick up bows inside and shoot from atop at the enemy. Warriors will request food to be brought in by Serf when hungry, otherwise they will stop “working” and walk out, just like citizens do. It is yet unclear how warriors specialization will affect his performance in the tower, or if warriors inside could take a fraction of damage from enemy archers. At the moment, all warriors shoot with the same strength, distance and frequency and stay 100% protected inside.
• Buildable fences. Now you can build and destroy your own fences (and enemy fences too, of course). Fences cost wood to build and block passage for citizens. Warriors can break fences on their way with several blows. So far it is quite a weak obstacle, but with more playtesting that can change. In the future fences are also planned to be used for cattle.
• Real Fog of War. From now you can see only what you have surveyed. This is how fog behaves in the majority of the games. Implementation was quite tricky, but the end result is well worth it.
• Early stages of multiplayer accounts. Registration and mission highscores allow you to compete with other single-player players. More on that is covered in the previous article.
• New and updated campaign missions. Campaign scripting and persistent script storage between missions, customizable icons and maps. Now allows for more varied custom campaigns. Check updated tutorial, Intro and Hostages missions.
• Added Russian localization as a test of a text translation engine. More localizations can be made later on.
• Configurable shortcuts/hotkeys are finally here as well. Almost everything is configurable and Ctrl+Alt+Shift are supported as well.
• Restyled fish count calculation and display in water bodies. Now it is smooth and informative.

Smaller features are:

• Return of the fraction of building materials on house destruction. Nice bonus or last chance at building a Stonecutter’s – you decide.
• Revised several house models (still temp).
• Finally added some leather background to in-game forms. It’s still a work in progress though.
• Added cinematics and speech bubbles support in missions.
• Allowed to make terrain highlights (invoked from script).
• Decal and Objects palettes for the MapEd. As well a couple of new objects.
• Added support for Buttons in dynamic script messages. Your choice can now directly affect mission flow.
• Changed how coalmaker’s house works, now the coalpiles need to be set outside.
• Made AI to attack animal dens
• A lot of effort went into refactoring alliances. Neutral hands. Players instantiation and mission setup
• Reiterated and improved AI in Skirmish (GDP +17%, Starvation -30%)
• A whole lot of bugfixes and improvements
• New music by Juan (Dark Banner, Harvest, Over the Hills)
• Campaign Builder tool is included with the game now.

Join the Discord server and try it out – https://discord.gg/cEwJFSY
Please report bugs and feedback on Discord too!

If all goes well, Alpha 11 will be released this month.

Knights Province Alpha 11 is going to be ready soon and it’s time to talk about one more unique feature that it is going to have: Knights Tavern!

Knights Tavern (KT for short) is a codename for the accounts server we have been developing since 2019. Accounts were one of the more often requested features in KaM Remake, but we never had expertise or bravery to actually implement it (well, for numerous reasons). Attempts were made for the KP, but they did not succeed until recently, when a lucky chance has arrived (in form of an article (https://habr.com/ru/post/491272/) and a code repository (https://github.com/Cooler2/ApusEngineExamples)). Now, knowing that the backend server can be developed in the same language as the game, KT is finally taking its chance to come true.

Neat thing about KT, is that it can be used for both KaM Remake and Knights Province. Both games are very much alike in terms of accounts info they provide and can benefit from. So we can safely build KT in such a way that it allows for a single account for both Knights Province and KaM Remake. Register once and play twice. KP is our testground for the KT. Once it is sufficiently tested, KaM Remake can be upgraded and start using it too.

You can help with KT playtesting right now, but more on that later.

Basic auth functionality is mostly covered: KT has player accounts that can be registered, activated, logged in to and logged out of, forgotten passwords can be reset.

For a proof of concept, KT can report how many player accounts it has and how many players were active within the last hour.

The first useful feature in KT are mission highscores. If a single-player mission was prepared by the mapmaker in a specific way (2 lines of script, one dynamic and one static), the game can submit the mission’s winning score to KT and later on show the player his ranking in that mission.

Word of caution, KT is still in beta and might have bugs in all different areas. We hope to iron them out over time. That’s why we start testing with simple functionality, so flaws in the authentication (which there must be) can be fixed. So, since there might be bugs and weak spots, do not use your everyday life passwords for KT.

KT future allows for many interesting things:

• Friends, instant messaging, lobby invites, clans, etc
• Player ratings and reputation, ELO scoring, etc.

KT poses new challenges to us:

• It needs to be coded in an asynchronous way, so that data requests do not slow down or freeze the game.
• Player data needs to be passed and stored securely (we already use salts and hashes)
• We will need to preserve the players data on upgrades and between game versions

Best of all – you can already try out KT and help us improve it! See the latest KP wip builds (available on Discord https://discord.gg/cEwJFSY). Please report any bugs or flaws. We are also open for suggestions on KT functionality. It can steer it into many directions and it would be best to pick ones that are more wanted.

Campaign menu is one of the menus that received the least attention during Alpha development so far. Why is that? Well, it’s not as important as the main game or map editor – it’s rarely used and serves a small role of allowing to click “Start mission” or choose to replay the previously beaten mission. It lagged so much behind now that it’s subpar even by Alpha standards. By requests from mapmakers it’s finally getting some dev time. Along with that campaigns are also getting some new features (campaign scripting, yay!)

What campaign menu should look like? The big idea is to have it in 3D as a sort of map laid on the table, with heights and 3D banners.

However this is far from priority, since it’s better to have a more developed game, rather than campaign menu, right? So for now, campaigns are getting most of their planned mechanics, but still retain its simpler (and easier to develop) menu.

Following features and customization abilities have been added already:

• Chapters. Each chapter has its own background graphic and subset of missions.
• Customizable mission flags. Each flag has 3 states that can have custom graphics – locked/normal/won. For example now you can denote fighting only missions with crossed swords and normal missions with city icon.
• Nodes between flags

All these custom graphics can be png files in the campaign folder. If not supplied – the game will use default stand-in images.

New campaign format is mostly self-explanatory (just open the info.xml in a text editor). Images and texts are now referenced from within the campaign spec (info.xml) – less hardcode rules, more customization.

For the technical side – campaigns got scripting support! It’s made of two parts:

• Persistent data storage between missions. Now mapmakers can record data from one mission and use it in the other. Did you help that rebels town in mission 2 – now rebels can send reinforcements in mission 4!
• Campaign scripting. Mapmakers get control over which missions get unlocked and when. Did you choose to side-track to the mountains to help the miners or to chase the bandits and let the miners take the usurpers side?

There’s also another neat addition – Campaign Builder – a tool to create and edit campaigns for the game. From now on it will be included in the pack. The tool is rather basic in its look and function, as it’s not the main dev focus. Still it’s handy to set up the template for the campaign and especially the flags/nodes placement.

Give it a try!

• If you are a player – check it out and report bugs/feature requests
• If you are a mapmaker – start creating your campaign! (and report bugs/feature requests too)