War of Rights News

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!

Hello everyone,

Today marks yet another major milestone in the development of War of Rights as the long awaited platform system is released as part of update 169!

[h2]Platform System[/h2]

The platform system, having been in the works since January of 2018 is one of the biggest programming updates to the alpha we’ve ever done. It is bound to change how a lot of the game features function on the backend due to its complexity and thus bugs should be expected in this very first deployment of it on the live alpha branch.

Here to give you all a brief rundown on the details regarding what exactly the platform system is, why we’ve decided to spend the time required to create it, what today’s implementation of the initial platform system version brings to the alpha and what to expect coming from later additions going forward, is Philipp, one half of our programming team & creator of the platform system:

With the release of the platform system in its first iteration it's time to talk about its purpose again.

As mentioned in an earlier field report, the goal of the platform system is to replace the old system that handles all “social” and platform related functionality and allow us to expand functionality in that area as well as make it far easier to diagnose and fix problems.

At its core, the Platform System is a data driven collection and management system, built around the entity component system framework EnTT. This means it collects information from various sources, like steam, aggregates it, filters it and then has other subsystems operate on it depending on their needs. As a result, all sub-systems and “information” providers are completely disconnected from each other and can operate only on the data they need, or not at all if the required data combination is not available. Furthermore, data collection can be deferred so that systems only start using it when it's available, without blocking any work while waiting for it.

As with the old system, the networking functionalities provided by platforms like steam are also included in their own modules to facilitate direct connections between clients and servers.

For the user this replaces the back end to the current connection and matchmaking systems, so visually there will not be any changes for this release, but probably some improvement in responsiveness.

Since the matchmaking and connection handling is now completely separate from game systems, we were already able to identify the cause of some major issues that have eluded us for quite a while with just two public test sessions. One of them is the famous “mass booting” issue, which, as it turns out, was caused by the basic steam P2P system timing out a large number of users seemingly at random. This has now been replaced with a lower level system that also resulted in some connection speedups.

The intent for all this is to serve as a base for future features, like the integration of the company tool, and potential expansion into other platforms as well. For the near future I am planning to add in a few steam social features like friend/server joining and currently playing information which did not quite make it into this release. But with all the work that has been put into the platform system, this has become a far less complicated and much, much quicker task, which was the core of the problem in the first place.

[h2]Update 169 Patch Notes[/h2]

Today’s update contains quite a bit of changes and additions (some are tied to the platform system’s introduction while others are not). Below is a complete list of what update 169 brings to the alpha.

- Implemented the first iteration of the platform system, resulting in added features such as better messaging to players when issues or unexpected things happen, possible fixes for long-lasting alpha major issues such as servers mass booting players and drastically increasing the rate at which we can locate and thus work on fixing bugs in the future.
- Added or updated the following battle flags in our continued effort to bring you the most beautiful & accurate battle flags in any game:

CSA

• 1st Virginia Infantry national
  

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

• 18th Virginia regimental
  
• 4th Alabama regimental
  
• 27th North Carolina national
  
• 3rd South Carolina national
  
• 17th South Carolina national
  

USA

• 1st Maryland regimental
  
• 20th Maine regimental
  
• 5th New York national
  
• 5th New York regimental
  
• 20th New York regimental
  
• 39th New York regimental
  
• 126th New York regimental
  
• 30th Ohio regimental
  
• 32nd Ohio regimental
  
• 4th Rhode Island regimental
  
• 1st Delaware national
  
• 1st Delaware regimental
  
• 51st Pennsylvania national
  
• 51st Pennsylvania regimental
  
• 72nd Pennsylvania national
  
• 9th Vermont national
  
• 9th Vermont regimental
  

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
- Added the 5th New York “Duryee’s Zouaves” Infantry regiment to the game, playable on the fictitious Pry House skirmish area.

