Welcome Citizens of Mercia to EXPEDITION, the newest and biggest update The Black Death has ever seen! Servers are now live and client is fully released.
We have been working hard on a wealth of new content, reworking/enhancing older systems (such as XP/Leveling and Combat) as well adding completely new systems (such as Traveling between lands and First Person Mode). The purpose of these changes is to lay the technical groundwork for future updates, opening up a multitude of future possibilities.
Let’s get straight to it:
Major Features:
- Travel Between “Lands” With A Persistent Character
- New Homestead Map
- Mercia Mainland Map - Size increased by 15%!
- New Arena Map - A new land where players can fight friend or foe to the death
- New First Person View Mode - (Third person can be accessed with “Y”)
- Updated Combat System - Directional attacks with different animations per weapon type
- New Quests System - Jobs can be found on boards around major towns
- Numerous Visual Improvements to lighting, sky, fog effects as well as the fidelity of forests
- New NPC Enemies - Flagellants and Celtics
- New Sneaking System
- New Dynamic Music System & New Music
- New Territory System - Claim plots of land, name your town
- Backend Rework To Items - Make them more robust and a lot more optimised
- Update to XP/Leveling System
- Enhanced Inventory
Supporting Features:
- Improved IK solving, A.I Navigation and A.I Head Look At
- Slopes Effect Characters Speed
- Easier To Invite Friends To Play With
- Destroyed Building that need cleaning Up On Territories
- New Experimental Logic For Commanding Owned NPC Guards
- New Loading Screens
Below is a breakdown of the new features:
Travel To Lands With A Persistent Character
Characters are no longer per server, instead you have a single character and can travel between “Lands”. The lands we have with this update are Mainland Mercia, The Arena as well as Homestead. Because of this initial workload, in future updates we will now be able to easily add new, unique and exciting Lands to the game with ease. You can travel between lands using the “Ferrymen” situated around the coast in each map (easily recognisable with a boat icon above their head). Character customisation now takes place in the main menu. You can modify your look and gender at anytime by returning to the main menu and hitting the “Modify” button on the right hand side.
Homestead
When starting out you are welcomed with your own private land (which you can invite your friends to play in). This base of operations is to ease players into base building mechanics and survival techniques and provides a Hub for the player to travel to other locations (such as going online) through the ferryman. Homestead has lower yield of resources and has no higher tier items such as iron, silver and gold. Travelling to Mercia for further progression is a must, just make sure you travel back safely….
Mercia Mainland
Mainland Mercia is the Mercia you have come to know and love. We have been working hard on fixing bugs, improving current areas as well as adding entire new areas! This newest update increases the size of Mercia by around 15%. Three new regions are being added which is just over a square kilometer! The new regions are named freeman’s castle (overlooking freemans port) Murkridge and Freelaw. These locations are currently planned to be raid areas including a town for bandits and outlaws named Freelaw fort (if you are of the outlaw profession you can freely explore and shop there).
The Arena
The Arena map is one of the new “Lands” players can play privately on with friends (Pressing “F1” will bring up the invite steam friends menu). It is a small map which comes with some unique features. There are targets for practicing archery, practice dummies where you can test weapon damage, a fighting pit area as well as a bell that that can be rung to summon a gladiator to test your might against. These enemies will not drop any items for balancing reasons, but they are perfect for fighting training, however be careful, they won't hold back and can and will kill you if given a chance.
First Person Mode
We have added a new first person mode to the game and set it as the default view. If you prefer third person you can switch to back at any time with “Y”. We felt that the third person view was causing some issues and was giving the game a more arcady feel to it. When we initially tested a first person system, it instantly felt more immersive and made interactions such as combat more intense. So we decided to go full steam ahead and implement it as a whole. It has and will provide a lot of new opportunities such as an improved combat system, accurate looting and deeper exploration.
Updated Combat System
Our new and improved combat system now gives accurate first person cursor hit detection (swings passing through where you aim) and lots of attack variation based on the initial direction of movement as well as each weapon type having unique attack animations (daggers, one handed, great swords), adding up to over 100 new animations total. We also reintroduced a stamina system for attacks, to help balance attacking. You can hold an attack before releasing allowing you to be more tactical with your striking, however this will drain stamina. Holding a strike for longer will cause it to deal additional damage. This new combat system is more responsive and authentic and a great base to build off of e.g. further weapon animation types
Quests
Quests are known as ‘Job Contracts’ and currently spawn procedurally around Mercia on job boards, located in Freeman’s port, Govan’s head, Farleigh, Dunstead and Raven’s Reach. Once you pickup a contract, head into your inventory and use it. This will show you the job details and potential rewards and allow you to accept the job. Jobs vary from killing and crafting to farming. Upon completing a reward is given, ranging from gold and XP to rare items.
