Official KaM Remake Ideas topic

[T*AnTi-V!RuZz]

Players should be able to play from any system they wish.

They do.

Right now, yes. But if I understood you correctly, you proposed a maximum of three computers per player..

[The Dark Lord]

Also, if he wants to point out a place, he can show you on which area it is (well flare can do this too).
This is a feature that is on AoE online, and I find it VERY useful for teamwork (and there is flare also in this game, so it can be useful for other things) :p)

This is a great idea and as an AoE player I was missing this too! But how should this work? Do you have any ideas?
I was thinking about the following: you get a message with something like 'Your ally requires your attention on the following event' and then you click on 'go to' and tadaaaaah!
Or is this too slow? I just think that a flare like in Age of Empires doesn't really fit into KaM.

[Shadaoe]

Yeah flare could work like that, would be more KaM like !

[Ben]

Huge problem:
I was playing a 1x1 game and everything was going well. I went to click on a building that was on the center of the screen, and you will never guess what happened. The message "waiting for players: ...." appeared and I clicked "quit to menu" when I actually meant to click on my building!

This should be fixed with a "are you sure?" message. i will a little ticked. Now my opponent is playing at this moment without me. He doesn't even know what happened :x


P.S.
Now that I think about this, it was actually kind of funny in a sad way

And as for the Dark Lord's idea about flaring, I love it, but I'm not sure what the message should say. If my ally wanted to know where his gold mine was, I wouldn't "need his help" there

[Siegfried]

Right now, yes. But if I understood you correctly, you proposed a maximum of three computers per player..

What? The number 3 was just a random number to illustrate my example.

People still can play with their IDs (unless they are banned for lifetime on specific servers), it's just that everyone recognizes them.

Once again: the ID is not an account or anything similar. It's just some numbers that are unique for you and that you cannot change.

So if I see someone online who calles himself 'Lewin', I'd look into the details (which have to be programmed) and see, that he has the ID '1234CD'. Now I have to know the forums' Lewin's ID to compare. If I know, that Lewin's ID is '987654' then I know, that the person online is not Lewin but someone else who pretends to be Lewin.

Also, if you know from experience that someone with the nick 'lamest_flamer' and ID 'xxxyyy' is a displeasing player. If in the next game a person called 'nicest_player_on_earth' joins the game with the ID 'xxxyyy', you know that it still is the displeasing person with a fake nick.

The important point is, that the ID has to be assigned to you in a way, that you cannot change by hand. Or, to be more realistic, only with a great effort. So the mainboard serial number would be perfect. For privacy reasen, take a hash tag so nobody can know what mainboard you have.

If you still want to avoid being identified as 'lamest_flamer', you'd have to change your PC.

Maybe that's easy the first time because 'lamest_flamer' has a second PC, but the amount of PCs he has is certainly limited. Definately more limited than the number of mail adresses he has. And harder to cheat than registering a new account.

'lamest_flamer' still can play with all of his computers. He still can play online. But he can't avoid being identified as 'lamest_flamer'. So if he behaved like an idiot, people will remember.

This is the whole story: identifying someone without any external means necessary and without being able to fake that easy.

[Lewin]

In middle ages, villages had really rarely walls, only big cities

Exactly

Now, I'd like to propose my own idea. I think I've told Lewin once before, but can't really remember. What about being able to split your labourers into teams (max. of 2?). So when you have 10 labourers, split them into two teams of 5.

Yes labourers need optimising, and "worker teams" is one idea I thought of. But I think simply improving the algorithm that assigns jobs would be a massive improvement already. The distance should add a "weight" to each task meaning that building a house on this side of town will be selected rather than walking to the far side of town to build some road because road always has precedence. Also the "weight" should be increased for construction sites based on the number of labourers already there. So if a few labourers are building a house then new labourer would pick a different house to build, as long as they were about the same distance away.

Flares and "vision squares" (minimap screen outline) both seem like good ideas to me. Flares have been planned for a while.

I think the "Ban player form Lobby" feature should be a "Ban IP from server". I made a launch script in java to start multiple server dynamically and I'd prefer it if I could ban players from all my server permanently.

Is this REALLY that much of an issue at the moment? Are there a lot of lame people online? Mostly when I play everyone is nice, and if not then you kick them out and find a new person and remember their name for next time...
Banning IP is possible but it sounds like a stupid idea because most people are on dynamic IP addresses. So you unplug your modem, plug it back in and once it's connected and given a new IP you can connect to the server again! And this would mean that the IP could be given to another KaM player using the same ISP and then they would be blocked. Seems completely pointless.
I prefer Siegfried's ID idea, but I'm still not convinced this is necessary at the moment. If people can show me reasons why we need banning then I'll think about it.

Also 2 players controlling the same village is called team melee in StarCraft. And its the best idea ever. Especially since it'll help against disconnects a little bit more. Imagine enjoying a 4v4 with 16 players

Disconnections aren't really going to be an issue in the next version Unless someone actually loses their internet connection they should always be able to reconnect automatically within seconds, I've tested it with Shadaoe and it works really well.

What about making the building exist but not buildable by players? This way the map creators can create a map with defensive vs. attack map. One camp with defensive soldiers, the other with a sieging army (playercount: 1 vs 1, 2 vs 2, 3 vs 3, etc). This could create some interesting new maps, without the 'adding extra gametime hours'. Of course the Siege Equipment has to be implemented, as it makes no sense if the soldiers could take down the walls with their weapons.

Well you can already do that by placing the wall tiles from the map editor, so this would only be needed if we wanted destructible walls and I don't really see that as necessary. But it's still open for discussion.

