Hello everyone,
Today marks the day of the 159th anniversary of the battle of Antietam/Sharpsburg and so we are excited to be releasing a major update to the game in celebration and remembrance of the courage and sacrifices of the soldiers engaged in what would be America’s single bloodiest day in wartime.
Musicians
Musicians are (at long last) making their way into War of Rights!
Featuring a drummer and a bugler per regiment, the sole objective of the musicians in battle is to relay the orders of the officers to the men outside of hearing distance of the shouts.
On the Drill Camp level outside of combat, musicians (including the fifer exclusively available there) are also able to play a selection of Civil War period tunes should the company want to liven things up a tad while on the march or warming themselves next to the campfire.
When spawned as a musician, press Q in order to bring up a radial menu to select the call/signal or tune you wish to play. Note that you can only play while either standing still or at the quicktime speed.
Musicians can also sync up and play the same call or tune together. All it takes is both of the musicians being in relative close proximity to each other, both selecting the same call or tune and they will sync up with each other.
Note: With today’s update comes the very first musician class introduction into the alpha. Players should expect to encounter various bugs and issues tied to the class due to this.
200 Player Support
Much has changed since the early days of our technical alpha when we supported 32 players on a server and today we are happy to announce that the player cap supported is going to be increased from 150 to 200 players!
This has been made possible thanks to a large number of code optimizations implemented by our two programmers, Mike & Aleksi the past 4 or 5 months.
As an extra present for our community we’re very pleased to announce that the new 200 player slot option will cost exactly the same as what you’ve been paying for a 150 player slot server up until now - that’s 50 additional player slots for free thanks to Gportal’s willingness to work with us which we are very appreciative of.
The 200 player slot option is unlocked in the basic settings for anyone that rents a 150 slot War of Rights server at Gportal - no need to select a more expensive 200 player slot server via the slot slider when renting one.
If you wish to rent your own War of Rights Alpha server you can visit their website over at: https://www.g-portal.com/en/gameserver/war-of-rights-server-hosting
Demotion Systems
Today’s anniversary update also includes the very first implementation of the promised demotion system as well as the server-wide mute system in order to give the community a democratic means of policing non-admined servers. Below is a quick rundown of the workings of the demotion system as well as the server-wide mute system:
Downvoting
Downvoting is performed against another player on the tab screen. Here, you will find a down arrow icon located next to the player's name.
Upon pressing the down arrow icon next to a player name it will be highlighted to indicate that you have downvoted the individual. When the player has started receiving votes a tally will appear next to the down demotion arrow showing how many “effective votes” have been cast against the player.
To cast an “effective vote” you need to be on the same team as the player you downvoted. This is to ensure that a highly competitive enemy team can’t just target the best officers of the enemy team in order to remove them from command for instance. Furthermore, if the player you have cast your vote against changes team or you yourself change team your vote will be removed from the tally. Returning to the same team will make your vote an effective vote again. If you no longer wish to vote against a player, you can click the arrow again to forgive the player and revoke your vote.
Your votes are cast persistently which means that should you ever encounter that same player again in another game session your vote will be automatically applied again. For those who play across multiple devices; Steam Cloud will track your preferences.
You will not be able to see which individuals have downvoted you - only your total amount of downvotes received from the players currently on the server. This is a change in design from when the demotion system was originally previewed - there are pros and cons for both approaches but we felt this option was the better to initially test and is subject to change.
Demotion Triggered
Once you reach the vote threshold you will be demoted. The threshold is determined by a server determined fixed percentage of the server population. For example if the threshold is 15% on a 200 player server 30 votes will trigger a demotion.
Your name on the tab view will get a red “D” icon next to it, representing a demotion, alongside the total votes cast against you. This icon will also be shown under your in-game nametag (next to the speaker icon).
When you fall back below the vote threshold your demotion will be revoked and its enforced restrictions will be lifted from your player.
Demotion Restrictions
When demoted, you are restricted to the Infantry Private class. All other classes: NCO’s, Officers, Flag Bearers, Musicians and all of the artillery branch classes will not be selectable.
If you are playing as any of the aforementioned classes when a demotion is triggered you will be immediately slain and greeted by the branch selection screen.
