Last knights Forum

Fellow players,

For a long time you might have heard people talking or trolling about the new client.
In order to bring the game forward, another big set of changes to the code had to be done to be ready for the future.
Basically all pages have been rewritten into a new format for the better of the game.
In this post we will highlight some of the most significant changes and how you can explore/use them.

1. In order to get access to the new client you will have to go to a slightly different website.
The new client is running on ng.lastknights.com. For now, we are running old client and new client side by side.
They both use the same database, so you can consider them both as being 'live'.
If certain actions bug out for whatever reason, you can still go back to the 'old client' since that will work anyway.
If we are happy that most of the bugs are gone from the new client, we will switch them around, with the new client as default and the old client as the backup.

2. Changes to training. This might be for now the most significant change. Clicking is gone.
In our eyes it made no sense to keep endlessly clicking if that process can also be automated.
It was giving a disadvantage for mobile phone users, amongst other reasons to change this.
When you visit the training option in the new client you will find only one button for it.
In other words: market training, terrain training, and border training have been merged into one page called training.
The level of training will still increase with your rank as you are used to. (Note: Training didn't change, difficulty wise, it is just a different way of sending/receiving information from the database)
So, clicking is gone, as said. Instead you have to hold the attack button in the right bottom corner of your screen.
As long as you keep it pressed, you will automatically train, and get feedback on the results in front of you.
Training stops as you let go of the button, so you can heal or do other things with minimal mouse movement.
This works the same on mobile phones with your thumb or any finger of your choosing.
The design of this accounts for equal opportunities for both devices.

3. Changes to the map. The way the map was drawn has always caused us headaches.
It was stale, hard to work with and we were basically just happy that it worked, the way it worked.
Now Myth built a complete new engine for the map, which makes it customizable at any given point.
Both for us as admins, as for you as players. This is the base framework in which we can change/give you options whatever you want.
We have given you the power to remove patterns, and in future for example, we could even go as far as letting LD decide which pattern/color to use for its nation.
These things are not implemented yet, but this would never have been possible a couple of years ago.
The changes which you can experience right now is the hovering of your mouse over the map.
When you hover over a city, it will highlight its borders with a lighter shade.
So when planning (or preparing a plan) you can easily see which cities to include in your plans, amongst other uses of this mechanic.

4. Changes to other pages. Training and Map are the most shocking ones, so to speak. But all the other pages have been retouched. From Barracks to HQ, from Encampment to Border page. Everything has been rewritten.
These should be all self-explanatory if you are used to our game. If any questions arise and you feel they should be addressed by us, let us know.

5. Introduction of the Mentor System. In order to help newer players to master our game, we have developed a mentor system.
In short, mentors can sign up to offer help on several subjects and mentees can ask for that help if they desire such.
As a mentor you are able to see pages of your mentee that others cannot see. So we also set a couple of limitations.
Such as a mentor cannot pvp a mentee, amongst other things.
This is designed to help newer players who struggle with getting the deep know-how of our systems in army building and whatnot.
This is certainly not designed to give spies a free platform to use and abuse. Punishments on abuse will be in place and they won't be soft.
We will update the FAQ and reference guides when everything settles down. We do not expect everything to be bug free, hence we are running both clients side-by-side.

Some more info, details and thoughts:

The client released today (as early beta!) isn’t the new client I had envisioned a few years ago when we started working on it. What I wanted to do was completely ditch the old client and more importantly the old design, and start from scratch. Focus on mobile first, then adopt it to look good on desktop too. However, for simplicity’s sake we started building the new client with the old design so we could get the ‘code’ working. For the new design we thought about lots of things, including hiring a specialist designer to rework it for us. None of us devs are UI and mobile specialists. But then all of our activity dropped due to various reasons. Work, education, family, covid, etc …. Progress on the new client was slow, at times even dead.

The old client still wasn’t bug free either, and every time a bug report showed up the same discussion happened: Fix it in the old client? Or just leave it as it is because it’ll be fixed in the new client. Lack of dev activity often made us choose the 2nd option. But after some time the bug list grew bigger and bigger, but the new client still wasn’t any closer to release.

Then a few months ago Arc and Rixy decided they had enough of this discussion. They decided to go through all the pages that still weren’t operational in the new client. Add them in ASAP, with minimal changes compared to the old, to reach a point where the game could be played from the new client. Release the new client and remove the old ASAP. This way we only had 1 client to focus on.

I wasn’t happy with that (in my eyes one sided) decision at first. Again, the client was far from what I had set out to be the finish line. Even if it was playable. But I had to admit at the current speed it would have taken until eternity for the new client to reach my approval. So don’t tell them but they made the right decision. Having a deadline also boosted my activity a bit to at least finish up some of the changes I was working on. And I was able to make them agree to at least run both clients side by side for some time!

So what’s the current status?
2 of the big changes I had set out to do are included in the release: the new map and the new training system. Both still aren’t completely ready yet but I’d say they are already a huge improvement.

A 3rd big change is more internal. Cache and preload a lot of data such as soldier type info, city info, nation info, etc. so this data doesn’t have to be sent by the server to the client over and over again. In the new client, when visiting the castle page, all the server had to do is send some player names, combined with a bunch of numbers that correspond with ranks, cities and soldier types. We no longer need to send details such as rank names, city names, city sizes, soldier type names and stats, etc. The benefits of this will be more visible after we remove the old client completely. Only then can we go ahead and update the server to no longer read this information from the database and stop sending it to the client. This will reduce the load on the server and the communication, making it snappier.

My biggest regret, again, is the status of the design rework. Making the client mobile friendly and look more appealing is an important change we think is required before releasing the client in the app stores and start advertising to pull in new players. And in its current state this is far from done. Redesigning the layout from scratch is something we should currently give up on. Our activity and especially creativity isn’t at the level required to undertake this project. But that doesn’t mean we can’t clean up and modify the current design to improve the way it looks and behaves on mobile.
I’ve already seeded a few ideas on how I intend to do this. For example the use of icons instead of long texts on the encampment page, the fixed position for the training button, a full screen map etc … .

By releasing the client right now, as it is, we can now go on by making many small improvements over time. We no longer need to finish everything first, before release. I actually think this might improve activity again on our side. It no longer feels like we have to climb a huge wall. Instead we can take the stairs. Step by step.

good job Myth, and all who helped you on it

crazydude wrote: ↑Sat May 07, 2022 10:41 pm good job Myth, and all who helped you on it

I totaly agree, Good job, but pls CD get active again or change your statement :p

crazydude wrote: ↑Sat May 07, 2022 10:41 pm good job Myth, and all who helped you on it

Yes. If you read my post you might have the feeling it was mostly me but that's definitely not the case. Arc did a tons of work as well.