Welcome to the warlords remake

[SnotlinG]

I have started working on the FOW-functionality.
Its still a lot left to do, but the first screenshot from the client can be seen here



Done so for
- Visibility is calculated at gameload and minimap is shown with FOW
- Main gamescreen shown with FOW
- During move in client, FOW is updated on minimap and on mainscreen

Left to do
- Get the max viewradius from a moving group. The leader unit might not have the highest value
- Update the client to only get info regarding enemy armies etc on visible tiles during gameload
- Build client/server check for checking for new armies etc during move into FOW-area and halt move/update the gameclient properly

[piranha]

Beta3 is getting closer to completion. The major upgrades are in place.

During the last days I've been fixing various bugs that were discovered during beta2 and I also built some of the things from the wishlist forum.
There is still a long list of bugs to work through but most of them don't take a lot of time to fix.

Snotling is working on various optimizations and getting the final parts of the game initiation process working for beta3 games. As soon as that part is completed I will start testing the hero and battle changes that I worked on earlier.

Its pretty cool when various parts get completed and the game is taking form again in the new version.
Our goal was to release beta3 in October. Hopefully that is still possible.

I've had graphics painted for items and ruins/temples, but they are not going to be in the game until Beta4.
Here are two items:

[SnotlinG]

We have decided that we will add a basic version of ruins and temples to Beta3.
Unfortunately this will delay the beta3 launch a little bit, but we think it should be worth the extra wait

I have been working on adding this to the mapeditor, and I am almost done now...
Ruins comes in 3 diffrent levels, and temples in 2 diffrent levels. Exactly how they will work later on we havent yet decieded, but in beta3 they will be very simple. Most likely the ruins will just give some gold.

It is now possible to place ruins in the mapeditor, and also Undo and delete works well.
I still need to get the save and load functions to pick up the ruins though
Also need to add them to initialize-game, but that should be pretty easy.

[piranha]

I've been working on speed games the last days to make sure that you won't miss your turn and to make the turn progress go as smooth as possible.

I will open a new forum where you can announce that you are going to host a speed game tomorrow at 6pm for example so people who have time can reply about interest in participating and be prepared to join the game.
This should not be needed if the number of active players go up enouh in the future but right now I think it should make it easier to get speed games going.

This mode will be awesome. I know I wanted to spend an evening playing warlords but I can't because its not my turn and even if it was my turn its doen't last for that long .

I've also been working on a system to handle maps in a smart way. You will be able to host games on your own maps, but to make it official you will submit it and then other players can place votes and comments on the map. and if enough player like the map it will become a official map that anyone can use when hosting games.

You will be able to open other peoples map in the editor to look around the map too.

[SnotlinG]

Worked through another round of bugfixing in the mapeditor, it is starting to get pretty stable now

Fixed mapeditor bugs with:
- undo
- minimap
- placement of ruins/temples in forest
- water placement close to buildings


Continued on FOW:
- Cities that you have never seen, you dont know any details about from start (like income/defence level)
- Now keeps track of all enemies you have spotted during your turn
- During movement the server checks what enemies will be revealed and sends the info back to the client, which draws the enemies.
- Spotted cities also send their info back to the client and the client is updated.

[piranha]

It's time for another post here.

The mapeditor is now working and for those who are interested you can contact us to make a map.

The plan is to spend the comming Saturday on fixing and test playing beta3 so its definetly close now.

I've spent the last 2-3 days on chat system. The in game chat is still there with some enhancements but there is also a new public chat kind of like a IRC channel or as for us who are old school Starcraft players a b.net chat. A place to hangout and make friends.
This chat is accessable through the site so even if you are making a map or are in the middle of a game you can keep an eye if there is anything interesting going on.

I have also created a friend system pretty similar to the facebook system. You can ask someone to be your friend, and if they accept the request you will see if they are online when you are and if they are you can send private messages back and forth.

The community we have here is still pretty small but hopefully it can grow during the next beta. We are going to spend some hard earned cash to promote this game to see if that can bring new people.

Snotling have been working mostly with the FOW stuff for a while with quick mapeditor fix here and there, it always turns out that things a more complicated than you first thought .

I hope we can try the speed mode this weekend. As soon as it seems stable enough we would like to try with a few test pilots.
The ideal test would be 3 groups since speed mode require you to sit at the computer. 1 in Asia, 1 in europe and 1 in the US to see if the server speed and time limits work.

