Kingdoms News

Welcome, lords and ladies of KINGDOMS!
It's Friday and bugfixing is coming! Before going to the list of changes, make sure you didn't miss big 0.671 performance update, that significally improves performance and add multithreading support to Kingdoms. Thanks to all the players who is actively reporting bugs both using in-game reporter (f11) and game community - your help really matters a lot for the game.

CHANGES

• Slightly changed war modificators by killing settlers or burning the houses - now single attack action can't be less than 5%;
  
• Wars balance: now AI settlement can declare war to another settlement even if settlement-settlement distance parameter is too high;
  
• A line about active quest was placed at the top of dialogue list;
  
  

FIXES

• Fixed performance issue for specs with less than 8Gb RAM, when building masks (for removing grass, tress etc.) could take a long time to calculate and cause fps drops, i.e when house model is being spawned;
  
• Fixed issue when AI couldn't use shops and taverns at far distances;
  
• Fixed issue when AI couldn't properly buy and sell items in shops sometimes;
  
• Fixed issue when AI soldiers didn't properly use watch-towers at far distances;
  
• Fixed issue when player's title wasn't properly displayed when global reputation was above 10k;
  
• Fixed issue in quest "Bring iron axe for farmer" when quest took a sword instead of axe from the inventory when finishing it;
  
• Fixed issue when building big stone tower - big wooden tower carcass could spawn instead;
  
• Fixed issue when pickaxe could disappear from the inventory when trading to someone;
  
• Fixed issue when farmer could stuck at place in the garden collecting vegetables in the loop over and over again;
  
• Now when farmers inventory is full by some reason, he/she can put item in the store and use later when needed;
  
• Fixed issue when AI didn't participate in wars when settlement-settlement distances were too high;
  
• Fixed issue when grass spreading wasn't correctly calculating depending on in-game season sometimes;
  
• Fixed issue when farm-to-farm distance parameter wasn't correctly saved sometimes;
  

FULL LIST OF UPDATES

IMPORTANT
1) Please, feel free to use built-in bug reporter (F11) - it will help development a lot.
2) If something is broken make sure you have verified game files and started new world, remember -KINGDOMS is still EA, I try to make saves compatibility for every new version of the game, but can't guarantee it all the time.
3) The game is still in development, it's NOT finished product, updates are coming 3-4 times a week and that will inevitably cause various issues. Updates for game in development and for finished game - are two absolutely different things, remember that. Game mechanics come and gone, bugs are being fixed and new ones appear all the time. Its a normal thing for development process. If you want to experience KINGDOMS as it was initially designed - smooth, without bugs and full of working mechanics - please, wait till final version will be out.
4) You can support development of KINGDOMS on my official Patreon page.
Thanks for your support, see you very soon!
Cyfieithydd

Welcome, lords and ladies of KINGDOMS!
First of, make sure you didn't miss yesterday big update, that significally improves performance and add multithreading support to Kingdoms. Today I decided to make a bugfixing - previous update was really large and I definitely missed some bugs - but thanks to your reports and active help (Remember to use in-game bug-reporter - f11!) I can fix those. I think Friday's update will be also about bugfixing and since Monday i'll start to add new stuff - I have kept a LOT of cool ideas during working on performance update. But now, to fixes list:

CHANGES

• Default settlement-settlement, settlement-farm and farm-farm distances were changed to 1000m, 450m and 250m;
  
• Now the game can check amount of VRAM and automatically set quality options accordingly when first launching and creating options file;
  
• Grass height and density was changed a bit in order to make vegetables, small rocks and small animals more noticeable;
  
• Color gradient was added to grass texture;
  

FIXES

• Fixed issue when houses build by AI could be set up on another already build house sometimes;
  
• Fixed issue when AI stops to build houses in settlement at some point during long play session;
  
• Fixed issue when AI build house could sometimes be build right in the wall when their position was calculated at the same time with wall position;
  
• Some changes were made in house generation place formulas in order to increase populated world creation speed;
  
• Changes some raycasting logic in settlements scripts in order to increase performance;
  
• Fixed issue when AI could build City Hall too close to the wall sometimes;
  
• Big perk icon was removed from perk description panel in order to make the text more readable;
  
• Critical issue fixed, when settler couldn't build or buy manufactories;
  
• Fixed issue when player could take an unfinished product from the garden and it will be still duplicated depending on gardener perks, now only finished products will be duplicated;
  
• Fixed performance issues with stone walls;
  
• Fixed issue when stone walls had false lighting on their models;
  
• Fixed various collision issues with the walls;
  
• Fixed issue when fps could drop near big stone gates sometimes;
  

