New patch??
 

Hi, I was just wondering, is there like a date for the new official patch?

Re: New patch??
 

No. There is work being done, like what Kristoffer has done for the new nations and some of the new graphics, tomb wyrms being fixed and other stuff that has been quietly greenified in the shortlist, but there is still a lot to do, much of it things that only JK can do since he is the one who codes the game. And those things ain't happening before he comes back from India.

The next patch will also see most in-game typos fixed, leaving only very occasional things in there. The next patch can probably be expected in late August or early September, but that is nothing more than an educated guess. Kristoffer can probably a give a better estimate if he is inclined to do so.

Re: New patch??
 

Primarily JK must return from India. That is late July. Then there will probably be some fixings of his. And there are two other semi-external projects (Edis great typo fixing and another project) to include, but those are supposed to be more or less finished when JK returns, so my estimate is early/mid August.

The patch will be rather content heavy. Less fixes to game mechanics, since JK's been away for a while. There will also be a number of lesser bugfixes and balance chages. Edi's shortlist is greenified to give some clues. And sporadically I have written fixes and stuff in the progress page (although I'm not very good at keeping it up to date.).

Currently I'm visiting my folks, so I'm not working on dom3, but otherwise I've been rather productive this summer. I imagine I will be less so when JK returns, and there are more stuff you can do, like playing games http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I have some new ideas that I will work on, but I imagine these will wait for the next patch. My current MP game, ther first in ages, has put me in a position where I'm confronted with imbalancies, weaknesses (thematical or mechanical) and other stuff I want to change.

I'm playing MA Mictlan and I got new ideas for them, but it would not sit well with me to make changes to them in this patch, since it would give me advantages in that game.

Anyway, I think a nation will generally benefit from me playing it. So if there are other nations percieved as unfun, weak, or graphically unpleasant let me know for my next MP signup.

Re: New patch??
 

Early or mid-August already?! http://koti.welho.com/ehalttun/Image...s/icon_eek.gif http://koti.welho.com/ehalttun/Image...s/icon_eek.gif

I really need to get cracking on the typos...

Re: New patch??
 

Early is probably a bit optimistic, but mid I hope.

Re: New patch??
 

I'll do my best. The nation descriptions are going to take comparatively more time than the units and items since I need to check some content issues, but thankfully it's a short file, so I should get it done fairly quickly.

The unit thing is mostly a find & replace job and then looking over the new ones. Further fixing will also be fairly easy from now on since it'll just be a matter of locating single typos and fixing them.

I'm going to Italy on August 10th and coming back on the 17th, with the weekend of 18th/19th fully booked, so I need to get things done before that. If I can't quite manage to finish it, I'll do what I can and leave the rest for the patch after the next one.

Re: New patch??
 

Sounds good

Re: New patch??
 

The lack of itemized battlefield reporting kills me in the face sometimes.

Jazzepi

Re: New patch??
 

I think that will continue to be killing you in the face for the forseeable future.

Re: New patch??
 

Don't have playing in a an MP game slow you down on MA Mictlan (they could definitely use some help in the fun category), just request that game not update to the new patch. Actually wasn't bad for last patch, just make a copy of the old .exe and shortcut the new game to it.

Otherwise, sounds great!

Re: New patch??
 

Assuming 'kills me in the face' isn't copywrited, I'm going to have to try that out at the next party I attend.

I'd recommend playing LA Abysia, Kristoffer. I'm relatively new, but in one MP game I played it was pretty much agreed that they sucked donkey organ. Even quantum_mechanic more or less concurs. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: New patch??
 

Boy, what's the point of being a developer if you can't alter a patch in order to take advantage of it in a game your playing? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: New patch??
 

Thanks Edi!

-Max

Re: New patch??
 

MA T'ien Ch'i.
MA Agartha.

Re: New patch??
 

We have some hope of T'ien Ch'i getting a facelift, if not now, perhaps in a later patch, since their unit graphics have come up as topic of discussion in the beta forum, but I have no idea of the status of that project. Kristoffer may know more.

Re: New patch??
 

MA Agartha, 2nded, it lacks diversity, I personally love golem cult but its too much of a one trick pony. I think some 'free' design points by giving it heat scale would help and the low attack values a killer but thematic so I don't really know what to about that. Takes far too long to get going in MP to be viable/competetive.

EA Marverni, weak early game, gets knocked out in MP very quickly.

MA Ulm, weak early game, even weaker mid game and no chance at all in the end game.

Other than those, considering how many nations are in the game, its amazing how well balanced the nations are vs each another.

Re: New patch??
 

So is Lugh a new nation or a set of guys under the fomorians? I can only find stuff on the 'net refering to it as a Tuathan/Fomorian sun-god.

Re: New patch??
 

The Lugh I know of is the national hero for Tir Na N'Og. Is this who you mean? He is very, very useful with lots of nice abilities/magic paths.

Re: New patch??
 

