The Black Death - [SIG] Emily
Greetings citizens of Mercia and welcome to Dev Blog #52!

We’ve got a Dev Update, our Founder’s name closure, a new form open for your Black Death moments and memories of 2017 and details of our next Blog posts!

Dev Updates

There is a lot going on behind the scenes here at SIG. We have been gathering your feedback from the Steam Forums and also our feedback survey that we ran. We are currently working on a range of things for The Black Death. Some of these are as follows: Procedural loot system, Combat/fighting and also work on our AI. All of these tie into core areas of The Black Death so these may take some time for us to refine as we work on improving them.



We hope to bring you a Beta build on our Test_Beta server this weekend with some new changes added. As this is the weekend just before Christmas, if we do have an update to our Beta server we hope that you will all understand if there are issues present. This is of course intended as a testing ground for updates and patches. If you do find anything be sure to report it over on our

The Black Death: Google Bug Submission Form

Our Weekly Q&A will also be making a return to our Dev Blog’s in the new year, thank you for all your submitted questions. We certainly do have a pool to fish from!

Founder’s Discord Channel Locked

Thank you to everyone who sent in their Steam Usernames/ID’s on our Founder’s Channel over on our Discord. This channel is now locked and set to a read only state for archiving.

As a reminder these were the categories for submissions, if you fell into one of these or all of these you could submit your name to us, before the 15th December 2017 at 11:59pm GMT time.

– Are a long standing member of the Community
– Have been helpful to other Community members and shown kindness
– Have submitted Bug Reports to us through our Google Form or by Email

We will be checking through all of the names submitted to us, and your Steam ID’s to check against the above to verify the status of your submissions. These will then be added to a future update of The Black Death and those selected will be included in our Patch Notes.

Your Community Moments & Memories of 2017 – Entries

It’s coming up to the end of 2017, it’s gone so fast! There has been a lot that been going on and just like last year everything will be documented into our “end of year” Blog Special in a Part 2.

If you missed last year’s post here is a link: Dev Blog Special: The Journey So Far…

These questions and your responses will be included in our Plague Moments & Memories Community section, just like last year! But this time with extra information!

Please include your Steam Username in the last question if you would like your name to be credited with your responses and screenshots too.

Closing date on submissions: 2nd January 2018 at 11:59pm GMT time!

The Dev Blog Special Part 2 will be posted out on the 3rd January 2018 at 6pm GMT time!

If you head on over to our Website to view this Dev Blog, you should see this form embedded directly into your web browser, like magic!

Dev Blog #52: Dev Update, Founder’s Name Closure & Community Moments 2017 Submissions

If you cannot see this form on our Website for some reason there is a link below that will open the Google Form into another tab. Thank you in advance for all of your submissions!

Community Moments & Memories of The Black Death 2017!

That’s all for this week! Just to let you all know there will not be a Dev Blog next week as the SIG team are off on their Christmas break. You can look forward to our Dev Blog Special Part 2 arriving on the 3rd January 2018 at 6pm GMT time!

From us all here at Small Impact Games we wish you all a very Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year 2018!

// The SIG Team
The Black Death - [SIG] Emily
Greetings citizens of Mercia and welcome to Dev Blog #52!

We’ve got a Dev Update, our Founder’s name closure, a new form open for your Black Death moments and memories of 2017 and details of our next Blog posts!

Dev Updates

There is a lot going on behind the scenes here at SIG. We have been gathering your feedback from the Steam Forums and also our feedback survey that we ran. We are currently working on a range of things for The Black Death. Some of these are as follows: Procedural loot system, Combat/fighting and also work on our AI. All of these tie into core areas of The Black Death so these may take some time for us to refine as we work on improving them.



We hope to bring you a Beta build on our Test_Beta server this weekend with some new changes added. As this is the weekend just before Christmas, if we do have an update to our Beta server we hope that you will all understand if there are issues present. This is of course intended as a testing ground for updates and patches. If you do find anything be sure to report it over on our

The Black Death: Google Bug Submission Form

Our Weekly Q&A will also be making a return to our Dev Blog’s in the new year, thank you for all your submitted questions. We certainly do have a pool to fish from!

