Alpha 8 is ready!

Posted on May 25, 2017 by Krom

Alpha 8 is ready!

 

Change list is quite big:

Gameplay mechanics:

  • Rigged Cottages to spawn Blank units
  • Units get trained from Blanks now
  • Wool/Cloth/Recruits removed
  • Warriors take small time to train now
  • Units can be stacked in training queues now
  • Stockpiles
  • Story messages instantiated from dynamic script

Visual mechanics:

  • Rotate houses to face South or West (using spacebar)
  • Set default view from South-West
  • Revised viewport controls and added Q/E to change heading angle
  • Rotate minimap on camera heading change
  • Distinct Units/Houses sight radiuses though fog of war
  • Fog of war GPU optimizations

Map Editing:

  • Automation tools in MapEd (forest, mountains, stone)
  • Choice of terrain type when creating a new map
  • Terrain painting has area of effect now (ground, mountains, water)

Game content:

  • New skirmish 8 players map – “Wheel”
  • 2 new campaign maps – “Citizens” and “Army”
  • 2 new single-player maps by Petr – “Desert” and “Minicampaign”
  • Baker and Carpenter 3D models (not animated yet)
  • Placeholder Axefighter model from Militia model
  • Placeholder mounted units
  • New terrain objects (birch tree, log)
  • Minimap alerts (beacon, attacked, hungry troops)
  • House notifications with icons (no worker, no road, no fish, no ore, no trees)
  • Group orders icons

Other improvements:

  • Fixed forms snapping in GUI
  • Replay button glyphs
  • Large-scale texture variations on terrain
  • FadeIn FadeOut effects on hints
  • Fixed “unlimited” button in workshops
  • Improved Iron/Gold mines wire outlines when placing their plans
  • Slightly rotate houses on placement to break the monotony
  • Allowed to rename players through dynamic script
  • Story missions show description text from libx in menu
  • Fixed jittery warriors animations
  • Added tips to loading screen

As usual – this is still Alpha, there are likely a lot of bugs, flaws, incomplete features, broken mechanics and such. Please report them and also your thoughts on what should be different and why.

Download links:

Knights Province Alpha 8 (7z package)

Discussion forum:

https://www.knightsandmerchants.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=35

Posted in Downloads, News | 16 Comments

A dozen of ways to loose a unit

Posted on May 13, 2017 by Krom

I’ve been categorizing and refactoring unit deaths in the game. Made this comment block in the code. Might be interesting for you to see it too:

// Killing of a unit is done in 4 big steps
// 1. KillUnit - unit is doomed to die (could be next tick, if unit is doing exchange).
// - Fire event
// - Register statistic
// 2. KillInternally - we can kill it now (exchange interactions are done)
// - Abandon old tasks
// - Create and execute Die task (exits house, shows animation, takes ~20 ticks)
// 3. KillFinalize - erase all unit data and hide it from further access
// 4. Delete - when unit has no pointers left

// KillUnit usages
//
// A L - gic_TempKillUnit (kills any selected unit)
// S G - UnitOwnerChange (from script, or capturing a wagon. Kills old and creates new)
// A/S L - ScriptingActions.UnitKill (kills any unit)
// S L - CheckAnimalIsStuck (kills any stuck unit)
// A L - Unit.HitPointsDecrease (killed by enemy)
// A L - fCondition <= 0 (any unit could die of hunger any time. training units get their condition topped manually, yet script can reset any condition back to 0)
// S - - TrainingCancel (kill wip unit)
// S U - UnitTrainingEnd (kill Blank unit)
// S L - FindPlaceForUnit fail (extra units get killed when house is destroyed)
// S L - DeleteUnit (by MapEd)
// S - - TKMUnitTaskDie (final result of Die task)
// S C - TKMUnitTaskWagonGoHouse (wagon entering house)

// A - animated death
// S - silent kill

// L - Lost
// U - Upgraded
// G - GivenAway
// C - Consumed

Posted in How things work, Sidenotes | Leave a comment

Skirmish equalization improved

Posted on May 7, 2017 by Krom

I had some doubts about how to handle “Skirmish” setup in MapEditor. Cos there are plenty of ways for Skirmish maps to be made made “unfair” (placement of resources, dynamic script, etc..). So I thought that maybe the MapEd should not be so strict about the “Skirmish” setting …

Ideally I’d want to pop up a dialogue with settings – which aspects of the mission should be (or should be not) equalized. So the setting is more helpful than restricting. But that would take some time to implement ..