Organized under the command of Col. Abram Duryee at Fort Schuyler at New York harbor in April of 1861, the regiment soon became renowned as the efficient and disciplined “Duryee’s Zouaves.” However, they would also quickly prove their mettle and coolness under fire over the course of their regiment’s brief career, including their first fight at Big Bethel in June, and in the Peninsula Campaign a year later. After several charges into Rebel lines, their ranks were already depleted by the time they met their foe again at Second Bull Run. Joined by the equally small 10th NY Zouaves, the 5th NY barely mustered 490 men when a Confederate division 30,000 strong under James Longstreet crashed against them. The Zouave lines were literally ripped to shreds by the Rebel volleys, leaving only 200 to stagger back. As such, the 5th NY was left in reserve for several months while the ranks were reestablished, while a final engagement at Chancellorsville heralded the end of their two-year enlistment, where several hundred reenlisted into the 146th NY Infantry.

- Added 10pdr Parrott rifled cannons and their matching limbers to various batteries throughout the game.



Robert Parrott of New Hampshire, who graduated third of his class with honors from the US Military Academy in 1824, was the inventor of the famous line of Parrott guns in 1860. The 10-lb Parrott Rifle was one of the most common rifled guns to be found on both sides, but was often shunned by artillerymen as being a gun prone to bursting. However, perhaps due to a low production cost compared to other guns, it could be found in many sizes, the largest being the 300-lb Parrott Siege Rifle used against Confederate held Fort Sumter in August of 1863. Parrotts continued to be used in coastal defense roles until phased out in 1900 with the Endicott Fort Reforms.

- Updated the 2nd & 6th Wisconsin uniforms to better portray the uniformity & discipline of the units during the Maryland Campaign of 1862.



- Added several worn Hardee hat models.
- Added a short-brimmed beehive hat model.
- Added a tin bullseye canteen model.
- Reduced the complexity of the setup of every first person animation resulting in slightly different looking first person animations in the game.
- Improved the hand poses when carrying a flag.
- Improved the hand poses when kneeling with a rifle.
- Added different animation variants of entering aiming with a musket.
- Improved the revolver first person recoil animation when firing.
- Updated the two-banded rifle reload animation.
- Updated the double quick animation when carrying an artillery round.
- Added a sword order arms emote (F6 by default).
- Added a sword parade rest emote (F7 by default).
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
- Made the union cannons & limbers on the River Crossing skirmish area vaultable in order to lessen the blocking strategy as seen often used at the area after the introduction of artillery.
- Fixed a game-breaking bug that would cause counter-attackers to not be able to spawn when they entered final push.
- Added the burned down Wager Hotel, replacing the placeholder model at River Crossing, Harpers Ferry.





- Updated the canal wall models on the Maryland Heights side of the Potomac, Harpers Ferry.
- Added shale roof as a variant to the townhouses of Harpers Ferry.
- Added a St. John's Church model, replacing the generic town house placeholder structure in Harpers Ferry.





- Made the options menu way more reliable by recreating its backend functionality from scratch.
- Improved the usability of the options menu, now featuring tooltips, instant changes to settings (no need to press save settings anymore) & several bug fixes.
- Added a fullscreen and borderless setting to the options menu as well as settings for screen space reflections and ambient occlusion.
- Overhauled the keybindings menu, now allowing the user to change keybindings of every single action in the game.
- Overhauled the in-game controls screen (activated by pressing F2) to display every single action in the game (scroll your mouse wheel to view the entire list).
- Updated the admin menu in order for it to work with the new platform system and generally make it easier to use (now with F3 as its new default activation key).
- Added varying heights to all the characters in the game, resulting in a more realistic look when in tight and large formations.



