Birthright News

Another tech upgrade to run on UE 5.4 among several fixes and improvements.

[h3]UE 5.4[/h3]

With this version some optimization have started for Birthright with things that was added when upgrading to UE 5.

Nanite has been tested since UE 5 now and it does cost a lot of CPU when benchmarked. It does solve what it is supposed to, but having no real need for extremely complex meshes it cost much more than what you get from a games perspective.

This means moving forward Nanite is being completely disabled and removed, already with this patch most meshes has already been disabled.

Another big cleanup has been Foilage this patch. Several grass foilage had not been converted correctly to use Material Instances, hence cost a lot more than they should.
This has generated a good frame rate bump even on powerful hardware for high density foilage settings.

Lastly UE 5.4 now finally introduce multi-threaded rendering thread, similar to what Cyberpunks engine did to handle a lot of graphical effects and actors.
Demos from Epic maybe promise more gain on rendering thread than what most game developers report they get, but it is indeed a noticable improvement when benchmarked in Birthright.

[h3]Destructible Furniture[/h3]

During upgrade to UE5 all the destructible furniture in Dungeons was unable to auto-convert to the new Chaos destruction in UE5.

Now they are finally all back and converted to Chaos. This means that they all have proper anchoring for integrity (fence poles in the ground are bearing structurally etc).

Also using weapons now properly work on all items to smash and destroy.

This also include all breakable lootables such as Urns, Barrells, Vases (you still need to step on them after smashing to loot the coins they spill).

Next step with Chaos has been started on the final Destructible Sieges to use Catapults/Ballistas to take out the front or a wall. This already has an internal demo now (again, but don't miss the old PhysX crap) and will cook for a while behind the scenes until it's good enough for introduction.
But so far Chaos seems to be mature and ready for this.

[h3]Loot[/h3]

Another change, especially for Dungeons but active in all game modes, is that Player kills now directly make a Loot roll displaying loot in a new UI widget (showing the item and some stats such as Rarity).

This is additional loot meaning you still get the Victory loot after you won. For Dungeons this effectively doubles the loot on all enemies since you get two loot rolls per kill, if you finish the Dungeon.
But in large Battles it will give the Player some reason to not hang back and instead try get some kills yourself for some extra loot, especially the big ones that might have really good loot tables. But not being necessary since you still get scavenging loot like before on all dead opponents.
All game modes have this so even Siege, Skirmish and Arenas.

These loot rolls use the Characters personal Loot Table. Which is not the same as the Scavenging or Dungeon loot tables used for victory loot.

This makes loot more of a constant thing happening and can act as a driving factor, buffing early game a bit while having small impact on late game. And the game was always meant to be loot heavy, many items and micro-managed. This is a step in that direction.

[h3]Other notable fixes[/h3]

• Added a slight force backwards when hit blocking with a shield
  
• Max Speed on World Map has been increased by 50% giving more room for stacking buffs
  
• New Multi-Select UI widget when selling and buying part stacks
  
• Fixed clicking Accept Contract when promoting a family member to Lord (thanks to Jano)
  
• Increased eye adaption brightness in combat to better handle very dark Dungeons or Skirmishes
  
• Victory Panel after combat now plays a Positiive/Negative sound depending on outcome
  
• Fixed opening Map being blank until moving the map
  
• Several fixes around Loader and starting combat to streamline things
  

This patch introduce Vertex Animated Textures on Horses, new super performant accurate melee collision and tons of bug fixes along new items and characters.

Also upgraded to UE 5.3 and hopefully next patch will bring 5.4.

[h3]VAT[/h3]

Vertex Animated Textures was added as a new feature in Unreal Engine 5 to support bigger crowds. It's the most used technique to handle big crowds of characters that normally use expensive Skeleton Meshes for animations.

Horses have completely been converted using VAT, which was a heavy performance cost late game with many mounted soldiers. They have a complex expensive Skeleton bone structure so this is a huge performance save late game and for bigger heavy armies.

Soldiers generally are not planned right now to be converted due to unable to have free movement mixed with torso making attacks.

However Undeads will most probably be converted using VAT because there it would be fine for more static attacks that are in place. But would make it possible to have larger zergs of undeads.
So this is something being looked at for coming patches.

This will also make it easier to make animated characters on World Map and still be very performant.

Since dedicated servers do not use GPU, Horses will run using their Skeleton Collision Asset when needed instead on server side. But this is very performant and still makes Horses extremely cheap, not only for Clients.

[h3]Melee Collision[/h3]

Finally we have a multi-threaded and super performant solution for all combat collision. Which scales way beyond the future needs. It is also very accurate even with high velocity like horse riding.

