Hello everyone,

Today, on the 158th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam we're happy to be bringing you the next War of Rights game update!

The update brings the iconic 12-pounder smoothbore bronze cannons often referred to as "Napoleons" into the game, an overhauled character movement system, lots of animation setup fixes and more.

For the full patch notes, please read below.

- Added playable versions of the M1857 and M1861 12-pounder Napoleon bronze cannons to the available batteries in Skirmishes and firing ranges at the Drill Camps.





- Added 12-pounder limbers complete with shell, case and canister rounds.











- Replaced the old movement style with a new one. These changes are intended to make the player feel a bit more grounded in the world when moving around, accelerating and decelerating. This also include changes to the way the camera behaves when moving around.
- Prevented players from interacting with the artillery guns immediately after they have been fired.
- Other players will now tilt slightly in the direction they are turning towards while moving.
- Fixed nearly all occurrences of the hands of players sometimes spinning 360 degrees when starting to perform certain actions.
- The text chat box is now more responsive, resulting in little to no chance of getting stuck in it when double tapping the enter key.
- Detail work on the Drill Camp level.
- Possible desertion upon spawn fixes to Bolivar Heights Artillery Redoubt skirmish area, Harpers Ferry.
- Level detail work, Colquitt’s Defence skirmish area, South Mountain.
- Added the map overview of the Drill Camp level to the deploy screen when playing on a drill camp server.
- Level detail work, West woods skirmish area, Antietam.
- Fixed two non-functioning spawn points at River Crossing and Bolivar Heights Camp skirmish areas, Harpers Ferry.
- Fixed and improved the sharpshooter fur knapsack model.
- Updated LD Moore house, South Mountain.
- Level detail work, Maryland Heights skirmish area, Harpers Ferry.
- Overhauled the Harpers Ferry river wall models surrounding the town itself.
- Optimized the army tent models.
- Level detail work, Roulette Lane and Hagerstown Turnpike skirmish areas, Antietam.
- Fixed the broken proxies of the large beech trees, primarily found in the Drill Camp and Picket Patrol level.
- Fixed a bug where the player did not exit Right Shoulder Shift properly when starting to kneel.
- Improved the enter and exit melee mode with a bayonet animation.
- Improved the start and end reload and fix and unfix bayonet animations.
- Fixed a rare crash with the artillery.
- Added a new Siege of Harpers Ferry splash screen.

That's all for now. We look forward to be testing the new bronze beasts with all of you on the alpha servers. Until next time, have a good one!

Today marks the release of the 8th hotfix since the deployment of the artillery update just over a month ago.

The hotfix contains player interpolation updates that are going to be drastically reducing how often you'll be seeing players teleport/stutter from one location to another as well as a handful of bug fixes.

The notes are below:

- Reduced the amount of stuttering of other players.
- A possible fix for muting players in the voice chat via the tab menu.
- Fixed individual huzzah and rebel yell shouts not triggering.
- Fixed bedrolls sometimes having distorted colors.
- Possible fix for players getting moved from "In Formation" to "Out of Line" for no apparent reason.
- Several minor level detail updates.

Our 7th released hotfix focusing on issues introduced in the biggest update we've ever released: the artillery update, and highlighted due to your alpha testing is now live.

Below are the specifics of the hotfix.

- Fixed the desertion timer not always being shown and not always using the correct 60 second timer when the flag gets picked up while being Out of Line.
- Fixed the flag sometimes dissapearing when it gets dropped.
- Fixed a couple of crashes.
- Fixed the player breathing sound sometiems playing while sitting in the spawn menu.
- Fixed the text chat breaking if players had certain characters in their name.
- Reduced the amount of coloured fog in the rivers & ponds, resulting in less glowing water when overcast weather is present.
- Reduced the amount of blue sky captured in the environmental probes, resulting in slightly less blue tints throughout the game.
- Removed a number of possible spawn positions on various rooftops when spawning on the flag bearer.
- Tweaked morale starting amounts on Antietam:

• East Woods: +10% Union
  
• Nicodemus Hill: +5% CSA
  
• West Woods: +10% CSA
  
• Burnside Bridge: +10% CSA
  
• Cooke's Countercharge: +10% Union
  
• Roulette Lane: +5% Union

- Fixed a small section of fence line along Roulette Lane, Antietam not having a two sided ledge.
- Minor character tweaks & optimizations.
- Minor level detail work, Harpers Ferry.
- Fixed the Picket Patrol game mode.

