Topics

1

Announcements / Last Oasis Announcement

« on: January 23, 2019, 01:28:09 pm »

Alright guys, our new project is about to be announced in public.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/903950/Last_Oasis/

We've been busting our balls to get this ready, two years of hard work, still going strong. I _think_ we have something really cool here, a new setting, new gameplay mechanics, and a lot of trollishness as usual. It is in many ways a survival game, so not everyone may be into that, but a strong focus is obviously melee combat, clan warfare, economy and other things we learned from cRPG/strategus.

We're now publishing ourselves, which is so much better than the situation was with OKAM. We get to make all decisions with trailers, release dates, direction, and things are going quite differently.

We hope that some of you will like it, we've been trying to avoid mistakes of our past, get better, and do something cool. If you want to hate that's cool as well, but know that it will make me cry myself to sleep at night.

join https://discord.gg/LastOasis for the beta

2

Announcements / Donkey Crew is back!

« on: May 11, 2018, 04:13:05 pm »

visitors can't see pics , please register or login


So you guys probably heard the rumours that we were in china for a year. It was an amazing and interesting experience.

(click to show/hide)

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However, it was a bit difficult to find enough and the right people for our crew there, so we decided to come back to europe to expand the team and finish here what we started.

We are now back in Europe, Poland to be specific. There's some donkeys who are no longer on board, and many new donkeys to meet and troll. You'll get to know them eventually.
We got a sweet office in Wroclaw, which is, btw, a beautiful and awesome city.

(click to show/hide)

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So obviously we've been working on a new project. It's very different from what we did before, thematically. It shares some... "game design ideologies", but it's really really different. In short, we were given freedom to work on what we want, and we did. We'll release more info about what that is at some point in the future.

The plan is to have a playable version in some months, and we'd like to give you guys the chance to participate in early tests, if you want.

Also, we're hiring: If you have any skills that you think might be relevant to us (or check https://www.donkey.team/ ), and are willing to relocate, get in touch!

3

General / Donkey team no longer developing M:BG / OKAM

« on: February 01, 2017, 06:04:40 pm »

Alright, so, referring to the news here:

http://ofkingsandmen.net/index.php/2017/02/01/development-announcement/
 
Yes, most of the donkeys left the OKAM development. Effective the end of january, so practically now.
 
Wtf. Why?
 
I'd love to tell you. But the legal representative of Warlock Wireless has informed me that I am not allowed to talk about my reasons for leaving. They are considered company secrets and confidential, as stated in my employment contract.
 
What I can tell, though, is information that is publicly available.
 
As you know, after our failed kickstarter, things looked difficult. We had nearly n o money left, and not many options. We decided to accept a deal - one that involved giving away the majority ownership, and therefore voting power, of the project we worked on for many years.
 
I sincerely wish the remaining team and especially the CEO and director of Warlock Wireless all the best, I hope he succeeds in bringing the project to completion - the project that I worked on hard for so many years and invested so much into. It does feel a bit like a part of me is ripped out.
 
So here we are, once again broke, once again at the beginning.
 
Does that stop us?
 
Nope.

4

Announcements / Beta Test in 48 Hours!

« on: August 14, 2016, 11:21:39 pm »

Beta
To get ready for Early Access and Gamescom, we are starting the beta test Tuesday at 8pm UK Time, for a few days.

Details:
http://forum.ofkingsandmen.net/index.php/topic,665.new.html

5

Announcements / OKAM Playtest next week!

« on: July 06, 2016, 04:01:48 pm »

http://forum.ofkingsandmen.net/index.php/topic,213.new.html

Open for everyone with a cRPG account

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Announcements / cRPG Discount for OKAM Pre-order

« on: June 28, 2016, 07:17:48 pm »

Well hello thar

*** HUGELY IMPORTANT ADVERTISEMENT MESSAGE *** **cough**

as promised, I have a discount code for you for preordering Of Kings and Men as a thank you for all the years of support, rage, love and whine.


It's going to be released in August, and if you're sure already that you want to buy it, or want to support us, but not at the full price (is that a thing?), or want to buy it for a friend, then go ahead and use the Promo Code that should have arrived in your PMs at:

https://www.greenmangaming.com/games/of-kings-and-men/

The discounted Price is ~£13 / $17 /17€ (who knows with all the currency instability...)