Founder’s Discord Channel Locked

Thank you to everyone who sent in their Steam Usernames/ID’s on our Founder’s Channel over on our Discord. This channel is now locked and set to a read only state for archiving.

As a reminder these were the categories for submissions, if you fell into one of these or all of these you could submit your name to us, before the 15th December 2017 at 11:59pm GMT time.

– Are a long standing member of the Community
– Have been helpful to other Community members and shown kindness
– Have submitted Bug Reports to us through our Google Form or by Email

We will be checking through all of the names submitted to us, and your Steam ID’s to check against the above to verify the status of your submissions. These will then be added to a future update of The Black Death and those selected will be included in our Patch Notes.

Your Community Moments & Memories of 2017 – Entries

It’s coming up to the end of 2017, it’s gone so fast! There has been a lot that been going on and just like last year everything will be documented into our “end of year” Blog Special in a Part 2.

If you missed last year’s post here is a link: Dev Blog Special: The Journey So Far…

These questions and your responses will be included in our Plague Moments & Memories Community section, just like last year! But this time with extra information!

Please include your Steam Username in the last question if you would like your name to be credited with your responses and screenshots too.

Closing date on submissions: 2nd January 2018 at 11:59pm GMT time!

The Dev Blog Special Part 2 will be posted out on the 3rd January 2018 at 6pm GMT time!

If you head on over to our Website to view this Dev Blog, you should see this form embedded directly into your web browser, like magic!

Dev Blog #52: Dev Update, Founder’s Name Closure & Community Moments 2017 Submissions

If you cannot see this form on our Website for some reason there is a link below that will open the Google Form into another tab. Thank you in advance for all of your submissions!

Community Moments & Memories of The Black Death 2017!

That’s all for this week! Just to let you all know there will not be a Dev Blog next week as the SIG team are off on their Christmas break. You can look forward to our Dev Blog Special Part 2 arriving on the 3rd January 2018 at 6pm GMT time!

From us all here at Small Impact Games we wish you all a very Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year 2018!

// The SIG Team
Dec 15, 2017
The Black Death - Smallimpact
Hello there Mercia,

This week's update has been a primary focus on further optimisations and fixes issues that can cause various crashes.



Here are the patch notes in full:


Fixes:
  • Fix added to stop you getting kicked to main menu when using inventory via the context wheel
  • Fix for a crash happening on game startup
  • Fix to Royal Tunic item so that you can repair it at an anvil
  • Fix to stop previously owned houses keeping collisions and nodes when bought by someone new
  • Fixed an exploit with tool durability through equipping/unequipping
  • Fixed a bug which would let you use tools after they had broken
  • Fixed some UI chat stuff that you could interact with while in inventory that you shouldn't have been able to
  • Fixed bug which stopped you being able to perform dissections on bandits/NPCS
  • Fixed formatting of some timers in the UI
  • Misc spelling fixes in the chat trees

Updated:
  • If an “E” interaction has only one action that can be taken we made this happen automatically without having to select it from the wheel
  • Added a popup to the house workbench to warn players that if they remove all people from the permissions then the house will have to be bought again
  • Updated some icons for house node items
  • Small visual updates to the context wheel UI
  • Updates to the inventory UI

Optimisations
  • Big optimisation to network traffic

Known Issues:
  • We have temporarily removed steam to in-game chat while we hunt down a crash related to it

Thanks again to everyone playing the black death.

See you in Mercia

The S.I.G. Team
Dec 15, 2017
The Black Death - Smallimpact
Hello there Mercia,

This week's update has been a primary focus on further optimisations and fixes issues that can cause various crashes.



