- Fixed an issue where the morale was being listed incorrectly on the compass and on the deploy screen.
- Added a timer to the deploy screen for both the base spawn and for the flag bearer spawn. It also displays how many players are in queue for each type of spawn, though at the moment. You are required to enter the spawn queue by hitting Deploy, to get any queue and time information for that particular spawn point. After having pressed Deploy, it is now possible to go back to the regiment and class selection screen and pick another class (This will cancel your spawn request).
- Fixed the kneel reload animation ending before the character had a chance to put on the cap.
- Improved some of the reload transitions.
- Improved the left, right, forward and backward aim 3rd person animations.
- Added possible fix for HUD freeze.
- Added possible fix for a player nametag related client crash.
- Added slinged variants for the Whitworth, Lorenz and Enfield rifles.
- Minor character adjustments.
- The time between a player spawning on the flag bearer is now dependant on the formation buff status of the flag bearer. 10 seconds for in formation and 20 seconds for skirmishing.
Various graphical UI fixes and updates.
- Fixed a possible crash when leaving and entering the server browser quickly.
- Tweaked rain audio levels.
- Added a music volume option to the Sound Options.
Field Report 40: Skirmishes Phase II Released!
Hello and welcome to the Fortieth Field Report!
Hello everyone and welcome back to our field report news segment - it’s most certainly been a while since our last one (6 months!) so we’re happy to be kicking things off with some exciting news indeed.
Before we go ahead we’d like to thank all of our backers and followers for allowing us to build War of Rights. This project would not have been possible without the financial support and willingness to alpha test provided by you. Thank you!
Lastly we’d like to remind you that the game is currently in its alpha phase and thus any presented features and mechanics are subject to change throughout the development of the game.
With that being said, let’s get into it!
Skirmishes Phase II Released!
We’re very pleased to finally be able to release Skirmishes Phase II and thus open up the alpha to all “Sergeant” tiered backers and above!
Below is a highlight list of some of the major features Phase II brings to the game.
Phase II Features
Phase II is a major milestone for us as it covers the initial introduction of the flag bearer spawn system intended to simulate the reserve of a regiment. The other highlighted major feature of Phase II is going to be drastically improving the immersion and variation of the environments of the game - we hope you remembered to pack that gum blanket, soldier!
Flag Bearer Spawning V1
This first version of the flag bearer spawn system has been a long time coming. We’ve had to rewrite the spawn system of the game as well as create a system to calculate where to allow for players to spawn (it’s no good to spawn inside a rock, under the ground, etc).
The flag bearer spawning system provides players with another option to the default base spawn wave one that has been present in Skirmishes since day 1.
Now, players can opt to spawn on the flag bearer provided his formation buff stance is not “Out of Line”. Once selected, players will be placed in a spawn queue and spawned on the flag bearer when they have reached the end of the queue.
The flag bearer is designed to be a slow trickle of reinforcements and not act like a mobile base that spawns in countless of players on each spawn wave and thus the time to spawn on the flag bearer will vary wildly depending on how many other players are wanting to spawn on the flag.
Should the flag bearer be killed it is no longer possible to spawn on the flag we’ll make it so other players can pick up the flag and thus becomes the new flag bearer in a future update. Should no player pick up the flag it will eventually timeout and the flag bearer class option will be available to select on the class selection screen once again.
This is a project we’ve been steadily working on, on the sideline for the last few months. You will be experiencing clear skies, cloudy skies and when it rains, it can be all sorts of degrees of rain, light, medium, heavy and everything in between. When it stops raining, the ground and objects, including characters will remain wet sometime after. The wet ground will produce wet and sticky footstep sounds. It also features lightning strikes and dynamic wind, making the vegetation sway more violently and pushing gun smoke off the battlefield more quickly.
During skirmish playtime, the weather can only get so bad as no general (or at least very few) in their right mind would order an attack in heavy downpour.
What has happened?
The past six months have been very busy for us indeed. We have released 22 alpha updates as well as numerous hot fixes in this timeframe.
