I’ve been quiet of late. No real reason, at least no more than just life in general. So I figured a quick update is probably in order.
I’ve missed two release schedules. I intended to release a patch every quarter, around the solstice and equinox. Well, I missed the Autumn Equinox release for no other reason than I hadn’t done anything. So I bumped it to a Winter Solstice release… and well… you’ve probably noticed the lack of a release. This means that it will now be bumped to the Vernal Equinox. I’ll try and get on this one… please bear with me…
There will be two Doomdark’s Revenge bug fixes in the release that have already been fixed.
The first one is interesting as it was reported as a bug, but as far as I can see it is actually a problem in the original data. So yes, it is a bug, but one from the original release. I have no issue fixing this as I don’t think it will really have much affect on gameplay.
One other feature that was tentatively going to be in the next release was
The reason for the tentative status was purely because it needed more thought than what I added on the ticket, but ultimately I need to start somewhere with it.
Anyway, that’s what I’ve not been doing for the last 6 months…
The Solstice release has now been submitted to Apple and Google, windows versions to follow over the next few days. From this point forward I intend to produce four released a year with either new features or just maintenance. They will all coincide with the Solstices or Equinoxes.
Version 2.0.5 (44)
ADDED: panel_map_detailed – tool tip for location – press
ADDED: panel_options – gameplay rules
ADDED: Rule: Impassable Mountains
ADDED: Rule: AI Impassable Mountains
ADDED: Rule: Sole Mountaineer
ADDED: Rule: Add mountain passes
ADDED: Rule: LoM – Unrecruitable Fey
ADDED: DDR – Fast tunnels
FIXED: Character Time Shader
FIXED: DDR – Battle Algorithm
FIXED: DDR – Race preferred terrain for movement
FIXED: DDR – Cowardly lords attacking
FIXED: Android Rotation
The fixes or all rather straight forward and self explanatory. The main additions are the inclusion of the new gameplay rules, so here is a quick note on what they do.
Impassable Mountains
This is for both LoM and DDR. This stop player controlled players from entering mountain locations. In DDR it will also stop you from approaching and lord who is in a mountain location or entering battle in one. Also Giants and Dwarves can still traverse mountain ranges.
AI Impassable Mountains
As above but for AI characters.
Sole Mountaineer
With impassable mountains enabled, this can be enabled to allow a lord with no army to still pass through mountains.
Add mountain passes
Currently LoM only – punches some holes in the mountain ranges to allow access to areas that would become unreachable with impassable mountains.
Unrecruitable Fey
In LoM this affectively takes the fey out of the game. For that added level of difficulty.
Fast Tunnels
In DDR characters will move faster through tunnels than previously, making them more of an advantage. Dwarves will get an extra boost.
** Known Issues **
With combinations of impassable mountains, it is possible that a sole lord or a dwarf could recruit another lord within within either a mountain range or an inaccessible area. This would then mean that the recruited lord would not be able to move. This will be resolved in the next update. The work around is to not recruit lords in such a location.
I shall be releasing an update to both The Lords of Midnight and Doomdark’s Revenge toward the end of June. This is the “Summer Solstice” update.
There are currently three fixes.
Problem with Android rotation.
Cowardly lords can still enter a battle.
Characters are no longer correctly tinted by the time of day on the landscape.
Along with these fixes there will be a couple of new features. These features will be driven by the new gameplay rule system. The idea being that you can additionally enable certain features that will have an affect on how the game plays.
I have been planning this for a while and intended to introduce it with the c# rebuild that I am working on (slowly), but after requesting features for possible inclusion in regular updates I have decided to bring it forward. It gives an easy way to extend gameplay options.
Neil Swanson contacted me with a few ideas for new features and they have been rolled in to the gameplay rules.
I’ve also always intended to have a game difficulty mode: easy, medium, hard. So the intention is to use this in conjunction with the gameplay rules to leverage different types of play.
The following rules have been slated for development and have issues created for them on my GitHub repos. There are likely a few things to consider for them, so details may change.
DDR – Original terrain travel times
DDR – Armies attack when near an enemy
DDR – Armies will continue a battle without just randomly leaving
LOM – Cup of Dreams can replenish overnight
LOM – Varied initial start positions
LOM – Utarg of Utarg can become disloyal
LOM – Doomdark will go after Morkin heavily if the Ice Crown is picked up
LOM – Doomdark will guard the Ice Crown more heavily
LOM – Change quest completion rules to align with Mike’s original intention
LOM – Fey are not recruitable
DDR – Fast Tunnels
LOM/DDR – Impassable mountains
LOM/DDR – AI Impassable mountains
The plan is to have the last 4 in the Solstice update, and the work on Impassable Mountains already almost complete.
It’s interesting that when you think of a simple one line description of a feature, how complex it can become when you start to develop it. For example, impassable mountains are just that. LoM and DDR already have a concept of impassable terrain with the Frozen and Icy Wastes, so dropping in Mountains seems simple enough until….
What happens if the friend/enemy is in a mountain? You need to disable approach and battle. Out of that comes the concept of AI Impassable mountains to stop the AI characters from freely moving around the map. But that has its own issues.
What happens when a lord loses a fight and runs away. Well in LoM they only leave on location and there is already a check that it’s not Frozen Wastes, so that becomes straight forward. But in DDR they move up to 3 locations away. It checks that the target location is not Icy Wastes but not if the locations to get there are. Which is why you can currently be bounced in to the Plains of Anvoril if you enter battle up against the Icy Wastes surrounding it.
In DDR special objects are randomly placed on the map. So they can’t be placed on a mountain, but technically they can’t be placed anywhere that can’t be accessed. There are a handful of locations that would be problematic. So either the map needs to be edited to make those locations accessible, or they need to be marked as un-accessible, or we need to allow particular lords or races to not be affected by Impassable Mountains – like say Giants and Dwarves. The later make sense as there are a few Dwarven fortresses that are locked away in the mountains.
