Service Release 3 - Beta testing has started!

[Litude]

Update 2: Beta release 3 is now available!
Update: Beta release 2 is now available!

Alright, it took slightly longer than I had expected, but Service Release 3 is now ready for beta testing. I decided to make a public beta test because I assumed a private beta test wouldn't really bring in too many bug reports.
This is a beta test and as such there might be bugs present in this release! Anyone is allowed to download this release, but if you encounter a bug remember to post a message here!

Now I already posted the changelog once, but this seems like a quite good place to recap, so here it is for the curious. It might omit a change or two but should give you a good idea of what has changed.

General Changes
- Vehicles workshop and townhall can no longer be built on trees or other similar objects
- Iron mine icon is now blue
- Game music player now says "Track" before track number
- Fisherman now uses unique greeting and death sound
- Added two missing Polish letters to grey.fnt

The Shattered Kingdom Campaign
- Missing enemy farm in mission 12 now visible
- Missing enemy armory workshop and gold mines in mission 15 now visible (this makes the mission considerably tougher, one of the teams no longer runs out of gold)
- Increased defense radius of southern gray enemy in mission 15. This was to also make them defend the northern watchtower.
- Increased defense radius of green enemy in mission 15. Previously they had motivation problems defending their base
- Some extra road pieces removed/added
- Some missing fields/field pieces added to mission 9 and 18

The Peasants Rebellion Campaign
Mission 3
- Added a max troop limit to both enemy teams. This is because they do not attack, and would otherwise fill the whole map with troops causing the game to get sluggish.
- Some extra road pieces removed/added.

Mission 4
- All opponents will now attack.
- Decreased defense radius of green team because they seemed to think that your secondary storehouse was their territory.
- Decreased defense radius of eastern yellow team because they seemed to think that your secondary storehouse was their territory.
- Decreased defense radius of northern yellow team to allow easier expansion of your base northwards.
- Removed the iron ore and 200 coal from the secondary storehouse and replaced them with some leather equipment.
- Added a lot of skins to the northern yellow player because they fail at producing skins on their own.
- Some extra road pieces removed/added.

Mission 6
- The western green team and the southeastern grayish team will now attack.
- Added a max limit to brown team soldiers. They do not attack, so it was necessary.
- Decreased defense radius of green team. Previously, if you expanded your base somewhat southwards and the green team attacked, their whole army would join once you tried to defeat them.
- Decreased defense radius of dark green team because they seemed to think that your secondary storehouse was their territory.
- The brown team now handles soldiers of the axeman class correctly.
- The brown team has slightly altered defense positions. This was necessary as they did not know how to handle soldiers of the axeman class.
- Added an additional 15 wine barrels and 10 pieces of loaf to your main storehouse. This was because you didn't have nearly enough food to feed your army.
- Gave the southeastern grayish team additional iron to make sure they won't run out of supplies so fast.
- The western green team now starts producing recruits sooner.
- The southern dark green team now starts producing recruits later.
- Slight changes done to the northern stone mountain.
- Some extra road pieces removed/added.

Mission 7
- All opponents will now attack.
- The yellow team that was initially attacking from west was green on the minimap. This has been fixed.
- Hardcoded the defense positions for the green team.
- The green team has slightly changed defense positions. This was done because the player didn't know how to handle lance carriers properly.
- Slightly changed one of the iron mountains in mission 7 to allow placement of iron mine.
- Gave the southern yellow player additional skins and iron to make sure the player can keep on making soldiers for a longer time.
- Some extra road pieces removed/added.

Mission 9
- All opponents will now attack.
- Blocked iron mine from being buildable in mission 9. There are no iron vein mountains in this mission.
- The northern purple team had a faulty color value. This has been fixed.
- Gave some starting skins to the western team to make sure they could train soldiers.
- Gave some more iron to both purple teams so that they wouldn't instantly run out of resources.
- Removed a totally misplaced bakery from the brown team (the bakery never appeared either so it doesn't make a huge difference).
- Some extra road pieces removed/added.

