Lords and Ladies!
While today's game update brings mostly a *TON* of gameplay improvements and quality-of-life features, we nonetheless have a bunch of amazing news for you!
Gamescom 2022 is happening! And we're part of it! More infos below!
And for the first time since we launched Rising Lords in Early Access, you can try the game before you buy - with the new Rising Lords demo version!
Then the next round of our Challenge Island Tournament is starting! Challenge Island Round 2 will go live today!
And finally: the results for the Builder Contest are in (with all of the contestants' maps being playable via Steam workshop)!
Rising Lords @ Gamescom 2022 + New Demo
Rising Lords is part of Gamescom 2022! We're incredibly thrilled to show Rising Lords during the first in-person Gamescom since 2019! If you would like to visit us: you can find us at the Indie Arena Booth - Hall 10.2, Booth 8! If you're in Cologne and are visiting the convention, come and say Hi!
Additionally to commemorate the occasion, we released a demo version of Rising Lords for the first time! In it you can check out the story prologue and maybe even get a little something after you beat it! Grab it right off the Steam page and check it out if you like!
Challenge Island - Round 2
Challenge Island - our randomized combat-focused gameplay mode - heads into Round 2! That means starting today, previous leaderboards will be wiped and everyone starts with a completely clean slate again! Try to get the highest score and discuss your victories and your strategies with our community on Discord!
Builder Contest Results
Our Builder Contest is over and we'd like to thank each and every one of you for taking part and just for being part of the community! All of your custom scenarios have been nothing short of amazing! You all did a great job! But: not everyone can be a winner and we'd like to congratulate our Top 3 contestants 🎉🎉🎉
🥇 1st: Timmy's Glorious Day by Toni 955 🥇
🥈 2nd: Ravnskjold by Erasin 🥈
🥉 3rd: Fornburg by Yes. 🥉
And: as promised, the "builder" and contest-exclusive❗ "bloody builder" skins are now available in-game! We had a great time playing your maps and we are proud to see the community can come up with such creative and engaging stories and maps!
...and that's it for today! As always, see the full changelog for this version below! And see you at Gamescom - or on our Discord!
Full Changelog
0.16.1 (August 23rd)
New:
- bonus Lord skin "builder"
- new general outfits
- Added 10 loading screenshots
- roads auto-tile to connect to bridges correctly
- Added army morale penalty for losing a unit
- Multiplayer 'Custom Battle' displays map @ army selection
- Show unit bonuses for mercenaries on stats shield
- initial implementation of undo/redo in editor
- confirmation prompt to editor map reset
- Story Tree 'Limit radial menu'' node & updated tutorial
- story tree can now circle some GUI elements
Changes:
- removed sign from buff/debuff tile hint for better readability
- gave clickable tiles the ability to be clicked on while the player is not in the region
- bridge / traps change to yellow when placeable
- removed 'inspire' task from tutorial
- improved battlecam movement:
- Fixed clamping bounds inconsistency to be about 1.5 tiles out from valid slot
- Fixed jumpy zoom in/out in most cases
- Fixed full-zoom-out jitter in some cases / potential soft lock
- improved odd battle cam shift when zooming near borders
- updated some tutorial infos
- tutorial 'rebuild walls' prevents walls on other tiles
- tutorial task now expects exactl 20 sheep, not 20-40
- changed mission story + missions to be hidden during BattleSummary.
- Added battle summary to show multiple armies next to one another instead of on top of one another.
- tutorial prevents mill being built on wrong field
- Added zoom to battle will only include visible armies, so there are no more strange battle zoom ins.
- Added preventing editor hot keys from functioning while typing into input box.
- Fixed soft lock with right click radial battle menu when too close to the edge of the map.
- Changed the German language morale statement with allied armies.
- rearranged the skill tree to better match card strength
- performance optimisation FOW
- Modified helper cards to appear in the tutorial.
- attacking a unit that can't retaliate morale penalty increased to -6
- added delay to attack sounds to better match animation
- AI improvements
- changed battle-cam focuses on right-click target if on camera border
- shrunk tile cache surface (improved RAM usage)
- further minor performance improvements
- merchants now visit all player regions first to ensure a fair start
- bridges can now be placed on swamps
- Draw fishermen on harbour instead of nearby
- performance improvements
- bowmen balanced to now do a bit less damage against armored units and a bit more against peasants
- Modified English heritage bowmen to cost 50% more gold when mustering
- Modified battle summary text to have less words for units lost and killed when there are more than 2 players in the battle.
- improved campaign token text alignment (e.g. numbers on token base)
- building cost increase in a region per building lowered from 20% to 15%
- cheaper and faster secondary castle buildings
- chapel morale boost from 15 to 20
- adjusted region overview tutorial wording
- small tutorial improvements
Fixes:
- fixed bridge/trap hover not properly highlighting
- fixed resource consumption tooltip getting stuck on
- fixed region tile miss-align in editor
- fixed resign button not working correctly sometimes
- fixed horse growth rate bug w/ stables
- fixed morale explanation tutorial render bug
- fixed menu music fading when going to 'options'
- fixed missing player list 'background' for client in custom battle
- fixed broken tile 'grid lines' due to recent tile optimization
- fixed auto-govern merging your armies
- fixed auto-tile w/ connecting edges of bridges
- fixed miss-aligned 'enter code' box
- fixed bug w/ tutorial requiring 5 'random cards' instead of 3
- FixedMigration being inconsistent
- Fixed diplomacy staying visible when in screenshot mode.
- Fixed two crashes heading to multiplayer custom battle related to the helper cards.
- Fixed missing unit switch arrows / possible unit switch freezing
- Fixed clicking graphics > camera pan from toggling the battle speed.
- Fixed loading screen not freeing surface from memory, because it was being destroyed, but not exited, so it would recreate the surface.
- Fixed map_tile surfaces not being freed from memory with exit to title screen.
- Fixed map selection not freeing surface from memory, because play game never released it from memory.
- Fixed worker spine surfaces not being freed, except for fields.
- Fixed small memory leak w/ general avatars & in-battle cards
- Fixed right-click dismissing > 1 card at a time in scenarios
- Fixed campaign setup map surface not being freed when hitting back button.
- Fixed farm peasant surfaces not being freed when returning to the title screen, caused by their outline surfaces not being freed.
- Fixed clickable tile surfaces not being freed. They looked like construction sites.
- Fixed peasant surface mem-leak / slight reduction in peasant RAM usage
- Fixed disband buttons behind units
- Fixed potential freeze in 'mercenary menu' state
- Fixed skill-tree skill seams between background & icon
- Fixed 'region-switch' arrow placement after resolution change
- Fixed addressed some missed tile cache changes / highlight bugs
- fixed having an empty horse field killed all other horses
- fixed auto-tile in editor breaking swamp forest tiles
- fixed extra walls 'appearing' on tiles after wall attack visual bug
- fixed a number of token visibility issues
- fixed placing bridges not auto-tiling existing roads
- fixed tutorial army scrolls overlapping in some languages
- prevent wrong max. knob value in army menu which could cause bigger armies than allowed, and thus negative happiness.
- Fixed german language having ,,, at the end of new entries.