General stuff

[Moo]

I've noticed a few things with the latest version...

1) No message when the "last" knight is eliminated in duel-to-the-death type games... This isn't so much of a problem when that's the only way of winning, but when it's a game with wands of securing and other objectives, there would be no way to see which way the game was won.
2) No more message about needing gems when trying to destroy book without enough gems. This used to work, so is it a result of the recent pentagram/axe change?
3) While testing today, Knights crashed for me twice when joining a third player into a duel-to-the-death game that was sitting on the "winner" screen. I tried testing with other game types, no crash, then went back to duel and it wouldn't crash after that. So no idea what's going on there. :o
4) "Fixed bug where you could sometimes walk through a flying axe or bolt if you were moving straight towards it." I think I saw this happen once.
5) It just crashed again while in the middle of the game. I seem to remember someone a few days ago saying it had crashed for them during a game too.

[Stephen]

1) No message when the "last" knight is eliminated in duel-to-the-death type games... This isn't so much of a problem when that's the only way of winning, but when it's a game with wands of securing and other objectives, there would be no way to see which way the game was won.

Good point, made a note of this in Trac (#165).

2) No more message about needing gems when trying to destroy book without enough gems. This used to work, so is it a result of the recent pentagram/axe change?

Well, I just checked in v.19 and it didn't work there. I'm not sure if it ever worked to be honest. Anyway, I added it to Trac as a feature request.

Maybe there should also be a message if you strike the book with the wand, but not in the special pentagram? (Something like "Not in Special Pentagram"?) As sometimes I have noticed players being confused about how to destroy the book. Although maybe it's less necessary now that we have the Quest Requirements window. Hmm.

3) While testing today, Knights crashed for me twice when joining a third player into a duel-to-the-death game that was sitting on the "winner" screen. I tried testing with other game types, no crash, then went back to duel and it wouldn't crash after that. So no idea what's going on there. :o

I managed to reproduce this on a LAN game. Seems like the crash was on the client side; the joining player's copy of Knights just closed itself down, while the players in the game were unaffected. I will investigate.

4) "Fixed bug where you could sometimes walk through a flying axe or bolt if you were moving straight towards it." I think I saw this happen once.

Can't slip anything past you can I? :) Looks like I will have to do some more thorough testing of this.

5) It just crashed again while in the middle of the game. I seem to remember someone a few days ago saying it had crashed for them during a game too.

That sounds bad. Not sure if it is related to 3) or not. I might be able to glean something from the server logs... I will have a look later.

[Moo]

Well, I just checked in v.19 and it didn't work there. I'm not sure if it ever worked to be honest. Anyway, I added it to Trac as a feature request.

Yes this always used to work fine. At least I thought it did. I tried two different old versions just now and it didn't work though... Was I imagining it after all then? :/

Maybe there should also be a message if you strike the book with the wand, but not in the special pentagram? (Something like "Not in Special Pentagram"?) As sometimes I have noticed players being confused about how to destroy the book.

Yeah good idea... It's not like you'd be hitting books with wands at any other time, so a message wouldn't get in the way.

Seems like the crash was on the client side; the joining player's copy of Knights just closed itself down, while the players in the game were unaffected.

Yep

[Moo]

Fullscreen...

[Stephen]

Probably DirectX related.

What's your desktop resolution?

[Moo]

1280x800 like that screengrab, while using laptop screen. It may be that it decided on the resolution earlier when it was connected to a monitor (1680x1050), and tried to use that when going fullscreen later when disconnected. Not sure if I did quit the game between, probably not.
Hah. I ran it in fullscreen 1680x1050, took a screenshot, resized to 1280x800, and it looks just like the first screenshot, so that must be what happened. It probably needs to determine fullscreen resolution when changing to fullscreen rather than when starting the program.

[Stephen]

Ah, yes, I think you are right. My code checks the desktop resolution on startup and doesn't alter it after that. (I assumed the desktop resolution wouldn't change midway through the program... doh!)

Anyway it should be reasonably easy to fix, just determine the resolution each time we go to fullscreen, instead of at startup, like you said.

[Moo]

It seems that being squished in a closing gate doesn't hurt any more (or do anything really).

The mission-hints for deathmatch+wandofsecuring are kind of strange.

[K9]

I noticed the non lethal gate too has been that way for awhile and I'm not sure if your version ever supported death by gate.  (Moo & I had some fun confirming this Saturday ;)

Now that moo brought it up, I do recall a gate squish as being fatal on the Amiga version. I had flash backs to my brother & I switching gates repeatedly in hopes of catching on the right spot (trying to get book, leaning on a gated crystal ball), which did act as a kill.    I am almost certain it killed Zombies too, but will have to boot up Amiga to refresh memory.

I would like to see a knight squish by gate as either a hit point, while allowing to pass, or a kill, or a knight uncontrollably stuck (requiring release or suicide to get out).

Just a few ideas, if you have time to think about it, probably easy tweaks to bring back or add fun to the Squish.  I think it was essentially, same concept as switching a hole underneath the unsuspecting knight, you know how hilarious that is...

Thank you.

[Stephen]

Thanks Moo and K9 for these reports.

About gates -- I used to have it so that closing a gate did some damage (I can't remember how much it was, probably only 1 hit point?), and then if the knight was still alive, he would be pushed away from the gate to the adjacent square (a randomly chosen square if 2 were available).

However, this seems to have stopped working. I do not know why, I will try to look into it sometime.

About deathmatch + wand of securing -- You could say that that is a strange quest :) What should it say, do you think?

[Stephen]

OK, I actually loaded up Amiga Knights yesterday and did some testing of the squishing gates thing. It turns out that having a gate closed on you did kill you outright - even if you were at full health. And also (interestingly) even if you have invulnerability -- maybe that could be considered a bug in the original Knights though?

[Moo]

Hmm, so it never did work in your version? Another thing I incorrectly remember as working then.
Interesting... Maybe when you're invulnerable it should work as it does now - no damage, and you can walk off or stay there. But if the invulnerable wears off while you're still standing on the closed gate, squish ;)

[Stephen]

No, it did work in my version, or it used to in older releases, but has stopped working in more recent releases. In summary:
* In the original Knights it killed you outright.
* In my version (several releases ago) I think it did 1 hp of damage then pushed the knight away from the gate (if still alive).
* In my version (current release) it doesn't do any damage and the knight just stays on the gate square (you can walk off though).

I'd say we should change it to be like the original Knights, apart from the invulnerable thing where your idea sounds reasonable.

[K9]

Thank you for verifying the original Knights.  Glad to know my flashbacks were accurate.

I am ashamed to admit I haven't had time and space to plug in my Amiga, and my big powerful desktop pc that was able to run Cloanto Amiga Forever winUAE emulator at a decent speed has been out of commission from bad drive for years.

It's probably easy fix for the instant kill gate, and I do remember there was a lot of satisfaction in flipping switches back then.  The invulnerability tweak you both suggested will be a welcome improvement.

The only trick left, how hard to code so squish is counted in the kill score for deathmatch player that pulled the switch, or stepped on the pressure plate?  ;D  I'm kidding, if that is too time consuming, not really a big deal to me.

[Moo]

My sword broke!  :o
It still worked as well as usual though. Easily reproducible too.
Edit: And having confirmed it with K9, it does appear like that to other players too.