Release Alpha 0.4: New Android App, better AI, stock building, more menus, nightly builds, Discord, …

After more than a year (wow, that was a long time…), we were finally able to release a new version of our The Settlers III remake. We have a lot of new exciting stuff for you:

  • A new and completely rebuild Android App. Special thanks go to Tom Pratt who developed most of it! The new UI doesn’t look like the original one you’re used from the PC game but was adapted to fit to Android devices. Please note that the UI is, as always, not completely finished and will be subject to change. Please see our new Android User Guide on how to use the Android UI.
  • The AI opponents have also improved a lot again. The AI is now using pioneers to expand its territory even faster.
  • The stock building has been added. You can now store materials in the stock and configure what to stock either globally (via the menu known from the original game) or locally when selecting the stock building and configuring it there.
  • The AI uses the new stock building to store gold and by this improve its offensive combat strength.
  • Now, you can also configure the tools and weapons to be produced manually. The system will automatically produce the tools needed to create required workers. But if you specify a fixed number of tools manually, those will be produced first. If you specify a distribution for the tools, this will be considered with the lowest priority to ensure all your workers get their tools first.
  • The menu to see how many settlers of each type you have, has been added.
  • The sound has been improved a lot in the desktop version of the game.
  • And a lot of stuff I can’t remember any more…
  • And of course several bugs have been fixed as well.

While we are continuing the development with several new contributors (thanks so much to them!), we are still looking for you and your friend with good programming skills to help us getting more stuff done even faster! ๐Ÿ˜‰

Also, as requested by many of you, I opened up a Discord to make it easier for you guys to get in touch with us. And of course there is also a channel to find other players to meet up for multiplayer matches. You can find more information about how to get in touch with us and where to report bugs on our new Contact Us page.

Now where can I get this awesome game?? On our new Downloads page! There you can also read about how to get our nightly builds with the newest features (and bugs ๐Ÿ˜‰ ).

So where will we go from here?

  • I plan on improving the network code to make it much more stable. E.g. at the moment, the game cannot recover from even the shortest disconnect, which is a real pain…
  • We will continue improving the Android App (there are already Pull Requests for this in the pipeline).
  • We plan on replacing our OpenGL wrapper for the desktop version of the game. The reason is that JOGL (which we currently use) isn’t developed any more and causes crashs for some of our players. That’s why we want to switch over to LWJGL. If anyone has experience with this stuff, feel free to join the corresponding Discord channel.
  • From what I saw, ships are also in the making by one of our newer contributors.

So thanks for your interest in the game and our work! We’re looking forward to your feedback and please like and share this with your friends so they can find this project, too!

Release Alpha v0.3: New Main Menu, Original Settlers Maps, better AI and much more

It’s time again for the next release of our Settlers III remake! More than a 1000 commits have been added since the last release to bring you new features and great improvements! This includes (but is not limited to)

  • New main menu for the Windows, Linux and Mac OS version! The new main menu allows for choosing your own start position and the strength and number of your enemy AI players in single player mode. For multiplayer, these features aren’t ready yet.
  • You can now play maps from the original The Settlers III game in our remake!
  • Better AI! The AI became even stronger and got rid of its end game limitations. You can now see it building 70 and more weapons smiths!
  • Full Screen mode as default mode (use ALT + ENTER to switch between full screen and window mode)
  • Market and dokeys have been added.
  • Minimap has been added in the Android App.
  • New user interface for our map editor to make it even easier to create great maps!
  • Tower soldiers can now be set / released from the tower.
  • Tons of bugfixes
  • and even more!

I know a lot of you guys out there also want some long needed improvements of the Android UI… However, we weren’t able to get in many improvements there. Michael has some in progress fixes but we could certainly need some more help there. So if you know somebody with good skills, convince him to contribute ๐Ÿ˜‰

In order to make it easier for new players to get into our game, we’ve written a small guide. Especially, the shortcuts section could be of interest for most players.

Just to give you some vague roadmap, here are the ideas for the next release (no guarantees):

  • I plan on implementing the warehouse
  • Stephan (codingberlin) has some new AI improvements in progress
  • Hopefully Michael gets the time to finish some of the Android fixes
  • Make it possible to select player slots / AIs / number of players in multiplayer matches

To reduce the waiting time for the ones that cannot compile the newest version themselves, we plan on providing nightly builds. Of course they won’t be as stable as these releases, but you’ll get the newest features. I will keep you updated here, when this becomes availble.

