As planned and mentioned before – Alpha is due to be released early this summer. Hopefully around June or so (however schedule tends to slip). Let’s talk about it.
Alpha version of the product is like a proof of concept – showcasing the various ideas that are mean tot be in the final version. There can be several Alphas focused on different ideas. Basing on feedback, some ideas might change, some get dropped. Alpha generally should be quite unstable and could cause crashes or even data loss.
Knights Province Alpha 1 is going to be very raw and have a limited scope. It will be very far from the goal we aim at in all aspects (gameplay, design, graphics, features and etc).
What there will be (for those who are lucky to avoid bugs and crashes):
- the game is somewhat playable. Meaning that you can build a town, train troops and defeat the enemy.
- functional built-in Map Editor. You can create a map and play it.
What will be missing:
- many game mechanics (including unit navigation, fighting and many others)
- maps
- balance
- graphics
Content will also be very limited:
- there are just a few house models (with not a single one complete) and
- a single unit model used as a template
- terrain has only a few objects on it (yet with a couple of growing trees)
- there is no music and sound effects
- many in-game menus are missing and/or incomplete and non-functional
- only English translation
Keeping all of that in mind, is there anything special that you would like to see in Alpha 1?
Multiplayer. Although I am afraid I know the answer will be “sorry but not yet”. However, if you ever make an alpha specifically focused on people giving feedback about the production chain etc., it will probably need some form of multiplayer (even 1v1)
I’m thinking Alpha 1 will be more about answering the question: “does it even work on 50% of PCs?”
MP code is mostly there, just in a state it was in 2013, but since many other parts has changed it may be very unstable.
I hope there will be at least a dozen of Alphas focused on different areas of the game, MP being added somewhere in between too.
Is alpha for everyone to download? Or just for specific people?
I think public.
When?
Hopefully by the end of this month. However I’m going through major real-life changes that might delay it by a month or two.
I think that building and fighting with enemy is enough for Alpha 1 so work more on codes for us being able to play the game 🙂
I think Krom’s plan is to even separate that.
For example:
1> Building demo
2> Economics demo
3> Ai demo
4> etc…
…
That would also make sense, reading through his post.
Also for debugging purposes that would make sense. 😛
Fighting is one of the parts that could be implemented later on, as building, economics and AI logic are always a rather interesting difficulty by themselves.
Yeah, we have tried that scheme before and it proved to be working well 🙂
I don’t know how feasible it is, but I like games where I can generate a random map as that gives infinite replayability.
I also like games with an option for an economic victory as well as a battle victory – I might be in the minority here, as I’m a girlie and not so fond of too much fighting!
Actually not that bad of an idea in my opinion..
And no I am not a girl. 😛
Economic victories… Could you describe it in greater detail perhaps, so everyone could form a proper idea of how exactly you meant that?
Some example scenarios would be amazing. 🙂
Heya!
Well, if you are searching for idea as “Economic Victory”, why won’t you just take the old models?
Like “Build this expensive Thing, and you will win”
Something like a big Temple
If you need a specific examples for some campaign scenarios…
1# Build this “Statue” or (whatever you wann ) in a certain time…
2# Send X value of Resources to a King
….
There are a lot of those ideas that ( i’m sorry ) you can just take from other games. So you don’t have to invent a bycicle. Of course those 2 examples are simple and boring. But well, you can take the main idea “Collect/Build/Survive…” or whatever and than just describe your own background history 🙂 ( Of course we can do it all together, as community. )
Hopefully, new “Objectives” display will make goals tracking a lot easier now 🙂
Seems that i’ve missed the infos ’bout Objectives (._. )
There is a map in K&M Remake that has economical victory (Florescence One), so I think in KP there could be maps like that, just with implemented proper scripts 🙂
Yep, scripts will be there 🙂
Random map generation could be troublesome. Hopefully KP built-in map editor will be user-friendly enough, so we don’t have need for random maps 😉
There will be dynamic scripting, so map makers could create a wide variety of winning conditions. We are also looking into making the script goals and status display more handy.
You can tell when it will be expect?
I’m very busy with real-life issues. Hopefully next month.