- Flags now won’t as quickly get dirty when dropped as they did before (the speed at which bullet holes are added has not been changed).
- Updated the small arms projectile impact particle effect on dirt and grass surfaces.
- Increased the max amount of dismembered body parts a player killed by an artillery round might turn into.
- Fixed the bug where players might spawn inside one of the bush models when spawning on the flag bearer.
- Increased the CSA starting morale amount on the Pry House skirmish area by roughly 10% as one in four enlisted men of the newly added 5th New York regiment will be issued with a Sharps rifle.
- Made the canister balls spread out a bit more when fired from the Napoleon cannon.
- Updated the cooking implements of the cook tents featured throughout the game.
- Various level detail work.
- Updated the setup of all of the flags of the drill camps to make them less rubbery and more predictable.
- Wall tents are now enterable.
- Fixed several NCO characters spawning without a weapon selected, requiring the player to spam 1 in order to get a weapon.
- Weapon selection when having several weapons no longer requires the user to cycle through them sequentially. Instead, key 1 will select the primary weapon, key 2 will select the secondary weapon and key 3 will select binoculars. Switching cartridge type on the Springfield M1842 has now been moved to key 5 as its default key.
- Fixed the third person microstutters when in at the ready or in the rifle club melee mode.
- Fixed a bug where the dynamic depth of field didn’t always calculate the proper distance to what you were looking at and thus sometimes blurred the image incorrectly.
- Fixed most occurrences of a bug where an artillery shell hitting a wooden surface, like the roof of a building, would spawn the brick impact effect instead of the wood effect.
- The amount of dark red tint added when wounded now scales based on the time of day, resulting in players not going blind when wounded at night.
- Added a popup warning that the user is going to be killed when enabling the spectator camera (sorry, no more “press F9 for a scoreboard/godmode/fully automatic musket” trolling!).
- Added a lock icon next to passworded servers in the serverbrowser.
- The correct loading screen should now be shown when you’re joining a server.
- Added a “Tutorials” entry to the main menu. Pressing this will open a website containing tutorial videos created by the community & Campfire Games alike which explain most of the current features of the alpha.
- The War of Rights error reporter found at: https://warofrights.com/errorreporter has been updated to support the platform system.

That’s all for now. We look forward to partaking in playtesting the patch with all of you as well as gathering your feedback, especially in regards to the platform system, in order to iron out the bugs almost certainly introduced in its initial implementation as well as to be utilizing the additional data provided by the system to help us improve the stability of the game on a quicker, continuous basis going forward.

See you on the fields of glory!

War of Rights is currently 30% off as part of the Halloween sale!

You can purchase the game at: https://store.steampowered.com/app/424030/War_of_Rights/

We look forward to be greeting the fresh recruits in-game.

Happy Halloween!

Hello everyone

We have just opened the public test branch of the game for stress testing the initial implementation of the platform system, a major core code replacement created to combat several alpha issues such as connectivity ones that have long been part of the game. In short this will mean us being able to deliver a better working game at a quicker rate going forward, resulting in less stuck at establishing context and mass player drop issues, better game-to-player communication in terms of messages sent based on whether you were kicked, banned or lost connection to a server and more.

The public test branch can be joined by all owners of War of Rights. In order to locate it, simply navigate to War of Rights in your steam library, right click and enter properties. Once there head into the beta tab, open the dropdown menu and select publictest-platform.

Steam will now download the public test client. Once downloaded you'll be able to join the public test server. Should you wish to return to the live version of the game you'll be able to opt out of the test in the same dropdown menu as you used to opt into it via.

The public test branch will also include a few other additions for you to test out such as an updated options menu and the next cannon in line to be released; the 10 pounder Parrott. It can be found throughout many of the available batteries in the game.


We hope you will join us in the very first stress tests of the platform system, arguably one of the core systems to better the development of the game going forward.

We're currently aware of at least two scheduled mass testing events on the public test branch server this weekend:

Friday (tonight) 23rd of October - 8 PM EST / 2 AM CET
Saturday 24th of October - 8 PM EST / 2 AM CET

We invite everyone willing to help us out stress testing the platform system prior to it headed to the live build to join in!

Thank you for your help - we look forward to be seeing you on the fields of glory!