Hello everybody.

We’ve got a ton in the works for the next patch, and all of this is gearing up for a larger content update in the near future.

Till then we figured we should show off the behind the scenes, for what’s going on in the Renown Development world, at the moment.

Introduction to one of our Mystery Programmers – It was Phanzor the whole time!

We are delighted to introduce one of our programmers, Phanzor, who recently transitioned from a long-standing role as a Discord moderator to a full-time developer on the project. Below is a brief message from Phanzor:

“Hello all

I’m Phanzor and I’ve recently been fully onboarded to the project after being a long-time moderator here on the discord.

I am currently working on the siege system. This has involved reworking projectiles to increase their impact with players. We’ve done this to improve the feeling of being involved in a siege. It also lets us make them more modular, allowing us to implement newer variants (i.e. flaming boulders). This opens up the entire system for easy development for some cool ideas, such as; Anti-Personal Catapult shots, Cheap Tracing/Guiding shots, and maybe even an airborne human option at some point.

This also comes with fixing up and adding in the trebuchet. We’re also making it so raid sounds are heard from farther away. Previously the impact and feel from being under attack was underwhelming. It also missed out on a key Survival Raiding troupe, of being able to hear a raid from a long distance and act as a 3rd party.

Recently also I finished up the new wipe system making it more reliable and introducing a scheduler to ensure servers wipe at the correct times and advance the date correctly afterwards.”

We’re super excited to have Phanzor full time working on the team. While there is still a lot of sharpening and fixing still to be done, we’re really excited for the future of the game. Next time we’ll hear from Moxie a long-time programmer on our team and our other “Mystery Programmer” mentioned last week.

KZ has mainly been hard at work with Combat Feedback and improving the direct feel of the combat system. We’ll have a whole dev blog dedicated to just the Combat system and its changes coming in the next week or so. Till then KZ has also been modelling and animating some cool new features.

The Carraige and Caravan System

The first of these are the new traveling event in game. These are the Merchant Caravans and the Royal Carriages.

To begin with, these will be AI controlled Carriages which travel around the map. If players find them, and can do enough damage, the Carriage will be stopped and lootable.

They’ll have a basic foot escort of Mercenaries for the Merchants, and Knights for the Nobles. This should add some excitement to the mix and gives us system to scale with the value being carried.

In the future KZ has mentioned he’d like to have the AI escorts riding on the carriage. For example, the back of both the noble and merchant vehicles has a step for riding along, or places at the front to ride “Crossbow”. This should also add a level of dynamic fun given the carriages could move a lot faster this way.

Further beyond this, we’d love for players to be able to create and ride along in their own carriages or caravans. KZ already had a video from a WIP riding system, but it’ll need a fair bit of love before it’s in game ready. However, this is stil a tangible step toward to the mighty medieval wagon fort!

The Ferrymen – A new fast travel system

The other area KZ has been working on, is the design and implementation of our new fast travel system “The Ferrymen”.

In this case we’re still looking to redo the entire vehicle system in game when we add in horse and cavalry. Till then we’ve got a fairly large map, and not a ton of ability for players to move around.

The quick solution for this in the meantime, is a simple network of Fast Travel points separated around the coast of the map.

The main idea being this should help with greater player interaction over the map, and better Quality of Life for any longer journeys the player regularly takes.

We’ll be starting with it fairly unrestricted, but we’ll be looking at options to add fees or other balance gates if it’s causing less fun than it’s helping to make.

This of course hints at a greater system of player rideable, and then controllable boats and other watercraft, after the aforementioned Vehicle system can be overhauled. River logistics was a huge part of the medieval world, and who doesn’t love a good sea battle at the end of the day.

Stay tuned for next week's "Fresh of the Forge" update. We'll be covering Combat changes and various other exciting bits planned for the next patch.