Hello again renowners, its Mr. Z speaking here with an update on what we've been up to lately. KZ and I have prepared a short explanation of what we've been working on lately as launch approaches. KZ has been very hard at work preparing the art side of things for launch, specifically there's been an optimization pass, an external walls rework, and stability fixes. In his words:

A big chunk of time has gone into optimizing the map. Ive been tackling texture memory usage, cleaning up LODs, utilizing static mesh instances, and making sure key points of interest are running smoother across the board.

The goal is to ensure we squeeze out every bit of performance without sacrificing visual fidelity, by using the tools the engine has provided us with.

The exterior castle walls are now fully functional and finalized. Its been a long road getting them just right. However, theyre now in and working as intended. I'm just fixing up the last touches before another patch. We have a set of High walls and Low external walls now, each with their own advantages.

The Backer content is nearly ready! All the backer statues, headstones, and skins are being implemented and polished to ensure everything looks great and is in place for launch. Thanks again to everyone who supported the project your in-game presence is coming to life.

My main focus right now is getting the client stable and polished for launch. That includes art bug fixes, performance improvements, and making sure the experience is as smooth as possible for everyone on day one.

Thats all for now back to the grind. Appreciate everyones support as we push through these final stages.

As for my section I will be discussing a few things, Namely: The engine upgrade, code improvements, New animations, Combat overhauls, Localization, customization overhaul.

As many know, I've been working very hard towards upgrading the engine version to the latest version of Unreal. Unfortunately, the engine upgrade was not successful. We ran into many new unknown issues with the way the Steam SDK works with that version of Unreal. We also had many plugin incompatibilities that caused us to lose key functionality.

Every time we made progress with the engine upgrade we were met with new issues to resolve. Ultimately the new version of Unreal had too many fatal crashes and incompatibilities and so we had to roll back to 5.3. This means we'll be missing out on some useful optimizations we were going to take advantage of but, ultimately optimizations are not useful if the game no longer functions.

This cost us a lot of time but now we're back to normal and updates will resume very shortly. Lately we've been backporting the work we had done on the newer version of Unreal and we've almost completely wrapped up recovering all that work.

During the engine upgrade I spent a lot of time improving the code base of Renown. Many pieces of code have been optimized. Specifically a lot of the subsystems that run in Survival mode have been made to run much faster on the server which should help improve server stability. There has also been a lot of code clean up that should reduce the CPU time on the client as well.

One very highly anticipated thing that's been in the works is new combat animations. During our last demo we were short on time and released some new combat animations prematurely.

Unfortunately the state of those animations worsened the combat feel quite noticeably and we humbly apologize for that. We have a new and improved set of animations on the way for 2 handed swords coming very soon. After that you can expect to see a new set for 1 handed weapons and their shielded variants.

On a similar note, there has been much work done on overhauling the combat mechanics themselves as well.

Animations and the combat systems are very tied together so they're being overhauled together. Specifically there's a new system for server side melee hit detection, this should noticeably improve parry responsiveness. The point of view of the defender will be more accurate essentially, which should lead to less missed parries that looked correct on their screen.

Many players complained during our last demo, that the movement was too sluggish, so its now been made more snappy like it was in the past. Timings for attacks and parries are being fine tuned currently, so we will be starting combat playtests again to really nail down the timings for launch very soon. Finally, the way shields are used will be getting a final pass once the animations are completed.

Last but not least, the customization system has received full overhaul. The UI most importantly, has been redone to facilitate a much better user experience. You can now customize armor that is currently equipped and be able to visualize it accurately in the preview.

There has been changes to differentiate between "skins" and "templates". Skins are essentially a raw version of a new model for an item, while templates are a skin with the additional customization saved locally for ease of use. In the future we'll make it possible to share "templates" with your friends so you can create and share matching clan outfits for example.

There was support added for Steam Item dependent skins, so all skins will no longer be unlocked by default. What this means is that the backer reward skins will be getting distributed very soon so keep an eye out for when we announce that. Of course backer rewards included weapon skins, so naturally, we now have support for weapon skins as well.

With all that out of the way, you may be wondering whats coming next for Renown. We'll begin again to do internal playtests with our backers, to try to iron out all the issues we can before launch. Specifically we need help testing; combat mechanics, building mechanics, and a quality pass on the points of interest on the main map. We'll be announcing shortly some playtimes for when we'll be doing these tests so stay tuned for that. Our immediate goal is to get the game ready for a large survival playtest before launch.

Greetings and salutations, Mr. Z here with a small update on our progress currently.


We've been super busy behind the scenes preparing the game for launch, so we apologize if things have seemed quiet lately.

The biggest thing to report is that the engine upgrade has been completed and we're now on UE5.5. This version of unreal came with a lot of optimization improvements and stability fixes that we've been needing, as well as some new features we're making use of.

Generally speaking the engine just runs a little faster, but we'll be making use of some new features that will make the character rendering a bit more performant.


Unfortunately combat had to be put on hold to do this upgrade, which is why we haven't been seeing much progress on that front recently. It took a little longer to upgrade the engine than expected but we're back on track now.

In the last demo, we had a lot of complains about performance, and the combat gameplay. These two things are actually intrinsically tied, if the performance is bad, the combat noticeably suffers.

Going forwards to launch these 2 things are the top priority. I'm going to start putting out regular patches with combat tweaks, new animations and possibly new/overhauled combat mechanics.


If you would like to help test the combat mechanics before launch now is the time to jump in and start giving feedback. As soon as we've reached a good level of combat improvements we'll be getting ready for more large scale playtests.

We give our thanks to our backers, both new and old who have helped us get this far. Early access is only just the end of the beginning for us at RDBK, we still have a big journey ahead of us.

Alpha 1.7.5

Added Brick textures on Brick external models
Added new Window that tells clients why they lost connection
Fixed upgrading buildings skipping tiers
Fixed Torch particle performance
Fixes for optimized buildings not being transmitted

Hi everyone, Mr. Z here.

I've just pushed out a fairly large patch that contains major optimizations to the biggest problems we encountered during the previous demo. The building system has had a major rewrite to enable large player bases to no longer cause so much lag on the server and the client. What this means in layman's terms is that we're quickly approaching the kind of performance targets needed for Early Access release. Tomorrow the servers will be wiping so I highly encourage people to come play this new patch so we can gather good performance data for it and find those final issues causing lag.

Going forwards we'll be working on fixing the most serious exploits, an engine upgrade, an overhaul of the combat system/animations and preparing the last few things for launch. There is even more than that happening behind the scenes so stay tuned for more updates.

Alpha 1.7.4

Fixed triangle pieces not snapping properly
Fixed Gate collisions
Fixed winterhold doors
Updated crafting cost of siege weapons

Alpha 1.7.0

Fixed Recipes causing lag on the server
Fixed broken collisions on the port model
Tickrate is back to 30
Disabled bench inventory
Optimized building snapping
Fixed issue with loading screen
Fixed default settings
Reworked building repair
Fallen founder cloak is a mail coif skin now
New Backer's Sallet
Fixed clipping issues with Plaster floors
Fixed Mail bevor
Remodeled the Gauntlets
Bucket Hat added
Reworked Building Damage so Rams and Petards are less useful against walls
New Optimized Buildings

Mr. Z here with the news! As you may have noticed, our world has been rocked by some pretty big events lately. We concluded a very large playtest a few weeks ago, we've also done a send out of Steam keys so all our backers can play the game before early access, and not to forget we've been hard at work in the background fixing many of the issues found in the playtest and working on additional new content.


One of the new pieces of content in the works is new external walls! We decided to split external walls into two categories. Low Walls and High Walls. Kz has been hard at work making the additional models.


We noticed during tests that the External walls had a lot of issues because the wooden walls would turn into a giant stone wall when upgraded. Now when you place external walls you will have to choose from the beginning whether they'll be Short or Tall and as you upgrade them they'll have the same footprint like how all other building upgrades work.


During our playtest we had 40 thousand people playing in total and we peaked at 1800 co-current users, a quite large number especially considering the playtest wasn't advertised heavily. We launched many additional servers as practice for launch day and many were booted on demand. We also had a series of very high performance servers launched by our Winterust partner. We took a lot of performance metrics on those servers as people were playing and found out that with a few more optimizations we'll be able to hit our cpu budget for launch. We've haven't had so many people playing survival with the servers running so fast and the player counts being so high before, so it was every encouraging to see the performance numbers we achieved during the playtest.


Optimization has been a huge focus before and since the playtest. We've done a lot of work on optimizing the physics of the game. The cost of simulating the world had become a lot more expensive on the server when we expanded the size of the map and added more complex POIs to the map. One very major optimization I've been working on lately is a system that essentially works as an LOD for large bases, as we were getting a lot of lag on the server and client when groups of players would roam around the map and come close to very large player bases. Although the game servers were running relatively fast, there were some really bad lag spikes that made the experience very unstable. I've been carefully identifying and fixing the cause of each lag spike so we can achieve true stability, as any amount of server instability can make the combat extremely volatile.



A large part of the work we're doing lately is in preparation for another Open Stress Test. While we can't yet say when this next Open Stress Test is scheduled, we are working diligently to get it ready as soon as possible, that being said, our goal is to reach a more much stable build than before. The last test, while fairly unstable, gave us a lot of crucial data that we needed to help us fix many issues. You can expect for our next playtest some significant optimizations to be done, additional new content and the combat system to get some much needed love.


We did a large key send out to all backers recently that had a fair few hiccups. We're still working on resolving the issues with the backend and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this has caused. As a thank you, for our communities awesome patience, Kz has created a new helmet skin for all our backers. We present the "Sorry Sallet" Helm which will be given to all backers as an extra cosmetic.



If you still have not gotten your keys, please check our the support services on our discord: https://discord.gg/Tr2DxFh
We've got a channel called "steam-key-faq" with tips for how to get a quick resend.

As always, we cannot thank our backers enough for helping us get this far. Renown would not have been possible without you and we hope to see everyone playing the game on early access launch.

Hello everyone!

Were thrilled to announce the long-awaited news youve all been patiently waiting for, along with a short developer update discussing some of the changes!

The Open Demo Playtest will be going live this Friday, March 21, 2025 4:00 PM PST

We are excited to announce our partnership with BisectHosting!
Announcement
BH has been an integral part of the development process for many years now, providing us with servers for everyone to play on and as such we will be working with them on Renowns launch to bring servers online across the entire world so everyone can experience Renown with great ping!

We have always been heavily in support of community run servers, allowing our players to alter the game to their liking and their communities. If you are interested in setting up a server of your own when Renown launches we have added a #Server-Hosting Channel with links to their website.
Renown Server Hosting
We also had a great interview with their team which you can check out here Huge thanks to BH for everything they have done for us and continue to do!

We have also had a great roadmap graphic whipped up that outlines some of the planned features and content updates as Renown hits early access (Stage 0) . We hope to have some of stage 0s tasks ticked off before EA release.

Material fixes
Fixed an issue where the inventory wouldn't close
Added gameplay settings debug back into the menu
Sallet material fix
Fixed placement of small external walls
Buffed tool damage
Increased cost of bricks
Crafting sorts by highest tier first
Fixed being able to demolish merchants and loot
Reduced backwards movement slightly
Fixed animal collisions
Algara map improvements
Added more NPC camps
Bow and fist animation fixes
Crafting menu uses R to open now
Added crafting skin preset support to crafting menu
Chat bubble never shows for yourself now
Added buy and sell sounds for vendors
Disabled support pieces
Fixed ladder detectection
Research menu fixes
Fixed map markers not working
Added Map cameras to all the maps
Removed Polearms from loot tables
You can toggle chat messages off from players now
Added the ability to send direct messages /dm ID or name
Added the ability for admins to remotely dm players
Admins can global mute players now
Changed player markers for party members to a blue marker
Sleepers in the Winterhold castle should be killed correctly now
Added map icons
Added more props to some of the POIs
Tutorial bug fixes
Fixed up Encyclopedia
Upgrading buildings now checks if a player will be overlapping (no more getting stuck in external walls)
One hander animation fixes
Fixed issues with maintenance costs
Fixed issue with Fist combos

Alpha 1.5.2

Added new crossbow reload anim
Fixed gambeson weighing
Server session fixes
New Greataxe out of combat animations
AI can update teams
Updated lighting on all maps
Fixed issues with Party markers
Tutorial only shows up in survival mode now
Fixed issues with dropped item replication
Fixed external wall placement
Added Party leader support
Improved Party UI
Fist running animation fix
Added new longsword bash anim
Updated Main Menu
Fixed skin colors being bugged
Added Global smelting multiplier
Added Gathering multipliers for Raid mode
Fixed Chase mechanic
Fixed banner not being detected in raid mode unless it was loaded from a save
Raid mode players always spawn with clothes now
Fixed doors not autoclosing in Raid mode during sieges
Scoreboard has a team color indicator
Updated animal roaming behavior
Added a Gathering phase barrier to RRaid-Small_p
Added better attenuation to all animals
Max ping shows in server details now
Fixed issues with Inventory changes not registering for UI events
Increased crafting cost of arrows
Fixed Camera perspective not working
Fixed Bench inventory size
Removed armor template menu
Bandit Raid Loadout tweaked
Fixed issues with locks in Raid mode
Fixed up Last Team Standing not working
Reduced movement acceleration
Added Item Blacklists for Starting Loadouts in Arcade gamemodes
Added a setting for auto placing locks if they are in your inventory
New Crafting Menu
Lowered Banner Render range
Fixed Building menu not updating resource count
Fixed Hauberk Weighing
Polished up Emote animations
Fixed Melee system not working for NPCs
Polished up Peaceful mode animation
Added Loot Balloons
Bear overhaul
Parties now work in all gamemodes
Ally markers disappear on death now
Muted players can't invite you to a party now
Fixed Scoreboard menu archor not working
New Scoreboard UI
There is an notification when you drop an item on the ground now
Added Building limit to Banners
Petards can now misfire
Petards can no longer be stacked in the same spot quickly
Projectiles affect buildings properly with ownership checks
Added a Windows Icon to the game
Better server reboot handling when EOS fails
Fixed Settings UI scaling on different resolutions
Updated Drop Equipped Weapon Input
Updated Emote Menu
Animals can be parried now
Trees now respawn and are persistent when they are chopped down
Added server RCON support
Fixed issues with weapon swapping
Fixed not being able to spawn in Survival
Updated Credits menu
Algara Isle graphical touchups
New Animation system for Combat
Fixed Inventory UI scaling issues
Archery Aiming total rework
Optimized Items on the ground and projectiles
Fixed Crafting multiplier not working on queued stacks of crafts

Mr. Z here, today well be going over some quick updates on where weve been lately.

As stated before were all coming back from the new year's vacations so work has been slow as of late.
Now were mostly back in gear and the updates have begun again with Patch 1.4.8 having been released a few days ago.


During the break I opted to get some work done on Raid mode and get it up to par, Ive always enjoyed playing it and wanted to make some much needed improvements to it. Now we have a map that has 4 teams. Progression is substantially faster with good loot scattered around the center of the map.

You can leave gold coins in your teams banner and buy loadouts from the banner directly. There's a few other new features, but all in all, Raid mode has never been more fast paced to play so were restarting our weekly Raid mode playtests in each region. Raid mode is a really fun way to experience the gameplay loop quickly so I encourage people to join our playtests on the weekend.


Another thing weve been up to lately is replacing all the animations in the game with new motion captured animations. It's been a slow process but the difference in quality speaks for itself. Lots of locomotion animations have been implemented already.

Soon, the swing animations for the combat will be getting revamped. Anyone who thought of holding off on practicing the combat system should get ready to get practice soon as the final animations get implemented over the coming months.


Ultimately, our goal with Renown is to reach a stable EA release in June this year. One of the best ways weve been able to improve the games stability is by holding large public demos of the game and getting as many people playing as possible.

To that end our highest priority goal currently is preparing the game for an open beta. The main things holding us back are some server performance issues that make playing the game with a very high player count extremely unstable.
Specifically, we have some issues with the building system that require a rewrite, also we need to upgrade the engine to UE5.5 for some needed optimizations.

Well be keeping people posted on when the open beta is coming, so make sure to subscribe to our announcements channel in our official discord and our steam page. It's likely well do stress tests as well to see how the new optimizations hold up, so if youre a backer stay tuned for those as well.


On behalf of RDBK I wish everyone a happy new year and hope to see you all playing the game later this year on launch day.

This is a fairly short update to let you know were still working hard, and a little of what weve been up to.

Well also go over our current plans for re-opening for a public demo in the near future.

What has the team been up to?
Currently were taking the time to address core issues which wed have been unable to tend to, without the support from the crowdfund.

One major area is the Animation Overhaul.

KZ and Delta have been working hard on the locomotion sets which is what you physically see as characters walk, run and turn.

For the last couple of months this has effectively been going full time. The attached Gifs directly show this work.

Mr.Z needed to travel for a few weeks but used personal funds to purchase a laptop so he could keep support going for the project while away.

Given hes back, the team is currently starting on Combat Animations.

Mr. Z has also been hard at work doing fixes and various other optimisations, leading us back to another Open Demo.

A lot of other work going on, has been distinctly less sexy but is none the less very important.
Without getting into too much boring detail;

Anti-cheat Systems will greatly help with cheaters and toxic players.
All players will have access to VOIP due to the removal of the Xsolla Launcher.
Bugs with Epic Online Services and servers disappearing are under investigation.
Improvements to the Tech Tree and other key UI work.
Required work for eventual backer skins distribution and implementation.

Weve been able to bring Moxie back on the team for Programming support thanks to the Crowdfund.

Hes been working on the Steam Skin Integration, and currently is fixing up the new player tutorial.

Whats going on regarding another open demo?
Were just getting back to a place, that another Open Demo is about due to really stress test out the recent changes.

Firstly, we would like to apologize for any testers put off by the lower population on servers and lack of organized events.

As mentioned, the crowdfund has allowed us to address some really important areas.

However, its hard to drive a car, when the engine is in pieces on the shop floor.

If were able to stress test a lot of the changes and fixes, it provides the exact data we need to keep improving the base experience in the game.

It should be noted were not expecting all these new changes to work perfectly.
Veteran players will know to expect issues, but for our newer backers, please dont be worried if the demo is a bit wild.

If things go badly, it provides us invaluable information.

If things go well, then were another step closer to Early Access.

Either way, it should hopefully be a fun time and expect to see a boom in populated servers while the events ongoing.

There's still a couple more things we want to change and optimize, but well be putting out news regarding said Open Demo over the coming weeks.

On behalf of the entire Renown team, Id like to say another huge thank you for another year of amazing support and encouragement for this project.
We truly couldnt do it without you, and were really excited about what Renown could become this year.

As always, till next time.

Alpha 1.3.3

Server Optimizations
Fixed an issue with servers window not refreshing properly
Toggling autoclose off clears the auto behavior now
Added Terracing map features to Algara Isle
Added new Rivers to Algara Isle
Improved the Chat bubble
Fixed some issues with animations
Raid mode gatherphase 15 mins -> 20 and is server configureable
Added more Iron to raid map
Added breakable Pots and Baskets
Fixed some AI pathing issues
Fixed Chatbox turning on when the message isn't supposed to be seen
Added Signages on the roads pointing to Settlements
Added New Research Window
Added New Item description window
Added New Recipe window
Added new NPCs
New Reclaimer Forge Model
New MOTD menu
Fixed Building menu not showing construction resources
Fixed Archer loadouts not spawning with arrows
Fixed peaceful mode canceling out when using attacks that aren't bound to LMB
Fixed Siege Timer indicator

Alpha 1.3.2

Reworked Tech Tree
Fixed an issue with resource nodes not spawning
Added the building optimizer
Fixed audio occlusion issues
Algara Isle updates
Fixed inventory showing in research menu
Fixed reclaimer forge not being placeable
You can split stacks by holding shift and left clicking now
Fixed an issue where team selection wasn't loading properly in team modes
Fixed some building placement issues
Raid mode improvements
Added more starting resources
Added gold ingots in banners to move them once easily
Added starting components
Players in raid mode can now spawn on unclaimed team owned beds that aren't on spawn cooldown
Added tier indicator to workbench indicators
Chat requires a player to validate first
Fixed campfires being required for some recipes
Added additional logging for admins
Technical debt clean up
You can assign marker colors for players/friends in the settings menu now
Added last used code button to code locks
Added a chat bubble to players who are typing, and a talking animation
Added a heart beat sound effect when low on hp
Fixed server travel breaking servers
Fixed melee attacks not cancelling peaceful mode

Alpha 1.3.1

Fixed AI melee attack hit detection
Fixed last bandage not being applied
Fixed fire arrows being pickup able
Fixed issues with arrows bouncing off surfaces
Unowned buildings show their hp bar now
Reduced Zweihander size slightly
Fixed issue with vanity mode allowing players to switch to melee mode
Fixed stamina costing twice for ground hits
Tweaked resource rates from nodes
Reduced champion loot
Fixed npcs switching weapons when staggered
Players can no longer repair items while in combat
Lots of landscape fixes
Fixed new river areas not slowing down players
New POIs have been polished up
Added a Reverb effect for being indoors
New sound effects
Fixed an issue with sound looping when moving vehicles
Spear was buffed
New Tech Tree
New Ocean mesh
Fixed issues with the chat box not going away
Admin fixes
Added r.HZBOcclusion toggle to video menu
Triangle Half wall meshes added
Fixed a duping bug
Fixed building destruction not being synced sometimes
Improved player reporting functionality

Mr. Z here!

