IMPORTANT 1) Please, feel free to use built-in bug reporter (F11) - it will help development a lot. 2) If something is broken make sure you have verified game files and started new world, remember -KINGDOMS is still EA, I try to make saves compatibility for every new version of the game, but can't guarantee it all the time. 3) The game is still in development, it's NOT finished product, updates are coming 3-4 times a week and that will inevitably cause various issues. Updates for game in development and for finished game - are two absolutely different things, remember that. Game mechanics come and gone, bugs are being fixed and new ones appear all the time. Its a normal thing for development process. If you want to experience KINGDOMS as it was initially designed - smooth, without bugs and full of working mechanics - please, wait till final version will be out. 4) You can support development of KINGDOMS on my official Patreon page. Thanks for your support, see you very soon! Cyfieithydd
UPDATE 0.677 [BUGFIXING]
Welcome, lords and ladies of KINGDOMS! Today is Friday and today we have fixing of various bugs you've sent to me through in-game reporter and via community. Mainly it was AI behavior fixes - settlement joining issues, stuck at one place etc. The full list follows:
FIXES
Fixed bug when settlers gold was reset to default 200 after loading the save;
Fixed war balance issue: now settlers can join to the settlement that is on war, but can't join the army - this should fix the issue when settlers didn't join the settlement when this settlement was on war actions for a long period of time;
Fixed settlers joining issue, when two or more settlements reached certain and equal population settlers didn't join these settlements. When other settlements reache4d this limit population grow also could stop, now it's fixed;
Balance tweak - now settlers don't have any preferences in settlements choice, this should fix the issue when by the end of the game there were many more or less balanced settlements with approximately same population, now the diversity and dominance of certain cities will be more obvious;
Fixed issue when some settlers could just wander around the island without joining any settlement;
Now farmers and bandits will also join settlements after several unsuccessful attempts to find place for farm or lair;
Fixed issue when house became invisible after building on the systems with 8Gb RAM;
Fixed issue when settler could spawn in the middle of notice board right after time skipping for quite a long period of time;
Fixed issue when after loading the save the settler who travelled to settlement to join didn't do that when reaching this settlement;
Fixed critical issue when AI could calculate actions even if game was paused;
Fixed critical issue when AI could stand at one place and not moving after loading the world right after exiting another world;
FIXES
Russian translation was updated;
French translation was updated;
Fixed various grammatical errors, lexical errors and misprints in English localization (big thanks to KiFouine!);
IMPORTANT 1) Please, feel free to use built-in bug reporter (F11) - it will help development a lot. 2) If something is broken make sure you have verified game files and started new world, remember -KINGDOMS is still EA, I try to make saves compatibility for every new version of the game, but can't guarantee it all the time. 3) The game is still in development, it's NOT finished product, updates are coming 3-4 times a week and that will inevitably cause various issues. Updates for game in development and for finished game - are two absolutely different things, remember that. Game mechanics come and gone, bugs are being fixed and new ones appear all the time. Its a normal thing for development process. If you want to experience KINGDOMS as it was initially designed - smooth, without bugs and full of working mechanics - please, wait till final version will be out. 4) You can support development of KINGDOMS on my official Patreon page. Thanks for your support, see you very soon! Cyfieithydd
UPDATE 0.676 [DESTROYING AI SCAFFOLDS]
Welcome, lords and ladies of KINGDOMS! Todays update should fix the most annoying and most reported issue of current build (thanks for reporting btw!!) - AI building inside already build houses. First, they won't do this anymore. Second, to fix already messed up structures now player can demolish scaffold as well as already build houses - but in owned settlement only (would be strange if you could demolish structures in some random settlement - though, never say never). Another things to mention - fixes for animals behavior when they could loop in warning animation which was kind of annoying. Plus now player can see the amount of gold of each individual settler in the notice-board list. The rest of changes and fixes follows:
CHANGES
Now player can destroy AI scaffolds in owned settlement, no need to wait until house is build;
Now player can destroy any scaffold without having Builder perk;
Now player can see the amount of known settlers gold when using settlers list;
FIXES
Fixed issue when AI could calculate place for their houses at the same time as player is building something and two result could cause "building-in-building" bug;
Fixed issue when AI could spawn their building inside players common house because it wasn't properly added to settlement houses lists during building process;
Fixed critical animals behavior, when they stayed at one place in looped warning animation instead of running away or attack;