Hello everyone,

Today, our 6th hotfix since the release of the artillery branch just two weeks ago is being released!

- Fixed a server crash.
- Possible fix for one of the player mass boot issues (these will often appear as a server crash for the players).
- Fixed the initial forward defensive spawn for infantry on some skirmish areas not always working properly resulting in some of the defenders spawning on their main base instead of the capture zone.
- Possibly fixed some players speaking globally in the voice chat.
- Players currently sitting in their flag spawn queue will no longer be moved over to the flag spawning queue of the other regiment should their own flag be dropped.
- Made the weather less foggy before it starts raining and made the fog less blue when its about to rain.
- Fixed a client crash if too many messages got written in the chat. This crash would usually occur after 5 hours of gameplay.
- Activated blendspace smoothing cvars, possibly resulting in less jittery characters in cramped spaces.
- Minor detail work on all army camps.
- Vegetation should now look slightly better when in the shade/cloud shadows.
- Broke down a few fence lines in close proximity to the batteries at Cooke's Countercharge & Piper Farm/Bloody Lane skirmish areas for slightly better battery mobility.
- Minor character skinning & material updates.

Hello everyone,

We've just pushed a hotfix containing several possible fixes in order to increase the stability of the alpha, a new artillery feature for manually setting fuze lengths as well as minor character & level updates.

The hotfix notes can be found below:

- Players can now elevate or depress the barrel in 0.01 degree increments by rotating the mouse wheel for micro adjustments when using the elevation screw. Holding Shift will speed it up to 0.02 degrees.

- When using the elevation screw, players can now offset the fuze timer set by the dynamic fuze system by pressing Page Up or Page Down. The offset amount will be indicated by the value in parenthesis in the lower right corner of the screen. To return to the default fuze timer length, press the Home key. After the cannon has been fired, the fuze timer will return to its default value from the dynamic fuze system.

- Improved the artillery case and shell explosion effect.
- A round fired from the artillery will now produce a small dent in the ground when it ricochets.
- Fixed a couple of client crashes.
- Most likely fixed a server crash.
- Fixed NCO tags not appearing when pressing T. The NCO needs to be In Formation for his NCO tag to appear.

Hello everyone,

Today, we’re happy to announce the release of playable artillery onto the live build of the alpha! The artillery release is part of update 166 which is the largest update we have ever released for the game. We’re looking forward to be sharing its details with you below!

Before we get started, however, we’d like to thank everyone who’s helped us test out the features of the artillery in the public test branch of the game - we’ve been able to identify and fix a substantial amount of issues thanks to you all.

That being said, we do expect to see several new issues coming into view as we now begin mass testing on the live alpha build and so we look forward to seeing all of your feedback.


To get things started, we’ve created a little demonstration video highlighting the basics of the artillery mechanics. The video features Campfire Games Historical Advisor George Crecy as the mean drill instructor - enjoy!

Artillery basics demonstration

Let’s now take a look at exactly what we’re adding in update 166.

- Added the first version of player operated artillery to the alpha. This includes an operational 3 inch ordnance rifle and its limber.


Union Battery volley firing near Otto & Sherrick Farms, Antietam

- The 3 inch ordnance rifle can be operated via a number of loading steps as well as movement & aiming interaction points: sponging the barrel, inserting the round & powder, ramming the round & powder, priming the cannon, firing the cannon, pushing the cannon by its wheels (two players are recommended for this but it can be done with one at a considerably slower speed), turning the elevation screw in order to adjust the aim of the cannon vertically and picking up the trail spike in order to adjust the aim of the cannon horizontally (these feature two different speeds - hold shift in order to speed up the process).


Turning the elevation screw to change elevation and set the fuze


Moving the cannon - it goes quite a lot faster with two people on the wheels


Picking up and moving the trail spike in order to aim horizontally

- The limber can be moved in much the same way as the cannon can. It features an openable limber chest containing shell, case shot and canister types of rounds for the 3 inch ordnance rifle.


Moving the pole of the limber in order to steer it

- Added Union & Confederate artillery camps as well as firing ranges to the drill camp level. The infantry regiments will spawn in on the infantry drill camps while the artillery crews will spawn in on the battery camps.


