War of Rights News

War of Rights is currently 50% off being part of Steam's summer sale!

Whether you'd like to fill the infantry ranks on the live servers or help playtest the new artillery on the test server we welcome you. :)

Get the game at: https://store.steampowered.com/app/424030/War_of_Rights/

[h3]Hello everyone. [/h3]

Today, we’re extremely happy to be able to invite every owner of War of Rights to partake in the public test branch of the long awaited artillery update!

In order to partake, all you have to do is right click War of Rights in your Steam library, head into its properties and locate the “betas” tab. There you will be able to select the public test branch from the dropdown menu.


Please note that you will not be able to play on the live game servers nor be able to see them in the server browser until you opt out of the public test branch again.

The artillery update consists of many months of work - it is by far our biggest update to date. No mass testing has yet been done (this is why we need you guys!). As such, a large number of issues should be expected when partaking in the public test: incomplete features, client crashes, server crashes, skewed team balance, visual issues to name but a few. The public test server is also not guaranteed to be online 24/7 during the testing period.

There is currently no end date to the public test. This will depend entirely on how the test goes. We expect to cycle to different battlefields & drill camps throughout the testing period.

The artillery update is featuring more additions and changes than just the introduction of the artillery branch: Major overhauls to all of the forests in the game, reworked lighting, most materials of the game reworked, overhauled town assets, updated animations, etc.

A complete changelog (or as complete as we can muster, we are bound to miss a lot of things given the scope of the update) will be posted when the artillery update is released onto the live build of the game.


Known artillery issues

• It is currently impossible to stow a round in the limber chest if you have picked one up. We’ve decided to go with a stow feature instead of a drop feature as the latter will be highly trollable.
  
  
• The rounds inside a limber chest are currently invisible in the first skirmish area you join. They will come back into view once you interact with them or when the next skirmish area starts.
  
  
• The rounds inside a limber chest currently have a chance of appearing as if they are shaking.
  
  
• The cannons and limbers feature rather basic collision meshes currently. This can result in some interesting results.
  

That’s all for now. We can’t wait to partake in the very first public artillery test with you all!

[h2]Hello everyone![/h2]
We thought it might be a good idea to give you all a bit of an update as to the progress we’re making regarding two of the most complex systems we’ve yet to develop: Artillery & The Platform System as well as list some of the release blocking issues currently stopping us from releasing artillery in its current state despite the great amount of anticipation surrounding it.

[h2]Artillery Progress Report[/h2]
Since we last showed you any of the artillery in action we’ve been adding fully functional limber carts containing Shell, Case & Canister rounds as well as being moveable in much the same way as the cannons themselves are. We’ve also polished a number of animations as well as having updated the firing particles of the cannons. Another addition is the displayed “Elevation Angle” shown in the lower left corner when turning the elevation screw of the cannon. This is the total of the barrel elevation as well as ground slope combined and should prove very useful for gunners wanting to shout out angles to the other crew members after successful hits. We have also added a 2nd quicker speed when strafing with the limber cart pole, the cannon trail spike and turning the elevation screw. This will allow crews the ability to quickly turn the pieces most of the way (holding shift) with the faster speed as well as use the precision of the slower speed (letting go of shift) to properly aim the piece.

We have also populated all of the battlefields with the correct batteries at the correct locations (based on the exact key moments the skirmish areas portray) as well as added capturable forward battery deployments for each individual active battery (This is basically our way of giving the battery crews a forward spawn just as the infantry regiments have their flag spawns).

Here is a quick video we recorded of the above new additions.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Artillery Release Blockers Detailed[/h2]
As we know just how anticipated the deployment of the first version of artillery is by many of you we have decided to give you a quick rundown of the current major release blockers we are working on fixing. Please note that this list is the current list and that it may grow in future internal playtests. It is also possible that several of the below issues are caused by the same bug.

1) Reset the state of artillery pieces when the round is over.

2) Look into cannon firing sounds and particles not triggering for some clients when firing - once this is triggered it appears to be in place until a game restart.

3) Sometimes the inserted shell is not removed correctly from the player, leaving him in a shell carrying animation pose without a shell and allows him to switch to the rammer as well, enabling him to both load (with the invisible shell he holds) and ram the cannon on his own without having to grab a new shell.