Fixed issue when wild horse could be looped in annoying warning animation;
Now horse galloping sound is less annoying and unnatural;
Fixed issue when meat-eaters didn't properly react on other animals and didn't chase them;
Fixed issue when game sometimes set resolution to 0x0 when first launching the game (mostly because of video driver issue), causing crash, now if this happens, the resolution will be set to 640x480 and players will be able to launch the game;
Fixed issue when AI could build a house right inside the wall sometimes;
Fixed issue when AI didn't got a gold for item sold in the shop;
Fixed critical trading issue when AI gold didn't change after barter causing impossibility to earn money and buy expensive stuff in shops;
Fixed critical trading issue when after selling an item the gold went to shops storage and to to settlers pocket;
Now the game can recreate options file once it will find out that it was created incorrect by some reason;
Now amount of pooled houses depends on RAM available in order to prevent crashes on systems with <8GB RAM;
IMPORTANT 1) Please, feel free to use built-in bug reporter (F11) - it will help development a lot. 2) If something is broken make sure you have verified game files and started new world, remember -KINGDOMS is still EA, I try to make saves compatibility for every new version of the game, but can't guarantee it all the time. 3) The game is still in development, it's NOT finished product, updates are coming 3-4 times a week and that will inevitably cause various issues. Updates for game in development and for finished game - are two absolutely different things, remember that. Game mechanics come and gone, bugs are being fixed and new ones appear all the time. Its a normal thing for development process. If you want to experience KINGDOMS as it was initially designed - smooth, without bugs and full of working mechanics - please, wait till final version will be out. 4) You can support development of KINGDOMS on my official Patreon page. Thanks for your support, see you very soon! Cyfieithydd
UPDATE 0.675 [BUGFIXING]
Welcome, lords and ladies of KINGDOMS! Today is Friday and today we have fixing of various bugs you've sent to me through in-game reporter and via community. As always, I'll repeat many time said words - don't be afraid to tell about various issues and report them - it really helps the game to become better with every portion of fixes. Every single report is matter - horse is flying? report! save won't load? report! report and report! My job is to fix things here making Kingdoms the game we all want to see. And now - to the list of todays fixes.
FIXES
Critical issue: fixed bug when sometimes game could freeze at roads calculation when loading saved game;
Building and scaffolds pools size was changed from 15 to 30 to prevent situations when player has 15 i.e. build towers in scene but can't build or finish new one because pool is over at 15;
Fixed issue when house doors could have false position and rotation sometimes when spawning;
Fixed issue when AI gatherers could only gather wood, ignoring all other resources;
Fixed issue when AI couldn't sell nothing but wood in the shop;
Fixed issue when farmers couldn't properly sell various seed types in shops;
Fixed issue when settlers couldn't sell various meat types in shops;
Fixed issue when game didn't mark biggest settlement on the map after populated world generation;
Fixed issue when gold in killed NPC pockets was calculated incorrect sometimes;
Fixed issue when AI farms could have missing doors sometimes;
Fixed issue when game marked farm or bandits lair instead of biggest settlement right after landing if save was loaded with player on ship;
Fixed issue when saddled horse couldn't properly spawn near the player after whistling;
Fixed bugged physics of some doors happening sometimes;
The scale of big wooden tower was increased a bit;
Fixed issue when player couldn't destroy bandits lair sometimes (new game is required);
Fixed issue when the icon of biggest settlement (after populated world landing) could have farm icon instead;
Fixed some AI scripts logic in order to increase stability;
Default AI building speed was set to 3 instead of 1 in order to balance AI settlements grow speed;
Fixed issue when fresh saddled horse couldn't properly called by whistle;
Added automatic unused resources unloading to some scripts in order to optimize memory usage and overall stability;
IMPORTANT 1) Please, feel free to use built-in bug reporter (F11) - it will help development a lot. 2) If something is broken make sure you have verified game files and started new world, remember -KINGDOMS is still EA, I try to make saves compatibility for every new version of the game, but can't guarantee it all the time. 3) The game is still in development, it's NOT finished product, updates are coming 3-4 times a week and that will inevitably cause various issues. Updates for game in development and for finished game - are two absolutely different things, remember that. Game mechanics come and gone, bugs are being fixed and new ones appear all the time. Its a normal thing for development process. If you want to experience KINGDOMS as it was initially designed - smooth, without bugs and full of working mechanics - please, wait till final version will be out. 4) You can support development of KINGDOMS on my official Patreon page. Thanks for your support, see you very soon! Cyfieithydd
UPDATE 0.674 [WHERE CAN I FIND...?]
