Service Release 3 - Beta testing has started!

[Litude]

It doesn't have to make perfect sense...

Yeah it certainly doesn't have to make perfect sense, but in this case it makes no sense at all .

Also, since when did KaM contain simple english??

Well if you check the messages from the TPR campaign, those messages are using simple and on top of all bad English.

[Danjb]

You're forgetting my "invisible upgrades" explanation

Just because we don't notice a change in the watchtowers, doesn't mean there can't be one (well, I mean I know there isn't, but we can pretend there is on the inside).

Anyways, if you're gonna disable the watchtower, at least don't then enable the siege workshop... I don't think TSK missions should be edited to allow TPR buildings...

[Litude]

Anyways, if you're gonna disable the watchtower, at least don't then enable the siege workshop... I don't think TSK missions should be edited to allow TPR buildings...

The siege workshop will most likely be available in mission 11 (or 12 if I decide to take it really far), but I disagree with disallowing the TPR buildings.
Sure, it's not faithful to the original TSK campaign, but because they decided to include the campaign in TPR I'm sure they also wanted it to benefit of the new features in the expansion.

Just for something to compare to, it's not like Age of Empires disallows technologies or units that were added in the expansion packs when playing the original campaign.

[Danjb]

Fair enough, but all I'm really bothered about is exactly that - staying faithful to the original TSK campaign... I don't really play TPR much.

And I don't think we can be sure that that was their intention - as for it benefiting from TPR's new features... well I guess that's a matter of opinion.

Anyways I'll keep checking back, good luck with the project and keep up the good work (despite our disagreements, I'm glad the game's not being forgotten)

[Lewin]

I don't know is it a good idea, they'll empty the whole sea and there won't be enough for human player. Making disconnected fisherman's huts (like in 10 TPR) or belong to other player (like brown's quarry in 9 TPR) will be better in my opinion.

I agree, it would be bad if they empty the sea. However, in cases where their water source is different to yours (e.g. mission 5 TSK) then I think they can have a functioning fisherman's hut. I think it would be better if it belonged to a different player, rather than disconnected road. Disconnected road looks really bad.

I prefer them to auto-build, rather than have a city laid out for them right at the start; that way it's just like the campaign, just the player against a bigger (but stupider) opponent.

Yes, maybe you're right. But still, we could give them some watchtowers (they don't build these very well in auto build mode)
We can still improve other things, such as attacks, defence settings, etc.

Hmmm... What about
Mission 2: Fisherman's hut, leather, sausages
Mission 4: Scouts, gold production
Mission 5: Iron production, ally
Mission 7: Stables, active ally
Mission 8: Watchtowers (siege workshop?)
Mission 9: Limited Barbarians, siege workshop
Mission 11: Town hall

That sounds good. Maybe holding off on the siege workshop until mission 9 would be a good idea. Or, if we REALLY want to spread things out then we could only introduce it in mission 12. (then it's more like one new thing per mission) I dunno though, it's hard to decide.

Hmm... In one of the multiplayer maps there is indeed fish above the waterfall and the waters do look empty without fish . Wonder what to do...

Uh.. I thought we'd sorted this one out.... Maybe it depends on the case. If there is a large water body (or river) above the waterfall then we put fish, however if it's only a little bit of water then we don't. Think about it: if the fish are a little way up stream then they wouldn't be swept over, none of the water in KaM flows that fast. I'm really not sure though...

You are so right at these missions being merely some fill-up material that pretty much noone bothers to play (honestly I've only finished three of the skirmish missions), so some real big changes should be done to them in order to make them worthwhile.
Changing these missions would really require quite a lot of work, so I will start looking at the possibilities after beta 4.

Good idea, leave them until after beta 4. If you like then I could do a bit of work on them, but maybe you'd prefer to do it yourself?

Another idea: We could make the multiplayer missions "more interesting". All of the non-battle ones are the same, you start with a set of buildings. (in village mode) We could vary the buildings a bit more, and make the villages larger in some missions. I'm just throwing ideas around, in case someone thinks one of them is good.

If the AI has pretty much every building already pre-built, do they still decide to continue building if you add that piece of scriot?

