War of Rights News

Hello everyone,

We have just released a new alpha update to War of Rights. This update is primarily a maintenance update while we work towards revamping the victory/defeat screen shown at the end of the match while also aiming to do a better job at presenting the historical, geographical & situational relation each skirmish area has to the many other skirmish areas on the battlefield.

Expect to hear/see more from us regarding this matter in the not too distant future.

Below are the patch notes of update 173:

- Fixed a bug causing some of the regiments in the game to be unable to pick up dropped flags.
- Fixed the text chat not showing admin messages.
- Reduced the amount of visible corpse frame spawning (sometimes reported as teleporting players). This is not entirely fixed but it is much improved.
- Possibly fixed the stretching corpse visual issue.
- Fixed a terrain hole that would sometimes trap players at River Crossing, Harpers Ferry.
- Detail work done on all levels of the game.
- Work on all cornfield borders in the game.
- Updated the 114th Pennsylvania regimental flag.
- Added some key backend systems for future features.

Hello everyone,

We have just pushed a new alpha update.

Alpha update 172 is smaller update primarily focusing on fixing several bugs within the game.

- Possibly fixed overly stretched corpses.
- Prevented a bug with the desertion areas where it was possible to exit the skirmish area without deserting.
- Fixed the formation status always showing as Out of Line after having left and joined a server in the same play session.
- Fixed a couple of crashes when leaving a server.
- Fixed inconsistent teamkiller names in the teamkill messages.
- Fixed a bug where other players would not be moving after having joined a server. The only way for these players to start moving on your screen would be if they performed a character action, Enter Ready, Enter Melee Mode etc.
- Fixed a bug where the spectate camera couldnt be rotated and the spectated player could not be changed when spectating during the Last Stand endgame event.
- Various minor level detail updates.
- Slightly optimized the cornfields of the game.
- Fixed a bug that prevented union soldiers from being able to capture Lane's Battery at Colquitt's Defence, South Mountain.
- Fixed several broken ledges not allowing players to vault some of the fences at Pry House, Antietam.
- Updates to flag material settings.

Hello everyone,

Today we’re happy to be bringing you alpha update 171 of War of Rights, bringing in some much needed optimization upgrades, resulting in quite a performance boost for a number of hardware configurations running the game!

The CPU is the primary benefactor of this update. This means that any system that might be having a slower CPU (processor) than GPU (graphics card) is likely to see a performance increase due to the bottleneck of the CPU. The improvements come from a fairly wide range of changes that all work together to improve the performance:

- Updating various subsystems of characters are now being started earlier in the frame in one big batch for all characters. Previously, the updating of each character was scattered all across the entire frame. This helps significantly reduce the overhead of starting each subsequent threaded job related to character processing and thus helps significantly improve the performance.

- Characters are now skipping animation updates when they are far away from the camera. The amount of frames the animations skip, depends on the characters distance to the camera. This in effect means that at a distance, the animations on characters might look like they are lagging, it has been set up to first take effect at a fairly long range where it’s really difficult to actually notice the animation lag while still contributing a fair amount to improved performance.

- We now hide various character parts at various distances. The distance at which we hide a particular part depends on the size of the part. For instance the small brass belt buckle gets hidden fairly close to the camera where the backpack is one of the very last things we hide at long range. The character’s trousers, jacket and head will always remain visible. This helps significantly reduce the amount of drawcalls each character adds to the overall rendered scene as well as reduce the amount of transforms that constantly needs to be updated for every little part of each character.

- Player characters are now being hidden when they are not visible on the screen. This allows the engine to stop updating a lot of unnecessary elements on the players that are off screen and as you rarely have every single player visible in your current view, this helps improve the performance.

We have monitored a number of in-house systems as well as user feedback from the public test branch running the performance upgrades these past few weeks and have generally seen gains ranging from excellent to hardly any at all (due to whether the CPU is a bottleneck of the particular system or not).

One of our machines consisting of a 2080ti GPU and an i9 9900K CPU running the game with “very high” settings in 1080p saw a benchmark average frame rate increase from 52,5 to 66,2 running the new performance upgrades. That’s a 34,8% performance increase.

Some of the changes for the performance improvements have however been quite invasive and did result in a few bugs of which most have been fixed. Expect fixes for the remaining issues in the upcoming updates.

We have added an initial implementation of Playfab which will later be used to integrate the Company Tool into the game itself. For the foreseeable future the features it will add will be of the behind the scenes type of features. For instance, it will post an entry in the database whenever a game client gets involuntarily disconnected from the server and what the cause for the disconnect was. It will also post the benchmark results as well as a very basic listing of the graphics settings and current hardware setup.

