Such a brief summer this starved Sun brought each day

So more solstice releases missed….

I realise that the last official release was actually Spring Equinox 2023 – nearly a year ago!

It’s not that I’ve not been busy. There has been plenty of development, some sideline things, but ultimately I’ve not been visiting the land of Midnight quite as much as I would have liked. I can insert all the usual excuses here, but ultimately it just comes back to enthusiasm and time management.

So I’ve just pushed the button on the next release. It’s heading to testers now and will be available to all soon. if you just can’t wait you can sign up for testing of iOS LOM and DDR or register for Open Testing for Android LOM or DDR (click link from your device). OSX and Windows versions are available from the download pages – LOM and DDR

The observant among you will notice that there are actually two releases. This is because if had a release ready to go last year, but just never pushed the button on it. That is, except for Android. I had to push a mandatory Android release for targeting SDK 33 – so I pushed it out around October and didn’t even mention it. So there is a good chance that if you’re an Android user you already have 2.0.7

This is really a DDR heavy release, and I must also add a shout out to Andrew Smart for keeping on my toes with all his questions while he has been beavering on with his implementation of Doomdark’s Revenge. There are a few issues the the below list that came out of those questions. Particularly the bug fixes…

v2.0.8 (47)

  • ADDED: Game Difficulty – Number of followers should affect outcome of fights
  • UPDATED: Lords should not be displaced when a member of a group
  • UPDATED: Groups should not disbanded when the leader dies in a battle
  • ADDED: Game Difficulty – Number of Soldiers affects the outcome of a fight
  • ADDED: DDR – Game Option – Upgrade to Shareth Army AI
  • FIXED: DDR – Character without an army doesn’t trigger an AI lord deciding to stay at a location
  • FIXED: DDR – ‘prepares to do battle’ message is shown incorrectly
  • FIXED: DDR – Imgorarg’s loyalty is incorrect – should be Dwarf
  • FIXED: DDR – Dawn energy boosts are flipped for AI / Non AI characters
  • FIXED: DDR – Dawn energy boosts for resting are fixed and not based on hours remaining
  • FIXED: DDR – Recruitment does not take in to account the power of the 5 main special objects
  • FIXED: DDR – Incorrect object name / types

v2.0.7 (46)

  • ADDED: Game Difficulty – time affects seeking
  • ADDED: Game Difficulty – time affects hiding
  • ADDED: Game Difficulty – time affects recruiting
  • FIXED: DDR – Think page incorrectly shows Person and Army info outside of tunnels
  • ADDED: DDR – Game Option – Don’t swap after successful approach
  • ADDED: LOM – Game Option – Auto Seek enhancement
  • ADDED: LOM – Game Option – Auto Approach enhancement
  • UPDATED: Android target sdk 33

So let’s talk about what all the above features mean…

Firstly a note on Difficulty. When it is set to NORMAL which is the default, then the game plays as original. Changes only apply to EASY, MEDIUM, and HARD.

Game Difficulty – Number of followers should affect outcome of fights

If a lord goes in to a fight, the chances of death or losing a horse will be removed by fighting as a group. The current rules for LoM of a friendly army being at the location still apply. So really this only applies when all the lords do not have an army. In DDR the lords’s armies could still lose numbers, but the lord will not engage the nasty. The number of followers that has an affect is based on difficulty.

Lords should not be displaced when a member of a group

When a lord loses a battle and does not die and are part of a group, then the lord should not be displaced so that they can stay in the group. They should however not take part in any more of the battle. In hard mode, then they could still be displaced. What this essentially means is that in hard mode you may have to remove the lord from the group yourself, which is a conscious decision as you might not be aware that they are no longer with the group.

Groups should not disbanded when the leader dies in a battle

Aligned Lom and DDR so that groups are not disbanded due to death. This allows the UI to reflect that a lord has died so that the player can see it.

Game Difficulty – Number of Soldiers affects the outcome of a fight

If a lord goes in to a fight, the chances of death or losing a horse will be removed by fighting with soldiers. In DDR the lords’s armies could still lose numbers, but the lord will not engage the nasty. The number of soldiers that has an affect is based on difficulty.

DDR – Game Option – Upgrade to Shareth Army AI

Two changes for this feature. Firstly, AI Lords have the habit of leaving a fight. This option makes them act like LoM and stay until their death or other lords leave. They may also choose to leave if the total number of soldiers is not currently within their favour. Secondly, AI lords have the habit of not attacking enemies that are close by, unlike LoM. This feature makes them act more like LoM.

These decisions are linked to game difficulty and lord traits.

DDR – Lord without an army doesn’t trigger an AI lord deciding to stay at a location

This is a bug fix. AI Lords make a decision to leave a location at the start of their turn. If there is an enemy at the location it’s pretty much a toss of a coin. But lords with no armies don’t get included in the enemy count, and therefore an AI lord will not consider lone lords when they are making the decision on whether to stay at a location.

‘prepares to do battle’ message is shown incorrectly

The addition of the words, “prepares to do battle” was inconsistently shown. It was possible for a lord to still be in battle in the morning and the message would not be correct.

DDR – Imgorarg’s loyalty is incorrect – should be Dwarf

Imgorarg had the incorrect race attached to him.

DDR – Dawn energy boosts are flipped for AI / Non AI characters

The dawn energy boosts that are applied ahead of the nights battles we incorrectly flipped. So AI lords were getting half that of player lords.

DDR – Dawn energy boosts for resting are fixed and not based on hours remaining

Resting characters energy is hard coded to a fixed amount and should have been calculated based on the number of hours remaining when they started to rest.

