Version 0.240 is Out!

[armagan]

Hi,

Version 0.240 is out.

Changes in this version:
- New user interface design.
- Item modifiers
- Improvements to combat ai.
- More combat animations
- Horse attributes working
- Many other small improvements and bugfixes.
- Storyline removed. New one will be added later.

For those beta-testers who were boasting that there was no army strong enough to challange their might ( ): Thanks to you the game is much more difficult now. And if that's not enough for you, check out the mighty dark hunters . They are the new addition to Calradia's villainy, and you'll learn much more about them soon.

 

[Anonymous]

We want some cheats! testing would be much easier that way if we are able to want anything we buy, and test anything we want.

By the way i want poison arrows

 

[armagan]

I thought about supplying cheats but an important objective of the beta-tests is testing game balance and playability. If you play with the cheats you may fail to detect problems with game difficulty. Still, if you absolutely must have the cheats, send me an email and I will send them to you.

By the way i want poison arrows

No way! It is too much of a hassle to implement poisoning. I would need to keep track of which guys are poisoned and make sure they die in a few days.

Would you settle for some flight arrows or piercing arrows? Or a special large bag of 30 arrows?

 

[raptor]

yeah i would settle for those , by the way i downloaded and played the game about 15 minutes , the new looks are too much better

i didnt see much change in 15 minutes except the menus , the ones i observed are the movement sensitivity of the horses which is quite better ; and i would like to see the arrows hit in the body , they dont appear if you headshot, which is ok , but body hits are not shown either which i dont like.

hmm and when i talked with the tournament master, the cam was showing his body when he was speaking , not his head just torso which is a bug i suppose.

 

[raptor]

by the way, whistling arrows would be good too. And different looks in the arrows , different feather colours for example..
and visible arrow sacks

 

[armagan]

i didnt see much change in 15 minutes except the menus , the ones i observed are the movement sensitivity of the horses which is quite better ; and i would like to see the arrows hit in the body , they dont appear if you headshot, which is ok , but body hits are not shown either which i dont like.

Arrows hitting the body are shown. They are not shown only in the tournaments because in tournaments, they use blunt arrows that do not pierce armor.

 

[Mortiis]

I want a bigger bag of arrows like in tournaments...something like 50-60.For testers who wants to play as an archer...

 

[armagan]

All right. I will put some larger bags of arrows. Also, you can carry two bags of arrows if you can do without a shield or even three if you have the nerve to carry no melee weapon.

 

[Zajcew]

Don't want to start a new thread to post my opinions, so since I started playing from ver 0.240 (yesterday), I'll post here.

First thing that comes to my mind is travelling speed. It's way to slow, when you set up a course to a distant city, it takes ages to get there. There should be some sort of "speed up the time button".

Second thing are the cities. I realise you guys have put a lot of work to make them the way they are, but it's simply not working IMO. Much better solution would be to make some sort of "city screen" with tabs corresponding to each merchant, trader, city lord etc. As it is, those cities are compleatly unnecesary, and even thought they are small, and running around them does not take much time, I still say it is unnecesary. Unless of course you plan to expand them a little more, give every city a unique look or something like that.

Next thing that is necessary is possibility to give horses to your mercenaries. I know they sometimes take horses from the battlefiled, but I would like to be the one who decides who gets the horse. So there are no situations like in my current party, where militia dude is riding a horse, while knights run around on foot.

You guys could also came up with wider veraity of weapons. I decided I wanna play with sword and shield, but even though I'm lvl 16 right now, the best one handed weapon I could find was watered down scimitar, and it's only a little better then the basic sword I got at the beggining of the game.

This game would be like 5X better, if you could get rid of the nasty limit of units during battle. Can you imagine how sweet would it be, if you could lead like 50 men AT ONCE against another party of 50? Now that's a regular battle, an it would really OWN.

Another annoying thing is that almost all battlegrounds have way to many hills and valleys. Sure, when you're fighting in mountains, that's understandable, but those battles that occur on the flat lands should happen on a flat ground, instead of hills all the time. A bigger veraity of settings would be a good idea to. Why not make some winter settings in the north and desert settings on the south?

Overall, I have to say I like it very much, ther's something extremally satisfying in cutting down some sucker with one, perfectly placed sword swing.

Game crushed to desktop with some C++ error message once, but that's not a biggy.

Keep up the good work.

