Battle Realms: Zen Edition News

Greetings, Warriors!

We are releasing a patch to check if we got at least one of the crashing culprits nailed down (yes, there are multiple unfortunately). As per our previous announcement, only Windows 11 users are affected by the now infamous lag/stutter/crash.

Note that this is not a fully-fledged fix yet as it tackles only one of the crashing culprits, and it might not help everyone who's having this issue, but we are hoping it helps at least a part of the crashing users while we continue sorting this out.

The main issue lies in the updated D3D rendering introduced with the almighty Update 1.58. The reason why it decides to act up only on Windows 11 systems remains to be figured out.

[h3]Crash Report & Dump Collection[/h3]


Speaking of figuring out, any users that crash can now help us solve those issues in a much more convenient manner. We've simplified this process by integrating the crash dump autosave and autodelete features straight into the game's options! All you have to do is tick the box to save the Dumps, the game will take it from there. If you have that box ticked, and the game decides to crash, the Dump will be collected and saved to a dedicated /Dumps folder straight in the game's core folder.

In order for this feature to work, you should set the .exe (Battle_Realms_F.exe) in the game's folder to run with Administrator Permissions

You can then grab it from there, upload to any file sharing site and submit a bug-report describing the circumstances of the crash either on the Steam forums or in our Discord.

If you've ever activated Windows Crash Dumps as per our instruction, please disable them, and thanks a lot for your help (Set DumpCount to 0 or delete the entire LocalDumps folder).

[h2]Changelog:[/h2]

[h3]Technical:[/h3]

• Game will now always prioritize Dedicated GPU over the Integrated one..
  
• Fixed the intro mission where peasants would idle or run away instead of responding to enemy attacks.
  
• Added the dump collection setting.
  
• GPU information (Videocard) will now display in the game's options.
  

[h3]Gameplay:[/h3]

• Fixed Dragon, Serpent and Lotus Clans' buildings not playing their destruction SFX correctly (our utmost gratitude to Tovarish Tony for their sharp hearing).
  
• Fixed an issue with Garrin not playing his dialogue lines correctly during Campaign.
  
• Invisible/submerged (digger) units won't reveal their visual status effects to enemies.
  
• Fixed a bug in which AI would still relocate in campaign missions (they won't relocate at all now).
  
• Soban's Golems will no longer be able to use horses anymore (they were never supposed to, that was possible due to a dev oversight).
  

[h2]Battle Realms Discord:[/h2]
  

Join the official server for the game, the universe, and the community if you haven't. Discord has proven to be a very helpful and fun program to use for us (as developers), so we're quite keen on maintaining our server.

Populated by more than 4000 warriors, it is a solid communication bridge between us and all of you.
If you're having issues, planning to report a bug, or just want to learn something new about the game and communicate with other fans or even developers -- we'd like to see you there, come around!

[h2]Battle Realms Fundraiser:[/h2]

• Help Fund Battle Realms! by Ed Del Castillo.

[h2]Follow Battle Realms:[/h2]

• On Youtube.
  
  
• On Facebook.
  
  
• On Reddit.
  
  
• On Twitter.
  
  
• On Twitch.
  

[h3]Stay tuned for more updates!

- The Battle Realms Team[/h3]

Greetings, Warriors!

We are back from our break and now feeling stronger than ever. Future updates won't take as long, and they'll contain lots of exciting stuff. More details on that will be provided later...

The time has come for us to release another update for the game. With this one we're building a foundation for a serious rebalance of the existing systems in the game, which we will in the future polish up and see the new concepts come to fruition. Prepare for some good stuff ahead!

[h2]Regarding Stutter-Lag-Crash for certain Windows 11 users as per our previous announcement[/h2]

This is being looked into as the highest priority right now, but might take a while as it affects only a certain part of Windows users. We have no way of reproducing this and only have to rely on more crash reports to be sent to us so we can pinpoint what exactly goes wrong there.

