Dear Lords and Ladies, We told you, you won't have to wait for very long! It's finally time for a new major update! We'd like to present you: The Halloween Update (oooOOOOooooOOooOO) This brings Rising Lords to a new major version and comes with a huge number of additions, fixes and changes for you to check out right now! A huge thanks goes out to our community beta players that helped us a ton with ironing out issues thanks to their amazing feedback. Thank you so much! Don't forget: if you'd like to join the community and hang out with us, make sure to check out our Discord. Thank you! Anyway! Time to show you some highlights of the Halloween Update! Followed by the full, detailed changelog for this new major version.

The spooky time of the year

Did you know that the history of Halloween goes all the way back to (at least) 2000 years ago to the Celtic festival of Samhain and became later known as All Hallows' Eve? As such, the citizens of your realm are celebrating this festival of the dead in style! Outfit your character with a pumpkin head and herd your skeleton cows and nightmares well. Wouldn't want those to roam free and spook your people, right?

Auto-Governing your regions

Playing on one of the bigger maps? Tired of micro-managing every little thing about the regions you conquered? Well, have we got a solution for you! Introducing the new "auto-govern" button, which will now allow you a completely hands-free approach for your freshly "acquired" lands. Auto-goverened regions will operate on the "passive AI" setting, meaning that while they won't expand by themselves (can't leave everything up to the AI after all) they will keep your people fed, happy and alive!

Quality-of-Life improvements + WIP Controller support

In an on-going effort to improve usability and Quality-of-Life when playing Rising Lords, we made a number of additions and improvements on how the game is played. First of all: we implemented basic controller support! While this one is still very much a work in progress, it's a first step towards additional QoL and accessibility! We'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback on playing the game with a controller! In addition to that, we're slowly working on a way to make the mouse controls more streamlined as well. As such you can now pick up and place peasants using just a single mouse button. To drop peasants on an already occupied tile, try to click outside the occupying worker sprite! We will be improving and expanding this new control scheme with upcoming updates, so keep an eye out for that. And finally we have some neat new animations for when the seasons change. This should give not only an additional indicator for season changes (especially for the less noticeable like Spring -> Summer, Summer -> Fall), but also is just a really neat visual addition, we think! :) And that's not all! See the full changelog below for everything we added, fixed and improved for this update! That's it from us for now! Please let us know what you think of this update Thank you very much!

Full Changelog

0.12.5 (October 31st) - HALLOWEEN UPDATE

New:

• added Halloween helmet and halloween themed scenario graphics
• added working auto govern button that uses passive AI
• added new left mouse system for peasant distribution
• controller Support (WIP)
• added season transition graphics
• you can now demolish buildings
• tile types are displayed when hovered during deployment
• added tile highlight glow for town hall when picking up rogue
• added rogue to steal from current region if task cannot be afforded
• display limited player maps but gray out extra players
• added AI ability to build stable if it has more than 100 horses, rather than requiring it to want knights + cavalry
• added AI ability to construct more castle courtyards and construct them at higher priorities based on AI personalities
• added more AI logic to determine when it should upgrade
• added AI ability when the personality says not to build more structures it will upgrade
• added missing German text for the feedback form
• added new Baltic map graphic
• modified army description to include player name
• added 4 new sounds for farms + construction + upgrades
• implemented paged editor hints / changed tip importing system for it
• damaged wall support in editor
• ladders display valid unit icons on card
• added numpad support to have the same functionality a d-pad for the keyboard
• added event card support in scenario.
• army scrolls show owner for enemies, prevent text overlapping
• close button to editor help page
• merc tooltip displays cost / upkeep
• added new village sprites.
• added arrow key support for card presentation in battle.
• added sound feedback to options menu + title screen menu.
• added grid percentage to graphics menu
• fade / scroll effect to tutorial tasks
• show defeated message when ai or human is defeated
• re-added +/- on units in the army menu
• added 2 helper tutorial cards about how to move the camera
• added dynamic troop amounts to new structure descriptions like town guard, castles, stables, and court yards.
• added more tips to the loading screen.
• added back Neverending winter events 80% 2 winters, 20% 3 winters.
• added provisions to allow LMB clicking the icon to increase and RMB clicking to decrease.
• added click (left or right) GUI to trigger tool tip for those who don't want to wait.
• added knights icon to skill card usage
• added English heritage sheep trait to show on field tool tip.
• visual indication where offscreen waypoints are