Here are the patch notes in full:


Fixes:
  • Fix added to stop you getting kicked to main menu when using inventory via the context wheel
  • Fix for a crash happening on game startup
  • Fix to Royal Tunic item so that you can repair it at an anvil
  • Fix to stop previously owned houses keeping collisions and nodes when bought by someone new
  • Fixed an exploit with tool durability through equipping/unequipping
  • Fixed a bug which would let you use tools after they had broken
  • Fixed some UI chat stuff that you could interact with while in inventory that you shouldn't have been able to
  • Fixed bug which stopped you being able to perform dissections on bandits/NPCS
  • Fixed formatting of some timers in the UI
  • Misc spelling fixes in the chat trees

Updated:
  • If an “E” interaction has only one action that can be taken we made this happen automatically without having to select it from the wheel
  • Added a popup to the house workbench to warn players that if they remove all people from the permissions then the house will have to be bought again
  • Updated some icons for house node items
  • Small visual updates to the context wheel UI
  • Updates to the inventory UI

Optimisations
  • Big optimisation to network traffic

Known Issues:
  • We have temporarily removed steam to in-game chat while we hunt down a crash related to it

Thanks again to everyone playing the black death.

See you in Mercia

The S.I.G. Team
The Black Death - [SIG] Emily
Greetings citizens of Mercia and welcome to Dev Blog #51!

As you may have noticed our website has a slightly different look as our Wordpress has been updated, we will still be bringing you our content, just with a fresh look!

We’ve got a mini Dev update, closure on our Community feedback survey, a friendly reminder on our Founder's deadline for submissions and our Community Showcase Issue #4 coming tomorrow (sorry for the delay!)

Mini Dev Update

This week's Dev update is a small one, but rest assured we will be having a few things to tease in next week's Dev Blog! Fuelled by coffee, the team have been busy working on bug fixes, issues and crashes. Once again thank you all for your emails, bug reports and Steam posts, together we can squish those bugs faster!

Next week's Weekly Q&A will also be returning, this time with a few more extra questions answered than usual.

Community Feedback Survey – CLOSED



A big thank you to everyone who sent in their feedback to us, we really apreciate your time and support!

Dmitri and myself will be gathering up your submissions into a report for the team to evaluate and take on board. Your responses will be fed back into what we do here at SIG.

As promised here are the Community members who wanted their names displayed in our Dev Blog:

Butch
HolyAvengerOne
Waffles™
Sleezy
ebhe2003
GamerbugUK
Running Blind
JsR
r_lapin
Corrosive365
Mika.Allah
Cookies
Sovgoth
AndyMatches
Kez
Drunkn
Scorch1402
Kyle852
DeathDarkSoul
Horn Drinker
Stainless001
Ceiphid

Founder's Deadline Reminder – Closes 15/12/2017 (1 day left)

This is the last friendly reminder about our Founder's Golden in game name oppertunity for your submission entries. You all have until this Friday the 15th December at 11:59pm GMT to submit your names to us for approval.

Below is a reminder of our original post:

"As a token of our thanks we would like to give Players the opportunity to receive an in game Golden name, if you fall into one of these categories type your Steam ID into the Founder’s Channel and we’ll do the rest!



The Black Death Official Discord – Founder’s Channel Link

– Are a long standing member of the Community
– Have been helpful to other Community members and shown kindness
– Have submitted Bug Reports to us through our Google Form or by Email

The deadline for submissions is the 15th December 2017 at 11:59pm GMT.

Your Steam ID should look something like this, unless you have not set a custom URL, then it will be displayed as numbers.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/SIG_Emily/
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198318030488/

We will be verifying all Community members to check your status on the above categories. We will be flagging your SteamID’s in a future update and these will be included in our Patch Notes.

Community Spotlight Issue #4

Apologies for the delay, it's been a little while since the last Showcase post. This will be returning tomorrow night here on our Website, so watch this space!

That’s all for this week, see you next time!

// The SIG Team
The Black Death - [SIG] Emily
Greetings citizens of Mercia and welcome to Dev Blog #51!

As you may have noticed our website has a slightly different look as our Wordpress has been updated, we will still be bringing you our content, just with a fresh look!