Mission 10
- All opponents will now attack.
- The northern purple team had a faulty color value. This has been fixed.
- Slightly changed one of the gold mountains in mission 10 to allow placement of gold mine.
- Gave some starting skins to the blue player to make sure they wouldn't stop creating soldiers.
- Gave some extra gold and iron to the purple players to make sure they wouldn't have to stop creating soldiers.
- Decreased the amount of troops needed to launch an attack for certain teams
- Some extra road pieces removed/added.

Mission 12
- All opponents will now attack.
- Made all enemies on the map allied with the fourth player.
- Altered the blue opponent so that he will no longer create recruits (doesn't have any weapons to recruit soldiers with).
- Removed the initial attack the blue team made. This was likely to be unintended and the attack by the grayish team is enough.
- Gave some starting skins to the eastern and western teams to make sure they wouldn't have to stop creating soldiers.
- Some extra road pieces removed/added.

Mission 14
- Added a max troop limit to all enemy teams. This is because they do not attack, and would otherwise fill the whole map with troops causing the game to get sluggish.

Misc. Mission Changes
- Some missing road pieces added to tutorial
- Blocked iron, coal and gold mines from being buildable in the tutorial

Text Fixes:
- Check language specific readme

To install the beta patch, download the version that matches the language of your game. Then just copy it over into your game folder and extract. When asked about overwriting, chose yes to all and all files should be automatically placed into their correct paths.

Remember that this patch is here primarily for beta testing! Any encountered bugs should be reported here ASAP!

Download:
English
Dutch
German
Polish

Enjoy and remember to send in your bug reports!

[JBSnorro]

And does this update include the previous updates? Or do you have to install SP 2 and 3?

[Litude]

You have to install SR2 for this beta test, the final version will have the files from SR2 included.

[Nick]

will u include my changes to the unit.dat file or not?
advantages:
- it makes the AI stronger
- battles will last bit longer
- it balances the units more

if u won't include it tell me why (cuz i think its a great patch)

[Litude]

I think the modified unit.dat makes such changes that the file would be more suitable for a mod instead of a patch for the game. But if someone else has an opinion on this, feel free to speak aloud

[JBSnorro]

I agree that Nicks file would be more mod than patch.

[Nick]

ok then... dont include it
once that tool is finshed i will release it as kind of a mod

[kuba11100]

Good work - it's good that someone still wants to make this game better!

I've tested the missions 1-6 TPR. I noticed many improvements - the first five on the changelog are working good. The attacks are also working, but:

In mission 4, after about 2:40, the northern-east pale yellow enemy attacked. Few seconds after their attack, the eastern enemy attacked the storehouse. They didn't take a lot of troops, but when I started to protect building, they took more and more troops. After the battle, they had only one axe fighters group and one bowmen group, so I attacked them. After about 10 minutes, the northern-east enemy attacked again. About 10 minutes after that, the northern yellow attacked. It was like before, with the eastern enemy - they took their all troops, so after that it was easy to get into their village. In my opinion they shouldn't attack so often and they shouldn't take their all troops (maybe reduce their radius on the defense positions). Also, what about that useless iron ore in the second storehouse? Allowing iron smithy or removing the iron ore at all would be good idea (I thing it should be removed, the mission would be too easy with iron troops).

In mission 6, after some time (I don't remember) the southern-east enemy attacked - okay, but they attacked only once - after that they ran out of iron and coal. They should be able to train also non-iron troops. The southern enemy also attacked, but the situation was like before - they took their all troops. The northern-east enemy hadn't attacked at all, except beginning. Maybe they should attack, too?

But that's much better than before, missions are not so boring right now .

In mission 3 the soldier limit is working, enemy's not attacking. There's also some strange thing - when I get into the northern-east enemy and started to kill serfs, he was still training recruits in school - also when he had only one serf (maybe an accident, i used there F8 a lot, it can make strange things).

