New KaM Remake Demo r2411

[Siegfried]

In KaM, ranged units NEVER missed towers.

That's not correct. In KaM, ranged units quite frequently missed towers, it was only a fact of the position of the archer. If it was slightly diagonal, it never hit the tower actually. You can check this: let your archers attack a tower and on the same time, let some militia attack your tower. You will notice that most militia die within half a minute.

I always hated that in original KaM, because it never allowed to attack with archers and melee units at the same time.

The way it is implemente into the Remake is very good.

I'm sure that the deviations from original behaviour have to do with the implementation of the fighting system. In original Kam, all troops behaved somewhat lethargic. This was a consequence of the limited CPU powers at that time, so algorithms were designed the checked each troop only every few ticks. You could see this also on the growth of corn. It also went line-wise, independent of the seeding time.

In the Remake, the CPU power is of no problem, so every unit is updated immediately. Each serf starts to move immediately when it is assigned a task. Each evasion process is much faster and so on.
Also note, that the attacking animations were slower in original KaM.

In this process, also the updating of life points is much faster, thus it is very tricky to set it up correctly - especially since we don't know the original value in KaM. Also, we don't know if the original fights were calculated in real time or if they also were updated quite slowly.

I wouldn't change the attack system any more. On the one hand, it is pretty close to original KaM, on the other hand I would trust in the original strategy book (btw I owned it, too).
I would rather think of minor adjustments to improve it. To make the fights last longer, I could only think of increasing the recreation speed.


Regarding the other ideas:
-> I would hate to have checkboxes whether the wood cutter should plant or cut trees. If we want something like that, we should implement the original graphic for a forester and divide both of them. But this had to be an option, not a standard.

-> I also hated the TPR troops since the beginning. This behaviour never changed. But since gold indeed is a very valuable resource (unless someone designs a map with LOTS of coal), recruiting the stronger soldiers is rather balanced. The balliste needs lots of iron, so even more coal and iron - they might be that strong, so no need to change anything there.

-> 10 players maps would be nice indeed because of the 5v5 option. But would this really be used? The first person who falls out of the game will fall out pretty fast and then it's over for him? For some reasons, I rather prefer smaller teams.

[CuDi]

I've shared much of your insights in my playing before, Dark Lord.
I think that Catapults are very fair (They tore down buildings like monsters in KaM TPR since they couldn't miss) but they also hurt your own men. Ballista, on the other hand, are stacked. Unless your opponent can get around you, they will have a hard time destroying them without huge losses (and the AI is too dumb).
As for the Town Hall, I hate it. Took the "Real" feeling out of KaM. I wouldn't mind taking it out all together, but that would ruin many missions/ ideas for missions.
I never thought about the "Waiting Time" that the school as in relationship to the town Hall. It is a very good point. What if The Town Hall worked like the School where there was a "Waiting Time" (Perhaps one could consider it the "paperwork" of the hiring process)?

I agree, to me it doesn't fit the KaM standards. I would rather move the troops from the town hall to the barracks if anything. That way it will be more realistic to create them. At the same rate, those troops were designed to be a quick and easily made soldier. Not really sure how I would go about modifying the town hall..

[sir_drink_a_lot]

dont you dare to remove town hall !! Otherwise ill shoot you ... xD

no honestly guys , I was kinda disapointed when i found marketplace added while KaM_TPR buildings not .

The problem with KaM is that it takes to long to create an reasonable army . Town hall alowed you in almost an hour to have some sort of army - weak, but still an army.

and if you say its like cheating then why dont you do otherwise - make wepons making more faster (like making 2 handaxe instead of 1) , so that townhall wont be such a good option.

And for those who say that it isnt realistik then look at this point - you arent traning them , you are hiring them .

In the end ,just think about those people who dont want waste time watching how serves deliver goods but want to clash with the enemy as soon as posible, trick them , try many batletactiks ...

Anyway , if you are going into more modification, here is what i think -
* townhall should be alowing you to train weekest soldiers while barbarian/wariors should be removed for some time. It should be used like place to hire soldiers for defence
*marketplace is a good way to generate aditional gold when the mines are empty. I found some reasonable prices ( 4 bread for 1 gold). so you should be able to build it after building a sawmill as alternative to gold mines.
Also trade rates should be reduced (not bigger then 1 to 2 and the formula relooked.
*army gathering should be faster. Because building wepon worshops takes ages it should make wepon faster.
*rebels could be trained at school as defending troops (but the time to train them should 3x longer)


i believe there will be many who dont agry with me as well as they do there should be like a mod choosing . There could even some sort of vointing to see what people prefer.

[GreatWhiteBear]

marketplace: leave it.
Townhall: implant it and have the gold capacity increased to 10or something like that.
Weapons Production: If this is going too slow for you then you are doing it wrong, either you don't have enough resources or you don't have enough processors.

Rebels at school sounds nice.
Also please ad the vagabond to the barracks.

[Shadaoe]

sir_drink_a_lot : this wouldn't be kam anymore.

[Jolinar_CZ]

marketplace: leave it.
Townhall: implant it and have the gold capacity increased to 10or something like that.

As u wrote in your own comment, you are doing it wrong, just build 2 Townhalls if u want to have bigger capacity for gold (I hope amount of Townhalls is not limited to 1). I never have only 1 school if I am going to build large army.