Last Dev blog I said I was going to discuss some of Renowns game design and that's what well be doing today.

During the demo we had our largest number of players yet, over 1000 at one point even. This meant we got to stress out the game servers extra hard and we got a lot of performance data out of it. It also meant we got to see what high pop gameplay looks like.

One of the things I noticed during the demo is a lot of players were not crafting their own gear, but finding it from looting. Going forwards well be adding more ways to acquire tier 2 gear from looting to support this more active playstyle. Weve added many new POIs to the map so there will be way more ways to acquire better gear without having to craft it. Of course tier 3 gear will always need to be crafted, and looted gear wont be a replacement for crafting.


Another thing that happened is groups were rushing through the tech tree way too quickly. We are in the process of finishing up a new tech tree that allows players greater choice as to which weapons to unlock while also making it more difficult to rush the research. Also to note, all our servers were running at x2 resource gold coin gain which made it super easy to tech up. We will also be adjusting costs accordingly so that rushing plate armor and t3 weapons isnt super trivial and also be running our playtests at x1 gold rates going forwards.

There was definitely an overabundance of resources during the demo, this was by design to onboard new players more easily. For the next demos well be running the game the way it was meant to be played with x1 rates. There are also now less resources in general spawning in the map to encourage players to roam around more instead of staying near their homes. Gold and Silver were especially too common and have been made rarer. Animal Hunting grounds should also become more contested now.


Raiding bases was a little too easy in the demo, due to the abundance of resources. Weve made the Sappers axe a little harder to unlock and silver much rarer so people dont get raided so easily so early. That being said, Ive added an even earlier raiding tool, fire arrows .They can be used on plaster and wood doors. Fire arrows do not cost silver, so they can be used to cheaply raid any really underdeveloped bases quickly. Petards will be getting many changes so players arent able to use them so quickly to explode their way through a base. Another issue with petards is the placement range, its way too far so the attackers do not place themselves in nearly enough danger when blowing through a base, this will be addressed soon with a big rework.


As far as Gear disparity goes, having better weapons is much more beneficial than good armor, so costs will have to be adjusted to account for this. Plate armor is also not quite good enough I feel and would benefit from being stronger but also more expensive so it really fits into the elite armor role. Additionally, the damage resistance calculation isnt quite giving the results I want and will be tweaked to make higher tiers more useful, especially against lower tier weapons. We dont want to see sticks being used to beat plate armored players to death so easily.

Were now in full production towards preparing Renown for Early Access release, some things that will be coming is an animation rework of many of the attack animations, shield gameplay rework, UI polishing, server + client optimization, and additional map improvements.

In the next Dev blog Ill be discussing some of the UI improvements that have been in the works lately.

Hello everyone!

As always I need to say a massive thank you to our amazing backers. The recent Kickstarter campaign is just the thing we needed to keep us in the game.

This dev blog is more of a general update to let you know our broad plans for Renown in the next few months. Well also be going over wrapping up the Kickstarter campaign.

Whats the plan for Renown going forward?

With a combination of the Kickstarter funding, the ongoing feedback from our backers and the recent demos, we feel were in a very good place to move forward.

The next steps for Renown are not very sexy, but theyre super important.

Weve identified these as the primary areas that need improvement:

Improvements to server infrastructure to reduce crashing. - Server browser needs to be more consistent and streamlined

Anti Cheat Implementation and improvements to Admin Tools

Building optimization and Fixes Allow for more player buildings and fix building exploits (Floating bases, double walling etc)

Key UI changes primarily focused on the Tech Tree

Ongoing Bug Fixing

Combat Animation Overhaul

Effectively, if we can help alleviate the exploits and cheating, improve the overall server stability and building optimisation, the game will be in a very playable state.

Alongside this were working on some key UI changes. The major example being an overhaul of the Tech Tree to make it much more usable.

Another major area we want to address is Combat Animation. Almost all the animations specifically relating to combat are still place-holders from our earliest version of Renown.

The issue we ran into with the Mocap animation, is that Mr. Z is still needed for the extremely high level implementation of the attacks.

Due to the high precision nature of melee games, a key amount of design programming is required. Mr. Z will no doubt have a more high level explanation of this process in the future for you.
Weve also begun work on the stretch goal inclusions from the Kickstarter.
The first area weve started on is the Sound Overhaul given how important hearing is in a survival setting. Well have more from our expert MattGibsonMusic in the next update.
Thank you to everyone whos taken the time to report bugs. Weve got a very detailed log to work through. This will be an ongoing process as more pop up, and other ones get squashed.

The End of our Kickstarter Campaign Thank you so much to all Backers!

Another bit of news to announce is that well be ending our Fundraising efforts for the time being.

Steam has a limit of 5,000 Default Release Steam Keys.

These are the full game steam keys well be sending out as part of the crowdfunding perks when we hit Early Access.

Currently were standing at just under 4,500 backers so were effectively forced to end the campaign.

For this reason, (and because it just seems unethical) we didnt want to announce early and create a sense of FOMO or some other bad sales tactic.

Steam is very strict with Key rules. Weve been trying for a month to get more Testing Keys but they won't budge, so we dont want to risk going over the Release Key limit.
This means if youve already backed, youre right as rain for continued testing all the way till we get the game onto steam Early Access.

If youve missed out, dont fear, well still be doing Steam Demos in the future to help stress test the game. We cant make any promises right now when the next one of these will be that said.

Again, a massive thank you from our entire team for anyone whos helped support our work, either in the past or the recent Kickstarter.

We are super excited for the future of Renown, and it thanks to you folks we can keep working at it.

Stay tuned in the next couple of weeks for another update from our team relating to our progress and future plans.

Till next time.

Hello Everyone

As always, a huge thank you to our amazing backers and supporters. The Kickstarter being a success is a huge win for the future of Renown. A big shout out to our moderators here on discord for their awesome help likewise.

So weve got a bit of a more wordy update for you. Given it's been a little bit, we figured it best to go into detail about what the team has been up to.

Kickstarter Send out waves Xsolla store, and the future of our Crowdfund.

The first thing I wanted to clear up is how were currently handling Testing Key send outs for our Kickstarter and our PlayRenown store.

Due to how Kickstarter works, we need to manually send out the keys. This means that we take the data, extract anyone already sent a key, format that and send it off to Xsolla to distribute.
Learning from our previous Indiegogo, there isnt really a way to directly automate this process from Kickstarter/Indiegogo. This also means were required to send Kickstarter keys in waves due to the volume of support were receiving. Currently Kickstarter waves are sent Wednesday at 9:00 AM CEST - 12:00 AM PDT - 6:00 PM AEDT.

The alternative we came up with is to use https://playrenown.com/ if youd like to support our work. It has a much more limited range of tiers but has many more payment options including PayPal and others, alongside the keys being sent automatically on Backing.

As was promised to our original backers, the legacy skins will be unavailable for purchase and thus exclusive at the end of the month. We really appreciate the community's understanding in letting us bring those back for a short run. It directly helped with the success of this Kickstarter, and thus the future of our work.

Well likely do a fairly full swap over to the Xsolla storefront in the near future as well, so all backers are directly getting keys sent instead of waiting for a week.

Mental Health Break/Working Holiday

One thing I just wanted to raise with the community so anyone new doesnt think were lazy buggers slacking off, is that were completely exhausted after this campaign. Preparation started in March, and weve been going full tilt since then.

Chatting about it as a team last week, the solution is a quick Mental Health Break/Working Holiday. Basically for the next two weeks, our work might be a bit slower and more random/fun (Mental Health part) but well still be around doing tickets, chatting with the community and generally keeping on (Working Holiday part).

The downside of this, and the reason I bring it up, is things might be a bit slower for the next two weeks. We really appreciate the understanding of this community, and a quick rest will do wonders for future progress.

Onto some much more relevant updates, Mr. Z has been kind enough to do a big explanation of his recent work;

Update from Mr. Z

Mr. Z speaking here, today Ill be going over some of the more technical aspects of our recent demo and how things have held up (or not!).
This current demo did surprise me quite a bit in how well it held up under stress. We had the help of modern server hardware on some of our servers and some very clutch optimizations.
We were able to achieve a player count of about 70-80 with stability for a much longer period of time than before. We even had working voice chat this time, the last demo the voice chat was causing massive server instability and had to be disabled.

Of course it wasnt all good news, after about twenty thousand buildings were placed on the map, we started running into fairly serious performance issues. Fixing this is going to be the focus going forwards in the optimization department and once it's done I believe we can have a stable full week wipe with at least 64 player servers.

We may also need to enforce more sensible building limits as people built so large this time around that one extremely large clan base was costing up to 11% of the building performance on the server.
Due to the popularity of this demo we ran into another issue, Cheaters and griefers Going forwards a lot of work is going to be done with Anti Cheat and Moderation measures. There's a lot of things cheaters can mess with currently and while not totally devastating, the fact there was no anti-cheat at all in the demo meant they could do it with impunity.

Were glad to see the game got so much activity that this has finally become a high priority issue to deal with. Despite being a bad thing to have cheaters, it's a very good sign that were making good progress towards getting the game ready for early access.
Another thing that went quite well for us in this demo is the map expansion that KZ worked on, which gave players enough space to build out their bases this time. More of the map is spread out, perhaps too much right now for our current supported player counts, but once the game is stable at 100 players it should be an ideal size.

The additional POIs on the map added way more variety to the gameplay experience. It also made it so that smaller groups and solos could stick to the borders of the map and be relatively unmolested by larger clans who prefer to stick near the center, which has the higher concentration of loot and PvP encounters. One very hopeful thing to note is that the map expansion didnt actually reduce performance by a perceptible amount, yet the map size is significantly bigger now.

In the next dev blog Ill be discussing some game design (rather than technical) focused topics about how the demo went and what well be making significant changes to. There's a lot to talk about between the combat and survival mechanics so it may need to be a two parter dev blog for next time


KZs Progress Update

Kz has also been hard at work doing some majorly large arts tasks. So far hes:
Designing and optimizing more Interesting/bigger points of interest also planned to make current Point of interest more interesting alongside more interesting Npcs to go with
Heres a list of what he has planned:
* Not currently on the map
Winterhold
Winterhold Village
Safezone
Fishing town
Stronghold
Coastal Keep
Northwest Village
Bandit camp
*Trader camp
*Rus camp
*Mongol Camp
*Viking Village
*Port Village
*Port Centre
*Port docks
*Port Keep
Island Castle
*Farm
Tavern
*Sewers
*Mine caves with crumbled entrances

Npcs planned:
Winterhold peasants
Winterhold guards/archers
Winterhold swordsmen
Winterhold Knights
Winterhold lord
Dewsbury Guards
Dewsbury Merchants
Yarlford Fishermen
Elkmire Soldiers
Calchester Knights
Calchester lord
Caershire Villagers
Thirsty Swan barkeep
Thirsty Swan Drunkard
Selasund Peasants
Selasund Vikings
Dannamore Nobles
Dannamore Cooks
Dannamore Knights
Dannamore Lord
Brimdurn Peasants
Brimdurn Monks
Brimdurn Champion
Brimdurn Guards
Brimdurn Knights
Brimdurn Lord
Brimdurn Sailors
Woodland bandits
Woodland Travellers
Steppe Travellers
Travelling merchants
Street Riff Raff

He has also been working on cleaning up the armour system and killing as many Clipping issues as possible.
so far he has fixed:
broken chainmail texture on Jupon
Jupon under leathervest
Jupon over Pauldrons
Jupon over breastplate
Jupon under certain breastplate
all coifs sit correctly over armour now
fixed Peasant vest under jupon
fixed Coif clipping issues
fixed emblems not working on jupons
Fixed emblems not working on tabards
Fixed hosen clipping through boots
fixed character skin clipping on some characters skins
fixed archer helmet clipping with arming cap
fixed gambeson clipping with breastplate
fixed Womens hosen clipping with shirt
Fixed monk outfit bulging out
fixed mail hauberk clipping through leather vest
fixed overthrow rigging issue
fixed gambeson broken under peasant vest
fixed tunic clipping through leather gauntlets skin
fixed broken tunic under peasants vest
fixed broken womens tunic
Fixed peasant shirt clipping through leather vest


Once we have polished most of the clipping issues off he will look into getting all the backer skins up to scratch and ready for EA
We will show these off in game via sneak peaks. He also has plans for optimization work making sure nothing is detrimental to fps.
Of course, theres also implementing all the points of interest and increasing map polish.

Again thank you so much for the awesome support folks. Well be putting out another dev blog in a couple of weeks with our overarching plan for the coming months.

As always a huge thank you to all our amazing backers, both in the past and from our Kickstarter.

Ive got some quick-fire updates for everyone so lets dive in!

The One for All Renown Demo Starting June 27:
So, were firstly very excited to announce the return of Renowns Alpha Demo as promised to the community.

Its only been a couple of weeks so dont expect big changes. However Mr.Z has been working hard at fixing what he can, trying to improve stability and optimisation.

For the duration of the Demo, full testing access will be open on steam if you know folks who are keen to try Renown but havent backed or played yet.
We should hopefully be posting launch and wipe times for each region soon.

Our Community Manager Volker has also been kind enough to whip up a Server Region Survey.
This survey will directly help inform us of which servers were missing, need more of, or are solid. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc-rFISah0j7lTWrvLMh6j_H7TdkJ4FmhFoWY6pOJI7bWYWCA/viewform


Kickstarter Credit Notice:
One thing Kickstarter suggests we remind the community.

If youve pledged on Kickstarter, payments are sent to your card/bank during the first week after the 27th.

The recommendation is calling your bank if youre worried about the payment. Otherwise, if you have any issues, they should email you, letting you know.

Testing Key and Title Distribution:
Likewise, well be starting our Title and Key Distribution after the 27th. We do need to beg for some patience from the community as were doing so.

Testing keys will be sent out via Email during the Demo so all backers will still have access to the game at this time. Due to the steam testing key policy, were forced to use Xsolla testing keys for a while longer.

I want to reassure all backers that Early Access and the Full game will be on Steam. Xsolla is only our stop gap measure to ensure all Backers have testing access to the game.

Discord Titles will be available via the Get-Backer-Roles bot channel. Well put out another update with specifics on how to use this Bot to get your titles after the 27th.

Xsolla Store Alternative backing methods PayPal, Google pay and other:

Well also be bringing back our Play Renown Storefront for backers who are outside the Kickstarter backing regions, or for those without credit card access.

This store will have the exact same pricing (excluding currency conversion) as the Kickstarter, and purely functions as an alternative for those who arent able to use Kickstarter.

This site should be coming back online sometime soon after the 27th.

Also please see attached for some awesome photos coming out from KZ's new work on Lighting Systems. These are still in testing and should hopefully be coming to a patch soon.

We very much hope folks will enjoy The One for All Renown Demo. Thank you again for the amazing support of our work.


Till next time.

Hello everyone!

As always, a huge thank you to our amazing backers and supporters. A big shout out to our mods here on discord likewise.

Weve got some big news regarding the next couple of weeks.

Return to the OTK Expo 2024:
Firstly, and in no particular order, weve been invited back to exhibit at the OTK Expo 2024. In this case were not running in the competition (given that would be a bit unfair given we won in the past), but well be doing an interview update segment during the Expo Stream.
If you'd like to see an early pre-view of just our segment:

Well be linking the Expo Stream, when it goes live. This will be running on the 4th of June.

Steam Open World Survival Crafting Fest (27th May to 3rd June PST)
Were also very excited to be taking part in the Steam Open World Survival Crafting Fest between the dates of the 27th of May and 3rd of June, on the Steam Platform.

That means between these dates well be running a free open demo of the current survival alpha. If youve got friends looking to try Renown out, or to just better understand the state of the game, this is a great way to try it out.

These events have also always provided us with huge amounts of both game data, and player feedback.

Extended Survival Map Ready Algara
Another area were hyped about is our new extended survival map Algara.

You can find a lot more details about this map in our previous dev blog. Without overly going over the same, its roughly 60% larger than our previous survival map, and has an emphasis on increased building space for player bases. In the future itll also act as our test bed for the new PGC biomes weve created but are causing trouble when all combined onto our 4x4km map.

The map is currently playable for backers.

Renown: The Final Crowdfund
The last area of anxiety and excitement for our team has been preparation for a final Crowdfund during this event. As you know, were extremely grateful to the community here and our backers whove made our work possible this far.

However, were still only a small team of dedicated folks going for just over 4 years now.

Weve been doing a lot of meetings with Publishers and Venture Capital.

The problem with this is at best we lose creative freedom, and in the worst cases (looking at the paperwork), they take control over the entire community, project, marketing and even when/where we can launch.

Kz has been working hard on a whole new set of cosmetics, and well be providing new titles and packages. Well of course be offering testing and full game access as before at the lowest same price as on our store page.

Please see as follows for a pre-launch link to the new campaign: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/playrenown/renown
Itll be going live with the Steam Open World Survival Crafting Fest.

One thing we really didnt want, was to create a sense of pressure or FOMO on our old crowdfund by announcing this one early. Well be closing the old Indiegogo in the next few hours, and well be temporarily taking down our Xsolla Play.Renown when the fund goes live.

This will likely see a return in the future, however with the updated packages.

As always, should this campaign fail, weve got plans for redundancy and fall back. We are dedicated to getting Renown out on steam, no matter what.

Again thank you to our amazing testers and backers. We truly couldnt have gotten this far without you, and were super keen to keep going.

Till next time.

Welcome Renowners, Mr. Z here with some exciting news about a new map and changes to our backend.

One of the biggest complaints weve had in our Survival playtests has been the lack of space to build bases on the map, given the map was originally designed for a 4 Team Raid mode, this is quite understandable. Fear not because weve addressed these issues by completely revamping the map. The newly named map: Algara Isle, now has the shape of an island with water on all sides, and the former map boundary cliffs have been removed.



The overall size of the map is roughly 60% bigger, but that doesnt tell the whole story. Originally, the Winterhold castle area took up a pretty large proportion of the map, with the area being unavailable for player bases. Most of the new areas with this map extension have added quite a bit more building space for players. Weve also added brand new POIs to the map to give players more locations to fight over and to spread the loot a bit more, as it was too concentrated in the Winterhold area, which let high performing groups of players dominate most of the loot too easily.


Here KZ wrote us some details on what the goals of the new map expansion are:

Main Goals of the Map Expansion:
Increased Space for Building: The primary objective was to provide players with more room to construct without feeling crowded.

Enhanced Player Interaction: Despite the expanded area, maintaining player encounters was crucial to fostering community and interaction.

Abundance of Points of Interest (POIs): To prevent the expansion from feeling like a mere walking simulator, numerous POIs were scattered throughout, offering exploration and activities.

Balanced Development Opportunities: Ensuring that building in the outer regions remained worthwhile was a key consideration.

Integration of Features and Optimization:
Gradual Introduction of Biomes: The expansion serves as a platform for introducing and refining biome mechanics, allowing players to experience varied environments.
Incremental Feature Testing: Features from the larger map are being methodically integrated and tested in the expansion, optimizing functionality and player experience over time.
Continuous Improvement: The expansion provides an opportunity to address existing issues in the larger map, refining gameplay and performance iteratively.


Theres a couple of questions many of you must be thinking, why did we expand the old map and what's going on with the upcoming survival map? As many know, navigating the waters of game development is a very volatile experience, and often requires changing course quickly. Weve made a slight course correction as we were expecting to be able to release a new map around this time, but unfortunately we ran into a lot of obstacles along the way. The biggest of which was performance issues that we havent been able to resolve yet. When making the new map we decided to use a new system for placing foliage in Unreal 5 called PCGs. It produces some pretty impressive and organic looking results but unfortunately it has nuked our performance to well below our intended targets.