When you have the typos "fixed", would you open the patch up for peer review before it is applied? Then some other people have a chance to find things which you may have overlooked.

Re: New patch??
 

I'd nominate EA Ulm and second LA Aby for nations in need of work.

Re: New patch??
 

The only part of the code I've seen are the description files and you need to ask Kristoffer that. You can take my word for it that I did spend over a month going over a string dump and fixing everything I found and Kristoffer gave me the actual source files to work with because most of the work was already done. I've caught a couple of very minor stylistic things from the nation descriptions which I'm redoing and a couple of other changes I went over with Kristoffer, but other than that it's going to be a straight find and replace.

I cannot give you the source files, but I can give you the strings extracted from the dump and accompanied by the fixed versions so you can look them over yourself. I'll be doublechecking everything as I fix it, so you will have a very hard time finding anything. If you do, let me know, but there are thousands of typo fixes there, from misspellings to grammar to punctuation, so much more than what was reported in the in-game typo thread. Enjoy yourself.

I will warn you that not QUITE everything will be fixed by what I do, since not all of the strings (such as event descriptions, including global enchantment texts or name lists) are in the description files and those will be left up to KO and JK.

Fixed strings attached.

Re: New patch??
 

You mean just the typo fix list?
The patch gets a peer review by the beta group prior to release

Re: New patch??
 

Hey KO, I know other people have mentioned Abysia - but I just wanted to point out a pet peeve I have with them. Abysia is "immune to death scale" in terms of suppply, right? But the fact is that Aby cannot ever take Death scale because all its mages will die off... basically immediately. Any chance you can do something about that?

Re: New patch??
 

I it's too late to do anything about that - the manual and that ability gives new players the idea that Abysia should pick death scales, when in fact it's suicide for them. Can't do much about that,.. other than maybe make death not alter Abysia's income either.

Re: New patch??
 

No disrespect, but who are you do say that? Clearly Aby has special code that protects it from the supply checks. All that needs to be done is to place a similar check into the death component of the old age affliction code. This does not seem so back-breaking of a request.

Re: New patch??
 

Or simpler yet, decide that Abyssia's non-human mages have longer lives than humans. Enough to compensate for their fire magic at least. Or drop their starting ages.

That's even moddable.

Re: New patch??
 

You could houserule Abysia's units to have higher maxages. Maybe it's one of the quirks of being magma creatures.

-Max

Edit: Whoops, Jeff beat me to it.

Re: New patch??
 

That would be easy, yeah. But I dont know if its thematically in line with what the devs had in mind for Abys mages. After all, "the light that burns twice as bright burns half as long". They just need to not be effected by Death, like they are supposed to be

Re: New patch??
 

Why should everyone live longer than humans? I like shortlived Abysians http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif They are supposed to burn out! I'm more inclined to make them cheaper and even more short lived.

Edit: Or since we like them expensive, just make them more short lived http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: New patch??
 

That's exactly what I wanted. Having the original *.txt file and a patch (you know the *nix command "patch"?) would have been better maybe, but this is still very good. Please commit your final version when you have compiled it again.

Re: New patch??
 

Edi, after a quick look it seems you really did extensive fixing. A few things that caught my eye:

- You sometimes use lower case for units, like "The asp turtle" at the very beginning, or "iron ancestor" for "Iron Ancestor" while at the same time you use "Tomb Oracles" and "Seal Guards" at the next occasion. How come?

- I think that it should be "appetite" instead of "appetites" in most cases, but then again I'm not a native English speaker. (see, I even have to capitalize that word... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif)

Re: New patch??
 

Normal English capitalization rules. Everything is lower case unless the monster name is

• Rank (e.g. Centurion, Legatus Legionis, Lord Guardian)
• member of a military or other order (e.g. Wind Rider, Seal Guard, Guardian (of Ulm) as opposed to e.g. heavy infantry or infantry of Ulm)
• unique monster (e.g. Eater of Gods, King of Banefires)
• commander is not capitalized because that is too much of a generic descriptive rather than rank

As I said, everything will get reviewed when I work with the description files, but I did pay a lot of attention to this issue.

Spell descriptions (not in that text file) will have the names of all monsters they summon capitalized for clarity.

The selection of appetite/appetites depends on the context, but both of those are normal English. I'd elaborate, but I have early morning shift tomorrow and I need to hit the sack.

Re: New patch??
 

Wow, I'm impressed. My eyes are bleeding from all that text. I didn't spot any issues with the corrected text, though. Nice work!

-Max

Re: New patch??
 

Among all the bug everyone tries to push on the face of KO I'd like to highlight the (already highlighted) red bugs, in particular the fort issues (that should be very easy to correct) and the Dominion (spread, scales) issues, that can ruin a game. I kno these are JK things.
It's not fair that a game named Dominion has some big Dominion bugs.

Re: New patch??
 

