Scripting demo release candidate

[The Dark Lord]

Regarding the actual discussion of building unlocks:
- if the problem is that it makes maps too easy them maps can be modified to have less timber, stone, food, etc.

I agree.

- if the problem is that players build too much before peacetime then you can play with 5 or 10 minutes less peacetime

I agree.

- if the problem is that new players get confused and run out of wood/stone or forget to build an inn, that's a serious problem which needs to be considered

I agree. But don't think that it's only new players who forget to build an inn. It has happened to me and other TS guys as well.

Anyway, there is one more option you didn't mention. What if the problem is that people just don't like it and prefer the old way? Someone like myself? Call me a conservative, but KaM has always been a slow game and I like it. There's now an option to increase the game speed, so I don't see the necessity to speed up the game even more, and, what's worse: compulsory! We have no choice.

Map authors can still change the unlocking, for example To's maps still have the quarry and woodcutter unlocked at the start, other maps you have to build the school first (so To's maps still allow a faster game start than others because you can get the sawmill after just 1 building, rather than 2). So there's still room for customisation. You could even unlock the sawmill at the start to allow players to rush for gold/iron before getting woodcutters/stonemasons properly set up. Or unlock farms at the start to encourage people to use horses. Or unlock gold/iron/coal mines at the start. There's lot of possibilities for customising your map by unlocking certain buildings.

So when all of this is possible... when we can have so many different combinations and options of building unlocking... Why can't we have the old, default one?

[Krom]

These two speedups were made independently in parallel, without relying on each other.
PT speedup covers overall "economy phase" speed.
Unlock order addresses initial lag.

[Siegfried]

Obviously if we stretched the message to 1920px wide it would look silly, so we decided on a certain width and used that. The gap means more of the map is visible to the player which is a good thing. What do you suggest we do instead?

Maybe you give it a try and put it to the right side or in the center. For my, it feels a bit odd that it is attached to the vertical control panel (the wooden thing on the left). It does not really belong there, especially because there already are the small scrolls indicating new messages. If you have enough space, they don't need to be on top of each other.

[dicsoupcan]

Before i wanted to say anything about the new release i wanted to test a few things myself. I apologize for the wall of text, because it shall have no mercy for the readers.

about the new RC:
+ fog of war for each individual player in replays, wich will give a great insight in what someone can see and why he made certain decisions;
+ new statistics look very nice and orderly;
+ i like the new message system, it is not quite a mess now and i am not bothere it is not streched all over my screen. I can see more of the game this way.(minimal hud's are always nice);
+ farms work very efficient now, too bad the replay is broken otherwise you could have seen it;
+ map editor, you can make very custom maps now and editing is easier;
+ overal small improvements, like the buttons;
+ you receive a message when a woodcutter is on cut only and has nothing to cut anymore;
+ the building you get a message for is highlighted when you click on the message, no more looking what building is meant;
+ ranged units will be fixed as far as i could read here, right now they are really inflexible indeed.

Now for the things there is already a heavy discussion about, wich will provide the wall of text. I will mainly write about the unlocks of buildings.

I can see both points in this discussion. On one side you got a lot of things to do early in the game, but on the other hand maps get really easy. I made a build today on golden cliffs loc 5, simply because that is the map used most as example and loc 5 is my favorite loc, so i had many replays i could compare it with. What is a shame is that the replay got broken because i crashed ( the report ahs been sent) so i cannot give a comparison. All i can do is describe how it went. To start off i did set the pt to 55, and wanted to play untill 60 to see for myself what i could make and compare what i would not have gotten at 55 pt.

Because i knew the school would unlock the woodcutter and the inn, i made a road to the forest instead of making a road for the inn. After the school i made my woodcutter and starting building stonemasons + a road for the sawmill. As you can see i have a lot of things to do, but on the other hand i already got wood and the cutters alreayd started planting. This also resulted in earlier farms that i normally build so i got my first corn earlier. I did have gold at the same time as i usually do, just because i timed it like that. I was at my iron 2 minutes earlir then normal, even though i did not really rush towards it. i had to build my pigfarms earlier because my earlier farms produced corn earlier, and on a sidenote i saw the difference in the efficiency patch since my swinefarms worked a lot better. I also needed an earlier 3rd sawmill because the woodcutters produced trunks earlier, on wich turn i also made earlier wooden weapons and the 4th sawmill, wich would expand my wooden weapons faster. While i was doing that my 2 armorsmitties were working already and i was just finishing adding a second ironsmelter and started making the weaponsmitty. I was also making a 4th farm already and added one more swinefarm + 2 fisheremen to reduce food problems. Then all i needed to do was add a 3rd ironmine + ironsmelter and my base was done. since i had 13 minutes left till pt on 55 pt i added 1 more farm 1 mill and some towers, and i was a bit too late with my baker, wich came right after pt.I also could add a 3rd goldsmelter 5 minutes before pt with added coalmine. the only problem i had was a late barracks, wich caused a large stream of weapons fmro the storehouse to the barracks, causing my town to be idle for a few minutes.