Welcome, lords and ladies of KINGDOMS! Todays update adds to the game very useful feature, that will make a life of all travelers a bit easier. Now you can ask settlers to mark various location on your map - settlements of all kind, ruins, useful building like shops or manufactories - it's all there. The idea came to me when we were testing performance for 0.671 and I actually managed to play my game for a quite long time - usually because of often update timeline I usually see only some local areas I'm working for particular update - and that's the downside of such planning. And this time session was large and I could finally play and enjoy (!) Kingdoms. During the testing I clearly understood that game is desperately missing that and that here and here - when working on the game all days long you just don't see such things. So asking for locations is one of these features that I'm planning to add before we'll get back to the roadmap. It won't take long but definitely will make Kingdoms more enjoyable to play.
CHANGES
Now player can ask settler about following locations:
closest settlement;
closest farm;
closest bandits lair;
closest ruins;
closest iron bank;
closest shop;
closest blacksmith;
closest tavern;
closest stoneworkers place;
closest bakery;
closest woodworker's house;
notice board;
leader of your settlement;
The result depends on many factors, i.e. if settler didn't join the settlement, he cant tell about any shops or if shop wasn't build the answer also be negative etc.
FIXES
Fixed issue when the phrase "I cant teach you anything" could stuck in the dialog;
Fixed issue when AI's answer after player refuses to make a quest disappeared too quickly;
Fixed issue when AI's answer after player agrees to make a quest disappeared too quickly;
Fixed issue when the last phrase of AI after finishing the quest was invisible;
Fixed issue when marking settler as destination font color was unreadable sometimes, now it's white;
Fixed false AI animations and meshes clipping in watch-towers;
IMPORTANT 1) Please, feel free to use built-in bug reporter (F11) - it will help development a lot. 2) If something is broken make sure you have verified game files and started new world, remember -KINGDOMS is still EA, I try to make saves compatibility for every new version of the game, but can't guarantee it all the time. 3) The game is still in development, it's NOT finished product, updates are coming 3-4 times a week and that will inevitably cause various issues. Updates for game in development and for finished game - are two absolutely different things, remember that. Game mechanics come and gone, bugs are being fixed and new ones appear all the time. Its a normal thing for development process. If you want to experience KINGDOMS as it was initially designed - smooth, without bugs and full of working mechanics - please, wait till final version will be out. 4) You can support development of KINGDOMS on my official Patreon page. Thanks for your support, see you very soon! Cyfieithydd
UPDATE 0.673 [BUGFIXING]
Welcome, lords and ladies of KINGDOMS! It's Friday and bugfixing is coming! Before going to the list of changes, make sure you didn't miss big 0.671 performance update, that significally improves performance and add multithreading support to Kingdoms. Thanks to all the players who is actively reporting bugs both using in-game reporter (f11) and game community - your help really matters a lot for the game.
