Category Archives: Development

Perhaps you need more than words, perhaps you need this…

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4

Version 2.1.0 Build (57)

It’s been a very long time since the last release. So I am happy that the next release will include a bounty of changes. There are some new game rules. Some bug fixes. Numerous cosmetic updates. Some new UI additions.

There has also been a lot of work under the hood making way for AppleTV and The Citadel. The games also now run in a desktop web browser. This also allows for quick releases to check issues out before building the final store released.

Currently available to test at The Lords of Midnight (WEB) and Doomdark’s Revenge (WEB) full release to follow.

Game Options

  • ADDED: LOM – ‘Replenish Things’ and ‘Random Replenish’, things removed from the map respawn after a number of days dependent on difficulty. This is either happens based on game design or completely randomly depending on the game rule.
  • FIXED: DDR – Circular liege when a lord recruits their own liege
  • ADDED: DDR – ‘Fix Circular Liege’, on by default and enabled for existing games. Fixes a problem were lieges could be recruited by their old subjects. Full discussion here…
  • ADDED: DDR – ‘Safe Lord Death Rules’, a lord can’t die while they still have an army. This is similar to how LoM works. This is a game option to avoid compromising the original gameplay.
  • ADDED: DDR – ‘Hide Lords In Tunnels’, armies following a lord who is in a tunnel now search the ground within 3 squares of them, on by default. With this turned off and in original mode, the armies would sit on the location directly above the lord.

Action Menu

  • ADDED: Help icon on the actions menu. A method of re-reading all help popups from the action menu.

Think Screen

  • ADDED: DESKTOP – Arrows on the screen pager
  • ADDED: LOM – The think pages show ‘He thinks again….’ with keyboard shortcut
  • ADDED: DDR – The think pages show ‘More?’ with keyboard shortcut
  • CHANGED: LOM – The think pages show ‘To the [direction],’ for what lies ahead, as the original

Misc Changes

  • FIXED: LOM – Seeking no longer removes wild horses from the map on default and easy difficulty
  • CHANGED: Corrected night colour text
  • CHANGED: Dedication screen is no longer shown every time
  • CHANGED: Upgraded to latest Axmol, targeting Android 36 and latest iOS/OSX
  • FIXED: HTTP urls updated to HTTPS
  • CHANGED: IOS/OSX – Added new support for document sharing
  • ADDED: TVOS – Apple TV build of LOM and DDR. Game is almost ready to run on AppleTV. This also includes changes for using a DPAD on other devices.
  • CHANGED: Updated Windows Installer

Map Changes

  • ADDED: Map pinch and zoom. Should be pretty clear. Desktop you hold the shift key down while moving the mouse.
  • ADDED: Map extends beyond the edge UI elements. This fixes lords at the edge of the map getting stuck under UI elements.
  • ADDED: Filters fade the map layers and lords, and filter buttons with nothing to show or hide are hidden
  • CHANGED: The background behind a many lords icon fades out at the edges
  • CHANGED: Touching anywhere outside the many lords dialog dismisses it, fading it out
  • CHANGED: Tidied up the discovery map mechanics
  • FIXED: Crash going to the map straight from a new game from a gesture on panel_look
  • FIXED: Crash going to the map from the actions menu in a game saved before the map was remembered
  • ADDED: Memories feature. Armies locations are remembered, but they fade over time.

Select Screen

  • FIXED: Leaving or disbanding a group now returns to the standard think screen
  • ADDED: Lords rotate around the group circle when using the group left/right arrows
  • ADDED: Lords animate from the group dialog to their place on the select screen when a group is disbanded
  • ADDED: Lords animate to their new positions when using the tidy up button on the select screen
  • ADDED: Lords fade in and out when the select screen filters are changed
  • CHANGED: Filter buttons are hidden when pressing them would not change which lords are shown
  • CHANGED: Tidy up places a group on a block of four squares so it never overlaps other lords
  • CHANGED: Lords move aside, animated and as little as possible, when a group needs room or is over the edge of the screen
  • ADDED: DDR – Lords in a tunnel show a tunnel icon with their status icons
  • ADDED: DDR – Select screen – Tunnel filter button, as on the map

You may try, Morkin, if you wish.

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Quick post to show off something that just happened – this is Lords of Midnight running in a web browser. Yes! exactly the same game that is running on iOS, Android, OSX, and Windows. It currently only runs on desktop browsers because of a lot of in game decisions that are actually made at build time. it might change that, I’m not sure. But for now I am thinking about using it as a quick preview location so that people can play new builds as soon as I build them.

Lords of Midnight, Doomdark’s Revenge, and The Citadel are all supported. But I will just roll out LoM for a while.

Click here to try it…

Rotten Doomdark magic

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The Spring equinox release didn’t quite go as smoothly as hoped. It was a big release because the Axmol upgrade but a few issues meant I’ve had to push a hot fix. Actually being truthful, I’ve pushed a few… the latest 2.0.11 (56) is rolling through now. The Windows update will be a little later – just because of build delays.

Build (56)

  1. FIXED: LOM – Crash when seeking and finding an object that can be picked up

Build (55)

  1. FIXED: LOM – Crash at startup after previously chaning scenaro to LOM_NOVEL
  2. FIXED: DDR – Friendly Lord ‘prepares For battle’ at friendly fortress after being recruited

Build (54)

  1. FIXED: LOM – Crash when after Moonring wearer dies
  2. FIXED: Incorrect hours remaining shown after finding guidance
  3. FIXED: Problem with shaders on older devices – Black rectangles around characters

Build (53)

  1. FIXED: ANDROID: Start new game crash – stop proguard stripping axmol utils.

Here’s what happened.

  1. Android build messed up only for the Play Store build. So had to immediately push a new version. This is to do with how the build process removes unused code etc. It had tagged some parts of the engine as not required which would cause a crash on creating a new game. So I pushed a new build just for Android.
  2. Shader problems on some iPads (potentially other devices). A divide by zero issue that has been in the shader code – forever – caused the outlines of terrain to be funky, but more importantly the characters were sat in a black box. Not sure what in the process caused this to show up now, but thankfully the Axmol guys helped located the issue. It’s one of those – doh! moments. That said, it’s been fine for 12 years!! Also thanks to Gareth Jones for helping test the fix.
  3. There was a crash in LoM when Luxor died. When the Doomguard who follow Luxor try to to locate someone else to follow, the game crashed. This was because in implementation of the Novel scenario, I had inadvertently turned off the Moonring feature!! This and the shaders warranted a quick release.
  4. I had a small guidance bug brought to my attention which I had fixed, so I though I might as well push it with the hot fix.
  5. New crash at startup – in fixing the Moonring issue I introduced a different crash. This is what happens when you try to rush releases and don’t cover your fixes with proper unit tests!
  6. Has also fixed a small prepares battle reporting issue.
  7. Crash problem caused when seeking and finding an object that you can pick up – Sword, Moon Ring, Ice Crown. This was caused by the guidance bug fix – see previous comment about tests.

Hopefully this is now all settling…

In the meantime – I also started the process of getting the GoG releases updated. The stores should be up to date with the new release later this month. I’m holding off for a little while longer due to these hiccups…