Sep 5, 2023

Rising Lords - Argonwood

Greetings Lords and Ladies, time for an update :)
Some QOL things and a lot of AI improvements, but also bugfixes from user reports.

Some players had problems with incorrect downloads/ not being able to see maps or add players in singleplayer. Uninstalling the game and deleting the C:\Users\your name\AppData\Local\RisingLords folder (keep save if you want) and the reinstalling the game was confirmed to fix the problem. This might be related to a corrupt steam download, not completely sure.
Let us know if you encounter any other problems or this doesn't help you.

Full Changelog

New:
- Show message when Rising lords servers are down
- Show user message when connection is lost
- added old save warning
- Added generalized diplomacy tool tip for gifts
- Added explanation of each diplomatic status

Fixes:
- Fixed a rare unit display crash
- Fixed info display crash (beggars + the second other factors).
- Fixed health crash (food diversity + other factors).
- Fixed a rare scr_FightSequence_WrapUp crash
- Fixed important skill tree information being beneath the bottom card display.
- Prevent multisend same crash report
- Fixed skills unlockable when they shouldn't be
- Fixed region overview's auto-govern buttons not always activating. Now it activates when cursor is outside region overview.
- Fixed tool tip not working for diplomatic statuses caused by a misalignment.
- Fixed generalized diplomacy tool tip for gifts from the previous commit.
- Fixed "Lack of Beggars" in info display tool tip being a bonus.
- Fixed tutorial so you can't end turn in first task
- Fixed gamepad +10 and +100 not working on 'send food' menu
- Fixed controllers unable to dismiss persistent notifications
- Fixed MPclient 'not ready/ready' text in wrong location w/ campaign
- Fixed unit pickup sound sometimes not loaded in campaign
- Fixed army menu -> skill tree button snap bleed w/ controllers
- Fixed cost not going up when building structures.
- Fixed cards in deck displaying incorrect graphic
- Fixed buggy skill unlocking w/ fast presses
- Fixed 'Tankred' not being set as name in tutorial
- Fixed army info drop-down scroll not substituting dictionary key name
- Fixed missing substitutions in some event cards (%1% etc)
- Fixed language file regression causing incorrect map size limit warning
- Fixed info display health + happiness tool tips showing beggars as a plus in the final total change.
- Fixed info display health tool tip crashing when displaying "other factors."

Changes:
- Disable save in battle between turns for performance reasons
- Added language support to happiness info display
- lowered min framerate when changing languages (to load faster in VM)
- Added names for raider generals
- removed 'asia server' warning
- improvements to the map editor and story tree editor
- Adjust max upload size to 70MB

AI:
- Added AI to not build walls unless it has a smith, or more than one region.
- Fixed AI rations + taxes not recognizing revolt thresholds for heritages.
- Added AI to consider selling resources to the merchant if the player has no smith.
- Modified AI to prioritize construction to come before region focus.
- Added AI region focus to reset to none, before it checks what the focus should be. This is to prevent getting stuck in a focus that is no longer relevant.
- Added AI region focus to be set to horses if there are more horses than sheep, and smiths.
- Fixed AI eating horses, because there is no field, when there was a stable for them.
- Added AI to focus on gathering resources for manor production if there is a beggar. This includes wool production.
- Added AI to need sheep quick when focused on wool production.
- Added AI to only start building walls when it has a player neighboring the region.
- Added AI to not eat sheep when focused on wool production.
- Fixed livestock_needed_quick not getting at least one worker to manage fields when there is no livestock.
- Added AI with a region focus on wool to pile as many workers into sheep fields.
- Fixed AI thinking it needed more of a resource to forge a equipment, when it had an equal amount.
- Added AI to only take a wool priority if its solution to beggars is to build.
- Added AI that wants knights to set a focus to horses when it has enough equipment for knights, but not enough horses.
- Added AI regions to take a focus on horses, which means maximum grooms to find horses, and no eating horses.
- Added AI to purchase resources to build its first smith, if it is low on money, and doesn't have resources in its region.
- Added AI to be limited to how many castle parts can be constructed when they have only one region.
- Fixed AI going broke purchasing material to forge equipment that it already has.
- Fixed AI requiring a minimum purchase from merchants when purchasing material to forge equipment.
- Added AI players to focus on horses when AI has more than one region, and wants mounts.
- Added AI to focus on horses if they want cavalry, and not just knights.
- Added AI to purchase 30x more resources than needed for mounted units if the AI has no places in their regions to get the resources.
- Added AI that wants cavalry to be taken to account for purchasing resources from merchants. No AI specifically wants cavalry.
- Modified AI to think it needs less of a surplus if it only has one region. The surplus will then be sold to merchants.
- Fixed AI calculating sword wood cost from merchant by mail production amount.
- Modified AI with more than one region to require only one region to be happy enough to muster an army.
- Added wool surplus definition to AI personalities. Any amount of wool over the number will be sold off.
- Added AI personalities that want more smiths per region to add them while still considering that they don't want them in every region.
- Adjusted strength threshold for land grab armies. Set to 100 stronger, original was 0. That way AI failed to conquer sometimes, which was intentional. but the players wanted stronger AI.

