Official KaM Remake Ideas topic

[Ben]

I don't see a problem with letting people use whatever speed they like. Of course the competitive/veteran players probably won't like it, but if casual players prefer playing at faster speeds what's wrong with that? Sure you can't manage your economy as perfectly as usual but if those players are still having fun then why does it matter? Not everyone wants to play in a highly competitive environment and there's nothing wrong with that.

Some people just like to mess around, build a village and have a battle in 30-45 minutes rather than 80+ minutes. If people weren't enjoying games at 2-3x speed then they'd stop playing them. In a poll on our Facebook page faster multiplayer speeds was voted to be the most popular feature of the new release, so I think it very much appeals to the casual majority(?) of our player base.

We will certainly not be removing the speed sliders or reducing the maximum. Why should we tell people how they must play the game? People can try it and play it how they like. I'm not opposed to changing it to 0.25 increments instead of 0.5 though, if people think that will be useful.

I think that having x3 speed is just not needed! We don't have x4, x5, x6, etc because the game just doesn't work with those speeds. In addition, the PT slider doesn't go all the way up to six hours. These extra settings are just not needed. I think that having 1.0x, 1.25x, 1.5, 2.0x are plenty enough options.\

[Krom]

@Shadaoe: Something strange in the way you express your thought in last message. I have read it three times but still could not understand it %)

[Siegfried]

I think he means the following:
he wants to have an AI in the game that starts without houses or units. If I had to guess, he wants to add them with dynamic scripts.
Would be nice to introduce a new enemy with that method, that hadn't been around before. So like ... surprise, we're here now

[Krom]

This is not possible at the moment and we are unlikely to implement that, because it requires quite a lot of work. Much simpler solution would be to position AIs e.g. Watchtower somewhere on the map where player can't see it, so that AI is properly initialized and activated on mission start.

[The Dark Lord]

I'll repeat this idea because I think it's quite necessary: checkpoints in replays so we don't have to fast-forward so much. Just one at the end of peace time would be enough for me already.

[woloszek]

I do not know if he was such an idea, but I'll write. What do you say to add to lobby the option "update the maps"? Of course, after all the tests, Lewin, Krom would have to approve the map and then be sufficient only click "update the maps" and everyone without charging, would have the maps. Now, hardly anyone wants to manually download ...

[Shadaoe]

This is not possible at the moment and we are unlikely to implement that, because it requires quite a lot of work. Much simpler solution would be to position AIs e.g. Watchtower somewhere on the map where player can't see it, so that AI is properly initialized and activated on mission start.

Yes sorry if I expressed in a bad way :/
I know an easy solution is to add a dull unit, I already figured, which you can kill on mission start or anything. But my main concern is that it causes bugs !
When the player isn't activated, if you add units via script, they're invisible, unkillable, unmovable.
And as I already said, sometimes even with a dull unit or building you can't activate the player in the map editor in the player list (where you chose default, human, AI) !

So my main concerns are the bugs that it causes and how someone trying to script and not aware of that problem will fail, not understand, and just give up.
If it requires a lot of work then you don't have to refactor everything, you could just add something so that automatically it checks at least one thing in the mapEd player list (AI for example) when this player has one unit / building so that you don't have to do it manually and to remove the bug where even with units you can't activate a player.
I hope I was clearer :p

[Krom]

@TDL and woloszek: Thanks for your ideas, we already have them in our todo list, we just don't have enough time to implement them

@Shadaoe: Adding assets to inactive players is a bad thing, we will see how we can block that (skip/halt on adding). Can you describe the "with a dull unit or building you can't activate the player in the map editor in the player list" issue please?

[Shadaoe]

Thanks, it'll be better to have an error showing exactly why it crashes rather than nvisible units for people who try to learn scripting and might become discouraged !

Sometimes, it's really rare and I can't seem to reproduce it now, even with a dull unit, you can't activate it here :


In the case of this screen I didn't have the issue but I hope you see what I mean, I'll keep you up to date if I manage to reproduce the problem !

[Krom]

@Shadaoe: I have checked with the code and there are already checks for active player. I can't see how you could add a unit to a non-activated player. Please give an example!

[Shadaoe]

I'll try to reproduce it but can't promise anything since it was quite random :/

[WhiteWolf]

Would it be an idea to give the Barracks a 'rally point' function ?

Example: the Barracks is in located in the center of your town (X9 Y9). Now if you train 20 militia your village will be very crowded, the militia will set up there 'tactical stance' in the middle of your village. But when you set the rally point just behind your defence line (i.e. X49 Y36) the militia will leave your village immediatly.

Anyone agrees/disagrees ?

[Shadaoe]

Why don't you just put 1 serf in the middle of the map for that player and let it starve to death ?

I don't really see the problem on this one..

Because I had an issue when, even with one serf, I couldn't activate the player ?

By the way, as I ALREADY SAID, I'm aware of the workaround where you put an unit and you can even kill it on mission start instead of letting it starve to death, so if you don't see the problem, please read my post again.

I'm not stupid, I knew that solution, and I even took the time to write it in my posts.

[Lewin]

I have also found it annoying that the map editor disables players who don't have any houses/units when I've been making/editing maps. Dynamic scripts now mean that it's not going to be uncommon to have players who start with nothing and have their army/units appear during the game from the script (some of Vas' missions do this, so do missions like The Siege where an army appears from off the map after a certain time). Placing a watchtower/unit somewhere the player can't see is a very ugly/unintuitive workaround (some missions have the entire map revealed anyway). I think it would be good if there was a way to force a player to be enabled even through they have no units/houses.

@Shadaoe: Can you explain the invisible units/crashes in more detail? Is it caused by using dynamic scripts or just by using the map editor? I'd like to fix these issues

[Shadaoe]

Here is a sample map where it happens, I didn't experience this issue with only the map editor, it always happened with dynamic scripts :
In this sample map the bugged player even has an unit placed in the mapEd ! He's just no checked at all on the mapEd player list. I added units via script and if you test this map in multiplayer, by taking player 1 (anyway I don't think you can even take the other player), you'll end up being surrounded by invisible units that you can at the first look kill (you attack them and they play the death sound), but they'll keep blocking your way.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/1sb ... UITgA&dl=1
And the unit for that player that was placed in mapEd doesn't show up either.

This is an example of the issue, but here are all the setup where I encountered the problem (with sado since we did some tests about that together too) :
-when adding units to a player in mapEd but not checking him in the list (the case I used in the sample map) and then adding scripts to add units. This setup seems to bug only in multiplayer, when I tried in sp the units did actually show up.
-sometimes, with the same setup as above and in sp, sado and I encountered an issue. I sent him a map and, on his side, with the same map, he had invisible units where I had visible units. It was quite odd.
-on a multiplayer map with 4 players, all having units on the map and all activated as "humans" in the mapEd player list, when you play with less than 4 players, all missing players had invisible units when they're added via script.
I don't know if it helps but here are all the versions of the problem I encountered