Birthright News

[p]While the next big Major patch is cooking this patch fixes many bugs and optimization, polishing the core gameplay.[/p][p]And also adds 50k more translations of dialogues. But localization is still a Beta feature and more UI fixes will follow coming patches to accomodate Russian and Simplified Chinese texts.[/p][p][/p][h3]Important Notes[/h3]

• [p]Main Menu now shows latest Character and Family[/p]
• [p]Several rebalancing of what production each Region can have[/p]
• [p]Combat Animations now use LOD and CPU budget, depending on hardware range, to scale animation much better in Battles and Sieges[/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug where Player could loose inventory (Big thanks to Rigo1 for reporting this)[/p]
• [p]Settlement Dialogue Market now close market when clicking background[/p]
• [p]ESC now closes a Story Dialogue while in Settlement Dialogue[/p]
• [p]Character panel has several UI changes to free up space and make things tighter[/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug with scrolling army[/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug with Army leveling panel expanding[/p]
• [p]WM fixed persistent camera position when coming back after combat[/p]
• [p]WM Camera now only collide with Terrain and nothing else[/p]
• [p]WM Camera when moving with WASD now follows Terrain[/p]
• [p]WM made several optimizations of Meshes becoming ISM[/p]
• [p]Fixed Unit Battle marker widget and positioning[/p]
• [p]Added several new UI sounds during Character Creation[/p]
• [p]Fixed horses brightness of saddle bags and eyes[/p]
• [p]When opening Settlement Dialogues in SP it will now wait for World Update to finish before pausing if happening at the same time[/p]
• [p]Options Panel have reworked Dropdown and keybinding inputs[/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug when sorting dead Soldiers after Battle finished[/p]
• [p]Desert Temple Dungeons got several Texture fixes[/p]
• [p]Combat fixed a bug with Followers Charging when in Formation[/p]
• [p]Combat Characters updated for the upcoming Mass Actors to work seamlessly[/p]
• [p]Fixed an issue when loading World Map showing the map before everythign had loaded[/p]

[h3][/h3][p]Meanwhile the next Major patch is cooking well and already Mass Actors work as Soldiers for all weapons and formations. And the performance improvement is very good so really looking forward to release this overhaul of everything with Combat Characters.[/p][p]A great side effect of AI/Perception/Movement becoming fully multi-threaded is some complex things to calculate suddenly works fine and scalable. Like advanced Boid Flock movement where they now have understanding of density around them of Enemy/Allies, forming loose formations of 2-4 nearby Allies in a natural way etc[/p]

[p]This is yet another minor patch while the next big patch is still cooking something big and yummy.[/p][p]There are tons of bug fixes, performance optimizations, Quest system improvements and new tutorial quests, but also a Beta release of Localization.[/p][p][/p][h3]Quests[/h3][p]So far there have not been any in-game help what to do except discovering things yourself. And finally we have a new quest chain that takes your thru the most important steps (building a house, marriage and conquering settlements).[/p][p][/p][p]The quest system has also been heavily updated and modified like better cleanup of spawned things and better failed/abort handling.[/p][p][/p][p]There is also new events sent when quests progress, or are added to Player. Almost all quests and events have had updates and fixes.[/p][p][/p][h3]BETA Localization - Phase I[/h3][p]This has been something that was planned to wait until production phase is further along. But we now have a full translation pipeline established with Unreal Engine where new texts can automatically be translated. So it is time to start releasing the changes now. [/p][p]Next up will be to create a tool for handling human correction authority and minor changes to Dialogues to be better cut into paragraphs. [/p][p]Changing language can already be tested in Options -> Game -> Language [/p][p]Currently it is not 100% complete but will be coming patches (and change font to support Chinese and Russian characters natively). The supported languages for now are: [/p]

• [p]English[/p]
• [p]Spanish[/p]
• [p]French[/p]
• [p]German[/p]
• [p]Chinese (need special font installed)[/p]
• [p]Russian (need special font installed)[/p]

[p][/p][h3]Important fixes to mention[/h3]

• [p]Optimization round for Stones and Mountains placed in levels, now instanced static meshes[/p]
• [p]Fixed a random head bug for soldiers[/p]
• [p]1h (no shield) Right attack is fixed and not so short[/p]
• [p]Fixed updating follower counter when recruiting them on the road[/p]
• [p]Character Creation panels now show Avatar in fixed position and during the whole flow[/p]
• [p]Undeads got OnHit cooldown[/p]
• [p]Fixed a hard cut in music when changing Terrain on World Map[/p]
• [p]Character Panel and Settlement UI now use ESC better to step back and close[/p]
• [p]Character Panel got a new closing sound[/p]
• [p]New hit animations as interrupt when hit for all characters with a cooldown of 2s[/p]
• [p]World Events for quests now show Task description instead of Quest description[/p]
• [p]Fixed a broken Temple Dungeon in Desert with bad navigation[/p]
• [p]Fixed Player camera at start position when coming back to World Map[/p]
• [p]Combat healing got new floating icon and better abort logic[/p]
• [p]Fixed Minotaurs attacks[/p]
• [p]Fixed World Events showing big ui widget to queue them and pause in multiplayer when Player opens other UI (time stil goes on in multiplayer)[/p]