This system is now regarded as feature complete and production ready. A big important feature moving forward. The backbone of combat.

[h3]Dedicated Server / Multiplayer[/h3]

There has been a heavy focus on honing multiplayer and lots of bugs have been fixed. And the next step now will be to try test with much more players on server than 3-4 which has been the max so far.

Reconnection for Players in Combat should now work properly.

Performance in Combat with several players have been heavily refined and tuned with congestion control of resources (bandwith) when replicating larger battles and several players.

[h3]Other[/h3]

Some minor things to be mentioned:

• Character Dialogues has a new UI
  
• Settlement Extensions has a new UI design with new filter buttons
  
• Selling prisoners in Arena now correctly update UI widget prisoner counter
  
• Settlement Markets now show a Sell Junk (all) button for Players
  
• Tropical battle levels have had several fixes to the grass and water
  
• Spawns of all kinds on World Map have increased slightly for Players
  
• Added animation effect on new contracts in World HUD
  
• Fixed a naked neck issue on characters
  
• Player Horse when dismounted now stays around rather than start running
  
• Unreal Engine updated to v5.3
  

Plus too many changes/additions to be listed in Data (items/characters/missions/titles etc)

[h3]Dismemberment and Gore[/h3]

Mesh Merging is finilized this Patch by now also include Horses. At the same time several optimizations were done on Horses, and like Humans same equiped models share instances for best performance and memory footprint.

Now when we are done introducing Mesh Merging, Dismemberment of Limbs is back for more Gore! As of now only on Humans but will add for Horses and more in later Patches.

[h3]New Food System[/h3]

The food system has revamp all food and ingredients. Previously some complex food required 4-5 ingredients which is extremely hard to maintain for little benefit. And Bread was the king of foods to maintain your army.

Many ingredients now have been cut down to reduce the clutter (example only 2 types of fishes now exist + 1 very special, the Gold Eel). While making the cooked food easier to make it overal feels like there are much more Food options now compared to before.
To balance this one new ingredient were added: Salt. (Mines produce Salt in various degree depending on Upgrade).

Now each of the better cooked food require 2-3 ingredients only and each give a unique Buff to everyone eating it.

Beer Barrels also give a hefty combat Buff if Soldiers consume it with Food. But ifthere is no food, they will get a bad debuff because of drinking on empty stomach.

[h3]New Spawn Systems[/h3]

On World Map spawning was previously based on Pathing to Player which was not reliable enough for many scenarious. So now it strictly use placed areas on the World Map for all types of spawns to make sure it is controlled (example nothing can no longer spawn in the vicinity of The Citadel unless it's a special City POI's that should spawn there).

Combat Spawn is also heavily changed because the previous way could not handle the Chaos that errupts when you push to the extreme with several Lords/Players entering on both sides for Battles/Sieges. Or if anyones army is camping on spawn positions when Reserves spawn, eventually something would go wrong.
Now it will properly probe a grid of 100 possible spots simulating insertion of a Character + Horse to find a safe spot, for each character.

[h3]Other fixes[/h3]

Fight Pit has been rebalanced to better increase the difficulty when joining the tryout quest. And with it the rewards are much greater
Arenas now pay more for sold Prisoners

• Initial Start Story has changed all Food the Player can get at start
  
• Changed minimum Spawn in combat from 5 to 20 regardless of Spawn Ratio
  
• Fixed MP server event when a Player joins the server to display Long Title
  
• Fixed rider immdeiately falling to ground when Horse is killed
  
• Fixed a bug in arena/fight pit where Player could loose army
  
• Fixed a bug when Player used Bow
  
• Fixed Weekly event Wheel of Fortunes spawn point in The Citadel
  
• Fixed MP fetching childrens families in Family Panel
  
• Fixed several issues with Siege Progress marker
  
• Fixed a spawn point issues in WestmarkVillage2 map
  
• Fixed several issues in Fight Pit/Arena thanks to reports from Rigo1
  
• Fixed Red Sea (Desert) Tax to be properly saved when changed
  
• Fixed Desert random Battle Maps does not include Village maps
  
• Fixed UI bug when talking to Follower from Character Panel
  

[h3]Promote Family[/h3]

You can now Promote family members (Family Panel), for a fee to Notarie, making the family member a full Lord operating on their own under your House.

Basic Commands can be given from afar using 1 Raven:

• Collect Taxes (House owned Settlements)
  
• Recruit (If enough Coins)
  
• Patrol
  
• Follow Me
  

You can Trade and Transfer soldiers to manage the Promoted Lords.
Food Collection will be done automatically with a growing Army. But it will take time for them to build up on food themselves.

They have same food and upkeep consumption as other Lords depending on Army size.

