Hello Aggressors!
We have just finished a new version v1.0.6. called "Español and more" as a thank you to the translators who did an incredible job and translated all the texts into Spanish. Aggressors has proven to be ready for a multilingual support and even modders and scenario creators can create content in these languages!
We hope that some other languages will follow soon but needless to say - if you want to help us with localization, we would be very grateful for any kind of support!
Apart from this, there are a number of other changes. The most important are:
Spanish language added.
Player can see the progress of other factions towards the individual victory conditions.
Unit selection out of stack improved. This is one of the features players were asking for the most.
Unit icons now also indicate fortifying, building, etc.
Today at 8 PM BST Pavel & Lucie will continue their playthrough leading the sons of Sparta to victory in Aggressors!
This time they have a special target - nothing less than Rome!
Tune in with us on Twitch to find out if developers themselves are capable of defeating the mighty Rome!
We have prepared a short video explaining and showing how the new Map Builder tool in Aggressors works.
With the new Map Builder tool players are able to import any kind of map (e.g. from a picture) and play it out in Aggressors. Do you want to play on a map of South Africa? Just find a picture of the map of South Africa you want to import, run it through the tool as shown in the video and get ready to play.
It's as easy as that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy-E_0mbvks
Many players are already making use of the new tool, as well as of the new changes and improvements that we brought with the latest free update. It's part of our continuous effort to support the modding community, and it's certainly working. There are already several dozens of mods and scenarios available in the Steam Workshop, all available for free. It is extremely important for us to help and support the modding community, and we'll continue to do so.
Please let us know what you think about this new tool, and don't forget to give us your suggestions!
Today we released a new version v1.0.5, called "Creators Update". The update was not announced in advance as usual – as it was a small surprise for our fans, especially the scenario creators and modders. We hope that this will also convince other players that creating your own map is so easy and fast that anyone can do it!
Let's first start with the built-in game editor. The feedback we have received so far was very positive. All suggestions and requests related to the editor were given a priority in our change implementation schedule. The game editor is very stable, intuitive and easy to use. You can change pretty much anything related to a scenario - such as adding new units or creating rivers, to defining relations and army morale for each faction.
We also wanted to make the process of changing the existing assets and texts as easy as possible. Scenario creators can now change the banners and coat of arms of each faction, add their own pictures to be displayed in the game windows or game help, change illustrations of leaders and even add their own videos to their scenario! All this without any changes to the mod, create your own map and add assets as you like, no advanced knowledge of modding is needed, it is extremely easy!
At the same time, we wanted to support the modders and give them as much flexibility as possible. Modders can change anything they like and implement their ideas with a lot of freedom. However, we have identified a few restrictions/limitations that we wanted to address.
The most obvious one was the strict mapping of one scenario to one mod, meaning that scenarios created for the official mod do not automatically work for other mods. If a modder wanted to use an existing scenario (let's say the campaign scenario), he would have to copy it over and configure this new file for his own mod.
There were two reasons for this - firstly, the scenario has to know which mod to load (as different mods can introduce different rules), and secondly, if you allow a scenario to run for any mod you run the risk that it won't work for many of the mods due to conflicts and the player experience would be ruined.
We realised that it might be confusing for the modders and scenario creators and perhaps even more so for players who download these new items from the workshop and so we decided to change the way mods and scenarios are bound to each other. By default, it works as I described above but from now on, mod creators have the option to mark their mod as compatible with the original mod (if the changes made do not conflict with the original rules) and explicitly allow to run the scenarios of the original mod for their mod as well.
This means that you can now do your own little modifications of the game (starting from different UI, new unit types or unit improvements through creating your own terrain types and kinds of animals) and still let players enjoy all this in the scenarios designed for the official mod.
The second request came directly from the modders. The game already allowed customised maps to be created in different mods but factions, state decisions, victory conditions and other game items were still taken from the original campaign scenario. To make this easier, the modders can now specify themselves what should be the "template" of which the new map is generated from. This allows the player to create random maps for any mod without limitations.
Last but not least is the introduction of a new tool called Map Builder. I am quite excited myself by this tool, as it is really the most significant "gift" to our scenario creators and players as well.