[SnotlinG]

Im now finished with all the FOW development. It still might need some finetuning and bugfixing, but seems to work pretty well already. We have 2 settings for if your army should halt movement as soon as an enemy is spotted, or if it should only halt move in case the path is blocked.

Also attacking a city in the fog is not possible, when attack-clicking a city that is in the fog your troop will move next to the city and then halt. This as you dont know for sure whats in this city until you see it, and maybe you want to change your mind about attacking.

For FOW I have created a new "lost connection to the server" popup, which is an improved version of the outofsync popup. This one will (after reload of the page) center on and select the unit you had selected when the error happened

Worked a lot on fixing bugs/issues thats caused due to our new database structure. Kind of boring, but it needs to be done Also did a small change that if you decide to raze a city that you capture, it will keep the enemy graphics. It has always annoyed me a little that it looks like you are destroying your own cities, when in fact its the enemy city you destroy

Also done some minor changes to the mapeditor. When setting up cities you can now choose between 3 diffrent levels of random production. Could be good if you want a certain city to always have good production.

[SnotlinG]

Just a small update
We have done quite a lot of progress this weekend. Even tried out our first speedgame using FOW. We hit a bunch of bugs and issues of course, but have worked through most of them now.

Piranha spent quite some time working on temple and ruins, and we now have the basic temple and ruin functionality in place, with auto-popups when an army visits a temple, or when a hero visits a ruin.
Also new images for battles taking place in this terrain (terrain bonus for fighting is the normal City bonus)

Also added basic description popups for when you click on a temple/ruin, so you can see what it is good for/decide if it is dangerous.

I have done some updates to the history entries and winner-popups/emails due to the fact that players can now play "undercover". In the end, the real name is always revealed

Fixed a bug when battle in a razed city (we have a lot of new bugs due to the new db/game structure, a bit painful, but in the end Im quite sure it will be worth it )

Also fixed the bug with the calculated number of cities and city income when you have razed cities. It should now display correctly.

Fixed a bug with the path when ending a move in the fog.

Fixed some wrong Z-index which caused the armies to stand behind the road

Added ruins to FOW, i.e. if you have spotted an Explored ruin, your client will remember in future turns that this ruin is Explored, even if you dont have view there. Onmouse over terrain desc is changed depending on if it is Explored or not.

Next I think I will start looking at the update of the fightorder, put the last parts of functionality to patroling mode, and fix the win-condition check to work with the gamesettings...

[SnotlinG]

It seems like it takes for ever to complete the Beta3 scope, but anyway I have made some more progress today

Most of our new functionality is in place, now we are testing and finding/fixing bugs.
I have also started to work through the list of bugs found in Beta2 supplied by you guys

- Fightorderupdate, doesnt lose grouping

- wincondition check updated, now uses the value supplied by the gamehost (ex 60% of cities etc)

- Patroling functionality added and tested

- If you lose a city (in a game of FOW), you will see the result of the enemies actions, i.e. if he razes the city or if he choose to keep the city (i.e. occupy or plunder)

- flyer cost increased to 4 on Mountain-terrain

- city viewradius increased to 4 for standard cities, 6 for capitals

- Fixed a bunch of movement bugs in FOW, i.e. stopping at wrong coord, not possible to go out to the edge of the map and some others.

- Fixed some bugs with hero movecost in terrain depending on what units he was grouped with

- Fixed unselect button bug on moving unit.

- Removed herolevelcheck when in observermode

[SnotlinG]

I´ll just list the new bugs/features completed at this time for beta3

- Possible to buy production and set up vectoring, buy citywalls in your cities even when it is not your turn. This is primarly for the speedgame-mode, but could be useful for standard games also.

- outofsync error when moving through your own units has been fixed.

- outofsync has been improved, it now reloads the unit(s) that are outofsync from the server, and replaces them in the game, and then centers on the unit you where working with. (After 3 outofsyncs the client will be reloaded the standard way, as we then assume something is wrong with the current load)

- corrected move calculation error in the client for heroes grouped with units with movespecial abilities

- selectrow is sorted the other way around, to match battle-setup

- bug with fow where you could not move to the edge of the map is fixed.

- count cities at statusbar shows correct number of cities

- razed cities doesnt count as income at the statusbar

- Inactive player kicked out due does not get his razed cities rebuilt

- minimap army is removed after failed attack at city