Fixes:

• added beggars to not occupy the same space as rogues.
• fixed drinking peasants not showing correct gold bonus in the tool tip
• fixed rogues from double billing and other inaccuracies
• fixed 'ram' card not detecting nearby stone wall in some case
• fixed unable to ram inner stone wall if tile entered via ladder
• fixed half-towers in some battle destruction cases
• fixed some non-castle walls not turning gray when damaged in battle
• fixed stone castles in editor auto place stone walls instead of wood / stone to wood attachment issues in editor
• fixed two crashes when placing rogues after the player has been eliminated.
• fix for skill menu not displaying greyed out icons
• fixed extra button in editor drop-down menu / missing steam save button
• travelers to move away from constructing buildings beneath them
• fixed merchants + mercenaries from going to their next destination when they are told to leave a newly formed construction site
• loading map allows Steam upload w/o resave
• fixed AI having too many on cows and not enough on sheep
• fixed beggars remaining on town halls
• fixed players from being able to construct things where they're not supposed to (like mountains)
• fixed beggars from appearing when there's enough housing
• fixed some steam upload issues with maps
• fixed editor crash when a saving map was shifted so far that waypoints were out of bounds.
• fixed sounds happening during next turn.
• fixed the player paying for all AI upgrades.
• fixed season transition leaves not filling the screen when zoomed out.
• fixed army menu not resetting unit max correctly
• fixed custom campaign not syncing player limits on multiplayer
• fixed army menu sliders not adjusting neighbors
• fixed some damaged walls not turning dark in battle
• fixed walls resetting after battle
• fixed editor outlines odd sizing / missing corner triangles
• fixed glitchy region rendering in campaign
• added battle lost to the people card rather than the people liberated the people.
• fixed campaign setup avatars.
• fixed incorrect general avatar parts in skill trees.
• added new setting to avatar parts that won't automatically dress an avatar in random attire.
• fixed popup message in battle when pressing space
• fixed another player's bailiff being spawned in the wrong region.
• fixed crash from castle setting up walls on tiles that weren't set.
• fixed figures moving between regions when right clicking things.
• fixed army spawning on top of figures will push the figures away from the army.
• fixed AI upgrading stables + courtyards, which cannot be upgraded.
• a bunch of linux version fixes
• added more free generals to avoid a shortage in late game on huge maps
• fixed crash related to AI upgrading its town hall by removing its ability to upgrade the town hall.
• another attempt to fix snowy fields in wrong seasons
• fixed scaling on army desertion warning card
• fixed inability of opening Steam files, causing a crash.
• fixed seams w/ editor borders
• churches not showing up correctly in battle
• walls not shifting in editor / wall crash
• a battle camera jump
• fixed mini map crash in beta
• small memory leak w/ battle effect icons
• several animation timing glitches / bugs
• animation frames 'freezing/stuttering' on some attacks / retaliations
• victory card text overflow
• first attack defender occasionally skipping frames
• fix beta branch crash when general is placed in campaign battle
• castle walls not rendering off-castle tiles placed through editor
• double general avatar render in skill-tree
• added debugging error for build time of 0 bug
• fixed burning camps missing fire
• fixed editor map size limit to prevent memory crash
• fixed a bug with incorrect tiles
• fixed editor regions rendering incorrectly
• adjusted destroyed wall positioning
• fixed skill-tree card selection bug
• fixed editor saving wall data on mountains
• fixed a few linux fixes
• fixed skill tree deck placement /w widescreen
• fixed numerous camera issues w/ widescreen battle mode
• fixed town upgrades not showing town capacity.
• fixed wooden castle upgrade not going to a construction site.
• fixed victory condition text overflow
• prevent broken waypoints being included when importing a map
• prevent rare soft-lock when battle is over
• fixed walls rendering in open water (campaign)
• fixed tiles rendering in shot mode
• fixed event cards not showing up sometimes
• fixed sheep growth for english heritage
• fixed baltic map with wooden castles and castle walls
• fixed half-house by water
• fixed a hover workplace crash
• fixed missing watch-tower on upgraded buildings
• fixed several minor memory leaks
• fixed bath house to use its upgraded capacity
• fixed Performance issues using skill tree
• fixed controller support preventing mouse movement on go to battle menu popup.
• fixed max livestock on field tooltip
• fixed battle zoom durring unit placement
