May 7, 2015

Reign Of Kings - Sir Fairnore

This update contains a number of fixes on some issues we were seeing since the major Unity5 engine change. Official servers have been wiped, and we recommend for community servers to also wipe after the update. We hope to have fixed a number of inventory related issues such as items mysteriously removing or being swapped randomly.

EAC has also updated today, and a number of hacks should no longer work. Do not hack or you risk having your account banned from using the game.

Please follow this guide for properly updating your community server:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=435654886

Looking to the future, we are working on a decay system, and are getting close to finishing it. But it did not make it in time for this update, it should hopefully allow us to extend the time between wipes. We also plan to start working on different traps (bear trap, spike traps, pressure plate spike trap), wooden drawbridge, Massive War Hammers, Heavy Morningstar Maces, and more. Alongside further bug fixes and hack prevention. We plan to resume our 2-3 week update cycle.

Features:

- Added small Falling Leaf particles when chopping trees

Changes:

- Player skin is about 50% brighter (now more similar to Alpha 11)
- Ambient light from ground more dynamic
- Bloom effect a bit more common
- Some specular highlights will have bloom now
- Night made a bit darker

Bug Fixes:

- Potential fixes for inventory items disappearing or swapping.
- The item cache can now be saved after a player disconnects.
- Items inserted into an occupied cache slot will now take the next available slot.
- Items De-serialized with a cache hit as the wrong type or quantity will be reconstructed.
- Removed underwater air pocket in lake
- Fixed a bug that would spam "Server is restarting..." if a server fails to shut down.
- Potential fix for players getting launched by trees
- Ballista retains it's last aim direction when you begin aiming
- Ground Torches and Low Quality Tables fixed to have batch size of 1
- Fixed interact range on Ancient Crown Pedestal
- Swamp Ambient sounds should stop playing sooner after leaving the biome
- Wind sounds shouldn't cut off as harshly
- Chickens killed in distant pages won't become giants
- Dejembe Drum can no longer be placed on walls/ceilings fixing an exploit
- Fixed a bug that would not allow player specific formats for name, chat or guild.
- Fixed dropped item sacks that wouldn't remove themselves after 10 minutes. All dropped item sacks should now remove after 10 minutes.

Design Changes:

- Ballista bolts now do 100 damage was 60.
- Trebuchet stones now do 900 damage was 500. Scaling of damage and radius of damage has also been better balanced when firing multiple trebuchet stones.
- Trebuchet explosion radius increases by up to 50% depending on ammunition quantity

Thanks for playing,
- The Code}{atch Team

May 7, 2015

RoK Update Alpha 13

Reign Of Kings - Sir Fairnore

May 1, 2015

RoK Update Alpha 12

Reign Of Kings - Sir Fairnore

This weeks update contains some massive changes. Official servers have been wiped, and you will need to also wipe your community servers after the update due to extensive changes.

We've switched the engine to Unity5 from Unity4. This process took quite sometime, as many key areas changed such as rendering and physics. As a result, you should notice a number of performance improvements. The physics engine is now multi-threaded, and there are additional improvements to the rendering and rendering pipeline. Big bases should now also run much faster, and block LOD's should switch faster due to our own improvements.

We've also incorporated some more anti-hacking features such as fly detection and teleport detection. It is a config option that servers can turn on if they wish. The first ban waves were handed out as well this week, 377 hackers were banned from game via EAC for using a $13 dollar hack. Do not hack or you risk having your account banned from using the game.

Please follow this guide for properly updating your community server, as the save file location has changed:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=435654886

We've also added a few new items, such as the Sawmill, Spinning Wheel, and various Costumes. The Sawmill is a new refining station require to turn wood into lumber. Costumes can be created at the Spinning Wheel along with the banners.

Going forward, we look forward to fixing bugs discovered from this update, working on further anti-cheat systems, and will be working on a decay system for old bases/floating bases that sit dormant on server too long to help clean up servers and further push the time between wipes.

