During the past week the team has been keeping busy working on the next update. We don't believe the update will be ready until the end of next week, or perhaps a few days past that as it changes many core systems and needs the proper time.
The work on shields is going well. We now have the shields integrated into the game, and working fairly well aside from some more balance. There was a number of bugs that came up as a result of the integration, but we are getting close. Players will swap out shields, swords, and other items via the 1-9 slots. We decided to go this route versus having players equip and unequip shields via the inventory screen, as we feel it is much faster and fluid to control. This way you can easily swap between just a shield, a sword and shield, or a two-handed weapon. Were also limiting players look rotation speed and movement speed depending on the shield they are carrying. Tower shields are very heavy and have a very high movement penalty, but they also have a very large protection area. Heaters are in-between, and bucklers are the most nimble shields.
Many of the shields will also display your guild emblem.
The hacker report system had to take a backseat while we work on the auto-ping detector/kicker system.
The auto-ping detector is still WIP. It is actually taking much more work than originally thought due to some work-around needed, as we were not getting reliable results using some built in network commands. Were not yet sure if this feature will be ready for the next update or not. We'll keep everyone updated on it.
The interaction system re-write is a good chunk of work. Results are looking very promising, including a hopeful fix to a crash that was plaguing us for a long time on Stormwall (we now think the reason it randomly shows up in Stormwall is due to it having more objects to interact with than Crownland, but it was very complex bug to find). This system being very integral to the game, so it is keeping our QA very busy. The new system will also give a performance boost in different situations.
Were also putting a few more options in the settings screen so that lower end computers can play our game better. As our internal QA showed that draw distance and LOD level can really impact performance on low-end computers. We actively test on save files we grab from the live servers you play on right now, this helps us track performance and optimize where we can.
Having read through and considering the community threads about the totems that you can bind into a guild crest in order to give it temporary protection. We've decided to go ahead and try doing it. And we'll see how it plays out. We understand some players may be worried on how much this will affect raids, but we must remind them that it doesn't stop your ability to raid, infact, you can still tear down an entire base using a trebuchet. It just gives the base owner the ability to spend resources to try and protect their crest so one cannot simply remove a couple walls, take down their crest, place their own down and remove his base. We never personally liked this mechanic in it's current form, as we felt it wasn't fully balanced, and the majority of the community seemed to reflect that. Reign of Kings was always intended as a game about base building & raiding, with a strong pvp type focus. This mechanic will be in the hopes of further refining the pvp experience to become more balanced.
Thanks for playing,
The Code}{atch Team