• fixed D3D buffer crash
• fixed the escape key not going back a menu.
• fixed crash with never show again being clicked before variables are set.
• fixed tile changers (construction sites) showing up on the mini map.
• fixed half-tower bug
• fixed left-facing archer death incorrect
• fixed skill card decks getting overwritten
• fixed bugs related to conquered regions not changing ownership
• fixed cavalry to have breathing animations.
• fixed movement of autogovern button and made it a toggle for every region
• some fixes regarding the new battle camera and drawing on battle tiles
• fixed an auto govern button crash going into battles.
• fixed the crash reporter to actually send savegames again
• fixed mercenary costing 0 gold
• fixed battle setup rounding errors
• fixed 'sea region' label missing in editor
• fixed mercenary grouping in one region
• fixed invalid walls on two maps
• fixed tile seams
• added minimum XP for custom battles to prevent a soft lock.
• fixed manors starting on bridges when using high populations to start with.
• fixed some ruins being town halls on the Baltic map.
• fixed problems with general sprites in campaign
• prevent crash from hiring two of same mercenary
• fixed random deck not drawing available cards
• fixed a softlock in battle
• fixed future animal prediction error
• fixed auto-govern sending out treaties.
• fixed AI peasant priority for not using remaining workers on farms.
• fixed a conflict crash in border battle.
• fixed tile grabbing so the camp is town or castle
• fixed fog not hiding black tiles
• fixed some other rare crashes related to data structures
• prevent battle turn order from repeatedly changing
• prevent crash in fog of war manager when returning from battle
• prevent battle turn order from repeatedly changing
• prevent crash in fog of war manager when returning from battle
• fixed the collision area for beggar tooltips
• fixed beggars not existing when just loaded campaign
• fixed player deck missing in battle
• fixed missing loading screen in multiplayer
• fixed 'Shoot area' causing shot enemies to gain instead of lose morale
• fixed shoot area usable by cavalry
• fixed card display losing grayscale
• fixed some unit animations 'reversed'
• fixed army menu XP loss bug
• fixed display battle card view drift
• fixed spectator crash
• fixed fog with black tiles
• fixed a few rare crashes
• fixed +/- buttons in army menu not updating population costs
• fixed AI use swap over bigger distance than allowed
• added general specific items in battle rather than always player lord's items no matter what the general has.
• fixed army count rendering before general
• fixed missing initiative card stack in some cases
• fixed battle zoom displacing 3rd/4th players avatar and morale
• fixed animals not breeding as much as they should
• fixed battle options menu not appearing and appearing at the correct time after the first move.
• fixed battle decks being over or gone from player avatars at the bottom of the battle screen.
• fixed glitch that can cause buildings built on ruins to jump to nearby tile
• fixed battle end-game zoom issue
• fixed skill/army menu flicker bug
• added ability to be next to a wooden wall to use the Ram card.
• fixed instant crash with custom battle
• fixed heritage not affecting sheep cap
• fixed problem that can cause rare random crashes on maps that have ruins on
• fixed rogue's GUI tooltip specifying he was doing thievery rather than spying.
• fixed rogue's actions not resetting when dropped in a place where the rogue will do nothing.
• fixed rogue running to a new region after arson.
• fixed rogue arson notification to have the correct region
• fixed dynamic tokens not taking their turn before they disappear.
• fixed auto-govern picking new cards for armies
• modified "Revealing Events" status to not be shown since it always shows over the event card.
• fixed invalid battle icons rendering and enemy icons sometimes visible in battle
• fixed castles not being built by AI on some maps
• fixed AI upgrading the castles to e.g. water tiles
• fixed ruins being counted as a structure and part of the build cost of future structures
• fixed 'rename region' broken in 'wall mode'
• correct upgrade menu when watchtowers are built
• update GUI when each peasant is moved
• fixed the loading screen to cover the entire screen for weird resolutions
• fixed a battle camera crash in campaign after campaign victory
• fixed no text with the game over screen
• pavise now shows icon effect when used
• fixed missing avatar in battle
• prevent attacker being able to place units too close to defender camp at start of battle
• fixed multiple fire volume glitches
• fixed fire not disappearing
• fixed poor unit placement on battle-end screen
• fixed banner text alignments sometimes off
• fixed half-houses on town guard
• prevent opening title screen menu in game
• fixed stone bridge tiles