Sep 5, 2023

Risk it for the biscuit

Mewgenics - TylerGlaiel

Hey, Tyler here! I'm covering the blog post this week and I wanna talk about, THE HARD PATH.

In (most) of the chapters on an adventure in Mew, you fight a miniboss at the half-way point, and afterwards are given the option of continuing along the normal path to the chapter boss, or taking THE HARD PATH instead.

What fun awaits you on the hard path, you ask? Well let me tell you!
The hard path has one more combat encounter in it than the easy path, and in all of the combat encounters along the hard path, enemies have a chance to spawn as a Champion instead.

(you vs the cat she told you not to worry about)

Champions are beefy upgraded versions of regular enemies. And they all have unique art too! In addition to increased stats, champions have double health, move farther, do more damage, and take an extra turn every round. If you are not prepared to deal with these champions, they will be your demise.

I mean, some enemies are still not very threatening when upgraded into champions

But some champions are absolutely terrifying to go up against.

So, obviously, if you're risking this much by taking the hard path, there should be a pretty good reward for doing so, right? Fortunately, that is absolutely the case. The treasure chest on the hard path has rarer items in it than the one on the normal path, plus you also get extra food to help with cat breeding or a furniture piece to decorate your house with. But also, very importantly, that extra combat is also a huge reward in itself, and here's why:

Lets quickly recap how cats level-up during an adventure in Mewgenics. Every time you win a combat encounter, your lowest-level cat levels up (randomly chosen if there's ties for lowest-level). When you level up, depending on which level it is, you are given a set of abilities, or passives, or upgrades to choose from. Some of the options you are given at higher levels are extremely powerful, but you will not reach those levels normally. Taking only the normal path, at the end of your adventure, you will have 2 level 5 cats and 2 level 6 cats.

Now, that one extra combat on the hard path? That's one extra level up. And there's a hard path on every chapter. You add those extra level ups into the mix, now your whole team can reach level 6 before the end of an adventure. If you're bold enough to do all 3 hard paths, now one of your cats will reach Level 7 as well. Without spoiling, Level 7 is a pretty big power spike for cats, so if you're trying to make the strongest cats you can, well, you'll need to take on the hard path.

The choice of whether or not to take the hard path is not a trivial one, however. If your team is not playing together well, or you ran out of consumables, or a cat got depressed, or one of your cats already died, or the miniboss left you particularly beat up, you're much safer just taking the normal path. So many of my losses are from being like, "I think my team is maybe strong enough to take hard path this time" followed by immediate regret. And there's nothing to blame except my own ego.

Till next time!
- Tyler

Sep 5, 2023

Dev Transmission! (August 2023)

SENTRY - Gary

Hi everyone, this monthly update is a little late because I was away at the end of August and have been catching up! Anyway, here's what we've worked on during that time:

New Trailer!

We created a new trailer that we’ll be debuting during Realms Deep on the 30th September. In case you weren’t aware, this event is hosted by 3D Realms and if you’re partial to a FPS and other cool indie games it’s definitely worth tuning in.

It was fantastic to see all our work pulled together in this fashion and we can’t wait for you to see it!

New Enemy!

…Or more like an old enemy polished up. The Heavy (placeholder name) is slightly larger and bulkier than your standard soldier-type and carries a plasma-based minigun that lays down a withering hail of fire. We prototyped this enemy very early on – in fact you can see him in our Announcement Trailer - but switched focus to other enemy types while we worked on the rest of the game, so it’s been good to bring this big guy up to the same standard as his peers.

Loadout Screen!

When entering a level to commence your defence a SENTRY is deposited via a pod transport system. During this sequence you are presented with a loadout screen that allows you to choose which weapons, deployables and abilities you want to use in the coming battle.

We created a loadout menu a long time ago, but it wasn’t efficient to use and was visually outdated compared to our more recent Upgrade and Unlock menu system, so we’ve completed a rework to bring it up to scratch.

New Level!

Our latest new level is one with lots of high walkways, ideal for throwing enemies into bottomless pits!

Other stuff!

Every month we do loads of smaller changes that don’t necessarily warrant a section to themselves. Besides tons of little fixes and polish tasks, we also did:

More co-op work, we’re at the stage where we have a long list of individual features that need to be networked. Co-op is in a pretty good place but there’s still a huge amount of work left to make it shippable.
Fixing up a bunch of co-op sound effects where you could hear the audio your player made but not the sounds the co-op player was making.
The start of a save system

Just for fun!

At the start of the month we took part in Tiny Teams, a festival dedicated to games created by small teams. We have just one programmer, artist and designer, with some part time music and sound-design and myself handling non-core-dev work (QA, Community, Production, boring business stuff) and because we’re choosing to self-publish it’s great to have events like this that shine a light on the little guys!

Tell us what you think about the latest additions! If you want to reach out we’re active on all these platforms:

See you next time...