I have two suggestions - maybe the quarry in our ally's village in 1, 3, should be removed? (It's gold mountain). Also, in mission 9, our western enemy has some unused buildings (stables, mill, armory workshop, quarry - thy belong to other player!) - the buildings should be usable for him (quarry should be deleted).

Language mistakes:
In Polish (argh! encoding!) version I found only two:
The second message in the tutorial (comes with SR2): "Zacznij budow(e,) od klikni(e,)cia myszka" should be "Zacznij budow(e,) od klikni(e,)cia myszk(a,)"
The miner's description looks like this:
"G?rnik wydobywa
rudy w Kopalni W(e,)gla,

elaza i Z(l-)ota."
It should be:
"G?rnik wydobywa
rudy w Kopalni W(e,)gla,
(Z^)elaza i Z(l-)ota."

(sorry for that, but forum isn't supporting Central Europe encoding, so:
(e,) - latin small letter E with ogonek alt+0234
(a,) - latin small letter A with ogonek alt+0185
(l-) - latin small letter L with stroke alt+0179
(Z^) - latin capital letter Z with dot above alt+0175
look on the windows's character map, Central Europe encoding)

Also, the man who's reading briefings in TPR missions sometimes doesn't read that what's written. I don't remember where, I'll check and write that what's he saying.

[Litude]

Great work kuba, that's one great beta test report!

...enemy attacked again. About 10 minutes after that, the northern yellow attacked. It was like before, with the eastern enemy - they took their all troops, so after that it was easy to get into their village. In my opinion they shouldn't attack so often and they shouldn't take their all troops (maybe reduce their radius on the defense positions).

This definitely sounds like the defense radius needs to be decreased, will look into.

Also, what about that useless iron ore in the second storehouse? Allowing iron smithy or removing the iron ore at all would be good idea (I thing it should be removed, the mission would be too easy with iron troops).

Iron buildings won't be allowed, the mission would turn ways too easy. I might remove the iron ore and possibly replace it with some skin or leather (not 100 though), but I'll need to look into it.

In mission 6, after some time (I don't remember) the southern-east enemy attacked - okay, but they attacked only once - after that they ran out of iron and coal. They should be able to train also non-iron troops.

Or should more iron be added to their storehouse? Mission 6 sounds like a quite good point to make an enemy team fully using iron.

The southern enemy also attacked, but the situation was like before - they took their all troops.

This is bad, I already decreased their defence radius quite a bit because I noticed similar behavior. Seems like I need to decrease it even further :shock: Hopefully they will still be capable of defending their base

The northern-east enemy hadn't attacked at all, except beginning. Maybe they should attack, too?

Looking at the original scripts it seems like this team wasn't supposed to attack at all.

In mission 3 the soldier limit is working, enemy's not attacking. There's also some strange thing - when I get into the northern-east enemy and started to kill serfs, he was still training recruits in school - also when he had only one serf (maybe an accident, i used there F8 a lot, it can make strange things).

I guess this could be changed by altering some TOWN_DEFENSE or some similar line, but I'm no expert on the AI. Need to look on this as well.

I have two suggestions - maybe the quarry in our ally's village in 1, 3, should be removed? (It's gold mountain).

I always assumed these buildings were added for "the effect", in other words to make it look like there would be some mining going on there so I don't think I'll remove them (besides they do not make the AI easier or anything).

Also, in mission 9, our western enemy has some unused buildings (stables, mill, armory workshop, quarry - thy belong to other player!) - the buildings should be usable for him (quarry should be deleted).

Never noticed this. Need to look into this too (it might have been that these buildings weren't supposed to be used by the AI either hence giving them to the wrong team, but I might be waays off here since I haven't taken a look yet )

Language mistakes:
In Polish (argh! encoding!) version I found only two:
The second message in the tutorial (comes with SR2): "Zacznij budow(e,) od klikni(e,)cia myszka" should be "Zacznij budow(e,) od klikni(e,)cia myszk(a,)"
The miner's description looks like this:
"G?rnik wydobywa
rudy w Kopalni W(e,)gla,

elaza i Z(l-)ota."
It should be:
"G?rnik wydobywa
rudy w Kopalni W(e,)gla,
(Z^)elaza i Z(l-)ota."

