KaM Remake -> Multiplayer Demo out!

[Lewin]

Nice ilustration file. These days i am quite busy, but in two weeks i'll start translate from english (with little help of slovak ) to czech. I am sure my brother will help me (even he doesnt know yet :evil: ).

Glad to hear it. Let me know if you have an questions.

I was able to finish a few matches without one crash. Very nice work, guys! So I don't have any crash report.

Thank you

- the AI only attacks fully built houses. If a house still is in the building process or even only marked, it is spared

Thanks for reporting that, I've fixed it. They now attack any house, including planned houses.

- as far as I noticed in the original sometimes grapes disappeared if troopes marched through the vineyard which I found quite funny (and realistic). This feature is missing

I was not able to reproduce this in original KaM at all. We could still add it as a feature, does anybody have an opinion?

- AI attacks seem to be quite CPU-consuming. Despite a good CPU (i5) there are some noticeable lags.

Yes the AI code is not very efficient at all. We'll improve it when we reinvent the AI system.

- there is still a scrolling problem (Dual Monitor, game in a window) if you press one of the arrow keys during a message appears, for example the win/lost-screen

Could you please explain what you meant by a message? Do you mean an in-game message like "troops are hungry", "house it not occupied", etc. or another sort of message? I'd like to fix this so can you please explain in more detail? Thanks.

[Siegfried]

- there is still a scrolling problem (Dual Monitor, game in a window) if you press one of the arrow keys during a message appears, for example the win/lost-screen

Could you please explain what you meant by a message? Do you mean an in-game message like "troops are hungry", "house it not occupied", etc. or another sort of message? I'd like to fix this so can you please explain in more detail? Thanks.

Take the Map "Survivor", downloadable from your site.

Some seconds after you started the map, you get the "you have lost"-screen (I don't know why, maybe because some TPR units were declared?).

If you press one of the arrow buttons and hold it until the lost-screen appears. You can release the button and then click continue - and your game will continue scrolling even without pressed arrow button.

This is not a big deal, but I am certain that this also appeared to me in a different situation, which I unfortunately can't completely recover.

[Lewin]

Thanks for that Siegfried, I fixed it
Good description of the bug. It now releases the scrolling keys when the victory/defeat/pause/etc panel appears.

It says you lost survivor because the goals are defined incorrectly in the script (I just checked it)

Remake news: I have made the delay dynamic so it adjusts to your latency. On a LAN it is barely noticeable compared to singleplayer, and over the internet it will be as good as possible. I also fixed more bugs and improved lots of things.

[Lewin]

Hi guys,
I just thought you might like an update on what's been going on. We have made huge progress over the past few weeks mainly in mutliplayer. You can even save/load multiplayer games and play with AI as well as human players! (the AI is stupid at the moment but we will improve it one day) Our play testers have played a 3 player multiplayer game for almost 3 hours on the LAN with no serious problems. I have played it with people on the other side of the world to me, there's a slight delay but it's definitely playable.
Today I finished the Linux dedicated server implementation, here's a screenshot:
http://lewin.namsys.com.au/kam/Temp/Linux.gif

We're hoping that people will host dedicated servers for us (there is a Windows version too) so you guys can play over the internet without needing Hamachi or port forwarding.

We are aiming to release a demo next week, but if more bugs are found it might be delayed further.
After this demo we plan to add a master server, so it will show a list of all running servers around the world and allow you to join them.

We are looking for translators for all languages except for Hungarian and Russian. Even languages that were fully translated in the last demo as we have new text ready to be translated. If you are interested in contributing to an existing translation or creating a new one, please email me at: lewinjh@gmail.com

Lookout for the demo next week
Lewin.

[Siegfried]

Oh my. I tried KaM Remake on a Vista Laptop and it crashes at startup.

Error message:
http://i.imgur.com/dXoso.jpg

Log file:
http://pastebin.com/W2GQBgMK

The old version (the one from January) worked fine before. I extracted the new file in the same folder, replacing all of the old files. Then I extracted r1902 and replaced the exe.