We’ve got a mini Dev update, closure on our Community feedback survey, a friendly reminder on our Founder's deadline for submissions and our Community Showcase Issue #4 coming tomorrow (sorry for the delay!)

Mini Dev Update

This week's Dev update is a small one, but rest assured we will be having a few things to tease in next week's Dev Blog! Fuelled by coffee, the team have been busy working on bug fixes, issues and crashes. Once again thank you all for your emails, bug reports and Steam posts, together we can squish those bugs faster!

Next week's Weekly Q&A will also be returning, this time with a few more extra questions answered than usual.

Community Feedback Survey – CLOSED



A big thank you to everyone who sent in their feedback to us, we really apreciate your time and support!

Dmitri and myself will be gathering up your submissions into a report for the team to evaluate and take on board. Your responses will be fed back into what we do here at SIG.

As promised here are the Community members who wanted their names displayed in our Dev Blog:

Butch
HolyAvengerOne
Waffles™
Sleezy
ebhe2003
GamerbugUK
Running Blind
JsR
r_lapin
Corrosive365
Mika.Allah
Cookies
Sovgoth
AndyMatches
Kez
Drunkn
Scorch1402
Kyle852
DeathDarkSoul
Horn Drinker
Stainless001
Ceiphid

Founder's Deadline Reminder – Closes 15/12/2017 (1 day left)

This is the last friendly reminder about our Founder's Golden in game name oppertunity for your submission entries. You all have until this Friday the 15th December at 11:59pm GMT to submit your names to us for approval.

Below is a reminder of our original post:

"As a token of our thanks we would like to give Players the opportunity to receive an in game Golden name, if you fall into one of these categories type your Steam ID into the Founder’s Channel and we’ll do the rest!



The Black Death Official Discord – Founder’s Channel Link

– Are a long standing member of the Community
– Have been helpful to other Community members and shown kindness
– Have submitted Bug Reports to us through our Google Form or by Email

The deadline for submissions is the 15th December 2017 at 11:59pm GMT.

Your Steam ID should look something like this, unless you have not set a custom URL, then it will be displayed as numbers.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/SIG_Emily/
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198318030488/

We will be verifying all Community members to check your status on the above categories. We will be flagging your SteamID’s in a future update and these will be included in our Patch Notes.

Community Spotlight Issue #4

Apologies for the delay, it's been a little while since the last Showcase post. This will be returning tomorrow night here on our Website, so watch this space!

That’s all for this week, see you next time!

// The SIG Team
The Black Death - Smallimpact
Hello there Mercia,

We have put together a new update to deal with some important issues and added a new feature to allow player's to craft and equip bags that can increase their carry weight! Here are the patch notes in full:

Fixes:
  • Fixed crash on game loading from discord-rpc.dll issues
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when closing down the game
  • Fixed bug that caused your view to get frozen when pushing "E" to exit from the inventory after reading a book or note
  • Fixed bug that could cause dissection labels to get stuck on your screen permanently
  • Fixed bugs with repairing clothing items, they should now all be repairable
  • Fixed bug with Leatherwork Apron and Work Apron pickups
  • Fixed bug that caused you to stop moving when equipping/consuming/healing from the context wheel
  • Fixed socket rotation issue of simple ai that holds ale
  • Fixed Steam issue on servers not registering players
New:
  • You can now craft 3 tiers of bags within the artisan tree to increase your carry weight
Updated:
  • Polishing the context wheel UI
  • Updated item icons
  • Sped up time it takes when pressing "E" to bring up the context wheel
  • Recipes now use the icon for the item they will make
  • Update pass on the House workbench UI to make things easier to read
  • Update pass on the inventory UI to make recipes easier to read
  • Made the inventory auto select and fill the last recipe you were on when you enter it
  • Separate storage units for each resource type are now available for building
  • Guards are only available to hire within the wall perimeter of houses
  • First guard node is now an additional first tier utility node instead
Balancing:
  • Wellness health increase rate has been re-balanced
  • Added 1 wheat to buy cost of mid and heavy house guards to match that of light guard
  • Guards now cost less wheat upkeep resources, they now cost more gold upkeep instead
Optimisations:
  • Optimised UI

Thanks everyone for playing and good luck with surviving the black death...