Sorry for the encoding issues. Can't really solve them as I don't write Polish but I've noted these text errors. I will try to fix them as well.

Also, the man who's reading briefings in TPR missions sometimes doesn't read that what's written. I don't remember where, I'll check and write that what's he saying.

Would this happen to be mission 3 TPR? Incase it is, I have a pretty good idea of what is going on.
I might be waays off here as well so if it isn't mission 3 TPR then just ignore the stuff I wrote

Hey and whilst you played mission 6 TPR, did you feel that more food should be available in the storehouse from the start to make it possible to feed your army (if you do well in the defence at the start)? I originally added some food but The Knight didn't like the idea. Still I think adding some more wine wouldn't really be a bad change, but I need to know in case it's just me that considers this a problem (you could just send the army to beat up e.g. the green team but in case you want to keep it for future defence this is slightly problematic).

It's getting quite late so I won't be able to fix anything today. If something didn't make sense I'll try to rewrite stuff tomorrow. I swear I'll never do a post this big again . And I will most likely be away for the weekend so unless I find the time to fix all this tomorrow, you will most likely have to wait at least until Monday for a version that applies these fixes.

Another good news (for me that is ) is that I managed to setup Virtual PC to get a copy of Windows XP up and running. Knights and Merchants turned out working fine, but Virtual PC had some problems keeping up with the resolution changes Anyways this means I'll be having a ways easier time to fix bugs when I can play the game at the speed it was supposed to be played at

[kuba11100]

One tiny thing found - in 7 TPR the yellow team who's attacking at the start from west is green on the minimap.

More iron for the southern-east enemy is a good idea. But don't forget about coal and gold - they also might be needed.

About the food in 6 TPR, I noticed the problem, but I managed to keep my soldiers alive. I built many farms, mills and bakeries, the storehouse was empty, but only few citizens died. A bit more food should be added, I think (but not too much).

I also found a lot of mistakes (maybe made due to the encoding problem): almost all messages added after SR2 have ź (z with acute above) instead of ż (z with a dot above). I haven't noticed it at first time but if you take a look, you'll notice it.
Translation: Track --> Utw?r

Also, the end of briefing in 3 (and single words in 4 8 9 10 TPR) are different. I tried changing text a bit and it wasn't working - usually because it was longer than before. Is it possible to make the text longer than it was?

One more question: do you plan to make bugfixes for other, bigger bugs, like AI serfs not taking some wares to storehouse or soldiers not eating fish?

[Litude]

One tiny thing found - in 7 TPR the yellow team who's attacking at the start from west is green on the minimap.

Strange bug, will look into this as well

More iron for the southern-east enemy is a good idea. But don't forget about coal and gold - they also might be needed.

Don't worry, I won't.

About the food in 6 TPR, I noticed the problem, but I managed to keep my soldiers alive. I built many farms, mills and bakeries, the storehouse was empty, but only few citizens died. A bit more food should be added, I think (but not too much).

Exactly my thought, and adding some extra wine shouldn't help too much (maybe add 10-20 wine?)

I also found a lot of mistakes (maybe made due to the encoding problem): almost all messages added after SR2 have ź (z with acute above) instead of ż (z with a dot above). I haven't noticed it at first time but if you take a look, you'll notice it.

Strange, I guess someone messed up badly whilst creating Service Release 2. Should be fixable though.

Translation: Track --> Utw?r

Ok, thanks. Need yet to see if translating that string would prove troublesome as it is a part of the game exe and not part of the lib files.

Also, the end of briefing in 3 (and single words in 4 8 9 10 TPR) are different.

I have a pretty good idea of what is going on in the end of the briefing in mission 3 TPR. There was an official patch for the game released that as far as I know wasn't ever made part of SR2 which altered this briefing.