And at the start it crashes without giving me a hint what is wrong.

[Lewin]

Hi Siegfried,
The error occurred while loading game resources (either textures or fonts I think) I recommend you delete the old Remake folder and then install the first multiplayer demo (r1793) and then patch it to r1902. See whether it works like that.
Installing it over the old version from January could make it load old data files or something.

If that doesn't work let me know and we'll debug it further.
Cheers,
Lewin.

[Kotouč]

This is kinda random, but will the remake include speed changes for multiplayer? Like normal, fast (between normal and F8 ) and very fast (F8 )?

I think F8 is too fast, but perhaps something in between would be good? all players should be able to change speeds whenever they want, unless there was a lock speed option, which would be almost 100% necessary.

I think its a great idea, but that's me. I just wish I could help more with the remake.

Are you going to implement something like this?

I'm also missing aliance settings in MP. Sometimes I was able to fight second player and sometimes not, I guess it depence on scenario loaded?

[Lewin]

We haven't implemented F8 for multiplayer yet, but I think we will. Not sure how to show when the other players want to use F8 and are waiting for you to press it. Maybe it can show a clock icon for each player that appears when they turn their F8 on? I don't think it'll be in the next demo, but maybe the one after.

Yes alliances used to be fixed from the scenario you chose, but now each player has a Team setting in the lobby. If you are on the same team, you are allied.

Last night I added word wrap to the multiplayer chat and I made the chat button flash during the game when you have unread messages. A few more over the internet tests and we'll be ready for the demo

[Safihre]

Played the remake today for the first time and just wanted to say that I'm really impressed! It's fast and loveee the freedom to play in any resolution!

The only bug/problem I found is that selecting units is not optimal, a lot of times I need to click twice before the unit gets selected. But can't really show a log of that
But other than that, keep up the good work! :!:

[Lewin]

Hi guys,

The only bug/problem I found is that selecting units is not optimal, a lot of times I need to click twice before the unit gets selected.

I think that's because you have to click at the unit's feet to select them. Currently units/houses are selected by the tile they occupy, meaning that is a square around their base. It is on our features list to select units by the area of the sprite, rather than the tile they are standing on, which should fix your problem. For now try clicking slightly below the unit to select them.

Update 3 to the multiplayer demo has been released Download it from here:
http://code.google.com/p/castlesand/downloads/list

You must install it over the first multiplayer demo r1793 which can be downloaded from Krom's site.

The complete changelog is huge, and can be found in the download. The main new features are:

  Code:

 - A massive number of bugs and crashes fixed.  - Multiplayer now stays in sync and can be played for hours with no problems!  - Linux versions of the dedicated server are included  - You can select your team in the multiplayer lobby  - You can load/save multiplayer games (meaning if you have an error, you can load one of the autosaves save10-13)  - AI players can be added to multiplayer games (they are not intelligent at all, so they don't make for challenging enemies)  - In-game chat for multiplayer  - The dedicated server can be left running for days and will self manage everything (assigning hosting rights, etc.)  - Archers have friendly fire, they will hit your own units/buildings  - Special characters in the German translation now display correctly (should not have been using Unicode)  - More strings added to the translations, thanks to Jecy[/quote] I am very excited about the dedicated server now that it runs on Linux and can be left running unattended, I am hoping that some of you will be able to host it on a fixed IP address or hostname, then post that address here so anyone can join the server. If you can provide this service we would greatly appreciate it. See the Dedicated Server section of Readme file in the download for more information. My plans for the future are as follows: We need a master server to maintain a list of all the running servers around the world, then show them in the game. I am planning to write this in PHP and MySQL as I have some experience with that. Once that is done it will not be necessary to post your IP address on the forum, it will show up on everyone's server listing. My other grand plan is to allow dedicated servers to host multiple games. Right now if the game running on the server is in progress, no one is allowed to join. I plan for servers to have "rooms" in which games can be played, meaning that if one game is in progress on a server you can create a new game in a new room. The server would just send packets to the clients inside your room. As the load on the server is very small (~2 kb/s upload and download per player) this means one server could host maybe 10 games simultaneously no problem. Unfortunately my uni holidays are over. The main reason why so much progress was made in this patch is because I spent a lot of time working on the Remake during my holidays. (many late nights went into this update :P) I am going to have to put it aside and focus on uni for a while, but I'll try to do some work each week and of course Krom will still be working on the project too. As always please send crash reports to us (contact details in the Readme) and give us feedback/suggestions. Also if you would like to help out with translations please contact me. I look forward to seeing some dedicated servers running 24/7 :D Cheers, Lewin.

