Kings and Knights

[Nebula]

Kings and Knights

A strategy game based on civilization. Nearly two years
in the making.

Project page.

http://www.aczez.cistron.nl/

Requires DirectX7.

See bottom thread for latest features.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Nebula, welcome to the neighborhood!

I checked out the Kings and Knights web page briefly (I'm at work ) and it looks like you've got a lot in it already!

ai cities will try and keep a defensive force of 5 spearmen

Isn't this wasteful? Should not forces be sent to the "front" if one exists, with lighter reserves in back?


Best of Luck with the project!

[LDiCesare]

Nice game.
I downloaded and played 30 turns.
Technically, the game runs fine, with no glitch. Very good. My impressions are good. I insist because I am going to point out lots of things that do not go well in my opinion.

Graphics are very good.

User interface is cool but you need some other keys available. If you saw my laptop you would understand how puzzled I was at each diagonal move I wanted to do.
You need an easy way to see there are more than one unit in one square.
You need some way to automatically activate units as they are being built.
Some feedback when you can't upgrade a city would be welcome, like price and such. Also, upgrading is instantaneous while unit-building is not. I don't feel very comfortable with that although it works well.
It is a bit hard to know what fights occurred during the ai turn.

Combat:
They seemed a bit too random to me (knight attacks bombard and loses). The civ model you used is not the best. I mean getting stacked unit destroyed is not much fun.
Also, units seem to be either dead or alive, never wounded. I couldn't figure whether terrain (hills) had some effect on fights.

Units:
Most are useless. Axemen are strictly worse than pikemen but cost more. All in all, the only useful units are settler, but I didn't need roads so not that much, pikemen for defense (cheap), knights for offense (3 move + high attack is awesome. It is worth 3 times the same offense at one move IMO), sometimes catapults for counter attack from cities, but they are too expensive wrt knights.
I suggest raising the cost of knights or reducing their moves, or allowing a unit to attack only once per turn no matter how many moves they have.
Zones of control I had trouble understanding. Cities obviously have ZOC, but it seems nothing else has. No problem with it, but I am not sure how it works.

AI:
Roads are used correctly.
Fortresses are not, as sometimes a knight would stop there and stand idle, alone. I can understand if he waits for some reinforcements or blocades a road, but he didn't do anything.
They shouldn't attack knights with warriors or pikemen.
AI builds crappy units. See above.
Often the units move right beside (or end their move beside) a roaming knight, asking to get killed.
You should try to coordinate attacks by sending at least 5 knights, with a few pikemen, to target a city.
It seems the AI decided to attack one of my cities and their troops passed near a city they had lost. Maybe they wanted to attack it too, but it was not clear. Do you change target priorities when cities are taken?
I saw a pikeman standing near an empty city attack my knight instead of entering the city and fortifying there.
AI should build some catapults in-city and shoot at attackers with them.
As Mark said, you should move some of those pikemen to the front rather than keep them home. Probably the ai needs to upgrade its cities a bit or start with upgraded cities.

[Nebula]

New update :

- Keypad can now be used to move units
- message when city cannot be upgraded
- Rewritten battle outcome code
- Added stacked units do not get destroyed rule
- Changed certain attack and price settings
- New ai code

Mark - I have not gotten to that part yet

[neonext]

looks good, i will have to try it out sometime.
a few questions tho,

any multiplayer support or plans for multiplayer?

any kind of research or technologies or is this strictly a medievil game?

also, when was this first released and how did you get 500 downloads?

[Nebula]

>any multiplayer support or plans for multiplayer?

There will be no multiplayer. I need to learn it first. Also I would not know how to add it at this stage of development.

> any kind of research or technologies or is this strictly a medievil game?

I am still thinking of what to add concerning technologies and research.

> also, when was this first released and how did you get 500 downloads?

As for the first release I dont know. This game started may of last year as a programming example for the download section of my homepage.

yeah the 500 downloads is pretty nice.

[Nebula]

I have updated the project again.

There is a new screnario and this time two computer players are at war with each other. They will fight each other. There are 4 players in the map.