Union Artillery Camp


Union Artillery Firing Range


Union Artillery Firing Range


Confederate Artillery Camp


Confederate Artillery Firing Range


Confederate Artillery Firing Range

- Added more than 40 artillery batteries, containing their correct number of guns (although all are currently the 3 inch ordnance rifle type), to their historic positions on our skirmish areas (this is not limited to a single position as batteries would often move a great deal throughout the day in a battle so you might see the same batteries featured in several skirmish areas at different times in the day). Some skirmish areas have had their map boundaries expanded in order to support the batteries placed at their historical positions.



USA
Crome’s Battery
CSA
Bondurant’s Battery


Bondurant’s Battery (CSA), Garland’s Stand, South Mountain


Bondurant’s Battery (CSA), Garland’s Stand, South Mountain

CSA
Pelham’s Battery

USA
Clark’s Battery


Clark’s Battery (USA), Anderson’s Counterattack, South Mountain


Clark’s Battery (USA), Anderson’s Counterattack, South Mountain

USA
Glassie’s Battery

USA
Stewart’s Battery
CSA
Lane’s Battery


USA
Potts’ Battery
CSA
Read’s Battery
Manly’s Battery
French’s Battery
Carlton’s Battery


Manly’s Battery (CSA), Available in all of the downtown skirmish areas, Harpers Ferry


Manly’s Battery (CSA), Available in all of the downtown skirmish areas, Harpers Ferry

CSA
Manly’s Battery
French’s Battery

USA
Von Sehlen’s Battery
Phillips’ Battery
Graham’s Battery
CSA
Courtney’s Battery
Brockenbrough’s Battery

CSA
Manly’s Battery
French’s Battery

USA
Von Sehlen’s Battery
Graham’s Battery
Phillips’ Battery
CSA
Brockenbrough’s Battery

CSA
Manly’s Battery
French’s Battery

USA
Graham’s Battery
CSA
Manly’s Battery
French’s Battery

USA
Rigby’s Battery
Potts’ Battery
CSA
Walker’s Battery


Rigby’s Battery (USA), Bolivar Heights Redoubt, Harpers Ferry


Rigby’s Battery (USA), Bolivar Heights Redoubt, Harpers Ferry

CSA
Manly’s Battery
French’s Battery


USA
Cooper’s Battery

USA
Matthews’ Battery
Thompson’s Battery
CSA
Brockenbrough’s Battery
Jordan’s Battery
Poague’s Battery

USA
Campbell’s Battery
CSA
Brockenbrough’s Battery
Poague’s Battery


Campbell’s Battery (USA), Hagerstown Turnpike, Antietam


Campbell’s Battery (USA), Hagerstown Turnpike, Antietam

USA
Matthews’ Battery
Ransom’s Battery
CSA
Blackshear’s Battery

USA
Campbell’s Battery
Reynolds’ Battery
CSA
Wooding’s Battery
Balthis’ Battery
Pelham’s Battery
Carpenter’s Battery

CSA
Miller’s Battery

USA
McGilvery’s Battery
CSA
D’Aquin’s Battery

USA
Weaver’s Battery
CSA
Squires’ Battery

USA
Edgell’s Battery
Tompkins’ Battery
CSA
Carlton’s Battery


Carlton’s Battery (CSA), Dunker Church, Antietam


Carlton’s Battery (CSA), Dunker Church, Antietam

USA
Clark’s Battery
CSA
Richardson’s Battery
Brown’s Battery

USA
Owen’s Battery

USA
Cook’s Battery
CSA
Maurin’s Battery

USA
Graham’s Battery

USA
Owen’s Battery
Hexamer’s Battery
CSA
Brooks’ Battery
Boyce’s Battery

CSA
Brown’s Battery
Reily’s Battery

- Added a forward spawn feature for all batteries. This enables battery crews to quickly get back into the action by spawning at the initial deployment location of their battery (note that cannons as well as limbercarts can be moved during play). If enough enemy players are close enough to the forward spawn point of the battery, however, it will become disabled for as long as it is occupied. This allows teams to effectively take over a battery from the enemy, denying them the forward spawn point as well as possibly turning the guns and using the battery for themselves if they have any available battery crew members on their own team to do so. Note that not all forward battery spawn points are actually situated within the confines of the contested playing fields of the skirmish areas (the batteries are placed where they were historically - sometimes that means up close and person in the action, at other times it means far to the rear, unable to do anything but fire in-directly towards the enemy. Should a forward spawning point have been occupied by the enemy and thus disabled a battery crew can always spawn on the main infantry spawn location should it so desire.