Oh, and the in game music in really great, did you guys made it yourselfs? It really fits the setting perfectly

 

[armagan]

Hi Zajcew,

First thing that comes to my mind is travelling speed. It's way to slow, when you set up a course to a distant city, it takes ages to get there. There should be some sort of "speed up the time button"

I used to have a "speed up the time button" but that didn't work very well. It's too distracting and disorienting. Instead I will speed up your normal speed a little bit. I hope that will help.

Second thing are the cities. I realise you guys have put a lot of work to make them the way they are, but it's simply not working IMO.

Hopefully we'll add some variance to the towns as soon as we have some time.

Next thing that is necessary is possibility to give horses to your mercenaries. I know they sometimes take horses from the battlefiled, but I would like to be the one who decides who gets the horse. So there are no situations like in my current party, where militia dude is riding a horse, while knights run around on foot.

I don't think the knights are going to like that .

Because of the way the regular soldiers are implemented, it's not possible to do that easily.

You guys could also came up with wider veraity of weapons. I decided I wanna play with sword and shield, but even though I'm lvl 16 right now, the best one handed weapon I could find was watered down scimitar, and it's only a little better then the basic sword I got at the beggining of the game.

You're right. I'll try to fix that.

This game would be like 5X better, if you could get rid of the nasty limit of units during battle. Can you imagine how sweet would it be, if you could lead like 50 men AT ONCE against another party of 50? Now that's a regular battle, an it would really OWN.

The limit is there partly to avoid putting too much strain on the system. Anyway, I am going to add a battle size option. That will allow for larger battles.

Another annoying thing is that almost all battlegrounds have way to many hills and valleys. Sure, when you're fighting in mountains, that's understandable, but those battles that occur on the flat lands should happen on a flat ground, instead of hills all the time. A bigger veraity of settings would be a good idea to. Why not make some winter settings in the north and desert settings on the south?

We used to have desert and mountain settings but I removed those. I hope to be able to introduce them back sometime.

Game crushed to desktop with some C++ error message once, but that's not a biggy.

It could be really helpful if you could remember the error message.

Oh, and the in game music in really great, did you guys made it yourselfs? It really fits the setting perfectly

I am glad you liked it. It's actually stock music, but one of the better examples. We are lucky to have found it..

Thanks a lot for your suggestions.

 

[ShadowMoses]

Hi Zajcew,

First thing that comes to my mind is travelling speed. It's way to slow, when you set up a course to a distant city, it takes ages to get there. There should be some sort of "speed up the time button"

I used to have a "speed up the time button" but that didn't work very well. It's too distracting and disorienting. Instead I will speed up your normal speed a little bit. I hope that will help.

Yeah movement speed generally slow, i keep wanting to press a "Run" button! maybe there is one?!
Also, jumping and combat don't feel right to me, maybe i need to play a bit more?!

Second thing are the cities. I realise you guys have put a lot of work to make them the way they are, but it's simply not working IMO.

Hopefully we'll add some variance to the towns as soon as we have some time.

Towns are really destroying immersion for me. It would be nice to see much more variety both in terms of characters and locations/rooms etc.
At the moment i don't "believe" these are real places. Characters don't move and the rooms don't look "lived in". Doors that you can't open are bad! and even worse are the invisible walls!!
It would be really cool if you could take some elements from Gothic and have NPC's living out their lives!

Overall, i haven't played the game for too long yet but it has potential!

Are you guys still implementing features?

 

[armagan]

We are aware of the shortcomings of the towns. We are trying to improve that. But don't expect something like Gothic. We don't have that kind of resources.

Are you guys still implementing features?

Not really. We are polishing up and adding in the storyline and content.

 

[Zajcew]

Hi Zajcew,

1.I used to have a "speed up the time button" but that didn't work very well. It's too distracting and disorienting. Instead I will speed up your normal speed a little bit. I hope that will help.

2.Hopefully we'll add some variance to the towns as soon as we have some time.

3.I don't think the knights are going to like that .

Because of the way the regular soldiers are implemented, it's not possible to do that easily.

4.You're right. I'll try to fix that.

5.The limit is there partly to avoid putting too much strain on the system. Anyway, I am going to add a battle size option. That will allow for larger battles.

6.We used to have desert and mountain settings but I removed those. I hope to be able to introduce them back sometime.

7.It could be really helpful if you could remember the error message.

8.I am glad you liked it. It's actually stock music, but one of the better examples. We are lucky to have found it..