[p][/p][h3]Next Major Patch[/h3][p]There are several projects going on in parallell now. AI is helping to build a lot of code and tools that are needed (translation pipeline for example).[/p][p]And to prepare for expanding the studio I have created several AI agents that fill certain roles. For example there is already a Project Manager AI running the Trello board, keeping track of what changes in Progress and comments on tickets. It has deep understanding of Birthright as a project and what plugins and technologies it is built on.[/p][p]Because of this new AI help with deeper technical discussions, and super fast probing of Unreal Engine source files, the foundation of a new battle character structure that is very optimized is on it's way.[/p][p][/p][p]So for the next Major patch it will include a new completely custom built character used in Combat, for superior scalability.[/p][p]Unreal Engines Mass Entity system is fully used both for custom Movement pathfinding and full AI multi-threaded batch processing. Removing most of the CPU bottlenecks currently in game.[/p][p]
While the plan is still to use Skeleton Meshes for Players and Humanoids/Monsters (might change in future), for Undeads the plan is to use VAT (Vertex Animated Textures).
Currently Horses use VAT to remove the cost of Skeletons and Animations.[/p][p]For Undeads this would mean they can scale up to massive amounts and be more of a zerg than armies.[/p][p][/p][p]This is an exiting project cooking and very much needed for performance in larger Battles and Sieges. And of course multiplayer replication is a core of it, much more performant though and with new better ways to solve things.[/p]

* Added Server and Client version matching when trying to join a server
* Armor Data have been updated to better reflect quality change
* Old Merchant now has a special Loot Table spawning random loot every season it shows up. This also means more varied items instead of previous fixed table. Legendary and Epic weapons are replaced with their Recipe and more diverse variations.
* Fixed a bug when Crafting big batches of items
* Fixed Settlement Prosperity only updating every morning, now also when new Extensions are built
* Fixed server doing world save before pausing when last player logs out

When this project started it was only Singleplayer. But along the way a POC was made and proved Multiplayer will work having different Game Modes for World Map and Combat.

At the same time a lot of time has been spent on upgrading Unreal Engine since the goal was to settle on UE5, which it now does on a fairly stable release (UE 5.4) that has fixed most child issues of UE5.

This meant Multiplayer had not too much attention or optimization. But now it finally got some needed love and this patch has a heavy focus on improving Dedicated Server. Adding new features such as Local Chat and optimizing data in combat and world map.

So now is the time to start hosting a public server that everyone can try out. This will make it possible to gather more needed logs for further refinement.

And some QoL features for hosting Dedicated Server will be added in coming patches where Multiplayer will now get more focus than Singleplayer (still all comming features will be same in both).

[h3]Local Chat[/h3]

There are already Chat Bubbles in place for Local Chat, but now there is also a standard Chat window to handle local chat in a better way.

This is still just local in a radius around Players. If you can see another Player on World Map both will hear each other.
So for long range communication the idea is still that Messages has to be written and sent with Birds. Something that is still in the works.

[h3]Server Performance[/h3]

World Map CPU usage now takes less than 2% on a i9 CPU. And memory is down to 0.5-1.0 GB. This makes further optimization unnecessary and there is plenty of head room for the future features added to World Map and AI.
All AI Characters are still fully operating on the map regardless if any Player is nearby or not. This is not something that will be simulated to save performance.

Battles and Sieges have also been heavily optimized where 200 soldier limit is default in server configuration. And even though bandwidth have been reduced significantly for each connected Player this is an area that will be looked at more. But to do that will need much more Players trying the official test server.
So far testing has been made with 2-3 Players and the difference to 1 Player is not noticebale anymore in performance.

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

* 1h + shield now has 4 High Mode attack combos
* New Battle widget design
* Improved ragdoll
* Added Clock in combat UI
* Fixed a helmet issue with head mesh
* Settlement UI fixed quick buttons showing coins
* Settlement UI moved Back buttons to bottom for better mouse flow
* Settlement UI removed showing Loader when fetching initial data in MP
* Settlement UI fixed an issue with updating Visiting Lord total power
* Settlement UI fixed a rare race condition if opening UI same time as World Update started
* Settlement UI improved opening Character Panel while in Settlement
* Settlement UI fixed quick close from Market
* Multi Select widget in UI got better visuals and style fixes
* Recruitment and Daily Upkeep costs increased by 50%
* Fixed a bug where a built Extension could be available to build again
* Fixed Settlement Market price sometimes showing wrong Need
* Fixed a blocking volume on World Map
* Fixed World Map spawns using Troll spawn points
* Fixed weapon tracing for Ghouls and Wolves elite characters
* Fixed Ghouls sometimes using Human Taunt sound
* Fixed Kingdom Panel sometimes showing wrong portrait in Multiplayer
* Fixed an issue with Stamina Regen
* Changed Running Stamina Cost to depend on Stamina rather than Toughness
* Blocking a Hit with Shield now cost Stamina based on stats for hitter and blocker character
* Stamina regen now stops while Running and while Parry/Block
* Fixed Lineage Tree showing default placeholder when no family
* World HUD Top Panel showing materials got several fixes for showing big numbers
* Fixed updating total coins after being granted coins as rewards in Taverns for Multiplayer
* Changed early game Undead Bosses weapon sets
* Fixes to styling of Screen Loader
* Fixed follower Elysa dialogue when talking to her while in party
* Fixed speed on World Map set correctly after Settlement Event Dialogue
* Unit UI in Character Panel got reworked to be more clear
* Added Discord button at Main Menu
* Camera brightness is changed and now separated better between World Map, Battles and Dungeons
* Fixed Multi Select sometimes allowed higher amount than item in Crafting UI
* Fixed Overview Map showing Heralds on Settlements
* Fixed destructible fragments to not interact with Players