Being so long since our last field report, we thought it best to give you all a list of highlights of some of the changes, fixes and additions these months have brought War of Rights.
A host of animation updates and improvements to secure a more consistent level of quality
Countless of server and client crash fixes
Auto balance system
Overhauled UI
Union “Drill Camp” variant: Bolivar Heights Camp
Dozens of new regiments
39th New York “Garibaldi Guards”
Character blood system, character dismemberment and wounding system
Wounded impulses, suppression animation states, player flinching
Officer specific out of line rules to counter officer ramboing
Updated environment assets
Pry Barn
Henry Rohrback Barn
9 Additional skirmish areas (8 on Harpers Ferry, 1 on Antietam) have been released
Washington Street, Harpers Ferry
Maryland Heights, Harpers Ferry
Pry House, Antietam
School House Ridge, Harpers Ferry
Bolivar Heights Camp, Harpers Ferry
The above is just a selection of the many new features added - if you’d like to explore all of release notes of the patches you can do so here: https://www.warofrightsforum.com/showthread.php?1888-War-of-Rights-Patch-Notes
Changes to Crowdfunding
Due to the project having entered Skirmishes Phase II now and nearing its Steam Early Access launch (more on that below), we are going to be changing the pledge tier availability in our long-lasting crowdfunding campaign starting from today.
The discounted “Private”, “Musician”, “Journalist” and “Corporal” pledge tiers have been discontinued as part of our move to ultimately shutting down the crowdfunding campaign when we launch on Steam Early Access.
If you want to raise your pledge (can be done by following this link and the steps located there: https://warofrights.com/Crowdfunding_RequestLogin ) in order to secure yourself additional exclusive physical or digital backer rewards now is the time to do so as the crowdfunding campaign in its entirety is indeed drawing towards its end.
Looking Ahead
With Skirmishes Phase II now released our sights are set on the next major milestone, the launch on Steam Early Access. It is our intention to launch there before the end of the year but naturally delays could happen.
Between now and then is a whole lot of polish, bug, crash fixing and expanding the flag bearer spawn system as well as add in end game events designed to make the final moments of the skirmish areas more memorable.
The above will be our main focus going forward.
We look forward to be seeing the many new faces taking part in testing out Phase II and we’re sure the veteran players and companies will do their utmost to give the green recruits a warm welcome.
That’s all for now. Until next time, have a good one!
September 21st - Update 121 Released!
- Major UI Update. Completely reworked and cleaned up the UI behind the scenes.
- A lot of new UI elements have been added to the DeployScreen but for now, that is only cosmetic and has no function yet.
- Updated most of the UI images to support 4k resolutions, making the UI look sharper.
- On the faction selection screen. You now join the faction you click on when you click on the USA or CSA image. Previously you would first actually join the selected faction when you moved on to the next page. This makes it easier to join the faction you want when there are lots of players on a server.
- When rebinding the keys in the options menu, it will now accept mouse keys as valid input.
- Added labels for the amount of players on each side on the faction selection screen.
- On the tab screen, it now also displays the total amount of players on the server.
- On the server browser, the Refresh List button now refreshes the server browser, though you currently may have to click on it a couple of times for it to work.
- When starting the game, the Campfire Games and War of Rights image can now be skipped by pressing any button, to get to the main menu more quickly.
- Added the 9th skirmish area "Bolivar Heights Camp" to Harpers Ferry. This skirmish area has the Confederates attacking the Union army camp of Bolivar Heights itself either via a direct assault or a more sneaky way up the heights through the forest to its flank.
- Updated Sherrick Barn model.
- Added Henry Rohrback Barn.
- Several visual updates to the Drill Camp level.
- Updated the flag by giving those that had it, a unique texture on each side.
- Added a new version of the flag for some of the confedereates.
- Made the golden fringes of some of the flag some a little bit more 3D and made them flap around a little more.
- Added a new flag for the 6th Louisiana.
- Fixed an issue where the player would play the enterSprint animation if the player started sprinting when the exitReady animation were playing. This change results in the weapon simply blending to the sprinting pose.