- Added 3 different types of 3 inch ordnance rounds.


Opening the limber chest to expose the ammunition

Shell
Used for long distance firing. It’s thick metal encasing and big internal blast charge results in large deadly chunks of shrapnel being flung the furthest of the blast charge carrying round variants.


Picking up a selected round

Case Shot
Used for medium to long distance firing. With its thinner structural frame and smaller internal blast charge one could easily be misled to thinking that the case shot is the lesser one compared to the shell. What it lacks in explosive capabilities it more than makes up for in shrapnel deadliness however. Packing a wide range of differently sized balls that are shot out in all directions upon explosion, one could easily name this round the long distance cousin of canister.


Inserting the round into the muzzle

Canister
Used for short to medium distance firing. Probably the most notorious of the lot. This can packed with sawdust and 27 solid iron golf ball sized projectiles is carnage waiting to happen. It is often compared to a giant shotgun and with good reason. If you face a tight line of men in relatively close proximity to you, this is the round to use.


Ramming the round home

- Added a dynamic fuze system tied to the elevation screw. When adjusting the elevation screw a complete table of fire is displayed in the lower right corner of the screen detailing range, elevation, time of flight and fuze length.The dynamic fuze system ensures that you get the proper fuze length at whichever elevation (and thus range) you’ve adjusted the elevation screw to. We’ve implemented this in order for the artillery experience to be more enjoyable and also dramatically simpler to get into. A great deal of aiming and range estimating is still very much required in order to be an effective artilleryman. The dynamic fuze system is something that may very well change in later updates if alpha test results prove that it is too powerful a feature.
Overview of the Dynamic Fuze System

- Added ricochet abilities to artillery rounds. Artillery rounds impacting terrain or objects prior to their fuze timers are up, have a chance at ricocheting in another direction. The angle of the hit surface compared to the round trajectory determines how likely the round is to ricochet - if the angle is a shallow one the result will be a ricochet while closer to perpendicular angles will result in the round burying itself into the surface, eventually exploding when the fuze timer is up. A round can ricochet several times if the environment required is present. A ricocheted round will explode whenever its fuze timer runs out (just like any non ricocheted round).


Pulling the lanyard, thus firing the cannon


- Overhauled the lighting setup of the game, resulting in material tweaks and fixes for most of the textures used in the game, in order to increase the visual fidelity.
- Added interior environment probes and fog volumes to all enterable structures in the game, resulting in better lighting when inside of buildings.
- Major detail pass of the entirety of the level that is hosting all of the drill camps as well as picket patrol areas.
- Replaced a lot of our older environment textures with new better looking ones.
- Overhauled many of the environmental assets of Harpers Ferry, including the town houses as well as John Brown’s Fort, supporting more close up details such as improved doors, shutters, windows and gutter improvements.


Updated Environment Assets, Harpers Ferry


Updated Town Houses, Harpers Ferry


Updated Town Houses, Harpers Ferry


Overhauled John Brown’s Fort, Harpers Ferry

- Overhauled all of the forests available in the game with new tree trunk models, textures, as well as new high detail forest floor environment props such as tree stumps, rocks, fallen over trees, etc.


Updated tree trunk models


Updated tree trunk models


Updated tree trunk models


Updated tree trunk models


New forest floor environment props


New forest floor environment props


New forest floor environment props

- Updated the arms and hands models of all characters.
- Overhauled the stonewall pile model (it was ancient).
- Added a 2nd animation variation of a musket/rifle reload. We’ve been aware for quite some time that our original one wasn’t entirely accurate to the manual of arms of the period so we’ve now introduced a 2nd one into the mix that should remedy this.
Showcase of the new musket/rifle reload variation

- Updated the sword melee mode movement animations.
- Updated the revolver aim movement animations.
- Added a new open frock coat variant to both officers and privates.
- Added bendable hat brims when entering the right shoulder shift stance.
- The tents now react to the wind.


- Added an overtime breaking timer (visually shown in the compass in the UI) to make players aware that the overtime is about to break due to the majority of players inside the point of contention having shifted from one team to the other. This should reduce the feeling of a buggy overtime feature often experienced by players due to the sudden stopped overtime and round end as they will now have enough time to, at the very least see that the majority is indeed shifted, if not even enough time to try to shift back the majority again which will stop the overtime timer.