I have added mines to the game. You can build mines on mountains that contain gold. The code needs further work as does the ai to capture and start their own mines. Currently only screnario#5 has the option for mines. press 'm' with a settler on a mountain that contains gold to build a mine. It takes 3 turns to complete. The mines are purely experimental for the gameplay at this point.

The fog of war can be ativated thru the map options. If the fog of war is activated only the game in your visible area will be shown.

I also have done lots of bugtesting and hopefully fixing to.

I have also ripped some civ2 graphics and added to the game graphics crops (for food for cities and units) beavers (may change into something else) I will be looking at more graphics for new gameplay features.

Let me know if the mines are a good idea.

[Nebula]

Another few days have passed and I have been busy with the game. New stuff are in and several bugs are hopefully out.

- I have fixed the gold mines so they actually do add to your income. They can be build by a workforce by pressing 'm' when the unit is on a gold filled mountain.

- I have updated screnario#5 and now each empire is at war with eachother.

- I have tweaked and adjusted the ai so they can fight eachother. I have watched the ai capture cities and recapture cities and totally conquer eachother.

- I have added a random modifier that will increase ai output every now and then.

- I have hopefully fixed a bug that caused units to be created at map position 0,0. (This happened every 20 to 100 turns) (Took me a while this one )

- I have linked the difficulty level to the amount of players that the human player has. If someone builds up a huge army then the computer will send more units in the field. This is probably a temporary setting until I find something better.

- I have created a new ai function that reassigns units that have played out their ai mission. The computer will select between 5 different tactics and select between 5 different aproaches. This also means that enemy units you place on the map will be used by the ai. (only non fortified units and units not in cities)

Thats it.

There are not that much new features since I spend such a long time playtesting and bughunting. But progress is being made.

***update - I added the following features/fixes

- when the next unit is to be selected for its movement the game will check the last position for new units to move.

- Weird graphic display bug fixed

- Each ai player has different attack settings

- Ai now goes beserk for a certain period of time when you capture his cities.

- Ai will exclusively attack the nation that captured one of his cities. But only for a certain period of time and then he will default to his regular playing style.

- And several tiny fixes

[Nebula]

Kings and knights has been put on the side for the moment while I am working on other things.

The last thing I was working on was a goto feature.

[Nebula]

Little update :

I made the goto function functional. It does not work for stacked units yet but the gameplay has changed much already with this new feature. Just press 'g' and select a destination and the unit will end up at that position. If the position is out of reach it will move towards it at the next turn and so on. There is no way to cancel the movement orders at this point.

The feature is not finished and implemented correctly so do not expect much from it. It has been implemented currently for movement in friendly terrain only. It has no detection of enemy units or anything so things could go screwy. (units could end up on enemy units for instance)

Download the game from www.blitzcoder.com or find the link somewhere above in the first post in the thread.

[Nebula]

The last couple of days I created 2 new Screnario's. I updated the minimap. (Now shows terrain) And I added a small feature to the load save box. Also if your tax is above 110 you can build more units per turn per city. Another new feature is the ai general. He can be activated by pressing F-12. He will start attacking enemies. While the general is active hold the right mouse button down to fast forward. Hold down the left mouse button to return you to the game.

Not much but it is getting along.

Screnarios are as follows :
Red - Franks
Green - Holy Romans

In both screnario's (6 and 7) the Franks have the smallest empire. Try to hold off the Romans and launch attacks and capture as many cities as possible. Only then a quick victory can be asured.

Speed tip : Enable and reset fog of war to speed up the computer turn.

The goto feature has some issues. This is to be cleared up in future versions.

[Nebula]

After posting KK in a dutch game developers forum I got some feedback and decided to add some things things that where suggested.

User interface changes :

One suggestion was that the gui could use some real arrows for the scrolling of interfaces. This I have added. I took it a little further and created and added several extra buttons. Ofcourse the interfaces are stil far from final

Tutorial :

Another suggestion was a tutorial. This is now also in place. A requester in the start of the game now asks
if you wish to play in tutorial mode. The tutorial messages are triggered by events and time. They might need further tuning. I wrote about 16 tutorial messages and most are implemented.