Keep in mind this is useful in Mid/End-Game and Early game it will be too hard to sustain the upkeep of several armies. And with no respectable army they will be easy prey for hostile Lords.
Without any particular order they will act on their own for the House just like any other Lord. With their own Personality based on their Tarot cards.

After your first Settlement it's a good time to Promote someone.

[h3]Mesh Merging & Optimization[/h3]

Modular Characters are now merged into a single mesh to increase performance in combat, effectively reducing the draw calls to 20% on the GPU. Each combination of equipment generate one single body that is shared among everyone with the same look. The memory footprint is therefore also minimal, compared to before. Especially when having big Battles/Sieges.

Combat system is still modular when calculating hit body parts.

This is same in SP and MP.

[h3]Combat[/h3]

MP replication in Combat has been heavily optimized. Makingit smoother on clients and reduced bandwidth.

• Combat Camera now defaults to 75 degrees FOV.
  
• Hit Sounds now have 5 new different sounds covering all Armor Types (before simplified into 3 light/medium/heavy).
  
• Ranged damage has been nerfed by 40% from Stat gains, not weapons damage
  
• Combat Camera Vertical/Horizontal position can now be adjusted in Options UI Settings
  
• Several Combat Animations have been changed
  
• Spawning logic for Characters in levels have been reworked
  
• Fixed a mounted character dying bug using animation to now use ragdoll instead
  
• Fixed several Wolf sounds
  
• Fixed several Undead sounds
  
• Fixed several Humanoid sounds
  
• Fixed Medium Armored Troll animations and ability to equip any 2-hander as 1-hander
  
• Fixed combat rotation for AI to now rely on Dexterity
  
• MP Fixed Combat Formation selection
  

[h3]World Map[/h3]

• World Map now has WASD Camera movement and Q/E rotation as default, Can be changed in Keybindings.
  
• LMB/RMB now both are same functionality
  
• New Character Preview in Character Panel
  
• New unique background images for all Extensions
  
• New Permanently Delete Button on Contracts
  
• Granaries now more properly calculate correct Food consumption of connected Settlement and try to stock up 5 days of food
  
• Settlements being taken over now send Raven message to Owner along with World Event
  
• Settlement Extensions UI remade and everyone got unique backgrounds
  
• Settlement Extension building time reduced by 50%
  
• Settlements now start with more Materials on New Game making first few days easier
  
• Birds have been simplified to only have Ravens now
  
• Added mouse panning in Lineage Tab in Family Panel to pan around freely
  
• Removed collision on all houses, only Walls have it now
  
• Removed 4 types of Berries reducing unnecessary complexity
  
• Undead Dialogues now got a new unique background
  
• Decreased radius World Extensions show their Widget
  
• Fixed several bugs around Ongoing Battle Marker simulating AI vs AI
  
• Fixed Settlement Crafting to show max Durability
  
• Fixed Settlement being taken over sometimes showed wrong State afterwards
  
• Fixed several bugs around Army Food Consumption
  
• Fixed Leandra Story when falling down breaking the leg it can be healed with sticks/bandages
  
• Fixed that sometimes the wrong Terrain was shown
  
• Fixed Event Filter buttons styling having rounded boxes after UE5 update
  
• Fixed several Character Templates stats to better balance them
  
• Fixed some wrong weapons in starter Equipment for Characters
  
• Fixed immigrants not targeting full Settlements as much
  
• Fixed Family Panel start text
  
• MP Trade Coins between Players now working
  
• MP Fixed Coins update when trading with other Lords
  

[h3]Next Patch[/h3]

Big thanks to Amarum & Co for helping out with testing MP and many players in battle!

Next focus will be to start making Tutorials, something that have been asked for. As well as expand World AI and End Game even more.

• Added Target Attack Directions in UI
  
• Changed Combat Camera positioning
  
• Character Panel can now be opened on top of Settlement/Story Dialogues
  
• Food Item Description has been updated to not state ingredients as actual Cooked Food
  
• Apples & Fruits now count as Cooked Food for Soldiers as an early game option
  

• Fixed Horses turn rate should no longer depend on frame rate
  
• Fixed Keybindings for Attack Directions
  
• Fixed Lord Dialogues continuous offering Alliance
  
• Fixed broken Dialogue Condition to check if player owns Settlement
  
• Fixed Leandra Dialogue missing rejoin option after fallen in combat
  
• Fixed SnowyVillage1 map start positions and a static object in the sky
  
• Fixed Village3 map start positions
  
• Fixed Black Scorpions face direction
  
• Fixed Morning Update to lock Settlements that Players are visiting to avoid a crash that could happen if Player changed Data during this time