I THINK so... They build based on whether they've already built one, not on whether they started with one. Still, might be worth a try.

Hardly, this bug did not exist in the TSK engine, actually it came to the game in the 1.56 patch for TPR so that's by no means the reason.

Yeah, but we believe the bug is cased by too many units, and if you add more animals then that means more units. Understand? The TSK campaign in TPR still uses the TPR engine.

- some purple enemy's soldiers on horses does not keep positions

Yeah, I've had that too. Once, (way back in TSK when it didn't matter if yellow died) they attacked the yellows but then didn't go back home. (they just sat where the lance carriers used to be) I think they have less defence positions than troops. Maybe giving them more defence positions would be a good idea.

This would be really hard to make possible in a bug-proof way, thing being that the new AI is pretty much not interested in detroying allied buildings, only troops. This means that I'd have to hardcode attacks on each of their buildings and if one of the attacks fail the enemy won't be defeated.
Before you ask, yes, the battle missions have hardcoded attacks for destroying the buildings. It won't break in these as they are a lot less random than normal missions.

I agree, I think the goals are ok. I once did have the purples attack their town, but that was in the TSK engine. Defending their troops is hard, but possible. (I think) It make more sense story wise too.

I'd like to suggest some changes to the messages your wrote. You wrote it in perspective of "our" enemies, not "your" enemies. In the TSK campaign/briefings they were always "yours" and not "ours". The narrator was independent, not a part of your team.
Also, I changed shall to shalt, but I'm not sure about that one, it kind of sounds better as shall.
I have a major suggestion: In TSK, yellow had a character. His name was The Barron of Lauenburg, and in the end he allied with you. Do you think we could give some character to the TPR teams?
My revision:

  Code:

The dastardly attack by thy enemies hath indeed left a cruel mark on the village of thine ally. I stress upon thee that thou must needs protect thine allied troops from further attacks, or otherwise they shalt be deeply humiliated and crushed by thine enemies![/quote] The second message is excellent! [quote="Danjb"]Guys, I think it's great that this patch is being made to fix many of the bugs and inconsistencies in the game, but I'd just like to try and discourage you from changing too much. It can be very easy to go a tad too far... [/quote] You're raising a good point Danjb, we must be careful. [quote="Danjb"]I've not read through everything, but one example I can think of is the watchtowers in level 7. I can see why you might consider disabling them because of the plot that follows, but I'm sure I used watchtowers in that mission and I'd hate to see them disabled. I'm sure the makers of the game knew at least roughly what they were doing, so let's not undo too much of what they've done. [/quote] But did you use them effectively? I was never able to. I built some near my top storehouse and tried to lure the enemy to them, but it really didn't work. There is just too much distance between bases in mission 7, and the enemy doesn't attack you that much. I think it would make little difference disabling them, and would make much more sense story wise. BTW: I ended up putting bowmen behind the allies militia and luring the enemies into them. It worked really well, but I don't think my allies would agree. :wink: [quote="Danjb"]You're forgetting my "invisible upgrades" explanation :wink: Just because we don't notice a change in the watchtowers, doesn't mean there can't be one (well, I mean I know there isn't, but we can pretend there is on the inside). [/quote] Come on, that's just silly. Here's how I see it: You get watch towers in mission 1, but you can't build any more. This makes me think that we don't have an easy way to construct them, or the engineer didn't come on the campaign :wink: Anyway, so once you find the blue prints, they tell you have to make them easily, so you can now construct them. I remember thinking when I play TSK the first time that it didn't make sense, but I just accepted it. [quote="Litude"]The siege workshop will most likely be available in mission 11 (or 12 if I decide to take it really far), but I disagree with disallowing the TPR buildings. Sure, it's not faithful to the original TSK campaign, but because they decided to include the campaign in TPR I'm sure they also wanted it to benefit of the new features in the expansion. [/quote] Well, if you're going to put the town hall in mission 11, then I'd recommend putting the siege workshop in 12. (or 9) The town hall AND siege workshop is far too many new things for one mission, they must be in different ones. Should we put a message at the start saying that we've found the designs for siege equipment? (like the watchtowers) Might make it more interesting... Lewin. P.S. Do you have a planned date for beta 4?