Given the time crunch were currently under (we only have 4 developers), we decided to revamp the old existing map to alleviate most of the issues players had with it as it was pretty playable already. Thankfully, the expansion of the old map seems to have had no effect on performance. There were also other performance issues with the full survival map, and we havent had enough playtesting on it to balance out all the Loot and POIs. A map extension to our old map seemed like the obvious thing to do and it seems to have paid off as well be getting it released in a major patch shortly.


So whats the plan with the full survival map? Our focus right now is shifted at the Steam Open World Survival Crafting Fest at the end of March. Thats right, were doing another demo and this time for a Festival, were going to have a lot of players during the festival so this is the perfect time to gather up the gang for a new wipe. After that demo ends were going to redirect and redouble our efforts back into the full survival map. Were very excited to get it playable since the maps large size is also going to necessitate the introduction of rideable Horses to the game, which have been expected for a long time.


We have some other good news relating to the backend of the game.

Were now using Epic Online Services (EOS). EOS gives us 2 new features weve been badly needing, a good anti-cheat service and VOIP. To be perfectly clear, the game is still coming to Steam without question, EOS is compatible with Steam and lots of games on Steam are using it lately.

Anti-cheat has long been on our minds, despite the game still being in Alpha weve already attracted the attention of hackers. Nobody likes hackers, weve all played many games that have been ruined by their presence, so were taking a proactive approach early to deal with them.

One key feature that was missing in our last playtest was Voice chat. Its a very integral feature of PvP open world survival games and its absence was felt pretty strongly. We were relying on a duct tape solution for voice chat that was sending the voice data through the same game server that players were on, but unfortunately that has massive performance issues and simply doesnt scale to the player counts were expecting. Were now using Epic Online Services Voice, which shifts the performance costs of Voice chat to the Epic Backend instead of our game servers. We cant wait to see what silly antics players will get into now that Voice chat works again.

Well have another dev blog soon with a big announcement, follow our announcements channel on our official Discord and Renown on Steam to stay appraised.

Alpha 1.1.7

Fixed recipes missing Axeheads
Fixed networking issues that caused lag
Optimized animals path finding
Fixed issue with Barrel shield
Fixed a bug with the Bed respawn timer
Fixed not being able to click the spawn buttons while being raided
Fixed not being able to spawn in while the game is saving
Final save warning is 10 minutes now
Rewrote NPC spawning logic
Fixed many NPC spawns
Throwing weapons cost stamina now
Fixed Petard sound attenuation
Fixed an issue where the inventory would disappear randomly
Fixed not being able to move Banners
Fixed Alt Overhead Morph to Slash anim with Greataxes
Fixed an issue where all Furnaces would stop smelting
Fixed Petard Damage detection and added a more reliable splash radius against players
You can now input queue an arrow after firing
Fixed an infinite arrow bug

Alpha 1.1.6

Fixed Scoreboard scaling
Fixed Servers Display
Fixed Server crash issue
Fixed issue with Saving
Fixed issues with Party system
Added Save Snapshots
Improved Player Banning admin tool
Changed silver smelt from 20 ore to 10 ore
Fixed Poleaxe recipe
Fixed Banners not taking damage
Fixed issue with maintenance cost naming
Reduced cost of components from merchants
Fixed issue with pitch on some weapons
Fixed admin messages not appearing in chat filter

Alpha 1.1.5

Added Pole to Research tree
Lowered costs of components
Fixed Audio issue with Furnaces
Fixed Home page
Fixed a duping bug
Fixed an issue with stagger
Fixed anim blending on legs
Fixed Merchants being naked
Tweaked the Loading screen
Added a new Quit prompt
Updated animations
Added the Encyclopedia, which contains a Survival tutorial in it
Fixed Petard research
Fixed Crossbow draining stamina when loaded

As always, a huge shout and thank you to our amazing backers and supporters.

The team has been cracking away at the project since our last update. Well have a larger more dev focused blog coming soon, but this one relates to some exciting events and changes coming in the next couple weeks.

Firstly, were very excited to announce well be running an Open Demo Stress test on steam between 23/03/2024 to 30/03/2024 . This will likely be our last time publicly demoing our older survival map.

Were specifically looking at testing how the UE5 changes have affected a large, populated server.

For the event well have one large pop survival server per region, with multiple survival smaller servers for stable gameplay. Likewise, well of course have Duels, FFA, TDM and LTS servers as always.

One fan Favourite game mode, Mr.Z has been working hard to bring back is Raid Mode.

For folks who never got to play this game type, it's effectively a slimmed down and sped up version of the survival game.

Players start on 2 teams and small premade bases and resources. After a short window of safety, players go straight to raiding without all the grind related to a full survival wipe.

We hope this game mode will not only be a good thing for the Demo, but hopefully a way to get you folks as our backers having fun again week to week.

Well be putting out another Dev blog soon detailing all the work going into the new survival map, but were hoping this is a bit of fun till were able to get that map testing.

One other area we wanted to bring up for full transparency, is that well be doing a small reduction in our pricing.

Firstly, well be taking $10 USD off the price of the Loyal Supporter pack. Wed planned on doing this in Beta but given the ongoing cost-of-living crises around the world, it seemed better to move now.

The other thing well be doing is implementing regionalised pricing. If you use a currency other than USD, it should mean reduced conversion fees and the like.

Given all our support has come from you folks, we didnt want it to seem like were pulling a sneaky on the price. Likewise, as gamers we hate that feeling of buying a game, then the price goes down the next day.

Well be implementing these changes at the same time as our Stress Test, if any potential backers wanted to hold off till then, to save a little bit.

Again, folks thank you so much for the amazing support, Bug hunting, feedback and just encouragement you give us. If youve got anyone whos interested in checking our Renown, please let them know about the Stress test.
The more we can get, the merrier.

Likewise well be having running updates going here on discord, so dont forget to invite folks https://discord.gg/Tr2DxFh


And don't forget to follow the event here on discord! https://discord.gg/renown-687527527245414508?event=1220206353151299614

Till next time.

1.1.4

First person animation updates
Fixed Scoreboard rendering
Fixed Upgrade menu closing when releasing E
Fixed Pebbles not stacking
Fixed item tier showing wrong sometimes
Increased stack sizes
Components are cheaper
Components craft faster
Added Mace weight and Manganese recipes
Removed swing grunt from tools
Removed stamina cost from tools
Changed equip anim on 2handed tools
Fixed Flinch canceling crossbow load
Fixed up some typos on the home page
Updated the intro video
Fixed NPCs not running
Fixed issues with bed respawns
Fixed issues with movement networking

1.1.3

Fixed too many quivers spawning
Fixed Cooking menu scaling and moved Fuel time text
Changed Resource stack sizes to 600 and components to 60
Fixed catapult exit positional desync
Fixed issues with Freelook
Disabled 3rd person freelook
Fixed Equipment durability not updating visually ie armor taking damage from a hit
Fixed naked merchants again
Fixed Bed respawns spawning with default gear in Raid mode
Fixed POI spawners
Fixed networked movement
Increased max ping to 255
Enabled voice chat for all game modes except survival
Reduced gold coin costs of components
Direct message when a bed is assigned to you by a friend


1.1.2

Fixed Naked Merchants
Added Timegate on Particle effects from building dmg
Fixed NPCs spawning under the ground
Fixed Coif slot
Fixed quiver sockets
Fixed some one hander anims
Fixed Tier display on some items
Fixed Black Alder collision
Doubled Resource gain rate in Survival mode
Added Sapper's Axe (Hand ram replacement)
Admins can extend wipe time manually
Fixed Cookers with no fuel staying on forever
Fixed Voting to extend time
Doors in Raid mode spawn with autoclose turned on
Fixed Loot respawning
Added Cooking time Multiplier
Raid mode has a x4 Multiplier on Cook speed now


1.1.1

Fixed Trunk Pivots
Fixed Primitive weapons
Fixed Freelook Rotation
Fixed Vendor visuals
Fixed Tannery and Loom
Fixed Deer LODs
Added tiers to tools and misc items
Added more Doors to castle
Added NPCs to castle basement
Barrels auto pickup dropped items on destruction
Timegate some system messages for non-admins
Disabled Peaceful mode
First Spawn for a wipe is 5 secs in Survival
Animation updates
You can chat in the Deathscreen now
Reduced recovery window on resource gathering tools
Updated Item icons
Pattern Fixes
Stone and Brick doors look different now

1.1.0

Animation cleanup
Fixed issues with character skin rendering
Fixed blood particles
Fixed portcullis textures
Updated resource node textures
Fixed an issue where you could damage your own buildings in raid mode
Fixed an issue with vendors
Scaled down furnaces slightly
Fixed destruction meshes spawning on server
Disabled campfires
Fixed an issue where you could not click recipes sometimes
Fixed recipe sorting logic
Added Resource crafting category
Added a Show all Recipes toggle
Fixed Recipe searching
Reduced Raid mode resource gain rate to x4
Reduced Deer hp
Research bench is easier to craft now
Fixed some issues with one handers
Fixed Hair material
Fixed asset issues in Survival map
Fixed Coif clipping
Fixed Barrel shield clipping
Updated Shield anims
Added Footstep sound effects for characters not on the screen
Fixed bandit camp respawn times
Simplified weapon stat tooltip
Fixed bandages dropping too commonly
Tweaked weapon drop rates
Fixed up some weapons looking wrong on weapon racks
Added Tier number to items
Tweaked swan resource rates
Fixed being able to open building menu with the inventory opened
Added a server limit to the amount of dropped items in the world
Reduces the frequency of system messages in chat
Fixed an item duping issue
Fixed weapon pivots
Fixed freelook in first person
Added Loom and Tannery (automated Leather and Cloth crafters)
Fixed some UI issues in the research menu


1.0.91.0

Main menu Overhaul
Added a Wooden Flail
Fixed dead animal networking issues
Fixed up the Downed anim, including the camera not updating
Added an Intro Movie
Added Raid banner icons on the compass
Fixed spawning issues in Raid mode
Added POIs to the Small Raid map
Removed safe zone spawn option in Raid mode
Fixed issue with bag interaction
Disabled wipes on Raid mode
Updated one hander anims
Vehicle placement fixes
Added Component Merchants to Raid mode
Fixed up Lighting on Medium map
Fixed gather phase not working correctly in Raid mode
Added starting items to banners in Raid mode


1.0.9.9

Fixed issues with picking up dropped items
Fixed Merchant visuals
Fixed stagger not working properly
Added WIP localization support (Audio Menu)
New Languages are French, German, Portuguse, Russian, Spanish
Fixed being able to shoot your own buildings to cause a raid alarm to go off
Added a visual background for the Loadout menu
Fixed Weapon and Armor selection in the Loadout menu
Fixed issues with Loadout man not updating correctly
Updated Death Screen
Changed Ambient Audio
Players spawn in peaceful mode by default
Fixed some main menu visuals
Fixed Trunk performance issue
Disabled Small Battering Ram
Fixed some issues with the Server screen
Fixed death anim playing while downed
Improved Parry detection
Fixed an issue with Wipe time being calculated incorrectly
Updated Throwing weapon damages
Fixed Fists movement anims
Fixed spinning on projectiles
Added stick to new player spawns, stick can now harvest resources
Reduced some instances of stuttering while moving
Fixed Projectiles sticking to walls incorrectly

1.0.9.8

Fixed issues with animal networking
Fixed Banners in Raidmode not working correctly
Crafting refresh time should be faster now
Fixed siege ladders not placing on enemy banner zones
Fixed an issue with particle effects
Fixed an issue where loot buildings would stop networking correctly
Fixed being able to invite players to a party outside of Survival mode
Added Player name clone handling
Added a warning for when upgrading fails
Fixed a lot of technical debt
Fixed bandages and throwing weapons switching to a new weapon without an animation sometimes


1.0.9.7

Fixed being able to place 2 banners in the same spot
Fixed being able to pickup petards that were lit
Fixed a server performance issue with characters
Added Projectile sticking to surface support
Added a delay before a partially drawn bow can be fired
Fixed an animation issue with crouching
Fixed an issue where water movement speed would persist forever
Doubled boulder damage from catapults
Run speed is reset to minimum speed when lunging ends now
Fixed sign posts not working
Fixed hoarding not being placeable
Fixed repair costs for some furniture items
Fixed Stair collision issues with Triangle stairs
Fixed Roof collision issues
Added a message for repair cost for items that were consumed by repair
Stamina drain from drawing bows now increases over time
Added climbable ladders to Winterhold Castle's gates

1.0.9.6

Fixed the bug reporter not working
Fixed chase mechanic not working properly
Fixed attack Lunge not working
Fixed banners not being able to be upgraded
Fixed being able to aim the crossbow without stamina
Fixed the deathscreen appearing sometimes when it shouldn't
Weapons no longer take damage when kicking
Increased the amount of animals in the map
Fixed weapon rack repair costs

1.0.9.5

Added Resource gain multiplier to server configs
Fixed Hand Rams not working
Fixed issues with placing buildings inside banner zones
Improved AI memory
Fixed Map Camera not working
Fixed networked movement on Animals
Fixed animals not despawning when harvested fully
Increased falling damage min distance
Fixed banners not being moveable
Fixed coffin chest pickup
Fixed footstep detection
Fixed custom names not working for furniture
Fixed Camera issue when server is doing final save
Added Primitive Quiver recipe (Fiber)
Fixed issue with Death screen showing up randomly
Added a Loot sack
Castle gates can no longer be opened by players
Reduced saving system messages verbosity
Fiber is more commonly found now
Fixed issue with Resource spawn areas being too big
Fixed issue with banners not calculating maintenance properly
Fixed an issue with armor durability
Fixed Icons rendering incorrectly when rotated
Fixed crafting tooltip being too transparent
Fixed External Inventory window looking different
Fixed Fuel time not being shown correctly
Fixed inventory menus not being closed when moving too far away
Improved anim blending for fists and movement

1.0.9.4

Fixed bows not working in Loadouts
Fixed an issue where depleted nodes would spawn in for clients
Fixed crafting menu crash
Fixed Player name not Saving
Fixed Pain volumes in castle enabling too soon after the event starts to end
Fixed issues with Keylocks


1.0.9.3

Crash fixes
Added more building Icons
Fixed issue with Inviting to parties being visible all the time
Fixed animal spawners not working
Fixed broken window mesh in castle
Fixed Brick hall model
Fixed bleeds not persisting
Fixed castle doors not being damageable
Fixed issues with FOV
Added a game icon
Fixed Equipped bandages not attaching to player model properly
Removed spatializing from own footsteps
Reduced crate hp to 60
Fixed multiple issues with placing roof pieces
Fixed AI ignoring players who were attacking them with projectiles
Fixed an issue with the jump landing animation


1.0.9.2

Fixed AI roaming logic
Fixed weapon not equipping in TDM automatically
Fixed issues with Encyclopedia
Movement networking optimization
Added Key lock recipe to defaults
Opening Inventory closes build menu now
Can add mallets and gold to the banner now
Fixed shaft and pole recipes
Fixed poles not being craftable
Added Max stack count indicator for some items
Added Ranged zoom sensitivity slider
Fixed crossbow not working
Added notification for firing bows without the correct quiver
Fixed castle event not ending
Fixed kick tracers
Added peasant vest icon
Fixed chat box staying up forever
Added better admin teleport support
Fixed issues with arrows
Fixed javelins and throwing axes throwing incorrectly


1.0.9.1
Added Icon for Manganese
Added new Icons for Roof buildings
Added Floor Hatch Icon
Fixed issues with resource node networking
Added Icon for Peasant Vest
Fixed missing floors in one of the houses
Barrel HP lowered to 40
Fixed map buildings taking damage when they were disabled from recieving damage
Fixed UI crafting menu crash
Fixed NPC inventories being bugged
Added admin spawning of animals
Revamped Main Castle and dungeon
Fixed up throwing weapons
Fixed placement of roofs
Fixed input bug with Throwing weapons
Fixed issues with animals not roaming


1.0.9.0

Fixed Knight Baron Loadout
Fixed Kick with Fists not costing stamina
Added Icons for resource harvesting on the Crosshair
Added ability to Invite to Party by Interacting with other players
Fixed Painting furniture Icons
Fixed Loadouts with Quiver not granting ammo
Closing the Inventory menu clears search filters
Fixed issues with the context menu
Sleepers inside castle now die when the gates close
Saves now show date of next wipe
Fixed issues with UV maps on some building models
Disabled External walls until further notice
Reduced Banner build size slightly
Disabled Melee Lunge until further notice
Increased Max item Stack size on most items
Tweaked FPS display, added FPS display toggle setting
Lowered the cost of building maintenance considerably
Closed off some of the underground areas that aren't ready yet
Added Wipe time on the Server browser details
Many CPU optimizations, weaker CPUs should see a big improvement
Fixed issues with equipping weapons on the character
Fixed some issues with Geese npcs
Players can't select weapons while the inventory is open now
Reworked some character initialization code
Fixed up performance issues with the lighting on the survival map
Fixed issues with Catapult shots not exploding properly
Fixed Catapult shot not doing damage sometimes
Crafting and Gear menus can be toggled by pressing 1 and 2
Updated the Look of Gold nodes
Fixed issues with player pitch
Fixed Hand Axe weapon not working correctly
Cook times in furnaces have been adjusted
Adjusted some early game research costs
Fixed Item Name visibility problems
Updated stairs model to visually block under them
Disabled belts until further notice
Fixed Hand Rams not working properly
Added Barrel lid shield
Added a Coffin shaped Chest
Fixed issues with placing Petards
Fixed some player input issues
Items on the ground now combine into a bag if theres too many nearby
Fixed an issue with respawn time being reset
Fixed issues with Running not working properly sometimes
Fixed issues with furnaces not saving correctly
Fixed being able to attack while placing furniture
Fixed an issue with Fuel checks on furnaces
Added a Ping limit to servers
Fixed issue with character LODs breaking customization
Bow aiming system has been completely revamped
Added better projectile collision
Improved shooting anim blending
Fixed debug models from AI system showing up ingame
You can now hold attack to resource harvest
Fixed an issue that would cause infinite ammo for bows
Fixed some camera logic on the character
Fixed items equipping to different slots inconsistently
Improved warning messages for placing buildings
Keylock recipe now requires stone instead of iron ore
Primitive Tools can be repair without a workbench now
Increased gather rates on all tools
Fixed UI scaling on the Death Screen
Fixed Archery Target placing wrong building model
Fixed issues with Resource mining from Nodes
Fixed Patrolling NPCs staring off in the wrong direction
Fixed NPC archers not working properly
Fixed Siege ladder not having correct HP when picked up
Wall torches and other placeable light sources are now on by default when placed
Added more warning messages for picking up buildings
Added new Hats; Byzantine Peasant hat, Rus hat, Mongol
Added new Pavise Shield model
Added new peasant Vest (Chestplate slot)
Changed Dirt rendering on armors to be more visible
Removed Mallet damage bonus to buildings
Fixed some issues with Holding item warnings
Fixed some clipping issues with the Jupon
Projectile Deflections reduce less damage when holding a ranged weapon
Fixed issues with Portcullis rendering
Added an opening sound to crates
Pavise Shield can be deployed on the ground as a static defense
Fixed Ladders being useable from behind
Added new Gates to the Main castle
Fixed issues with floating barrels in some areas of the map
Updated the weapon throwing aiming system to work like the new bow system
Fixed a crash related to the crafting menu
Fixed Crafting recipes ordering logic
Fixed Scrollbar scaling on the crafting menu
Mineable stones on the map have more resources now
Fixed some resource nodes not being mineable
Fixed a clipping issue with the Windmill POI
Fixed overhead Map camera not working properly
Early game weapons are easier to craft
Removed Torches from Peasant NPCs
Fixed First person Run not working properly
Revamped the Save System
Fixed Sleepers being invisible
Fixed Weapon slots on external inventories being highlighted
Fixed issue with lock placement

Mr. Z

Welcome Renowners, we have some great news for everyone today. After several weeks of private testing weve finally reached a good level of stability and optimization to return to regular weekly playtests.


Many parts of the game had a lot of prototype code that had to be overhauled. Now every gameplay mechanic has had an optimization pass to work well in the context of a big multiplayer open world survival game. This is a big milestone for us as it is the first big completed step towards releasing the upcoming survival map.


Optimization for client side and server side performance has been the main focus, but also lots of other things were improved as well, as you can see below. If you were having performance issues with the game before, you should find significantly improved performance in this patch.