CHANGES
Slightly changed war modificators by killing settlers or burning the houses - now single attack action can't be less than 5%;
Wars balance: now AI settlement can declare war to another settlement even if settlement-settlement distance parameter is too high;
A line about active quest was placed at the top of dialogue list;
FIXES
Fixed performance issue for specs with less than 8Gb RAM, when building masks (for removing grass, tress etc.) could take a long time to calculate and cause fps drops, i.e when house model is being spawned;
Fixed issue when AI couldn't use shops and taverns at far distances;
Fixed issue when AI couldn't properly buy and sell items in shops sometimes;
Fixed issue when AI soldiers didn't properly use watch-towers at far distances;
Fixed issue when player's title wasn't properly displayed when global reputation was above 10k;
Fixed issue in quest "Bring iron axe for farmer" when quest took a sword instead of axe from the inventory when finishing it;
Fixed issue when building big stone tower - big wooden tower carcass could spawn instead;
Fixed issue when pickaxe could disappear from the inventory when trading to someone;
Fixed issue when farmer could stuck at place in the garden collecting vegetables in the loop over and over again;
Now when farmers inventory is full by some reason, he/she can put item in the store and use later when needed;
Fixed issue when AI didn't participate in wars when settlement-settlement distances were too high;
Fixed issue when grass spreading wasn't correctly calculating depending on in-game season sometimes;
Fixed issue when farm-to-farm distance parameter wasn't correctly saved sometimes;
IMPORTANT 1) Please, feel free to use built-in bug reporter (F11) - it will help development a lot. 2) If something is broken make sure you have verified game files and started new world, remember -KINGDOMS is still EA, I try to make saves compatibility for every new version of the game, but can't guarantee it all the time. 3) The game is still in development, it's NOT finished product, updates are coming 3-4 times a week and that will inevitably cause various issues. Updates for game in development and for finished game - are two absolutely different things, remember that. Game mechanics come and gone, bugs are being fixed and new ones appear all the time. Its a normal thing for development process. If you want to experience KINGDOMS as it was initially designed - smooth, without bugs and full of working mechanics - please, wait till final version will be out. 4) You can support development of KINGDOMS on my official Patreon page. Thanks for your support, see you very soon! Cyfieithydd
UPDATE 0.672 [BUGFIXING]
Welcome, lords and ladies of KINGDOMS! First of, make sure you didn't miss yesterday big update, that significally improves performance and add multithreading support to Kingdoms. Today I decided to make a bugfixing - previous update was really large and I definitely missed some bugs - but thanks to your reports and active help (Remember to use in-game bug-reporter - f11!) I can fix those. I think Friday's update will be also about bugfixing and since Monday i'll start to add new stuff - I have kept a LOT of cool ideas during working on performance update. But now, to fixes list:
CHANGES
Default settlement-settlement, settlement-farm and farm-farm distances were changed to 1000m, 450m and 250m;
Now the game can check amount of VRAM and automatically set quality options accordingly when first launching and creating options file;
Grass height and density was changed a bit in order to make vegetables, small rocks and small animals more noticeable;
Color gradient was added to grass texture;
FIXES
Fixed issue when houses build by AI could be set up on another already build house sometimes;
Fixed issue when AI stops to build houses in settlement at some point during long play session;
Fixed issue when AI build house could sometimes be build right in the wall when their position was calculated at the same time with wall position;
Some changes were made in house generation place formulas in order to increase populated world creation speed;
Changes some raycasting logic in settlements scripts in order to increase performance;
Fixed issue when AI could build City Hall too close to the wall sometimes;
Big perk icon was removed from perk description panel in order to make the text more readable;
Critical issue fixed, when settler couldn't build or buy manufactories;
Fixed issue when player could take an unfinished product from the garden and it will be still duplicated depending on gardener perks, now only finished products will be duplicated;
Fixed performance issues with stone walls;
Fixed issue when stone walls had false lighting on their models;
Fixed various collision issues with the walls;
Fixed issue when fps could drop near big stone gates sometimes;
IMPORTANT 1) Please, feel free to use built-in bug reporter (F11) - it will help development a lot. 2) If something is broken make sure you have verified game files and started new world, remember -KINGDOMS is still EA, I try to make saves compatibility for every new version of the game, but can't guarantee it all the time. 3) The game is still in development, it's NOT finished product, updates are coming 3-4 times a week and that will inevitably cause various issues. Updates for game in development and for finished game - are two absolutely different things, remember that. Game mechanics come and gone, bugs are being fixed and new ones appear all the time. Its a normal thing for development process. If you want to experience KINGDOMS as it was initially designed - smooth, without bugs and full of working mechanics - please, wait till final version will be out. 4) You can support development of KINGDOMS on my official Patreon page. Thanks for your support, see you very soon! Cyfieithydd
This one took good half of the total amount of work. At first I wanted to experiment and understand on practice where multithreading is able to give real performance boosts. After numerous tests the result was: pathfinding and spawning can use multithreading at 100% speed, AI though can use it in some heavy code parts like complicate formula calculations. Of course the result depends on cores you have - 8-cores CPU will give much better result than 2-cores CPU.
