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