Greetings citizens of Mercia and welcome to Dev Blog #59!
We had some bad snow over the weekend, but it appears to have all melted here now, Spring will be on it's way soon!
This week we will be taking a look at our Interview with PCGamesN, our new Steam Quick Start Guide and Advanced Guide, a reminder on our Request A Feature Form and more!
For this weeks Dev Blog we wanted to have a focus on our Community and what we have been working on for you all outside of the game as well as in game. We wanted to streamline our communications with the Community and work together in making The Black Death better every day.
We have been reading through all of your requests together as a team and we have been working on a lot of things that you have requested. We are also planning on doing more of these in the future for our updates too.
PCGamesN Developer Interview
It may be a little bit on the late side, but we wanted to share with you our Interview we did with PCGamesN on how we simulate the Plague using the Unreal Engine 4 to create The Black Death. Click on the link below the image to read on!
Making it in Unreal: how The Black Death's developers simulate the plague
Official Steam Guides for The Black Death
[SIG] Dmitri and [SIG] Emily have been busy working on an Official Guide for The Black Death. This started out as the Beginner's Guide but there was so much information and images we decided to split this into two separate guides. These are both now known as the Quick Start Guide and Advanced Guide. The links below under the Steam hub screenshots will take you directly to our new guides.
Please note that these guides will be further developed and updated as new additions and changes are made to The Black Death. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact one of our Community Managers at [email protected] and [email protected].
The Black Death: Quick Start Guide
This Quick Start Guide is designed to help you make your first steps in the dangerous lands of Mercia. Every section here represents a step that you should take, starting from spawning at the Freeman's Port and ending at building your first house. This guide should easily occupy you for at least a couple of in-game days. Enjoy!
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1322197745
The Black Death Advanced Guide
This tutorial is designed to guide you through the basics of the game, occupying you from the moment you spawn into the starting area of Freeman's Port, to learning how to survive, building your first house all the way up to pillage areas and more!
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1307687286
Request A Feature For The Black Death
Welcome to our new Request A Feature Form for The Black Death. Here you can send your suggestions in to the team and we will review them along with your feedback on our current in game features. This form directly links to a Google Sheet when a new submission is sent to us. Please note, we have not closed our TBD Trello Board this is still viewable but no further comments or submissions can be made. Thank you to everyone who sent in a submission to our Trello Board, all of the information has now been moved to the Google Sheet linked to the new Google Form.
We wanted to create a more streamlined way that the community can send in requests and suggestions to our current features. Much like our Bug Form, which is also linked to a Google Sheet, this will allow us to keep track of requests better than a board system.
Also, we have gathered every Suggestion from our Trello Board, Forums, Discord, Emails, and some older Google Docs and Sheets we had and have and added them to the Request A Feature Form to ensure that everyone's suggestions are kept in one place.
If you would like to request a feature for The Black Death or suggest an improvement for an existing feature please fill out the form at the link below.
Request A Feature For The Black Death
If you head on over to our Website version of this Dev Blog you will see an embedded Google Form of the link above.
The Black Death Wiki Project Revival
We have mentioned it before, but now that we have got our Official Steam guides up and running, one of our main focuses will be on reviving our Wiki.
If you would like to have a look at one of our older posts on the Wiki check it out over here on Steam. The Black Death Wiki - Mercia Needs You!
We have already started to port our Wiki pages over from the older Gamepedia website to our new Fandom Website . All of the images that are on the Gamepedia Wiki have been saved one by one in a folder to preserve them for archiving previous updates, icons and models in game. These may be added as trivia sections to the respective Wiki pages in the future.
Our mission now is to pour information into these pages as well as high quality screenshots and images to revitalise the Wiki into a go-to place alongside our Official Steam Guides. We feel these two will accompany each other nicely for hubs the Community can refer to.
Community Showcase Issue #6 Details
Our Community Showcase makes a return with Issue #6 this Friday. Our Cover Art for Issue #6 is from Steam user EK.i ¦ Aleysiia
Our Showcase features for Issue #6 includes:
- Steam screenshot gallery picks
- Content creators corner
- A new Player story
- New RP Community Server
That’s all for now, thanks for reading and see you next time!
// The SIG Team
——————————————
To keep in the loop, follow The Black Death on our social and news sites!
The Black Death on Steam
The Black Death Official Discord
The Black Death Steam Community Hub