Hello all!
We have been working very hard over the past few months and it has been extremely fruitful. Firstly, FliesLikeABrick and Shadlington worked hard to completely rewrite the server browser. This updated interface provides long-awaited filters and uses a completely new backend - no more waiting for slow community-hosted servers to respond. Shown below, you can see new colorful minimaps, custom controls for filtering important server attributes and also an instant search box to find players, partial server names or descriptions, or even parts of IP addresses:
This leads into the next major announcement which is the King Arthur's Gold API - a programming interface for community developers to query a central, authoritative source for player statuses and whereabouts (think buddy lists), server statuses including direct minimap access, filtered server lists including more filterable attributes than you could dream of -- and we're extremely open to suggestions about anything else you could possibly want, just let us know! For those of you who are initiated in such APIs, this is a generally RESTful API utilizing JSON to expose as much player and server information as we can to encourage development of feature-rich community websites and applications. Full documentation of the API is available on the King Arthur's Gold Wiki and any specifics can of course be requested in the Developer's Forum in case we missed anything.
Lastly, but far from least, Shadlington has invested a few weeks of his time into a brand new "security levels" system unlike what is found in most other games -- especially indie games. This new innovative feature offers unparalleled control over how your administrators, normal players, and VIPs can interact with your servers. With this system you can define custom access levels for different admins by username, meaning no more pesky RCON passwords to trust people with. You are able to define precisely which commands each admin can access, or allow the public at large to access special features. A middle ground is to allow Very Important Players/People to be able to do things such as join full servers, access a limited number of reserved slots, optionally use spectator slots, or any combination of other admin or general features. Security levels are in the process of being documented on the wiki and additional or missing details are always available by request at the Developer Forum.
None of these features are limited to a specific access level -- that is admin commands could be made available to the general public, or public features such as spectator mode can be made exclusive to VIPs or admins. The levels themselves are not pre-defined, that is you can have 10 different levels of VIPs or admins if you so desire. As with anything else listed here, we are very open to feedback and suggestions in our developer forum so if you have any feature requests or suggestions feel free to stop by. Quasi-relatedly, Shadlington has done some work to open the doors to custom classes - A few quick config file changes and you can create sub-classes on your server that have slightly different attributes than the typical Builder, Archer and brute force Knight.
Looking forward, MM and Geti are making very reliable progress towards fully scriptable blocks and server side scripting. For example, here is Geti's beautifl garden he has created with server scripting and some custom sprites -- an example of what you all should soon be able to do with server and client scripting/modding:
Other features on the plan are for API-aggregated statistics (ranging from kills to blocks placed by builders, or arrows fired by archers), TCP rcon support and other features to help create a rich and customizable gameplay experience in your servers or clients! You can follow along with all of the development progress and plans on the King Arthur's Gold Developer Log, but we will be keeping you posted here on all the major developments -- we have plenty in store over the coming weeks and months!
We have also been loving following the Adventures of Meow, a very amusing but highly accurate comical and artistic representation of KAG gameplay by forum member xiaojin. I think pretty much all of the developers have been following along with his stories as both them and his artistic portrayal of events continue to evolve.
See you all in another week or two with what we hope will be a stream of updates as we carry our development momentum through the rest of the summer and into the fall!