- Added procedural flinching to all players regardless of their class and weapon. It gets triggered by bullet whizzes, players dying and artillery shells.
- Made players recover from suppression when OutOfLine, slightly faster.
- Players can now start and stop aiming while the character is in the process of entering kneel or standing up.
- Slightly improved the aim transition of other players when they start aiming from melee mode with a bayonet attached.
- Fixed an issue where the movement keys would not always register when they were being pressed, forcing you to release and press a movement key again.
- Several visual updates to the Drill Camp level.
- Added blood and gore to the officers.
- The artillery now casts more rays towards the player, each slightly offset, to better check if the player is behind cover or not, in order to possibly kill them.
- Added a check for other players being stuck in geometry. If stuck, the player gets teleported to the proper position, this fixes players being stuck on the wrong side of a fence or the wrong side a wall of a building.
- The weapons on other players now gets removed when they die, producing better looking dead bodies.
- Possibly fixed a client crash when spawning for the first time.
- Fixed a possible crash when leaving a server.
September 5th - Update 120 Released!
- Fixed a bug that would crash the server when it reached 150 players.
- The Standard Issue Bayonet will now get bloody when it stabs someone, other players will also be able to see your bayonet being bloody if you return to your regiment after surviving a melee engagement.
- Made more regiments support bloody character models.
- Added 32nd Ohio and 126th New York for the Maryland Heights Skirmish Area
- Fixed a bug with projectiles where if they flew outside of the map, they would never time out and exist forever.
- Sometimes when players have clicked deploy, they would be stuck in the spectator camera without ever spawning. This happened because the game client tried to spawn on a spawn point that was deactivated on the server which then denied the clients spawn request. Now if this happens, the spawn point the client tried to spawn at gets disabled on the client and the Deploy Screen on the client should restart hopefully allowing the client to respawn at a spawn point that is also enabled on the server.
- Updated the R. Miller barn model.
- Graphical updates to the drill camp level.
- Added the 13th Georgia to Hooker's Push skirmish area.
- Added the 1810 Stairwell to Harpers Ferry.
- The player is now able to enter Melee Mode with the club faster.
- The movement of the camera has been reduced when entering melee mode with the club.
- The Sharps Rifle and Sharps Carbine is now positioned correctly in the hand when being in Right Shoulder Shift.
- Alligned the sights on all ranges properly to the center of the screen for the Springfield M1861, Springfield M1855, Pattern Enfield M1853 and the Whitworth.
- The sound of gunshots is now delayed, depending on the distance of the shot to the listener, simulating the travel time of sound.
- All melee attacks play slightly faster.
- Replaced all the 1st and 3rd person animations on the flag bearer with new ones.
- Changed the way the weapon moves around on the screen when aiming left, right, up and down.
- The friendly fire suppression amount has been reduced by 75% to lessen the amount skirmish lines suppress themselves.
- Possibly fixed the issue where CSA Privates for no reason would be deserting on the Roulette Lane Skirmish Area.
- Increased available NCO slots from 2 to 4 for each regiment.
August 24th - Update 119 Released!
- Added the 8th skirmish area to Harpers Ferry: School House Ridge. In the early morning hours of this first skirmish area of the Bolivar Heights location the Confederates are attacking the forward Union skirmish line based in the valley between Bolivar Heights and School House Ridge.
[Img]https://i.imgur.com/zh54vvm.jpg
- Increased the play area of the Union camp at Bolivar Heights, Harpers Ferry to allow for marches down to the Potomac through the forested cliff sides.
- Updated the Piper Barn model.
- Added new gore system.
- When players, get hit in the legs, torso, or the head that specific piece of the character will become bloody. Other parts of the character may become bloody as well.
- When players are headshot, their player model will get massive headwounds.
- Added suppression animations on other players, making them duck their heads. It currently only works if the player is standing still while at shoulder arms.
- Added stamina animations on other players. When other players are low on stamina, hey will play breathing animations with an intensity correspending to the amount of stamina they have left. Breathing sounds on other players will come soon.
