Greetings citizens of Mercia and welcome to Dev Blog #60!
For this weeks Dev Blog we are taking another look into our new Building System with some more tasty information for you all along with some juicy new images of examples of what you will be able to build. We also have a new Beta, with info on how to download and access the Beta branch and some Community extras at the end.
Dev Update: New Building System
The New building system has had another revision to improve it's gameplay loop. "buildable land" will be in certain parts of the world and will be easily accessed, you are free to build anything on this land until it has been "claimed" by a player. Their land claim will block any other player within a radius being able to build there, the land claim and it's blocking radius also handles permissions so players can add their friends to the list and let them use their doors and build on their land.
This new revision allows players to use the system quickly and also have longer games of attrition against others or even cooperative build extremely large villages, town and castles since we will be only implementing much larger areas throughout the world that you can build on.
Beta Patch Notes
Updated:
- In char create made per profession attribute increase gold colour so they stand out more
- Pressing quickslot 0 will now cancel a building placement
- Added time building time remaining under cross hair when crafting
- Added a pop-up to tell players when they are on buildable ground
- Added a pop-up to tell players when the object they are trying to build requires buildable ground
- Made profession increase on attributes in the inventory easier to read
- Updated version number
Fixed:
- Fix added to bug that caused players to occasionally be unable to interact with anything in their inventory after levelling up
- Fixed bug where objects could get profession prefix if you hover from a person the directly to an object
- Fixed bug which stopped attributes profession increase for mason to not show
- Fixed selecting Mason profession in character create filling in at the top with “Militia”
- Fixed misc spelling mistakes
- Fixed bug with beds to do with the new building which meant players couldn't spawn
- Fixed a bug that allowed houses to be built on top of houses
- Fixed collisions to stop preventing walls being built next to walls
- Fixed collisions to allow building utilities inside houses
- Fixed collisions to allow cosmetics items to be placed inside houses
- Fixed collisions for doors so they can be placed in door frames and gatehouses
- Fixed Gatehouse meshes to allow for doors to be built inside
- Fixed Pivots so rotations of some objects are lined up correctly
- Fixed workbench so it can now be placed from the hotbar
- Fixed so houses now save the correct position after building
How To Download Our Beta Branch & Send Bug Reports
As always, if you do find any bugs or issues when playing on our Beta Test Server please fill in a Bug Report over on our Google Bug Form , every bug counts! When submitting bugs make sure to always select the Beta option in the drop down when playing on the Beta branch that looks like this “Version V0.26 (Beta)”.
To download our Beta branch follow these steps:
- Make sure The Black Death is closed and not running.
- Go to your Steam Client and navigate to your Steam Games Library.
- Right click on "The Black Death" and select "Properties".
- Navigate to the far right tab that reads "Betas" and select it.
- Using the drop down menu, select "Beta - Beta test branch" and select Close.
- In a few moments Steam should start to download the Beta branch of The Black Death.
- To switch back to The Black Death "Live" build. Simply navigate to "Properties", "Betas" and then select "None - Opt out of all beta programs"
To ensure that The Black Death is kept up-to-date before other games, select the "Updates" tab. Then click on the drop down menu and select "High Priority - Always auto-update this game before others".
Take a look at the image below and match it to The Black Death in your Steam Games Library If the title is missing the [beta] you have the "Live" branch installed.
Beta Playthrough Survey
There is now a Google Form that will appear in your web browser once The black Death has been closed after playing. This form will only load in your browser if you have been playing on the Beta branch.
If you have been playing on our Beta branch, when you have finished your play session and have closed The Black Death, a Google Form should open in your default web browser. This is designed to help us gather feedback from your play session on the Beta, and to help us get a clear impression of your thoughts after playing. We greatly appreciate your feedback and suggestions. Thank you in advance for your submissions.
If for some reason the Google Form does not load in your web browser, or if you accidentally close it, here is a link to the form.
The Black Death Beta Playthrough Form
Community Extras
Request A Feature Form Reminder
Our Request A Feature form is our new streamlined way of receiving community suggestions and feedback on our current systems and features in game. The data from our Trello Board has been saved and added to the sheet that is linked to our new form.
If you would like to submit a request for a feature or a suggestion for a current feature in The Black Death, please fill out the embedded Google Form over on our website here Dev Blog #60: Dev Update, Beta Patch Notes, Beta Branch Info & Community Extras
If you cannot see the form over on our Dev Blog, you can use the link below.
Request A Feature For The Black Death
New Steam Forum Sticky - Helpful Links
We have a new Steam forum sticky post with all of our social links, community, news, features, technical help links and more. This is a good one to have in your bookmarks if you want a quick and easy place to have all our sites handy. Be sure to share this with your fellow adventurers!
Social, Community, News, Technical Help & Official Guide Links!
New Player Written Book
We have received a new player written book, a big thank you to Lapin_r for sending this in to us, it's a great read for sure and we can't wait to get this in game for you all to find and have a read yourselves. It is a guide book about the Plague and is also written in character based on the time period of The Black Death itself. Keep an eye out for this one in a future update!
That’s all for now, thanks for reading and we will see you next time!
// The SIG Team