Whats new:


New pieces of furniture
New early game items
Added Ping limits
Deployable Pavise
Building system improvements
Added Floor hatch
Ranged combat overhaul
Added new keys for opening locked doors at POIs
Winterhold Castle Revamp
Many AI improvements
Many bug fixes and QoL improvements
Substantial optimizations for client and server
Automated Wipes
Maintenance system
Loot system rebalancing
Crafting rebalancing


Well be planning to do an official Stress test in the coming weeks, so we can prepare Renown for a public demo some time soon. Well need as many testers as possible to fill up the servers so stay attentive for an upcoming announcement of that.

Hello everyone!

As always, wed like to say a huge thank you to our amazing community. We know weve been a bit quiet on the updates front lately. Hopefully this dev blog will help explain why.

So, the best place to start would be to show not tell. Thanks to Jesse-Delta for his great work on the showcase.


Please see as follows for a showcase of our recent progress;

Over the last few months, the three main areas of development have primarily been:
-The swap from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5
-The total animation overhaul
-Creation of the new 4x4km map with new biomes.

One of the reasons weve been a bit short on news, is we didnt want to be one of those teams screaming about how Unreal Engine 5 will solve all of our problems. While a great tool, nothing in game design is ever that easy.

In our case we did a lot of estimating what could be useful from the new systems which are available to us now.

Then it was a matter of when to do the swap over, our logic is it's better to do it now when we are in alpha instead of later as it would be more time consuming and riskier.

Ive asked if Mr. Z could prepare a more skilled explanation of the physical effects from the swap over.

There have been various new developments since the last time we spoke. Many systems changes and optimizations have been made to allow for a giant open world map, mocap work is full swing, and UE5s new features are being fully utilized now.

As some may have noticed, a new survival map was briefly tested to iron out all the issues of scaling up to larger map sizes. I may have jumped the gun a bit with the map as I ended up making it 8x8 kilometers. Its good to test a bigger than expected map as our final survival map is around 4x4 km so this gives us quite a bit of breathing room. Lots of systems had to be changed for this to work, including the ingame map menu, the way resources are populated in the world, additional systems for placing points of interest in the map, and on a more boring note plenty of code had to be optimized or rewritten for this to work. It was quite a time consuming ordeal but Im glad weve taken care of all the large obstacles for the final survival map to be technically feasible.

Alongside this work, we have also gone into full production with the new mocap animations for the characters. Weve been quite busy with retargeting all the motion capture animation data to our character and getting them into the game itself. Lots of work had to be done on the animation controller to support a wider array of animations. Where it stands right now is were part way through implementing the Longsword animations, so hopefully it wont be too long until we can have at least one animation set using fully motion captured animations. Motion capture is a very lengthy process but were confident with this type of workflow now and were very excited to get these animations finished and in our backers hands.

The switch to Unreal 5 has been fully completed, meaning were using all the new systems weve intended to utilize and the legacy systems have been fully removed. What are these systems you may ask? For starters weve fully switched over to Chaos Physics, which is the new physics engine for Unreal 5 that allows for a higher degree of complexity in destruction physics. Were also now fully using World Partition, which is a new feature that allows us to build substantially larger game levels while still maintaining good performance. Another important feature were using is Lumen, which is a next generation lighting engine for the game. It has done wonders for the look of the game, especially with how much better the armors look in real lighting now. Finally, were also using Nanite, which is another next generation feature, what it does in effect is it makes LODs (Level of Detail) models obsolete, by removing the jarring transition of models to lower detail ones thats plagued 3d video games since the first days.

2024 will be a very productive year for us going forward, were making very rapid progress on the game, but it is a big game to make especially for only a handful of developers working on it. As weve seen time and time again theres no use in rushing out an unfinished game just to get it in peoples hands quickly. So well give a proper release date when were confident we can actually deliver a game were proud of.

Well have more regular updates coming in the near future as we move past the transition to UE5 including more words from Mr. Z

Ive also asked if KZ could prepare a short note for you folks explaining in detail his side of stuff a bit more. It should be noted while a team effort, what youve seen in the above showcase is largely the result of KZs hard work.

The last few months have seen significant progress on the art front. A lot of work has been done to establish a strong foundation for the new year. Essentially, much time has been dedicated to developing the new map. This endeavor has presented substantial challenges, considering it's no longer a small map; it's a world. Nevertheless, we are making good progress.

We began by designing how we wanted to shape the world itself and envisioned all the interactions across the map that we would like to see or open up possibilities for. Our approach prioritized function before form. From the ground up, we designed additional biomes to give the world a more rounded feel.

A big challenge was to design the transitions between biomes, but a lot of thought was put in, and tests were conducted, and I think we got there on the feeling of traveling seamlessly through the biomes while still feeling inline.


We have expanded from one biome to nine, including Meadows, Forests, Swamp, Snowy Fields, Snowy Mountains, Steppes, Arid, Canyons, the Desert, Beaches, and rivers to break it all up. Safe towns have been developed for some of the major biomes, and while these are still being fleshed out, they are mostly completed.


Specifically, there is a big castle with a town and port included in the Meadows biome, a Norse Village in the mountains, a Steppes village, and finally, a Desert Town. Lastly, a lot of thought and work have been put into the placement of Points of Interest to keep players entertained with plenty to explore and fight over.


Fortunately, the new biomes have accommodated this effort and will introduce biome-specific Points of Interest, adding more intrigue to different parts of the world.

Hopefully well have some more of KZs work to show off for you soon!

Alongside all the topics Mr. Z has discussed, one main goal for the new year is to get organized weekly wipes going again as soon as possible. Weve had to put regular testing on hold for the UE 5 swap.

This means we can start to rebuild the weekly population on servers across the major regions of our backers.

Wed like to thank everyone again for their patience with the lack of activities and low pop over the last little while. Its an area weve keenly aware of and hope to address quick smart.

Well also hopefully have some more flashy news for you folks in the new year as we start to see the results of our recent work.

Again, folks from our entire team, thank you so much for your amazing support this year. The last 3 months (and this entire year honestly) have been tough but your enthusiasm and kindness are one of the main things keeping us going. We hope to have some good results to make you proud soon!

Thanks again and till next time
Ashur

1.0.21

Fixed an issue with the center castle vanishing
Fixed a message flood bug with placing furniture
Fixed presets showing up research menu
Fixed freelook Axis
Added a Dungeon key to unlock some loot rooms


1.0.20

Fixed an issue with Research not working
Fixed the nav mesh on the training map
Improved door open mechanics
Added Harvesting efficiency to item descriptions
Fixed issue with plant fibers not disappearing when harvested
Fixed resource node collisions
Added missing house back to survival map
Fixed issues with arrows
Enabled some optimizations
Fixed animals despawning when players are nearby
Fixed some issues with item stacking logic
Added automatic weekly wipes
Fixed an issue with crafting stealing player input
Fixed some issues with placing lamp posts and torches
Catapults now have persistent durability when picked up
Door opening mechanics improved
Fixed a bug where placing furniture would bug out inputs
Fixed up the crosshair not working properly
New Archery aiming overhaul (WIP)

1.0.11

Fixed not being able to crouch with the minimap open
Fixed healing well not working
Tweaked healthbar UI
Button in the corner of the chatbox is clickable now
Added support for more complex looping behavior on Emotes
Fixed issues with the training map not working
Fixed silver ore not being mineable
Fixed resource collection effects
Added new furniture items
Fixed issues with stairs support
Fixed up lunge movement
Fixed up decelleration from turning quickly
Dropped items despawn faster if they're broken
Dropped broken items can be interacted with to destroy them sooner
Fixed issues with the Navmesh on Small_p
Added effect on nodes partially mined out
Doubled amount of resources on nodes
Added a building anim
Fixed building not making a sound effect
Added Furniture to research menu

1.0.9.4

Fixed issues with item stacking
Fixed issues with crafted items not showing up in the menu
Fixed a bug with the Loadout system menu
Fixed a bug with creating map markers
Optimized animal movement
Fixed dropped item physics
Fixed not being able to sprint with a crossbow loaded
Fixed a crash with the inventory
Fixed issues preventing proper resource harvesting
Reworked Bed system to work properly on a large scale map
Fixed connection timeout being too long
Fixed issues with resource spawning
Fixed player marker being hidden by other markers
Improved movement networking
Grass under buildings now hides properly
Changed FOV limits
Fixed issues with FOV
Added Floor Hatch Doors
Reworked ladder climbing
Fixed an issue where running would get canceled by crouch
Fixed a bug with a character material
Fixed movement speed boost from attacking applying incorrectly

1.0.9.0

Fixed AI not spawning in training map
Improved the AI spawning Menu
Disabled items with internal Inventories (Bags, belts, quivers)
Fixed issues with the Loadout system camera
Fixed being able to open chat while the HUD was toggled off
Improved Server browser UX with sounds and visuals
You can double click servers to instantly join
Removed chicken sounds
Fixes for Resource node Networking
Improved the minimap
Fixed issues with Auto run
Fixed issues with the NDA screen
Fixed issues with resource collection
Fixed an issue with the crafting button
Improved animation blending on the pelvis
Fixed issues with servers not showing up in the server browser

Dev Update - Happy Halloween and News from our Team

Hello Renowners

As always a huge thank you to both our backers for their support, and to our community here for being awesome, as well as a shout out to our mod team on our official discord.

It's been a little while since we last put out a public update, as weve been incredibly busy working behind the scenes on many different systems. Mr. Z has written an update for you to let you know what weve been working so hard on lately.

Weve always tried to make testing fun. What were currently doing is extremely important for the future of the game, but it's not as glamorous as shiny new features.
To say thanks for your patience the team (Mostly Mr. Z in his off hours), has created a fun new game mode for you.

We present to you:

Horde Mode


Currently done up in a Halloween theme, the Horde mode is your classic PvPvE wave survival onslaught of attackers.
One player is chosen as the Skeleton Lord to lead the enemy Horde.
Living Players attempt to survive until the time runs out.
If you die you become part of the Skeleton Army as it grows in size.
The last player standing is the winner, but for how long?
After they fall, the game starts again.

To be perfectly clear, this is something Mr. Z has been working on his own time in the last few weekends. The vast majority of development hours were not spent creating this game mode. That said, it still provides us with useful data, and we hope it will become a fun thing to keep you going!

Speaking for the entire team, we hope you have a very fun Halloween.
Mr. Z has taken the time to write up some of the majorly important work the Programming team has been up to behind the scenes over the last few months.


Mr. Z speaking, it's time for a general update on how development has been going over the last few months.

We've been incredibly busy and highly productive lately on many different things, one of the biggest has been reworking many old game systems.

Our goal lately has been to take the gameplay systems we've managed to make and essentially optimize the crap out of it. We've had enough playtests of survival mode to know what has been needed to be changed and we got excellent data on which things had poor client/server performance.

Many systems have had a partial/full rewrite, including but not limited to;
The saving system,
The base building systems,
Inventory systems,
Networking subsystems,
Resource gathering, and more.

The goal has been very simple, we want to optimize the game for higher and higher player counts, our goal for early access has always been 50-100 on a server and we're getting very close to reaching it.

One core system that had many hours of work put into it was the new base Maintenance system. Bases once built need resources for maintenance upkeep, these resources are stored in the banner's inventory. This is to ensure people don't just leave abandoned bases all over the map, as buildings will begin taking damage once maintenance upkeep payments are missed. Not only that but this mechanic also puts a soft cap on how big bases can realistically get, as you wouldn't want to build a base too big that farming the resources for the upkeep becomes prohibitively time consuming, especially for solo players and small groups.


Melee combat has also received lots of small improvements as I've been trying to spend more time dueling some of our best players to get a feel for what the highest level melee gameplay plays like. When work was still ongoing in the combat alpha, there weren't many people who could consistently beat me in duels and I'm happy to report that has changed.

Many mechanics with melee have been tweaked considerably to improve the likelihood of solo players being able to have a realistic chance of winning when fighting outnumbered. As well, the ability to aim your swing paths have been buffed considerably to allow more possibilities to outplay opponents through swing manipulation. Morphs and Feinting has received many changes to be much less of a gamble while still remaining a useful mixup during engagements.

In the near future we'll begin implementing the new motion capture animations for melee combat, that work is currently ongoing and we're looking forward to when it's ready to be pushed live.


ItsMoxie has been steadfastly working on a rewrite of many networking subsystems. In our playtests we were hitting pretty big networking bottlenecks so we're converting a lot of game systems to a more optimized networking model. Unfortunately the default networking model for Unreal Engine was optimized for small scale multiplayer arenas like that of Unreal Tournament, however fortunately for us because Epic Games also developed Fortnite we're able to use many of the systems they created for it for the purpose of optimizing large open world games. One of these features that we've implemented is called the "Replication Graph", it helps us support a far larger player count on a large open world map by optimizing the amount of work done by the server to update players in different regions of the map.

Thank you again dear folks. Well be putting out an update soon regarding our overall changes to UE5, Animation updates and most excitingly, the various biomes KZ has created for the new map. Weve got big things coming in the near future and were all stoked to show them when theyre ready.

Till Next Time
Ashur

1.0.8.1

Fixed up some scaling issues inside the Scoreboard
Fixed crouch canceling running input sometimes
Fixed debug text in the sky
Reworked Resource harvesting system for hunting
Fixed a Damage volume in the Castle still staying active
Fixed Plant Fiber node scaling
Fixed a loadout selection bug
Fixed equipped weapon buttons not updating sometimes
Fixed missed swings that hit the ground costing double stamina
Fixed resource node spawn handling causing nodes to disappear from the map

1.0.8.0

Fixed issues with Ranged weapon zooming
Fixed issue with aiming states with ranged weapons
Fixed not being able to unequip a loaded crossbow
Added sockets on character for quivers and crossbows
Projectiles can stick to surfaces now
Fixed up Archery target
Fixed Projectiles not dropping properly when hitting deers
Fixed up Javelin throwing animations
Toggle Always run is off by default now [Capslock]
Enabled T3 tech again
Added Fountain to Nook FFA
Added a damage volume to the castle basement
Fixed up a bug with maintenance costs causing it to be too high for small bases
Maintenance costs are much lower overall now
Added a new networking subsystem for resource nodes
Fixed the gates on the castle not working sometimes
Added maintenance cost alerts

1.0.7.2

Crafting Menu fixes for crashing
Currently selected weapon now shown on UI elements


1.0.7.0

Optimized Rabbits
Added Color Variation to Rabbits
Movement System Optimizations
Optimized Dropped items
Optimized Sky
Optimized Sleepers
Optimized inventory replication
Reduced NPC counts on the map slightly
Fixed Merchants having invalid items
Fixed Crossbowman Loadout
Buffed Shelf HP
Buffed Wood harvesting rates
Disabled the Bear
Networking Optimizations
Added Maintenance costs
Fixed Early release counting as a hit
Fixed ground hits costing stamina even if you hit a player beforehand
Buffed chained parry stamina gain
Broken items on the ground now display with a broken name
Fixed some input consumption issues
Fixed silver item spawns
Damaging buildings with a weapon now deals more damage to the weapon
Added Damage bonus/malus display on landed attacks
Fixed some recipe names
Nearby Loot bags show up with held interact now (Hold E)
Fixed Wood Gateway collisions
Repair warning message is more clear now
Lowered sound levels of door open/close
Campfire has a crafting menu option now
Fixed archery targets not being placeable
Fixed some building placement warnings
Better warnings for crafting items
Fixed up player joined message displaying wrong names
You can hold shift and drag and drop items to split them now
Added Fat to loot drops
Fixed some item dupe issues
Fixed Clashing with fists
Added a Bash cooldown from a Clash
Buffed Morningstar
Reduced attack lockout on being parried massively
Fixed LTS not working properly
Fixed some inconsistent gather rates for tools and nerfed the benefit from tool tiers
Fixed item durability showing when it wasn't relevant

The free demo has gone live as of this post.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1488310/Renown/
The demo will run between the 21st and 28th of September. We'd like to thank all our backers for the immense support they've given us over these last few years, getting the game this far simply could not have been possible without their support.

1.0.6.2

Tweaked Active Parry particle effect
Gates in Winterhold castle have been fixed
Added new Shoulder shield brigandine skins
Fixed clipping issues with peasant gloves
Fixed clipping issues with padded pants
Tweaked Lantern lighting visuals
Hair color tweaks
Added new Trees
Crossbow anims added
Removed Riposte bashing
Removed Miss combos
Parry doubles deflection chance but doesn't reduce ranged damage directly anymore
Increased combo time from bashes
Code locks now causes damage on wrong guesses
Fixed Door upgrading
Removed Steel hand Rams
Fixed alt click equipping on dead players
Added the ability to have Placeable markers on the map
Added Party support to placeable markers
Added hitstop on friendlies (not in survival)
Fixed issues with the scoreboard causing duplication
Fixed items on spawn sometimes not being equippable
Optimized UI
Fixed performance issues with particles
Party system remembers disconnected players
Beds have their own icons on the map now
Beds highlight on the map now
Fixed performance issue related to audio
Added direct IP join support
Added skin for cuisses
Added plate sabaton skin
Ranged attacks no longer grant stamina
Fixed eyepatch material
Fixed AI spawning unarmed sometimes
Tweaked HP values on animals, most no longer die in 1 hit
Same faction NPCs will now hitstop on each other
Fixed issues with crouch anims
Fixed Cave material
Improved vote to kick functionality
Fixed landscape grass
Added a primitive bow
Added new item components for crafting weapons and armor
Optimized furnaces
Added support for a mission system
Fixed the bug report menu
Added high ping indicator
Fixed voice chat audio
Enabled Shader Model 6
Added chaos destruction support
Added save support for Raid mode
Added support for saving for raid mode banners
Fixed held item bug
Added support for Lumen lighting
Added an elevator
Removed stamina cost requirement for lunging
Increased player radius slightly to mitigate facehugging
Added new graphical toggles
Removed boosting on players
Fixed being able to certain actions while downed
Fixed AI movement
Added clash sound effect
Run speed is now slowed down on sharp turns
Added Parry from Recovery
Added Combo into Parry
Loadout menu fixes
Tweaked morph timings
Fixed recovery parries costing less than combo feint to parry
Fixed crash related to research menu
Resource bag is now checked for building costs
Added ability to equip item in each slot
Fixed last team standing
Fixed drag and drop items causing bugs
Added animation prediction
Tweaked riposte window
Stagger flinches reliably now
Fixed under siege mechanic being unreliable
Added mocap emotes
Made AI spawns more reliable
Added new Nook map
Code locks require 8 digit keys
Turncap is now more consistent
Kicking now blends the player to a stop much faster
Tweaked the parry boxes
Increased stamina miss cost on weapons
Added longer recovery for missing kick/bash
Added vote to end match
Fixed issues with crafting queue
Added new ranged weapon anims
Spruced up the Safe town
Added workbenches to safe town
Fixed AI spawning in castle when it was closed
Fixed resource nodes
Reduced parry window slightly
Reduced feint cooldown
Added server side melee tracers
Fixed up deer movement
Fixed server history tab
Fixed stone croppings
Added new icons for resources
You can cancel out of holster with attack inputs
Reduced sway on bows

It's time for a quick update about what has been going on behind the scenes here at RDBK Studios!

We have been absolutely under the pump over the last few months transitioning to UE5. We felt the
engine was in a state ready for us to make the change.
It's a decently long process, but we are more or less back up and running now in UE5.
Some people may see a decrease in performance for a few weeks. The previous optimization passes need to be reevaluated for systems such as nanite and lumen.
We have added a toggle in the settings for lumen (improved lighting) if your graphics card is or isn't recent enough to handle it.

On the UE5 front we will be pushing the current build for a stress test in the next couple days, keep an eye out for the announcement.

Melbourne International Games Week is upon us and we have been invited to take part on steam. We will be running an Open Stress test throughout its duration, so be sure to let your mates know.
Raid Mode and Survival will be the main focus points for the week.

More information on Melbourne International Games Week linked below!

https://gamesweek.melbourne/events/2023/migw-steam-festival-2023


In other news our motion capture workflow is well underway, here is a little video of the studio and our lead artist KZ taking on the role of Mocap Actor.


We have almost completed our Fist and Unarmed peaceful animation set and you should be able to see portions of this in the steam demo. It will be a rough version with more clean up necessary.

Thank you for putting up with the lack of information during these busy months. We will have some exciting new updates now that the UE5 swap over is behind us.

As always thank you to all our backer's for allowing us to continue making our dream game become a reality!

Looking forward to seeing you in the demo.