- Added a new and improved bayonet attack miss animation that plays if a player melee attacks with the bayonet into the air/misses.
- Improved the animation transition to right shoulder shift and improved the hand rotation while being in right shoulder shift.
- Slightly improved the performance of the long distance trees.
- Made the CSA spawn points on the Harpers Ferry River Crossing Skirmish Area randomly disable and enable every 3-6 minutes, making all players on their team always spawn together, resulting in a more massed force assaulting either the pontoon bridge or the rail road bridge.
- While using the worcam/spectator camera, reduced the risk of some of the keys stopping to work. If it does happen. Disabling the worcam and enabling it should now fix the issue.
- Fixed an issue with the player not returning to At The Ready after having started to aim just as the reload animation has finished.
- Possibly made the auto balance feature actually work. The auto balance feature now kicks in depending on the amount of players on the server. If 8 players are on the server. It allows a player difference between the teams of 1 player. If the server is full. It allows a difference of 9 players before it starts to autobalance.
- Possibly fixed a crash with the new nametags.
- Possibly fixed player nametags vanishing.
- Possibly fixed or bettered the HUD vanishing.
- Added the console variable Game.VoiceChat.Debug. When set to 1 by typing Game.VoiceChat.Debug=1 into the console which can be enabled by hitting tilde (the key to the left of one). It will output data of all players of the 3D voice chat into the console. This will most likely reduce your framerate to 1-5, so you should only enable this console variable if you suddenly find that you are unable to hear other players. When you have enabled it, you should let the game keep running for about a minute. Then close the game, and go ahead and use the error reporter on our website: www.warofrights.com/errorreporter
August 10th - Update 118 Released!
- Released a drill camp variation for the Union: Bolivar Heights Union Camp at Harpers Ferry. Consisting of some 1700 tents housing the more than 15.000 Union soldiers during the Siege of Harpers Ferry, the camp is indeed an impressive sight sitting on the slope of Bolivar Heights on the outskirts of Harpers Ferry. It is safeguarded by a fortification consisting of an embankment, abatis and an artillery redoubt to fend off any rebels looking to capture the town of Harpers Ferry.
- Added an experimental auto balance system. When you die, if you are on the team that outnumbers the other team by more than 3 players, you will be brought back to the faction selection screen where you will only be able to select the other team, unless other players joins the outnumbered team before you, at which point you will be able to select the same team as the one you were just on.
- Temporarily removed the Pry House skirmish area at Antietam to possibly fix players sometimes spawning in the air. Please let us know if you experience spawning in the air and dying after this update.
- Added water splash particles in the rivers of Harpers Ferry.
- Fixed nametags on players being offset while playing at certain resolutions.
August 5th - Update 117 Released!
- Released the 18th skirmish area on Antietam: Pry House: In this alternative scenario pockets of Confederate forces have managed to sneak by the Union line and are attacking Pry House, headquarter of commanding Union General George B. McClellan.
- Added 9 inch Dahlgren cannons to the naval battery at Maryland Heights, Harpers Ferry.
- Updated the spawn areas to support more players spawning at once in order to avoid players spawning inside each other.
- Added several updated barns to Antietam and the Drill Camp maps.
- Fixed a weapon reload bug if the player player started reloading while holding the aim button and then released the aim button.
- Enabled character shadows on High at half the distance of of character shadows on Very High.
- Made the multi-part melee system work.
- Added melee attack animation variations depending on the distance to the person or object being attacked. If the attack doesnt connect, a miss animation will be played instead.
- Improved the sprinting animation in first person with a rifle.
- Reduced the amount the camera moves up and down while idle and while the player is suppressed.
- Made the weapon shake slightly when the player is aiming while suppressed.
- Increased the suppression effect while being Out of Line when bullets fly over your head, weapons are fired close to you, players die close to you.
- Made the player recover from suppression more slowly when out of line.
- Made the suppression screen effects fluctuate in and out to better simulate stress and confusion.
- Possibly fixed a UI nametag crash.