If you're undecided yet just wait, some proper letsplay videos are bound to pop up very soon

You can also share the code with friends if you want, but there's only a limited amount - first come, first served

7

General / Of Kings and Men Servertest, Saturday, 18th of June, 6pm UK time

« on: June 14, 2016, 03:17:28 pm »

cRPG Playtest on Saturday, for info check here:

http://forum.ofkingsandmen.net/index.php/topic,130.html

Let's crash some servers!

8

General / New forum!

« on: June 07, 2016, 02:31:56 pm »

This part will be locked shortly - move over there!

http://forum.ofkingsandmen.net/

9

General / The Epic

« on: May 18, 2016, 02:42:37 am »

The Epic

Epic is the persistent World Part of OKAM. It will represent, in an abstracted way, feudal medieval societies, and allow players to find a niche to settle in and become successful.

The World

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The world of OKAM will be very barren in the beginning, until players start to construct outposts; over time, the more successful outposts will turn into villages, towns, cities. All of that is fully player-controlled and designed. While outposts or small production facilities can be run alone or with a group of friends only, the larger you want to become the more feudal you have to become.

The 4 Pillars of a successful city (or: what can I do in OKAM?)
There are various different roles that appeal to different players. There is no actual role classification, you can create characters that specialise in one or try and do everything.
The Worker

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The worker is the economical backbone of every well run city, ensuring that whatever the city needs, the city gets. This includes the production of raw materials (based on the location), the crafting of necessary items (tools, weapons, intermediary products) and trading with other locations to receive goods that are not commonly available in your territory. This is run independently (you, as a person, decide what to produce, usually based on the cities supply/demand) and to large parts automatically (you send your family to work, you don't stand on a field to harvest wheat). You can be specialised in something specific, with the drawback of not being able to react to changes in the economy quickly, or generic, with lower income, but higher flexibility. If your city is run well, this should be a low-danger activity. Being a merchant is medium-danger, as you will travel to other settlements, exposing yourself to the possibility of raids.

The Explorer

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The explorer has certain tools to help him find the world's hidden treasures. That can be either yields for raw resources or what is (temporarily) called blueprints. The main gameplay element is walking out into the uncontrolled lands to find those valuable spots. Think of the geologist in "settlers". Just armed.

The explorer lifestyle will be the one of the most dangerous ones, you can expect a lot of rivalry out in the open. Someone might get hurt, even. When you find someone out in the open, you can expect him to be there for the same reason you are - he is a treasure hunter. And he might have treasures on him. Or he might suspect you to have the same. I think you get where this is going.
Yields
Yields define the geographical value of a location. Some cities will have high quality wood, or high quality trees, or high quality soil.. etc. No city will ever have all it needs.
Yields will never run out. You have what you have, as long as you hold the location. This is to make sure creating long-term plans to overtake those locations is viable. There will be no "oh we just wait until they run out of iron". They will not, you will have to take it from them.

However, the technological race over yields is a very important one. In the beginning, everyone has limited tools, and the yields you can find will do, but to stay competitive you have to keep searching, keep finding better and better resources to use them yourself, or sell them at a good price to the best buyer.

Blueprints (temporary name)
Another thing hidden in the world is blueprints. (there will be an explanation for that, stay tuned) It is basically an instruction on how to build things in the world, be it weapons, armors, or buildings. Those blueprints come in different quality, and the combination of demand and quality will define their price on the market. High quality Blueprints will be extremely valuable, and sought after.

Specialised blueprint-traders are to be expected - people with good relations to different cities and their lords, and knowing who wants what.

The Warrior

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The warrior comes in different variations - from a simple grunt, known for his proficiency in fights, to brilliant strategists, trusted with armies to conquer or defend areas. Having a large army by itself means nothing without having skilled players taking control of them. Warriors will split into different subcategories like soldiers, raiders, escorts, etc. Whenever you expect to have to fight, you may want some of those with you. The difficulty and risk of this playstyle can range from "smooth sailing" to "omg my family was wiped out".

The Politician

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The most difficult and advanced playstyle, as it will require a lot of social skills. When you start turning your little lumbercamp into a full blown city, you will need to manage it well. And the higher you get, the less power you will actually have - feudalism at it's best.

You need to make sure that the people in your city are happy. What is a happy citizen? One that feels you are not screwing him over. One that feels protected. One that is rich.