Changes:

• numerous skill tree visual changes
• sped up 'build army' menu and fow
• diplomacy/army/resource hover page changed to tooltip
• added more workplaces that are not flamible
• modified upgrade scripts to show messages or not. AI usage would not want to show messages.
• removed extra 'victory condition' entry @ campaign setup
• removed force battle setting from campaign setup
• modified "happiness from bishop" to be a generic "happiness from travelers."
• decide an attack angle based on the unit position if hovering over centre of a slot
• removed item selection in scenario (scenario setup still has item selection)
• adjusted AI behaviour with walls
• remove destroyed walls in campaign
• editor hex outlines changed to black
• added AI to only clear fields when there are no empty fields rather than based on the AI personality telling it to.
• added AI the ability to only clear one wasteland at a time rather than trying for two or more.
• modified positioning of many heads and hair pieces.
• fixed the people being allowed to both win and lose battles.
• castle towers don't darken when walls damaged
• modified cheats.txt to be in notes and not datafiles which are now seen by the public with GMS2.
• editor hex outlines now connect corners
• 'show reginos' is disabled in low graphics mode
• castles are now "camps" when set in editor battle maps
• skill tree interface
• skill tree banner size / position
• modified stats of town center upgrade. -> reduced build time, added housing
• remove 'random' button from campaign skill-tree
• battle camera has been completely reworked
• modified hit_pause in battle from 0.25 to 0.05
• upgrade building displays population change
• french language update
• modified position of export game menu item in battle.
• added AI to prioritize construction first when there are less than 4 peasants and a beggar.
• make spine part reload when remove or edit values (graphics modding)
• modified language to make menus more consistent like "back" instead of "close X" "exit" "exit Y"
• modified description of castles, castle upgrades and castle additons.
• skill tree tooltip position
• modified build descriptions to have resources side by side and no longer show the 0 costs
• modified text layout + size of GUI tool tip.
• FOW optimizations in zoomed-out & large map reveal situations
• other minor performance increases for scenario
• adjusted mouse pan to be more generous on the left and right to avoid leaving the game window accidentally
• modified crackling fire to be half volume, because roaring fire was already half volume.
• tool_tip timer for GUI increased to 2 seconds
• added diplomacy + provisions menu to close GUI tool tips.
• modified editor text to elaborate that sea regions won't work if there is any land.
• minor performance enhancement during campaign
• minor performance optimizations for AI in battle
• updated map previews
• changed shed animal protection amounts if completely neglected to 1/4
• can now confirm on empty skill tree
• added new fire sound code that allows sound only when you're in the region, when off screen and still in region it has less sound.
• english archers don't get hill range bonus anymore in addition to heritage range bonus
• added upgrade workplace for old savegames
• sheds now semi-protect from disease / flooding
• menu optimizations
• added rogue to stand behind army when infiltrating
• minor text alignments
• keep travellers away from ponds
• smith/field radial hightlights on hover
• replace initiative sort with a stable sorting algorithm
• optimisation for AI pathfinding
• added status of "waiting for other players to end turn" so the status is no longer "counting coins."
• army tooltip now also uses proper GUI-sensitive tooltip system
• added basic formatting to tooltips (color / size)
• minor battlecam target change
• fixed XP not lowering w/ added units
• changed tooltips while dragging peasants
• font alignment adjustments