SCRIPTS
The next global goal was to clean up all possible game scripts and change their logic in such way so they could use less CPU resources and give the same results. Update() functions were mainly removed and replaces with IENumerators() - this gave significant boosts to settlers, houses and animals scripts. Memory leaking code parts (i.e. with many GetComponent<> calls) were removed, cleaned and rewritten. Scripts are now working asynchronically to remove all performance spikes from the game. Some systems, that worked individually for each object and took significant amount of performance - like AI finding place for house - are now calculated in separate threads.
BACKGROUND CALCULATIONS
The main key point of Kingdoms is breathing and living world. When playing it you can be sure, that even at very large distance settlers do exact the same thing they do near you - building, trading, crafting, selling, growing stuff at farms etc. For me it was and is to not cheat the player and calculate something in a tricky way, like spawn goods at shops or add settlers to the settlement - even at the distance world should have the same logic as at the very close distance. Most players won't even notice that, but for me it was important to make the world live in any point of the island even of player doesn't see it. And to tell you the truth all these calculation took quite significant part of script calculations. So I revisited all of them to understand where I can improve performance without loosing mechanics working. It was long and quite monotone process but the result is in the game, which is totally fine by me.
LOADING SPEED
Now game uses different compression method and this method increases overall loading time about 80-100%. Another issue was long saves loading, in particular - long roads calculation. This was because game also calculated walls all over the map at start of roads calculation. This was also improved - walls now can spawn much faster and as result it increases save loading about 200%. But roads spawn is not the single spawn system that was changed.
STATIC SPAWN AND MEMORY LEAKS FIXES
Another serious issue that needed to be fixed is periodically memory leaks. In most cases it was inefficient spawn of static objects. That's why the whole spawn system for static (i.e houses, scaffolds etc.) was rewritten from scratch to remove memory leaks. Vegetation was changed as well. First of, now it uses multithreading, plus many connected systems were changed as well in order to increase performance - masks on structures (that remove grass and other objects), masks on roads, all vegetation textures were compressed, distances were tweaked, LODs were optimized, colliders were optimized as well.
AI BODY SPAWN OPTIMIZATION
Previous AI bodies also affected performance in a negative way, causing fps drops there and there sometimes so the goal here was to make it work as fast as possible. Was was changes - body texture and mesh combiner scripts are now multithreaded, meshes were optimized (as a bonus all body customization options are more visible now), textures were compressed.
PATHFINDING OPTIMIZATION
The main thing here is multithreading support. Also some additional features were added to scripts in order to increase performance, i.e. occlusion culling.
SIEGES PERFORMANCE FIXES
As many of you could notice sieges in game affected performance in a very negative way sometimes, so this update will fix it. Many scripts were rewritten here as well, plus optimization of light sources and particles now give significant performance boost.
WHAT'S NEXT?
So, the huge optimization work is over and we're back to usual schedule - three update per week, the next one (0.672) is coming Wednesday. Plus update contains a LOT of bugfixes, I decided not to add them to this announce, they will be added to Wednesday patch note. Thanks to all the players for support and patience, I really hope that you'll like the result!
IMPORTANT 1) Please, feel free to use built-in bug reporter (F11) - it will help development a lot. 2) If something is broken make sure you have verified game files and started new world, remember -KINGDOMS is still EA, I try to make saves compatibility for every new version of the game, but can't guarantee it all the time. 3) The game is still in development, it's NOT finished product, updates are coming 3-4 times a week and that will inevitably cause various issues. Updates for game in development and for finished game - are two absolutely different things, remember that. Game mechanics come and gone, bugs are being fixed and new ones appear all the time. Its a normal thing for development process. If you want to experience KINGDOMS as it was initially designed - smooth, without bugs and full of working mechanics - please, wait till final version will be out. 4) You can support development of KINGDOMS on my official Patreon page. Thanks for your support, see you very soon! Cyfieithydd
UPDATE 0.669 [BUGFIXING]
Welcome, lords and ladies of KINGDOMS!