I tried changing text a bit and it wasn't working - usually because it was longer than before. Is it possible to make the text longer than it was?

You need to use Lewin's text editor to achieve this.

One more question: do you plan to make bugfixes for other, bigger bugs, like AI serfs not taking some wares to storehouse or soldiers not eating fish?

Those are beyond what I'm capable off I'm afraid

[kuba11100]

About the wrong colour on the minimap in 7 TPR: recently I noticed that minimap colours from 229 to 235 (maybe also other) must be used ascending with the players' numbers, for example:

player 1: 229
player 2: 230
is correct

player 1: 230
player 2: 229
both players will have colour 230

Maybe this is the problem? (I don't know, haven't looked into the script yet).

Food in 6 TPR - I thought about adding for example 5-10 of every type of food (or some flour).

About translation: there are more mistakes (like message "when you build tannery, the mission's over", it's partially true, but it's needed to defeat enemy, too). Maybe I'll fix them, and send you the correct version?

---edited---

7 and 8 TPR tested

7 - As I reported before, the yellow team who's attacking from the west is green on the minimap. After 1:30 the southern green enemy attacked with its all soldiers - but it was not because of the defense radius, he just sent all his soldiers to me. It wasn't very hard to defeat them, so attacking their village wasn't a problem. Yellow enemy's attacks were OK. Yellow's village belongs to two players:
Northern: mill at the top-left of the village is disconnected from the road.
Southern: they ran out of iron (not a big problem), but also out of... leather! They were training only militias after 4 hours!

8 - nothing to change

[Litude]

About the wrong colour on the minimap in 7 TPR: recently I noticed that minimap colours from 229 to 235 (maybe also other) must be used ascending with the players' numbers, for example:

player 1: 229
player 2: 230
is correct

player 1: 230
player 2: 229
both players will have colour 230

Weird stuff, didn't know about that but will take a look.

Food in 6 TPR - I thought about adding for example 5-10 of every type of food (or some flour).

What about adding 15 wine barrels and 10 bread?

About translation: there are more mistakes (like message "when you build tannery, the mission's over", it's partially true, but it's needed to defeat enemy, too). Maybe I'll fix them, and send you the correct version?

You are right about that and it did cross my mind when making the patch but thought it might be a bit of a non-issue. But now that I did a quick replaying of the tutorial the end is really quite confusing when you see how the messages just suddenly end. I whipped up a potential fixed English line.

  Code:

Original: Now you should build yourself a butcher's and a tannery to process the meat and skins. Once you've completed these two buildings, the tutorial is completed. New: Now you should build yourself a butcher's and a tannery to process the meat and skins. Once you've completed these two buildings, it will be up to you to defeat the opposing encampments close to your location.[/quote] [b]I'd highly appreciate if someone with good knowledge of the English language could verify and agree that the modified line makes perfect sense and sounds good, or offer a better alternative.[/b] Also, I hope the translations to the other languages will make similar modifications to the lines in that specific language to keep the scripts consistent between the languages. Naturally it doesn't have to be a word-by-word translation, but something that sounds good in the language in question and yet has a similar meaning to that of the fixed line. [i]I am aware that this is not the place to look for translation to the other languages, work will be done to get the translations after the English build of Service Release 3 is pretty much final as to not constantly have to nag someone for translations.[/i] [quote="kuba111000"]After 1:30 the southern green enemy attacked with its all soldiers - but it was not because of the defense radius, he just sent all his soldiers to me.[/quote] Okay, I'll need to take a look at the size of the attack. [quote="kuba111000"]Northern: mill at the top-left of the village is disconnected from the road.[/quote] Noted [quote="kuba111000"]Southern: they ran out of iron (not a big problem), but also out of... leather! They were training only militias after 4 hours [/quote] Okay, this is really bad. I might possibly give them slightly more iron (depending on how much they have from the start, but the leather supplies should basically be infinite for them which is what I'm aiming for. And yeah it will be until Monday before another beta will surface as expected, but that doesn't prevent anyone from testing the missions that haven't yet recieved a report of there being a bug or issue.