[xzaz]

Great work! I see some Translation errors already, I will email them to you. I started the dedicated server that is online 24/7.
Join: www.avatune.nl OR 82.169.168.61

[Shadaoe]

Great job, I didn't try the last demo yet but the changelog looks impressive ! Multiplayer
I just registered to thank you for your work and tell you that I should be able to redo the french translation to fit the remake (but maybe only when it'll be more stable)

[Siegfried]

Awesome! Really awesome!

Great work! I see some Translation errors already, I will email them to you. I started the dedicated server that is online 24/7.
Join: www.avatune.nl OR 82.169.168.61

I entered your server moments ago to try this out and startet a fighting missing agains a KI player.

Seconds after I started the match, the game was aborted with the following error message:
"network error: The server was forced to restart due to a data corruption error"

Maybe you should send your log files to Lewin so he can check what went wrong.

And you should restart your dedicated server because it seems to have crashed. I cannot connect to it anymore. Sorry
*edit: after some minutes of waiting the server is back up. At least ...

*edit2: a second try ended with the same error some seconds after the game has started.
My log-File: http://pastebin.com/keu4qkJe

[Shadaoe]

I just tested the last version of the remake, it's really awesome !

I played on xzaz's server with AI players, and had no problem (except a ping of 1500). Didn't have time to test it a lot though.

What should be added to the remake :
-flac support for the music files (it's not that important, but can be interesting, I love flac :p )
-being able to move the camera with the arrows
-a way to see what our allies are doing

I noticed something : when clicking on the players info button, it shows the chat, and clicking on chat shows the players info ;p

Great job !

edit : after a retry, I had the same error as Siegfried

[Lewin]

First of all thank you xzaz for hosting the server. And yes please email any translation corrections to me.

I noticed something : when clicking on the players info button, it shows the chat, and clicking on chat shows the players info ;p

lol not sure how that happened. Fixed, thanks for reporting.

-flac support for the music files (it's not that important, but can be interesting, I love flac :p )
-being able to move the camera with the arrows
-a way to see what our allies are doing

- Supporting additional music formats isn't a priority, we might consider it later when we're looking for a music playing library that is less Windows dependant.
- You can move the camera with the arrows, just make sure you don't have the chat window open as then the arrows are used to move the cursor in the edit box.
- Seeing the same as your allies: Thanks for reminding me, I'd forgotten we need that It's on the todo list.

Now for the big one: Server data corruption errors. I spent the morning puzzling over what might be causing this and eventually checked the code that tests for data corruption errors. I realised that I wrote it horribly wrong, and it will think there is an error if one message is split between two TCP packets So unfortunately it is going crash multiplayer very quickly. It may happen less on a LAN with fast computers, but it will most likely still happen. This feature was a last minute change which wasn't tested enough, and I did not properly check the code I wrote.
I'm quite disappointed by this, I was hoping this demo would have working multiplayer. As this is a very serious bug I think we will release a new demo within a week or two to fix it. I'll also try to add rooms to servers so they can host multiple games simultaneously (should be quick to implement) and an initial validation check to make sure a client is actually the KaM Remake not a bot or hacker probing ports/spamming.

Thanks for your help and testing everyone.
Lewin.
P.S. I won't need the log files for the server data corruption errors, they wouldn't tell me anything new.