Go vote!

So, this little thing:

http://adrenic.net/?page_id=284

So, we’re losing on this poll, and they spelled the game’s name incorrectly! Not a great start, but considering there’s less than 200 votes on the board we can turn this train wreck around with your support!

Voting us up takes ~5 seconds, get in there! Vote KAG! Tell them the spelled the name wrong in the comments for bonus points! Support your country Game! … Oh, and us, too ;)

Edit: Huzzah! We’re on top and they fixed the name and it’s thanks to you guys!

Thanks for your support guys!

Edit2: Yikes, AoS is catching up! If you haven’t voted yet, hop to it! It’d be good fun to win this thing.

This weeks sneak peek

Sneak peek into what I’m working on this week all explained in a nice picture.

Other than that I’ve started exporting the game rules (like what happens on score, how much points for doing stuff etc.) into a script file.

MM

Call to arms!

This from one of our Guards, Neat:

Red, and blue, the biggest recorded single battle ever yet. We now have a 128 player server. It may have crashed at 60 players the other night but I think it’s worth a try to get as many people, hopefully the maximum number in at once.

If posted to tumblr and facebook and this forum, I reckon we can get 128 people at any one time and keep it going for a while (presuming it doesn’t crash, they’re going to work on the issues)

Kag is not tennis, Kag is WAR.

Help us iron out the networking bugs by tweeting/spamming facebook/mailing your grandma about this and playing on that huge server, we want to see some epic recordings and hear some amazing tales, and most importantly bug reports when it dies detailing when, how and why :P

MeteorVPS 128 Slot is the place to be!

Have at it!

Geti

Build 158 released!

Oh this was a bad one. It seems like the big guys, like us and Apple are having problems these days :). But I was faster to fix it!

I noticed the amount of players online suddenly dropped so something was wrong. Servers and clients have to patch. Please restart to auto-update.

Changes 157-158:

- fixed not being able to connect to server after some time of server running

Features Coming!

This picture basically outlines 5 things we want to get done alongside the October event, some after, some before:

• Gendered players - not much difference between them, but being able to select Male or Female as part of your player customisations will help us be more inclusive as well as getting some variety onto the battlefield. After that we’ll include customisable heads - including hats helmets and haircuts for paid players.


• Workshops - Arrow and Bomb workshops pictured here, allowing construction of those items and potentially upgrades to them later on.


• Mechanisms - Spike and Arrow traps that you can attach to pressure plates and levers to allow forts to be more easily defended and to give builders a more interesting engineering task than 10-ply walls. These will be paid only.


• Wooden Buildings - A cheaper faster option than stone that will actually very likely be required before “upgrading” a tile to stone. A lot of work will have to go into balancing this, but I’m alright with that. We may add stone doors at the same time.


• Fire! - Bombs, fire arrows (and perhaps a few other things later on) will be able to set fire to wooden buildings. We’ve devised a way to make “putting out” flaming buildings possible without water that basically involves cutting out the flaming parts. Fire will give players a genuine reason to upgrade from wood to stone - fire hazards are a real concern you know ;)

Not pictured:

• Coins - a system representing the work a player has done for the team, you’ll drop coins upon dying and gain them from building, killing enemies, capturing flags, and manufacturing items. You’ll be able to use them to buy items (including bombs and arrows) which will provide a much better self-balancing system than the current resupply on spawn.
  That means no more endless stream of suicide bombers!

We’ve got more plans, but they’re not concrete so I’m not posting them. Feel free to ask questions in the comments - I’ll be watching this post over the weekend.

Geti

Build 157 released!

Changes 156-157:

- added “nocollapsing_nearspawn” variable to game rules file (CTF/gamemode.cfg)
- near spawn collapses prevention works for larger structures only (>15 blocks)
- fixed collapsing issues again
- fixed unbuildable spots bugs
- fixed crash reason
- fixed not being able to return to menu after disconnect
- knight image files height correction

Build 156 released!

Another quick patch. We’re ironing everything out before the next major builds that will bring some awesome new stuff. In the meantime the major bugs are being eradicated, I’m especially proud of fixing the collapsing issues. Should look much better now!

- unlimited resources on warmup removed (get 250 stone and 100 in tent)
- fixed creative/sandbox mode resources
- when max resource limit reached item falls out
- fixed picking resource item when full
- added circle on player when freezed
- fixed flag scored when touched on flag carrier
- fixed unsupported resolutions in fullscreen
- fixed frozen players dying
- fixed server browser sorting
- sort selection in browser is saved
- teams open doors can’t be destroy by team members
- fixed collapsing issues (floating blocks & not all blocks collapsing)
- fixed crash on start for old video cards

Build 154 released!

