Kingdom Wars
Update 1.5 - Coming Soon
First of all apologize for the lack of communication during the past month, as well as the continuous delay with the update 1.5.
I`m the one working on this update, and having had some personal away time during March due to multiple reasons - this has really delayed the update, as I`ve missed the time window to work on finishing things up, and had to switch to other projects.
Everything is back to normal now with my work schedule so I expect to finally finish this update towards middle of April.
Once again - sorry for the delay, and this is quite a big update - so making sure it make it worth the wait.
There should be no more delays, and I`m here to reply to any questions you might have.
Thanks for the continuous support and your understanding guys!
Update 1.5 delayed until March 20th
We apologize for yet another delay. Shouldn`t have promised specific dates. We are stuck with multiple games updates this month, and also had some vacations on the team at the bad moment - so looks like we`ll only be able to deliver this next update later in March. Aiming for second half of March. Really sorry about this, and updating the post with new dates.
To make up for this update will include a few more cool things and improvements.
In the new update we have fixed over two dozen major issues across the board that has been there for years. These are the issues that are most commonly referenced by our players in the support forums and bugs reports. This ranges from common crashes to performance or not being able to compete quests or levels.
Same time we continue with improving graphics, and adding various art and UI improvements. To this extent I`m working on redesigning the look of the homeland and world map, re-texturing everything and making other changes to try to get things to look as good as our newer games. Can`t wait to share this with you - new Homeland and Worldmap look really add to the game!
Also to address the multiple questions and requests for a total remake or big expansion - new races e.t.c...
...potential rebuild of the game will take about two years. Adding a new race would take about half a year (and nothing else will get fixed or improved meanwhile). So we really believe that majority of players would rather have something much sooner than that.
So our plan for now - is to grind to fix and polish the base game and do everything possible to upgrade and improve. We`ll be doing at least two big updates a month for the next 3-4 months. And we`ll re-asses where we stand towards summer time, depending on how well the game reviews and player base are.
Thanks again for the support and overwhelming feedback.
Update 1.4 - Major Visual Updates
As you might have heard - we are back to working on Kingdom Wars. With multiple updates planned in the coming months. Today is the first step on this journey...
We start with updating all the art assets to an acceptable level, with many art improvements that we added to our other games now finally added to Kingdom Wars. You will notice that majority of the game`s textures has been updated or replaced with new once, and overall the visual fidelity has been greatly improved.
In the next update we`ll continue with visual improvements across the board, including updating the world map visuals, more improvements to how homelands look, and first round of PvP and combat improvements. We are aiming to have the next large update towards the end of February.
And so, lets take a look at what update 1.4 brings:
Update # 1.4
Visual Improvements
<*>All the trees updated to the new art
<*>All terrain textures updated to the new art
<*>Update majority of nature textures to fix various visual issues with texture popping
<*>Update art for all Orcish buildings and units to much higher quality textures
<*>Update art for all Elven buildings and units to much higher quality textures
<*>Update art for all Human buildings and units to much higher quality textures
<*>Reworked all the icons for all units both on the world map and in RTS mode
<*>Reworked the day and night cycle for the RTS mode
<*>A lot of units has been rescaled, especially units like Dragons, Ogres e.t.c
<*>A lot of buildings rescaled to be larger in size
<*>Player unit colours changed and are a lot easier to see now
Other Fixes
- Improved latency and lag in multiplayer games
- Greatly improved performance during large town visits or battles
- Company into cinematic volume is a lot lower now
- Elven tree trunk top is better visible now
- Rescaled the flag when tasking units to be much bigger
- Refreshed the main menu scene not to include busy and dramatic combat effects
- Removed Invite new players, newsletter and social media links from the main menu
- Updated profanity filter to include dozens of new terms
- Updated the currently list for the booster shop up to date
Updates Incoming in 2021
It has been a very long time since I have posted here... Glad to bring some very exciting news - we will be resuming updates on Kingdom Wars 1 starting later this month.