.. two hours later ..


So what “Story/Skirmish” does now is just sets the flag to “Story” or pops up a “Skirmish setup” menu. Actual Skirmish “equalization” happens in “Skirmish setup”, where you can choose what to “equalize”.

New settings could appear there later in development (e.g. indicators of existing unfairnesses or more detailed descriptions, or something else related).

Posted in Live progress | 5 Comments

Terrain Triggers – another feature into Alpha 8

Posted on April 17, 2017 by Krom

There’s one more feature I want to include into Alpha 8 – terrain triggers.

Terrain triggers are special zones placed in MapEd, that trigger dynamic script events when a unit enters into the zone. This is very helpfull for story missions scripting. With that feature, events could be triggered once and then removed/disabled if not needed.

Posted in Ideas, Live progress, Sidenotes | 13 Comments

Faking horses

Posted on March 27, 2017 by Krom

Alpha 8 is mostly ready. I’d guess it will take another week or two before it’s released.

Now I’m looking into making some final touches to it. For example until there are proper designs and models for mounted units – here are some fake horses to distinct kinds of troops:

You can also see new group orders icons.

Posted in Live progress, Screenshots | 17 Comments

All notifications together

Posted on March 12, 2017 by Krom

Made these notifications and updated the games’ code to show them in appropriate situations:

Posted in Live progress, Sidenotes | 5 Comments

House notifications icons

Posted on March 10, 2017 by Krom

After watching second part of Knights Province play (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33tjOSoJfNQ) I’ve decided to look into house notifications. As of Alpha 7.1, they indicate when a house if missing a worker, or a connecting road (these are 2 very popular situations for new players). In Alpha 7.1 those notifications are rather vague and easy to miss in the background. So I’m drawing new icons for them. Here is the style:

Icons are good at attracting attention, as they should, but I’m not entirely happy about the style – it looks a bit “artificial”.

Key thought on the matter:

  • games do have artificial elements all over them (take “magic” GUI for example).
  • a town with dozens of these icons could look “crowded”.
  • this is an RTS, genre where you need to manage a lot of different things and every help from the game is appreciated.
  • “float-above” notifications are more affordable than arriving messages, which need to opened, read, clicked “go to”, finding an outlined/highlighted house and only then seeing a problematic house.
  • perhaps notifications can become houses “thoughts”. I need to think more in that direction ..

Until then, this is what I’ve been working on today (and refactoring controls render overall) 🙂

Posted in Ideas, Live progress, Screenshots | 10 Comments

GUI improvements

Posted on March 8, 2017 by Krom

The game’s GUI just got nicer with new “fade in” and “fade out” animations. They are short and subtle, but make the menu hints appear much nicer.

Fort and Barracks UI got improved and now looks alike School’s:

I also was watching this YouTube video of Knights Province:

and it caught my attention, that there are no alerts on the minimap when players troops get attacked. Feature was implemented right away and will be available in Alpha 8 soon 🙂

Posted in Live progress, Sidenotes | 2 Comments

Wip on pop-up messages

Posted on March 5, 2017 by Krom

Working on adding pop-up messages. Much needed in Town Toturial 🙂

Early screenshot:

Posted in Live progress, Screenshots, Sidenotes | 6 Comments

Building materials to building sites

Posted on March 4, 2017 by Krom

I was wondering, why Serfs would have to wait for the house area to be flattened before bringing any building materials to it? Surely they can do that as soon as Builder arrives at the site.

Posted in Sidenotes | 7 Comments