As always, have fun with the game and share this with your friends, so they can have some fun too!

Best regards,

Andreas

PS: I’ll not be able to work on the project for about a month from now. So don’t worry, if you don’t see that much activity from my side. I’ll be back soon!

Release Alpha v0.2: Computerplayer, UI improvements and tons of bugfixes

First of all: Happy New Year 2016 and thanks for your support and interest in this project during 2015! I also want to say: Many thanks to all the contributors who helped to bring this game a huge step forward!

Speaking of which: The new Alpha Release v0.2 is out with our brand new AI! Many thanks go to Stephan (@codingberlin) who developed this great feature.

To play with AI players, you can simply start a new single player game. All other players on the map will be AI players. One important thing to mention: We have four AI difficulties at the moment. As our main menu UI still lacks a lot of features you currently cannot really configure the AI difficulties (there is a way via a configuration file). Nevertheless, to give you guys a comfortable way to test all of these AIs, every player will have a different difficulty level. Therefore, player 2 will be very easy, player 3 easy, player 4 hard and player 5 will be very hard.

In multiplayer games, all player spots not taken by humans will be played by a very hard ai player.

Another important thing I have to add: At the moment, you as a player, can controll and see the AI players in singleplayer games. This is actually by intention as it allows you to see what the AI does, how it does it and what could be made better. If you see a mistake, you can actually try to help the AI in the battle against other AIs or yourself. Feel free to report issues and possible improvements, so we can enhance the AI further.

As always, we will continue to work on the game and are looking forward to your feedback. And if anybody would like to make a cool, up to date video with the newest release to be published on this site, feel free to write me an email!

Best regards + have fun with the game,

Andreas

PS: Upcoming changes: New mainย menu UI and the possibility to play the original maps!

PSS: Don’t forget to Like or Share thease great news with your friends ๐Ÿ˜‰

Release Alpha v0.1.3: UI improvements, improved mining and bug fixes

I’m happy to tell you that we’ve made a new release version of the game. You can download the packages of Alpha v0.1.3 here. Please also have a look at the installation instructions.

Beyond many other fixes and smaller improvements, this release includes the following:

  • Many UI improvements including:
    • Minimap options for displaying only soldiers / settlers / none; coloring the player’s area … (please note: buildings are not shown on the minimap at the moment).
    • Additional menus: You can now see the amount of each material you have.
    • Improved menus: The building menu now displays the number of buildings you have and the number of buildings in construction.
    • and more
  • Mining has been reworked to behave more like in the original game. Mines now also display their current productivity.
  • Amazon Demo files are now really working for the game.
  • Further bug fixes.

We hope you enjoy the game! If you have any trouble, please let us know (preferably as a ticket on GitHub/JSettlers or write me an email, post a comment if you don’t have account on GitHub).

Have fun and enjoy the game! Best regards,

Andreas

PS: We’re now also working on an AI implementation. It is already quite good and will be improved further…

JSettlers is Open Source, First Alpha Released!

Hello all!

UPDATE 26.04.2015 22:47: New release with some bug-fixes and an easier installation. Furthermore, new Java OpenGL libraries should improve rendering on more platforms.

UPDATE 07.04.2015 22:47: I just published a new release with some bug-fixes.

I’m happy to announce that the source code of our Settlers 3 remake is now fully available on GitHub. The repository can be found at https://github.com/jsettlers/settlers-remake. Please read the README.md for an installation guideline and a developer guide, if you want to assist the development. There you can also download the first alpha release of the game.

Before you start the game, have a brief look at the manual, as there are some extra features in the UI, you should now about.

Also note that you will need to have an original version of “The Settlers 3” installed on your computer, as this game is using the original graphics and sounds.

Furthermore:

  1. This game is only in an alpha status! So be aware of bugs, missing features (no AI, only Romans playable, missing buildings…), an “unfinished” UI and frequent code changes possibly breaking your savegames. I’m looking forward to your reports and help in improving this game!
  2. I’m still looking for a good name and I’m open for your (serious) proposals.
  3. When following the installation instructions for JSettlers, you will also get the Map Editor installed. Feel free to design great maps and send them to me / commit them to the repository.
  4. I will try to update / improve the documentation more and more. If you have a special request / see a certain need, let me know!

Best regards, have fun with the game + many thanks for your patience!

Andreas