The S.I.G. Team
The Black Death - Smallimpact
Hello there Mercia,

We have put together a new update to deal with some important issues and added a new feature to allow player's to craft and equip bags that can increase their carry weight! Here are the patch notes in full:

Fixes:
  • Fixed crash on game loading from discord-rpc.dll issues
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when closing down the game
  • Fixed bug that caused your view to get frozen when pushing "E" to exit from the inventory after reading a book or note
  • Fixed bug that could cause dissection labels to get stuck on your screen permanently
  • Fixed bugs with repairing clothing items, they should now all be repairable
  • Fixed bug with Leatherwork Apron and Work Apron pickups
  • Fixed bug that caused you to stop moving when equipping/consuming/healing from the context wheel
  • Fixed socket rotation issue of simple ai that holds ale
  • Fixed Steam issue on servers not registering players
New:
  • You can now craft 3 tiers of bags within the artisan tree to increase your carry weight
Updated:
  • Polishing the context wheel UI
  • Updated item icons
  • Sped up time it takes when pressing "E" to bring up the context wheel
  • Recipes now use the icon for the item they will make
  • Update pass on the House workbench UI to make things easier to read
  • Update pass on the inventory UI to make recipes easier to read
  • Made the inventory auto select and fill the last recipe you were on when you enter it
  • Separate storage units for each resource type are now available for building
  • Guards are only available to hire within the wall perimeter of houses
  • First guard node is now an additional first tier utility node instead
Balancing:
  • Wellness health increase rate has been re-balanced
  • Added 1 wheat to buy cost of mid and heavy house guards to match that of light guard
  • Guards now cost less wheat upkeep resources, they now cost more gold upkeep instead
Optimisations:
  • Optimised UI

Thanks everyone for playing and good luck with surviving the black death...

The S.I.G. Team
The Black Death - [SIG] Emily
Greetings citizens of Mercia and welcome to Dev Blog #50, what a milestone!

We’ve got a Backpack teaser and reminders on our Community on goings! This week's Dev Blog is smaller than usual, but expect to see Community Showcase Issue #4 tomorrow!

Backpack Teaser!



From the desk of SIG_Mac, this backpack will be a craftable item found in the Artisan recipe/skill tab. There will be three different backpacks in total, each of these will increase your carry weight in stages. These will be sure to make a fine addition to any adventurers attire!

Founders Deadline Reminder - Closes 15/12/2017

This is just a friendly reminder about our Founders Channel submission entries. You all have until next Friday on the 15th December at 6pm GMT to submit your names to us for approval. Below is a reminder of our original post:

As a token of our thanks we would like to give Players the opportunity to receive an in game Golden name, if you fall into one of these categories type your Steam ID into the Founder’s Channel and we’ll do the rest!



The Black Death Official Discord - Founder's Channel Link

– Are a long standing member of the Community
– Have been helpful to other Community members and shown kindness
– Have submitted Bug Reports to us through our Google Form or by Email

The deadline for submissions is the 15th December 2017 at 6pm GMT.

Your Steam ID should look something like this, unless you have not set a custom URL, then it will be displayed as numbers.

http://steamcommunity.com/id/SIG_Emily/
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198318030488/

We will be verifying all Community members to check your status on the above categories. We will be flagging your SteamID’s in a future update and these will be included in our Patch Notes.

Weekly Q&A Questions Reminder



We need some more questions for our Weekly Q&A pool, go ahead and drop us a few over on our Steam thread and we'll fish them out and answer some in next weeks Blog!

Submit Your Questions For Our Weekly Q&A's Here!

You can send these via email at: Emily@small-impact.com, over on our Twitter at @blackdeath_game or directly over on our Steam forum thread at the link above.