Cheers

- Jesse

0.9.3.0

Fixed Grandmace research
Tweaked Catapult costs
Updated some external wall models
Fixed server browser bugs
Fixed stacked items not working correctly sometimes
Removed sickles from peasants
Fixed deflection not working with ranged weapons
Increased miss combo time
Stab into Stab combo is slower
Improved 2 handed axe kick animation
Crossbow anims WIP
Fixed code lock crafting
Added new t2 pauldron skin

0.9.2.0

Fixed bug with server browser not showing when last joined the server
Fixed issue with warning popup not working
Fixed bug with resource nodes
Added support for scars
Added new helmet skins
Added Bandits to the jousting fields and more loot
Fixed issues with barrel loot spawning under the ground
Added new destructible crates with more variety of loot in them
Banners no longer give access to Locks
Kills now grant instant hp
Reduced club damage slightly
Reduced amount of plant fiber in nodes
Fixed helmet damage resistances
Fixed arming sword damage
Tweaked 1h weapon damages
Tweaked arming sword cost
Fixed collisions on trees
Fixed code locks not working correctly
Fixed Goedendag not being researchable
Fixed beds not showing the correct amount of hp when spawning in
Added warmup time to survival mode so slower loading players have more potential to load in before the match starts
Removed HP regen on LTS gamemode
Passive HP regen checks last offensive action time now before regening
Fixed up combo anims on 2 handed axes
Fixed movement with kick morphs
Added attack lockout on Clashes so it resets initiative
Increased miss combo time
Added a clash indicator
Increased lunge speed boost
Parry Box and Extended parry box is bigger now
Removed weapons making your player collision bigger or smaller
Reduced windup time on many weapons (faster attacks)
Fixed some wrong damage values on some weapons
Reduced parry lockout time
Fixed riposte bug
Fixed alt mode bug
Added cellar under winterhold castle
Opened up basement entrance to the winterhold castle that is enterable through the mines
Fixed bow equip anims not working sometimes
Fixed projectiles feeling laggy and inconsistent to use
Fixed Javelins being oriented the wrong way when thrown

0.9.1.0

Fixed Audio bug on Survival map
Fixed research inconsistency
AI now always staggers and never drops their weapons
Disabled Day/Night cycle
Beds now have markers on the map
Fixed a bug causing ai not to patrol properly
Fixed Cave material being broken
Added new Warhorn sounds
You can equip armor from dead bodies more easily now
Bastard sword damage buffed
Fixed issues with character render in inventory
Tweaked some stab timings
Added epilepsy warning
Fixed swapping armors not updating worn model sometimes
Increased arrow velocity by 20%
Removed some furniture from winterhold that was causing pathing issues
Gamma is now locked to 2.2
Added primitive weapons to Loadout menu
Fixed tabard customization not working
Increased distance of lighting on torches
Destroyed items on the ground disappear sooner
Character tab now shows by default in the Loadout menu
Torches are easier to craft now
Players start with a torch by default
Disabled Mantlet
Warhammer now requires primary weapon slots
Fixed Goedendag bug
Armor effectiveness preview toggles off in some contexts now
Fists and Tools can no longer give lunge
Fixed Lock position on external gate
Fixed black outlines in the character render
Renamed Dane Axe to Battle Axe and vice versa
Fixed a health regen bug
Sleepers don't have white clothes by default anymore
Nerfed Pollaxe alt mode damage
You can parry out of release after scoring a hit
Lunge is shorter now
Lunge stops when moving backwards now
Lunge ends when attacks are cancelled now
Lunge works with ripostes properly now
Fixed issue with ground hits
Fixed Kicks and Bash combos being slow
Added a delay on morph to kick
Players are granted hyper armor on scoring hits now
Fixed knockback being too strong
Increased miss combo time
Head follows aim during attacks
Mines are opened up again
Added new resource nodes for the mine
Reduced windup time on some weapons
Increased helmet protectiveness
Added stamina regen delay when leaving a running state
Fixed jittering on movement sometimes
Fixed footstep noise being inconsistent
Input is now disabled when the server does the final save
Fixed some issues with armor rendering
Fixed siege warning not working sometimes
Siege warnings are more accurate now
Building destroy timer is 30 mins from 15 mins
Resource gain was lowered from x3 -> x2
Silver smelting is half as efficient now
Fixed External Tower collisions
Fixed being able to build too close to enemy bases
Removed hit trades and replaced with clashes
Greataxe alt stab is working properly now

Changed bed roll model
Fixed Club visuals
Updated Bleed indicator
Fixed some hairs being broken
Added new peasant NPCs
Fixed bag timers
Fixed sign post text
Updated resource HUD
Optimized some brigandine models
Added Multithreaded saves
Equip context option now swaps gear
Added categories to input menu
Fixed broken gear not showing durability
Fixed issue with renaming loadout
Ctrl click looting now causes item to stack
Resource bag handling fixes
Disabled contextual pieces until refactor
Multithreaded save loading
Increased goedendag dmg
Added Favorites and History to server browser
Fixed exploit with bash
Tweaked lunge to be more reliable
Fixed brigandine research
Bandaging prevents sprinting now
You can no longer feint a morph that came from a riposte (Riposte -> Morph - Feint)
Lowered durability on shields
Hit particles cull properly now
Bags are cheaper to research
Reduced gold coins found in barrels slightly
Inventory no longer goes dark when opened sometimes
Building wheel now supports using the number keys 0-9
Sleeping characters can now be walked through
Bed respawn times are 15 secs now (cooldown on beds is same as before)
Fixed keylocks not working for teammates
Hand ram costs steel now
Rebalanced armor costs
Armor damage resistances rebalance
Fixed kick slowdowns on combo
Added a chat queue for receiving messages before the UI had loaded in
Sprint speed bonus goes away if walking into walls
Added attack lockout on missed combo feint (miss attack -> combo -> feint)
Added longer feint cooldown on morph feint
Removed riposte on held blocks (shields)
Parrying kicks with a shield now staggers you instead of only on hold block
Fixed not being able to parry immediately after landing a strike
Shield recovery is longer now
Reduced stamina negation on held block
Added Morph to Kick
Fixed Pollaxe alt mode
Getting staggered from stamina running out now disarms players remember to bring a backup weapon
Added longer delay on stamina regen after combat actions
Reduced parry lockout on shields
Hold block no longer cancels attacks
Miss combo times are more consistent across the board now
Hold block now forces the player to walking
Shield parry window is 50 ms shorter now
Disabled changing gamma in menu
Fixed Petards having broken ground checks
Lowered upkeep costs
Door HP has been lowered by half
Siege damage has been halved
Petard does 1000 damage now
Research costs have been tweaked
Siege weapon costs have been tweaked
Added WIP Triangle Spiral Staircase
Tweaked peasant weapons
Fixed building issue with plaster pillars
Fixed hair clipping through coifs
Fixed error message for buildings being blocked in placement
Fixed Shared recipes not always working
Catapults spawn with no ammo now
Fixed ladder exploit
Furnaces can be picked up again
Fixed Loot tables missing on some NPCs

This dev blog covers our ongoing move to a Full-Blown Survival Alpha, Changes to Indiegogo, alongside the Xsolla Launcher Swap for Alpha and Beta. Id like to say a special thank you to our dedicated testers who have been helping us with the survival pre-alpha. Weve had some nasty bugs and our testers' persistence in helping us sort these issues has been hugely important. Thank you again to all our backers and double to those dedicated folks who put in that little bit extra (You know who you are). Likewise, a big shout out to the moderation team here on our discord. Its been a little while since our last update, but weve not been idle. Lets get into it.

Survival Alpha!
So the big news is that were moving steadily towards our first Stable Alpha build featuring the Survival gameplay loop. We still have a lot we want to add, change, and improve but this build represents a big goal for the community.
Our new Dev Vlog takes a head on look at this topic and covers:
-Improvements to the building system with new textures, redoes of older tiers and the Stone External Wall Implementation.
-New customization and Play Model Changes.
-New Weapons for the T0/Primitive Level of gameplay
-A focus on the new Survival Build as a whole.
-An overview of the new progression system and how Silver is used as a raiding resource.
-Points of interest including the new Castle Event
-How Barrels and the road Network functions.
-The new underground cave network

Theres also discussion on some of the new quality of life features weve added, AI changes and more. A link can be found here:

Alpha vs Beta?

One topic I want to face upfront is how weve decided to address Alpha vs Beta. Weve been working hard to get the survival gameplay implemented in a fun manner which accurately represents the end game we want to make.

However, were very aware there are several key features/mechanics we still need to add such as Cavalry Warfare, Worker Buildings, the Renown System itself to name a few. Likewise, there are multiple areas we still need to re-do and improve such as Animations, The UI and various small but meaningful optimizations.

By drawing the line down the middle, were able to get players going (on what we hope) will be a fun experience, which also directly helps us by providing invaluable testing data. Likewise given weve always been set on making a Survival game its very exciting for our team to have reached this goal, even if theres still a lot to be done.

Big questions regarding the Xsolla Launcher, Indiegogo, and Beta Access.

As weve said many times, were extremely grateful to our community for their very generous support of our work.

Im sure folks will have plenty of questions regarding the new update and changes. Were always around here in discord if you want to ask.

That said to head off any misinformation, Im going to do my best to answer some of the more glaring questions.

1. Whats with Steadfast Backers getting testing keys now if its an alpha?

Weve decided were going to allow early testing access for our previous Steadfast Backers. Given how weve decided to deploy the Alpha, and that it may still take a while before we reach beta, we didnt see any reason to punish folks who have already helped support our work in the past. This also allows us to do a small expansion on the tester base in a controlled manner. You should be receiving your testing keys via email in 1-2 days.

2. What happens to Beta if that's no longer for sale?

We are absolutely still going to be doing our Beta Phase release when we get to that stage of development.

That said, given the confusion this has caused over the last few years weve decided to remove the ability to purchase Steadfast and Proud Backer tiers from our site going forwards.

3. Whats the deal with this new launcher then? What about Steam?

This is something weve been slowly required to do as our community has grown.

Steam limits the number of testing keys it's willing to distribute. By these rules were very much already at the upper limit of what theyll offer us.

By swapping to the Xsolla launcher, we can ensure that tester keys keep coming to our backers and that we can honour our promises regarding the spare beta keys. It also means well never have any issues regarding running out of keys again and ensuring that keys are always sent immediately on backing.

[b]We want to be super clear:
[/b]
-The game is going to return to steam for Early Access.
-This is only an intermediary stage for Alpha and Beta before the game returns back to Steam.
-When we return to steam, youll receive your full game key with attached cosmetics, Titles, and the like.

Customers with steam keys should be fine to keep using them for the foreseeable future for testing. Well be updating the Xsolla and Steam Builds in tandem and it does not matter which launcher you play from; both connect to the same servers.

Again a huge thank you to all our amazing backers, our community here on discord and the awesome moderators who help keep it all together. Now that weve gotten past this big goal well be doing more regular updates to let you know how's it going.

Till next time!

Hello everyone!

Firstly and as always a huge thank you to our awesome community for your support this year. The hard work of our raid testers, the general enthusiasm and kindness of the community, and the overall reception to the project this year have all been overwhelming.

So you may have seen our End of Year Update video. (If not the video is below!) This video covers our main goals and plans for the upcoming year.


We had hoped to get the new map ready to be played before the end of year, but we decided given our limited time before the EOY, wed focus on getting our previous maps as bug free before we take a refresh and reset break.

While being insanely blown away by the support weve received, I can confirm the effort of this year has thoroughly smoothed brains across the team. Due to team members having family holiday obligations, we decided it was best to take January 1st to February 1st as a break. This will help us take a breath, hopefully massage some wrinkles back into said brains, and overall come back swinging hard in February.

Over this month, were going to still try to keep testing going (more for organized fun, then dev testing). Likewise while slightly slower well still be around on our discord, answering tickets, questions and making sure everything is going alright. Indiegogo keys will be sent every week as normal.

When were back weve got some big plans to expand and crack into the next stage of the game. Without giving away dates (for which I cant promise just yet anyway) were aiming to get what were calling Raid Alpha 2.0 ready to go ASAP. This includes a new larger map, persistent save system and more teams moving into a dynamic team system. After that weve effectively got ourselves a survival game.

After were feeling confident that the majority of bugs are squashed, and the game is as optimized as we can get it, well be aiming to enter Beta officially. We then plan to use beta to continue squashing and tuning, while adding missing core features such as our Animation Overhaul, Cavalry, Worker Buildings and several of our key ideas that make our game unique.

Till then folks I just want to say another huge thank you to our backers and testers. The fact weve gotten this far as a small indie team is testament to the quality of our community and the support youve given us. It blows me away to think we started the year with a Basic Combat System Demonstration, and were ending it one step away from a real (if still very young) survival game.

On behalf of everyone at RDBK Studios we hope everyone has a great holiday and new years.
Again thank you all so much for an amazing year.

0.8.0.4

Fixed Repair costs for Weapons and Armor
Players now move slower when crossing shallow water
Reorganized Building wheel to fit pieces into Categories
Fixed Rigging on Plate armor shoulders
Added Triangle Roof Tops
Players now can't build in a spot where a building was destroyed momentarily
Added Encumberance and Deflection chance tooltips to Armor
Fixed Bracers not protecting the hands properly
Doubled the Durability of Hand Held Rams but also increased their gold cost
Added a New Bed that respawns you faster
Fixed up Battering Ram and Catapult movement sounds
Ladders now work correctly with regards to enemy placed ladders
Keep building radius is smaller now
Upgrading pieces requires player to be standing in building zone
Deflection chance on Plate armors has been lowered except for the Breastplate
Lowered Parry compensation slightly
Added Streamer Mode
Fixed Plant fibers not spawning
Plant Fiber clusters now align to the ground
Plant Fiber clusters are now larger in size and number
Fixed Storage containers not saving properly
Fixed Armor stands not saving properly
Added Volkskamp map (FFA,TDM, LTS)
Increased Throwing weapon damage
Increased Throwing weapon velocity
Fixed Throwing weapons not having animations for other Players

0.7.9.6

Fixed issue with Garbage Collection
Added Hurlbats
Reimplemented Throwing weapons (G) to throw
Bed Respawns are 30 seconds now
Bed Respawns adds a 3 min cooldown on all nearby beds
Fixed Autobalance not working correctly
Bracers aim bonus added to Mail gloves and Leather gloves
Properly implemented Crossbow
Craft menu Icon scaling fixed
Added distance checks to keeping inventories open
Zoom in Holster mode with RMB
Fixed Stone placements not having attenuated sounds
Fixed armor stand armor models not clearing correctly
You can alt click items on armor stand to fast equip them or double click them
Added a Mantlet (Mobile cover)

0.7.9.5

Optimized the servers
Removed Autosort button disappearing
Autosort now gives you a reason if it fails
Autosorting is faster now
Increased Catapult HP so it can survive 4 shots now from Catapults
Fixed picking up Armor Stands
Reduced Bash Damage
Reduced Bash speed
Increased time on Combo from Bash
Doors are now only unopenable when under attack if they take singificant damage
Fixed Stamina drain on parries not working
Fixed Voice transmit volume being mislabeled in the Audio menu
Fixed Steel Mallet not having a model
Increased Bodkin arrow damage slightly
Fixed banners not breaking when their supporting floor broke
Fixed Bed spawns not working for Team 3
Fixed Raid mode not ending properly with more than 2 teams
Fixed other gamemodes not working correctly with more than 2 teams
You can now assign beds to teammates
Increased Max item repair value to 100% from 67%
Vehicles ignore dropped items now

0.7.9.4

Fixed issues with Replays
Fixed an issue with the respawn timer
Fixed a bug with the armor stand
Fixed swapping armors with armor stands
Fixed armor stands getting the wrong inventory reference
Increased Armor stand collision size
Fixed Stakes collisions
Improved sword and shield running animation
Fixed issues with Loot spawning in Crates
Bodies now despawn after 15 seconds or 60 in Raid and Survival mode
Item bags now last 15 minutes in Raid mode
Fixed issues with Dropped Items (Weapons/Armor)
Fixed Wheelbarrow slow turnrates
Fixed Wheelbarrow camera position in first person
Tweaked Wheelbarrow velocity
Fixed Autobalance no longer working
Fixed being able to pickup buildings that werent scaffoldings
Added Keylock as a craftable item
Fixed falling damage being inconsistent
Healing queued up now gets reduced equal to the amount of damage recieved rather than completely cleared by any damage
Fixed issues with placing keylocks on doors and gates
Increased Parry compensation slightly
Bodkin arrows now cost Steel instead of Iron
Reduced Gold cost of Catapults and Siege Rams to 60
Cost of Grates and Portcullis increased to require additional Iron
Fixed External doors not having height offsets
Added Arrow mesh to Door previews so you can tell which way the door opens
Fixed Mallets not doing correct damage to owned buildings
Reduced Speed penalty from wearing armors
Increased damage resistance of Brigandines slightly
Increased damage of Bashes
Decreased windup duration of Bashes
Fixed issue with Alt mode
Equipping Items now slows players down to walking speed temporarily
Encumberance penalties to Ranged weapons from wearing armor are now more extreme
Hold breath shooting mechanic is affected by Encumberance
Reduced effectiveness of passive HP regen
2 handed swords have been buffed to compensate for the sturdiness of steel armors
Reduced handle tracer size of most weapons with handle tracers
Increase Pollax alt mode damge to plate armors
Reduced health of some building pieces to combat honeycombing
Retuned Arrow damage to be lower overall
Ranged weapons and Shields have tool tips that show their stats
Added Preset buttons to the Armor crafting menu to craft a full armor set (Leather, Brigandine, Plate)
Knockback is now ignored when parrying multiple opponents at the same time
Tweaked resource spawn rates in the Raid map to spread the resources out more evenly rather than the vast majority being in the center area
Resources nodes that havent been mined now despawn later
Fixed Deers spawning inside damage zones for the Red team
The center High yield nodes in the Raid map now do not spawn until Gathering Phase ends
Added a no Build zone in the center area to prevent people from building outposts there and claiming every resource node trivially
Added a no build zone in the sky to prevent extremely tall buildings
Fixed some rocks not being mineable
Added the ability for admins to change the amount of teams in a match and add additional spawns for different teams
Fixed the team UI banners using the wrong material
Fixed Freelook neck blending
Added a 50% damage resistance to all projectiles when parry is active
Door autoclosing can now be toggled off
Autoclosing doors wont close while the base is under attack
Doors can now no longer open when they are under attack
Portcullis had their HP lowered
Ladders had their HP increased
Stakes now deal more damage and more reliably
Added a Wheelbarrow icon
Added Icon to Stakes
Added a Brazier
Siege weapons now take full damage from Siege damage (Catapults can now shoot and kill each other effectively)
Improved the Patch notes menu

0.7.9.1

Fixed vehicles breaking movement replication
Tweaked shield hold block angles
Reduced Parry angle
Fixed stone amouns on stone croppings
Fixed roof sockets
Fixed preview building blocking upgrade traces
Mail Hauberk is now 1:1 sized
Tweaked armor costs to make it easier to bulk craft
Increased Katzbalger damage slightly
Increased Mace damage slightly
Increased Waraxe damage slightly
Bows now only go on the primary slot
Quivers only go on secondary slot
Resource bag only goes on secondary slot
Bandages can now be placed on the toolbelt
Wall torches are cheaper
Cloth and Leather craft faster now
Cloth is cheaper to craft
Rebalanced fuel and charcoal costs
Fixed resource bag not dropping properly
Increased resource bag size
Fixed Icon scaling
Fixed Icon scaling when rotated
Armor can no longer be repaired if it falls below 33% durability
Added Battering Ram recipe
Added many missing icons
Bow Draw strength has a penalty on high encumberance (Slower projectiles, less damage)
Added Steel tools
Removed Unused keybinds
Improved Roof placement
Fixed issues with triangle floors
Fixed up window directions
Fixed issues with invisible resources nodes
Improved some Emote anims
Added noise that scares deer away to arrow impacts
Improved deer AI
Fixed damage resistances on buildings
Fixed ladder dropping a full mesh
Fixed command wheel opening while chatting
Added starting beds to raid map banners
Swapped context menu options for banners
Reduced Maul damage
Reduced Stakes cost
Fixed some repair costs on buildings
Tweaked Steel weapon costs
Reduced Iron Hoe cost
Added Primitive arrows for Shortbow
Fixed lock position on Gate
Beds now require a floor and banner
Fixed warmup spawns
Players now recieve a notification when they can't build while under siege that shows the time remaining
Fixed a bug causing raid mode to never end
Endgame screen shows proper winner now
Fixed flying bug
Rewrote Bed spawning system
Fixed Pillars not working well with Walls and Floors
Fixed Ladder volumes being hit by melee attacks
Fixed boulders persisting
Fixed Plant fiber cluster spawning in the same location as other Plant fibers
Added Wheelbarrow for mobile storage
Tweaked Raid time added from damage
Scaffolds now have 1 HP

Hello everyone

Firstly, wed like to apologize for the absence of our regular dev updates in recent months. I want to assure everyone this is not a reflection on the teams efforts over this period.