Features:

- Added New Loading Screen wallpaper
- Added Lumber Resource
- Added Sawmill (refines wood into lumber)
- Added Flower, Fern and Hay Armor costumes
- Added Spinning Wheel (used to create costumes, other cloth related items)
- Added hit particle effects/sound effects on all items
- Added Gather sounds to plants missing them
- Added terrain parallax mapping on higher settings
- Added Salvage system. Players can now salvage items outside of crest zones with normal weapons, the harvesting tools are the fastest at salvaging. Be sure to keep your items secure in crest zones

Changes:

- Improved fog in Plague Village
- Sharper UI elements at lower resolutions (720p)
- Terrain material quality option added to settings
- Improved lighting effects
- Updated Plague Village model
- Damaged items now display when holding a Repair Hammer
- Character walking is more snappy, takes slightly longer to accelerate up to a full run.
- Applied smoothing to third person camera.
- Converted ragdolls to use Unity 5 Physics.
- Added optional hack detection systems for flying, teleporting and hovering characters. Can turn on in server config settings.
- Ramps and Stairs now have destruction particles like blocks
- Default lobby menu sorting is now Ping > Name.
- Sorting the lobby by player count now ignores the player limit.
- All items moved into and out of your inventory will now display a counter.
- Improvements to saving the identity of individual items.
- Items will no longer be duplicated when placed into distant containers.
- Empty item stacks now show in your inventory and can be destroyed without rituals.
- Removed the guest permission group since it is now redundant since players cannot play without being registered.
- Moved the save location into the Saves/ folder next to the server exe file. This save location can be configured in the Configuration/ServerSettings.cfg
- Added the option to change the steamAuthentication timeout. If your players are continuously getting the "Failed to authenticate steam" error try increasing this value.
- Improved the logging system for debugging purposes. (disabled by default)
- Added a permission to join a full server. 'codehatch.login.ignore.playerlimit'
- The server name, password, and max players can now be set while the server is running using the /config command. (This updates the values live)

Optimizations:

- Greatly improved 3D tileset LOD changing performance
- New rendering pipeline used, less CPU render time as a result
- Rope performance/stability improvements.

Bug Fixes:

- Fixed a couple memory leaks on the server
- Characters no longer slide down slopes.
- Fixed rain sound pause
- Fixed invisible beach rocks
- Fixed skybox rip on lower draw distances
- Fixed a crash relating to projectiles and terrain
- Nonlocal players should now see blood when hit with a projectile
- Explosion particle effect for trebuchet more consistantly placed
- Can't shoot through items if really close now
- Lord's bed now properly allows you to respawn at it
- Fixed broken players due to capture while disabled because of paging
- Fixed no build zone in Ravens Treasure Tree
- Saving when you finish your First Character Creation is more robust
- Prefabs now face the proper direction when placing
- Well is no longer invincible
- Various audio tweaks/fixes
- God mode now works again for server admins

Design Changes:

- Due to community feedback, removed melee swing movement slowdown
- Blocks and prefab under 90% health cannot no longer be picked up. You will have to repair them first.
- You can no longer build blocks over destroyed block rubble
- Some armor sets (Steel & Iron) did not have proper defense value set on some peices. Should become more protective now.
- Repair Hammer now uses materials to repair and repairs items via swinging at it over time
- Siege weapons now shoot slower
- Made projectiles more consistent in what they hit
- Items held while aiming a ballista are now put away
- You can now only load up to 5 Trebuchet stones at a time in your Trebuchet, used to be infinite amount
- Charcoal is produced faster.
- Fire materials burn for 5 minutes, down from 15.
- Charcoal will now be produced by fires based on fuel, instead of input.
• Trebuchet Stone now siege damages for 500 was (1500)
• Ballista Bolt now siege damages for 60 was (500)
• Cobblestone block had HP increased to 6000 was (4500)
• Reinforced wood had HP increased to 9000 was (6000)
• Stone block had HP increased to 12000 was (9000)
• Iron Door had HP increased to 9000 was (6000)
• Reinforced Wood (Iron) had HP increased to 4500 was (3000)
• Reinforced Wood (Iron) trap had HP increased to 4500 was (3000)
• Reinforced Wood (Steel) had HP increased to 6000 was (4500)
• Stone Arch had HP increased to 12000 was (9000)
• Iron Gate had HP increased to 15000 was (12000)
• Reinforced Wood (Iron) had HP increased to 12000 was (9000)
• Iron Bar Window had HP increased to 9000 was (6000)
• Stone Slit Window had HP increased to 12000 was (9000)
• Iron Crest had HP increased to 3000 was (1000)
• Leather Crest had HP increased to 1500 was (500)
• Steel Crest had HP increased to 6000 was (2000)