The Map Builder is a standalone application or "tool" which allows you to create your own Aggressors' map out of any picture. You find an image you like (basically any picture with a map), start the tool, crop the picture, define the map size and number of terrains you want to have on the map. The tool processes the picture and "simplifies" it to a number of colours matching the number of terrains. And that's it! It literally takes one minute to create an Aggressors map out of any picture downloaded from the Internet. Don't believe it? Give it a try and let us know what you think!
This is our way of thanking not only players but particularly all those who started creating their own scenarios and mods. We are still amazed how creative and dedicated community we have and the incredibly exciting content that has been designed and added to the workshop.
If you want to see some of these features in action, join us for our regular Dev stream this Friday. Tomorrow's stream will be focused entirely on modding and map creation. Don't miss it! Tune in at 9 pm CEST on Slitherine's Twitch Channel.
Aggressors Dev Diary #11 - The show has just begun
It has now been more than a month since Aggressors was released. We've already released three big updates since then, and we are proud to say that just a minor portion of the changes were bugfixes. We would like to thank our beta testers who did an incredible job during the long beta testing phase with helping us identifying and fixing almost all technical issues.
One thing our players appreciate is our professional customer support. The game itself comes with a simple to use "error window" that pops up when a problem is encountered. This is a quick way of informing us that something went wrong. You can contact us directly either by using this tool, through e-mail or just by posting on our forums. We really do our best to answer within hours every time. In some cases we also do one-to-one support over phone/Skype to fix problems mostly related to PC configurations, old drivers or user permissions.
The low number of bugs allowed us to focus on implementing changes requested by players, either related to gameplay, UI or the rules. So what has been changed since then?
The biggest change in the first update was the introduction of UI scaling. I think we should humbly confess that this is something that should have been already in the vanilla version. Most of our beta players had resolutions up to FullHD, which was the resolution the game was initially designed for, and so it happened that this issue did not really come up during the beta. For higher resolutions there has always been a workaround which enabled change to FullHD. However, this solution proved to be insufficient and we realized it very soon after the release.
We made it our top priority for the first update and we were able to deliver full UI scaling within one week of the release. Players can now take full advantage of UI scaling without any limitations.
However, we wanted the solution to be robust and complex. Therefore, we implemented customizable UI scaling. Players can now decide what UI scaling fits their needs themselves and not have this solely based on their screen resolution. If you prefer to have smaller UI even at bigger resolutions, bigger UI even for FullHD or even play the game in (by today's standard) "obsolete" small resolution like 1024x768, you are able to do so.
The second most requested feature was an alternative mouse control system. Despite the fact that we consider Aggressors' mouse control system to be effective and innovative, players should be able to set it to suit their preferences. We understand that players who play games like Total War or Civilization are used to a different way of mouse behavior and that was also the reason why this was our second priority. It took us a couple of weeks to fully integrate a new player option called "Alternative mouse control" which allows the player to set the mouse controls the way he is used to. However, we still feel that the "Aggressors way" of mouse control deserves a chance. It might take a couple of hours to get used to it but based on the long beta test we can honestly say that most of the players managed to get a hold of it in few hours and they like and prefer it this way. From a quick survey we know that most of these players do not plan to switch back to the previous mouse control system they were used to.
We also watched many gameplay videos on YouTube and Twitch. We made notes of their complaints, struggles and suggestions. The list is pretty long and we want to give each of the ideas a proper consideration and eventually implement those that fit the game theme and logic. On the other hand, the number of features already implemented is also quite long. We’ll mention some of the most important here.
Main view changes:
One of the things the players struggled with was the supply management system. Not that they would not understand the concept but the indicators in tooltips about the tiles supply values were often overlooked and went unnoticed. On top of that, only a small portion of the players used the "Supply map" overlay intuitively.
We decided to address this imperfection and extend the standard way of how this information is presented. Players can now notice different highlights for out-of-supply or partially supplied tiles even in the standard view. They can see which suppliers provide supplies for a particular unit and to what extent the supplier participates in the supply level for that unit.
We expanded the settings for map appearance. One particular complaint we noticed was about the fog density. Players found it to be too dense and obscuring the view.