Progress on development has been moving rapidly, so much so that when iv gone to write an update for you, there is already new topics to discuss. This all said as we grow closer to the initial raid mode, we hope to have the time and media to provide better insight going forward.

As always, a huge thank you to our amazing backers, and the wider community as a whole. We literally couldnt do it without you, and your support is a constant reminder that were on the right track. Likewise, a huge thank you to our awesome mod team here on discord for all the same reasons.

Ive written a Brief explainer/recap of what our daily work has been since OTK/Next Fest.

Likewise given weve got a lot to discuss. As such to avoid long drawn-out essays, well be attempting to bring back our weekly, or fortnightly updates.

Currently weve got an interview with ItsMoxie regarding our new Bandit and Animal AI. Kz and Mr.Z have attempting to tackle the animation problem themselves. Likewise, Delta has been doing some great stuff with External Fortress walls, Battlement attachments, and destruction meshes. Stay tuned in the coming weeks for these updates, and related art/media.

For this post, Mr.Z has written us a nice quick section regarding his recent exploits in archery/ranged combat development.

Dev Recap since OTK/Next Fest Expo

TL:DR Weve been carefully integrating survival elements for months, creating new maps and biomes. Weve had several internal tests which have been awesome fun, but theres still a lot to be done.

Full As folks might be aware, we had a great run after the OTK Games Expo, and Steam Next Fest. The results of this have been great for our marketing, and ongoing crowdfunding. That said were still only a small team, and we need to work within a scope we can manage.

In effect this means weve been selecting specific elements of survival gaming which we then prototype, implement, and then balance these elements to create the survival/combat experience that is our vision.

As an example, weve been running regular internal tests of the Initial Survival Build. If you looked at it from the outside, it has all the bells and whistles of a prototype for our full game. Players can currently: Harvest/Farm, Create Keeps with a verity of building pieces, Progress in technology via upgradable workbenches, Place beds for respawns, Hunt working AI deer and even engage in the first implementation of raiding.

However, it must be clear, on inside there is still much work to be done. The most prevalent ongoing activity is pure balancing. This includes everything from how much the first swords should cost, to how many hits of a battering ram should take down a door/wall.

Another factor to consider as we add new layers, (Archery for instance) it drastically changes the way the game is played, from how players act in the world to how bases are designed. Were basically attempted to layer these on as quickly as possible, while still adhering to the level of quality we like to aim for.

In this way were making really good progress towards our end goal. If we can keep going as weve been doing so, before to long (hard dates not being easy to predict), well reach a point where every layer has been implemented, and we can do a last balance pass before launching the raid mode to our backers.

That said i should remind folks that this is a slow process, and weve got a thing for quality. We cant wait to get the wider community to be playing and testing the initial raid mode, however well be doing our best to release it when we feel its ready.



Archery

Salutations Renowners, Mr. Z speaking! Over the past few months Archery mechanics have begun their first implementation. The goal of archery in Renown is to be a useful supplement to melee combat without becoming the dominant form of combat. We do not want the game to devolve into a shooter with every man bringing a projectile weapon to the fight, the focus of this game is melee combat first and foremost. That being said, Archery is meant to be a playstyle that allows people who are newer and less experienced at melee combat to be able to be useful in PvP without as much effort.

Archery has many uses, not just limited to PvP as hunting down deers with a bow is much easier than trying to run up to them with a sword in hand. There are 2 types of arrows, Bodkins (Anti Armor) and Broadheads (High Damage and Bleeding) points. The bows have many quirks such as how strongly they affect aiming difficulty, movement speed, firing rate, etc. One somewhat hidden mechanic is called Encumbrance. Encumbrance is when your equipped armor affects a lot of Bow mechanics such as how much Stamina is drained by aiming with the Bow and movement speeds with bows as well as difficulty to aim. Ideally for easier aim, one should desire to have a minimal loadout just including some gambeson and a helmet to avoid any Encumbrance penalties. Additionally using a Bow requires a quiver which takes up a primary weapon slot, same as the bow, so effectively one cannot use large 2 handed weapons while using a bow. I feel this is a good enough downside that archers are not expected to dominate in melee given the relative lesser power of one handed weapons compared to 2 handed weapons.

One thing to take special note of is that Bows do not use a random cone of fire mechanic for aiming, the arrow is always pointing where it will travel, aim difficulty comes from how hard the camera shakes while aiming. Another very important mechanic is deflection chances, good armors such as plate armors have a high chance to deflect Arrows which massively reduces damage taken, the deflection chance is also stronger the farther the projectiles have traveled so a smart Longbowman will want to prioritize shooting enemies at distances close enough that its possible to be threatened by melee opponents closing the distance. One should take special care to use armors in good condition as deflection chances drop the lower armor durability gets, that rusty plate of armor isnt going to be a strong defense against a good archer.





Additionally, there have been new bows added, namely the Shortbow and the Warbow. The Shortbow is the first Bow you can craft, as such it is the weakest of them all, however they are also the fastest firing and have the least penalties to movement and aiming. The Warbow on the other hand, is the slowest of the bows, the most damaging and longest ranging, it also has the least chance of having a deflection. However its Stamina requirements are absolutely massive and it would be a bad idea to get caught in close quarters with it.

Another new development is the return of Throwing weapons. In the past I experimented with allowing players to throw any weapon of their choosing. This proved to be a mistake as people chucking Zweihanders at incredible velocities which seemed very wrong. It also led to a lot of melee engagements being decided by a spontaneous weapon throw from one of the parties, which was hardly sportsmanlike. Given this, a complete rework of throwing was due, and now only specific dedicated throwing weapons are able to be used.

We now have 3 types of throwing weapons: Throwing Axes, Throwing Knifes, Javelins, and in the future different kinds of medieval grenades. These weapons are able to be made early on in the tech progression and are a good supplement for a powerful 2 handed primary weapon or can even be used with a shield in hand. They are very useful for killing players who are running away or dealing damage before a melee engagement. Thrown weapons can be parried however so anyone ready for them is unlikely to be hit by them.

Given that the ranged combat has received so many new additions, it was also time to overhaul the Shield blocking mechanics. Shields now can block projectiles using their hitboxes rather than just giving complete immunity to ranged attacks in the past. More importantly, its now possible for Shields to block Projectiles passively, even when they are on your back or the side of your horse.

As always folks, thank you very much for your ongoing support and enthusiasm. Well hopefully have the next update out next week with either itMoxie on bandit and animal Ai, or Kz/Mr.Zs animation progress. Let us know in the discussion channel what youd rather see.
Till next time

Ashur

0.6.8.3

Tuned Footstep sound attenuation
Loadouts are better Sanitized now
Fixed issues with crouching while sprinting
Fixed Bear overthrow skin
Added Archer and Crossbowman Loadouts
Fixed Crossbow quiver
Fixed Crossbow aiming and projectile velocity
Increased Grossmesser Combo and Windup durations

0.6.7.9

Belt can store items
Added Iron Hoe
Quiver Ammo fixes
Increased Arrow hitbox size
Fixed Arrow trajectory being too high
Added Broadhead arrows
Added the ability to toggle different arrow types (Altmode Key)
Added new Emote
Increased chase mechanic time
Fixed crouch speed bug
Players dont disappear on disconnect now
Fixed up bow handling of Ammo
Added animations to the longbow mesh
Fixed arrow orientation
Lowered Intro music volume
Added sockets for Bandages carried in equipment slots
Added Bandaging animation
Fixed equipping bastard sword while in altmode with a Shield

0.6.7.6

Reduced Bash windup
Lowered Fists and Tools damages
Added Longer feint cooldown on consecutive feints
Fixed some issues with Stagger
Reduced Kick range
Increased Base walk speed
Increased Stamina miss cost across the board
Removed hidden platform on Grove
Fixed up Collision issues with the Bow

Fixed Projectile Collisions
Removed damage on weapons from hitting the world
Fixed not being able to drop quivers
Added more Damage textures to Helmets
Fixed Bandages
Fixed weapon model not disappearing on Death
Fixed being able to gather resources with Kicks
Encumberance Mechanic for Ranged weapons (heavier armor and weapons make using bows harder)
Encumberance increases stamina drain for bows
Bow draw is cancelled when Stamina runs out
Arrow properly gets destroyed when switching out of bows
Fixed Combo into Parry timings
Fixed up Archery anim replication
Fixed up Parry Morph bug
Fixed Crouching Speed
Fixed Shield Model durability checking
Increased turnspeed while kicking and increased recovery time
Changed Action bar to Show item icons

We're proud to say we've received over 100,000+ wishlists, and we really wouldn't have made it this far without our wonderful community and our supporters.

A huge thanks to all of you who have supported us this far, and we can't wait to continue sharing this journey with all of you.

Mr. Z here, to give everyone an update over what has happened recently. Almost immediately after the OTK expo where we won first place, we released an open Demo of the Combat Alpha for anyone to play. During the demo we saw tens of thousands of people play the game, give feedback, and spread the word about Renown. Things went much better than expected and we have the deepest thanks to all our backers who have helped and promoted the game to get this far.


We found many bugs as a result of the massive amount of new people playing the game, and throughout the last few months we've been fixing a lot of stability problems that were discovered. We have been splitting our development time between bug fixing, balancing combat, adding new features and working quietly on Raid mode.

As some may have noticed in the patch notes, there are sometimes things in there that seem related to Raid mode. This is because over the last month we've been mostly developing Raid mode and Survival mechanics now that the Combat Alpha has more or less reached its conclusion. We've been making very steady progress on Raid, as a Developer I can say that I've never been more relieved to see the game's core gameplay mechanics all working together harmoniously. Every week ItsMoxie and I have been playtesting Raid mode internally and discovering all sorts of bugs and tweaks to do, at the start we've been walking away from a test with an average of 50 tasks to care of and the number keeps getting smaller each week. We've been making a lot of progress on Raid and we want to make absolutely sure that the gameplay loop is as fun and bug free as we can, even in this early state it is in.

There were 3 other major additions to Renown during this time as well. Shield Destruction, Armor Destruction, and Archery. It is too much to go over in one Blog post so I will be discussing Archery next blog.

Shield Destruction mechanics were added recently with some expert modeling and texturing from KZ. The Shield models actually update as they are taking damage, with their textures and models changing, and they get especially destroyed with weapons like Axes. When a Shield is fully destroyed this causes the player to get staggered, this should help keep people playing overly defensive with Shields at a disadvantage.



Programming the Armor Destruction mechanics was fairly simple to add shortly afterwards. It became clear to us that our old Rendering system for Armor damage did not sufficiently convey damage details to players. As such, KZ spent many weeks authoring all the new textures as the process of making these impressive damage details is no trivial task at all, many models required a lot of reworks and improvements and attention to detail it takes to do this was nothing short of impressive. The results speak for themselves, with these new details we can say confidently that Renown has something many other games wish they would have.




The look of the armors has been designed so that someone can quite quickly see whether an armor piece is damaged or not and have a good idea of how damaged it is. When an armor has lost enough durability, its stats start to become less effective, when this happens is also when the first damage textures are blended in so there is a very clear connection between the artwork of the game and gameplay consequences.

Combat has also received many refinements since the Demo. Many balance changes were made, the movement system was redone, Parrying and Flinching was made more consistent, Kicks were reworked, the Swing manipulation was reworked, and there have also been improvements to 1vX combat.

0.6.7.1

Added Ping Compensation to Bows
Increased Arrow Damage
Added Arrow Trails
Fixed Arrow Collisions
You can no longer sprint with a Bow Drawn
Your movement is slower with a Bow Drawn
Removed Flinch from Projectiles
Fixed Arrow Canceling
Ranged Weapon users can now be Flinched out of their Draws
Added Stamina Drain while Drawn with a Ranged weapon
Added Sockets for Bow on the Back
Fixed Archery animations not blending correctly in Third person
Reduced Cone of Fire with Bows
Added Broadhead Arrows

0.6.7.0

Tier 2 Damage textures
Fixed Armor Damage mask not blending correctly
Doubled Iron Tool durability
Moved Notification Widget so it doesn't block the Compass
Increased Turn Speed for Parries
Fixed Shields not always showing up when equipped
Increased Tier 1 Damage Resistances
Added Toggle for Auto Balance (Admins)
Swaped around order of Weapon Slots to Left to Right
Peasant Damage Textures added
Added Ammo Counter
Fixed Shields on Back showing up broken
Shields Block projectiles
Added Longbows
Added Quiver
Added Bodkin Arrows

0.6.6.1

Lowered Stamina Regen Penalty from wearing weapons and armor
Reduced model sway from turning while doing attacks
Fixed attack anims not working if a player fought for too long
Removed Wallrunning exploit

0.6.6.0

Fixed issues with Servers Expiring from Server Browser
You can no longer Crouch while in the Inventory
Added more Quick Hotkeys for Inventory Management (Holding Ctrl or Alt while clicking items)
Added a Server Name filter
Fixed Zweihander being equippable on Sidearm slots
Quick equipping Sidearms prefers Sidearm slots
Added new Damage Textures for T3 Armors
Changed Running movement to rubberband less
Fixed shields sometimes being visible on your back in first person mode
Reduced Active Parry window
Fixed Shovels and Long Knife
Added AFK timeout to for players
Base Damage is now shown in the Damage log
Slightly increased Grossmesser damage
Increased Pollaxe Stab damage
Reduced Release timings on some weapons that had overpowered Drags
Reworked the Turncap to be more reliable and consistent
Lowered how high you can aim attacks
Parrybox extends further now

0.6.5.3

Moved Debug options to separate menu
New Pauldrons model
Fixed Rondel Damage windups
Increased Parry compensation
Increased Greatsword damage
Increased Double Axe overhead damage
Added WIP kick checking
Fixed Mail coif clipping issues
Changed Greataxe anims to kick from right side
Fixed Character head material sometimes breaking
Fixed some server timing out issues
Increased Turnspeeds with Overheads and Stabs

0.6.5.2

Fixed issues with Servers crashing
Added Colleoni emblem
Turncap Interpolates better between Idle and Attacking
Fixed Frying Pan locomotion anims
Improved Armor optimization
Held Block with Shields now prevents Running at full speed
Increased Durability of Peasant clothes
Buffed Zweihander and Grossmesser stats
Fixed Messer broken overhead animation
Removed Altmode from Training Sword
Increased Longsword Combo times
Bash Tracers are less wide now
Preview Map Camera works better now
Falling Damage works correctly now
Increased Morning Star Damage
Reduced Attack Lunge while in the air
Added Stamina gain on repeated parries
Fixed Server browser Server listings having clickable elements
Made Battle Axe short alt mode less short
Increased attack lockout on Kicks
Increased Kick Recovery time by 25 ms
Fixed not being able to combo without Stamina from a hit
Fixed Alt mode handling
Darkened Item backgrounds in the Inventory grid
Fixed Flat Helmet clipping issues
Rebalanced most weapons to have more consistent stats, ability to drag, morph, turncap
Reduced ability to turn heavily with horizontal slashes

0.6.5.1

Loot bags are now destroyed instantly when emptied
Fixed dropped weapons appearing destroyed sometimes
Fixed Frying Pan anims
Fixed Melee World Hits
Sped up Morph anims by 10%
Mace Damage increased by 5
Early Release Window on Stabs is longer than other swings now
Fixed Claymore Anims
Armor Rebalanced Damage resistance
Better Armor Layers handling
Fixed up issues with Servers not appearing in the Server Browser
Parry Box size reduced
Added Attack Lockout on Kick Feints for 400 ms
Added a W.I.P. UI element for seeing how well Armor protects all your Character's Hit Zones (Useful to see how armor layering affects damage resistances)
Fixed Inventory Icon scaling issues
Fixed Training Swords

0.6.5.0

Fixed Auto Balance handling
Fixed Linux not being able to launch the game natively
Active Parry duration reduced by 100 ms
Parry lockout increased by 25 ms
Increased morph window by 20%
Parry window reduced by 25 ms
Riposte window reduced by 50 ms
Fixed Houndskul tinting
Fixed Breastplate model issues
Reduced Shield Durabilities
Increased Maul Stamina miss cost
Texture optimization
Changed up how Ripostes are handled
Shield can no longer attack from a block unless its a Riposte
Attacking from a Parry (without a Riposte) has a 100 ms delay
Increased Attack from Parry cost from 5 -> 10
Players have more mobility while Kicking now
Back Pedaling with a Shield is slower when holding a block
Removed a Parry into Attack exploit
You can no longer deal damage while Flinched
Tweaked Release timings of most weapons to be longer
Tweaked Stamina drain values to be lower on the strongest weapons
Longsword combo times are longer
Reduced Pavise Shield size
Fixed not being able to Parry backswings
Fixed Early Release tracers not working
Added a God Mode to Admins
Durability Damage to Armors is now spread out evenly between all layers that were hit
Armor Damage Resistance is now Calculated more accurately taking into account the Durability of all Armors that were hit, this could lead to situations where your shirt could get destroyed before your plate armor
Fixed up Emblem textures
Added a Camera Offset setting so you can have a wider perspective in First Person without needing to increase your Field of View
Added all the Quick Slot keys to the Input settings menu
Fixed up First Person view with some Emote animations
Overhauled the Emote Menu visuals
Fixed Interaction aiming in Third Person
Added a Hit Indicator
Changed Player Marker texture
Added new Emotes
Added a Camera Perspective Toggle
Fixed Emotes not respecting player aim Pitch

Heads up, the Demo will be going down on the 30th, thanks again for playing the demo, We hope you all have enjoyed it. And especially a big thank you to everyone that gave us feedback on the demo, its been absolutely invaluable and is being used to improve the game in many areas going forward.

The next big milestone in the future will be the first build of our Raid gamemode, which is designed as a test for many mechanics from our survival mode (building, crafting, hunting, gathering, sieging) but in a faster paced, team based, capture the enemy castle, type of context. Stay tuned for more announcements on that in the near future.

If you'd like to continue playing and getting all the future patches, you can back the game with the loyal supporter tier at https://playrenown.com/

Welcome to the Renown Question and Answer Session with the Renown Developers.

We're fielding questions on our discord: https://discord.gg/Tr2DxFh
We might also take questions on the day from chat.

We hope you enjoy, and thank you to our community for all the support

Welcome to the Renown Question and Answer Session with the Renown Developers.

We're fielding questions on our discord: https://discord.gg/Tr2DxFh
We might also take questions on the day from chat.

We hope you enjoy, and thank you to our community for all the support

Hey everyone!

We were completely blown away with all the support we received during and after the event. These last couple of days the team has been completely at a loss of words and we've been so thankful to be a part of the event. It means the world to us, we're so thankful for the opportunity to be shown at the OTK event, and thank you to everyone who voted for us!

To those who didn't make it to the event but would have liked to see our portion, here's a mashup video:

0.6.4.3

Fixed issues with Voting
Voting cooldown added
Fixed an issue where the UI would bug out when you join a game
Fixed issues with Spawning in LTS
Added a leave server message in Chat
Added a message for when admins log in
Updated Player Markers
Less aggressive Turp interpolation after attacks end
Horizontal Slashes have a tighter Turncap now

0.6.4.0

Added New Beards and Hairs
Added Shield Damage effects
Improved Female armor models
Team Damage does Negative Score now
Kills award 15 stamina instead of 5 from hits
New Peaceful mode Anim for Shields
Tools have proper animation sets now
Tweaked Shortsword locomotion animations
Equipping a shield now tries to Equip a Melee weapon with it as well
Fixed Gamemode and Scoreboard menus not always closing
Added Autoscramble to LTS mode
Restricted horizontal Slash turn caps further
Turncap mechanic now calculates more consistently
Added Greataxe altmode transitions
Updated Inventory UI
Removed grass under floors of Vestibule
Fixed up Spectator features
Items on back now reflect their durability levels
Improved Shortsword running animations
Fixed issue with servers not properly restarting
Added Weapon destruction mechanics, they now properly drop on the ground once destroyed with a unique destroyed model

So weve got a couple of interesting updates for you folks over the next few days.

Firstly and before you get your hopes up, weve been working extremely hard to get our initial raid mode all finalized, however it's not quite ready yet. Feature wise were very close but we want to try to polish and squash as many bugs as possible first. Well be putting out a detailed update on our plans for this process in the next few weeks.