July 28th – Update 116 Released!
- Fixed a bug with the recently added system for preventing officers from moving away from their men. Officers were supposed to be allowed to freely move around inside the main spawn area without while being Out of Line, but instead the timer would appear on their screen and they would shortly after be killed.
- When players are getting shot, they will now receive the majority of hit impulse in the limb they got shot in, so if a player is for example shot in the arm, the arm will swing backwards.
- Made the corpses of dead players, sometimes twist and move in agony. They will stop moving when shot. It's currently only client based so some players may see some corpses moving, while other players will see other corpses moving.
- Fixed a server crash.
- Fixed a client crash related to the UI.
- Added a more detailed version of Roulette Barn, the barn is enterable on both the ground floor and first floor. Doors will be added soon.
- Made it less likely if not impossible, for players to spawn underneath the ground on the Drill Camp.
- Fixed an issue on one of the skirmish areas in Harpers Ferry where the Garibaldi Guards were not selectable.
- Fixed a crash when shooting at the shooting range.
- Possibly fixed a crash related with the new nametags.
- Fixed players not being in the same spot on all clients.
- Fixed players spawning as the wrong character model.
- Made the terrain have more friction to prevent dead players from sliding down hills.
- Added doors to Roulette Barn.
July 15th – Update 115 Released!
- Added the 39th New York "Garibaldi Guard" regiment.
- Added a new system that makes the officer start deserting if he is not inside of the teams safezone, or if he is Out of Line. When the officer is deserting, a timer will appear on the screen, counting from 20 to 0. If the timer hits 0 and the officer has not reentered the teams safezone or rejoined the troops he was commanding, the officer will be killed.
- Added new animations for the revolver in first person when moving and aiming.
- Improved the Dynamic Depth of Field, making it less likely for the screen to blur for no reason.
- Added a new nametag system above players heads with a new font as well as a speaker icon when they are speaking with the voice chat. In order to keep UI clutter to a minimum, the speaker icon will not show up automatically, you will have to press T when someone is talking, to see who it is.
- Fixed a client crash with the old nametag system by replacing it with the new one.
- Removed the nametags above the heads of enemy players.
- Fixed a server crash on the Drill Camp.
- Fixed a server crash when a player was leaving the server while doing a specific thing.
- Optimized the server slightly.
- Fixed a crash when closing the game (the game may still crash on close, it will just be another part of the game that crashes it).
- Made the transition from sunset to night, slightly brighter.
- Made the shadows during the night slightly brighter.
July 3rd – Update 114 Released!
- Added the 7th skirmish area of Harpers Ferry: Maryland Heights. The fighting on the overlooking Maryland Heights of Harpers Ferry on the 12th and 13th of September 1862 was a key part of the siege of Harpers Ferry. Union commander Miles had posted 1500 soldiers near the crest of the heights to defend them in order to safeguard the town itself. The fighting on Maryland Heights would result in most of the Confederates casualties of the entire siege and would eventually end with a Union withdrawal into the town using the pontoon bridge after having first spiked the guns at the naval battery halfway up the heights, leaving the Confederates in command of the heights.
- Added possible fix for the servers crashing regularly - thanks to all of you who have been submitting error reports! If you'd wish to help us out by submitting one, please head over to: https://warofrights.com/ErrorReporter
- Added particle effects when bullets impact with various materials (dirt, wood, metal, rock, grass).
- Added a very transparent small dust cloud particle effect when playing are walking on dirt.
- Added a water splash particle effect when players are running through water.
- Updated all the melee mode animations while using the rifle as a club (Quicktime, Doublequick, Charge, attack, look and turn).
- Added a breathing idle loop to the recently updated ready pose.
- Improved the sprinting animation in 1st person.
- Made players very slowly recover after having been hit by the club or stabbed by the bayonet, resulting in the screen slowly becoming clearer. If the player has been hit by the club twice or stabbed by the bayonet, it will take about 15 minutes for the player to fully recover. No longer will you have to sacrifice yourself after an engagement if you survived but got injured in the process.