Again, like many times before, we didn’t want to hardcode specific values to the game. We realize that what one player likes might not satisfy another one. We already went through this with settings for terrain saturation, terrain overlay, contrast of highlights or displaying trees. In this case, we simply followed the established level of customization and we introduced yet another player option called "Fog density". This allows the player to set the fog density to his liking. Needless to say, some players were really happy about this.
Most comments we received are on game sounds. We wanted to be a bit different and used quite original "greeting" sounds. Players could hear yawning or bored sounds from settlers, "I'm the man" from military units or shouting soldiers ready for action. The feedback was surprisingly controversial. Some players found it very funny and liked it very much; others found it weird and immersion breaking.
If you have already understood our vision for the game, you probably know what we have done. We added another setting that allows the player to completely turn the greeting sounds off or replace them with a simple "click" sound. Hopefully this will make both sides happy.
User interface changes:
One of the things we constantly improve is the UI. Players ask to have a clear view of information, to get more indicators of what is going on under the hood and to know how can they influence the situation around them.
An area where we needed to improve the UI is Trade. Players seem to appreciate the depth of trading and like the concept but they were missing an indicator of what the opponent might need or what resources he has in abundance.
Last week we introduced the concept of "recommended resources to buy and sell". It is a list of 3 resources suggesting what the opponent needs most and what he might be willing to exchange. This not only accelerates the negotiation of new trades but it also lowers the number of "trade spam offers" (human players tend to send trade offers to many players at once to have a higher chance to get one accepted).
Other improvements were made on the Political Map where the player can now get extended information of other factions’statistics and battle prediction tooltips.
Game rules:
The changes which were made were not only related to the UI and controls. Players already came up with a number of new interesting ideas and suggestions on how to improve the existing rules.
The Player community is priority number one for us. We want you to be in control of the game and tell us your wishes. Of course we have our own vision of the game but every time a new suggestion is received, we carefully consider it and either implement it straight away, log it into our tracking system to be implemented later or we explain in detail our reasons to reject such changes. In this case we advise players on how to make such changes if they decide to create their own mod or scenario.
The list of changes is long but let’s list the ones we decided to implement straight away and that are already part of the latest build:
- When a unit is in the city, it automatically heals two times faster.
- The factors affecting possible army desertion were vastly expanded - overall enemy power, support of nearby units, army morale of enemy, and others are now taken into account.
- Recovery speed is now based on the unit's "base" power instead of the current power.
- Independent cities repair and improve themselves similarly to cities of other factions. The improvements available for them depend on the level of development of the factions around. This should reflect the real world when the "development" level of one country has an influence on nearby territories.
- Rules related to military units withdrawing from battles were improved.
- Factors that influence the occurrences of revolts and civil wars were extended to include loyalty and general morale.
AI players:
We are very happy that the AI player is perceived as very smart and quite unpredictable. Nevertheless, the work on AI improvements is a never ending story and we constantly try to make it better. In the last month we've already reviewed some of its behaviors:
- When the AI rejects a diplomatic offer, it also specifies why.
- Number and types of AI's diplomatic offers were reviewed and made more realistic.
- Changes in AI tactical behavior were introduced making it an even stronger opponent during wars.
It is needless to say that we plan to continue providing you the best player experience. We are happy that you have so many ideas and suggestions; it will keep us very busy in the upcoming months. So which card are we going to draw from the stack next? In the next week or two we want to release a new update focusing on modding and scenario building. We want to give the means to create a new scenario to as many people as possible.How do we want to achieve that? Stay tuned, we will reveal more details soon!
We want to thank all the players for reviews and spreading the word about the game. It is not only extremely motivating to read how you enjoy the game but it is also the best way how you can help us to continue working on it! As per the title of the dev diary…the show has just begun, and we’re looking forward to telling you what comes next!
There's going to be a new Aggressors dev stream tomorrow!
Pavel, lead designer of the game, will focus on the degree of customization you can experience in Aggressors, as well as speak at length about his design choices behind the UI.
As the other dev streams in the past this will be a great occasion to hear straight from the devs and get an insight on how the game was designed. You will also be able to speak with them and ask them anything you'd like!