[Litude]

I agree, it would be bad if they empty the sea. However, in cases where their water source is different to yours (e.g. mission 5 TSK) then I think they can have a functioning fisherman's hut. I think it would be better if it belonged to a different player, rather than disconnected road. Disconnected road looks really bad.

Look at mission 10 TPR to see an example of this type of disconnected road.

Yes, maybe you're right. But still, we could give them some watchtowers (they don't build these very well in auto build mode)
We can still improve other things, such as attacks, defence settings, etc.

You're right, the AI should attack and their defense settings are completely messed up.

That sounds good. Maybe holding off on the siege workshop until mission 9 would be a good idea. Or, if we REALLY want to spread things out then we could only introduce it in mission 12. (then it's more like one new thing per mission) I dunno though, it's hard to decide.

I guess that mission 9 it is, at least for the time being.

Uh.. I thought we'd sorted this one out.... Maybe it depends on the case. If there is a large water body (or river) above the waterfall then we put fish, however if it's only a little bit of water then we don't. Think about it: if the fish are a little way up stream then they wouldn't be swept over, none of the water in KaM flows that fast. I'm really not sure though...

Yeah but IIRC that was just a small piece of water, well let's just forget about it.

Good idea, leave them until after beta 4. If you like then I could do a bit of work on them, but maybe you'd prefer to do it yourself?

Feel free to send in fixed mission files!

Another idea: We could make the multiplayer missions "more interesting". All of the non-battle ones are the same, you start with a set of buildings. (in village mode) We could vary the buildings a bit more, and make the villages larger in some missions. I'm just throwing ideas around, in case someone thinks one of them is good.

Nah, normal multiplayer is fine as it is right now.

I THINK so... They build based on whether they've already built one, not on whether they started with one. Still, might be worth a try.

You were right I'm afraid . They do insist on constructing yet another inn despite them having already three of them...

Yeah, but we believe the bug is cased by too many units, and if you add more animals then that means more units. Understand? The TSK campaign in TPR still uses the TPR engine.

Yeah, but you didn't really get my point. Your question was whether fish was absent from this mission to prevent drunk soldiers, but that isn't the case as the drunk soldiers bug did not exist in the TSK engine (where the mission of course originates from) and it got introduced in the TPR 1.56 patch.

Yeah, I've had that too. Once, (way back in TSK when it didn't matter if yellow died) they attacked the yellows but then didn't go back home. (they just sat where the lance carriers used to be) I think they have less defence positions than troops. Maybe giving them more defence positions would be a good idea.

Sounds like a likely cause.

I agree, I think the goals are ok. I once did have the purples attack their town, but that was in the TSK engine. Defending their troops is hard, but possible. (I think) It make more sense story wise too.

Yeah unfortunately they won't attack friendly buildings in TPR . Don't think it's exactly hard to defend the lance carriers though. Putting some archers behind them will let them last for quite a while.

I'd like to suggest some changes to the messages your wrote. You wrote it in perspective of "our" enemies, not "your" enemies. In the TSK campaign/briefings they were always "yours" and not "ours". The narrator was independent, not a part of your team.
Also, I changed shall to shalt, but I'm not sure about that one, it kind of sounds better as shall.
I have a major suggestion: In TSK, yellow had a character. His name was The Barron of Lauenburg, and in the end he allied with you. Do you think we could give some character to the TPR teams?
My revision:

  Code:

The dastardly attack by thy enemies hath indeed left a cruel mark on the village of thine ally. I stress upon thee that thou must needs protect thine allied troops from further attacks, or otherwise they shalt be deeply humiliated and crushed by thine enemies![/quote] The second message is excellent![/quote] Shall to shalt is a good change. As for the perspective, you aren't 100% correct: ...Now that Lauenburg is our ally... ...Our enemies are soundly defeated... ...we shall be defenseless against enemy attack! ...thou shalt protect our stalwart allies... Think you got the point. [quote="Lewin"]Well, if you're going to put the town hall in mission 11, then I'd recommend putting the siege workshop in 12. (or 9) The town hall AND siege workshop is far too many new things for one mission, they must be in different ones. Should we put a message at the start saying that we've found the designs for siege equipment? (like the watchtowers) Might make it more interesting...[/quote] I'd like siege equipment in mission 9, but it makes more sense to get it after the town hall telling me to put it to mission 12. Nah that message is quite unneeded. [quote="Lewin"]P.S. Do you have a planned date for beta 4?[/quote] I'm planning to release it this weekend, but more and more stuff is needed to be done so I'll have to see about that.

