Service Release 3 - A minor update, any interest?

[Litude]

Sometime ago, I was developing an unofficial update to The Peasants Rebellion unsurprisingly called Service Release 3 (Please note that this is not to be confused with the Service Release 3 made by pawel95, which turned out to be a hoax). Whilst reading the reaction at the German forums it seemed like there generally was not really much interest in getting another patch, unless it was capable of fixing some of the major bugs in the game. The reason I'm making this news post is to ask the community here whether interest for such a patch would actually exist? Please discuss this in the comments section of this news post!

[Merchator]

I don't need Serivce Release 3 until it doesn't fix multiplayer bugs
It's years ago when I played the campagin the last time.

[harold]

I'd say, make it anyway, it won't hurt
Could you tell us what it will fix? (and do you need any help?)

[Litude]

As for the changelog, here it is:

Graphical Changes:
- Iron mine icon is now blue

Text Changes:
- The CD-Player now once again says "Track" before the track number

General Fixes:
- Townhall can no longer be built on trees and other objects
- Vechicles workshop can no longer be built on trees and other objects

AI Fixes:
- The AI will now attack in The Peasants Rebellion campaign as supposed
- The brown AI player in mission 6 TPR now handles axe fighters correctly
- Green player defense radius in mission 15 TSK improved, sneaking no longer works
- Southern gray player will now defend the northern tower in mission 15 TSK

Mission Fixes:
- One enemy farm that did not previously appear is now visible in mission 12 TSK
- Two enemy gold mines and one enemy armory workshop that did not previously appear are now visible in mission 15 TSK
(This is not merely a cosmetic fix, if you ever wondered why mission 15 TSK was so easy, it's because the team runs out of gold :shock:)
- (Not done) Check what's causing the enemy to run out of food in mission 9 TSK and fix it
- A lot of misplaced and missing roads have been fixed

Text Fixes:
- Message sent at start of mission 3 TPR has been corrected (English)
- Mission 6 TSK briefing text fixed (English)
- Mission 8 TSK briefing text fixed (English)
- Grammatical and typographical errors in several messages and briefings fixed (English)
- Dispatch troop erroneous hotkey description changed to D (English)
- Link up troops erroneous hotkey description changed to L (English)
- Separate troop erroneous hotkey description changed to S (English)
- Eventual text errors found in other language versions of the game...

Some of you probably realize but ELP4 was originally created solely for this patch. This is why the text fixes lists the changes that were done in ELP4. Because the patch was put on hold, the decision was made to release ELP4 separately.
Granted, the fixes in this patch are nothing close to as major as to make the old players take the game out of the cupboard and start playing again but it's something
One major reason why I wanted to create a SR3 in the first place was to make sure quite major text fixes would find their way onto as many players computers as possible. The other fixes were just done as a "bonus" you could say.

But is there any interest for something like this whatsoever? And I left it at the stage where it was something like 95% complete, so no, finishing it would not mean a lot of extra work.

[harold]

Well I'm interested
If I may ask, how did you do those general fixes?

[Litude]

Did some hex edits to the houses.dat file. Damn that took a long time Think I spent half of a day just to figure out where the hell the clever devs at Joymania had hidden that data

[harold]

Ah yes I guess that figures
Did you know that the TPR torrent that I started (and seed) includes about 1% of your SR3? It has the blue iron mine

Anyway, why not just finish those 5%'s and release it? Sure many people complain that they want more, but then they always do and I think that most K&M players will download the patch anyway (I know I will)

[Litude]

Yeah I guess there's nothing really stopping me from releasing it no matter what some people from the community think

[Lewin]

Hi Litude,
I think that it is a great idea! I had no idea you'd done so much work! Have you asked The Knight what he thinks? Even if he disagrees I think you should publish it.
Anyway, if you've already done 95% of it then it would be a waste not to publish it!
Let us know if you want help with beta testing etc.
I think that the CD player shouldn't just say "Track #", it should use the song titles! In TSK the songs were all named, and that was good because I could always remember my favourites, and it gave them more personality. I know the 4 new TPR songs don't have names but you could make up some or just call them TPR #. Also, would it be possible to restore all of the old music? (so that is will play all the songs including Spirit, my favourite) I know that would make the file much larger though, so maybe it's a bad idea. But I do miss some of the old songs....
I have one more suggestion: In SR2 scouts can see WAY further than all other units. I think that all mounted units should see a bit more, but no where near as much as they can. Something like an extra 4 squares than non-mounted troops.
Lewin.

[Thunderwolf]

That might be even better, TSK also had the track-names for each song.

Those mission and AI fixes are very nice.

[Litude]

Making the CD-player display names for each track it plays is ways beyond my ability.
I've also made numerous attempts at finding the value telling the game how many audio tracks to look for, but haven't yet succeeded at locating this value. I will keep on trying though.
The scout LOS would be easy to decrease. I also agree that their LOS is ways too big, in certain missions you can see half of the enemy base when you send your scout to where the enemy soldiers are guarding the entrance. Scouts were always used for exploring so it's quite realistic to have a higher LOS for them, but SR2 went a lot overboard.

And I will certainly need help in beta testing. Especially as playing the game with my current rig is far from optimal Thankfully it still runs though, unlike a few other games.

[harold]

The rig is not the problem, if you would have XP Pro x64 (need a free link?) you would have no problems whatsoever (and better performance for most programs and games, except HDD-transfer-speed bound programs such as winRAR and 7zip)

[Litude]

Yeah I know it's not the rig that's causing the slowdowns. Don't really want to downgrade, this is pretty much the only problem I've had when running Vista so a work-around sounds more logical to me

[harold]

Maybe you're not noticing that Vista is slow because you're running it on a newer computer than you used to run XP on..
So just dual boot them for a sec, compare, and leave the dual boot because someday soon the annoyances of Vista will get you

PS: I have to hit Submit a gazillion times again..

[Litude]

Okay, now I just need to decide about the unit line of sight for the cavalry and the package is ready for beta testing (Dutch build not done yet though ). Naturally, changing the stats of an unit is something I can't just do by myself and then decide to release a patch, the community's voice also must be heard

So, normal units all have 9 squares as their line of sight. When SR2 was released, the Scout got an increase in line of sight to a whopping 18 squares (yeah, they doubled it :shock:). My suggestion is that the Scout has his line of sight changed to 13 (As per Lewin's idea), and that we change the line of sight for both the vagabond and the knight to 11.
These changes are based on these points:
1. Scouts currently have waays too high line of sight
2. Scouts were used for scouting (where the hell did you think their callsign came from ), so it is "realistic" for them to have a higher line of sight than other units.
3. Mounted units should logically be better at scouting, but I do not want to overdo it.
Now my question is, are these changes significant enough to have any effect at all? Do you think adding two squares for the knight and vagabond would actually have any effect? Or would it be better to add three and five squares?