• Lumber now replaces wood when crafting the following items:
o Reinforced Wood (Iron) blocks, ramps, stairs
o Steel Chest
o Large Gallows
o Small Gallows
o Deer Head Trophy
o Gazebo
o High Quality Bed
o High Quality Bench
o High Quality Cabinet
o Lord's Bed
o Lord's Large Chair
o Lord's Small Chair
o Medium Quality Bed
o Medium Quality Bench
o Medium Quality Bookcase
o Medium Quality Chair
o Medium Quality Dresser
o Medium Quality Stool
o Medium Quality Table
o Rocking Horse
o Siegeworks
o Ballista
o Trebuchet

Thanks for playing,
- The Code}{atch Team

May 1, 2015

RoK Update Alpha 12

Reign Of Kings - Sir Fairnore

Apr 17, 2015

Progress on RoK

Reign Of Kings - Sir Fairnore

We are not able to release an update this week, since our current dev cycle is taking a bit longer. However, we will still be wiping the official servers this morning. It is community servers choice whether they want to wipe or not.

Our team is currently working on porting Reign of Kings to Unity5. Currently, the game runs on Unity 4.6, so this process is a bit of work and takes time to finish, we started this work early last month. The reason we are upgrading the engine is due to performance concerns. While there are visual improvements that will come naturally from the upgrade, the performance on the physics engine (now multithreaded), and performance for big bases (runs much better), are the main drivers for the upgrade. So we look forward to finishing our work on the upgrade, and hope that it will result in a smoother play experience for you.

We thought we'd also give everyone a general timeline on when to expect updates going into the future. We feel that 2-3 weeks in-between updates will work best for the studio. While we indeed updated once a week since launch, that type of cycle was better for short term goals, and can be very taxing on the team, which may lead to more bugs due to not as much time given to properly test the new features.

As for server wipes, we plan on wiping the servers about once a week, whether there is update or not. This is needed to keep the game running well. We hope to extend the time in-between wipes even further apart as we develop the game. As we mentioned above, performance is very important to us, and that is the reason we are switching to Unity5. The performance benefits from that, and our own work over the next months will help extend the time between wipes. RoK is a dynamic game with no constraints, this means players can build as much as they want, so eventually servers will hit some performance caps and have to be cleaned up. This is similar to other games that have dynamic building with no constraints.

We are also thinking of ways that players can also salvage up all the old buildings/bases on the server that no one uses anymore (old raided bases long forgotten with no crests). Possibly even allowing players to torch old buildings that have no crests. Things like this will go a long way in helping to extend time between wipes aside from our performance and optimization improvements.

While it would be nice to have no wipes in theory (although maps would become extremely crowded), its just not possible with today's computer hardware, an infinite amount of building and object placing will eventually build up and tax the hardware. You may also wonder why other games like MMO's don't require wipes, well simply put, RoK is just a different style of game, where players are building cities and placing structures everywhere as much as they please with no limits. If we didn't have the player made buildings, or placing structures, and all buildings on server were static and there forever, then we wouldn't need to wipe in an extremely long time. So it's best to think of wipes like other games think of a match (StarCraft 2, Natural Selection 2), in that they wipe their level/server after each 2-4 hr match, we wipe after an 150 - 200hr "match", and hope to extend that time of play beyond 150hr - 200hr into the future. We think its best to share this so people can go all out towards the end of the play on our official servers. We will keep everyone updated when we extend the period between wipes.

As for combat balancing, we understand that most were not happy with the movement slowdown in combat, so we've decided to take a step back from that and try and think of some better solutions for making combat more robust.

There is also balancing being done on the siege & repairing front. We plan to make it so you can no longer collect blocks/objects under 90% health and instead have to repair them before picking them up. Repairing will also take resources now. As well, when you are under siege, you cannot build blocks in your crest area for a period of about 5 minutes from when the last treb stone hit your territory. Treb stones will also be doing much less damage, and we are going to be increasing the health on the stone teir blocks. Ballistas are getting a damage reduction from 500 down to 50. Guild crests will be getting more health, and will have an upgrade system within instead of forcing players to take old one down & place new one to upgrade.These efforts will hopefully help make sieges last much longer, and become more strategic.

