Wyrmsun (about time I made a topic about it here!)

[Andrettin]

Wyrmsun 2.0.0 has been released! Besides a lot of new content being added to the game, with this new version the game is now free on Steam as well (it had of course always been free to download on GitHub and etc.), with cosmetic-only DLCs being sold instead.

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- 2.0.0 Changelog
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* Abilities
- Added "Puncture" learnable active ability (icon by Exidelo), available for units capable of making melee thrusting attacks.

* Buildings
- Improved Teuton smithy name generation.
- Added a Brising-specific version of the Dwarven Smithy (+50% Time Efficiency).
- Brising Smithies now have their own graphics (if the player has the Brising Faction Flair DLC).
- Brising Mead Halls and Bastions now have their own graphics (if the player has the Brising Faction Flair DLC).
- Added proper name generation for lumber mills.
- Dwarven Smithies now have proper names in the Dwarven language.

* Civilizations
- Added many new component words for Germanic settlement, province and smithy name generation.
- Names for smithies, provinces and settlements are now generated for Goblins.

* Factions
- Added support for factions using a different language than their civilizations (for name generation).
- The England and Scotland factions now use English for proper name generation (for units, settlements, provinces, mountains, hills, smithies and lumber mills).
- The Saxon Tribe and related factions now use Old Saxon for proper name generation (for units, settlements, provinces, mountains, hills, smithies and lumber mills).
- The Frisian Tribe and related factions now use Old Frisian for proper name generation (for units, settlements, provinces, mountains, hills, smithies and lumber mills).
- The Suebi, Marcomanni, Alamanni, Bavarian Tribes and their related factions now use Old High German for proper name generation (for units, settlements, provinces, mountains, hills, smithies and lumber mills).
- The Angle Tribe now uses Old English for proper name generation (for units, settlements, provinces, mountains, hills, smithies and lumber mills).
- The Frank Tribe and related factions now use Old Frankish for proper name generation (for units, settlements, provinces, mountains, hills, smithies and lumber mills).
- Renamed the Skjoldung Tribe (Germanic) to Skeldung Tribe.

* Grand Strategy
- Fixed issue which caused custom heroes to not be placed in the province properly after the "On the Vanaquisl" event mission.
- Fixed issue which caused the screen to be partially blackened after certain event missions.
- Fixed issue which allow players to save/load scenarios from within a grand strategy battle by using the save/load hotkeys.
- Fixed issue which required the attacked province to have a dock in order to conduct an attack overseas, rather than requiring the province from which the troops were being sent to have a dock.
- Fixed issue which caused workers to not generate labor after loading a saved game.
- Fixed issue which caused rebellions to happen with no rebel units present, when the population of the rebelling province was too low.
- Added new tooltip to explain how to move units and attack provinces.
- Fixed issue with terrain tile name generation which caused an occasional crash when starting a grand strategy game.
- Added new tooltip to explain how to attack over water.

* Heroes
- An error message is now given when an invalid custom hero name is entered (if it has an invalid character or contains only spaces).

* Items
- Scrolls can now drop from town hall and stronghold type buildings (scrolls always have a property associated with them).
- Added "Suebi Allegiance" spell for scrolls, which allows Teuton units to transform into their Suebi faction-specific equivalents (if any).
- Added "Detachment" spell for scrolls, which allows a faction-specific unit to transform into its civilization's equivalent unit.
- Added "Forgetfulness" spell for scrolls, which allows retraining a unit.
- Added "Frank Allegiance" spell for scrolls, which allows Teuton units to transform into their Frank faction-specific equivalents (if any).
- Rings and amulets now always have a property.
- Scrolls can be generated with literary works inscribed on them. Reading these will provide a very small (but persistent) bonus to your character.
- Added Fafnismol (literary work, scroll) (+1% damage bonus vs. dragons) (dropped by dwarven Mead Halls and Bastions).
- Added Reginsmol (literary work, scroll) (+1% backstab bonus) (dropped by dwarven Mead Halls and Bastions).
- Added Alvissmol (literary work, scroll) (+1 mana) (dropped by dwarven Mead Halls and Bastions).
- "Right-click to use" no longer appears in an item's popup if the item cannot be currently used (i.e. if the unit doesn't fulfill the conditions for a scroll to be used).
- Fixed issue which caused the stats change of one of the equipped rings to not be displayed properly when two rings are equipped.
- Added Hildebrandslied (literary work, scroll) (+1% critical strike chance) (dropped by teuton Rathauses and Burgs).
- Added Brising Round Shield.
- Added Frankish Spatha.
- The unique sword Gram is now a Frankish Spatha.