What I am super excited to announce is that weve been selected to take part in the OTK Games Expo. For those who don't know this is a new indie game expo hosted on Streamer Asmongolds channel, joined by several other popular streamers.

Apparently hundreds of games applied, and weve been selected as one of the 30 picks.

As such weve got a brand new trailer to look forward to. Likewise our CEO Delta will be doing a Live Interview on stream.

We really hope youll like the trailer and interview but we also need to ask a favor of you kind folks. The Expo has a $50,000 USD prize selected by votes in chat. Its on june 8th at 11 am PT 1pm CT 2pm ET. If you'd like to see updates their twitter is https://twitter.com/OTKGamesExpo.

If youre able to attend on http://twitch.tv/Asmongold and help represent Renown, wed be hugely grateful.


Ultimately were very proud that weve been selected at all (which you've already helped us with greatly), and hopefully this is a great opportunity for some new folks to see the game regardless. That said if we can win, itll be a huge booster to the team right now.

Well be posting our next big piece of news on the same day so stay tuned.

Again thank you so much to our awesome community.

Till next time.

0.6.3.9

Fixes LTS not showing correct player counts
New Server backend
New End of game Screen
Fixed normal maps on underwear
Character morph target fixes
New Longsword Locomotion animations
Shields hide during Emotes
Fixed Shield Turncap
Fixed weapons back not always rendering
Added Shield Destruction
Added Vote Kick UI
Added new Beards
Added new Hairs
Increased Stagger Duration to 2.2
Quick looting by holding Ctrl and Clicking items
Fixed Weapon anim references
Nerfed T4 helmet
Fixed Stagger animation

0.6.3.1

New Inventory Icons
Improved movement replication
Increased Streaming Pool defaults
Updated the Main Menu
Increased VOIP volume
Fixed Items on back not rendering sometimes
Updated the Texture for the Damage Indicator
Added new Texture for taking Damage on screen
Tweaked Server Browser
You can now Toggle Markers with L (On, Friends only, Off)
Many art fixes with armor clipping
Fixed Gamemode Timers showing incorrect time
Fixed items showing as broken when they weren't supposed to have any durability
Fixed suicide button not working
Backspace now cancels key rebinding inputs
Players now get kicked off their vehicle when it gets destroyed
Added Player Avatars to Markers
Added Global VOIP
Updated One Hander anim Locomotion
Added new 3rd person running anims for one handers
Fixed shield hold block not always working
New shield locomotion anims
Team selection buttons work more reliably now
New Team selection menu
Improved Blood Spatters
Added Blood pool on Death
Added new particle effects for hitting different materials
Fixed Eyes being hidden at the wrong time sometimes
Fixed Head material not recieving decals
Added First person vehicle support
Fixed issues with Spectating
Changed the Team colors slightly

0.6.2.4

Increased Shield HP
Reduced Handle tracer size for Greatsword and Zweihander
Fixed Deathscreen not showing proper Weapon names
Added Enemy Ping to Deathscreen
Hosen protects Feet now
Reduced Max Rotation with Slashes
Reduced Parry Window by 25 ms
Healing Wells now have Compass Markers
Teammate Indicators are Yellow for Teammates now
Extended Parrybox is smaller now
Improved Movement prediction reliability
Shield on back now properly hides when you equip it
Fixed Emote menu persisting sometimes after death
Fixed Stamina sometimes not regenerating
Fixed Duplicate Entries in Loadout menu
Fixed Input being defaulted constantly
Reduced Release timings of many weapons
Increased Time limit on Training map
Improved player spawning logic to be more optimized and reliable
LTS now properly gets rid of Lootbags between rounds
Ping compensation now averages between attacker and defender
Early Release window for Bashes and Kicks is now the old value
Fixed issue with Always Run sprint handling
Parrylockout is now skipped while Flinched
Fixed up VOIP connection issues

0.6.2.3

Improved Extended Parrybox collision handling
Fixed not being able to see Shields that were dropped on the ground
Fixed Shields not working correctly after being destroyed
Admins using Admin commands now lets players know in the Chatbox
Fixed issues with changing teams
Added Autobalance to Team Modes
Increased Bash damage with Fists
Estoc damage slightly increased
Reduced Parry lockout from Parry recovery
Updated Vestibule map to be larger, and supports Team Modes now
Fixed exiting Catapults causing input problems
Last Round of LTS no longer spawns players after it ends
Fixed First Person Crouch Camera orienting incorrectly
Added more player spawns to some maps
Attack Cooldown after feinting is longer after a Kick feint
Fixed Crouching with a Shield playing the wrong animation
Handle hit detecton is now more forgiving
Tuned Alt Morph timings
Fixed and issue with the Kick collisions coming from the wrong leg
Boots Reduce falling damage now
Added Bonus Fist damage based on Gauntlets worn
Bloodied weapons are now more visibile
NPCs now despawn after some time
Servers no longer crash when NPCs die
Fixed clans not registering properly
Fixed issues with Escaping from the Main Menu
Improved Main Menu handling
Fixed an issue with Dead Players not dropping Weapons correctly

Hello everyone!

As always id like to express our teams thanks and gratitude to our amazing supporters and community here on discord. Likewise a big shout out to the moderation team here as always.

Firstly on behalf of the team I'd like to apologize that its been a good while since our last update. While weve still kept working hard, basically everyone on the team has gotten sick in waves over the last month and a bit. That said were pretty much all back to fighting strength, and weve still kept up regular meetings, and work, while still getting in some good rest and recovery in.

On that note, I'm happy to announce were very close to our next Combat Hotfix. Our testers having been giving us some amazing feedback, and provided some great bug reports with replication videos/data. Id just like to say thank you again for anyone who's keen actively assisting in this process.
Were just waiting to do some final internal testing then well be pushing it live. Mr.Z will be putting out a full patch notes for our Testers to see whats specifically changed.

Likewise iv got our regular Mini-update for you. Given its several weeks of work put together the name might not be so accurate anymore. Apologies for any overlapping of tasks, weve done our best to make sure its succinct as possible. Lets crack into it;

Mr. Z

Released the Major Combat Patch
Fixed a bug where the HUD would be spawned twice when the map would restart
Fixed Default Loadouts having wrong Tiling values on the patterns
Added Blood Effects to the Body
Fixed Short Spear locomotion animations
Added Pollax Alt Mode where you flip the weapon and deal blunt damage
Fixed a bug where you could attack out of a parry and parry again unintentionally
Fixed an issue where the jump animation would loop forever instead of landing
Fixed Always Run Toggle not increasing sprint speed
Added Hair Tags for hiding/swapping the hair in certain situations with helmets equipped
Added Hair under Helmets support
Patch QA testing
Added Dedicated server beta branch
Added Linux Client build
Active Parry window is now based on the windup of that attack
Fixed Emote menu not closing when the player died
Added alt modes for certain weapons where you hold it shorter to make handle hits less likely and fight better in close quarters with polearms
Fixed a bug where draining stamina would not happening when you hit the ground
Fixed Shields not showing up on the Inventory Screen
Lowered Polearm Knockback
Upped Mordhau grip damage on Longsword
Fixed Parrying with the Maul in alt mode
Fixed Server Browser resolution scaling
Fixed Parry into Attack allowing you to Parry twice
Change Handle Hit to do damage based on Weapon Type as a Flat value
Attack Lockout is now shorter with Handle Hits
Slightly Increased Movement Speed
Increased Bash Recovery window
Reduced Turncap when Parrying
Removed Turncap while in Idle
Added New Emblems
Made sure Crouch takes priority when Always Run is True
Fixed bug with Exiting Vehicles breaking Melee inputs
TDM and LTS variants to Vestibule
Added support for Banners with customizable patterns
Fixed Siege Tower Physics asset
Melee combat balance Playtesting
Additional Melee Balancing
Fixed Battering Ram
Reduced Parry Lockout on missed parries
Buffed Estoc damage
Added Auto Balance to Team Modes
Admin Actions show up as Messages on the Chat Log
Fixed Shields not breaking properly
Fixed an issue with Longsword Mordhau grip altmode where it was not dealing correct damage


Todo:
Finish Hotfix patch
Implement Weapon Destruction
Hand Battering Ram mechanics
Archery
Throwing
Tech Tree

Moxie

Fixed Equipment spawns in LTS again
Fixed LTS spawning issues
Fixed issues with switching loadouts
Fixed inventory bugs after map switched
Fixed Weapon Dropping
Added Game Phase feedback on HUD for Scoreboards
Added LTS grace period after spawning in
Scoreboards get reset after warmup ends
Held Weapons drop on death now
Dropped Items despawn faster on combat gamemodes
Updated gamephase UI
Fixed LTS healthbars when no one was alive
Fixed Killbot not spawning with any Gear
Fixed Bug with the Team HUD not updating Player counts
Fixed Dead Players persisting their bodies sometimes
Interaction traces are more accurate now
LTS spawning is more reliable now between rounds
Fixed dead player Lootbag was spawning with not enough slots
Fixed bug First Hit kills on the Death Screen not working correctly
Fixed Death Screen not showing correct HP/Stamina values of Killer
Fixed Death Screen showing up when you get respawned in LTS
LTS now pauses if no one is on the second team
LTS team health bars no longer reset after round end, added a grace period added so you can see it before the new round begins
Fixed FFA scoreboards being offcentered
TDM Kills needed for Team to win now shows on the scoreboard
New Tooltip for Scoreboard that shows a players Team Damage for spotting griefers
Players Joining LTS game in progress, now properly join Spectate
Spectating new player when target dies
Assist Kill Logic added
Score system tweaks
Improved Kill Feed Dialogue for Fists
Fixed LTS Spawning issues
Building System improvements
Fixed building pivot points
Fixed Furnitures placement
Fixed Raid team selection menu
Fixed Raid spawning logic
Fixed Raid mode scoreboard logic
Fixed HUD timers
Improved Context Menu
Drop down animation for Siege Tower
Added Tailor Workbench
Shield breaks properly and can be dropped on the ground now
Fixed an issue with Switching teams
Added Battering Ram and Siege Tower to the Siege Engineer building
Siege Engineer spawns Vehicles in the world now when it finishes producing them
Added functional Doors to Siege Tower that can be opened and closed
Added Base Banners
Healing Well fixes Shield Durability now
Changed LTS rounds limit to 10 from 7
QA testing


Todo:
Processor Bench
Siege Engineer building improvement
Loot spawning in Crates
Additional Raid mode mechanics

Delta

Video editing
Audio editing for the video
Small Raid map preproduction
Updated the playrenown website with new screenshots
Fixed the banner
Designed part of the tech tree
Gifs for Indiegogo art update
New Raid map
Added Loot zones
Added Building Scaffolding models
Added External wall models
Destructed models for many building models
Added Collision Models for buildings
Updated Vestibule Map to be larger
Raid Map improvements
Working on Building System
Updating Steam Page
Improving Building Models


Todo:
External Walls Models
Tech Tree

KZ

Cloth physics fixes
Fixed Hair clipping issues
Added Hair under helmet
New Horse model, fully rigged
Tier 1, Tier 0 , Tier 2 horse armors - Tier 3 to do, skin support later
Hair Tags for helmet short hair variants
Model skinning bug fixes
Added new Breastplate Skin, is now the new default
Hand Battering Ram Anims
Added Puffy shoulders Gambeson skin
Added Building Scaffolding models
Added new Weapon Destruction Models
Added Keep Banner models
Added Levers for Siege Towers for dropping doors
Added Torches to Vestibule dark areas
Updating Steam Page and artwork
Work on building system
Added blood masks to all weapons

Volker

Twitter and Instagram posts for the previous Dev Blog
Lots of Customer Support Tickets
Running community Play Tests

As always folks I'd just like to say thank you again and till next time.

Ashur

0.6.1.4

Fixed Action bar not showing Shields and their durabilities
Fixed hitting the ground not draining stamina
Added Short hold Altmodes to many of the 2 handed axes
Active Parry duration is now based on swing windup duration
Added new Fist Parry sounds
Added Reverb to SFX
Added Hair variants for when wearing helmets
Added Pollax alt mode with blunt side
Added a Delete Prompt when Deleting Loadouts
Fixed Emote Menu switching weapons
Fixed Armor Morph Target LODs
Loadout Menus redesigned
New Death Screen that shows combat stats
Fixed Active Parry
Polearm animation set, new weapons; Halberd, Polehammer, Billhook, Bardiche
Fixed many clipping issues with armors
Stamina Regen starts later now
Added new Longsword Locomotion animations
New Scoreboard
Increased Kick Recovery time
Decreased Knockback on large weapons
Increased Attack Lockout after being Parried
Increased Knockback
Improved Knockback code
New Main Menu
Added Leather Tinting for Armor Customization
Added Nudity Toggle
Weapons and Armor can now be Dropped and Picked up
Reduced Waraxe Release timings by 25 ms
Added damage impacts to player model
Improved player capsule collision handling
Weapons and Armor now get destroyed when they run out of durability
Greataxe animation set, added new weapons; Doubleaxe, Battleaxe, Maul, Grand Mace, Pollax, Scythe
Added Dodge Ability
Tweaked melee attack direction input handling
Fixed kicks not getting pitch applied to them
Disabled Weapon throwing
Fixed Shields
Team colored underwear
Dropped armors now have a new model while on the ground
Added new Interactive crosshair that shows parry duration and parry recovery, it can swap the crosshair texture and have its scale tweaked
Increased Parry Lockout time
Tweaked turncap limits to be less restrictive with most weapons
Added Player markers that display team status/friend status/friend
Feint to Parry is now enabled by default
Shields now show team color in team modes
Certain weapons deal bonus damage to shields and armor
New Melee swing trail particle on weapons
Slowed down one handed weapon combo timings
Added Handle hits to weapons with long shafts, handle hits deal less damage and flinch for longer
Added Hit stop on teammates (still deals full damage)
Improved Knockback on Slopes
Tweaked maximum allowed rotation during swings to make landing overheads easier
Added AltMode to Polearms where you hold it closer to make Handle Hits less likely
Added Inventory screen (Tab)
Equipment now has a durability bar in the Inventory
Improved player hit boxes for better melee collision
You can now Parry out of a Riposte
Axes deal bonus damage to shields
AI fixes
Added Camera shake on world hits
Added new Default Loadouts
Added Mordhau grip AltMode to certain weapons, changes damage to be more effective against Armor
Added Tattoo support
Fixed Fists not equipping if player had no weapons
Fixed Shield equip handling
Added Always Run Toggle
Added Metal bracers to Plate Gauntlets
Added Training Sword
Added indication for when a Shield does a Block or a Parry (Blocks take more durability damage and cost more stamina)
Changed some of the character preview idles
Added new Customization Patterns
Pattern Customization now supports non-uniform tiling
Improved Pattern editing menu
Spectator FOV now matches FOV settings
Added Damage taken direction Indicator
Fixed Emblems textures
Increased Bash Distances
Shirts now protect the hand hitbox
Added Moss level
Added Vestibule level
Added Ruins level

Hello everyone!

As always a huge thanks to our amazing Backers, our great community here on discord, and our awesome moderation team.

I've got our regular dev update for your reading. That said I thought explain first a little about what our current plans are regarding our next patch, and our movement towards the Initial Raid Module.

If youve been keeping up with our updates, you might have read between the lines that weve been doing a lot of survival development alongside the ongoing combat system work.

Effectively were attempting to combine the two, so that any bugs can be addressed early and more importantly we can figure out how to best optimize the game as we scale up into a larger world.

Our backers may have also noticed we haven't put out a patch in since the holidays. Weve got a big Combat Patch on the way, and there is a very long list of patch notes for you folks that well be dropping soon.

Long story short, were focusing on building up the background systems needed for a survival game, while still working on some fresh combat content for you to enjoy in the meantime.

Likewise well have a Dev Vlog under construction at the moment, which we hope to have on our Discord and Youtube very soon.

Without any further distraction;

Mr. Z

QA
Last Team Standing fixes
Team Deathmatch fixes
Deleted a lot of old models and removed the technical debt
Testing Shield Mechanics
Implemented Moss map with LTS, TDM, FFA variants
Technical Animation improvements
Added Chest morph targets to the Man
Made sure the Characters equip fists on spawn if he has no weapons
Equip other one handed weapons with a shield already equipped
Always Run Toggle
Conducted a private playtest
Fixed the spawns on Vestibule
Fixed TDM round end logic
Fixed Map Camera not working properly
Unequip shields by Equipping the same shield again
Fixed Loadout Bugs
Added Wooden Training Sword
Tweaked Chat Box
Shield Mechanic bug fixes
Reorganization of our task list
Added Non uniform tiling for patterns
Added new Patterns
Fixed Pattern slider not matching
Added a map changing message in Chat
Fixed a Vaulting issue
Added Spectator matches selected FOV
Added Shield Damage from Parries being displayed
Fixed an issue vehicles breaking melee inputs
Added Direction Damage indicator
Fixed Emblems not showing when you select a skin for an armor
Added new Crosshair icon for Parry
Added Streaming Pool setting slider
Fixed Markers showing up incorrect in TDM
Added Greataxe Locomotion Torso animations
Fixed Respawning in LTS
Fixed an issue with Reconnecting breaking the Spawning Logic
Fixed an issue with spawning twice
Game Variable Spawn time
Counter for Respawn time
Fixed Shield Emblems
Fixed Bastard swords being equipped upside down when one handing them
Fixed Map Rotation
Changed how movement axis works for animation blending
Increased Bash Tracers
Added Hand Protection to Shirts

Todo:

3rd Person Polearm movement animations
Fix Issues with Spectating
Finish Tattoo support, Face support
Continue on Gore

ItsMoxie

Testing the patches with all the changes and combat test
Fixing Inventory issues with durability on items
Durability Bar with a number on it
General bug fixing
Added Durability Numbers to Item slots
Color Coded durability bar
Fixed bug with durability bar not updating
Fixed bug with item slots not updating
Removed Decimal numbers
Corpse looting
Scoreboard added to LTS mode
Updated Scoreboard
Fixed Lootbags
Fixed Inventory refreshing issues
Fixed Loadout bug
Fixed Inventory persist on map change
Fixed Clan info on death
Fixed Loadouts overwriting each other
Fixed issue with durability when unequipping
Fixed issue with seeing your own bugged corpse after respawning
Fixed being able to take armors off players and their corpse updating
Added Delete loadout safety check


KZ

Reimported Siege Tower Model
Todo skeleton fixes
Phys asset fix
Fixed workbench pivot
Redid catapult animations
Fixed Catapult wheel visual bug
Tanner and Tailor workbench models finished

Model Fixes
Breastplate armor fixes
Added new customization Patterns, 19 in total
Fixed sabatons
Added Vambracers to Tier 3 Armor
Gambeson customization fixes
Fixed Peasant gloves coloring
Fixed Female bulge
Fixed neck guard on Breastplate
Fixed overthrow rigging
Mail coif no longer pokes through some helmets
Leather Vest doesnt clip with Tabard anymore
Fixed Female mesh
Chain leggings had morph targets added
Fixed Tier 4 helmet clipping issues
Padded Coif remade
Replaced belt with Bags
Added Character morph targets to hide nipples clipping through armor
Fixed Peasant Legs
Fixed Leather Gauntlet Tints
Removed Norse Hosen
Ruined Gloves added
Fixed brigandine belt
Fixed Painted Breastplate
Fixed leg clipping through cuisses
Color pass on Emblems
Fixed Emblems
Fixed belts having pattern problems
Fixed Siege Tower model
Added Hairstyles for underneath helmet
Marketing photos
Updating Steam page artwork

Delta

Siege Engine Render
Shield Renders
Dropped items Renders
Equipping and Picking up sounds Render
Workbench Renders
Updated Vestibule Map
Greenery
Added Couple of Rooms on the side
Gifs and Videos for social media
Retakes
TikTok video
Banners for Videos
Tweaked Moss map vegetation
Unreal meeting
Steam Highlight reel
Recorded renders for blog
Fixed Road model bugs
Added Loadout areas to new maps
New Crosshair Block Icon

Todo:
Voice over for vlog
Get additional combat footage
Tech tree designing

MattGibsonMusic

SFX
Crafting
Inventory
Pickup weapon/items
Hover selects
Menu sounds
Gathering
Tool hits
Plant hits
Stone hits
Catapult
Catapult siege destruction
Projectile hit wood/stone
Projectile wooshing

Todo:
Building Sfx
Handle Hits
Tweak Bows sfx
Javelin sfx
Throwing axe sfx
Shield Destruction sfx
Weapon and Armor break sfx
Death vocal sfx

Volker

Published Mini dev update on steam and reddit
Instagram updates
Sneak Peek posted
Imgur added
Tiktok setup
Moderation
Social Media posting
Imgur
Instagram
Sneak Peek

Till next time folks, and thank you again for the amazing support.