Your questions will be gathered up and kept in our Q&A pool, so if you don't see your question answered in the next Dev Blog you may see it in a future one! Please note, this thread has no closing date.

Feedback Survey Reminder - Closes 13/12/2017



As a reminder from Dev Blog #47, this feedback will be gathered up by Dmitri & myself and will be sent over to the team in a report. Your responses will be fed back into what we do here at SIG. There are a total of 7 questions for you to answer and the form will be open until the 13th December 2017 at 6 pm GMT.

The Black Death Community Feedback Survey

A big thanks to those who have sent in their feedback so far and wanted their names displayed on our blog!

Butch
HolyAvengerOne
Waffles™
Sleezy
ebhe2003
GamerbugUK
Running Blind
JsR
r_lapin
Corrosive365
Mika.Allah
Cookies
Sovgoth
AndyMatches
Kez
Drunkn
Scorch1402
Kyle852
DeathDarkSoul
Horn Drinker

That’s all for this week, thanks for reading!

See you in Mercia.

// The SIG Team
The Black Death - [SIG] Emily
Greetings citizens of Mercia and welcome to Dev Blog #50, what a milestone!

We’ve got a Backpack teaser and reminders on our Community on goings! This week's Dev Blog is smaller than usual, but expect to see Community Showcase Issue #4 tomorrow!

Backpack Teaser!



From the desk of SIG_Mac, this backpack will be a craftable item found in the Artisan recipe/skill tab. There will be three different backpacks in total, each of these will increase your carry weight in stages. These will be sure to make a fine addition to any adventurers attire!

Founders Deadline Reminder - Closes 15/12/2017

This is just a friendly reminder about our Founders Channel submission entries. You all have until next Friday on the 15th December at 6pm GMT to submit your names to us for approval. Below is a reminder of our original post:

As a token of our thanks we would like to give Players the opportunity to receive an in game Golden name, if you fall into one of these categories type your Steam ID into the Founder’s Channel and we’ll do the rest!



The Black Death Official Discord - Founder's Channel Link

– Are a long standing member of the Community
– Have been helpful to other Community members and shown kindness
– Have submitted Bug Reports to us through our Google Form or by Email

The deadline for submissions is the 15th December 2017 at 6pm GMT.

Your Steam ID should look something like this, unless you have not set a custom URL, then it will be displayed as numbers.

http://steamcommunity.com/id/SIG_Emily/
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198318030488/

We will be verifying all Community members to check your status on the above categories. We will be flagging your SteamID’s in a future update and these will be included in our Patch Notes.

Weekly Q&A Questions Reminder



We need some more questions for our Weekly Q&A pool, go ahead and drop us a few over on our Steam thread and we'll fish them out and answer some in next weeks Blog!

Submit Your Questions For Our Weekly Q&A's Here!

You can send these via email at: Emily@small-impact.com, over on our Twitter at @blackdeath_game or directly over on our Steam forum thread at the link above.

Your questions will be gathered up and kept in our Q&A pool, so if you don't see your question answered in the next Dev Blog you may see it in a future one! Please note, this thread has no closing date.

Feedback Survey Reminder - Closes 13/12/2017



As a reminder from Dev Blog #47, this feedback will be gathered up by Dmitri & myself and will be sent over to the team in a report. Your responses will be fed back into what we do here at SIG. There are a total of 7 questions for you to answer and the form will be open until the 13th December 2017 at 6 pm GMT.

The Black Death Community Feedback Survey

A big thanks to those who have sent in their feedback so far and wanted their names displayed on our blog!

Butch
HolyAvengerOne
Waffles™
Sleezy
ebhe2003
GamerbugUK
Running Blind
JsR
r_lapin
Corrosive365
Mika.Allah
Cookies
Sovgoth
AndyMatches
Kez
Drunkn
Scorch1402
Kyle852
DeathDarkSoul
Horn Drinker

That’s all for this week, thanks for reading!

See you in Mercia.

// The SIG Team
...