We are also working on a sawmill, which will refine lumber from wood which can then be used to make furniture. There are also some costumes coming, and a spinning wheel to produce costumes at. Aside from that, and Unity5 upgrade, the team will mainly be focusing on our bug list which has grown since the engine switch. So to summarize, our main focus in the near term is Unity5 upgrade, performance, hack prevention, & bug fixing.

- The Code}{atch Team

Apr 17, 2015

Progress on RoK

Reign Of Kings - Sir Fairnore

Apr 10, 2015

RoK Update Alpha 11

Reign Of Kings - Sir Fairnore

This update contains some major backend changes to help prevent hacking. Servers were wiped with this update, we recommend for community servers to be wiped as well.

We have integrated Easy Anti Cheat (EAC) with the game, and you will be required to install it before running the game. EAC will run in the background after you launch Reign of Kings, when you are done playing, EAC will stop running. We felt it was best to have a major anti-hacking solution on our side while we also work to prevent exploits and hacks on our end. We also included another layer of our own hack prevention in this update aside from EAC. You will now also be required to agree to our EULA before playing the game. We hope everyone understands that we are doing our best to prevent hacking, and we hope some of these solutions help out. We will continue to make this our top priority in the near future.

http://www.easyanticheat.net/

Do not risk hacking/exploiting the game, as this may result in your account being permanently banned through the EAC system. Bans will be delivered in waves, we will not elaborate on the exact timing.

Edit: If you are experiencing error "Please run from Reign of Kings.exe" - please try restarting windows to fix this.

For Community Servers:
You will need to delete your permission file, don't worry, it will auto-generate when you restart your server. Otherwise users may experience problems with users connecting to your server (stuck on downloading characters). Please clear your permission file. The permission file is located under the Configuration folder next to your ROK.exe.

For more info on upgrading to Alpha 11:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=406318745

As with the last update - Due to the current anti-hacking layers, modding of the game is not permitted at this time, this would include language packs or other localization attempts. Please verify the integrity of your game cache and keep your DLLs and game files unmodified to avoid unwanted banning or being added to a ban list. If you are unsure you can verify your game files through steam by selecting "Verify Integrity of Game Cache..." in your game's properties under "Local Files".

If verifying your files does not work, and you keep getting banned for DLL mismatch, delete your local game folder and redownload from steam.
1) Right click your Reign of Kings game in your game list 2) Select "Delete Local Content..."
3) Reinstall

Looking forward to the next week, our main focus will once again be on hack prevention, and also on performance.

This update also includes many bug fixes, design changes, and some new features like a trap door & furniture. You can find the full list below.

Features:

-Added Trap Door
- Added Wooden Sword (training weapon), one damage per hit.
- Added Wood Stick (training weapon)), one damage per hit.
-New original song "Wings of Shelter" added to the game
-Added Woodworking Station (used to create furniture)
-Added 26 Furniture, List of Furniture Items:
-Low Quality Bed (acts as spawn point)
-Low Quality Bench
-Low Quality Chair
-Low Quality Fence
-Low Quality Shelf
-Low Quality Stool
-Low Quality Table
-Medium Quality Bed (acts as spawn point)
-Medium Quality Bench
-Medium Quality Bookcase (acts as a container)
-Medium Quality Chair
-Medium Quality Dresser (acts as a container)
-Medium Quality Stool
-Medium Quality Table
-High Quality Bed (acts as spawn point)
-High Quality Bench
-High Quality Cabinet (acts as a container)
-Lord's Bath
-Lord's Bed (acts as spawn point)
-Lord's Small Chair
-Lord's Large Chair
-Banquet Table
-Bear Skin Rug
-Deer Head Trophy
-Rocking Horse
-Gazebo

Changes:

- Easy Anti Cheat (EAC) integration. Needs to be installed before playing. Will run in background while playing Reign of Kings, and then automatically shut off when finished playing Reign of Kings.
- Lobby refresh feels more seamless.
- Lobby pings are no longer discarded on refresh.
- Lobby column sorting is now saved.
- Lobby ping sort now updates at regular intervals while pinging.
- The saved lobby list will now load immediately.
- Input fields are more responsive to highlight selection. Double-click will now select all.
- Chat will now automatically close when disconnected from a server.
- Made it so the whitelist command is case insensitive.
- Ballista will lock during interaction
- Ballista aim screen has an interaction
- Melee Combat swings now slow the player down a bit.