4) Sometimes cannons and limbercarts will lose their proper physics behavior. Their proxy will be broken and they will be pushable by the player if they are walked into. They are also not allowing any seats to be interacted with in this state. This has been reproduced by having a limbercart (note: the cannon in this experiment did not break - the limbercart did however) interacted with/pushed, etc. so it is no longer in its default position on the skirmish area, then quit the game and rejoin the server. It will now be in a broken physics state where it is pushable and non interactable as described above while all of the rest of the limbercarts that haven’t been touched by anyone are still fully physicalized. Cannons have also been seen to break in the same way but it has not been reproduced by the above test.

5) All of the rounds inside the limber chest are sometimes invisible. You can still see the text above them and the second you pick one up they all come into view. This was seen on the Dunker Church skirmish area, Antietam in the Carlton Battery, CSA.

6) Friendly (and possibly also enemy) players killed by the explosion of a shell will sometimes appear dead for everyone but themselves. They are in fact alive and can be seen by their nametags moving about. While invisible they can still damage other players so this is a major release blocker.

While the above can give the impression of it going to take a lot of work to fix we are confident that we indeed are in the last phases of development before the update is ready for deployment. We hope the seriousness from a competitive game’s standpoint some of the above issues are will help you understand why the update has not been released yet.

Once the release blockers have been dealt with we plan on hosting a public dev branch test of the artillery patch prior to its actual release on the live build of the game. We will be sure to let you all know the when and how’s as soon as testing is ready to start.

[h2]Technical Issues in the Alpha[/h2]
In the wake of the last few weeks of posts by our community highlighting some of the issues they are currently (and have been for a long time) experiencing in the alpha we felt we needed to explain to you all what is being done in order to fix them. We therefore asked Philipp - the other part of our programming team not focusing on the artillery, to explain what he primarily has been up to since the alpha was released on Steam Early Access nearly 18 months ago.

[h2]The Platform System[/h2]
Hey, I am Philipp and one of the Programmers on the War of Rights Team.
I have mainly worked on core systems like Game rules, Spawning or Networking to name a few.
For quite a while now, since January last year, I have been focused on a rather large and difficult undertaking that we deemed necessary to make developing War of Rights easier and allow us to deliver a viable online multiplayer experience. That being a completely new Platform / ”Lobby” system.

[h2]What is it?[/h2]
The job of the Platform system is to handle all functionality relating to a “Platform” the game is currently running on.

Some of the crucial features being:

- Authentication
- Matchmaking and Server discovery
- Connection handling between client and server
- Platform related data exchange (Usernames, Clans, etc.)
- Chat

And some of the less crucial ones:

- Friends/Clans/Groups
- Ability to join games your Friends/Clan/Groups are on
- Rich status display about what you are doing to other (i.e. “Attacking on map x for side y”)
- Statistics
- “User generated content” (Icons, server banners, etc.)

[h2]Why is it?[/h2]
Right now, our online functionalities are being handled by a library that was designed for ps3/xbox360 era p2p style gaming, onto which we added the functionality required for steam servers. Since we released into early access this has been an ongoing headache. It makes it far too difficult for our small team to debug issues relating to connection failures and other connectivity issues. Adding new functionality is also a pain every time and might cause more issues down the line. In short, our current solution is not viable if we want to keep expanding on it.

[h2]What does it solve?[/h2]
A completely new implementation allows us to separate all online functionality into its own module and focus on solving issues that have plagued the game since early access release, which we so far are barely even able to reproduce, let alone debug.

Some of the issues that this will fix or help us fix are:

- Stuck on establishing context
- Random disconnects
- Failure to reconnect to a server
- Failure to connect to a server
- Server mass drops
- Servers not showing up in the list
- Connections to other players staying active after disconnecting
- Lighten the load on the game networking module and thread

[h2]What does it allow us to do?[/h2]
Apart from allowing us to properly debug and fix all our connection issues, it also allows us to implement some planned features as well as hypothetical features down the line so we don’t need to rip everything apart each time we want to add something.