Oh and I have a new website that also features the project.

http://nebula.woppy.net

I hope to keep adding new things during the following days. I am planning to add new screens in the city window which should bring some depth in the game. Designing the stuff is a pain however :P

Cheers

[Nebula]

I have designed some interfaces. They will bring hopefully some depth to the game.

New interfaces are : Market/Caravans, Production, Status, Armed Forces overview.

http://members.home.nl/cromdesign/interfacesdesign.jpg

They might and have already changed a little and two have already been added to the game. Still they do not function. I am still investigating if I can program it so it can be manipulated easily from textfiles.

New game elements will be initial limitations and new features. City growth will require certain things that can be build. Market and production goods are currently limited to 5 product catogories. Sub product catagories and product discoveries are being considered. Trade will be present in form of caravans which are requested in the market window. The current new interfaces are country/city level only.

Just like Clash I will make as much things as possible optional. Even the warface

[Nebula]

Minor update :

- Map generator for generating 'realistic' maps.
- Ships
- Minor/medium bug fixes
- Interface designer (standalone application)

The map generator I found on the Internet. I think it is a fractal division routine. The new maps now are generated from 2 different heightmap layers. One being the actual map and then a extra layer for trees.
The maps generated have 80 to 40 percent water mass so I added some ships in the game. The island maps have large water mass and small land mass.
There are 3 types of ships. Small/Medium and Large. They can carry 1/2/3 units each for now.
The system for transporting units is not perfected yet. Moving units onto land takes one keypress extra compared with Civ2. I still have to test it further. Ai has no abilility to use ships yet.

As a side project I started writing a interface designer. It is based on Smartdraw. It can be used to create custom interfaces for the game. It generates actual code so this should make designing and modifying game interfaces a lot easier.

Bye,

Nebula

[Nebula]

ROFL - I am the only one posting in this thread :P (At least people are opening the thread so I am not a complete fool )

But I know the people who read these forums and reply usually have their mind with their own projects.

So what am I up to?

Well I spend the evening and the night programming and the morning doing nothing. What a waste. I did manage to add features to the map generator and I did have time for a effective but rather short debug/re-feature session. Still sometimes the gaps in the clock are almost 5 hours or more. All the time doing nothing of importance. (My best skill) Still the war makes up for a lot. (No crap programming on tv )

What future feature development sessions will bring is still uncertain. I have actually no idea what to do next.
I could add socks or diplomacy. Who knows.

(Note - Download updated)

(Preview of my interface designer - full version)
http://nebula.woppy.net/blitz/ripper.zip

[Nebula]

Somehow the url I used for the project page does not work anymore. Also direct downloads do not work anymore. It is only possible to download the game from the project page itself.

The new and original url is http://www.aczez.cistron.nl/

Between the last and recent upload there have been changes.

Bug fixes
Tweaking
Stack movement (shift)
Better unit_wait system
Partially implemented flexible config files
Units are activated once build
Autosave
Partially functioning diplomacy (F3)
Display engine update

[Pedrunn]

I have played the game and seems one of the best i have played here. Yet some suggestions: You have dozens of unit in the game which are all pretty much useless. Specially because you cant make a group attack. So my suggestion is to either decrease the number of unit or give them the power to attack in group.

At least make them move together.

The UI hurts the eyes. Lesser bright colors and not black background would do the trick. At small size it becomes better though.

Very commonly the unit orders when pressed freezes my game. And i have to Ctrl-Alt-Del.

Great graphics and nice music

[Nebula]

Thanks for the compliment.

The freeze bug is fixed, I believe. A feeze bug sneaked in a few versions ago, I have not encountered it again since yesterday after I fixed it. Anyway a new version is uploaded that runs in windowed mode so it can be simply closed when something happens.

The 'land' units can move in groups using the shift key. They cannot be grouped yet.

You are right, there are a lot of units. I only use the pikemen, knights, ballista's, horsemen, and boats. The other ones I have barely used yet. I will see what I can do about this.

I will adjust the textures for the interface a bit.