FULL LIST OF UPDATES

IMPORTANT
1) Please, feel free to use built-in bug reporter (F11) - it will help development a lot.
2) If something is broken make sure you have verified game files and started new world, remember -KINGDOMS is still EA, I try to make saves compatibility for every new version of the game, but can't guarantee it all the time.
3) The game is still in development, it's NOT finished product, updates are coming 3-4 times a week and that will inevitably cause various issues. Updates for game in development and for finished game - are two absolutely different things, remember that. Game mechanics come and gone, bugs are being fixed and new ones appear all the time. Its a normal thing for development process. If you want to experience KINGDOMS as it was initially designed - smooth, without bugs and full of working mechanics - please, wait till final version will be out.
4) You can support development of KINGDOMS on my official Patreon page.
Thanks for your support, see you very soon!
Cyfieithydd

FOREWORD

Friends, welcome back to KINGDOMS! As you may know from this post last two month I was working on massive performance update that adds multithreading support to the game. During this process I understood that multithreading is only the top of the iceberg and I could try to improve the performance of the game in any possible aspect - textures, meshes, scripts logic, pathfinding, world generation, AI logic etc.etc. The goal was:

• Add multithreading where is is needed to not harm the performance;
  
• Optimize ram usage and remove all possible memory leaks;
  
• Optimize scripts logic - mainly for AI, structures and settlements - to improve performance for high-populated islands;
  
• Optimize spawn system for almost all in-game objects - settlers bodies, animals bodies, houses models and vegetation;
  
• Optimize pathfinding and navigation scripts both for settlers and animals;
  
• Optimize all siege connected assets to improve performance during sieges, especially in large settlements;
  
• Optimize game loading time and saves loading time;
  
• Fix as many bugs as possible on the way;
  
• Possibility to use old saves without any issues;
  

As you can see the amount of work was quite large, but I really hope that the result is 1000% worth it. Now to the points:

MULTITHREADING

This one took good half of the total amount of work. At first I wanted to experiment and understand on practice where multithreading is able to give real performance boosts. After numerous tests the result was: pathfinding and spawning can use multithreading at 100% speed, AI though can use it in some heavy code parts like complicate formula calculations. Of course the result depends on cores you have - 8-cores CPU will give much better result than 2-cores CPU.

SCRIPTS

The next global goal was to clean up all possible game scripts and change their logic in such way so they could use less CPU resources and give the same results. Update() functions were mainly removed and replaces with IENumerators() - this gave significant boosts to settlers, houses and animals scripts. Memory leaking code parts (i.e. with many GetComponent<> calls) were removed, cleaned and rewritten. Scripts are now working asynchronically to remove all performance spikes from the game.
Some systems, that worked individually for each object and took significant amount of performance - like AI finding place for house - are now calculated in separate threads.

BACKGROUND CALCULATIONS

The main key point of Kingdoms is breathing and living world. When playing it you can be sure, that even at very large distance settlers do exact the same thing they do near you - building, trading, crafting, selling, growing stuff at farms etc. For me it was and is to not cheat the player and calculate something in a tricky way, like spawn goods at shops or add settlers to the settlement - even at the distance world should have the same logic as at the very close distance. Most players won't even notice that, but for me it was important to make the world live in any point of the island even of player doesn't see it. And to tell you the truth all these calculation took quite significant part of script calculations. So I revisited all of them to understand where I can improve performance without loosing mechanics working. It was long and quite monotone process but the result is in the game, which is totally fine by me.

LOADING SPEED

Now game uses different compression method and this method increases overall loading time about 80-100%. Another issue was long saves loading, in particular - long roads calculation. This was because game also calculated walls all over the map at start of roads calculation. This was also improved - walls now can spawn much faster and as result it increases save loading about 200%. But roads spawn is not the single spawn system that was changed.

STATIC SPAWN AND MEMORY LEAKS FIXES

Another serious issue that needed to be fixed is periodically memory leaks. In most cases it was inefficient spawn of static objects. That's why the whole spawn system for static (i.e houses, scaffolds etc.) was rewritten from scratch to remove memory leaks. Vegetation was changed as well. First of, now it uses multithreading, plus many connected systems were changed as well in order to increase performance - masks on structures (that remove grass and other objects), masks on roads, all vegetation textures were compressed, distances were tweaked, LODs were optimized, colliders were optimized as well.

AI BODY SPAWN OPTIMIZATION

Previous AI bodies also affected performance in a negative way, causing fps drops there and there sometimes so the goal here was to make it work as fast as possible. Was was changes - body texture and mesh combiner scripts are now multithreaded, meshes were optimized (as a bonus all body customization options are more visible now), textures were compressed.

PATHFINDING OPTIMIZATION

The main thing here is multithreading support. Also some additional features were added to scripts in order to increase performance, i.e. occlusion culling.

SIEGES PERFORMANCE FIXES

As many of you could notice sieges in game affected performance in a very negative way sometimes, so this update will fix it. Many scripts were rewritten here as well, plus optimization of light sources and particles now give significant performance boost.

WHAT'S NEXT?

So, the huge optimization work is over and we're back to usual schedule - three update per week, the next one (0.672) is coming Wednesday. Plus update contains a LOT of bugfixes, I decided not to add them to this announce, they will be added to Wednesday patch note.
Thanks to all the players for support and patience, I really hope that you'll like the result!

