Greetings companions of the Edain,
Today we want to show you something a little different from usual. We don’t have any new outposts or faction rework, instead we would like to share some very interesting tweaks we have been making… to the game engine.
The game engine is the bundle of code which takes everything contained in the game files and actually turns it into the game you see on your screen. This powerful file has been a source of many issues over the years as it is completely opaque to us modders. Or rather it was completely opaque. Recently we have been doing work on this and are happy to report that we have made several large breakthroughs.
The Big Ones
Of all the changes we have made, there are two which we are incredibly excited to share with you. We have removed the faction limit. This means that we can add any number of factions with AIs to the game. As a disclaimer, despite this change we are not planning to add an infinite amount of factions, our goal remains to create a diverse set of factions which provide a diverse set of game styles. Nonetheless, in the next patch we will be making Arnor and Belfalas into standalone factions that will be freely playable next to Gondor. These will have an AI and be fully playable online, we have plans to bring additional tweaks to them in the future to give them a more marked difference from Gondor. We hope the Volker Submod team enjoys this patch and look forward to the day all 20 of their factions have a working AI.
The second big change is that we have also increased the FPS limit which means that Edain can now run up to 60FPS. This will not always be the case sadly as despite our best efforts the engine still has some performance issues but this should bring you a much smoother and more modern gaming experience.
You can see the impact of this change in the video below, make sure to select a quality setting that supports 60FPS
(https://media.moddb.com/images/groups/1/1/500/x9gyEwi.png) (https://youtu.be/ATYZSOvPXOA)
The Small Ones
Along these two huge changes we have also included a horde of small tweaks that will greatly improve the Edain experience:
- Errand Riders can now queue units even if at full command points meaning you will no longer lose Errand Riders if you press the button at the wrong time
- Multiple Radagast can no longer be summoned, the buttons no longer disappear after a summon
- All the units from Theodred’s attack posts are now controllable
- Unit’s recruit time, building’s construction time, upgrade’s research time and ability’s cooldown time now appear in the description
- Ambush of the Wood-elves can be activated on a selected group even if some units are not stealthed
- Single player games now save a replay and replays are automatically saved with unique names
- Economy upgrades can now be researched from the Lorien Outpost
- The AI will now wait at least 12 minutes before recruiting some of the stronger heroes for the first time
- The great majority of units can now be upgraded in groups with any other units including Imladris units with mixed weapon upgrades
- Observers can now click menu change buttons, allowing them to see what’s happening in submenus
- Players not participating in a battle in WotR will now be spawned as observers, allowing real time battles
- Maps have unique icons in the map list based on the map type
- Heroes will no longer block the recruitment of units
- WotR campaigns now lock the player factions to avoid accidentally selecting the wrong one
- Buildings at 0% construction start with 10% of their health
- Citadels buttons cannot be used while it is under construction
- Repairing buildings will stop repairing if they take damage
(https://media.moddb.com/images/groups/1/1/500/mKM3xHH.png)
(https://media.moddb.com/images/groups/1/1/500/eUs7pbl.png)
The Squashed Bugs
We’ve also fixed a number of “engine” bugs that were previously impossible to tackle:
- AIs now respect a hero’s recruitment location
- AIs can no longer recruit units from a building under construction
- Recruiting multiple heroes from different buildings will no longer steal your money
- Bridges from the freebuild walls are now properly removed
- All factions can now select custom heroes
- Units will no longer target invisible objects and object they cannot damage
- Animation stutters from the delayfix have been resolved
- Lairs destroyed will rebuilding will now spawn the ruins again
- Passive abilities from citadels, such as Intact Bastion, will continue working after the citadel has been rebuilt
- Castles, camps and outposts will unpack more reliably, reducing chances for missing plots
- AI is less likely to send idle groups near enemy settlements
- Units that mount/dismount will no longer regain health when they do
- Dwarven heroes now correctly exit mineshafts when evacuate all is used
We hope you enjoyed this insight into some of the work we have been doing and we are looking forward to sharing these changes with you in 4.8.6 this year. As always we welcome your feedback, what bug irks you? What mechanic could use some smoothing? Feel free to tell us about all these times we stated a bug could not be fixed due to the engine.