Just going by what the devs have said. They like Abysians that die off from old age quickly.

K O just said as much in this thread.

Since the manual already says "They do not farm or hunt for a living, so their income and supplies are not affected by the growth/death scale of a province." I can only assume that new players are taking death scale with them, not realising it's suicidal. I know I did.

From what I understand their income isn't immune currently, despite what the manual states, so I think the first change would be to make that the case. Maybe that way people might actually be tempted to try and take advantage of Abysian death scales.

Re: New patch??
 

I know that, but this isnt a design choice, its a bug. You can't offer a bonus like "abysia is immune to death scales" and then turn around and make it technically impossible for Aby to actually take Death scales. Its a design flaw that needs correction.

Either they should take away the Abysians "bonus" or fix it.

Re: New patch??
 

In GURPS terms, it's a quirk. (A feature which follows logically from Abysian history/physiology but has no real game impact.) Thinking that a quirk is a real advantage is a mistake, which the manual unfortunately makes. Fortunately the manual also has a disclaimer about all the strategies it suggests. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

-Max

Re: New patch??
 

Well I'm not so sure about EA Marverni being very weak in early game, I recall discussing this in another thread so I won't elaborate here again. They could use some "love" from the devs for more thematic depth IMHO.

As for Abysia I don't think its a bug. The "immunity" goes for standing armies in terms of provisions (don't starve) and not for economy or population immunity to death scale.

Re: New patch??
 

I was thinking you could do something interesting with Boots of Youth. I know, at least, one of the ages of Abysia has good access to blood.

Jazzepi

Re: New patch??
 

I agree Jazzepi. Aby does have a natural synergy for Boots of Youth. However, it still doesnt fix the fundamental brokenness of the Abysian "death scale immunity".

Re: New patch??
 

Booting every single mage is a tad expensive, which is a problem since every single mage is old. (That being said I've booted all of my MA warlocks in the game I'm playing at the moment...over 200 blood slaves to do so. It's fairly mandatory to do so because you don't have any other access to blood hunters besides at the cap) Plus the boots require construction 6 to build, so the first year or two of the game you don't even have the option to do so. They also don't work against Burden of Time, which already has a devastating effect on Abysia.

It's also a flat out bug that death scales directly affect Abysia's income, it's specifically stated that it does not in the documentation.

Also, can LA Abysia get fixed up a tad in general? They're fairly horrible looking, especially in comparison to LA Marignon (which might be a tad overpowered, but they put Abysia to shame across the board.)

Re: New patch??
 

The way I understand it, it is not a bug. Although it is not explained very well, the "bonus" is that Abysia is not affected by the initial effects of a growth/death scale. In other words, Abysia will not suffer -6% in their income from a 3 death scale, but the population in that province will still die. The fewer people in a province, the less money you will get. It is only the initial income and supply effects that Abysia is immune to, not the longterm consequences. Since, as Abysia, it is likely you will go with a growth scale, this "bonus" is really a penalty.

Re: New patch??
 

It's not a penalty, it's just that the other negatives of the death scale outweigh the free points you'd get by choosing death. Edit, this is wrong, sorry! Growth scales supposed to be affected too. It's a penalty.

In SP you can go Death-3, so the AI hordes starve even faster than they do usually. It puts more time pressure on the game too, and it's nice and thematic for a race that's doomed to die. EA can stick with Apprentices and Anointeds until they get boots, and MA can use Demonbreds. LA doesn't get the death scales bonus.

Re: New patch??
 

Except it IS affected by the 2% per scale tip...

Re: New patch??
 

Thanks! So that's what happened to all my money. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

You are right, income is affected normally by the death/growth scales, for all ages of Abysia.

Supplies are not affected at all by having death/growth scales.

And RamsHead, I was also wrong about the penalty in my post above this one. I mistakenly thought that it was just the death scales that had no effect. Since you don't get the benefit from growth scales (though as Micah says the income affect is buggy so you do get the +2/4/6% income) either, it is a penalty.

Re: New patch??
 

I will chip in to say MA Ulm is a terrible MP race. The reasons why are detailed in many earlier threads, so I need not repeat them here.

Re: New patch??
 

And it's also a minor bonus, when you're invading an empire with a Death-3 dominion, to not suffer from supply penalties. That doesn't mean you'd want a Death-3 on your *own* dominion.

Edit: yeah, Ulmish troops should definitely have their MR raised at the very least. Combined with their drain dominion, they should be quite magic-resistant, as opposed to requiring drain dominion to make them merely average.

-Max

Re: New patch??
 

The whole point of Ulm is that they are suceptible and afraid of magic. They might get other bonuses, but low MR stays.

Re: New patch??
 

Thematic? Too bad. I would have liked for Ulm to be the rock-paper-scissors "answer" to magic nations.

Re: New patch??
 

Okay, then. I guess I thought they had a different theme, but "susceptible to and afraid of magic" works too. Hmmm.

-Max