If you are a player who is struggling with the game on Windows 11, please contact us over at the BR Discord by submitting a bug-report. We will take it from there. Thanks!

Without further ado, let's get to the 1.58.3 changes...



[h2]• Highlights:[/h2]

• Reverting some experimental changes made in 1.58.2.
  
• Getting rid of the Fire damage by mixing it into Explosive. The total amount of damage/armor types is reduced from 6 to 5.
  
• Making Piercing damage always be the middle value of maximum and minimum armor multipliers to make it a true universal damage without it overshadowing unit weakness to xyz damage types.
  

[h2]• General: [/h2]
[h3]• Explosive & Fire Damage Mixed Together[/h3]

• Simplification of the damage/armor system. It is now 5 types instead of 6.
  
• Getting rid of "Nobody resists Piercing" and "Everybody resists Fire" concepts in the game.
  
• Fire-based units now become useful vs other units and not just buildings (i.e. Raider of the Serpent Clan as an example of this).
  

To put it short, all units that used to have 'Fire' as their base damage type. now have it switched to 'Explosive'. Fire is not removed as a whole, but is rather remade into what Piercing used to be (nobody resists it e.g. everybody takes 100% damage from it), with a little remark - no units deal fire damage anymore. Fire damage is now only dealt by embers launched from burning buildings.

[h3]• Piercing Damage Rework[/h3]

• Non-ZM units no longer take 100% damage from Piercing attacks.
  
• Piercing armor is now always exactly in the middle between the worst and best possible counters (weakest and strongest resistances).
  
• Piercing is no longer the best type of damage overshadowing proper counterpicks.
  
• Zen Masters no longer have a strong resistance against Piercing.
  

These two redesigns we consider to be rather significant, and that's done for the easier understanding of the game. These changes, as always, are not final and are bound to be improved in the future.



[h2]• Technical Changes:[/h2]

• Fixed a bug that allowed Watchtower units to become invulnerable.
• Fixed a number of triggers that corrupted save games preventing them from being loaded (resulting in a crash).
• [Experimental] Made the game permanently rely on threads, forcing an update every 2 seconds (and not every frame loop); This causes a delay in chat messages, but should make lobby joining better overall.
  
  
• Kabuki Stardust VFX remade.
  
• Ronin Blade On-Ground VFX remade.
  
• Warlock Dark Arson VFX remade.
  
• Chemist Rocket Explosion VFX remade.
  
• Cannoneer’s “Steel Cannonballs” technique ICON and NAME changed.
  
• Minor AI tweaks.
  
• Wild/Pack wolves won’t be considered as ‘undead’ by the game.
  
• Movement commands won’t be issued if the unit is immobilized by anything.
  
• Improved code for AI Peasants Tower Repair. They will now consider some factors like if the watchtower is manned and its health percentage. This is to fix the current behavior where they just send all the units they've got to repair the WT no matter what.
  
• Fixed a scenario caused by simultaneous button presses where the unit would cancel a BG but still trigger a move command afterwards.
  
• Included ‘Undead’ type in KillHero BG functions so it functions correctly if there are undead heroes like The Necromancer.

[h2]• Gameplay Changes:[/h2]
[h3]Campaign Tweaks:[/h3]

• Swans Pool building health increased from 2000 to 3000.
  

[h3]• General:[/h3]

The Serpent Cannoneer is back

You heard it right. We have reverted the concept of Stoneball introduced with 1.58.2 as it felt rather wrong and not fitting the tone of the unit, we believe the majority agrees on that.

This leaves us in a limbo regarding the "Steel Cannonballs" technique, which is now remade into an honest placeholder called "Ammo Pouches" that increases the amount of Smoke Bombs one Cannoneer can carry by two. We wanted to have it affect Mines as well, but once again the game decides to limit us technically, so that will take some time to figure out.

