The Last Seven Days #2 - A Warlord's Journal news

Update 03/08/2011: "The Ides of March"
Wow, where was I online today? My net was down this morning but it's up now. I felt like the world moved without me. Anyways I greatly added a $hitload of new features today. I can't even go into detail just yet. It basically consist of buildings which are almost done. I'm making sure each building is assigned there proper functions. Also getting units has again been revamped and overhauled. Remember how you used to upgrade troops using stables, ranges, and barracks? Well that system has been kicked out for an even better one! Getting Troops can work like income now. I'm not gonna go into too much detail just yet though.

On the other side of that I've made friendly dueling harder to get engaged in. Also there won't be a set variable of 300 or 150 to duel a lord or a king, it'll be based on how much renown they have now. Isn't that neat-o??? Anyways I've added a ton of crap I can't remember that's never been done before. So you all will be excited. I've also balanced out a few items and weapons. But I haven't gotten to the armor just yet. One of the forum members "Cathedralsqaure" has given me an item_troops.txt where he balanced out the prices of the items for me. Cool right? Thanks Cathedralsqaure!

On the flip-flop side of all that the Beta Team hasn't started testing yet because I'm busy adding new code. This is just that project that never ends. As soon as I think about something cool to do I've got to do it right then and there or else I won't get to the porting. I can't believe it's only Tuesday it feels like the end of the week. So that tells me that I'm making a lot of progress in very little time sweet! I strongly believe that I and the beta team should be done by the Ides of March... creepy right? It works as a double quote because this mod is called the Sword of Damocles and Julius Caesar was stabbed in the back by one on the 15th... Well that wasn't the name of the weapon that he got stabbed with. Read up on your history look it up. It can happen to you!

Update 03/08/2011: "When The Throne Is Obsolete"
I have made a lot of changes to the game; so much that I can say that 2.4 as Obsolete. I've been really chatting up with my Beta Team so I haven't been able to type in the public LOG/Journal as much. I'm actually glad that the hype in the forum has died down. I like the hype but it's hard to focus on coding if you get more than 3 messages every 30 mins. Today was actually the first time I was in the zone. I Overhauled a lot of previous SOD Features... now that I think about it I have to update the features list. I have actually lost track of some of the features that are in-game. I've improved on a lot of things, even in areas where players can abuse the game system.

Actually to be honest with you, my goal for 3.0 was just to port SODs Population System; well I actually finished that a few days after I released 2.5b, and it was actually easier to do then I thought. So you can say that when 3.0 comes out, that 2.4 was so 10 years ago, and that I should change the surname of the title for the game or drop the words "Test Combatant." but to be even more honest with you 3.0 is still a test. When we get to the actual story of the game it'll be so different from the TC it'll almost be like playing two variants of the mod. The campaign and the fully blown sandbox. Although the campaign will still give you your freedom.

Now to the good stuff. I'm gonna save buildings for later even though I've finished them I'll need another tree diagram for that. You all wanted it and the faith troops are back! You all will be able to get those Zealots and faith troops you've always wanted. They also have an over all stat boost making them the some of the strongest troops in the game. Being a king is so much more fun then it used to be. Who cares about a sword (Impending Doom) hovering over your throne. I've brought back the recruiting of lords but this time I've OVERHAULED that system instead of porting it. See the one from SOD Gold was actually very vulnerable (meaning the player could abuse the system not the player being abused) to cheating. I'm not gonna spill the details on it just yet I'll let you find out how it works. I have actually overhauled just about everything from SOD Gold. I took those systems from Gold they had and either turned it to something I thought was a good idea or made it even better then it was before.

I was glad to get rid of SODs old court and to replace them (or semi add them) to the diplomacy mods court. Actually I can't even say that this mod uses Diplomacy anymore. A great percentage of the diplomatic system has been overhauled now. I even fixed a few issues that were in the code (Just some mishaps nothing to big). The whole court has been improved in some way and the buildings you can add or just the freaking extra layers of cake on top of icing piled with more icing on top of that. I've also came to realize some of the annoyances people have as part of the path-finding speed on the map; everyone does have a good point. It'd be nice to zip around the map while holding down the fast forward button.

That's this mods only main issue. Everything is fine and dandy but I need to lower the bandit spawn limits near to the native values. I'm pretty sure that's the root to my map speed problems, because at the beginning, for about a month into a new game I'm happily zipping around the map at high speed until the month is over and it starts to receive lag again. I will improve speeds a bit more before the mod is released. I'll also end up making speed & stability options for the player too. That way if people can't play the game due to the high-res map textures then they can replace them with ones half that size. I have some other options available too like decreasing musket smoke amount and things of the like.

UPDATE 03/12/2011: "The Beta is Better"
I'm glad that the mod is in the beta testing stage now. Now that a majority off the tough coding has been done I can continue on adding more features that I want to put in game. I can also focus on doing the more important things like multiplayer support now. Doing that will be a huge accomplishment. I haven't forgot about the mercenaries at all, I've already have came up with some very great ideas. I'm gonna take the contract system and modernize it PMC style. It'll be sweet. Still the only thing in my way before publicly releasing 3.0 is making sure all the scenes are set for the castles and villages. I think that setting the scenes for the town took me one and a half days to do. It was mostly just busy work and constant repeating but it isn't fun to do. I'd rather come up with new scripts but alas' it must be done,! It annoys me when I take over the same castle scene in every game I play. I came up with the building diagram but it's huge! So I don't think I'll be posting it anytime soon. I'd rather for everyone to find out what does what when 3.0 is released...