[Lewin]

  Code:

Now you should build yourself a butcher's and a tannery to process the mat and skins. Once you've completed these two buildings, it will be up to you to defeat the opposing encampments close to your location.[/quote] [b]I'd highly appreciate if someone with good knowledge of the English language could verify and agree that the modified line makes perfect sense and sounds good, or offer a better alternative.[/b].[/quote] I'm Australian, and English is our one and only national language! So I'd be very happy to help correct that sentace. As a whole there is only one big mistake in the sentace. That is the word mats. What is that referring to? I think they mean sausages or pigs, (as that's what the butcher deals with) but mats certainly doesn't mean that! (a mat is something on the floor, like a small bit of carpet) Here's my suggestion: [code]Now you need to build a butchery and a tannery to process the pigs and the skins. Once you've completed these two buildings, it will be up to you to defeat the two enemy encampments nigh to thy location.[/quote] Butchery is a better word than Butcher's. The word "pigs" in KaM is not the best translation. It should really be pig meat or pig carcases, as pig implies a whole pig and not a gutted, skinned one. But as that is what they're called in the game I'll leave it be. The next line you'd written was ok, but I made it sound more old fashioned (thy means your in old English, and nigh means near) If you'd rather the tutorial to be more modern, then just use "your" and "near". Hope this helps, ask me if you have any more queries. (I think I'm the only regular native English speaker on the English fansite. Weird isn't it? :? I have a suggestion to make for the tutorial: You should NOT be able to build any buildings past the tannery!!!!!! I intruded my cousin to KaM, and I helped him through the tutorial. I was supprised to find that you could build EVERYTHING!! I think you should give them more troops to start off with but limit the buildings. When my cousin was playing he wanted to know where to build the gold, iron and coal mines. I had to explain to him that it must be a bug as there was none of them to mine on this map. (except a bit of coal, which is useless without gold or iron) Something I really liked about TSK was the way it introduced the buildings and troops one mission at a time. It was exciting the first time playing to see what the new buildings were like. (I especially remember great excitement in our house when my two brothers and I started mission 9 and found that we had barbarians!! We spent ages clicking on them to see what they said) I think that other users should enjoy this process too, and the tutorial should reveal no more buildings to you than you can build in mission 2 TSK. Great work with the patching, I still haven't had time to test it but I will at some point! Lewin. P.S. What does TK think of this? Does he know?

[kuba11100]

What about adding 15 wine barrels and 10 bread?

Okay.

Mission 9 TPR tested. Not very buggy, but some things also found:
- Iron mine is not blocked
- Western brown enemy doesn't make leather - I had similar problem when making a mission - adding butchery should help.
- Weird colour of northern purple enemy (one digit is missing)
- Disconnected armor smithy in the northern village.
- As reported before, unused buildings in western village.
- Gold mine can't be built in one place.

Attacks: Brown enemy took all troops, but now it was my fault, I was keeping soldiers too close to their base. Purple enemy didn't attack - but - as in the story, we have to get back the castle, so the enemy should protect it at all costs - so it's ok.

Mission 10:
Not critical bugs:
- Gold mines can't be built at all on one mountain
- Missing road piece under our ally's armor workshop
- Our ally has almost no timber
- Skin bug like before - but now he has also some in the storehouse, so it's not so serious
And a critical bug:
- No soldier limit causes AI infantry storming infinitely! With this bug, when some enemies aren't defeat at the start of the mission, the mission can be almost impossible (one soldier come to my base, when he's killed, more are coming, they stay in my base and kill my people).

(brown enemy attacks)

Mission 11:
Nothing to change.

Mission 12:
Just started testing, and found another critical bug: at the start, blue player kills all soldiers of dark green player! (dark green can't kill blue).

I've been testing it only few minutes, so there can be more bugs.