My conclusion is the following:

Yes the early game has sped up, but maps also got way easier to build on. during this entire building session i had no worries about wood at all, wich i normally would have. also i had no food problems since i got my butcher the moment bread ran out, but i still got fish. normally i would have only wine left. I think this has both to do with the earlier unlocks (earlier farms) and the more efficient farming (my swinefarms worked way better). I also had an earlier wooden weapon production and i still had wood to keep on building. It really seems like a small change, but it is a snowball effect into a big impact.

As for the pt army, in the shield patch release i would have gotten 20-25 swords, 30-35 (in exceptional cases 40) bowmen and 15 militia at 60 pt. In this release i had 25 swords (nearly 30 armor and shield) 10 militia and 40 bowmen + some jackets at the armouries at 55 pt. As you may think the pt armies are the same with 5 less pt. But i also had no starvation while i normally had starvation at pt, and my base was even larger then normal. My game crashed at 0:58, so i cannot know what i could have at 60 pt.

also it is a shame i cannot hand a replay to back up what i just wrote here, even the crashreport replay was not functioning for me.

suggestion:
My suggestion is to add a mutator ''classical unlock order'', because i can imagine that you do not want to revert the change, but the players who do want to have the extra challenge in their building can set this mutator. I think this is the best solution that can be made and it will statisfy a lot of people.

edited for some spelling errors that were bugging me.

[Krom]

@dicsoupcan: Thank you very much for detailed comparison and explanation about playstyle! That is a valuable info for us

According to your description I'll try to do some conclusions, please correct me if I'm wrong:
+ it looks that early wood indeed allowed you to build up faster (obviously);
+ new unlocking order is equivalent to 5-10min PT reduction;
+ side effect is that you get a little more food earlier and overall more stable food/swine chain;
+ side effect #2 more axes were made;
- you had no hard time planning wood/quarry houses to squeeze out max of limited materials supply (cos of late Inn);
- there was much less risk of getting into a gap between woodcutters cutting initial wood and idly waiting for new trees to grow up.

With this kind of analysis we can conclude that game speedup succeeded, but there are 2 specific side-effects that made the game easier. Did I missed anything?

P.S. Sorry about crashes, we hope to have much stable RC2 thanks to everyones crashreports

[BloodTree]

This extra timber are more vital houses sooner.. and for 60 PT it becomes more units, and surely 100% finished tower defenses.

The all in all point... as Pizza and other veterans think, is that the map became easier... for building and defending.

Then play with less peacetime and it won't be a problem

If in map loc are balanced you can make same size army or even larger.
If now you can build bit more then you could before its only good.
I don`t get it how can someone like hard loc or bad game coz hard loc. Or its hope that someone will mess up coz loc and you will win coz of it?
Game must be enjoyable and bring fun not hardcore as some individuals think.
60min PT are enough to finish all you want and its only good. There is no point play now 55pt. Who like unfinished city after pt end? Maybe only for player who like attack fast with horse and in hope that towers will not be finished yet.

r5057 are much better and more balanced.

Try enjoy what devs make for us and stop complain about less important things.
I am sure that devs in time will make KaM even more enjoyable.

[Krom]

@BloodTree: We don't want to make KaM casual oriented. RTS has always been one of those more harder to play genre. We do appreciate beta-testers opinions and will gladly accept more constructive critics and analysis.

[pawel95]

Only to Bloodtree: Ok, its your opinion so there isn´t any wrong or good.
However the most of the testers(like you can see in the postings) aren´t happy with the change of unlocking buildings. When you like to speed up the early game(which is the "only" really argument FOR implementing it), you still can play maps with unlocked woodcutter and stonemeason(more and more maps work like that, because Mapmakers can decide for themselves).

