Demo release! v0.1

[Captain Deathbeard]

Here it is, the long awaited pre-pre-alpha-demo. Basically you start off with 4 characters and there are random squads of bandits running around for you to fight, and everything is very raw and buggy. Its not very good yet, and at this stage most of my work is still going into the foundations.


First you will need to install the PhysX drivers:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx_9.09.0814.html

You also need directX9, which I bet you do.
Download both these files and unzip them into the same directory:
http://www.lofigames.com/devdem/Release6.rar
http://www.lofigames.com/devdem/demo_0-1.rar

Thats it. Please report MAJOR bugs and especially crashes. Thats what its for.
You probably need at least a 2-core CPU.

CONTROLS:

arrow keys - move camera
ctrl key - free rotate camera
left-click - select / deselect characters
right-click - give order (move/attack/heal etc)
F5 - quicksave (only saves your squad, not inventory or world)
F9 - quickload
T or right-click portrait - camera track character

NOTES:
-2 buttons near bottom middle-right for stats and inventory
-dont forget to level up characters after a fight with stats screen
-click MEDIC button, then right-click character to heal
-if a character goes down and you heal him, he will eventually get up when his blood level gets over zero. -100 is death
-look into "settings.cfg", here you can change the amount of bandits running around
-delete ogre.cfg if you want to change your graphics settings again
-the construction set is there if you want to play around

Lots of other keys will do weird debug stuff, so be careful. Of interest:
F4 - level editor (buggy)
F2 - character editor
F8 - screenshots
S - toggle shadows

[War]

Awesome! cant wait to play this tomorrow! =D

[joestoes]

woooot!

downloading now

I have an ati card so would i need the nvida physx drivers still?

[Zephyr8965]

Will you marry me?


Lol, downloading as we speak. Can't wait to see what you've got so far and how many times I can make it crash to the desktop.

[Beardface]

It's working, it's actually working!

[joestoes]

apparently i do need physx drivers for ati

how?

[Zephyr8965]

He posted a link. I'd imagine click, download and install.

But, not having an ati or ever having to deal with their nonsense, I can't be entirely certain.

And yes, it is working. Hard as hell, though. XD


Oh, and I have a crash to report! All my characters were dead from bandits (again...) and I hit f9, which caused all my characters to stand back up (back from the dead) and then Kenshi proceeded to lock up. (program stopped responding, close it or check for solution then close it, that whole schpiel that windows vista gives you with things that go boom)


EDIT:

Okay, so I've played with the quicksave and quickload a little more, and it seems like quickload works fine, unless someone's unconscious/dead. In the first lockup, all 4 guys were down and around -150 blood when I quickloaded, resulting in crash. I tried a couple quickloads after that, they worked fine, even with me moving around and all that stuff, but as soon as my main guy died and I tried a quickload, lockup. I'm guessing that's the source of the bug, but I'll continue efforts.



EDIT:

Oh, and some further information: I'm on an AMD Athlon 2.0 GHZ dual core, NVidia GeForce 8200M Integrated graphics with 256mb dedicated + 1100 mb shared memory, and 3 GB RAM. (kinda crappy, I know) Kenshi runs on my computer, albeit sluggishly. Just thought you might be interested to know how well it runs on various systems.


ANOTHER EDIT:

Okay, so, scratch previous theories, I just quickloaded after everyone died and it loaded just fine...hm...efforts shall continue. Lol, can't wait to see the pathing finished. xD



MORE EDIT:

Lol, okay, so, it loaded fine, then as I ran back to the place where I previously died, the bandit that killed my last guy was randomly dead and as I neared the area, the game THEN crashed. XD

[Windexglow]

wtf wer can i get a refnd dis inst a game dis is borin n shit yo wtf u doin 2 us nutin 2 do wtf and no wud? wut up wit dat


Good to hear the demo was finally released
Fun Fact: The demo contains 3x more gameplay than the final product!

[joestoes]

i still cant get the phsx drivers to work on my ati card

[Captain Deathbeard]

It's working, it's actually working!

Wow! Lucky cos I didn't know what was in the first zip.

I have an ati card so would i need the nvida physx drivers still?

Yes, physX has both hardware and software modes, so you need the drivers regardless of hardware. Your card should't make a difference


All the bandits have 10 in all skills, they're actually stronger than you to start with so pick them off until you get stronger. The idea will be at early levels you have to group up with other factions to survive. You can change the max group size in the settings.cfg to adjust difficulty.