It's a placeholder until better times, and it's better than having a technique that does absolutely nothing (how it has been since the original release all the way to Winter of the Wolf, and even earlier BR:ZE versions built on the latter).

With that being said, maybe you, our player base, have a better suggestion for this Cannoneer technique (upgrade)? We'd like to hear your thoughts, send them our way!



The Everchanging Kabuki Stardust

Dragon Kabuki's Stardust has undergone yet another change, and hopefully this will be the final one in terms of its mechanics. Stardust will now be a sustainable ability similar to Dark Canopy of the Lotus Staff Adept.

Kabuki will still have to throw the Star Dust projectile, but will be immobilized once it takes effect, effectively having his stamina drained while he's sustaining the ability.

The VFX have also been remade for improved visual clarity.

• Cannoneer default/original/vanilla attack restored, stoneball removed as a concept (reverting the 1.58.2 experiment).
  
• Cannoneer’s “Steel Cannonballs” technique is now “Ammo Pouch” and will increase his Smoke Bomb charges by 2.
  
• Crossbowman Weakness Bolt armor debuff increased from 25% to 50%.
  
• Kabuki Stardust redesigned to work as a sustainable ability akin to Archer Zen Arrow. (10 Stamina Cost / 5 Stamina Drain Rate).
  
• Wildeye base damage reduced from 18 to 14.
  
• Wildeye’s Spirit Wolves base damage reduced from 20 to 18.
  
• Wolf Sledger's Siege value has been slightly increased (the unit is more effective at taking down buildings).
  
• Berserker’s base damage increased from 20 to 22.
  
• Hurler Lava Rock FirePoint value increased from 0,075 to 0,085 (Lava Rock projectiles will set buildings on fire quicker).
  
• Fixed Chemist attacks not showing as Siege in Tooltips.
  
• Time to acquire “Rite of Ascension” BG for Tier 2 Lotus units reduced from 40 to 25 as per Unit Training Equalization changes of 1.58.2 (oversight on our part).
  
• Training time for Master Warlock decreased from 45 to 25 as per Unit Training Equalization changes of 1.58.2 (2nd oversight on our part).
  
• Horses Time To Become Wild increased from 30 to 45 ticks (tamed horses without a host retain their state for longer before going wild).

This would conclude the changelog for this update. It might feel rather short especially after so many months but trust us - we have a lot for BR:ZE in store this year, and we are eager to prove it soon. For more details on that, keep your eyes peeled for the next announcement regarding the future of BR. :)

[video]https://i.imgur.com/DsEykPn.mp4[/video]
(this is a video, if you can't click it, open the announcement in a separate page, if you have no sound, click on the speaker icon)

[h2]Battle Realms Discord:[/h2]
  

Join the official server for the game, the universe, and the community if you haven't. Discord has proven to be a very helpful and fun program to use for us (as developers), so we're quite keen on maintaining our server.

Populated by more than 4000 warriors, it is a solid communication bridge between us and all of you.
If you're having issues, planning to report a bug, or just want to learn something new about the game and communicate with other fans or even developers -- we'd like to see you there, come around!

[h2]Battle Realms Fundraiser:[/h2]

• Help Fund Battle Realms! by Ed Del Castillo.

[h2]Follow Battle Realms:[/h2]

• On Youtube.
  
  
• On Facebook.
  
  
• On Reddit.
  
  
• On Twitter.
  
  
• On Twitch.
  

[h3]Stay tuned for more updates!

- The Battle Realms Team[/h3]

Hi there!

We've noticed an increase in crash reports based on user feedback. Here are some examples:

Campaign runs for a few minutes then the game crashes without warning. It is not like getting stuck then closes but rather, you blink and it is gone.

The game suffers a large stutter and freezes, the freezes continue until eventually a crash happens. Can occur anywhere between the first 8 minutes to the latter 24.

The game closes when I open the story mode, both kenji and winter, just 5-10sec then it closes automatically.