Population

Who lives in a city? Well people, obviously. Players. Player families. Cities are where they are protected, where nothing bad happens to them, where they can practice whatever playstyle they want without having to look over the shoulder every second, worrying about a bandit attack or a murderer hidden under their bed. Cities have to attract players, and as a ruler it is your job to make your city as attractive as possible. Keep the area safe. Make sure that attacks towards you are dealt with swiftly, ideally without impacting your economy.

New players want to be wooed. Do you give them incentives? Like a house for free? Or a set of armor as a welcome gift? Possibly with your city colours, so they work as walking advertisements out in the city? All of that costs money. You gotta spend money to make money, right?

City Design
Each city will be split in different districts that are run by different lords. Those lords can (and will have to) split their districts again, and again, and again... If everything goes well, you will have a city that is producing steady silver that you invest into your city. Those investments attract people to live in your city, and people in your city mean power. Power to produce, power to wage war. Without people living in your city you are weak and defenceless. With many people you are on the right path to take control of the kingdom.

Currency

How do you get money as a city? You simply create it. You have people creating money. So you could send all your people into a mine to dig up silver and you will be the richest city. However, if you don't give that money back to your people, they will leave. They will go somewhere else, where they are actually benefiting from living there. Where producing goods pays off, where they can slowly advance in the horrible feudal-capitalistic society that OKAM will be. Having people loyal to your cause will help, but at a certain point you will require the help of the unwashed masses.

Taxes
Of course having people in your city has to give you something. That's taxes. But simplified. Let's cut all the complex bullshit and let's boil taxes down to what they really are: They are lifetime stolen by the government. So that's what you can do, you can steal lifetime of your population, part-time slavery if you will. The higher the "tax", the more you can allocate workers to city-relevant tasks - building defenses, drafting soldiers, creating money. If you go too low, you will not be able to run your city properly - reinvest money or defend from attacks. If you go too high, people will be annoyed and find another city that offers them a better living situation. Or, if things go really bad, they will revolt and try taking over the city from the bottom; best case is you have to wage a bloody civil war within your own city, worst case is you get driven out and lose all your power.

Armies
Armies work similarly to taxes - you draft from your population, taking away lifetime from your population. Your people will understand to some extent, but if you just abuse them as cannon fodder, possibly even without pay, they will at some point become unhappy. Waging war within your area will be relatively cheap, as you don't have far distances to travel, but the further you try to expand your power, the more difficult it will become to keep up the numbers needed for such a warfare. Better make sure you have all your cities under control.

Summary

This is just a brief introduction of the different mechanics that OKAM will offer, without going into the technical details too much. The big thing here is symbiosis. The symbiosis between players is what will be one of the main elements.

The rulers need explorers to advance, workers to create, and warriors to fight; workers need blueprints from explorers to create higher quality stuff and stay ahead of competition and warriors to protect them; explorers need workers to create better tools for exploration and possibly warriors to escort them; and warriors require cities to create armies and workers to create armors and weapons.

The more players involve themselves into the game, the more friends - and enemies - they will make. And the very interesting part is that those friends and enemies can be completely scattered over the land. An enemy can be your neighbour in the city because he runs a rivaling production, and you may want to draft an elaborate plan on how to get rid of him without anyone noticing. A friend can be a tradesman in a distant city that you deal with on a regular basis because he just pays more. Will war between your ruling cities destroy this relationship? Would your lord be pissed if he found out that you sold high quality armors to the enemy? Is it worth the risk?

Every political action will affect the world and it's inhabitants one way or another, with possibly unexpected results.

OKAM is a game about stories written by the players. It is very ambitious - the technical parts are solvable, but will the actual gameplay live up to the expectations? I can only promise that we will find out.

10

General / Of Kings and Men Gameplay Test, Monday, 23rd of May, 8pm UK time

« on: May 16, 2016, 01:38:06 pm »

Another test coming up. It's still limited to the early backers for now. The one after that will most likely be cRPG-community wide.

When? Monday, 23rd of May, 8pm UK time: http://www.thetimezoneconverter.com/?t=8:00%20pm&tz=London&

We will have new weapons, skills, leveling, and a new gamemode.

Be there!