Added a “Basics & Building” tutorial. This is something everyone starting with KAG should play first. Something like this might be mandatory to pass through in the future so that new players don’t spoil the fun for people already playing.

Fixed numerous most critical bugs. Please report if any of the mentioned bugs still remain.

Beware griefers! Mods can now freeze you by pointing at you with the mouse cursor and pressing [F3]. If you didn’t do anything illegal you can explain yourself during this time.

Changes 151-154:

- added “Basics & Building” tutorial
- added password prompt in server browser
- added moderator key [F3] to freeze a player
- fixed map tile desynchronization on game join
- fixed chat console not scrolling when joined game
- added infinite resources on warmup
- lowered amount of resources on round start (100 wood and stone)
- lowered amount of wood falling out of destroyed catapult or tent to 30
- builder automatically picks up stone and wood parts
- fixed castle background blocks requiring support
- fixed /kickid names display on Linux
- removed clantag brackets (default name separator is space; other chars can act as separator)
- cannot pull catapult while holding [F]
- fixed minimap dissapearing on death
- dedicated_autostart.cfg and mapcycle.cfg don’t get autoupdated
- fixed server map preview memory leak

Hotfix released:
- fixed 4 crash reasons

One "KAG Day"

I might or might not do this monthly or quarterly or whatever to see how everything changes over time. Here’s the rundown on new user registrations and total user logins per hour over one day recently:

(click for full size image)

That is what happened in KAG last Thursday. I picked Thursday because it marked the start of how the game’s population seems to be progressing - the day before had a large jump in registrations (see the log graph preview on the first graph above!) - and every day since then has been roughly the same in terms of activity both in registrations and activity (if you look closely you’ll see a higher volume over the weekend with some interesting spikes, but it looks to be continuing roughly the same)

User logins seem to peak around 2-4PM in a “KAG Day” (wherever that is) which is slightly after the peak in registrations. A “Dead” period (server population likely lower than 50) occurs from 11PM to 11AM.

By the sound of things the peak is probably when France does most of its gaming, which would overlap considerably with the rest of Europe. It seems to me that we don’t yet have as much of a presence as we could in the US, as logins are low apart from the EU spike. So, if you’re in the US, feel free to tell everyone you know good things about this game ;) We could do with evening this graph out a little, I think.

…That’s more or less all I wanted to say about the stats we have at hand (we also have cumulative registrations and are looking into logging more so we can learn more about when/how you guys play), I hope someone gains some insight from this - see you all for more chatter about blue lines in a month or so!

Keep your eyes on the blog for some gameplay (and premium) related content coming soon!

Geti

"New Server Browser" build released!

Besides tweaking some things, improving the auto-updater and fixing bugs we have now a completely NEW SERVERS BROWSER!

Includes:

• pinging (sorting closest server)


• map preview (check and see what is going on the server before joining)


• sorting by map size


• better view of locked and full servers

Attention knights! You can’t destroy now castle backgrounds with a normal hit and you can’t destroy your teams open doors. This is to prevent random damage when fighting inside your castle. You’ll need a full slash to destroy the castle back wall.

Changes 142-151:
- new server browser
- server pinging
- server minimap preview
- optimized GUI rendering
- max server name length added
- server info limited to 144 chars
- client disconnects with message when trying to enter full server
- autoupdater reads another download URL if first one fails
- precache.txt doesn’t update in autoupdater
- block cursor always shows for archer & knight
- knight can’t destroy team open door
- knight can destroy castle background only with slash
- changed default team switch button to ALT

Alpha Funding on Desura!

King Arthur’s Gold is now officially part of the alphafunding program on the games distribution channel Desura. Alphafunding (or crowd funding) is a way for independent game developers to create their games without being dependent on a publisher that pays salaries. These games are only for you, players. Once you pay for them, you can play the alpha version and when the full version is complete you get it first! The main benefit is that you get the game now for significantly less money than when it’s done.

We’re honored to be in a group of 5 awesome games.
Definitely try out the other games!

Hello new players!

We’ve got a new online record!

We have a massive spike of new players. Where are you people coming from? Stats engine hasn’t logged it yet.

If you’re new, here are the most important things in the KAG community:

http://kagforum.com - Forums where we hang out, discuss, add ideas, ask to solve problems

http://kagwiki.com - Everything you want to know about the game

Suggestions

KAG is in alpha phase and it is funded by players. If you want to check the roadmap where this game is heading checkout this page and definitely this page.

