I think you should have graphics for the encounters on the map.
 

...and since this blog post was written Knights of the Chalice has been updated two times more already; all the way up to 1.12! If the developer keeps improving his game at this pace, version 5.666 of KotC will be powered by CryEngine 2 just in time for Christmas... ;)
 

I am not 100% certain that is a good thing, but I am thrilled to see that he's cranking hard to address all reasonable issues with the game. I thought it was good back in version 1.02 or so. It oughta be great now.
 

I disagree that its a good thing demiath :) 12 updates in what small space of time? Thats either

a - poor QA on the developers part
b - bad testing on part of beta testers

either way its a failing on the part of the developer, that or they should sit on the fixes for a couple of weeks instead of releasing lots of minor patches
 

I don't think either of those conditions necessarily apply. Based on the descriptions of what is getting fixed, it sounds like he's just fixing bugs a handful at a time - which is no doubt *wonderful* for those who are affected by the bugs, so they can get their problems fixed ASAP.

The problem is that this could sabotage sales, as potential customers might decide to "wait it out" until the software becomes "more stable" (and, unfortunately, might lose interest by then). Maybe releasing the patches as a series of "beta patches" instead of official patches would be a better approach, with the official, "stable" patches coming out less frequently.

But inevitably, especially with a new release, you are gonna need some rapid patches. No number of beta testers given any reasonable amount of time are gonna find everything that a much larger "real" market of players will find.
 

I guess its a personal thing, but when I see so many patches, it just raises flags in my mind. I see lots are minor, and if it were commercial I'd say they were things maybe cut for time constraints but this isn't a game that has a publishers deadline with lawsuits if you dont meet it.

None of the fixes are critical, and imo should be saved up for a month then released, rather than a patch a day. it just goes against my grain :)

(but then they have a shipped product played by the masses and I have nothing!:) I work in the nuclear industry, bugs are bad in your shipping software,but thats a different kettle of fish.
 

Since Vampire Masquerade I hate visible encounters that don't support a good monster IA "outside" of the battle. I.e. to be in battle with one an that a visible monster in a adjacent room can't hear the raffling and come to help his comrade, it is too much of "breaking the mimesis" for me.

To have an pretty rendered 3D space without anybody and to have random monsters popping up for battle it is another breaking of the mimesis, but at the same time, is an already proved work RPG convention, so every player will be comfortable with it. And the other about Vampire it was just "bad design", so a proper visible encounters needs a huge lot of pain of programming than you could afford.

And don't forget the added tension of not know when a monster will appear, that's a plus of enjoy for your game with your actual approach.

However in the temple of the teaser the approach is ideal because, the most monsters are a certain amount of pus susceptible or pop up from the ground. So it is perfect in design. That can't be said for the monks, although they are already a guy reduced to pus, capable of pass walls and doors.

I can understand why you could desire such a feature. For example, the Crag Wolfs. It is desirable that they show up ahead in the track. But again, if they see you they should charge at the team and attack. This gives me an idea, that you could script the appearance of the encounters with some "animations". For example, if in the track in the wilderness a Crag Wolf must appear, you could make him jump from the wilderness to the track and attack the party. The encounter approach doesn't change, but you have put into a good mimesis in the fictional wolf, that is, wolfs don't materialize in the air from nothing.

Having all this in mind, you could use both approaches for the game: pus monsters, magical monster, ghosts, and such, could "appear" from nothing at any moment. Physical monsters should have an animation to put them into the environment before attack. It is possible to have visible encounters for specify enemies and to "fill the empty environment" (so for programming issues you should not make new encounters until that enemy is dispatched). But a simple IA is necessary, so you could sneak behind an enemy, or that one could hear you and attack instantly.

Good luck! :)
 

And sorry my ugly English.
 

People who express concerns about the rapid succession of patches for Knights of the Chalice (partly for understandable reasons given what frequent patch releases usually imply about the state of a game) are reading all sorts of things into this which simply aren't there.

Just for the record, during the 25 hours it took me to get through the main quest, I experienced exactly two crashes and not a single broken quest. Most of the patches have been all about small incremental refinements (most of which I personally wouldn't even have noticed if I hadn't read the appropriate forum posts on the official website) - such as the party automatically moving over to loot you click on which is too far away, changing the mouse cursor so that it has a more conventional upper-left hot spot, adding an Ultima-style hold-mouse-button-to-walk option, adding an automatic end of turn option, adding visual representationts of remaining charges in magic wands directly on the icons etc. etc.). And again, I thought the interface and controls were basically fine as they was and would personally have been able to cope just as well without any of the little details which has been added since the release.

In other words, it's definitely not the case that the pre-patched game was broken or anything - just that it felt slightly more clunky for some users than it does now.
 

@Demiath - That's what it sounds like. Maybe we should call them "updates" instead of patches. For example, the font was hardly broken or buggy on release - but people really didn't like it. Those are the kind of improvements that SHOULD be getting made to a game once it is out the door.

Frequency is still something of an issue - not that rapid response to customer feedback is a bad thing. But it is helpful for a regular customer to see a stake driven into the ground that will last for a while.

@Stu - Software for things like the space shuttle or nuclear power plants is a whole different animal. You have my respect, Stu!

@Ruber - no problem. I think you expressed yourself well.
 

there is an interesting post on therpgsite about maths in systems. interesting read on d6/rifts/storyteller.

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=15076

food for thought.
 

sorry, was supposed to have put that comment in the thread we were talking about systems, not this one. my bad :/