Optimizations:

- Garbage collection optimizations.
- Fixed object pooling. Added pooling to furniture, lights, and some additional items

Bug Fixes:

- Fixed some saving issues when the server is shut down.
- Fixed some dead sleepers not being saved when the server restarts.
- Fixed camera bug in third person where the camera will jarringly move forward, epsecially while swinging melee weapons
- Adjusted flame sound loops
- Fixed particles on Holdable Torch going crazy
- Players who have died while asleep are now properly re-loaded on server restart.
- Fixed the fires so they now properly damage players who are on top of them
- Blast decal for trebuchet should be proper
- If using ballista it shouldn't leave you in a camera broken locked state
- Paging will now continue if it encounters an error with one prefab
- Move prefabs to be taken in a conquered crest zone
- Lockpicks will not have two picking bars
- Prefabs cant be placed in conquered crest area
- Fix the campfire disappearing if it is updated and the area is left

Design Changes:

- Renamed a few items: eg. Steel Great Sword --> Steel Greatsword
- Trebuchet Stone is now limited to 15 per stack.
- Stone is now limited to 1000 per stack.
- Small Wall Torch, now Wall Torch.
- Wall Torch, now Small Wall Torch.
- Small Wall Lantern, now Wall Lantern.
- Wall Lantern, now Small Wall Lantern.
- Bear hide, now has a chance to drop from bears.
- Iron Chest, Steel Chest and Wood Chest now have descriptions updated to display proper slot count.
- Stone Blocks, now require 1 Stone Slab, 5 Clay (was 1) to craft.
- Stone Slab now costs 4 charcoal (was 2), 8 water (was 4), 100 Stone (was 60) to craft.
- Siegeworks now costs 400 flax, 1200 Wood (was 850), 100 Iron (was 50) Ingots to craft.
- Trebuchet Stone now costs 1 Stone Slab (was 50 Stone) to craft. Stone Slab has processing time involved.
- Trebuchet now costs 50 flax, 2000 Wood, 50 Iron (was 25) Ingots to craft.
- Iron Wood Cutters Axe, Steel Wood Cutters Axe and Stone Wood Cutters Axe all had their wood resource gathering increased by 2 per hit.
- Crest description will now indicate items health.
- Large Iron Cage now costs 40 Iron Ingots (was 90) to craft.
- Large Iron Hanging Cage now costs 40 Iron Ingots (was 90) to craft.
- Small Iron Cage now costs 25 Iron Ingots (was 80) to craft.
- Small Iron Hanging Cage now costs 25 Iron Ingots (was 90) to craft.
- Steel Cage now costs 30 Steel Ingots (was 95) to craft.
- Candlestand & Chandelier now burns fat for fuel.
- Ground Torch now costs 3 Iron Ingots (was 5) and 40 Stone to craft.
- Hanging Lantern now costs 2 Iron Ingots (was 9) to craft.
- Hanging Torch now costs 3 Iron Ingots (was 9) to craft.
- Holdable Candle now costs 3 Fat (was 5) to craft.
- Holdable Torch now costs 1 Flax (was 3) and 10 Wood to craft.
- Iron Floor Torch now costs 4 Iron Ingots (was 12) to craft.
- Small Wall Lantern now costs 2 Iron Ingots (was 7) to craft.
- Small Wall Torch now costs 2 Iron Ingots (was 7) to craft.
- Wall Lantern now costs 3 Iron Ingots (was 8) to craft.
- Wall Torch now costs 3 Iron Ingots (was 8) to craft.
- Standing Iron Torch now costs 4 Iron Ingots (was 12) to craft.

Thanks for playing,
- The Code}{atch Team

Apr 10, 2015

RoK Update Alpha 11

Reign Of Kings - Sir Fairnore