Visual Improvements
Lighting, the sky and fog effects have had further improvements to provide a more dramatic effect/difference between day and night to give the feeling that venturing out at night isn’t such a good idea. This also provides for more interesting lighting scenarios in towns and caves.
New NPC Enemies
Flagellants and Celtics melee enemies now wander Mercia, they deal high damage but suffer from low armour. These new enemies were to replace the monk enemies we had in-game, which will return as new neutral NPCs in the future.
New Sneaking System
We have added a new base sneaking system to the game. Now when you crouch, on the right of your HUD you will see a visibility amount. If you try to steal an item when you someone can see you they will attack you but if you are hidden you can get away with it! This is a system we are excited to build upon in future updates.
New Dynamic Music System
We created a new system for playing music during gameplay. This is more reactive and will trigger random combat music when you are attacked, spawning in and are killed as well as music more relevant to the area you are in for example a town or a creepy dark cave. We also added 6 new music tracks into the game so listen out for them.
Territories
Our Land Claim system has been reworked. Players no longer craft and place them instead land claims are pre-placed in each ‘Territory’ and can be bought and named by a player. Buying a Territory gives only you build control over the area (you can toggle build permission to all those in your guild). Territory claims can be repaired and destroyed. When destroyed they become available to be bought again, so make sure to build your defences properly around your claim. The largest territories are obtained within Mercia and are recommended to be conquered by guilds. Future plans are in place to provide players that own multiple territories with extra incentives to own more land and larger PVP scenarios. Buildable/stable ground is now only within a owned territory borders (this also allowed us to give these areas a graphical upgrade since they don’t require a single texture to operate).
Leveling System Enhancement
The XP system has been ‘remastered’ into a level system, taking a more traditional RPG approach. Now when you hit a certain level of XP you gain a level which is fully persistent with your character. Each level provides a group of points to spend anyway you see fit (varying on level). This allows new players to have more points to spend per level but also provides season veterans with bragging rights. When you die you will no longer lose any unspent points, XP gained or attribute points.
Optimised Item Backend
We heavily optimised the inventory and item backend, changing from actor pointers to optimised structs, allowing more items and faster replication. Item usage is now more responsive, that includes equipping, dropping, buying, storing crafting and selling items
Enhanced Inventory
We reworked the inventory, consolidating crafting UI to help make it clearer and easier to use. We also added new features such as a paperdoll view of your character to support new first person mechanics, allowing you to see all your equipped items and character. You can now quick equip clothing drag and drop clothing onto the paperdoll to quick equip it as well as a stats page with useful information about your character. Leveling up mechanics can also be accessed via the inventory.
Supporting Features Breakdown:
Improved IK Solving, A.I Navigation and Head Lookat
In an attempt to further improve the A.I.'s believability we decided to address the sudden turning and strange angles they adopt when travelling around Mercia (especially animals) the new changes include physics based feet placement solutions for any angle and more realistic turn rates. The results are definitely on the right path but we will be looking to add further animation variation to them to really sell it in the future. Also with the implementation of the first person camera it became obvious that we needed to have the A.I look at the player to make them feel more alive, so we added in some functionality to make the A.I head turn towards the most relevant player.
Slopes Effect Characters Speed
When players move through the world of Mercia the floor slope angle will now effect the speed at which they move. Moving down hill will make you faster whereas moving up hill will make you slower. This makes movement feel more realistic and makes moving around more tactical when chasing or running away from an enemy or wild animal.
Burnt Buildings
In your Homestead you will notice burnt buildings within your home Territory. These block you your ability to build in these location until you destroy them. They are simple to destroy with any weapon and when destroyed you can use the dropped items to help start building your home up. This is currently only implemented in the Homestead but will be put over to Mercia in future updates.
Easier To Invite Friends To Play With
We have been working on our steam integration, more specifically joining friends. When you are in your Homestead or in The Arena pressing “F1” will bring up the friends list menu. Here you are able to invite steam friends to your game.
New Experimental Logic For Commanding Owned NPC Guards
We have begun an experimental new system for commanding owned guard npc around. This will be expanded on in the future and is very tempermental at the moment.
New Loading Screens
We have unified our loading screens under one new loading movie. This now matches the atmosphere of the game as a whole.
Fixes and additional features for this update are being worked on as we speak so please feel free to let us know of issues you might find. We are also putting together a road-map to lay out plans on the run up to christmas and beyond so stay tuned!
Thanks for playing The Black Death!
The S.I.G. Team