So don't miss this chance and tune in on our Twitch channel at 9 pm CEST tomorrow on Friday October 5th!
Aggressors - Dev Stream on Country Management
Another friday is approaching, and Pavel from Kubat Software, lead designer of Aggressors: Ancient Rome, will once again return to Twitch for more live streaming!
This time, after last week's stream on Diplomacy, he will focus on Country management. As usual it will be an incredibly in-depth stream, ideal for anyone who really wants to master a quite complex game. So join us on our Twitch channel on Friday September 28th at 9 pm CEST! Don't miss it!
Aggressors - Dev Stream on Home Politics
After last week's break due to Home of Wargamers, we are ready to continue with our weekly series of Aggressors Dev Streams!
Many players asked for these streams to continue, and we're happy to oblige them. This Friday Pavel, designer and lead developer of the game, will stream Aggressors and focus exclusively on how to handle Diplomacy and Home Politics.
As usual it will be a very detailed stream, and it will be the best way to learn about the subtleties in the gameplay as well as to find out the reasons behind certain design choices.
Tune in on our Twitch channel on Friday September 21st at 9 pm CEST. Don't miss it!
Aggressors - v1.02.1 is out, bringing UI scaling!
We just released an update for Aggressors, bringing the game to version 1.02.1. It is a big one, and it's been in testing for a week to make sure everything works as intended.
Among many bug fixes and balance improvements, we're pleased to announce that the game now fully supports UI scaling. We know that some players couldn't play the game properly on a 4k screen, so we made it our priority to address that issue.
We really aim at improving Aggressors and to keep making it a better game. We just started our work on it, and now the team can start working on their next updates. It is important for us to hear your feedback and any criticism you might have, so we can make Aggressors the bext 4x game you can play.
We hope you'll enjoy this update, and as usual please let us know your opinion on the forum!
Changelog:
Game core
• Autoheal is 2x faster (health increase is higher) when unit is located in it's production building
(military unit in city, cavalry in stable, vessel in shipyard).
• Rules for desertion improved (it takes much more different aspects to the consideration of
potential desertion - power of enemy, friendly units around, etc).
• Recover is now calculated out of model defense and power, not current.
UI
• Statistics about opponent in political map added to the banner tooltip.
• Improved highlight of supplied and nonsupplied areas for selected unit.
• History replay lagging fixed.
• "Simple greeting sounds" option implemented (instead of listening "YES" or "What" you can hear just simple "click").
• Autosave at the end of the turn is configurable.
• Added damage indicator to the unit selector and map item detail window.
• Default fog density lowered.
• Tooltip of local happiness on hovered tile added.
• In editor you can move units even when it is out of movement points already.
• UI fully supports scaling 50%-200%.
Data
• Number of people working in mines decreased.
Modding
• Msgs.cs file (with modded unit actions) was not loading correctly.
Bugs
• Spacebar was not working during enemy moves to skip currently animated player's moves.
• Weird trade offer was not giving player choice to answer.
• Shield denoting stacked units was disappearing.
• Capital lost window title corrected.
• Few rarely happening CTDs fixed.
• State menu was not flashing (in tutorial) when player was reading about it.
• In generated maps, the first city always had the same first suggested name.
• Issue with pressing Esc when autosaving at the end of turn and after AI moves (main menu was appearing but it shouldn't).
• Editor - Unit properties window had an issue with number of defences for current turn.
• When exporting scenario, it was incorrectly exporting also game resources (this should be only in mod file).
• Number of other small bugs fixed.
• Error handling window improvements.
Aggressors - Dev Stream on Military Command
This Friday we are going to start the first stream of a series of developer streams for Aggressors: Ancient Rome.
The lead designer himself, Pavel Kubat, is going to stream Aggressors live, focussing every time on a different aspect of the game.
All of these streams will be extremely detailed and in-depth, offering deep insight on the game's mechanics.
This time he will focus on Military command: how warfare works, how to get the best performance out of your units, how to exploit terrain to your advantage, how to wage a war from a strategic point of view, and more.
So join us on our Twitch channelthis Friday on September 7th at 9 pm CEST.
