How about KaM flaws now?

[Krom]

Since similar topic nearby..

What are KaM biggest flaws? Which features could be excluded and which should be added instead. How do you think?

In my opinion it's:
- poor opponent AI which can't do anything at all in skirmish battles
- no support for add-on maps/campaigns
- TPR catapults, they just out of KaM "universe" (all-in-all I dislike almost all TPR additions more or less)
- aliasing and low resolution of menu/fonts/elements

what else do you think could be better?

[Lewin]

Hi,
I agree with catapults/ballistas thing. They are just like "Super archers" and serve no real purpose. They would work much better if they could only attack buildings and not units. A disagree that most of the TPR things are bad, the fisherman is very good, although he shouldn't just run out of fish. He should catch them slower and not run out. Town hall is ok, but I never use it myself. The new TPR terrain types are very good.

From a scripting point of view:
- The script is very hard to make a complicated mission. You are locked in to the format of "build a base then kill the enemies base"
- The AI scripting is very simplistic. It should be way more complicated. Event based would be nice (when you destroy this building this happens, or when you explore this place this happens)
- They never released a map/mission editor.

General things:
- They removed lots of the music in TPR. They should have kept the 20 songs from TSK and added the 4 new ones from TPR.
- The new troops in TPR use the same voices as the old one. This is silly, I don't know if I've selected a scout or a vagabond! Also, while hurling rocks the rouges say "Hang 'em from your spears!" (um... what spears?????) Is this the same in the German edition? Or did they use new voices?

I'm sure there are lots of other things that annoy me but I can't be bothered thinking of them now.
Lewin.

[MrVV]

Agree the general things.
- Music removed, i hate that, because i think this is the best music.
- The new troops use the same voices. :evil:
And the catapult/ballista thing.
And the most hated thing:
- They never released a map/mission editor.
:evil: :evil: :evil:

MrVV

[harold]

Let's not forget the bug that occurs when you have a lot of units, when some of them start walking random/to the enemy

[JBSnorro]

I like the ballista and catapult.... I know they're too strong for the game, but it comes at a price(slow and resources).

As for the music, they only removed 4 of 5 songs from the game, the shortest mainly... I didn't mind that too much, I do however like the TSK-songs more than the newly added TPR-songs.

About the AI and scripting, AI wasn't developped that much back then. We can say that they were the pioneers of this subject, so I don't blame them for keeping it simple.. Nowadays we're used to more sophisticated system, but don't forget that the AI is the hardest thing to code in a game!

And it don't have any complaint about the poor aliasing nor low resolution of the textures. I like KaM so much because of its looks, and this is simply part of it.

And as Harold mentioned, there are bugs like walking randomly, which should have been fixed before the game was published... The strange part is that TSK does not have this bug, but TPR does, and I didn't think that TPR would have any major updates in the game engine, just some minor update such as new buildings and units.

[Krom]

Oh yes, there are number of issues regarding large quantities. Big armies mess, serf stopping to carry goods...

Which reminds me one more let's call it "flaw"
- depleting vital resources. I did't had problems with gold, but few times I was short on stones and it was really frustrating.
Would be nice to have some kind of marketplace aswell I think

@JBSnorro: When I said aliasing I meant specific fonts and small elements which look quite ugly and unreadable. Would be nice to add support for proper antialiased fonts aimed at 1024+ resolution

[Merchator]

Short post:

-Bugs/AI-bugs
-Stupid AI
-No own-mission support/editor
-NO Multiplayer-server for online-games
-No "Easy, Medium, Hard" Buttons (could be really nice to test your skills")
-Ugly Ingame-videos :roll:

[harold]

The fonts are unfortunately raster images in K&M's case, they don't scale well, I might try to vectorize them but that's a lot of work (automatic vectorizers are crap, so it will have to be done by hand)
And if I do so, they will only ever work in TKE and possibly other places outside of TPR/TSK, but the original KAM will not support them (that would be an extremely hard patch)

[Lakai CXIV]

- The new troops in TPR use the same voices as the old one. This is silly, I don't know if I've selected a scout or a vagabond! Also, while hurling rocks the rouges say "Hang 'em from your spears!" (um... what spears?????) Is this the same in the German edition? Or did they use new voices?

Hi,Spear is the weapon of the lance carrier,well is the same as lance.

But the rogue just throw stones,they are not supposed to say something about spears or lances.

Well here are my things:

-I miss some musics.

-When the AI have much trops,they start to do something strange,like they get furious.

-Some AI problems.

And i dont know if there are more.

[harold]

Sometimes planned buildings just disappear - especially roads have a tendency to do this (I suspect that is just because they are often planned in large batches, how else would you build a road after all)

[Lewin]

Sometimes planned buildings just disappear - especially roads have a tendency to do this (I suspect that is just because they are often planned in large batches, how else would you build a road after all)

I get that too. Also, sometimes there is a bug when you build something the serfs never deliver the stones. I think that might have been because the ones doing it got killed... and new ones never resumed the job.
Lewin.

[Categoricus]

Town hall is ok

Definitely NOT OK! Units from town hall makes the battle system direfully slow! The more town hall units are trained, the slower battle system is.

And as Harold mentioned, there are bugs like walking randomly, which should have been fixed before the game was published... The strange part is that TSK does not have this bug, but TPR does

That's not true. Take a deeper glance at mission 15 -> the south-east black town -> their middle-north troop(s).

Things I don't like:

• In TPR you cannot reload a multiplayer mission (without hacking, which some of you have written about).
• I don't know how about other languages but Hungarian profession names and font types were turned into less suitable for me in TPR.

[Litude]

• I don't know how about other languages but Hungarian profession names and font types were turned into less suitable for me in TPR.

I don't know if you've been following the development of the 1.60 patch, but if you have any suggestions regarding the translation you can do so here. You might be pleased to know that the font in the 1.60 patch will return to the one used in TSK.

There are also some lines that need to be translated into Hungarian there in my post, but you might want to check with TWGH if he is doing the translating.

[Categoricus]

Actually this translating behoves neither TGWH nor me but another guy who, as far as I know, TGWH can hardly ever communicate with, I don't know the status of his work. We don't have a translation for SR2 either.

[CuDi]

That actually sounds like a good idea, having a marketplace, that would come in handy.