Hello everyone,
Today, we’re pleased to be bringing you the 195th alpha update to War of Rights!
After more than 2 years of testing player counts at 400 on the Official War of Rights Test Server and countless of optimization focused updates brought to you, we are now - at long last - at a point where we feel confident about raising the officially supported max player count on a server from 300 to 350. We opted to go with an incremental increase of an additional 50 players for this update because, as it stands, client performance for the last 50 players from 350 to 400 takes too big a toll, especially when not using the latest and greatest of hardware. However, fear not if you long for additional increases in the future: Our march towards a bigger and better performing digital battle will continue on throughout the lifetime of the game.
The new 350 player cap is now live and accessible via your server settings page at the G-portal site.
Update 195 contains a host of updates and tweaks to character models, buildings and animations, as well as several quality of life additions. Let’s dive into the details!
Update 195 Patch Notes
- Increased the player cap from 300 to 350 for even bigger and more immersive Civil War battles.
- Added Nicodemus barn to the game, replacing the placeholder Pry barn model used up until now. No photographs or drawings of the Nicodemus barn exist, and we have only the vaguest description of the structure, that it had a thatched-roof. Fortunately, journalists photographed and sketched both the exterior and interior of the nearby Smith barn while it served as a field hospital following the Battle of Antietam. Our model is inspired by these photographs and sketches of Smith barn, which also featured a thatched-roof.
- Updates to Sherrick Farm.
- Overhauled the Sherrick Summer Kitchen model and interior.
- Added some new glassware filler props to the game.
- Fixed LD Moore House Proxy: You should no longer become stuck in the stairwell.
- Fixed the cellar doors of R. Miller Farm missing their collision.
- Removed the legacy collision setup still present in some of the bushes at Harpers Ferry.
- Tightened up the auto kick feature whenever a player is AFK for a set period on time while on a server in order to lessen the amount of server slots wasted by inactive players and to reduce the admin workload in clearing them out manually.
- After more than a month of continual use with no downtime, it is now time for the backend server to replace the steam server browser in the game.
- Fixed up a few potentially exploitable console commands that would give the user an unfair advantage.
- Artillery canister team damage punishment effects now behave identically to artillery case and shell team damage as intended.
- Joining a server mid-game will no longer result in bayonets not getting correctly updated, and thus appearing as if everyone in bayonet melee mode was in fact in rifle club melee mode for the joinee.
- Fixed up the bullseye steam achievement not working reliably.
- Artillery is no longer pushed when getting hit by small arms projectiles.
- Artillery elevation screw inputs are now only applied when the player is fully seated and not during the enter/exit transition.
- Exit melee mode animation fixes for when using the artillery sponge/rammer.
- Animation corrections for fixing bayonets when standing and kneeling as well as when using shorter rifles.
- Added artillery sponge/rammer melee idle exit animations.
- Added sword and revolver specific fall and stand up animations, instead of just using the rifle ones.
- Added a fall animation when you are kneeled and too close to an artillery blast.
- Animations updates and tweaks for selecting/deselecting binoculars, pistols & swords.
- Tweaks and fixes to the following animations: In Place Rest, Melee Mode Bayonet, Melee Mode Rifle, Order Arms Rifle, Parade Rest Rifle, At the Ready Rifle.
- Animations updates to changing into Melee Mode using the rifle as a club while in sprint and back out of it again.
- Animation fixes when standing up/kneeling down while wielding a pistol, binoculars, sword, sponge/rammer and colors.
- Adjusted several movement animations while using a fife, bugle and drum.
- Overhauled the 4th Alabama National “Bread flag” following a research trip to the Alabamian State Archives and personally inspecting the real world artifact.
- Added the 20th Georgia and 20th North Carolina to the customizable units roster.
- Several animation issue fixes related to canceling a reload mid-reload, resulting in spinning rifles (some issues are still present).
- Added vault specific animations for vaulting while wielding a pistol, binocular, sword and flag.
- Updated hair textures and materials (darkened the texture, sharpened the normals, increased the gloss, adjusted mipmap and alpha coverage). Also darkened the eyebrow materials.
- Improved the McDowell cap model, matching its real world counterpart to a greater degree. Embroidery for officer’s McDowell caps will be added at a later time.
- Updated the uniforms and kepi textures of the 8th Florida.
- Various CSA rank insignia clipping issue fixes.
- Changed the rank insignia shoulder board color of the 20th New York from sky blue to green.
- Fixed artillery rounds being rotated 90 degrees in mid-flight.
- Players now ragdollize and become corpses rather than disappear when they disconnect.
Bradley’s Bread Flag Recipe/State Archives Research Trip
Many folks will shrug at an updated texture, but a good deal of work and history can sometimes go into these ostensibly minor changes. Today, I want to bring you along on a recent research trip to the state archives in Montgomery, Alabama. From February to May 1861, Alabama's capitol served as the first capitol of the Confederacy before it was moved to Richmond. The Department of Archives & History and the Museum of Alabama are located across the street from the capitol.
Alabama’s state capitol in Montgomery
The museum spans all of Alabama history, with artifacts associated with the earliest Native Americans of Alabama, the War of 1812, World War One and Two, Hank Williams, and so on. A very large portion of the museum covers the American Civil War, and visitors will encounter several uniforms and accouterments, muskets and revolvers, shells, and flags on display.
The Museum of Alabama
I spent most of the day not in the museum, but in the archives and specifically in the state’s massive collection of Confederate battle flags. It was surreal to see the scars of combat on many of these flags. Bullet holes, shrapnel tears, powder burns, and even blood stains testify to the horrors of war. Men died horrible, violent deaths carrying these flags. Again, an updated texture may seem superfluous until one considers what these artifacts witnessed.
A detailed look at a Confederate battleflag.
My primary objective was to inspect the Marion Light Infantry, carried by the 4th Alabama Infantry at First Manassas and as late as Summer 1862, and update the existing texture many in our community (lovingly or mockingly) refer to as the “bread flag.”
The old “bread flag” of the 4th Alabama.
The 4th Alabama Infantry’s “Stars and Bars” was one of the first flags that I produced for War of Rights and because of the unavailability of high-resolution reference photographs, it was one that we had always planned on improving upon whenever a research trip to view the flag in person became possible.
The reverse of the flag features three lines of text and each line is a unique, highly decorative font style. In the updated texture, this text is no longer a placeholder font style but is now entirely hand-painted, like the artifact. We also knew it would be necessary to consult with the archivists about what they knew of the general features of the cotton bale painted on the front of the flag, as the image has completely faded from the artifact. Much of the detailed work in the cotton bale is educated guesswork on my part, but the proportion and general outline are exact to the artifact. Lastly, I had questions about the construction of the flag itself, and was able to see just how this banner is assembled. Curiously, I discovered the canton was sewn onto the flag after the text and the cotton bale had already been completed.
The decorative text on the artifact, compared with the updated texture.
We’re very pleased with the updated texture and hope you enjoyed this behind-the-scenes look.
The updated flag of the 4th Alabama.
Celebrate the +50 with 50% off!
War of Rights is part of the Steam summer sale so there is no time better to join the ranks on the battlefields than now!
You can grab the game for yourself or your friends at a major 50% discount for the next two weeks. We look forward to be greeting the many new faces within the community and we hope that you will have a great time here.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/424030/War_of_Rights/
That's all for this time.
See you on the fields of glory!