The update also includes a number of other needed bug fixes to issues primarily introduced in the platform system update as well as a few new content additions as well. You can read the patch notes below:

- Reworked Miller’s Cornfield, Antietam. You will notice a new layout of pockets of trampled corn compared to the old area’s setup. It is also no longer possible to trick the corn stalks to vanish in order to gain a clear view of the enemy.
- Fixed an issue with the artillery spawn points on Miller’s Cornfield, Antietam.
- Updated the Saint Peter’s Church model, Harpers Ferry.
- Updates to all skirmish area boundary logic in an effort to reduce or remove various desertion issues upon spawning in.
- Made corpses display at longer distances.
- Fixed the stamina breathing sounds sometimes playing in the main menu after having left a server.
- Fixed the sprint button sometimes getting stuck ON when vaulting.
- Players can now freelook and chat during the vaulting animation.
- Allowed the artillery to set their fuze timer to half a second instead of clamping it at 1 second which helps them make the shell explode at closer targets.
- Fixed a miscalculation with the fuze timer when aiming at a very close target.
- Fixed a single frame A pose when a character starts aiming with the revolver when moving.
- Optimized the remaining cornfields of the game.
- Cox’s Push skirmish area, South Mountain detail work updates.
- The underwater bloodpool particle effect now correctly spawns once again.
- Added cornfield footstep sounds.
- Removed initial delay on third person gunshot sounds in an effort to debug why some of the gunshot sounds seem to be triggering at a delayed fashion.
- School House Ridge, Maryland Heights & Bolivar Heights camp, Harpers Ferry detail work.
- Removed the regimental flag of the 42nd PA as our studies indicate that the unit was unlikely to field such a flag during the Maryland Campaign of 1862.
- Added or updated the following new battle flags to the game:

• 8th Alabama national
  
• 65th Illinois regimental
  
• 1st Maryland PHB national
  
• 1st Maryland PHB regimental
  
• 3rd Maryland PHB national
  
• 3rd Maryland PHB regimental
  
• 114th Pennsylvania regimental
  

- Added a darker, varnished flag pole variant into the mix.
- Added the first implementation of specific specular maps for the battle flags depending on whether they are silk or a wool-cotton blend to better visually differ their materials. In the future this will be expanded in order to make the specular qualities of the paint on the silken flags appear different (much flatter) than the non-painted silken parts (much more shiny).
- The flags raised at the infantry drill camps are now dynamic. They will change to the battle flags of whichever regiment most players in the level have spawned as soldiers of. Note that all sizes of battle flags displayed at the flagpoles of the infantry drill camps from our many featured regiments will currently default to a rectangular shape for the time being.
- Detail work to the fields where the union spawns at the Garland’s Stand skirmish area, South Mountain. The stonewall separating the field from forest now has more holes in order for the union artillery pieces to be easier pushed towards the enemy.
- Fixed the missing CSA flag texture projected above the top of the players when spectating.
- Minor stonewall work, Anderson’s Counterattack skirmish area, South Mountain.
- Artillery crews & their officers can now no longer pick up fallen infantry flags.





War of Rights is currently on offer at a 50% discount at the Steam Lunar New Year Sale! With today’s performance updates & sale there has never been a better time for new players to give the alpha a try. You can grab a copy for yourself or your friends at: https://store.steampowered.com/app/424030/War_of_Rights/
We hope you’ll all welcome the fresh recruits in the ranks and we look forward to seeing you all on the fields of glory!

That’s all for now. Until next time, have a good one!

Hello everyone,

The main focus of update 170 is to fix up some of the anti trolling features left exposed following the platform system integration as well as expand them.

- Added artillery teamkill ban support. Firing a poorly aimed shot that ends up killing a bunch of friendlies will not get you immediately banned. The player pulling the lanyard will get notified of each teamkill comitted. A popup warning will also be displayed to the player pulling the lanyard when the teamkill limit is getting close to the ban threshold.
- Fixed past teamkills expiring sooner than they should.
- Improved the performance of characters by hiding small character objects when viewed from a distance.
- Fixed a bug where the player couldnt aim with the revolver or zoom in with the binoculars if the player had unselected the sword while being in melee mode.
- Removed various interact labels such as Open Door when spectating.
- Added the name of the banned player to the banlist.json file on servers.
- Players can now be unbanned in the admin menu by entering the players SteamID.
- Players currently not connected to a server can now be permanently banned by entering their SteamID in the admin menu.
- Fixed a couple of crashes.
- Prevented players from posting super long messages in the ingame chat.
- The boundary desertion system has been completely reworked to much more easily support desertion behavior for entities that are not necessarily players.
- Artillery and Limber Carts will now automatically be teleported to their starting position if they are left outside of the play area.
- Flags will now automatically be removed if they get dropped outside of the play area or in the enemys spawn area. This will allow a new flagbearer to immediately spawn with the flag.
- A custom player name can now be entered inside the Gameplay Options menu. To prevent name exploits, changing this name when already connected to a server will not come into effect until the player leaves the server and joins again.
- Servers without passwords can now be joined via Steam friends. Joining passworded servers via Steam friends will likely be added in the next update.
- Allowed the spectator camera to fly higher on all skirmish areas.
- Made the head sit higher for a better view when aiming the Parrot Rifle artillery.
- Added vaultable ledges to the artillery pieces at the bolivar heights camp skirmish area to counter the players using the arty pieces as a wall around the capture point, Harpers Ferry.
- Fixed some issues where certain character animations on the artillery could look very funny, in patricular when holding the trail spike if the artillery was moving.
- Improved the performance of the cornfields and reduced the stuttering they cause with rapid camera movements.
- Removed the floating blood cloud.