[kuba11100]

(...) in cases where their water source is different to yours (e.g. mission 5 TSK) (...)

Water in 5 TSK is near all players. Only in mission 14 (10? 20? I don't know how many fish contain one line in the script), 15 and 20 TSK enemy has his own water.

Litude: I've played new 4 TPR only few minutes, but the beginning looks good. Also noticed the yellow's butchery doesn't show up.

--edit--
7 TSK:
- northern blue enemy doesn't have school and have one not occupied watchtower
- crossbowmen, who had to attack with other swordmen and pikemen, attacks some minutes too late, after initial attack
- one purple lancemen group stays at blue's base and die of hunger
- question: how our ally's attacks works? Maybe he should attack other buildings after killing enemy soldiers?

[Danjb]

You're raising a good point Danjb, we must be careful.

As long as care is being taken, I'm happy

But did you use them effectively?

I avoided using this word before as I couldn't actually remember the level too well, but now that I've looked it up, I seem to recall that I did in fact use them rather effectively

I used them more as a form of attack than defence, building them all the way over by the enemy's bridge, right where my troops were, and then luring the enemy into them. I kinda did that a lot in the campaign

[Litude]

Litude: I've played new 4 TPR only few minutes, but the beginning looks good. Also noticed the yellow's butchery doesn't show up.

I'm still planning to do some minor changes to the misison.
As for the yellow butchery, I forgot to include the map file . Anyways, I did some slight changes to how the northern enemy kept his soldiers and made the elevation below the butchery a bit more natural, get the updated files from here.

7 TSK

- northern blue enemy doesn't have school and have one not occupied watchtower

Yeah I already fixed this by giving them one more recruit at start. From testing it seems that the watch towers always get occupied this way.

- crossbowmen, who had to attack with other swordmen and pikemen, attacks some minutes too late, after initial attack

I can also recall this happening. Will need to take a look to find out what the real deal behind the problem is though.

- one purple lancemen group stays at blue's base and die of hunger

I'll send them to accompany the other purple lance carriers that attack our ally a bit later then.

- question: how our ally's attacks works? Maybe he should attack other buildings after killing enemy soldiers?

Huh? You don't mean they actually kill all of the enemy soldiers in mission 7 TSK? Certainly can't remember this happening,


Oh and has anyone else experienced problems in mission 6 TSK that all soldiers don't always attack? This could be tough to fix but hopefully not impossible.

[kuba11100]

Oh and has anyone else experienced problems in mission 6 TSK that all soldiers don't always attack? This could be tough to fix but hopefully not impossible.

Yes. One blue knights group and one purple axemen group. But it does't happen all the time.

Huh? You don't mean they actually kill all of the enemy soldiers in mission 7 TSK? Certainly can't remember this happening,

I helped them - with support of 12 starting bowmen and 15 additional crossbowmen they're strong . I noticed it when there wasn't any soldiers and watchtowers in southern blue's base, allied militias destroyed only one building and then went back to their town.

I'm still planning to do some minor changes to the misison.
As for the yellow butchery, I forgot to include the map file Very Happy. Anyways, I did some slight changes to how the northern enemy kept his soldiers and made the elevation below the butchery a bit more natural, get the updated files from here.

Butchery is good, but why fish in the water is green and wolves are red on a minimap?!

--edit: new 4 TPR:
- when placing my soldiers on Y 53 or lower, northern enemy takes additional troops
- attacks: green attacks later, he attack our ally but he do it seconds after northern-east yellow - too big delay.

