• Improvements to team games
• New “Deathmatch” quest type
• Dungeon generator is now able to reflect/rotate rooms
• Several bugs have been fixed.

Downloads, and full release notes, are available from http://www.knightsgame.org.uk/download.html.

Unfortunately I did not get time to add Loki’s ogre monster to the game this time; however, I did do a little work on refactoring the monster code, which paves the way for me to add ogres (and perhaps other monster types) in a future release.

About Knights

Knights is a multiplayer dungeon bashing game. Players must explore randomly generated dungeons and compete to be the first to solve various quests. For more information please visit http://www.knightsgame.org.uk/.

This release adds a Random Quest button, as well as fixing a number of bugs. Full release notes are available at the above link.

About Knights

Knights is a multiplayer dungeon bashing game. Players must explore randomly generated dungeons and compete to be the first to solve various quests. For more information please visit http://www.knightsgame.org.uk/.

Note: The changes are server-side only, so if you already have version 016, there is no need to upgrade (unless you want to run your own server of course).

Download it from: http://www.knightsgame.org.uk/download.html

The main new feature is the addition of a new mouse-and-keyboard control system. The idea behind this is to try to make the game a bit more user-friendly for newbies. Although I think there is still more work to do in this area — e.g. a better tutorial might be nice — I think the new controls are a good start and hopefully will allow more players to enjoy the game.

If you have any comments on the new controls, or ideas for improvements, please feel free to comment below.

The old control system is, of course, still available. You can select which control system to use from the Options screen.

Enjoy the release

Next on the agenda is improving modding support (including Lua scripting) so that people can make their own mods for Knights.

New features include:

• Potion and scroll respawning (called “Stuff respawning” on the quest selection screen). This makes potions and scrolls respawn a certain time after they are used. This should be useful for multiplayer games where the potions and scrolls run out very quickly if there are a lot of knights. (Originally suggested by dukey, back when we had the first multiplayer games of Knights…)
• Team Duel to the Death mode. This works like a normal duel to the death, except that knights divide into teams (based on their house colours) and the team that kills all the other team’s knights is the winner.
• Single player games can be played on the server. Other players can observe, so this is useful if one player wants to show other players how to play the game. (Requested by Moo.)
• A speech bubble icon now appears above a knight’s head while they are typing a chat message. (Requested by K9.)

There are also a few bug fixes (see download page for full details). I have also added initial support for Lua scripting but you can’t do very much with this yet — I’m really just laying the foundations for future releases at the moment.

For the next version (016) I want to make some improvements to the control system (this has been discussed here a few times, and also some people on moddb mentioned it), and also continue working on the Lua scripting.

There is also a new release of Knights. You will need to install this before you can use the map editor, as the older versions of Knights are not compatible with the editor.

To use the editor, first download and unzip it. Then run knights_editor.exe.

Before you can start using the editor properly, you have to tell it where Knights is installed. To do this go to File -> Settings and fill in the “knights_data directory” and “Knights exe location” fields. These will usually be set to “C:\Program Files\Knights\knights_data” and “C:\Program Files\Knights\Knights.exe”, unless you have installed Knights to a different location. The program saves these settings so you only have to do this once.

You are now ready to start editing. To load the standard Knights rooms file, go to File -> Open and open the file “knights_rooms.txt” in your knights_data directory. (It is a good idea to make a backup copy of this file first, in case you break anything.) The standard Knights dungeon “segments” will appear on the left hand side of the window. Double click any one to open it for editing.

To place tiles you can click one of the tiles at the bottom of the window and then use the mouse to “paint” this tile onto the map area. You can use either the left or right mouse button to paint (i.e. you can have two different tiles selected at once, one on the left and one on the right button). You can also ctrl-click any tile on the map to select that tile (this may be faster than going down to the palette at the bottom all the time).

In the tile palette you will notice certain tiles have letters attached. The “P” indicates a “live” pentagram (the other pentagram tile without a “P” represents a “dead” pentagram that has no effect when stepped on). The “G” and “N” represent the gnome book and the Necronomicon respectively. “S” indicates the special pentagram, used for destroy book with wand quests (as opposed to a normal pentagram). “L” indicates doors which are “permanently locked” and can only be opened by means of a switch.

By clicking “Switches” you can cause actions to be triggered when a knight walks onto a certain tile or presses a switch. Double click the map to place a switch, or right-click to remove an existing switch. The switch actions have to be entered using a special scripting language which will be the subject of a future blog post.

By clicking “Rooms” you can set the locations of the individual map rooms which make up the segment, or view the existing rooms. Note that the actual dungeon rooms extend one square further in all directions than what is visible in the map editor (so that the rooms overlap by one square in the game itself). To place rooms, drag out a rectangle while holding the left mouse button. The right mouse button is used to delete existing rooms. Note that all rooms must be set properly before the segment can be used — if this is not done properly, the game is likely to crash.

On the File menu you have the usual New, Open, Save options. I recommend saving your work regularly since this is still beta quality software and it could crash at any time

The map editor has Undo and Redo features, available on the Edit menu (or by pressing Ctrl+Z or Ctrl+Y).

On the Segment menu you can add and delete segments to/from the current file. Each segment can be given a name (by editing the box on the right-hand side of the main window); this is not used in the game but is useful for keeping track of segments in the map editor. The segment “category” can also be set; this should be left blank for most segments, but can be set to “gnome_room”, “liche_tomb”, “guarded_exit” or “special_pentagram” for the special mission types. (See the segments at the bottom of the standard knights_rooms.txt file — the ones with names beginning “Z” — for examples of these.)

Last, but not least, there is also a feature where you can test your creations in the actual game. To do this, double click the segment you want to test, then go to Segment -> Test. Assuming you set your Knights exe location correctly, this will start a copy of Knights and put you into your chosen segment. After you’ve finished testing you can either close the Knights window or press ESC – Q to quit in the usual way.

If anyone does give this a try, please send me feedback – both as to any bugs you may find (I’m sure there are plenty) and also any suggested new features or improvements. Also, if anyone wants to send me dungeon rooms they have made, then I would be happy to put them into a future version of Knights!

The main new features in this version are a tutorial, and single player mode. There is also the option to have timed quests, and a number of bug fixes. See the above download link for full release notes.

Have fun!

This is the first stable release to include multiplayer support. The main purpose of the release is to fix (most of) the bugs that were found during the beta test and also to add one or two new things (for example the in-game player list).

The online server has been upgraded and the beta server has now been taken offline.

If you downloaded the multiplayer beta, please don’t use it any more as it will not work properly with the new server. Instead download the latest version.

Many thanks to everyone who helped out with the multiplayer testing.

Enjoy…

The main new features are that the lobby window now pops to the front when somebody connects to the server, and that “observer” support for internet games is fully working. There are also a host of minor fixes and changes which are mentioned on the download page.

Also Kalle Marjola recently contacted me to say that he has changed the licence of the original game to the GNU GPL. I have decided to follow suit and release my version under the GPL as well. This should clarify the licensing situation and also allow Knights to be included in Linux distributions and similar things.

I also plan to use the blog as a means of getting feedback from users, so if you have any comments – whether they are bug reports, ideas for new features, or just general comments – then please do post them here (or drop me an email if you prefer).

Today also sees the release of version 010 of Knights. This is a bug fix release containing the following improvements:

• Fixed bug where controls would sometimes not work properly when playing online.
• Fixed error “writeUbyte: out of range” when non-ASCII characters were typed into the chat box.
• It’s now possible to join a game that already has two players in it. You won’t be able to play or watch the game, but you will be able to chat with the existing players.

Download it from the Knights home page.