Rising Lords News

1.0.3 (February 6)

Dear Lords and Ladies,

our first bigger patch since 1.0 release. We also added the promised changes to difficulty and saving:

- added new more relaxed difficulty mode. next update will bring an option to change the difficulty when restarting a chapter
- changed the autosave system to show the beginning of the last 3 turns

New:
- Added'confirm' dialog to deleting saves
- continue game button back to first level of main menu instead of having to click "singleplayer" first
- Added gamepad and hot key support for all <<< and >>> buttons. RB + LB, or arrow keys.
- Added audio slider for intro video
- Added video setting for MMB + LMB + RMB to grab and pan the camera.
- Added Node reference for xp in change general node
- Added gamepad hints to multiplayer buttons and hints for multiplayer lobbies.
- Added gamepad RB + LB functionality to multiplayer buttons to cycle through <<< + >>>.
- Added missing localization credits
- Added ability to skip intro video w/ right-press (or east-face button)

Fixes:
- Fixed challenge mode entries not going to global highscore for some players
- Fixed inventory not always saving correctly
- Fixed rare merchant crash caused by an unknown tile or a tile without data.
- Fixed pause menu opening when ending wall mode by pressing escape key.
- Fixed rare bathhouse crash caused by force_singlelayer.
- Fixed game menu sometimes not properly 'enabling' in multiplayer
- Fixed numerous card-related text overflows in chinese / japanese
- Fixed 'Baltic' map showing up as 'Map Name'
- Fixed weird 'unit placement' click detection on ultra-wide monitors
- Fixed smithy icons sometimes floating incorrectly on ultra-widescreen monitors
- Fixed broken 'tips' page font w/ asian languages
- Fixed some connection issues with direct connection due to IP junk
- Fixed 'send 500 wheat' tooltip showing up in all game modes
- Fixed happiness tooltips report being inaccurate (food diversity, beggars, negative gold)
- Fixed upgrade being on smith lvl2 instead of demolish.
- Fixed smith when upgrading having another upgrade, rather than demolish like the other structures.
- Fixed fog sometimes not revealing / hiding properly w/ story tree nodes
- Fixed manors not rendering correctly in LQ mode
- Fixed 'end turn' button flicker in campaign map 4
- Fixed mountains in the fog not tiling correctly
- Fixed 'white flash' game start graphical bug
- Fixed 'invisible workers' bug w/ LQ graphics mode
- Fixed invalid wallslot id crash & battle 'double arrows'
- Fixed non-instanced snap points out-of-view not being ignored (controller)
- Fixed soft-lock in load when pressing 'back' over 'play game' button
- Fixed 'merge armies' titles not substituting dictionary look-ups
- Fixed merge army menu not releasing click lock at game close via esc menu

Changes:
- speed improvement to chunk update and render timing
- performance improvement for story missions
- performance improvements on consoles (battle + scenario)
- balancing adjustments to campaign levels
- minor localisation update (for the new entries mainly)
- Modified multiplayer Next + Prev buttons to be <<< + >>> for consistency.
- added controller tips w/ campaign camera movement to reduce 'flicker'
- QOL update w/ unit placement joystick snapping in battle
- connecting a controller now auto-switches prompts to console
- updated a few story images

AI:
- Added AI system to want wool for light armor for an abundance of spears. This solves AIs that don't want livestock from having a forest of spears with no light armor.
- Added PARA.spears_to_light_per to tweak the percentage.
- Modified wealth victory AI to only consider land regions rather than all regions.
- Modified AI to not need to buy wool if it has more sheep than the abandon amount instead of allowing for any amount of sheep.
- Fixed AI buying iron from merchant thinking it was wool.
- Fixed AI not eating wheat when it didn't have enough to plant, but still needed to harvest.
- Added AI to edit big armies that are just sitting around in some cases.
- Fixed unknown army strengths not getting set when AI establishes if it should edit an army.
- Fixed AI bailing flooded fields that had nothing of value to be saved while still bailing empty fields if there is only one clear field.
- Reduced max percentage of peasants in AI armies

known issues for the next patch:
- sandbox AI treaties sometimes not rejected correctly
- a few remaining display issues with chinese font
- automatic battles happening in rare cases where regions are oddly shaped or too small

Dear Lords and Ladies,

I wanted to take the time to thank everyone who has played Rising Lords over the last days after our 1.0 release and to talk about the current state of affairs and give a little personal insight.

Initially, Rising Lords was a sandbox game designed for short skirmishes against friends or AI, and the feedback was very positive! We then decided to also add a story campaign to give our single-player focused player base the chance to dive even deeper into the fictional medieval world we had created, with an intriguing plot to follow. We put a lot of love into it with all the story, quests, artwork, etc. and played it with beta testers to balance the difficulty.
While there are many players who have already completed the story campaign and enjoyed it very much, we have also noticed some frustration with it.

Mainly, although expressed in different words, it boils down to the fact that some of you find the story campaign too challenging and would like the gameplay to be more relaxed, with less trial and error and more freedom in making strategic decisions.

While the feedback from our beta testers did not reflect that, we have realized that this does not necessarily apply to everyone, as our player base has grown and broadened and many of the testers were experienced players.

To address this, we are currently working on an alternate difficulty mode that will modify the challenge of the current campaign to give players the freedom to choose how they want to experience the game.

Another issue that has been mentioned a lot was the autosave system, where the current and last turn saves are usually AFTER a battle, while the old turn autosave is not far enough back to make a meaningful difference. You can always save and reload manually or restart the mission from the pause/in-game menu, but we understand that this was not how users expected it to behave and are changing automatic saves to the respective beginning of the last 3 scenario turns. This means that autosaves will no longer happen during battles, directly after a battle or in the middle of a turn. We have made this decision based on your extensive feedback, which has taught us that you mainly use autosaves to reload previous game states, rather than using them to resume the game after a break.

