New KaM Remake Demo r2411

[Lewin]

Well it?s finally here, the new release has now been posted on the downloads page of our website!

http://www.kamremake.com/download/

The complete changelog can be found in the KaM Remake folder after installation, but I?ll mention some of the most exciting changes here:

- There is an online multiplayer lobby which shows a list of servers running around the world
- Fights are now very similar to KaM and well balanced (huge thanks to Humbelum for his help on this)
- The original music from The Shattered Kingdom is included
- Soldier voices are working, and the release includes the voices from 8 different languages
- Soldiers from The Peasants Rebellion are now working (not siege equipment though)
- Saves are now given names and are not limited to 10 slots

We look forward to playing with you online! Please help spread the word by posting links to our site on KaM forums and websites. Get all of your friends involved!

Please leave comments give us feedback
Lewin and Krom.

[Litude]

Congratulations on yet another fine release!
Did some initial testing and the marketplace idea is just awesome. Nice as well to see the battle sound effects now working (though it seems that sounds occasionally don't play), there was this "empty" feeling previously during battles but now they totally feel like normal KaM battles. Also thought the installation process went very smooth. An awesome release, enough said.

[Shadaoe]

Litude said everything, it's an amazing release ! And really stable !
I tested the first TSK mission and it feels really like the original, great job :p

[Danjb]

This is such amazing news; fantastic job!

[xzaz]

Grats Lewin and Krom, a lot of you hard work went in to this, and a lot of hours of coding. Grats! Great release!

[Danjb]

Some thoughts, having played a little:

- I like that a "basesave" is created when you advance to a new level; I always end up making copies of "start-of-level" saves so this will come in handy. What would be even better is if the game remembered your overall progress and let you replay previously-completed levels. It could even record your stats every time you complete a level (this is something I also find myself doing manually... then I work out kill / death ratios, etc... but maybe that's just me ^^).

- It would be nice to have a slider for "Scroll Speed"... although having said that, the "Fast Scrolling" option was pretty much perfect for me.

That's all for now, except for LOTS AND LOTS of praise! The replays, the interface... everything is just spot on.

[Lewin]

Thank you everyone for your compliments

(though it seems that sounds occasionally don't play)

Our current system only allows for 16 sounds to play at once, so during really big battles or a very busy village some sounds might be missed. I'm not sure whether we can increase that number, or whether it's a sound card/OpenAL limitation...

Some thoughts, having played a little:

- I like that a "basesave" is created when you advance to a new level; I always end up making copies of "start-of-level" saves so this will come in handy. What would be even better is if the game remembered your overall progress and let you replay previously-completed levels. It could even record your stats every time you complete a level (this is something I also find myself doing manually... then I work out kill / death ratios, etc... but maybe that's just me ^^).

- It would be nice to have a slider for "Scroll Speed"... although having said that, the "Fast Scrolling" option was pretty much perfect for me.

That's all for now, except for LOTS AND LOTS of praise! The replays, the interface... everything is just spot on.

We're planning to have a proper Replay Manager so you can view the replay from any save file. The basesave is actually just for the replay at the moment, but you can use it as a "start of level" save too.
Making the scroll speed a slider is a good idea, I added it to the todo list.
Thanks again guys.

[Danjb]

16 sounds at a time sounds like plenty :p
Awesome, sounds good! Love the idea of replays

I've spoken to Krom about maybe getting involved but I haven't heard from him in a while and I'm eager :twisted:

Would you be able to help at all? Krom said he could fill me in on Skype or something.

[Litude]

Our current system only allows for 16 sounds to play at once, so during really big battles or a very busy village some sounds might be missed. I'm not sure whether we can increase that number, or whether it's a sound card/OpenAL limitation...

Actually, that wasn't the problem. I had some lone knights, warriors and crossbowmen and when I clicked on them they sometimes greeted me and sometimes didn't.

Also noticed one minor bug; the left and right arrows in the soldier menu don't display the yellow roll-over text.