I've played only 2 hours.
It seems that there's enough stone now, correctly functioning swine farms.
I also looked at the script
Player 2 and 6:
- maybe some more gold, so they can use all the weapons
Player 5 and 7:
- maybe less corn

(numbers from Lewin's editor, in script it's 1 lower)

[Litude]

Yes. One blue knights group and one purple axemen group. But it does't happen all the time.

Yeah and IIRC the purple scouts won't always attack either.

I helped them - with support of 12 starting bowmen and 15 additional crossbowmen they're strong . I noticed it when there wasn't any soldiers and watchtowers in southern blue's base, allied militias destroyed only one building and then went back to their town.

It might work if the attack type is changed to 0 or 2.

Butchery is good, but why fish in the water is green and wolves are red on a minimap?!

I thought I saw something weird on the minimap... Thing is, wolves take their minimap color from player 7 and fish takes it from player 8. If you check the minimap of the original mission, the wolves are red even there.
The green player that attacks our ally was added as a new team taking the place of player 8, hence the green fish.
Now I think it should be possible but hard to change this start attack to be caused by the second player, that is the original green player.
This would fix the bug with green fish, wolves are really not fixable.

--edit: new 4 TPR:
- when placing my soldiers on Y 53 or lower, northern enemy takes additional troops

Okay, I skipped some defense positions and it ended up being fatal .

- attacks: green attacks later, he attack our ally but he do it seconds after northern-east yellow - too big delay.

Too big? I take it you mean too small? I'll increase the recruit count for the green team then.

Player 2 and 6:
- maybe some more gold, so they can use all the weapons

Hmm... Seeing as there are quite a lot of enemies in this mission, I think the gold amount should be somewhat limited so that the mission isn't ways too hard (it's only the fourth mission).

Player 5 and 7:
- maybe less corn

Why?

[kuba11100]

Never had any problems with purple scouts.
About minimap colours - maybe move the water animals up in the script, for player 6?
Yellow defense: noticed it before.
Attacks delay: IIRC they attacked in that order: E yellow, green, E yellow, N yellow.
Less corn: if you want leave yellow unchanged (he has 2000? he won't use it all), but I think that ally doesn't need 18000 of corn...

P.S. Sorry for no quoting and any errors, wrote this using mobile

[Litude]

Never had any problems with purple scouts.

I do recall them once not attacking. But you're right that it's mainly the axe fighters and the knights.

About minimap colours - maybe move the water animals up in the script, for player 6?

Unfortunately it doesn't really work like that. Wolves always use the minimap color of player 7, and fish uses the color of player 8. Another strange bug in KaM .
Anyways, I fixed the green fish so get the updated file here.

Less corn: if you want leave yellow unchanged (he has 2000? he won't use it all), but I think that ally doesn't need 18000 of corn...

It shouldn't really matter if they have surplus supplies of corn.

@Lewin:
I totally forgot to reply to giving the teams character in TPR. If you ask me, it seems like quite a lot of teams just got some random colors (brown is allied at some point, later enemy) so a lot of recoloring would be necessary. I'm not against it, but it will require quite a lot of effort.
Also as a note, going by the story your enemies should be rebels. Did you mean that we'd come up with some names for the "rebellion leaders" for each team? Oh and to get them smoothly inserted into the campaign would require editing the briefings (= voiceover redone in several languages => impossible ). I do really like the idea, but it's just so hard to realize...

[kuba11100]

It shouldn't really matter if they have surplus supplies of corn.

I know, but in my opinion it looks bad when farmers are not working on their fields.

Defending ally in mission 4 isn't hard, as it's necessary to place our soldiers near the second storehouse (to protect it), on the enemy's way to ally's village.

Also, what do you think about revealing allied villages in mission 3 and 10?

--edit--
4 TPR:
- I don't know was this attack intended (too many soldiers than in script, drunk soldiers), but after northern yellow attack both eastern yellow and green attacked
- drunk soldiers after 3h

Ally's soldiers didn't get drunk.

[Litude]

Okay I revealed the allied villages and also decreased the troop amount the opponents need for attack slightly.