Server browser inbound?

Server browser inbound. Includes:

• Sorting options


• Ping checking


• Map preview


• Player counts


• Simple Bookmarking


• A few other misc usability-wise useful things (game mode and password indicators)

Also likely included around the same time:

• BLD


• TDM

The full gui overhaul will need to wait, but this should make finding a game simpler. Should be around by this weekend.

Geti

Build 142 hotfix

Available on auto-update. Please note that some fixes require servers to restart.

- fixed emoticon bubbles not working on other players
- fixed kill feed truncating names to 1 character
- fixed main menu disappearing on player death
- fixed server links authentication eg. kag://127.0.0.1:50301

What's next

I was away for a couple days but now am back in business, ready to work with new ideas! It seems people are grabbing the premium edition like hot buns. This is really cool because we’ve got more motivation to finish it faster and make it even more awesome. There are some things though we need to fix to make the ordering process more clear and quicker.

KAG is steadily becoming really popular. I really need to make a proper server browser now since 25 servers is a hassle to browse right now. So that’s on my todo list.

I want to make the bomb workshop soon, since I feel the game needs that right now.

Also a builder tutorial is missing.

That’s all for now, we’ll keep you updated with the latest news. So subscribe to the feed or just drop in here later.

MM

Build 142 released!

Just a quick patch fixing most important issues cause I’ll be gone until next week. Attending Game Developers Conference in Poland (http://zjazdtworcowgier.pl/)

MM

Changes 137-142:

- fixed crash after too many objects
- ladders and castle background need support when building horizontally
- bombs just damage dirt blocks instead of destroying

Premium KAG and The Future.

We figured we should shed some light on where we’re going with KAG. As such, hit the jump for a rough roadmap of where we want to go (it has pictures!)

French translation / Française

Premium accounts reactivated

Everyone that bought KAG Premium should get an e-mail from me. If for some reason you haven’t got it (check spam folder!) please e-mail me personally with your paypal e-mail and game account name: mm [at] thd.vg.

In other news:

1. King Arthur’s Gold should be available on Desura within a day


2. MacOSX version is really coming soon now, I’ve got it compiled at 99%, just a few errors to fix

French, Polish & Russian subforums

We have new forums and our community is growing larger!
We decided to make language subforums. Everyone is welcome!
Currently available:

French forum, Polish forum and Russian forum.

(Forum francophone, Polskie forum, Русский форум)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEasSaaaUNk?feature=oembed&w=500&h=374]

Found a nice trailer for the last few versions of KAG from Crashman208, figured it’d be a nice preview for anyone “on the fence” with the game.

Also, some large news coming possibly later today (or by the end of the coming week at absolute latest if everything goes wrong and we spend this weekend in tears) about alternative pricing, and exactly what the awesome people who buy the game are going to get in terms of bang:buck ratio.

Geti

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

New website & game accounts

New KAG website is online check it out! We also took the time to improve the game accounts system. Unfortunately there are some issues that don’t allow for automatic transfer of old accounts. This means that you will have to re-register your account. Don’t worry this will take a second. Your premium account won’t be activated automatically also. Please allow 24 hrs and you will get an e-mail with instructions how to activate your premium account again. Don’t worry nothing is lost.

Also a new KAG forum is waiting to be launched…

New Official KAG Forums launched! It uses the same account/login as the game!

Enjoy a better gaming experience!

MM

Human Catapult build Released!

There is so much goodies in this build that I can wait to play it with the public! Here’s what we have in this latest installation of King Arthur’s Gold:

Every material now (wood, stone, gold, bombs and arrows) are physical game objects inside the game. This means you can:

• drop them (or use momentum to throw across walls) (default key [C])


• pick them up


• healing heart can be picked up with [E] if you don’t use it

So no more lost gold after being gibbed! But there’s more:

Presenting…

the Human Catapult!

I think it is obvious what to do with this. You’ll need a teammate to help launch you. Just watch out because long falls will cause falling damage or death.

Default key for loading catapult has changed to the drop key [C] !

Besides these features there are dozens of tweaks, changes and BUG FIXES. Worth mentioning are:

Attention server owners

The master server has been transferred and the address has changed.
Please restart your servers for them to update correctly now.

Server issues

There might be some temporary issues with master server login and server downloading. This is happening because:

• we’ll be moving the website and master to another system for better performance


• with more players the database has become inefficient and it clogs the server


• we’ll be replacing the current database along with introducing a new KAG website

When this happens you’ll be asked to re-register your account. Hopefully from then on it will be smooth sailing.