9.Thanks a lot for your suggestions.

Hi armagan

1. That would help a lot.
2. I still say a city screen would be better.
3. That's too bad. Maybe you could tweak the "horse catching" a little, so that more horses fell in to my mans heands after the battles?
4. Cool.
5. Well, the framerate on my comp during battles never drops under 120fps, and my rig nowhere near whot's considered a good gaming rig these days. But adding some sort "max no. of units during battles" to the options would be cool.
6. My main request is to simply make battlefields more flat. More varied settings would be welcome as well.
7. I'll write it down next time it happens.
8. The music is really great, one of the best music scores I've seen in a game sice Rome:Total War.
9. That's what I'm here for right? (apart from playing a game for free)

Seriously, I've been playing this baby like mad all day, and I can't say what makes it so enjoyable. You've done a really good work.

 

[armagan]

Thanks, it's good to hear that

 

[Anonymous]

is it possible to spawn a soldier right after the death of another, it is not realistic when they come e.g. 5 at a time, and when you kill them all another 5 appears. The limit is because of the slower pc's i know , but you should add one instantly, right after you remove one soldier.

and a minimap or something like that would be useful, by that way enemies can spawn at longer distances, ( opposing border of the map ) to hide spawning effects inside the battlefield, i kill one with an arrow, but many appears too much near to me . It is not a good feeling, being surrounded by a dozen of instantly appearing man

(raptor)

 

[armagan]

It is not a good feeling, being surrounded by a dozen of instantly appearing man

Yes, you're right. I'll add a fix for that as soon as I have the time.

 

[Anonymous]

when i am wearing a scale armor and walking my skin appears which is a graphical bug.
Also there are spelling mistakes in the description of surgery skill.

 

[armagan]

Thanks for letting me know. I'll fix them ASAP.

 

[ShadowMoses]

We are aware of the shortcomings of the towns. We are trying to improve that. But don't expect something like Gothic. We don't have that kind of resources.

Yeah i understand... i just love Gothic!

* Like Zajcew said, I think a town screen would be really good. You could have a main screen with info like faction, wealth, population etc. and then have your different room screens from which you can select different people to talk to.

* Each room could have certain supply needs so an armory would need steel, a pub beer etc. This way you could choose to become a trader and make better use of your charisma ability.

* To aid in trading you could buy horses that can carry supplies but are slower and maybe useless in combat. In fact maybe you can't even ride them.

* Likewise there are other people who are traders and you can become a mercenary, track down convoys and steal their goods and money. Your tracking skill (if high enough) could tell you whether tracks belong to trading horses or not.

* Also you could then have missions where you have to ensure the safe travel of a supply convoy from one place to another.

* In terms of weapon variety it would be cool if you could get weapons that had been forged using some kind of special ore to give them bonuses to skills. But these bonuses can only be used if your basic abilities are high enough. Similarly you could have armour and clothing which also give bonuses to skills, this way intelligence could be more usefull as a helmet could give a bonus to your tracking skill.

* To extend the above idea you could take your weapon to a blacksmith who can forge it for you and the bonus you receive depends on the ore you choose.

-----------

some other rambling ideas!

* on the travel map:

- Rivers: can only cross at certain points so enemies would be unable to attack you from the other side.

- Forests: much harder for you to be seen so less likely to encounter conflict. or could be used to ambush the enemy
or they could ambush you!

* Dialogue options before battle: you could attempt to bribe them or bluff by saying a big army is just behind you! or you could try to make them surrender without fighting! (success depends on abilities/skills and relative size/strength of armies)

* Ability to doublecross your own faction... but with a dramatic decrease in your relations (nobody likes to be doublecrossed!) and only a slight increase in your relations to their enemy (so as to stop you doublecrossing everybody!!)

 

[armagan]

Hi ShadowMoses,

* To aid in trading you could buy horses that can carry supplies but are slower and maybe useless in combat. In fact maybe you can't even ride them.

Yes I am planning to add this one. There are already pack horses in the game. It's not implemented yet but each pack horse in your inventory will give you a speed bonus while carrying trade goods.

* Dialogue options before battle: you could attempt to bribe them or bluff by saying a big army is just behind you! or you could try to make them surrender without fighting! (success depends on abilities/skills and relative size/strength of armies)

Yep, that would be really cool. I will think about it.

Thanks a lot for your suggestions.