After a “month off” in January, I have been back to working on the upcoming Steam version of Knights. Here is what was accomplished so far this month:
- Restart game feature: You can now press ESC then R in-game to vote to restart (i.e., end the current game and go back to quest selection). A majority of players must vote for this to happen. This provides a way to “abort” a quest without everyone having to actually leave and then rejoin the game.
- Chat filtering: Chat now passes through Steam’s servers, and offensive words are filtered out, according to your Steam settings.
- Localization: The in-game UI now supports Unicode characters, and almost all in-game strings are now in the localization.txt file. This enables the game to be translated to other languages – maybe some people will volunteer to do translations 🙂 (I think ZaRR already mentioned he might be willing to help with a Russian translation.)
- The LAN Games option has been added back into the Steam version. I also reworked it somewhat, e.g. the LAN discovery code now uses mDNS instead of broadcast packets (this makes it more likely to work with modern routers and firewalls).
- The Connect to Server game option was removed.
- I did think about keeping this option, but in the end, in view of things like the Online Safety Act (in the UK), and increasing focus on online safety generally, I don’t think it makes sense to support game servers run by random people on the Internet any more. The main venue for online multiplayer Knights, going forward, should really be Steam. This allows users to take advantage of Steam’s safety features like user blocking, chat filtering, user reporting, etc., which should hopefully mean a safer experience for everybody. (Of course, the Knights community has been very good and completely non-toxic in the past, but we don’t know what will happen when we open the floodgates to Steam players 🙂 )
- Some bug fixes were done, e.g. I fixed a bug where the display would not update properly after a player was eliminated in a wand of securing quest. Also some extra security checks were added to the network code.
The remaining things that need to be done are:
- Mods: I want to at least have a plan for supporting Knights mods (through Steam Workshop) in the future. There were a lot of good mods made by the community back in the day (rat rider, spiders, teleport wands, etc) and it would be nice to make these available again. This might not be in the release on day one but it should be part of the plan.
- Tool tips: I had an idea to add tool tips to the UI. This might e.g. help explain to new players what all the different quest options do. (Especially since no-one reads game manuals any more, so we do need some way for players to find out what the options do!)
- Bug fixes: There are still lots of bugs and other small tweaks that need to be dealt with. For example, I’m currently looking at a bug with non-English keyboard layouts that ZaRR mentioned to me.
- Playtest: Probably we should get a few people together for a playtest, in a couple of months time, once I have fixed all the bugs I already know about 🙂
- Steam store page: I still need to come up with text and images for the Steam store and library pages. I’m also not sure if Steam requires you to include a video, or if it’s optional – will have to look into that.
But, to summarize, it’s mostly just small tweaks and bug fixes to be done at this point. I guess it will take around 1-2 months to get these done, but we’ll see how it goes. Exciting times ahead!
About Knights
Knights is a multiplayer game in which players must explore randomly generated dungeons and race to complete various quests. For more information please visit https://www.knightsgame.org.uk/.