Some of the planned features are:

- Proper error messaging for networking related issues. This includes a description of why a join attempt may have failed or a message that tells you why you have been kicked/banned from a server.
- Integrate with Steam’s friend system so that you can join your friends and groups directly from the Steam client.
- Integrate with a backend service that allows us to supplement user data with our own persistent data. This makes it possible to integrate the company tool into the game itself.
- Backer reward cosmetics

Some hypothetical features this system allows us to implement without an insane amount of work:

- Cross battle persistent data
- Game events
- Server slot reservation based on company or event
- Expanding to other platforms in the future (Epic, xbox, playstation, switch, phone, microwave)
- Platform cross-play

[h2]Why is this taking so long?[/h2]
As you might imagine, this is a huge amount of work for a small team like ours and involves threading, networking, serialization, and other fun stuff.
The key here is to get it right and build a sustainable framework that is maintainable as well as extensible. This includes designing it to allow for easy integration of the different Platform Apis. (Steam being the main one, but lan also needs to be implemented for internal testing).

So, finding a combination of tools and learning them has been quite a challenge, but we hope to release the first iteration of this soon, and alleviate some of those ongoing connectivity woes.

That’s all for now - we can’t wait to eventually bring you the platform system, posed to fix or at least help to fix a number of some of the most reported and annoying alpha issues of the game and also heading into public testing of the artillery patch with you all as soon as the pesky release blockers have been dealt with!

[h3]Hello Everyone![/h3]
While we continue to work on the first implementation of artillery to the game we thought it a good time to show you all a bit of some of the other content we're working on which is to be released at some point after the introduction of artillery as well as give you all a brief update about the progress of the artillery development itself. But first we have a new sale to announce!



Part of the Steam Lunar New Year sale for the next 4 days, War of Rights is now 40% off! We hope you will all join us in giving the new recruits that are about to swell the ranks the warmest of possible welcomes!



The development of the cavalry army branch is progressing nicely, we think (we hope you will agree!). It being a major content addition coming to the game after the introduction of artillery, we hope you're looking forward to be exploring its uses on the field of battle as much as we are.

For now, we're pleased to be able to show you the very first in-engine screenshots of several cavalry horses complete with all of their tack, supporting CSA specific as well as Union specific variations as well!






The introduction of artillery into the alpha as soon as possible remains the absolute priority of the team. A lot of work is currently being done in order to make the limber chests functional in-game, allowing the players to not only move the limbers themselves in order to keep the ammunition supply as close as possible to any cannon or battery on the move, but also to allow the crew to open the limber chest lid, select each shell they wish to pick up individually (consisting of several different shell types) as well as the option to move over the tray of tools (which hides half of the shells in the limber chest) to the other half of the chest, exposing the remaining half of the ammunition of the chest for usage.

It is quite the task from a systematic as well as animation setup point of view but we're happy to let you all know that we're making progress in allowing the above stated to happen.



That's all for now - we hope you're looking forward to be greeting the new players welcome as well as the introduction of artillery and the eventual addition of cavalry as much as we are!

[h3]Hello everyone![/h3]
We hope you all had a nice Christmas and that you are now looking forward to a new decade of PC gaming as much as we here at Campfire Games are!

We realize there’s a lot of interest about how the development of artillery, one of the core features of War of Rights is shaping up and so we thought it a good idea to give you a brief rundown of some of the issues still keeping us from releasing the first version of it as well as a video showcasing two of our developers interacting with a cannon in a networked environment. The video displays a number of issues (and misses quite a few as well), some more serious than others that should make it clear why artillery is not yet released to the public.

(Note that the 2nd shot was the first time we actually tried to aim the cannon at the firing range target - we thought that went pretty well!)

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
As you can see in the video above, a number of animation issues are currently present - both in regards to general animation polish but also in relation to characters turning invisible for a period of time after having left the different positions of the cannon as well as characters currently glitching out when the cannon is moving over an uneven/sloped ground, sometimes resulting in falling through the ground (not shown in the video).

One of the major things that still need to be implemented is the ability to pick up shells from the limber chests (hence why an invisible shell was loaded into the gun in the video above).

While we do have firing sounds for the artillery we’re currently lacking most other sounds related to manipulating the piece.

That being said, we hope you will agree with us that the development of the first version of artillery is indeed headed in the right direction.

We will continue to push on in order to get it out to you all as soon as possible. Until then, we would like to wish you a very happy new year and also thank you for supporting the development of the alpha for yet another year.

We would also like to welcome the many new players who have decided to fill the ranks during the Steam Winter Sale - we are happy to have you and we hope you’ll enjoy the alpha and its great community.

We can’t wait to see what 2020 has in store for the development of WoR!

War of Rights is currently 50% off at: https://store.steampowered.com/app/424030/War_of_Rights