This past week about half of the team was working hard on optimizations and tracking a crash that seems to still occur on Stormwall. We think we may have found the cause, and it will hopefully solve the random crash and give a smoother play experience. However, this fix will take some time as it will require us to re-write portions of our interact system (system that detects what can be picked up/opened/used etc.), so it most likely wont be ready until our next update. Were also working on fixing the slowdown that occurs when opening/closing inventory by migrating to a 2d based inventory physics solution. Were also finding a fix for the floating beds issue, and hope to have that ready for the next update as well.
Aside from this, the rest of the team is working on implementing shields, the anti-hack report system, average-ping detector, server console, and throwing axes. The shields are coming well, we now have them in the game art wise, but are now tweaking, balancing, and properly positioning them for good gameplay. We believe it may take another 2 weeks yet however for the next update, so we do not see a wipe at the end of this week, as we intend the next update to contain shields in all their glory! The implementation of shields brought upon some concerns with character customization, so we are now going to limit the player height and arm length fields by about 30% on the lower end. Aside from the technical limitations we seen, we gathered many opinions from the community via different channels, and the majority seemed to want this limit for gameplay reasons. You will still be able to create short characters, but not as short as once before.
We've also heard many opinions and suggestions from the community about having your base removed when your offline due to someone destroying your crest and placing their own. To find a good balance, we are considering a system where players may temporarily "shield" their guild crest from being attacked. We are considering players the ability to craft small totems either out of wood, stone, or iron, and binding them to their guild crest as a offering to the gods (totem is just an icon, you wont see it in-game). The gods will then protect the crest (make it invincible) for a time limit that the totems offer. You can bind extra totems to a crest to increase the shields time limit. This would allow players who are worried about their crest being destroyed while they are offline to gather enough totems and plan ahead for their departure. However, this will not stop any raiding, players will still be able to trebuchet your base, steal your belongings, etc. But if you properly shield your crest, it will temporarily stop people from simply destroying a small part of your base, destroying your crest, placing their own, then deleting your entire base. The crest shield time limit of course would be displayed to everyone who is near your crest, so they will know when they can come back and destroy it if they please. We would not allow shielding of crests in "disputed zones" which would be in and around the throne room, treasure tree, and on the sword bridge. In this system, you will be notified if you are about to place your crest in "disputed zone".
We also appreciate everyone sending in exploit reports to our email address support (at) codehatch.com - We do read your reports and try repro internally and look for solutions.
Thanks for playing,
- The Code}{atch Team