* Map Editor
- A tooltip now appears when hovering the mouse over a unit type's icon in the editor.
- Added support for defining map-specific words (for name generation).

* Miscellaneous
- Added support for damage bonus vs. dragons. This damage bonus affects wyrms, and will affect any other draconic creatures added later to the game.
- Fixed an issue which caused unit/building proper names to overlap with other parts of the interface if a word in them was too long.
- Fixed an issue which caused the player to be able to see others' buildings on the minimap if the player destroyed their own town hall.
- The Brising Clan (dwarf) now has a faction-specific icon for the dwarven level 1 shield (if the player has the Brising Faction Flair DLC).
- The Custom Game "Advanced Squads" option now includes two cavalry units in each squad.
- Fixed issue which sometimes caused the game to crash when exiting a scenario.

* Modding
- Added support for redefining civilizations and factions.

* Multiplayer
- Fixed a potential desync cause due to units' facing being randomly set when created through a random number generating function that isn't synchronized.

* Music
- Added 42 new music pieces by Marcelo Fernandez (http://www.marcelofernandezmusic.com).
- Wyrmsun now features adaptive music pieces, which change according to context (i.e. the music becomes more intense when a battle occurs) (by Marcelo Fernandez) (https://github.com/marcelofg55/oaml).

* Quests
- The Home of the Boii quest (Teuton) now grants 4 tech points instead of 3.
- The Treasures of Svarinshaug quest (Dwarf) now grants 3 tech points instead of 2.
- The Necklace of the Brisings quest (Dwarf) now grants 3 tech points instead of 2.
- Fixed issue which prevented the player from winning The Binding of Grafvitnir quest (Dwarf) if Grafvitnir was killed.

* Terrain
- Overhaul of the forest tilesets (by Exidelo).

* Units
- When right-clicking on a tile-based resource, workers who are already carrying the resource at maximum capacity will now return goods and then begin harvesting.
- When right-clicking on a unit-based resource, workers who are already carrying the resource at maximum capacity will now begin harvesting after returning goods.
- Frank Ritters now have their own portrait (if the player has the Frank Faction Flair DLC).
- Added Teuton Speerkampfer (icon by Jinn).
- Added a Frank-specific version of the Teuton Speerkampfer.
- Added a Frank-specific version of the Teuton Krieger.
- Added a Brising-specific version of the Dwarven Miner.
- Frank Speerkampfers have their own portrait (if the player has the Frank Faction Flair DLC).
- Frank Kriegers have their own portrait (if the player has the Frank Faction Flair DLC).
- Brising Miners have their own portrait (if the player has the Brising Faction Flair DLC).
- Workers will now look to see if any trees have regrown closer to their drop-off point when going to harvest lumber.
- Improved worker pathfinding checks when choosing which objects to harvest.
- Added Goblin Swordsman.
- Added Dwarven Guard (icon and shield by Jinn, spear-wielding arm animation by badbuckle).
- Cavalry units, siege weapons, transport ships and gryphon riders now require 2 food instead of 1.
- Cavalry units now have 9 evasion instead of 10.
- Workers can now use mines owned by allies.
- The Ritter graphics now have improved shading (modification by Jinn).
- New Teuton iron shield unit graphics (by Jinn).
- Brising Transports now have their own graphics (if the player has the Brising Faction Flair DLC).
- Added Goblin Headhunter (upgrade of the Goblin Archer) (icon by Jinn).

* Upgrades
- Update to the Spatha's icon (by Exidelo).
- Added Long Spear and Pike upgrades for spearmen (icons by Vladislav "iDreamRunner").