DDR – Recruitment does not take in to account the power of the 5 main special objects

The Crown of Varenand, Crown of Carudrium, Spell of Thigrorn, Runes of Finorn, and Crown of Imiriel should all have a positive affect on recruitment. But they didn’t.

DDR – Incorrect object name / types

The Spear of Thorthak was incorrectly marked as a sword. And the Bow of Tororthane was incorrectly marked as a hammer.

Game Difficulty – time affects seeking

Seeking is no longer available at night when difficulty is hard. In medium and hard, seeking will actually take an amount of time.

Game Difficulty – time affects hiding

Hiding is no longer available at night for medium and hard. Hiding and Unhide now take 1hr on medium or the rest of the day on hard.

Game Difficulty – time affects recruiting

Recruitment time for both lords has a group of new rules depending on game difficulty. In easy the recruiter loses no time and the recruited is reset to dawn. In medium the recruiter loses one hour and the recruited time is set to the same. In hard they are both set to night.

DDR – Think page incorrectly shows Person and Army info outside of tunnels

When a lord is in a tunnel, information about the outside of tunnels was visible on the think page. This has been corrected.

DDR – Game Option – Don’t swap after successful approach

Added an option to stop the auto switch to the newly recruited lord after an approach. Player can choose to DO NOTHING or stick. After the approach a new icon is displayed next to the Look icon to indicate either the recruited or the recruiter lord depending on the swap option.

LOM – Game Option – Auto Seek enhancement

Added option to auto seek when entering a location. Doomdark’s Revenge already does this.

LOM – Game Option – Auto Approach enhancement

Added an option to auto approach when entering a location in LoM. This was not added as a feature for DDR because approaching is done from outside the location and is also linked to battle.

Not sure when the next release will be. I had one scheduled in for Spring Equinox which I guess this one is kind of becoming. Therefore the next release would be Summer Solstice (June 21st) but I’m not promising anything as I potentially have to perform another SDK switch!

The Wise are not the only guardians of knowledge

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)

  1. ADDED: panel_map_detailed – tool tip for location – press
  2. ADDED: panel_options – gameplay rules
  3. ADDED: Rule: Impassable Mountains
  4. ADDED: Rule: AI Impassable Mountains
  5. ADDED: Rule: Sole Mountaineer
  6. ADDED: Rule: Add mountain passes
  7. ADDED: Rule: LoM – Unrecruitable Fey
  8. ADDED: DDR – Fast tunnels
  9. FIXED: Character Time Shader
  10. FIXED: DDR – Battle Algorithm
  11. FIXED: DDR – Race preferred terrain for movement
  12. FIXED: DDR – Cowardly lords attacking
  13. 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.

The Lords of Midnight Downloads

Doomdark’s Revenge Downloads

You must challenge Doomdark everywhere…

Latest version of both The Lords of Midnight and Doomdark’s Revenge is available across all formats version 2.0.4 (43), depending on store and your update settings, they should become available over the next few days. As always windows and non App Store OSX versions will be available here and here

This release fully syncs both games with bug fixes and features. I will now be using my time to focus on updates to facilitate a release of The Citadel in the future, and I will post some blog entries on that over the next few weeks. However, if you have any ideas of features that you would like to see implemented, then contacted me and I will look at them. It would be nice to drop a new feature monthly or bi monthly just to stop the apps from stagnating and forcing me to keep the builds up to date.

There are a few new features in this release for both games, so I thought I’d mention them here. I have not had time to update the online documentation, but I will do soon as it doesn’t need a release of the app to do so.

ADDED: permanent scrollbar to all scrollable tip windows

It’s not always clear that the tip popups can be scrolled, so I made the scrollbars always visible to help with that.

Shows tip window with visible scrollbar
Tips Scrollbar

ADDED: panel_map_detailed – clarity behind multi lord select popup

On the map when there are a number of lords at the same location and a number of lords in the surrounding location, the selector popup sometimes looked confusing because of the lords in the background. I have added some fade out behind the popup to make things clearer.

Show map with lord select popup
Map – Select lord

ADDED: panel_look – compass – Long Press

I finally returned the compass to the main look screen. Just press on the screen and hold it for a few seconds (configurable in the options screen) and the compass will popup. Without releasing select the direction you wish to look. I have removed the haptic feedback that used to be there on mobile devices because it no longer feels right and its usage in the situation would fall foul of Apple guidelines.

Shows compass popup
Look – Compass

ADDED: panel_look – tool tip to lords on landscaping screen

You can now see who is stood in front of you by a long press on them.

Show lord with their name as a tooltip
Look – Tooltip

ADDED: panel_look – select lord from landscaping screen

Combined with the above. If you then release while still selecting them (or just press quickly) it will take you to the lords ahead think screen.

ADDED: panel_look – lord name to approach icon on choose actions

When you can potentially recruit or approach a lord, the command window icon will identify which lord you are about to approach.

Shows command window with lords name for approach
Command – Approach lord

FIXED: panel_select – crash caused by adding a new page / reorganise button

Fixed this crash when a new page was added to the selection screen. This could happen if you pressed the reorganise button or if you visited the select screen after recruiting a new lord. More prevalent in Doomdark’s Revenge because of the number of lords.

FIXED: panel_select – [win] missing or corrupt lord names

On windows the lord names were often becoming corrupt on the select screen. This has now been resolved.

FIXED: panel_select – truncated long lord names

Particularly on Doomdark’s Revenge grouped lord names would often become truncated depending on your screen size.

FIXED: [tme] – Stop diagonal movement of lord in tunnel

In the tunnels in Doomdark’s Revenge it was possible to cut the corner and move diagonally. This has been resolved.