Huge communities like AoE use Registered accounts. Changing accounts changes your Identity. This alone might deter them.
Also, some people (like me) have access to several different computers. No, I don't think your idea is any better of a solution.
I know that Me, The Dark Lord, Krom, and others would NEVER want to give away our names. It is the only identity we have in the community, and I respect it enough to not abuse it.

Siegfried's ID system was really just intended for identification so you can ban players more easily or check if someone is the same person.
Registered accounts is a HUGE amount of work and responsibility. We'd be responsible for the data and security, what if someone hacked us and leaked your details? We could be sued.
I've never seen anyone using someone else's name. Anyone who actually knows us will probably be able to tell it's not us. If someone tells us that this has been happening then maybe we'll look for a solution. I want this to be a casual game that anyone can start up and join a game without registering or anything.
It's easy enough to check whether it's me if you know me, and most of you guys have me on MSN/ICQ anyway...

I don't think, too many players have to equal computers that they play with. Maybe we should start a poll?

We shouldn't design a system around this limitation. If I am playing online using my desktop computer I don't want everyone screaming at me that I'm not the real Lewin. It doesn't matter how many people have this situation, enough people to do make it a bad idea to recognise people by their ID. But for banning purposes it could work quite well. Any blacklist could just be the IDs which mean the computer with that hardware is banned, which is indeed a good solution.
Clever people could recompile our source to change it, but if they're that clever they probably won't be screwing around online... and we can't stop everyone anyway.

This is a great idea and as an AoE player I was missing this too! But how should this work? Do you have any ideas?
I was thinking about the following: you get a message with something like 'Your ally requires your attention on the following event' and then you click on 'go to' and tadaaaaah!
Or is this too slow? I just think that a flare like in Age of Empires doesn't really fit into KaM.

I don't really see an issue with flashing a marker on the minimap at you. (and playing a sound of course) Messages might get annoying and yes they would be slower.

Huge problem:
I was playing a 1x1 game and everything was going well. I went to click on a building that was on the center of the screen, and you will never guess what happened. The message "waiting for players: ...." appeared and I clicked "quit to menu" when I actually meant to click on my building!

Yeah, I'll admit the giant "QUIT TO MENU" button in the middle of the screen with no confirmation wasn't our BEST invention It's been on my todo list for a while but your post drove me to fix it just then. Here's what it looks like now just after you press Quit by mistake instead of your building The confirmation buttons are lower than the original buttons, so even if you double clicked it won't quit unless you moved your cursor down too. Also notice the new player dropping system while waiting for the person to automatically reconnected, although you can't really see it here.

Whew, that took a long time to write This thread is going crazy

[Ben]

I've never seen anyone using someone else's name.

just for laughs and old time's sake, remember Avivis? The one who feigned being you, Lewin, and stating that The Dark Lord's campaign sucked?
Haha, that was way back in '08. Long time ago
This had nothing to do with the topic; though, sorry.

Anyway the new option after quitting is MUCH better, thanks

[Lewin]

I've never seen anyone using someone else's name.

just for laughs and old time's sake, remember Avivis? The one who feigned being you, Lewin, and stating that The Dark Lord's campaign sucked?
Haha, that was way back in '08. Long time ago
This had nothing to do with the topic; though, sorry.

Anyway the new option after quitting is MUCH better, thanks

Yes I do, and no one believed him for a moment
I can't wait to get the new demo out there and be able to play 8 player games without worrying about disconnections

[Ben]

I can't wait to get the new demo out there and be able to play 8 player games without worrying about disconnections

Amen to that! I got up at 7:20 this morning, (actually, not it would be yesterday, since it is past midnight) even though it wasn't a school day. Why? Well most people in Europe seem to be playing early in the morning for me. Anyway I didn't actually get any playing until 12:00 because of disconnections.
I'm not complaining because of your work; though! Just my bad luck
P.S., when do you think the next demo will be released? I want to know how much time I have to finish my maps.

[GreatWhiteBear]

I do remember someone using GWB as a name which is the abbreviation of my name. Maybe it was my brother trying to piss me off.

[The Dark Lord]

I don't really see an issue with flashing a marker on the minimap at you. (and playing a sound of course) Messages might get annoying and yes they would be slower.

Well if you can make it KaM-like you won't hear me complaining.

[GreatWhiteBear]

One word:
Trumpet!

[Ben]

Here is a little something that might cause a minor uproar.

Let me begin. There are two buildings in the game that both plant and gather. These buildings are, of course, the woodcutter's and the farmer's houses. As most of us know, buildings stop running after the amount of wears they have produced is greater than 5, which is when a overload is reached and serfs must take them away before production can continue. I agree with this 100%.
However, I have come up with a little idea. I'm not sure what I think of it yet, has anyone else been annoyed when their wood cutter is sitting around doing nothing when he has 5 tree trunks in his house? Well maybe not if he was watching trees grow, but what if he had already cut all the trees down?
My point: what if farmers and woodcutters continued planting their crops even when they reach an overload of resources?
I think that, maybe, we could do a poll on this?

[GreatWhiteBear]

@Ben: Good idea!
Something concerning the woodcutters. As said: In KaM you have a indirect impact on your economy.
Therefore the woodcutters idea failed. But what if you could close the woodcutters while it continues chopping? This way there would be a bigger chance of removing an unwanted tree without having him plant new ones.
Of course this idea wouldn't work together with Bens idea.
And this idea would become obsolete if you can remove trees in a different manner.

[pawel95]

Ben, yes this is a good idea. I hope i understand...If they have 5 woods...than they will plant new trees in this time???
Yes this would be really great!