Zephyr: I just tried dying-reloading repeatedly in the same spot, and not a single crash. was there a big distance between the 2 locations? Most of the crashing will probably be related to things loading/unloading when too far from the camera (everything is unloaded when far away)

[Captain Deathbeard]

i still cant get the phsx drivers to work on my ati card

Do you get an error? During driver installation?

[War]

I feel like a bit of an idiot but: Whats a directory?

[Beardface]

Hm'kay, tried to replace an item in the inventory screen when looting some dude which led to crash'age, I know now to put away my pants first before trying to put on someone elses'

I feel like a bit of an idiot but: Whats a directory?

By directory methinks he means something like "D:\Program\Kenshi\Release6" as in the location on your harddrive, ie, unzip them in the same "location".

[joestoes]

i still cant get the phsx drivers to work on my ati card

Do you get an error? During driver installation?

well i installed the stuff from your link but i dont this it will work with my card as its an ati

When i try to start the game it gives an error

[Captain Deathbeard]

Like I said, physX drivers are not card drivers, just install them anyway and the game should work

[Zephyr8965]

i still cant get the phsx drivers to work on my ati card

Do you get an error? During driver installation?

well i installed the stuff from your link but i dont this it will work with my card as its an ati

When i try to start the game it gives an error

Lol, install the physX stuff, then copy the contents of the error here if you still get it. It'll make it much easier to help you.

@Chris

Hm...the first time I loaded, my camera was in the same spot where I saved. I saved while the bandits were coming at me, so my camera didn't move any from save to load, and my characters were in the same area (they kept wanting to run to bandits, but I kept ordering them to stay put). This was right down the hill to the east from the starting point, right about at the bottom of the hill.

The second time it crashed was north of the starting point, which I think did put my character pretty far from my camera. I had moved up north, killed a couple bandits, then came back south and eastward (a bit north of the first crash) and I fought two bandits, there. They killed only one of my characters, so I went to do a quickload which moved them way up north and a ways west of the camera and the game crashed. (I'll start screenshotting things as best I can so you can see this stuff)

Oh, and another issue, but I'm sure you're working on it, since it's a pathing issue, is that it's sometimes impossible to perform first aid on someone who's negative on blood (but not negative enough to be 'dead'). The characters, rather than running up to them and healing them, run back and forth over the unconscious body endlessly. (which is why I quickloaded when one of my guys was down)

Oh, and sometimes when I hold ctrl to rotate the camera, the game freezes for a moment and the camera jumps way underground even though I only made tiny, subtle movements of the mouse to avoid jumping the camera too far. Just sometimes the sensitivity goes crazy when rotating, basically, and when you move the camera under the ground, it lags horridly, but that might just be my hardware.

[Hector]

Fairly major bug; none of the character models are being displayed; only the swords. My graphics settings are as follows, and I've installed the latest physx driver and dx9 stuff, and while I don't have the latest drivers, I do have very recent drivers. I'm downloading the latest drivers now to see if the same happens.

Render System=Direct3D9 Rendering Subsystem

[Direct3D9 Rendering Subsystem]
Allow NVPerfHUD=No
Anti aliasing=Level 8
Floating-point mode=Fastest
Full Screen=Yes
Rendering Device=ATI Radeon HD 4870
VSync=Yes
Video Mode=1280 x 1024 @ 32-bit colour
sRGB Gamma Conversion=No

[Zephyr8965]

You might try lowering the anti-aliasing and see if that makes a difference. The game might not fully support anti-aliasing yet. I'm not sure if that would make a difference or not, but it's worth a try, and, other than that and the video card, I don't see any major differences between your settings and mine.

[joestoes]

ok i installed the phsx stuff and now i get this wen i click on the kenshi starter in the folder

This application has failed to start because d3dx9_39.dll was not found

[Captain Deathbeard]

Oh, and another issue, but I'm sure you're working on it, since it's a pathing issue, is that it's sometimes impossible to perform first aid on someone who's negative on blood (but not negative enough to be 'dead'). The characters, rather than running up to them and healing them, run back and forth over the unconscious body endlessly.

Can you confirm that this happens only at low framerates? (you can increase frame rate by reducing bandits in the settings.cfg)

ok i installed the phsx stuff and now i get this wen i click on the kenshi starter in the folder
This application has failed to start because d3dx9_39.dll was not found

You need to install DirectX 9 runtimes, you can google for it.

Fairly major bug; none of the character models are being displayed; only the swords.

Okay I have ideas, get ogre.log out of the game folder and PM it to me (paste from notepad)

CAN OTHERS WITH ATI CARDS TELL ME IF THEY CAN SEE CHARACTER MODELS OR NOT.