We will be implementing these two major changes as quickly as possible, along with some minor additions and bug fixes based on your feedback.


Let us know what you think!
Best regards,
Chris

Rising Lords is just the sort of game I'm most vulnerable to: historical strategy with the simple setup of a tabletop wargame and the quality of life and large numbers that are only possible when a computer does the math and moves the pieces for you. What I especially like about it, though, is that it's colorful—which might be one reason I can actually get people to play it with me...
Read more.

1.0.1.488 (January 20)

Fixes:
- fixed a few issues with savegames that some users had and added a warning not to end the game during saving/processing.
- fixed tutorial getting stuck in battle when taking more units than advised
- fixed 'health' tool-tip locking in Polish
- fixed a potential building/farming crash during AI turn
- fixed tokens / workplaces not respecting 'blocking' gui elements, such as event cards
- fixed battle zoom for gamepads.
- added a new file to allow pre-release chapter 1/2 savegames to continue to the new chapters
- fixed japanese language crash on upgrade radials
- fixed 'pickup' hint cards showing in turn 2 of tutorial instead of turn 1
- fixed a potential problem in Mission 3 that lead to a defeat once one of the regions was lost
- fixed a potential problem in Mission 3 that lead to a rebellion in Havenhands counties

Changes:
- Added language support to the battle meter.
- Modified battle card cycling with gamepad to be with triggers and not the bumpers.
- Modified gamepad battle hints to not show when displaying battle information boxes.
- Added battle zoom gamepad hint.
- intro video now respects music & master volume settings
- Added hot keys to end round (F4 or End).

Lords and Ladies, the time has finally come: Rising Lords 1.0 is now available! After almost four years of passion and hard work, we have left Early Access!

First and foremost, we want to express our heartfelt thank you for your invaluable feedback and unwavering trust. Your support has been the driving force behind our journey, and we are so grateful for the incredible community that has formed around our game. Together, we've built something special, and we couldn't have done it without you.
Here's to the future and many more adventures together! 🛡️❤️

To celebrate this special day, we're offering a two-week launch discount of 15%, available from today until the 1st of February! So if you've been hesitating to join us in Early Access, this is your chance to step into the medieval world of Aubelin.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]The saga unfolds[/h3]

Get ready for a major content update to our Story Campaign, following the story of our protagonist, Tankred of Tannheim! Embark on a journey filled with intriguing characters, unexpected plot twists, and challenging quests that will test your strategic skills. Discover new twists and turns as you navigate through four all-new chapters and see the impact of your decisions! These chapters conclude the journey of Tankred of Tannheim, so get ready to discover the next phase of our saga!



[h3]Setting the tone[/h3]

Our new intro video tells the story of Aubelin, immersing you even further into this deep medieval world we've created. It will now play on startup, so look forward to it next time you play the game!

[h3]Achievements![/h3]

We know that some of you have been waiting for this opportunity to hunt for Achievements in our game! With their varying degrees of difficulty, we can't wait to see how long it will take you to complete all twelve of them!

[h3]... and more![/h3]

Of course, our journey is far from over!
Below you will find detailed notes outlining the various changes and fixes that have been made in this patch.

Over the coming days and weeks, we'll be working hard to iron out any bugs and tweak things based on your valuable feedback. At the same time, we may also have some other things in the works... Stay tuned for more exciting updates and in the meantime, join our Community Discord!




[h2]1.0.0 (January 18, 1.0 release!) [/h2]

[h3]New[/h3]

• complete story campaign - Guide Tankred of Tannheim through troubled medieval times in Aubelin!
  
• Intro Video explaining the past story of Aubelin!
  
• Achievements!
  

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• fixed crash when conceding while the game was processing AI movement or saving
  
• fixed auto-resolve if castle is causing 'region split'
  
• fixed region re-name not displaying textbox
  
• fixed ultra-wide monitors soft-locking on smaller battle maps
  
• fixed cursor double-jumping in-battle
  
• fixed some mission task depth oddities
  
• fixed rare inability to use merchant due to incorrect 'not your region' check
  
• fixed merchant menu 'sell' tab rendering white instead of black
  
• fixed merchant assets rendering on top of mission story
  
• fixed 'end turn' joystick hint off-center
  
• fixed battle gamepad hints having the potential to be small.
  
• fixed regression that broke d-pad support in custom battle
  
• fixed tool-tips covering currently hovered field upgrade button
  
• fixed tooltips spawning @ hardware mouse pos instead of virtual in some cases
  
• fixed controller 'back button' in skill-tree confirm dismissing all changes
  
• fixed 'over HUD' tool-tips not being triggered sometimes
  
• fixed controller shortcuts signals incorrectly being attached
  
• fixed 'falcon' not giving extra spy card
  
• fixed added numerous missing hover sounds
  
• fixed crash due to traveler figure missing dest_x or dest_y values
  
• fixed crash when no valid tiles for wanderer to move to
  
• fixed potential crash w/ obj_unitPath (battle related)
  
• fixed 'set server' menu missing currently active server
  
• fixed adjusting army sliders not resetting d-pad auto-snap
  
• fixed event cards not dismissing when menu opens
  
• fixed a number of cases where joystick mouse jumps to top-left corner
  
• fixed 'shared general' audiogroup volume linked to music instead of SFX
  

[h3]Changes[/h3]

• 'send food' tutorial tool-tip now shows in regular game modes
  
• localisation update
  
• removed waypoint debugging info display on map save
  
• removed 'early access' and FPS debug test from all builds
  
• tooltips dismissed when story book opens
  
• removed irrelevant controller tips when placing general
  
• reworked AI behaviour when defending for normal+ difficulty (use walls and castles more, especially ranged units)