[KroArtem]

That's a pity you released new version w/o fixing already existing bugs (both under Wyrmsun and Wyrmgus repositories).

[Andrettin]

That's a pity you released new version w/o fixing already existing bugs (both under Wyrmsun and Wyrmgus repositories).

I did fix a lot of bugs. The ones I didn't is because I unfortunately couldn't reproduce them. In any case, the game is stable and there should be no major bugs.

[KroArtem]

Yup, I know you fixed dozens of bugs, at least half of them were reported by me, so yes I know you did a lot of work. However, you haven't replied in those tickets saying it's not reproducible. I decided not to post more issues and wait till already opened would be closed, for example #75 and #54 in Wyrmsun's repo.

I don't blame you, just thought such a big release should be as polished as possible.

[c_xong]

There's always a balance to strike between fixing bugs and working on other parts of the game. If the bug isn't a showstopper, or it only affects 1% of users... why not spend the energy on making new content? But to tip the balance more in favour of fixing bugs, it's super helpful to include the following:

- What is happening
- How to reproduce it 100% of the time
- What you expect to happen

Because otherwise the burden is on the developer to try to reproduce the bug, or brainstorm a possible solution, or try to read the reporter's mind about what they think is wrong. If you do all this then it makes the bug really easy to fix.

[Akien]

That's a pity you released new version w/o fixing already existing bugs (both under Wyrmsun and Wyrmgus repositories).

By this logic, nobody would release anything. It's impossible to eradicate all bugs. Andrettin has been fixing most of the bugs you reported at an incredible pace, I find it unfair to complain about him releasing a new version when there are still bugs. If those bugs were already in the old version, what's the problem with still having them in the new release?

Now, thanks for all the bugs you've been reporting, it's very helpful to make Wyrmsun even greater. But as c_xong said, a balance always have to be found between bug fixing and release new features and contents, and I think most players have waited long enough for 2.0 (there used to be weekly releases previously).

[Akien]

Congrats on the new release Andrettin, the changelog is awesome :-D

[Andrettin]

Yup, I know you fixed dozens of bugs, at least half of them were reported by me, so yes I know you did a lot of work. However, you haven't replied in those tickets saying it's not reproducible. I decided not to post more issues and wait till already opened would be closed, for example #75 and #54 in Wyrmsun's repo.

I don't blame you, just thought such a big release should be as polished as possible.

I know, and I appreciate your bug reports a lot The remaining outstanding issues were IIRC:

1. The time a slime entered a tower (I couldn't reproduce that so far). It's not that it isn't reproducible per se, but it seems to be linked to a lot of very random factors.
2. The minimap sometimes not being updated if a mine was destroyed while out of sight; I could reproduce that now (though only with the "dwindling" magic mines), and fixed it.
3. The sound crash bug: I wasn't able to reproduce this one; last we talked about it I thought you were going to see if you could generate more detailed output with the instructions Marcelo gave?
4. The tooltip which appears when hovering units very randomly appearing over destroyed buildings. I've fixed that now as well.

Or was there anything else? The other ones were suggestions/feature requests IIRC.

[charlie]

It's on Steam? Cool, link it!

[Akien]

It's on Steam? Cool, link it!

It's been for a while: viewtopic.php?f=20&t=5739#p64861

[Imerion]

Congrats and thanks on/for this amazing release! Will be playing it with friends this weekend.

[KroArtem]

Because otherwise the burden is on the developer to try to reproduce the bug, or brainstorm a possible solution, or try to read the reporter's mind about what they think is wrong. If you do all this then it makes the bug really easy to fix.

I was trying to dig up as much as was able, but when there were problems with Lua I wasn't able to do anything :/

Anyway, now everything seem to be more or less polished, thanks for such a wonderful release.

[Andrettin]

It's on Steam? Cool, link it!

Yup! Released there last year actually Here's the link:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/370070

[Andrettin]

I was trying to dig up as much as was able, but when there were problems with Lua I wasn't able to do anything :/

Yup, you helped a lot. You've actually posted the majority of bug reports for Wyrmsun

What problems with Lua did you find?

