Weekly report #18

18th weekly report salutes you!

We will tell a little bit about siege weapons (to continue the report №15), show the castle evolution (to compare with the devblog №5), some animations that will be included in the pre-order bundles and in conclusion there will be a new rubric - “What’s going on the PTR”.

Let's go!

I 3D models – seige weapons

We should say that ROG doesn’t pretend to the historical accuracy. We can afford little inaccuracies as to name the all similar weapons with arrows - ballistae and small level weapons with low level correlation - catapults. Moreover, the distance, physic, damage, the amount of resources to build, weight - these parameters are pure fiction in condition of a balance search.

As was mentioned in the report №15, there will be 4 tiers (levels) of the siege weapons. Also, ballista and tower start with the level 1, but catapult, as a sort of the siege weapons, starts with the level 2.

That happens because the tiers of the siege weapons are connected with the castle tiers. The usage of a catapult against wooden castles is a controversial issue.

The main aim of catapults and trebuchets is to destroy castle buildings during the economic war and the need of reducing the grades before the siege.

Undoubtedly, the shell hit will dispose the human resources but in our view it’s too expensive.

That’s how the catapult looks like:

That’s how its skins look like. It doesn’t affect the characteristics.

The third tier turns a catapult into its older brother - trebuchet.

It is heavy, fixed, long-ranged but very vulnerable to the fire because of the immobility.

[By the way, ...]

Now let’s talk about our thoughts after the discussion of the 10th report .

The point is this: what exactly is the result of the craft of the siege weapons? And how it can be delivered to the destination place?

At the moment we incline towards the next model:

1. An armourer follows blueprint and creates a siege weapon. It requires resources (there are the warehouses near the city to lighten the transportation of wood and metal; it could be rented by a guild and the window of the warehouse would open in the craft workshop of the city); It was done for the simple reason - the weight of the resources complicates the transportation to the open world to develop the caravan system, but the weight of resources inside the peaceful area is a burden, adding the useless and stupid work without fun.
2. It can be disassembled into elements and instruction. There are 3 types of elements - small, medium, big (1st tier ballista, for example, consists of the 6 small details, 4 medium and 3 big). Elements are universal and fit to the assembling of the other ballistae of the same type. Elements could simply be moved to the warehouse where you can take it for the siege;
3. The siege weapons are assembled on the ground by an armourer too. The assembling speed depends on the type and tier of the siege weapon and also the craft level of the armourer. We won’t complicate it too much but if you want to assemble a trebuchet with an armourer of 1st level having awful tool you should start beforehand. ;) We consider possibility of assembling by a blacksmith but with the penalty.
4. After the siege you can disassemble the weapons (or during the siege)) - but you can’t disassemble it perfectly. The more damage the weapon got the less intact elements would leave.
5. But why do we need the intact elements if we don’t have an instruction anymore? That’s right, an instruction burns during assembling but you can make a copy with the NPC - librarian for talers. So it would be better if the copies would be made in advance.

So why elements instead of resources at the place of assembling?

We can’t mix two different mechanics with the same items - we limit ourselves in the balance. An example:

• we choose the weight of the raw materials and resources and balance it to find the optimal decision between boredom and caravan system;
• we choose the number of resources for the craft of the siege weapons and balance it;
• we choose the weight and the number of elements and its wear after the disassembling and balance it, regardless of the first two moments.

Otherwise, we get the statistics that nobody uses the siege weapons because its transportation to the siege place is absolutely boring and it isn’t worth to spend and hour. In that case we reduce the number or weight of element. Then 3-4 robust lads will easily teleport everything for the catapult. But if we assemble it at the place we need to reduce the number of resources (it’s economics) or reduce the weight (caravan system).

***

II 3D models - swords and daggers

A bit of models of expensive or unique weapons (next time we will show the rest and even the legendary two-handed ROG sword that we’d prepared for the intro).

III Social animations

A little more social animations that we prepared for preorder packs.

a) Black knight

Here he tricked a bit:

Here he appealed to the crowd for the support:

b) Banneret

Idle applause:

And a bit scorned greeting with sarcasm:

c) Raubritter

Farcical bow:

It’s perhaps his most emotional victory gesture:

IV Level design - castle

It took a long time to create the castles - we were choosing materials, models and also we were planning the building in terms of game design (the number of floors, entries, nooks and so on).

You can compare the result of our work with the devblog №5.

V Conclusion

In conclusion we will tell you about PTR (it’s our test server where also ROG Club can test different builds):

And again, that the build of 02/01/2019 is very difficult and there are many errors and disputes (it happens when we have huge amount of different results of teamwork).

Work on bugs in descending order (in importance and correction difficulty):

• 4 causes of server crash;
• GODMOD effect, when the hits don’t damage the characters;
• impossibility enter the game for the character again;
• disappearing of a character model;
• wrong mapping of the setting window, that leads to impossibility to use it;
• artefacts on some graphic cards and drivers in fullscreen;
• artefacts during animations with two-handed items (left hand was apart from a weapon);
• distortion of a character shadow in first-person mode;
• errors with chat work;
• the third person camera 2.0 (prohibiting the hits);

What we plan for the nearest future:

• [Animations] animation correction (including too straight backs during non-combat movements, distortion and sticking of first-person animations);
• [Models] engaging the physic of fabrics (it is removed from all new items and it causes the mixing of textures);
• [Models] error correction in the new weapons (almost all of them has the colour distortion);
• [2D] adding icons for the items (which are the screens for 3D model);
• error correction in the modular system and engaging all elements;
• correction of the non-fitment of the new equip system for weapons with the new modular system and as a result the recovering of a seamless transition;
• and the most important - preparing to add the world.

We draw the attention that the day of moving to a new site is closer and closer.

That’s all and take care at this cold days!

It’s Friday evening - ROGgons up, friends!

Yours sincerely,
Reign of Guilds Team