After having spawned in as an Infantry Private you will notice red “Demoted” text in the lower right corner. This will be visible for as long as you are demoted.
Demoted players cannot pick up dropped flags. Upon trying to pick up a flag you will be shown a user interface message in the center of the screen stating that you can’t do so as a demoted player.
The infraction decay timer (for team damage inflicted by you) is also greatly increased from the normal non-demoted rate for demoted players, resulting in much less teamkill trolling being possible for you compared to non-demoted players.
Server Wide Mute Sub-system
Player mutes (initiated by pressing the little speaker icon next to player names on the tab menu) are now tallied up in much the same way as downvotes - the total amount of mutes a person has received are hidden however. Once a certain threshold has been passed a server-wide mute (both VoIP & text chat) is triggered, muting the individual for everyone for as long as said threshold of mutes received by players on the server has been surpassed.
Upon reaching this, the server wide muted player will be shown a message informing him that he has been muted server wide in both VoIP & text chat and a muted icon will be shown under his nametag in-game (the VoIP speaker icon with a red cross over it), letting everyone know why the player they try to communicate with is unable to answer them.
The normal speaker icon next to his name on the tab view will also be changed to one that stands out to indicate that the player in question has been muted server wide.
Horse Teaser (Work In Progress)
Being that this is the anniversary update, we thought it’d be an excellent occasion to share a bit about the progress of getting horses functional in War of Rights. A lot of animation work has already gone into their implementation but you will notice key features such as audio missing.
Many of the systems to be tied to horses are also not ready yet and so their deployment is not exactly imminent. Even so, we hope you’ll enjoy this short teaser.
War of Rights Anniversary Sale
As part of the anniversary of the Battle of Antietam/Sharpsburg, War of Rights is now on sale for the next 72 hours at 50% off!
If you wish to join the ranks and experience the new 200 player battles, musician classes & demotion systems please head over to our steam store page at:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/424030/War_of_Rights/
Anniversary Update (Update 175) Patch Notes
- Added Musician classes to all of the Infantry & dismounted Cavalry units of the game.
- Increased the max player cap from 150 to 200 players.
- Added the new grievance system which handles demotions and server wide mutes.
- Implemented the following battle flags:
51st New York National
4th Rhode Island National
12th South Carolina National
13th Alabama National
32nd Pennsylvania Regimental
56th Virginia National
56th Virginia Regimental
1st North Carolina Regimental
- Implemented the following regiment-specific drums:
9th New York
2nd US Regulars
10th US Regulars
- Minor tweaks to the artillery foley sounds.
- Improved the camera/head position when on the elevation screw seat of the artillery.
- Various 3D model proxy optimizations.
- Detail work on the Harpers Ferry level.
- Detail work on the Drill Camp level.
- Fixed subtitle misalignment on Hatch’s Attack, part 1.
- Fixed the old map being used on Anderson’s Counterattack, South Mountain.
- Updated the Dunker Church 3D model.
- Increased the animation speed of enter and exit “at the ready” as well as aiming resulting in a more responsive experience.
- Updated the UI in the lower right corner to specify whether you’ll return to double quick or quicktime when you stop sprinting.
- Fixed a potential crash with the ban and unban console commands when entering a SteamID incorrectly.
- Prevented developers from being banned by administrators.
- Fixed an issue where players could not be permanently banned.
- Ban time formatting has now been fixed and will display in the format 00H : 00M : 00S
- Rain and snow will now evaporate and melt respectively much faster.
- Added chat messages for when a player is unbanned or when a player not on the server has their SteamID banned.
- Steam cloud support is now enabled; saving both your keybindings and demotion preferences.
- Improved the user interface performance for the chat and tab view.
- Fixed an issue where puddles and settled snow were not visible for joining players.
- Improved the sky and lighting environment for snow sessions
- Optimized the CPU performance for non-static objects.
- Potential fix for sliding artillery.
- Fixed some cases where a player would briefly appear on their corpse.
- Added a spectator-only text chat.
That’s all for now. A big thank you to our community for offering us the support and patience in bringing the main features of this update into fruition. We look forward to be joining the ranks with you, recruits and veterans alike, as we take the next step towards fulfilling the vision that is War of Rights!