We are hoping to release several updates - to fix some of the syncing and other issues, and help improve gameplay, GUI and minor upgrades to graphics.
Unfortunately we won`t be able to patch the core engine of the game, but only working on what we can change with scripting. As there`s no way to make big engine changes without making previous game account progress be compatible - so we are avoiding this.
First upcoming Update
Right now - we are working on the first steps - updating the main menu to be properly scaled on all resolutions including 4k. This update will also include a bunch of new terrain textures, better looking trees and other game objects, as well as some art work updates for the GUI. We`ll also look to fix several performance issues, and working on improving out-of-sync issues for battles.
Your Feedback is Appreciated
If you have some feedback on what you think we should be focusing on, and what you think are the worst bugs in-game right now - please let us know!
Moving Forward and MKW Invites.
Dear Players,
As you might have noticed we haven`t updated Kingdom Wars in a while. And while we still update KW2B regularly, the team is working on our next big title, a grand strategy game Medieval Kingdom Wars.
I`m afraid I can`t give you any good news with regards to Kingdom Wars... as you might have read before - we hit a roadblock with all the updates to the engine that we had since we started working on Kingdom Wars several years ago, that made us unable to retain player progress if we were to continue updating the game.
We are not sure about future plans for Kingdom Wars - perhaps one day we`ll re-release it as a new F2P experience using the updated engine, who knows, but one thing for sure - we`ll keep on running the original KW game servers indefinitely while there`s still any interest in the game.
With several free expansions, and nearly a hundred updates we had a lot of great times working and updating Kingdom Wars. And at this point we look to the future, and hope to see some of you try our upcoming Medieval Kingdom Wars title.
MKW Pre-Alpha Testing Invites
As we`ve mentioned - the new title we are working on is singleplayer Grand Campaign, with competitive multiplayer component - Medieval Kingdom Wars. We can`t reveal any details just yet, but we are looking forward to giving free access to this title to our top KW and KW2B players.
Later this April, the 14th, we`ll send out first round of email invites.
We have selected quite a few players who we`ll be emailing the invite, and we expect to have additional rounds that will cover majority of our top player population from Kingdom Wars 1 and Kingdom Wars 2: Battles.
Few things to mention - the requirements for the first invite are really high up, we are only inviting our top players. We looked at players with close to 100 hours of gameplay time, and lots of progress.
In addition please keep in mind that we can only send invites via the email that you entered when running KW2B or KW1 for the first time.
If you didn`t make it in this time - don`t worry, chances are if you are one of our veterans you`ll get invited in one of the following rounds.
We also have to mention that installation will come with an NDA agreement, as we have to keep the game a secret for now from the larger community and want to try and avoid leaking screenshot and video of the game this early in production.
And finally - this might be a deal breaker for some of you... But, for the first couple of rounds the pre-alpha build will require a pretty good video card. We are in progress of adding additional LODs to make it playable on all systems, but we are still couple of months away from that. I think from round 3 we`ll finally have game accessible for all ranges of hardware, so requirements will become same as KW2B.
Explaining the Lack of Updates
It saddens me to say so, but looks like once again we have to let our Kingdom Wars community down. After spending countless hours on trying to port the KW2B engine update into KW1, we have to admit that we have failed, and there`s no good way to go on. We tried... and tried and tried, several time we patched the new updates in, just to revert it hours later.
Due to lowering player population, and not being able to release the big updates we always planned - there`s only this much we can do for Kingdom Wars moving forward.
We do hope to release couple of smaller updates, but to be honest - they will not be adding any major content and will be mainly cosmetic.
Meanwhile - we will continue running the game servers for KW1, and our moderators will continue working with the game. Hopefully down the road - we might come up with some solution, for example - as been proposed by our players, porting the game to a new engine, updating the content and graphics, and re-releasing it down the road...
We do have some very good news for our Kingdom Wars 1 fans - to be announced in January 2017... With that announcement we will make it up to all of our veteran players.