Anyway, now everything seem to be more or less polished, thanks for such a wonderful release.

Thank you

[KroArtem]

What problems with Lua did you find?

I mean when the problem is in Lua code, I can't help because don't know it at all. Apart from that, you seem to be the only person who knows the internals of Wyrmsun.

[Andrettin]

I mean when the problem is in Lua code, I can't help because don't know it at all. Apart from that, you seem to be the only person who knows the internals of Wyrmsun.

Yes, that's true. For some things Lua gives very clear error messages, but for more complex Lua code usually only "error in error handling" is returned. Either way, if you found any other issues, I would be happy to know about them.

[Julius]

Any chance elaborating a bit more why you made it free (as in beer) on steam now?

I was actually hoping that this would work out as an example of selling a FOSS game at a nominal price on Steam as a viable source for funding development.
For pay cosmetic DLCs is of course also OK, but there are already other examples that this can work, and I personally dislike that to the casual user this makes FOSS games no different than F2P games that usually employ some pretty questionable tactics to get people to buy the DLCs.

[Akien]

I can't talk for Andrettin, but since I've discussed it a bit in private with him before he went this way: the main idea is to grow the player base of Wyrmsun.

Paying 5€/$5 for a full game is not much, but as it's still quite a niche genre that appeals mostly to people who had played older RTS like Warcraft 2, there were not so many players on Steam - by making the full game free (as in beer), I think Andrettin aims at reaching players that would not already be lovers of the genre, but could give it a try as it's gratis and quickly downloaded, and then like it's original features (as, unlike one could think by checking the screenshots, it's not just an imitation of Warcraft 2 or the like, it has very original features for such an old-school 2D RTS like the Grand Strategy Mode). That means less revenue to fund the game's development of course, but I think Andrettin wants his game played first and foremost.

Of course the new business model is something to be cautious about, I agree with you. There is absolutely nothing fishy in the way Andrettin set it up (the two DLCs are purely cosmetic, kind of similar to the very successful paid skins business model used by LoL and the like), and the free (as in beer) version of the game is still the full game and will always be the full game. Still, as a player on Steam I also tend to be especially cautious of Free2Play games (sadly Steam as no "Free with no strings attached" category...), so then it's up to the Store page to make it very clear what the free version contains, and what the DLCs are about.

One thing I proposed to Andrettin back then, and that would still be an interesting addition IMO, would be to set a paid-for "Libre Game Supporter Edition" (or whatever cool name would make it clear that it's about supporting the development of a libre game) for 5€/$5 or so that would automatically unlock the DLCs + make it clear to you that you're donating to fund the development of a libre game while also getting some goodies.

I'd be glad too to hear a bit more from Andrettin on this topic though, what I exposed above is only what I remember of our discussion and my own opinion, but maybe he can give us more details on how well/badly the game fared as paid-for previously, and if going free (as in beer) already has a significant impact on its player base.

[Andrettin]

It's pretty much as Akien said

The idea is to grow the player base first and foremost. The number of views the game gets on Steam dwarfs the ones it gets elsewhere (on IndieDB and etc.), and with a greater number of players it is more likely that a modding community will get properly started (I recently added a mod editor to the game which also will contribute to that).

The impact on the player base of the game going free on Steam has been huge. The game has only been free for about two weeks, and yet over a third of the total players who have the game installed on Steam got it in the last two weeks. The number of downloads of the game on Steam have increased by 40-60 times. The number of views the game's page gets has also doubled.

As you can see, despite the game having a small price tag before, it becoming free has a massive impact. That also has the added benefit that on Steam discoverability is related to the popularity your game already has, so the more people have the game installed, the more Steam will suggest the game to others.

About the "Libre Game Supporter Edition", I think that could be confusing for some people, since it wouldn't be different from buying the DLCs other than that it is specifically described as being a contribution to open-source development (which buying the DLCs also achieves anyway). I think that as the player base grows and the game gets more contributions, it being open-source will naturally become more strongly emphasized in its community.

[Julius]

OK thanks for the clarifications. I have my doubts that this increase in apparent player base will really be retained, as most "free" games have a very low ratio of downloads to even starting the game and so on, but let's see how it works out for you.