Visual indicator of the new overtime breaking timer, giving you a moment to react in order to try to stop it or make it happen!

- As an infantryman, it is now only possible to spawn on the flag of your regiment. This should remove the confusion that can happen when you spawn in on the flag bearer of a regiment that isn’t yours.
- Added a warning and an auto kick feature if a player is exploiting the respawn mechanic in order to cause harm to his team’s morale.
- Added 28th Massachusetts and 17th Michigan to the Otto & Sherrick Farm skirmish area, Antietam, replacing the two Union regiments that used to be present there.
- Replaced 20th New York with 20th Maine at the Pry House skirmish area, Antietam.
- Centered all rifles and revolvers more accurately on the screen.
- Improved the sights model of the Whitworth rifle for easier aiming.
- Made the animations of other players with both revolvers and rifles line up more accurately in the direction they are actually aiming at. This should reduce the issues where somebody shoots you while it looks like the player is aiming in a completely different direction.
- Prevented the rifle from sometimes falling down to a 45 degree angle when in Right Shoulder Shift.
- Allowed particles in certain circumstances to be spawned faster, resulting in the smoke from a very tightly fired volley spawning less delayed.
- Possibly fixed the widely reported bush crash.
- Added a brick and concrete particle effect and wall dent for bullet impacts from small arms fire.
- Added a small screenshake as well as a small amount of suppression from bullet impacts from small arms fire hits a surface of the environment near you.
- Made the fouling of all rifles more accurately represent how much a particular weapon has been fired. This is still however only for the visual effect.
- Prevented players from spawning on the roof of Sherrick Farm via the flagbearer.
- Prevented players from spawning inside Burnside Bridge via the flagbearer.
- Prevented players from spawning inside the locked room in the Rohrback farmhouse via the flagbearer.
- Minor optimizations to the small props in all buildings.
- Removed a few old and unused files in the game for a slightly smaller file size footprint.
- Improved the sounds during the kneel reload.
- Made the Deployment UI screen always auto select either the flag bearer spawn for infantry or the forward artillery spawn if either of them are available. If not, the base spawn is auto selected.
- Added open/close interact messages when looking at doors that can be interacted with.
- Added the 28th Massachusetts flag.
- Added click sounds when clicking on some of the buttons on the deploy screens.
- Prevented the Field of View option from being set below 65 in order to limit the amount of FOV-exploiting when firing long range shots, resulting in a more level playing field.
- Added an additional music track that can play in the main menu.
- Added additional UI messages when losing connection to a server. Currently if you are actually banned, the message will still state that you have just been kicked.
- Added a new icon for the game.
- Fixed other players' weapons not producing a sound when they fire buck and ball.


With today’s update being the largest ever patch deployed to the game we do expect to be releasing a lot of reactionary updates to the feedback that we’ll be getting, that being said, more content and major additions is also being worked on. We’d like to remind you all that the version of the artillery released today is our initial artillery version which we expect to update with more features & tweaks based on our own roadmap as well as on your feedback.

Work is progressing nicely in relation to being able to bring you all one of (if not the) most well known cannons of the war, complete on its carriage no. 2, alongside its limbers and ordnance, the 1857 smoothbore 12-pounder Napoleon bronze cannon!


The next cannon to be added to War of Rights!


12-pounder limber containing the correct ordnance for the Napoleon

Work is also continuing on the long-awaited platform system set to help us combat many of the technical issues within the alpha which Philipp, the creator of the system, detailed a few months ago at: https://www.warofrightsforum.com/showthread.php?6507-Technical-issues-The-platform-system-explained

The implementation of the platform system is likely going to be the next major milestone for us. While possibly not as interesting a milestone as that of artillery to the average consumer it is of huge importance to the future of the game and so we’re very much looking forward to its release and we hope you’ll help us test it when we get there!

That’s all we have for now. We hope to be seeing you all on the fields of glory!

Until next time, keep your barrels clean and your sights true!

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


Known artillery issues

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The job of the Platform system is to handle all functionality relating to a “Platform” the game is currently running on.

Some of the crucial features being:

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

And some of the less crucial ones:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some of the planned features are:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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



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

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





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

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



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