CHANGES
Now amount of grass on the terrain fully depends on the season;
Now settlers will bow to the leader instead of just waving when greeting before conversation;
Bowing animations depend on settlers character;
Two handed swords damage was balanced a bit;
Pickaxe damage was balanced a bit;
Pickaxe damage was balanced a bit;
Textures of some city gates were changed to metallic;
FIXES
Fixed issue when player couldn't use map properly (including diplomacy one) when there are too much kingdoms on the map;
Fixed rare issue when bandits tried to talk to the player being very far away;
Fixed issue when player pressed pause during screen fading and could brake game camera and players movement;
Fixed issue when settler could stuck in talking animation sometimes when conversation was already over;
Fixed issue when music in main menu could start playing for a moment even if volume was set to zero;
Fixed issue when players camera could have incorrect position right after landing;
Fixed issue when battle music could start playing even if was disabled in music options;
Fixed issue when player hands were lighted incorrect at night;
Fixed issue when some horses were lighted incorrect at night;
IMPORTANT 1) Please, feel free to use built-in bug reporter (F11) - it will help development a lot. 2) If something is broken make sure you have verified game files and started new world, remember -KINGDOMS is still EA, I try to make saves compatibility for every new version of the game, but can't guarantee it all the time. 3) The game is still in development, it's NOT finished product, updates are coming 3-4 times a week and that will inevitably cause various issues. Updates for game in development and for finished game - are two absolutely different things, remember that. Game mechanics come and gone, bugs are being fixed and new ones appear all the time. Its a normal thing for development process. If you want to experience KINGDOMS as it was initially designed - smooth, without bugs and full of working mechanics - please, wait till final version will be out. 4) You can support development of KINGDOMS on my official Patreon page. Thanks for your support, see you very soon! Cyfieithydd
UPDATE 0.668 [BLOCKING]
Welcome, lords and ladies of KINGDOMS!
CHANGES
Now player can block enemy strikes (both from animals and settlers) using RMB (by default);
Impact animations were added when player is hit when using block;
When block is used it takes stamina, depending on potential damage;
When player's stamina is low all strikes will deliver only 50% of damage;
If stamina is <0, player's block can't prevent damage;
Now arrow loading speed and preparing to shoot depends on archer perks (+10%, +25%, +50%, +75%, +100%);
Weapon strikes speed now depends on swordsman perks (+10%, +25%, +50%, +75%, +100%);
Energy taken after using a sword now depends on swordsman perks (-30, -25, -20, -15, -10, -5);
Stamina now regenerates much slower when in block - 20% from usual speed;
Quest "Bring vegetable pie for hungry settler" was added;
FIXES
Fixed issue when player's stamina wasn't properly decreased when swinging a weapon;
Fixed issue when pickaxe didn't deal any damage;
Fixed issue when player could accidentally hit someone after saving;
Fixed false "% to win siege description" in game options;
Fixed issue when settlers swords weren't properly visualized sometimes and all settler have default small iron dagger of save form etc.;
Fixed issue when player could hit someone just by standing nearby;
TRANSLATIONS
Now player will see available languages when game is launched for the first time;
IMPORTANT 1) Please, feel free to use built-in bug reporter (F11) - it will help development a lot. 2) If something is broken make sure you have verified game files and started new world, remember -KINGDOMS is still EA, I try to make saves compatibility for every new version of the game, but can't guarantee it all the time. 3) The game is still in development, it's NOT finished product, updates are coming 3-4 times a week and that will inevitably cause various issues. Updates for game in development and for finished game - are two absolutely different things, remember that. Game mechanics come and gone, bugs are being fixed and new ones appear all the time. Its a normal thing for development process. If you want to experience KINGDOMS as it was initially designed - smooth, without bugs and full of working mechanics - please, wait till final version will be out. 4) You can support development of KINGDOMS on my official Patreon page. Thanks for your support, see you very soon! Cyfieithydd