And my opinion to Townhall? I dont like it too much, but it is part of KaM so why not part of KaM Remake? I think it should be used especially for emergency situations (defence). My tip is this: just add some counter of units which can be recruted (or gold which can be spend?). First part of game (lets say 15 min?) it would be 0 and then starts slowly increase to some limit (lets say 10?). And if somebody wants more units from TownHall than he has to make them and feed them and wait for next.
It is just an idea, I dont think everybody will like it.

[Jolinar_CZ]

In the end ,just think about those people who dont want waste time watching how serves deliver goods but want to clash with the enemy as soon as posible, trick them , try many batletactiks ...

If dont want to waste your time watching how server deliver goods, u shouldn't play KaM, this is obvious
for fast battle u can still play some battle map

[GreatWhiteBear]

Now I think about it, rebels at schools would suck

[T*AnTi-V!RuZz]

What most people don't realise, is that KaM: Remake is based on TSK, NOT TPR.

So, IF Krom and Lewin were to leave out all TPR units and buildings, it wouldn't even surprise me

[GreatWhiteBear]

fish is already included, please also include townhall and balista thing.

[Ben]

Ben wrote:
In KaM, ranged units NEVER missed towers.

That's not correct. In KaM, ranged units quite frequently missed towers, it was only a fact of the position of the archer. If it was slightly diagonal, it never hit the tower actually

No, you are wrong. I just tested it several times from all angles. In KaM TPR, archers NEVER miss towers. They miss other buildings, though.

What most people don't realise, is that KaM: Remake is based on TSK, NOT TPR.

Considering that the town hall, fish, siege workshop, and TPR terrain still exist in the Remake, I'm not sure how you came to this conclusion. Perhaps I missed a quote by Krom or Lewin?

And I don't know if there is any point in moving the vegabond to the barracks. Seriously, horses are expensive. It would be hard for me to risk them by creating such vulnerable units.

[GreatWhiteBear]

not moving but having them like the militia, both townhall and barracks

[T*AnTi-V!RuZz]

Considering that the town hall, fish, siege workshop, and TPR terrain still exist in the Remake, I'm not sure how you came to this conclusion. Perhaps I missed a quote by Krom or Lewin?

1. It's on the KaM Remake Google Code page
2. Lewin once sent me a file (that can be found on the Google Code page) that's called 'ideas after TSK'
3. Lewin told me so. That he did doesn't mean he ever said he was going to leave TPR units and/or buildings out.

[Lewin]

T*AnTi-V!RuZz is right, it started as a TSK Remake because Krom (remember it used to just be his project, I joined 6 months in) didn't like a lot of the things TPR changes. (and I mostly share his opinions) Neither of us objected to fishing so we added that ages ago, and the same with TPR troops more recently. Krom dislikes siege equipment because there magically drive themselves, there is no one pushing them. In a game like KaM where everything is shown to the player down to the last detail is does seem quite strange to see machines rolling around on their own so I do agree with him. And both of us think the town hall doesn't exactly fit with the game mechanics so we're in no hurry to implement it.
I don't think we'll be leaving these features out, but I'm not sure because we haven't discussed it in a while.

Suggestions like sir_drink_a_lot that alter the game mechanics are only suitable for mods. It would be interesting to see a "fast" KaM mod which aims to speedup the whole village building process and make multiplayer games shorter, but that is definitely not appropriate for the actual game.

I disagree with training anything that can fight at the school, it only trains citizens.

Equipping the vagabond in the barracks is a possibility I hadn't considered, but it might be a nice idea. Fast units are great for taking out bowmen and they don't need a lot of armour for that, so being able to rush a stables and weapons workshop would add new and interesting strategies to the game.

Here's a crazy idea for the townhall: Surely if you are actually "hiring" the mercenaries, you don't own them forever. So why not make them go back into the town hall after 30 minutes or an hour unless you pay them the same fee again? That would make them great for defence in emergencies or for hiring before a massive attack, but as a standing army they would not work because you have to keep paying money to keep them. That way you would actually be hiring them. Note this is just a crazy idea and I haven't even mentioned it to Krom or thought about the implications myself, so don't get too carried away
I would also make it so you can request 12 units from the town hall and they will come out as the gold arrives. This saves the annoyance of having to return to your townhall every minute to train a single barbarian, and repeating this for 12 minutes just to have a proper group. Probably with something like the school queue, so you can queue 5 units to be hired when enough gold is there.

This discussion interesting so please keep it up, we might use some of the ideas. But don't "expect" us to implement anything, and remember that we don't want to change the game mechanics too much.
Cheers,
Lewin.

[Ben]

Probably with something like the school queue, so you can queue 5 units to be hired when enough gold is there.

That is what I meant, not training them in the school. Training them in the school would just be foolish.

And I, personally, agree with removing the siege equipment, because, like Krom, I don't like how they "magically" move around...it completely ruins the dynamics of the game.
If we had an artist, we could have him animate recruits pushing the siege equipment around. Of course, this would be very hard since the graphics would have to match those in KaM.
As for the rest of the town hall...I wouldn't miss it if it was removed. However, I wouldn't want the TPR troops, themselves to be removed. I'd like it if they worked like barbarians in TSK where they can be used only if the player starts with them.
As for Lewin's "crazy" (to use his words, lol) idea, I don't know. It seems like it would alter the game too much.

However, if the Hall is removed, then the vagabonds should be moved to the barracks.