Starter Pack DLC Released
Dear Players,
As we continue to attract new players to the game to allow our team to spend more time working on Kingdom Wars updates and expansions we have released the second planed DLC.
Please rest assured that we are not making our veteran KW players pay for any new content - these DLCs are meant mostly for new players or for these who want to support our small indie company.
Also we took precautions not to turn KW into a pay-to-win game, these DLCs were designed not to cause any balance issues, and are limited in their benefits.
And so introducing the second DLC - the "Starter" pack.
Enter the world of Kingdom Wars with an amazing starter pack including everything you need to bypass the grind of the early game and start building an empire with an army of Dwarven Mercenaries and a powerful Dragon under your command.
Start Pack DLC includes:
-Two extra city slots
-20,000 resources
-Ice Dragon
-20 Dwarven Units
-24 Hour Attack Protection
http://store.steampowered.com/app/366330/
Server Update - Login Issues Fixed
Dear Players,
Many of you have experienced issues logging into the game world this past weekend. We are very sorry for the inconvenience, and greatly regret that we weren`t able to address this problem on Friday.
I`m happy to say that this morning we have performed a server upgrade, and after a quick downtime the game servers are back online - and login problem will not happen again.
Thanks for your understanding, and once again - I hope you can forgive us for the delay, this bug came out of nowhere when relative specialists already left office for the weekend, and we couldn`t figure out what was going on. First thing on Monday we addressed the problem and performed needed server upgrades.
All Access DLC Released
Dear Players,
In order to attract new players to the game and allow our team to spend more time working on Kingdom Wars updates and expansions we`ve decided to release a couple of DLCs.
Please rest assured that we are not making our veteran KW players pay for any new content - these DLCs are meant mostly for new players or for these who want to support our small indie company.
Also we took precautions not to turn KW into a pay-to-win game, these DLCs were designed not to cause any balance issues, and are limited in their benefits.
And so introducing our first DLC - the "All Access" pack.
Enter the world of Kingdom Wars as a veteran VIP. All Access Key comes with 90% of what the game store has to offer, including the highly priced singleplayer campaign, 24 city slots and over 50$ in other features and benefits.
Enter the world of Kingdom Wars with an amazing starter pack including:
-Twenty Four city slots
-30 Days Premium
-40,000 resources
-Two Ice Dragon
-Gunpowder Army of Rifleman and Cannons - 24 battalions
-48 Hour Attack Protection
-Singleplayer Campaign
-Lay Siege Singleplayer Skirmish
-Castle Defense Singleplayer Skirmish
-Player Hero Customization Pack
-Hometown Flag Customization Pack
-Hometown Architecture Pack
-Wall Banners, Building Flags and City Colors Pack
Update 1.3 - "We Are Back" is Live!
Dear Players,
We are happy to say that we are back to Kingdom Wars 1, with what we hope will be small but regular updates for months to come.
As we continue work on the main game engine update, that we hope to figure out by mid September, we have plans for the next three smaller updates that will introduce a lot of art updates, gameplay balancing, fixing exploits, and introducing minor new features.
In addition we`ll be running few promotions during the next 30 days aiming to increase the player population. We`ll also be releasing couple of DLCs - Starter Pack and All Access DLC, that will help us bring more players, as well as allow us to dedicate more resources to KW1.
And so introducing update 1.3. This is the update that you`ll "see" right away as you load your homeland. Here`s detailed list of features:
-Greatly increased visual quality of terrain textures
-If player on purpose disconnects during the battle it`ll count as a loss
-Reworked all summer and winter terrain textures
-New look for in-game trees with higher quality textures
-New art for grass, cliffs and other vegetation
-Updated main menu to show News, Invite, KW2B promo
-Added swear words filter, swear words replaced with funny words
-Expanded Moderator Tools to manage Chat Bans and Player Bans
-Worker units are up to 40% better at fighting and surviving attacks
Moving forward we`ll be creating couple of new posts to get more feedback from you regarding what you think we should concentrate on for the upcoming updates...