FULL LIST OF UPDATES

IMPORTANT
1) Please, feel free to use built-in bug reporter (F11) - it will help development a lot.
2) If something is broken make sure you have verified game files and started new world, remember -KINGDOMS is still EA, I try to make saves compatibility for every new version of the game, but can't guarantee it all the time.
3) The game is still in development, it's NOT finished product, updates are coming 3-4 times a week and that will inevitably cause various issues. Updates for game in development and for finished game - are two absolutely different things, remember that. Game mechanics come and gone, bugs are being fixed and new ones appear all the time. Its a normal thing for development process. If you want to experience KINGDOMS as it was initially designed - smooth, without bugs and full of working mechanics - please, wait till final version will be out.
4) You can support development of KINGDOMS on my official Patreon page.
Thanks for your support, see you very soon!
Cyfieithydd

Welcome, lords and ladies of KINGDOMS!

CHANGES

• Now amount of grass on the terrain fully depends on the season;
  
• Now settlers will bow to the leader instead of just waving when greeting before conversation;
  
• Bowing animations depend on settlers character;
  
• Two handed swords damage was balanced a bit;
  
• Pickaxe damage was balanced a bit;
  
• Pickaxe damage was balanced a bit;
  
• Textures of some city gates were changed to metallic;
  

FIXES

• Fixed issue when player couldn't use map properly (including diplomacy one) when there are too much kingdoms on the map;
  
• Fixed rare issue when bandits tried to talk to the player being very far away;
  
• Fixed issue when player pressed pause during screen fading and could brake game camera and players movement;
  
• Fixed issue when settler could stuck in talking animation sometimes when conversation was already over;
  
• Fixed issue when music in main menu could start playing for a moment even if volume was set to zero;
  
• Fixed issue when players camera could have incorrect position right after landing;
  
• Fixed issue when battle music could start playing even if was disabled in music options;
  
• Fixed issue when player hands were lighted incorrect at night;
  
• Fixed issue when some horses were lighted incorrect at night;
  

FULL LIST OF UPDATES

IMPORTANT
1) Please, feel free to use built-in bug reporter (F11) - it will help development a lot.
2) If something is broken make sure you have verified game files and started new world, remember -KINGDOMS is still EA, I try to make saves compatibility for every new version of the game, but can't guarantee it all the time.
3) The game is still in development, it's NOT finished product, updates are coming 3-4 times a week and that will inevitably cause various issues. Updates for game in development and for finished game - are two absolutely different things, remember that. Game mechanics come and gone, bugs are being fixed and new ones appear all the time. Its a normal thing for development process. If you want to experience KINGDOMS as it was initially designed - smooth, without bugs and full of working mechanics - please, wait till final version will be out.
4) You can support development of KINGDOMS on my official Patreon page.
Thanks for your support, see you very soon!
Cyfieithydd

Welcome, lords and ladies of KINGDOMS!

CHANGES

• Now player can block enemy strikes (both from animals and settlers) using RMB (by default);
  
• Impact animations were added when player is hit when using block;
  
• When block is used it takes stamina, depending on potential damage;
  
• When player's stamina is low all strikes will deliver only 50% of damage;
  
• If stamina is
• Now arrow loading speed and preparing to shoot depends on archer perks (+10%, +25%, +50%, +75%, +100%);
  
• Weapon strikes speed now depends on swordsman perks (+10%, +25%, +50%, +75%, +100%);
  
• Energy taken after using a sword now depends on swordsman perks (-30, -25, -20, -15, -10, -5);
  
• Stamina now regenerates much slower when in block - 20% from usual speed;
  
• Quest "Bring vegetable pie for hungry settler" was added;
  

FIXES

• Fixed issue when player's stamina wasn't properly decreased when swinging a weapon;
  
• Fixed issue when pickaxe didn't deal any damage;
  
• Fixed issue when player could accidentally hit someone after saving;
  
• Fixed false "% to win siege description" in game options;
  
• Fixed issue when settlers swords weren't properly visualized sometimes and all settler have default small iron dagger of save form etc.;
  
• Fixed issue when player could hit someone just by standing nearby;
  

TRANSLATIONS

• Now player will see available languages when game is launched for the first time;
  
• French translation was updated;
  
• Russian translation was updated;
  

FULL LIST OF UPDATES

IMPORTANT
1) Please, feel free to use built-in bug reporter (F11) - it will help development a lot.
2) If something is broken make sure you have verified game files and started new world, remember -KINGDOMS is still EA, I try to make saves compatibility for every new version of the game, but can't guarantee it all the time.
3) The game is still in development, it's NOT finished product, updates are coming 3-4 times a week and that will inevitably cause various issues. Updates for game in development and for finished game - are two absolutely different things, remember that. Game mechanics come and gone, bugs are being fixed and new ones appear all the time. Its a normal thing for development process. If you want to experience KINGDOMS as it was initially designed - smooth, without bugs and full of working mechanics - please, wait till final version will be out.
4) You can support development of KINGDOMS on my official Patreon page.
Thanks for your support, see you very soon!
Cyfieithydd