[Andrettin]

Wyrmsun Development Diary #2: Northumbrian Tribes

I have been fleshing out the Teuton factions pertaining to the Anglo-Saxon branch. Two new Teuton tribes have been added, the Bernice and the Dere, both from the region of Northumbria. These tribes originated from Anglian peoples who conquered strips of the northern English coast. To represent that aspect of their history, their infantry units get a bonus to damage for a certain duration after disembarking from a transport ship. I intend to revisit the disembarkment bonus feature in the future, i.e. giving it to pirate units recruitable at the mercenary camp. Naturally, both tribes use Old English for name generation. In conjuction with the addition of these tribes, three new provinces have been added to the grand strategy mode: Durham, Northumberland and York.

The Teuton temple, based on the St. Michael's Church in Vienna, has now been finished by Jinn:



Those graphics are a really nice piece of work, representing the St. Michael's Church exceedingly well.

And Exidelo has completed the revamp of the forest tileset's rocks as well:



A particularly nice thing about the new rocks Exidelo made is that they have three variations for destroyed rock tiles. I have improved the engine accordingly to support destroyed tile variations.

Original Post

[Andrettin]

Wyrmsun 2.1.5 has been released

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- 2.1.5 Changelog
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* Building
- Added Latin Forum (graphics by Wildfire Games and Jinn).

* Grand Strategy
- Besides rulers, polity factions can now also have treasurers and marshals.
- Rulers and ministers can now affect revolt risk.
- The ruler interface now shows the ruler's trait.
- Literary works without a specific author attached to them (i.e. the Alvissmol) will now have a suitable random character become the author, or an author will be generated.
- Randomly-generated literary works now also appear from time to time.
- Grand Strategy characters who don't have their own portrait can now be used in battle as well.
- Noble characters with German names now receive a place-name based family name.
- Heroes are now generated from time to time, depending on the proportion of provinces with barracks a faction has.
- Rulers and ministers can now influence troop cost.
- Settlements' names are now written on the map below them, along with the name of their province.
- Provinces can now have province modifiers (which appear to the left of the buildings in the province's main interface).
- Added Library (+1 Research), Courthouse (-1% Revolt Risk), College (+1 Research) and University (+2 Research) province modifiers, which are added to provinces via events.
- Provinces can now have governors (if their faction is a polity), providing bonuses to them.
- Split the Austria province into the new provinces of Carinthia, Lower Austria, Salzburg, Styria, Tyrol and Upper Austria.
- Added Asturias, Finland and Norrland provinces.
- Building and managing province settlement buildings now requires clicking on the settlement on the map.
- You can now choose where the province's settlement location will be when building a town hall in a previously empty province.

* Heroes
- Dwarven axefighter heroes now have different weapon unit graphics when holding a mace-class weapon.
- Dwarven axefighters and steelclads can now equip mace-class items.

* Interface
- Fixed the issue which caused the loading screen to not properly appear under SDL rendering.

* Terrain
- Fixed an issue with shared vision which caused cut tree and harvested rock tiles under shared vision to not be updated graphically.

* Units
- Added Dim (-5 mana), Genius (+10 mana), Intelligent (+5 mana), Pious (+5 mana) and Wise (+5 mana) traits.
- Added Yale Lord (experience upgrade of the dwarven Yale Rider) (icon by Jinn).

[Julius]

Sounds like an awesome release!

By the way, did we ever offer to you to make a sub-forum here on freegamedev.net as a featured project? Only if you are interested of course

[Andrettin]

Sounds like an awesome release!

By the way, did we ever offer to you to make a sub-forum here on freegamedev.net as a featured project? Only if you are interested of course

Thank you! Having Wyrmsun's own subforum here would be awesome And it would be an honor for me to see it as a featured project!

I think it would also be a good way for Wyrmsun's players to get to know more about open-source gaming in general, since after visiting the Wyrmsun subforum (i.e. via a link from Steam) they could explore the other parts of the forum/website.

[Julius]

All Done

Alphabetical sorting puts the new forums at the bottom of the list, but I hope it will not be lost down there