Thanks for trying the game

[Pedrunn]

One other thing I forgot. Dont use that dice system to lnow how many units there are in a tile. Use a numerical system. Will make thing much easier for sure. And it is just a change in the graphics.

[Nebula]

Minor Update

- A key was added for scrolling (R-CTRL + Cursors)
- Middle mouse button (hold) also scrolls the screen
- Fullscreen mode bat file added (-fullscreen param)

[LDiCesare]

Nice game, a few comments:
Resolution. Is it possible to fit in window for higher resolution or change res on the fly as most games do?
Combat feels strange: I could take 3 defended cities with 2 knights.
It would be nice to get some feedback when we lose one unit.
Also, I saw something of a bug: A green knight attacked a ship and ended the turn in a water square.
Amphibious assaults seem too powerful: You can put a siege tower on a boat, go near a coast, attack with the siege tower, move the boat away.

[LDiCesare]

Double post .

[Nebula]

Resolution. Is it possible to fit in window for higher resolution or change res on the fly as most games do?

The game currently is fixed to a single resolution. This will change in the future (The display code is old and a mess). Currently I am moving the code away to another compiler that offers windows controls. I want to create a civ 2 like interface and a full screen variant. This however will take some time.

Combat feels strange: I could take 3 defended cities with 2 knights.

I will look into it and do some battle tests with cities and create a balance.

It would be nice to get some feedback when we lose one unit.

I will try to find a good solution for this.

Also, I saw something of a bug: A green knight attacked a ship and ended the turn in a water square.

Hmm, I have seen the bug to - I hoped I had fixed it. The water part of the game is rather new. I will add some code that should fix this.

Amphibious assaults seem too powerful: You can put a siege tower on a boat, go near a coast, attack with the siege tower, move the boat away.

This is something I have not even tried yet or thought of. I will certainly look into it.

Thanks for the feedback.

[Nebula]

I considered hiring another artist for some additional graphics but I decided to draw new additions myself.

Below is some concept art from start to finish. One midieval soldier, and one peasant. I am not pleased with the current end results so these will change.

[Nebula]

Also I currently have one picture here below that probably will be included after more detailing. This is actually the first portret of a girl I have ever drawn.

Edit : Re-uploaded picture

[LDiCesare]

Hi Nebula,

Your girl face looks nice.
A small advice about drawing portraits, if I may:
You give too much room to the lower and middle part of the face. Eyebrows and the lower end of the nose each delimit one third of the head, so the forehead is as big as the nose-to-eyebrow area, and the area below the nose is as big as the forehead.
In your portraits, the forehead is shrunk, or the middle portion (eyes and nose) is too big.
Here's a small sketch with a face (oval), with lines at one third, one half and two thirds, and where the features lie inside these marks.

[Nebula]

I resized the images, I did not take into account the proportions when pasting them. The hair might still be a little bit high. The head itself should have the correct proportions since I based it on a other portrait.

Thanks for letting me know.

[Nebula]

Whooo,

Made several modifications.

+ Code cleanup.
+ Added a worklog
+ Folder structure updated and cleanup. Smaller zip file.
+ The game now utilizes less cpu while idle.
+ Added initial and functional configuration file.
+ Added new 'scratch' title image.

[edit]

+ alpha blending functions added..
+ active unit flickering uses alpha transparency.
+ rotation functions added.
+ minimap converted to diamand shape map.
+ more configuration options
+ Tooltips delay added

[Nebula]

Yesterday I wrote a partial very good and flexible gui library. This ontop of a isometric map display. The gui elements behave just like the windows gui. I am currently enriching the features and looking for speedups. The gui will be added into K&K. Current features are Draggable ToolWindows, StyleTags, Gradient Filling, Assignable StyleSheets, HSlider, Popup Menu, Buttons.

A preview can be downloaded here 400k. Gui display and pixelscrolling one layer isometric map.



New Gui Engine - Populous

If you test it then tell me your framerate. I get 112 in 1024*768. This on a MX4 440. It should run very fast on systems with newer gfx cards.

[edit : spelling]

[Nebula]

Created a code overview page. Every variable, constant and function documented.

http://www.hardcorecoder.com/code/ki...ect/index.html