///////////////

Since our own TS is dead atm:

HydroX Teamspeak IP for the Playtest

(click to show/hide)

84.200.93.171:9995

Community Area / Okam

- join the Okam Chan right away and don't mess with the other ppl - they gave us the TS for free and on short notice - so be polite (or get banned from the Test )

///////////////

11

General / An update on things

« on: May 15, 2016, 10:04:46 pm »

First of all, we had a lovely BBQ yesterday, pics here if you're interested:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/pttglmtel2oto7h/AAC4YoCFO6GHC0_ajdsWckc-a?dl=0

So, we are getting ready and nervous regarding our upcoming early access. We had to make a judgement call regarding what to start with, either full combat, or half combat half epic.

We decided to go with pure combat for now, especially after watching other games early access and what we liked and didn't like about their release.

One of our goals is to have everything in our first release highly polished, and all the epic stuff we have is a lot of Work in Progress and would have the possibility to create many unforeseen bugs. This is why early access will feature no persistent world stuff - or, in other words, it's the spiritual sequel of cRPG (the Battlegrounds) - there will be skills and there will be progression and round-based gamemodes.

We will also release a version with bots for our backers in the next week, so you can play around a bit more with the earlier version. We may or may not update your version in the next weeks with more features - the reality is that hosting gameevents takes a lot of time, and it is better for us not to do it every week so we can develop more per week.

However, we plan to have another gametest soon - either end of this month or beginning of next month. I will let you know more details about that soon, and also who can participate in it (not yet decided)

I will let you know more about what the "Battlegrounds" part includes in some time (short version: more or less everything except horses for now, they need more love)

The epic part will be released as soon as possible after early access.

Early Access When? somewhen between next week and Gamescom ;)

12

General / Melee: Battlegrounds is dead! Long Live....

« on: May 01, 2016, 02:39:26 pm »

Melee: Battlegrounds is dead

...

Long live....
Of Kings And Men

https://vimeo.com/164895417

(make sure to set it to HD!)

Enjoy
This is just a community-internal release, the official announcement will happen by the publisher in a few days

13

Announcements / Moving Gameservers, starting with NA today

« on: April 29, 2016, 02:17:04 am »

Just a headsup, the NA gameservers will be moved in around an hour - you will need to refresh your serverbrowser.

New server should be stronger, so give me some feedback.

14

General / Plans for the Upcoming weeks

« on: April 22, 2016, 08:57:48 pm »

Apologies - some things went wrong in the last weeks, we messed up our timings here and there.

The original plan was to release a short video of our game, and our new name, beginning of April. We ran into some troubles, and lost a bit of time, and while trying to fix things panicky we got a bit unorganised

So, after getting our shit together, this is what's going to happen the next weeks:

Somewhen next week, the new name is announced, with a teaser video.

Next week, Sunday, May 1st, 6pm to 8pm GMT, we will have a combat test with our inital backers (all Scholars on the Forum) on a european server. (It's not bias for EU, but we need good pings in the office to get proper results for our test - NA will come soon as well) We will let you know in time where and how to get the client. The combat you've seen in our last video is not relevant any more - we made some huge changes after having a collective epiphany. Most people who tried it so far were very pleased with it, I personally love it, and I think most of you (definitely not all of you, it's not cRPG) will be pleasantly surprised - I will not reveal more at this point .

This test will help us figure out: how you like the combat, if the game runs performant on different PCs, if it will crash the servers, or the clients, if it will burn houses down, if the network code works (it might need some improvements), etc etc. The gamemode will be a simple battle mode, as we want to test combat only. It's important to test with a limited amount of people to not overload our servers yet.

Now, depending on how that test goes, the sunday after we will try another test with backers, or possibly more or all members from the cRPG community. It depends on what we want to test - performance, combat, network. We start with timed tests because it makes it easier for us to test specific things that need testing, and to get enough players for those timeslots.

Again, apologies for our miscommunication - I promise we'll try and do better. For now we're very happy to be able to show you a small yet polished part of our game next week, and we're very excited about the upcoming sunday. We have a shitton of work ahead of us for that, so: "see you in 9 days" to the scholars, and "stay tuned, it might be your turn soon" to all the others. Exciting times ahead

15

Announcements / cRPG servers maintenance

« on: February 18, 2016, 11:43:30 am »

the ISP has to shut down the cRPG server from 21:00 today to 9:00 tomorrow (possibly shorter)

just a heads up - forum should remain online, hopefully