Hello everyone!

As always a massive shout out to our awesome community for your amazing support. Likewise much thanks to our awesome moderation team here on discord.

This is two weeks worth of developer meeting notes so apologies for the multiple discord announcements. To clarify, were currently working towards our next combat patch. Given the time over the holiday break, and a lot of work done, this patch has had a ton of work put into it.

However I must be clear that while were making great progress, were still a little way away from our initial raid simulation modes. We hope to follow this new patch with regularity, leading right to the Raid modules and beyond.
Without further adieu;

Mr. Z
Added indicator when you Stagger from parrying
Capped max Rotation on slash
Kick anim fix with Greataxes
Marker color fixes
Can Shield equip and put away
Survival Item Bug fixing with ItsMoxie
Work on Shield customization
New melee weapon swing trails
Play testing survival mode
Armor and Shield Destruction (Swapping on broken weapons)
Kanban board reorganisation
1 Hander combo times made slower
Flinch time increased for Handle Hits
Alt modes for polearm where you hold weapon shorter
Polearm timing tweaks (handle hits also working)
Team damage changes
Hit stop on teammates
Knock back on slopes improved
Animation technical miniblog
Handle hits for all shafted weapons
Fixed stamina regen bug
Fixed Polearm bash tracers
Peaceful mode animation fixes
Ruins map setup and testing
Character Skeleton work
First person anims for polearm movement
Parry from Riposte to help with missed combos weapons
Handle hits Sound cue added
Damaging items on the ground by hitting them
Greataxe peaceful animations
Mantling added
Stagger state on weapon/shield destruction
Axes now do bonus damage to shield
Killbot is alive again
NPC melee combat is back with new features
Added Icon scaling support to the HUD markers
Gif of bots fighting each other in a duel
Respawning issues in TDM fixed
Team switching fixed in TDM
Gore system rework
Screenshake when you hit objects
Weapons on the back work again
Mordhau grip and halfswording modes
Improved Loadout Menus
New Default Loadouts with the new equipment
Fixed Altmode would persist when you would switch weapons
Increased spear combo times
Fixed Loadout bugs
WIP Tattoo support

Next week
Bug fixing for TDM, LTS and Shields, and fix respawning bugs
Make build for a playtest
Implement Moss map
Face Tattoos

ItsMoxie
Fixed A Bug Causing Loadouts To Break When Deleting Or Editing Name
Fixed A Bug Causing Loadouts To Not Let You Select Default Loadouts Other Then Knight
Fixed A Bug Causing Spawned Items To Have 0 Durability
Armour durability now works
Equipment Durability Now Shows In Inventory
Durability For Armors no longer Get Reset When picking them up off the ground
Equipment durability now has a durability bar even when equipped. it also updates live when you're using the inventory when someone hits you.
So if you got hit in the thorax by someone sneaking up on you... You'll know that
Added Weapon Durability bar for equipped weapons
Added Armour Stands
Adjusted The Way Equip And Unequipping Works
Bug with armor stands fixed
Fixed duplicate huds being spawned in
Fixed UI putting you into 3rd person when toggling from the inventory out of it
Fixed clients when updating their banner info when switching
Fixed bug with parts of the main menu open
Fixed switching teams respawning twice
Fixed Initializing players was counting as death
Fixed bug with spectating wasnt working
Fixed bug with spectating wasn't working at aimed player
Fixed a dead players weapon put into hotbar wasn't giving weapon
Weapons and Armor equip properly now
Fixed weapon not always spawning with correct durability values
FFA and TDM now spawn properly as survival game
Warnings for when you can't build in build mode
On screen keys for building mode
Added Siege tower
Half walls

KZ
Added Blacksmiths workbench model
Fixed morph targets issues with coifs
New Ruins Duel map
Furnace model added
Reimported all the character and armor assets
Finished Refiner workbench
Added ColorID for Gore meshes
Added ColorID for Knight gore meshes

Next week:
Art fixes
Metal Bracers to Tier 3 Gauntlets
Add more customization patterns
Tanner and Tailor workbench models for raid mode

Delta
Improved Ragdoll physics
Preproduction on the new Survival map biomes
Tier 3 building mesh collisions
Gifs for animations
Performance testing all the new trees
Worked on Raid map
Colour graded the trees
Megascans wind and colour on trees editing
Sound design review with Matt
Meeting with Matt to do new raid sounds
Work on Cinematic videos
Attachments Pieces for Buildings
Renders for Building pieces ready for marketing
Collisions on Attachments should be fixed
Forest map finished (Map RFFA-Moss_p)
Cinematic of Castles for dev blog
Development video pre-planning
Rendered a 360 video of castle
Renders of Flythroughs of the new levels
Developer update

Volker
More posts on instagram and other social media platforms
Conducted private playtests of the latest build
Posting on Twitter, Insta and Reddit
Posting Photos over the course is this month
Workflow for Youtube Shorts

Ashur
Added new Vestibule map, Duel courtyard
Vestibule map polish pass

Please dont forget to share our discord around if you can: https://discord.gg/Tr2DxFh. Likewise if youd instant access to our current Combat Alpha (moving into survival mode in the future) or just to help suppor the project, links can be found at: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/renown--2#/ and https://playrenown.com/

Again thank you very much for the support, dear community. The team is working hard, and well have more patches coming soon, and centrally more updates as we progress.

Till next time
Ashur

0.5.6.2.3
Updated Movement Smoothing
Added LODs to all the Armors
Fixed TDM gamemode
Fixed Incompatible Items being allowed to be added to Loadouts
Reworked Armor Tab Menu
Reworked Armor Pattern Menu
Reworked Movement Normalization
Fixed Weapon switching bug
Removed Alt Morphs
Stab Morph from Alt attack is now slower
Fixed Bloodiness on Weapons not Replicating
Extended Parry Box now follows player's pitch properly
Added Visor on T3 and T4 Helmets, K to Toggle (HUD visual only for now)

Patch 0.5.6.2
Normalized Morph Timings to Match Windup Duration
Added Parry Boxes
Loadout UI fixes
Added Early Release Tracers (Blue)
Knockback from Kicks is lessened if they are Parried
Reduced Parry Window to 375 ms
Reduced Parry Compensation Min/Max 100/200 to 50/100 ms
Shields can now be Equipped
Fixed instances where Morphs were using the wrong duration
2 Handed weapons flinch for 1.2 seconds, regular flinch is 1 second
Added Belt item (Currently does nothing)
Fixed Players spawning facing the wrong way
Fixed issues with the hud getting the wrong references
Added healing wells to Grove FFA
Fixed Emote Menu consuming Inputs
Added Widget that indicates the map is switching
Added the ability to tint leathers
Fixed many bugs with the Spectator system

First, and as always thanks so much to our awesome supporters and backers. So far the feedback and bug reports from our testers have been very useful. Likewise a huge shoutout to our moderator team here on discord.

So the big news of the day is were here to announce the winners of the art competition.

Art Competition Winners
To be more specific, KZ and the team have painstakingly gone over, and selected our top 10 favourites from the many entries. Wed like to thank everyone who took the time to enter the competition, and we can confidently say it was a close fight for the top 10.

A voting announcement will be coming in the next 24 hours.
This will have the top 10 submissions numbered, for your voting.

All top 10 entries will be winning a testing key. Likewise all 10 icons will be coming to the game as an icon to be worn.

However youll be voting on the top 5, to receive special prizes.

The 5th and 4th places will be receiving Loyal Supporter Packages.

The Third place winner will receive a Followers of Woden Tier Package.

The Second place winner will receive a Landschneckt Package.

Finally our first place winner will receive a Fallen Founder Tier.

Well leave the voting open for roughly 48 hours, so invite your friends if youve got a favorite you want to see become the winner. It should be noted that you can give the prize to another member of the community if you wish, but we can't offer monetary refund prices for the packages.

Alpha Update Summary

So as folks might have seen, were well underway on our current Combat Alpha.

Again I would like to thank all our awesome testers who have been helping improve the game.
Weve already put out several patches in response to player feedback. The latest one was pushed today in fact.

I wont get into specifics (especially considering that's Mr.Z's job), but some of the major patch features being worked on are:

Overall combat balancing and bug fixing - Ensuring the core combat is as smooth as possible, by altering weapon swing times, the way attack inputs are handled, alongside a merade of small but important changes.

New Maps and Gamemodes - We want to get playtests going on team based modes as soon as possible. We will be starting off with, team deathmatch and last team standing. It should be noted itll take a while to get all the maps and modes implemented and working perfectly.

KZs New Painted Armour Sets and New Tier One Overhaul - We actually haven't shown this off too much just yet. Some photos of it can be seen in Sneak peeks, and in the last dev blog. Our next Dev Vlog however will have a dedicated section showing off these beautiful new armours.

A new Ingame Bug Reporting System - By hitting F7 players can now report bugs and submit feedback directly in the game, instead of relying on discord as we currently are. While this is not the most flashy upgrade, its a vast improvement.

W.I.P. Voice Over IP (VOIP) system - While this system is still early, it allows for localised voice chat conversations in game. This will be very useful going forwards into the team game modes, and beyond into survival. We had a great stress test with VOIP enabled it was a ton of fun.

Experimental Spectator System - Again this is still in its early version, but it allows the player to zoom around the map, or from other players point of view (including their first person view!). This will be very handy for duels, last team standing and any tournament stuff we organize.

Loadout System Overhaul - The programming team has been integrating the new UI weve had custom made, so it's not only more polished looking, but also a lot more functional than before. Likewise well be using these systems for future balance testing for Armour and Weapon sets. (edited)
[10:05 PM]
Upcoming Dev Vlog

So the last topic I'd like to announce is our upcoming Dev Vlog. Without spoiling anything well be doing our best, to not only catch you up on recent events, but also show off some alpha footage, and to showcase the new artwork in the form of armours, customisation and the environmental changes.

Were hoping to have this out to you in the next two weeks or so. Given were a small team, the creation of media can be slow, provided we need to keep working on development at the same time. That said the team has been smashing out the work lately, and were very stoked for another chance to show it off.

If youd like to help support the game, and gain access to the current alpha or future beta alongside discord titles, our crowdfunding links can be found at https://playrenown.com/ or https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/renown--2/. Please don't forget to invite your friends and fellow gamers to discord. Every share helps keep momentum going in the project. https://discord.gg/Tr2DxFh

Again thank you so much for your amazing feedback, support and general encouragement for the game. Given this, were in a great position to keep moving forwards well beyond previous strategic planning estimations.

Till next time.
Ashur

0.5.4.4.4
Head and Neck are now the only body parts that take extra damage (+50%)
Tweaked how Knockback and Lunge is handled
Sprinting is now slowed down after getting Parried
Carried Weapons are now Visible on Players
Tree Branch is bigger and longer now
Fixed up Ragdoll Physics
Fixed not being able to Respawn in TDM and LTS
Fixed up some Voice chat issues
Added new Leather Bracers
Finished adding Voice Chat indicator
Fixed up Voice Attenuation
Fixed Admins not being able to Change Maps manually
Fixed First Person Arm Animation Blending
Fixed many issues with the Loadout Menu
Servers now should auto restart every 24 hours
Servers should now switch maps even if there are no players online
Added Leather Vest
Players can no longer Sprint while in Release Melee State
Fixed up Sprint Handling
Players now Slow down their Sprint if their movement is too slow (like when spinning in place real fast)
Knockback while in the air is stronger now
Fixed Audio Slider to work with Voice Chat Recieve Volume

0.5.4.4.1
Fixed being able to Dupe weapons
Reduced Knockback on all weapons
Tweaked Longsword Stab animation
Fix Branch missing Idle animation
Fixed Feedback Form (F7) not working
Server Browser Correctly shows current map
Kicks and Bashes aren't affected by Durability anymore
Kicks and Bashes don't deal damage to weapons anymore
Fixed Servers only allowing 16 players to join

0.5.4.4
Arms now do tracers for hitting objects
Added Ability to drop Weapons (Backspace)
Added ability to pick up Weapons off the ground
Reduced Speed Penalty on Weapons by Half
Fixed Flinch in Recovery breaking inputs
New Tier 1 Helmets
Added T3 Arms with Bevor (Protects the Neck)
Added Grove Map
Added Painted Helmets
Fixed Parry Queuing bug
Added Painted Pauldrons
Added T1 Boots
Fixed up Girl Model
Added Bug Reporting (F7)
Decreased Kick Windup by 25 ms
Bash Stamina cost from 10 -> 5
Fixed Parry Recovery
Increased Stab Release duration on many weapons
Fixed up Parry Knockback code
Chase mechanic now makes Players 10% faster than the fastest Sprint Speed
Kick and Bash no longer cost Stamina on Hits
Bash requires a Hit to combo from
You can now Parry out of a Riposte
You can now Parry out of Release if you dealt Damage
Added Experimental Voice Chat (B)
Added new map TestingLevel_p
Increased Bash Tracer Size
Added an Attack Cooldown on Combo Feints
Fixed Flinch handling
Added a WIP Spectator mode
Fixed up Lighting performance issues
Fixed Flinch removing attack inputs incorrectly
Increased Lunge Distances
Fixed up Riposte handling
Fixed Dodge and Emotes breaking attack inputs
Fixed Weapon switching while attacking
Team color is now shown on Player names
Added the ability to Feint Kicks (experimental)
Added First person Spectating
Fixed Y Axis flip option not working
Relaxed the Progressive Turn cap limits
Reduced Kick Knockback
Added Map Rotation
Fixed being able to input attacks in Flinch and Attack Lockout
FFA Round time is now 1 hour
Increased Dodge Distances and made it take into account armor worn again
Tweaked Sprint Handling, now Attack Lockout prevents Sprint acceleration
Fixed up Map Camera not displaying the level properly sometimes
Increased Parry Turn Speed
Tweaked all Turn Speeds to be 30% higher
Fixed Bots hitting the Player without being near him
Fixed up many AI issues
Fixed Fists and One Handed Weapons using wrong Holster animations
Added the T1 Armors

Hello everyone.

As I always do, I'd like to say a huge thank you to our amazing @backers. The support weve received in the last few weeks and months has been amazing. Likewise a huge shoutout to our awesome moderator team here on discord.

So the big news at the moment is that our Alpha is underway! If you haven't seen the details of this, were doing it in three waves.

Wave One consisting of our Heroes of the Wall and Fallen Founders has gone out.

On the 22nd/23rd (depending where you are in the world), the next wave consists of each tier from The Landsknechts to The Merchants. To confirm, this roll out will be occurring in the next 24 hours.

The final wave will be the Loyal Supporter wave coming the week following. Sadly the Loyal Support bundle pack purchasers will need to wait for wave Three. We apologize for the unclear nature of any previous posts, and this delay.

After the waves have come in, well be enabling and disabling different sets of armour and weapons on a weekly basis, so we can rotate focus testing on specific items. This way we can set up various scenarios each week to test more survivalistic type areas.

The team is currently also working on new maps for testing, alongside the prototypes for gamemodes to keep things fun. We hope to use this, not only to keep the game fresh and enjoyable in testing, but to also help us gather specific combat data.

This week K.Z himself has done a write up for us regarding his recent armour and arts work. Of course his work speaks for itself, but we figure you folks might like some details.

In the last few weeks coming upto alpha, I have started the armour overhaul with tier 2 and 3. This is nearly completed, with additional skins to mix it up a bit. There will be more added down the line. The biggest challenge has been getting every piece of armour to work with every other piece of armour, which as you can imagine takes some time.

Due to the demands of the upcoming alpha, I have put creation on hold for now and put my focus into fixing things like touching up existing armour. This includes fixing up hair, customization, player models, fixing texture issues and the like. Armour clipping still has some way to go but I've been slowly and steadily eradicating the problem, bit by bit.

I have also put a lot of focus into optimization and helping get that fps up as much as I can. Of course optimization is a thing that should be thought of from the start of development and it has. Don't worry, these fixes are just helping to get that fps as high as we can and I'm sure this will continue through alpha all the way till release.

I know i said i've put a halt on the Armour but i've managed to squeeze in a new tier 2 tabard with cloth physics as demonstrated below. Overall all aspects spoken about are well in the works and going well and looking on track for alpha.


K.Z.

If youre interested in hearing from K.Z. more regularly in these blogs opposed to just images, let us know in chat.

As always Mr.Z has written up his own progress for you folks to have a read over.

From Mr. Z
Over this past month one of the things Ive implemented is Durability mechanics on both Weapons and Armor. Weapons lose Durability when hitting things and parrying incoming strikes. This means that after the weapon takes a bit of damage it starts to do less damage, eventually in the future a weapon fully breaking will cause it to shatter into pieces forcing you to drop it.

Armors on the other hand start to protect less the more damage they take, eventually not protecting the player at all. In the Survival game you will be able to repair these weapons and armors back into working condition though be aware that every time they are repaired they will lose a good amount of maximum durability to dissuade players from using items forever. They will also be able to be scrapped back into materials so they can be used to forge new items.

Now that Armors have durability proper I also decided to rework the damage resistance formula to take into account armors being layered on top of each other. What this means is wearing a gambeson under a chestplate provides additional damage resistances, all based on total durability. This has created the effect of making the Neck, Hands, and Feet the most vulnerable areas on the player since these areas do not have multiple armor layers. In the future I will be adding a Face Hitbox so the open faced helmets have the weakness of being completely bypassed by hitting the face.

As we approached launching the first Wave for Alpha, I spent a lot of time this month optimizing the game. We had some very serious hitching issues caused by the amount of Armors each character had on them. Fortunately these issues were resolved in time for the Alpha.

One of the last things the Melee combat needed from a feedback perspective was animations for when Melee Weapons impacted surfaces or when they were deflected by Parries. I was able to add a unique animation for each attack type in the game and Im very happy with how they turned out. Also I was able to add 2 new weapons to the game, the Katzbalger which is a later tech arming sword and the Sax which is one of the first swords players will be able to forge.

In the last week I spent some time on the animation systems of the game, trying to polish up what I could in time for Alpha. I was able to add new Idle and Running animations to the character and I even revamped the holstering animation, the character now walks around with his greatsword resting on his shoulder.

I was also able to quickly get in a simple Emote system, and I have to say I was impressed at how much some simple emotes increased the immersion of the game. Going forward into the Alpha I hope to get more animation sets done for all the different weapon types Renown will support as some of the placeholders I have are not in an acceptable state to be used at this moment. We hope to get an animator in the near future to go back and redo my placeholder animations, we expect this to make the fights look a lot more dynamic and lively but unfortunately we have yet to find a suitable candidate.

Currently all my time is being spent polishing up Melee Combat systems as with the first tester wave Im getting some very valuable feedback from our testers. Ive already made some changes to Morphs and Feints so they are easier to read and more consistent and Ive also tuned the balance on a few weapons, based on tester feedback. Im also developing some tools for myself to quickly rebalance weapon values so I wont have to do countless patches getting the Weapon balance right.

A lot of time has gone on into making the Combat Alpha as polished (for an early alpha) as humanly possible and Im very glad to see how far weve come in such a short amount of time.


Well likely get another dev blog out to you folks in the next fortnight, after the 3rd wave has come in, and weve seen how things went.

I should remind all our readers and backers that this is a Combat Alpha Test. Were doing everything we can to keep the quality and fun as high as possible, but we do actually need the testing data. Likewise there will be bugs, unbalanced weapons and a range of troubles.

This is exactly what we need your help fixing! The feedback weve already got back is amazing. Two separate patches have already been sent addressing multiple issues from our first week. We hope our next tier of Backers will have as much fun as we did this week, and will likewise provide us with some clutch information.

Again thanks so much to the amazing community. Huge shout out to the awesome backers and our moderator team.

Till next time
Ashur

Hello Everyone

Today is the day of our crowdfunding campaign. You can find the link to our indiegogo here

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/renown--2/x/26164579#/

Firstly thank you so much for all the passionate support until now and for this fight.

Your help in this campaign will greatly effect and assist our ability to provide the game.

Another incredibly useful way to aid the fight is to help spread the word of our project. Sharing our campaign and discord can be a huge contribution even if it doesn't feel like it. https://discord.gg/Tr2DxFh

Again we'd like to humbly thank everyone who's given us their passionate support so far. No matter what happens in the near future, please understand that we're insanely grateful for your help and enthusiasm for our game.