Store Page
I have been spending the last few days setting up the Steam store page. It isn’t live yet, but I can show a screenshot of its current state:
(Click the image to enlarge, or see a higher quality version.)
I think this looks reasonable, but if you have any feedback, leave a comment below.
If I don’t get any feedback in the next few days, I’ll probably just submit this to Valve for review – assuming the review is successful, the page would then go live with a “Coming Soon” release date.
Potion Change
Earlier today I pushed an updated build to Steam which reduced the duration of potions slightly. The reasoning for this change was the following:
A couple of years ago, Knight_Rider requested that I increase the variance of potion times, to make it more like the original game. For example, in the original you could have “dud” potions which lasted only a few seconds. I duly did this, and potions were changed to have a time distribution which was more similar to the original Knights.
However, after playtesting a bit recently, I now think that this change made potions last a bit too long overall. The change made it so that the average potion time was about 80 seconds, but there was a “long tail” so that potions could last up to a maximum of 6 minutes. Given that a Knights quest can be over in 3-5 minutes (for smaller maps at least), I felt this was a bit excessive.
I have therefore tweaked the random distribution so that the average time is now 73 seconds (slightly lower than before), but the “long tail” has been cut out, with the new maximum being 3 minutes. This doesn’t actually make all that much difference in practice (for example, the variance that Knight_Rider wanted is still there, and the “dud” potions still exist), but I do think that removing those extra-long-lasting potions is good for gameplay (e.g. it’s more interesting if you have to find a new potion every now and then, as opposed to having one potion that lasts the whole game), so that’s why I made the change.
NB: I’m talking about “normal” potions (strength, super, invisibility, etc.) here. Some potions like Invulnerability or Poison Immunity have different rules, and those have not been changed.
Steam Trailer Video
The last major thing that we still need is to make a trailer video for the Steam store page. (Steam requires this before you can release the game.) I was thinking of perhaps holding a playtest sometime soon, and recording footage from that, to potentially use in a trailer.
For reference, the Steam trailer requirements are documented here: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/trailer. In summary:
- Trailer should be as high resolution as possible, upto 1920 x 1080.
- 30/29.97 or 60/59.94 fps.
- High bit rate (5,000+ Kbps).
- In .mov, .wmv, or .mp4 file format.
- H.264 video and AAC audio is preferred, but Steam can transcode from many formats.
- 16:9 aspect ratio is preferred (but 4:3 also accepted).
- The trailer should primarily show gameplay as this is what the player will want to see (they want to know what they will be doing in the game and what playing will look/feel like).
Other Stuff
Just so I don’t forget, I will note here that I still haven’t added ZaRR’s Russian translation to the game, but that can be sorted out in due course. I also need to update the credits page, e.g. to set the actual release date, and probably to credit ZaRR and ImpassIve for their help with playtesting the Steam version.
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/.
Knights is coming soon to Steam – if you would like access to the test build, send an email to stephen (at) solarflare.org.uk, and I will send you a Steam key.