Knights and Merchants.net Forum

We're getting ready to do the release candidate of the KaM Remake 1st Scripting Demo. Please send us your maps, new or updated old ones, so we can include them in the RC. Either email them to contact@kamremake.com or PM them to me directly if you prefer. New maps will be added if we think the quality is high enough.

Even if you have already sent them to us it's probably a good idea to resend them in case you've updated something or I missed your email.

If you find your map is missing from the RC it can still be added afterwards. We'll probably be doing multiple RCs as we are expecting there to be a fair few bugs given the number of changes which we've made since the last release.
Cheers,
Lewin.

Ha ha ha great joke Lewin 1 April

This is actually not a joke

So is there any deadline for sending maps? And you are going to judge every map individually?

For the RC? We're hoping to release it this week so try to send them within the next few days. For the actual release, you probably have a month or longer depending on how long RC testing takes.
We always judge each map for quality (terrain, balance, etc.) by taking a quick look in the map editor before adding them to the Remake. We're not just going to add any map blindly without checking that the quality is good enough. We don't actually play the maps though. Hopefully any issues we miss will be spotted by the RC testers and reported back to us/the map author.

We also made a decision to keep out duplicate maps. That is there's one Across the Desert and we are unlikely to include its variations (RA Team edition, etc)

Does that mean that Border Rivers FTR11, To's Across the Desert etc. are not going to replace them? At least Border should.

Yes border rivers should be replaced, across the desert I don't know, it was good the way it was, haven't really played to's version.

Well, one of the Acrosses by To, was good for a replacement in my opinion (the one where he changed the least things, was it 0.4?) but I can see how some might disagree - I think The Dark Lord should decide the fate of Across, that would be fair enough I liked some things in other To Acrosses and RA Team versions, but they changed too much stuff (either making the map too easy or too different) and I'd rather not see them in the Remake by default. Border is a different story though - Thunder did a great job balancing it out while keeping the rather high difficulty of the map. I see no reason for not replacing Border with FTR11.

I aggre with sado, across fix 0,4 should be implement to next release too.

I'm unsure what to do about fan-made improvements to existing maps. Some people agree with the changes, some don't, and then some people make their own version which is slightly different (like R.A. did with Across the Desert).

With Across the Desert we will be leaving it as the original game for this release, since there are multiple "improved" editions and people have a lot of different opinions on it. If you want to play that version with your friends you can always download it (call it "Across the Desert To Edition" or something).

I'm not sure about Border Rivers. If we adopt it then maybe someone will make another improved version and another and another, all of them slightly different with different people preferring each edition. It's hard for us to pick one version and say "this one is going to be the official one". If we include every version then we could end up with 20 editions of every single map which would obviously be silly.

It would be nice if we had a community map sharing site or file transfers built into the game (so you can click a button to download the map if you don't have it), but those things won't be available for this next release.

For now, I say that we should stick with the originals. Until we find a good, solid fix that makes the map almost perfect, we probably shouldn't include edits in official releases.

By the way, Lewin, I will be sending you an updated version of "The Battle of Octumn." Personally, I don't like this map, but it is quite popular at the moment it seems. There are some serious flaws that must be fixed before going public, so please don't include version .5

That doesn't convince me at all, since it wouldn't be the first time when an original map is improved and it wasn't a problem for you. It's hardly a problem for Teamspeak players since we can always download the map, but I don't want other people to play the unbalanced version. Your arguments are too theoretical for me, I 'd rather see a discussion about whether the new version of Border Rivers will fit better than the old one.

Lewin has always been very "theoretical." Here, he is supporting both sides (Advocate/Opposition) by providing a middle ground.

Someone should create a thread to discuss the improved Border Rivers version then
Discussion will show whether there are differing opinions on this map and show how popular the new version is.

It's true that we have accepted improvements to original maps in the past when the consensus was very clear. We're not opposed to doing that but we need to be sure that the vast majority of people agree with the changes and it doesn't take away aspects of the original map that people enjoyed. If different people are posting different versions of each map and arguing about the changes then it that's not a consensus (which seems to be the case with Across the Desert)