[Lewin]

Our current system only allows for 16 sounds to play at once, so during really big battles or a very busy village some sounds might be missed. I'm not sure whether we can increase that number, or whether it's a sound card/OpenAL limitation...

Actually, that wasn't the problem. I had some lone knights, warriors and crossbowmen and when I clicked on them they sometimes greeted me and sometimes didn't.

Also noticed one minor bug; the left and right arrows in the soldier menu don't display the yellow roll-over text.

That's weird with the voices not working... I assume you were using English? I'll try to reproduce it, it might have been trying to play a sound file that doesn't exist. (or one of them might be corrupt) Another possibility is that we only allow 16 global sounds on the map no matter where they are (which it shouldn't, far away sounds shouldn't even attempt to play)
I've added it to my todo list so I'll take a look, thanks

I'll also fixed the hints not displaying, (I must have forgotten to add them to those buttons) thanks
Lewin.

[Litude]

That's weird with the voices not working... I assume you were using English? I'll try to reproduce it, it might have been trying to play a sound file that doesn't exist.

I used English but I did manage to recreate it using German as well. After further testing it does seem to be some caused by some kind of limit.

I just made a new map with just some crossbowmen and warriors and the sounds always played fine. But in the map I originally played the problem still appeared and it has lots of more stuff going on so it probably hits some kind of limit. If you want to test the map that causes this sound problem, you can get it from here. You can find the warriors, knights and crossbowmen in the north.

As long as the battle is going on to the south, the soldier greeting voices occasionally get skipped even though the battle is far away enough that you don't actually hear the sounds of the battle when hovering over the soldiers in the north. I guess it is possible that the sounds are played at such a low volume that you can't make them out, but they still affect the limit for that reason. If that's the case, I guess it's very difficult to fix.

[Danjb]

If that is the case, I guess you could just have some sort of threshold, and sounds with volumes below that threshold are ignored (and not played)?

Anyway, I wondered what your plans were regarding victory conditions? I noticed the "Goals" section of the editor is currently empty.

If you haven't thought of it already, I thought it would be really cool to have building/resource-related victory conditions, so it's not just about destroying your opponent's town; or even a condition to destroy a certain building or buildings other than the standard School, Storehouse and Barracks. This would create a lot of editing potential.

Personally I've always enjoyed the building side of things more than the battling; with me and my brothers it's always been more about building the best town than about being the first one to mass a small army. New goals would make it possible to have the town building as the main focus. Examples:

- First one to reach 200 Gold in the Storehouse (this could make for an interesting map where players are fighting over a gold mountain)
- First one to build every building
- First one to build 20 Watchtowers

You get the idea

EDIT: Also having AI in multiplayer games would be nice, since then you could play co-operative.

[Lewin]

Thanks for the information Litude. You're right Danjb, there is a threshold below which sounds are not played. But it seems to not be working correctly as they are still taking a slot. I've added this to my todo list.

Yes we plan to add more victory conditions such as the ones you mentioned. The goals section of the editor is just empty because we haven't written it yet. There are already goals in the script that are used, you just can't change them with our built-in editor.

AI in multiplayer games works the same as AI in singleplayer, but none of the multiplayer missions included with the distribution have AI script in them, so the AI doesn't do anything. If you copy one of the single missions from "Maps\" to your "Maps MP\" folder and play it you will see the AI works fine. So if you want to play co-op my advice is to take one of those missions, copy it to multiplayer, edit it to have multiple players at the starting position so you can work together, then play it. Adding new players won't be possible on all maps because some of them use the 8 allowed players already. I'm thinking of writing a blog post about this because a lot of people want to do it but it's not clear how to. Next demo I'll try to include some co-op missions
Lewin.

[Danjb]

Sounds awesome, cheers!

[Danjb]

Just a thought, is a "Disable Music" button necessary when you can just reduce the volume slider to zero?

(I don't know if reducing the slider to zero kills the music, but it easily could!)