Hello everyone,
Today we’re pleased to be bringing you update 185: Traversal & Destruction for the War of Rights alpha!
We are going to outline the three new features that have been in development these past months. The following features are important stepping stones on the path towards the community level editor and the release of horses. With that said, let’s take a look at their specifics!
Destruction System
With Update 185 comes our new destruction system, focusing initially on fence destruction. Each object is configured with its structural integrity in mind. For example, each individual rail can be independently damaged and broken by small arms and artillery rounds alike, but if you target the posts, you cause a collapse of the entire segment.
Initially, we will only be rolling out post and rail fences as well as one type of stonewall while we gather network performance statistics and make balancing changes. More fence types and other objects are to be supported by the destruction system soon.
Artillery canister round versus a post & rail fence
Knockdowns
Another new feature with this update, designed to work in conjunction with the destruction system, are knockdowns. Artillery-round explosions now have a chance of knocking you off your feet, with the direction of the blast determining the direction you fall. In the future, we expect to expand knockdowns to other instances such as standing too close to a recoiling cannon, getting hit on the head by a musket butt, falling from a great height, and, eventually, getting hit by a horse at speed.
A knockdown caused by a nearby exploding shell
Artillery shell explosion versus a post & rail fence resulting in a knockdown
Vaulting and Climbing
Another big change in this update is the total overhaul of vaulting and the introduction of climbing.
The first thing you will notice with vaulting is that it will behave differently depending on the height of the obstacle; the taller it is, the longer it will take to clear it.
Secondly, you might notice that you can vault in a lot of locations you previously couldn’t. We have rewritten the obstacle detection to be more dynamic than before; vault areas that were previously hand-drawn in the editor are now calculated on the fly. This was an important pre-requisite for moving forward with the development of the Atlas level editor.
Finally, there is the addition of climbing. You can now clamber up obstacles that previously had to be navigated around. Climbing also lets you get on top of small objects such as barrels, rocks, and boxes, giving you access to new sightlines on some maps.
Vaulting a medium & a tall fence
Climbing the embankment
Now that we’ve gotten the major additions of Update 185 out of the way, let’s dive into the rest of the fixes and additions of today’s patch.
Update 185 Patch Notes
- Updated several environmental textures including leaves, plowed dirt fields, dry dirt, mud and dirt as well as MacAdam roads.
- Overhauled the Sherrick barn model.
- Updated the Roulette Farm scene to match the earliest known photograph (from the early 1900s) of its yard and stonewall entrance layout.
- Started the task of adding variations of flagstaff finials to the battle flags of the game. In this batch, we’ve added five finial models, including a common “acorn” style, three types of spades (decorative spears), and an eagle. More flags will get their historically correct finials as the amount of finial models is expanded.
Above is an Eagle finial, owned by Campfire Games Historical Artist and battle flag connoisseur, Bradley and the eagle’s digital self now featured in the game.
- Various character uniform and insignia tweaks in the wake of the visual changes of update 184: Luminance.
- Added Georgia State-issue (with cuff flashings) and Columbus Depot shell jackets to CS regiments and the character customizer.
- Fixed LD Moore House proxy.
- Changed the time of day of Colquitt’s Defence, South Mountain from 8.75 to 16.5 as was always the intended time of day.
- Updates to the materials of Dunker Church to better match its real life counterpart.
- Various model fixes for the structures featured in the game in order to better facilitate the lighting upgrades that update 184: Luminance brought to the table.
- Updates to the campfires for a more immersive drill camp.
- Battle flag materials are now either using cotton or silk presets based off of the historical artifact in an effort to showcase their digital counterparts as authentically as possible.
- Slight tweak to the spawn points of the Bloody Lane, Antietam skirmish area due to the updated Roulette Farm scene.
- Fixed the inverted artillery spawn points of the Framing Fencelines, Antietam conquest area.
- Updated the tree billboard textures for more dynamic and pretty visuals.
- Updated the visuals of the stone walls.
- The stacked bundles of wheat on the fields are now destructible.
- Updated the model of the larger bush in the game.
- Improved the proxies of a few environmental assets to better facilitate the requirements of the dynamic vaulting system.
- Fixed a few broken UI overview maps on South Mountain.
- Fixed the cloth of the battle flags sometimes vanishing.
- Fixed bayonets are no longer visually vanishing when cycling weapons (NCO sword/rifle).
- Various updates to the Christmas Event - you’ll have to join us in a few days to find out what exactly!
That's all for today - we look forward to be seeing you all vault, climb, destroy and get knocked off of your feet in the game!
