Greetings plagued ones, and welcome to Dev Blog #64!
Apologies for the large gap between blogs, we have been very busy with V0.30, V0.31 and our Hot fixes in-between. In this issue we will be taking a look at what we have been working on, fixing exploits, clamping down on cheats and our Unreal Engine Upgrade.
Exploits And Cheating
Thanks to our diligent community we are aware of serious issues related to exploiting/duplicating items and players using cheats on our official servers, so we are currently working on solutions to combat it, the coming unreal engine upgrade will make it easier to locate and ban cheaters alongside this.
Dev Updates
In this Dev Blog we will be taking a look at a lot of different content features that we have been working on!
Prisoners And Contracts
We are expanding recipes and creating new items to require contracts for example the trebuchet requiring the “sapper contract” and to help extend this system you will be able to obtain contracts from prisoners that you can free from bandit camps all around the world, this system will be placed procedurally within bandit areas allowing you to acquire contract items from other sources rather than just your local town earl. Why don’t you save your next guard captain from the clutches of the bandit king?
Free Build Items
Currently within the game players have access to some placeable objects that don’t require stable ground to build/place like tents and campfires, we would like create more items that have this capability, such as campsites (re-spawn point) and loot stashes (storage), these will be starting recipes and have fairly basic recipe requirements however will suffer from low health and high decay, having trouble finding land? Start your life in the forest hidden away building up your empire far from the reaches of tyranny. We will be adding additional small land plots throughout the map to ease players into bigger construction.
Throwing Rocks
This system allows players to equip a stack of rocks and throw them as a low damage projectile just like the NPCs do to you, now it’s time for a fair fight! It is now very close to completion and will be free to test on our beta next week.
Land Claims And Doors
To get players on the property ladder sooner and provide more avenues to land ownership we are in the process to making different tiers of land claim craftable (which vary in size and health) and allowing doors to be owned without the need of a land claim making these systems entirely separate, players will be able to own their built doors automatically and can adjust each one’s permission to be private or open to their guild, allowing you to have public and private spaces with your kingdoms. Land claims will soon be solely for preventing others building near your land and will have a permission list as before.
Beggars And Underwear
We plan on allowing character customisation of beggars again to prevent all early players looking the same, this change will also come with a large alteration to the character’s models themselves. Now you will start in underwear no matter the profession and will be able to craft a large range of basic clothing to cover yourself up. This update will come with more female versions of clothing also but will be an ongoing task for the future.
Production Buildings And Cages
More choice for players to build their own kingdoms the way they want it will always be a priority for us. More items to craft and build will be ready to try out soon such as barns, windmills, granaries and a brewery, these are buildings with strong cosmetic themes however we will be also be introducing cages, this is a small confined craftable structure that has a door slot (like houses) in which you can place your newly caught prisoner within or to simply use as a protective system for your loot. These will come in 3 tiers, stick, wooden and iron.
Unreal Engine 4.20 Upgrade
We are currently in the process of upgrading our Unreal Engine version to 4.20, this brings a TON of additions with it.
If you would like to read all about the new update and what’s included, check it out here over on the official site: Unreal Engine 4.20 Released!
One of the new features that we will be utilising for The Black Death is, Steam Authentication. The information below has been taken from the update notes for 4.20.
New: Steam Authentication
Steam Authentication has been added! Games can now add a packet handler component that interfaces with Steam’s authentication APIs, enabling them to advertise their servers properly, handle VAC/publisher bans, and provide better validation of clients. If enabled, clients joining a server now have to be authenticated by Steam before being allowed into gameplay. By default, clients who fail authentication are kicked from the server.
Community Extras
Localisation Progress
We are currently in the process of polishing up our existing languages in game, from any contributions that have been sent in by community members. A big thank you from us all at SIG for your continued contributions!
On that note, since adding in Polish and Spanish first passes, we are also now collaborating with 2 more community members on an Italian and Portuguese localisation! When we have more details on their progress we will be sure to inform everyone. When these have been completed by our community members, their localisations will be added to a new Beta build for testing.
SIG Presents “Build-A-Base” Event (Closes: 6th August 2018)
For those of you who missed our Steam announcement post on our feed, forum post and social posts too, we currently have an in game event running until the 6th August. You can find the full details over on our Steam sticky post here:
SIG Presents: "Build-A-Base" Event! 16/07/2018 - 06/08/2018
Steam Guide: A Guide To Player Housing (In Progress…)
We are currently drafting up a Steam Guide for playing housing. This Steam guide covers everything you need to know about building a base in The Black Death. It covers the basics such as controls, small houses, larger houses, Castles and Kingdoms too. There are also sections for every buildable housing item in game, along with decorative items, NPC Contracts and lighting.
This guide is still being worked on, as there is a lot of details to cover! When finished, it will be shared around on our Steam forums and social pages too.
We hope you enjoyed reading this weeks Dev Blog and ,as always, thank you for playing, that’s all for this week, see you next time!
// The SIG Team
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