[h3]Steam Winter Sale[/h3]

Hello everyone,

As part of the Steam Winter Sale War of Rights is currently 50% off!

You can get the game here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/424030/War_of_Rights/
We look forward to welcoming you as much as the player-driven company recruiters (okay, maybe not as much but still a lot!) who will be keen on inviting you to join the many excellent player-driven organizations in the game known as companies.

[h3]Hotfix[/h3]

Today we are releasing another hotfix to the recently deployed platform system game update.

The hotfix primarily includes several UI fixes & upgrades but also brings in new features such as being able to click on any player name in the tab screen to be taken to the steam profile of said player, new flag additions, NCO updates to the 5th New York. The in-game nametag system has also been redone to be more efficient. This update also contains the first iteration of the Steam rich presence integration. Though very basic at this point. You will notice in your Steam friends window that it now says you are playing War of Rights and that you are in the Menu. Our intent is to greatly expand this in the following updates with it being able to display information such as, current battlefield, current skirmish area, current class, current regiment, did you just win or lose a round, which server are you playing on and whatever other fun and useful things we can come up with.

You can find the hotfix patch notes below:

- Fixed a bug where the in-game menu would sometimes move to the upper left corner.
- Fixed a bug where the Gameplay Options menu would not change the settings properly if the options menu was opened and the user immediately clicked the Gameplay button and then proceeded to change gameplay settings.
- Added debug logging options to the gameplay section of the options menu. Excessive logging can have a negative impact on performance and the new default logging level is now much lower than it was in the previous versions of the game. The debug log level can now manually be increased by the player out of personal interest or if requested by the developers.
- Fixed and reenabled the benchmark which can be accessed from the options menu in the main menu.
- Servers can now be joined directly from the Steam client’s server browser.
- Players in the Tab menu can now be clicked on which will open their Steam profile in the Steam overlay.
- Added an additional action “Player Info” when having selected a player in the admin menu. Clicking this will open the Steam profile of the selected player in the Steam overlay.
- Several Harpers Ferry level updates.
- Optimized the river & canal wall models found in Harpers Ferry.
- Fixed several minor animation issues found in the kneel, short rifle reload and fence vaulting animations.
- Adjusted the sight on the 10pdr Parrott rifled cannon.
- Updated several of the NCO’s of the 5th New York to be using gold trimmed jackets & insignias.
- Remade the in-game player name tag system in order to have a more efficient setup. This should slightly improve performance as well as reduce bugs.
- Reworded some of the ban messages to be easier understood by the players.
- Random players should no longer appear as developers when typing in the chat.
- Sent text chat messages should no longer sometimes be posted twice.
- Player names should now be consistent throughout all aspects of the game.
- Added or updated the following battle flags:

CSA

• 8th Alabama national
  
• 13th Alabama regimental
  
• 2nd North Carolina national
  
• 4th North Carolina national
  

USA

• 39th New York regimental
  
• 2nd Wisconsin regimental
  
• 6th Wisconsin national
  
• 6th Wisconsin regimental
  

[h3]So Long, 2020[/h3]

As 2020 draws to an end we thought it a good idea to recap the year – it has been a special one for sure and while it can’t end quickly enough due to obvious reasons it has also been a hugely important year from a WoR standpoint.

Much of the first half of the year was spent on getting our artillery branch ready for public testing. Due to the complexity of the systems, and the visuals and authenticity we were going for this process took longer than we expected. We hope, however, that you would agree that the time was well spent in the end.

When we did open for public artillery testing in the summer, we saw the biggest surge of new players we have seen since the release on Steam Early Access and a half year prior. It was very exciting to see all of the new faces in the midst of cannon mayhem.

Later on, we expanded the artillery release to feature not only the 3 inch ordnance rifle but also the 12pdr Napoleon and the 10pdr Parrot guns. The transport system (the system which is the main supporting factor of artillery) is currently being overhauled in order to get ready for the first implementation of horses into War of Rights. The animations required for this to happen are currently in production as well.

2020 was also the year in which we had the pleasure of welcoming Bradley to our little team. He’s been hard at work at recreating the battle flags flown in September, 1862 to the utmost of his ability ever since – we hope you enjoy his work as much as we do!

At the tail end of 2020 (just a few weeks ago actually) came the Platform System release – the single biggest programming task done for WoR so far. It has already brought an end to several long lasting bugs and issues such as player mass booting, lack of proper messaging to players, unified player naming and it will continue to bring in more new features and fixes going forward.

Lastly, we’d like to thank all of our crowdfunding backers and early access customers for sticking with us for yet another year and we can’t wait to see what 2021 brings as we continue to push on for the ultimate immersive and teamwork-centric period shooter.

Stay safe everyone and happy holidays!