Let us quickly sum this up:

• We are looking into it, but it is a complicated matter that will take some time for us to solve.
  
• This only happens for Windows 11 users.
  
• This does not happen to every Windows 11 user (we have tried many times to reproduce this).
  
• Some users provided crash reports in accordance with our instruction, which helped us get some ideas as to why this happens.
  

This issue seems to have come out of nowhere and may or may not be related to one of the Windows 11 updates. It's challenging to pinpoint the exact cause because the game works fine on all other OS (even Linux via Steam Proton), and it works for us (BR dev team members) on Windows 11 as well.

If we can't reproduce it, we will definitely have a tough time fixing it. We're closing in on the target; however, and let's be honest, nothing will ever be as hard as getting this game on Steam was.

Thanks to everybody who sends the crash dumps; that is very much appreciated. If you are struggling with crashes as well, please leave a comment here answering this short form and maybe provide a bit of background details:

Does your Battle Realms: Zen Edition crash?
When does it crash?
Version of your Windows (Name + Build)
Do you have a stationary PC or a laptop? If it's a laptop, does it have a hybrid GPU layout (multiple GPUs)?
What GPU does the game run on?

Thanks in advance, and rest assured, we will have this solved soon. ːlunar2020halodragonː

This introduces a small fix to improve chat speed and a tweak to AI to fix an exploit on repair behaviour

Greetings, Warriors!

We would like to take a moment and address the state of the multiplayer experience in the game and share some important notes about upcoming maintenance.

[h2]The game will keep updating frequently. You might encounter "This session is running an outdated version of the game (or newer version)" messages when joining lobbies, keep your eyes peeled for fresh updates.[/h2]

As you may already be aware, the multiplayer functionality in BR:ZE relies on P2P (Peer to Peer) Network technology, operating within the Steam service environment. We're committed to delivering a smooth and enjoyable multiplayer experience, but we recognize that some of you have been experiencing issues such as mid-game desynchronization errors, crashes, deadhangs and various lobby problems.

We want you to know that we're fully aware of these challenges and are actively working to improve the overall stability and performance of our multiplayer system. Our small team is dedicated to finding solutions that will enhance your multiplayer experience and provide a more seamless gameplay environment.



We are about to take a deep dive into this. In the coming days, you may notice some adjustments and changes to the network functionality as we work tirelessly to address these issues. These changes are aimed at creating a more stable and reliable multiplayer experience for everyone. However, it's important to note that as we tinker with the network, there might be instances of unusually unstable connectivity during this transition period.

We understand that your time is valuable, and we greatly appreciate your patience and support as we work through these improvements. So far, your feedback and reports have been instrumental in guiding our efforts, and we're committed to keeping you informed about our progress.

Please keep an eye on our official communication channels, including our Steam discussions and our official Discord server, for updates and announcements related to these network changes. Your engagement and involvement are incredibly valuable to us as we continue to refine the multiplayer experience.

Stay tuned for more updates, and as always, feel free to reach out to us with any questions, concerns, or feedback. ːlunar2020halodragonː

[h2]Battle Realms Discord:[/h2]
  

Join the official server for the game, the universe, and the community if you haven't. Discord has proven to be a very helpful and fun program to use for us (as developers), so we're quite keen on maintaining our server.

Populated by more than 4000 warriors, it is a solid communication bridge between us and all of you.
If you're having issues, planning to report a bug, or just want to learn something new about the game and communicate with other fans or even developers -- we'd like to see you there, come around!

[h2]Battle Realms Fundraiser:[/h2]

• Help Fund Battle Realms! by Ed Del Castillo.

[h2]Follow Battle Realms:[/h2]

• On Youtube.
  
  
• On Facebook.
  
  
• On Reddit.
  
  
• On Twitter.
  
  
• On Twitch.
  

[h3]Stay tuned for more updates!

- The Battle Realms Team[/h3]