And the biggest argument AGAINST implementing it, was just written down here more often. Disco wrote it really detailed. The game on these "special" maps are way to easy,now. You can just to easy plan,where you wanna build your early buildings and you won´t have any problems with wood.
And so still any mapmaker could make it like it is in the actual RC.

BTW: We tested the RC, not that you think we just started the game for 2 Minutes and wrote these 4 sites on this topic without any testing


pawel95

[dicsoupcan]

@dicsoupcan: Thank you very much for detailed comparison and explanation about playstyle! That is a valuable info for us

According to your description I'll try to do some conclusions, please correct me if I'm wrong:
+ it looks that early wood indeed allowed you to build up faster (obviously);
+ new unlocking order is equivalent to 5-10min PT reduction;
+ side effect is that you get a little more food earlier and overall more stable food/swine chain;
+ side effect #2 more axes were made;
- you had no hard time planning wood/quarry houses to squeeze out max of limited materials supply (cos of late Inn);
- there was much less risk of getting into a gap between woodcutters cutting initial wood and idly waiting for new trees to grow up.

With this kind of analysis we can conclude that game speedup succeeded, but there are 2 specific side-effects that made the game easier. Did I missed anything?

P.S. Sorry about crashes, we hope to have much stable RC2 thanks to everyones crashreports

these conclusions are correct, plus as another side effect is that that the base can be larger at pt (read, better gold/food/leather and wooden weapon production) then normal without sacrificing pt army compared to the older release. This is what pizza also tried to explain, and many testers agree that it is too casual for them at the moment. that is why i suggested a classical unlock order mutator so both casual as more hardcore players can enjoy the game.

*edit* i hope the crashreport replay works for you then at least, so you can see what i mean for yourselves, i am sure those crashes shall be fixed soon:D

*edit 2* sideffect #2 is not only axes, but wooden weapons in general (bows also, i did not make lanses. and i needed more bows because i had more leather jackets so i had less axes)

[The Dark Lord]

I just downloaded the RC. I haven't played yet but I'll discuss some of the visuals.
- First of all, very nice multiplayer lobby layout. The 'randomize locations within teams' button may be confusing if you don't precisely know how it's used, but I don't see another way. Room settings and private messages are very neat.
- I like the new message scroll.
- The scores in Coastal Encounter Scored are debatable, but I like it.
- Replay FoW is great.
- Although I really like the snowy buildings, some towns look weird if there are a couple of buildings without snow (or one with snow and the others without). There is much contrast.

[Romek]

This extra timber are more vital houses sooner.. and for 60 PT it becomes more units, and surely 100% finished tower defenses.

The all in all point... as Pizza and other veterans think, is that the map became easier... for building and defending.

Then play with less peacetime and it won't be a problem

Yes, I repeated that like 4 times...

But well, they dont understand, or dont want to... that the old old order is not longer acceptable for a competitive RTS.
I don't play the evil part here, I just see this a positive change for Game Design in general, beyond our humans mapmakers preferences.

Game Design.

Please consider my middle point solution at least -> semi "old-new order" (quarry).
And bring peace to developers and veterans both.

I dont get it guys. I know my english is not good but i have no problems to understand what Pizza writed. Maybe next time just read his text ?
So i want repeat his main point : ITS ABOUT VERY EASY EARLY GAME. So as you see even if you will decrease PT that wont change a fact that EARY GAME WILL BE VERY EASY. You can play on 50 PT you also can play at 45 PT but it still wont change a fact that the EARLY GAME IS EASY.

[Mixons]

up:
Yeah, thats eeexactly the point, why dont change(or give players choice) old build order. And it even show why sometimes discussion on TS is better than posts on forum. Pizza wrote many posts why build order should be not change, but you understand him until(I think its bad word) Dicso post. Sorry for bad english.

[EDMatt]

I agree with Romek, I really see this game too easy now, its not peacetime that has to be changed, you can just go braindead build with 2 or 3 early woodcutters and enjoy steady flow of wood with not much thought put behind it which is the biggest problem, instead of going to all 4 corners of the map trying to hunt for some wood to continue building your production. INFINITE WOOD GAMING

[BloodTree]

Build speed are same as before and you can`t make more buildings now.
Only difference is that you might produces more resources then before.

[dicsoupcan]

one thing i forgot to mention, i wanted to see the shoot and halt fix in a battlemap but i could not give the ai a location, and i could not start because i got the message : unable to assign random locations. is this done on purpose?