This is yet another minor patch while the next big patch is still cooking something big and yummy.

There are tons of bug fixes, performance optimizations, Quest system improvements and new tutorial quests, but also a Beta release of Localization.

Quests

So far there have not been any in-game help what to do except discovering things yourself. And finally we have a new quest chain that takes your thru the most important steps (building a house, marriage and conquering settlements).

The quest system has also been heavily updated and modified like better cleanup of spawned things and better failed/abort handling.

There is also new events sent when quests progress, or are added to Player. Almost all quests and events have had updates and fixes.

BETA Localization - Phase I

This has been something that was planned to wait until production phase is further along. But we now have a full translation pipeline established with Unreal Engine where new texts can automatically be translated. So it is time to start releasing the changes now.

Next up will be to create a tool for handling human correction authority and minor changes to Dialogues to be better cut into paragraphs.

Changing language can already be tested in Options -> Game -> Language

Currently it is not 100% complete but will be coming patches (and change font to support Chinese and Russian characters natively). The supported languages for now are:

• English

• Spanish

• French

• German

• Chinese (need special font installed)

• Russian (need special font installed)

Important fixes to mention

• Optimization round for Stones and Mountains placed in levels, now instanced static meshes

• Fixed a random head bug for soldiers

• 1h (no shield) Right attack is fixed and not so short

• Fixed updating follower counter when recruiting them on the road

• Character Creation panels now show Avatar in fixed position and during the whole flow

• Undeads got OnHit cooldown

• Fixed a hard cut in music when changing Terrain on World Map

• Character Panel and Settlement UI now use ESC better to step back and close

• Character Panel got a new closing sound

• New hit animations as interrupt when hit for all characters with a cooldown of 2s

• World Events for quests now show Task description instead of Quest description

• Fixed a broken Temple Dungeon in Desert with bad navigation

• Fixed Player camera at start position when coming back to World Map

• Combat healing got new floating icon and better abort logic

• Fixed Minotaurs attacks

• Fixed World Events showing big ui widget to queue them and pause in multiplayer when Player opens other UI (time stil goes on in multiplayer)

Next Major Patch

There are several projects going on in parallell now. AI is helping to build a lot of code and tools that are needed (translation pipeline for example).

And to prepare for expanding the studio I have created several AI agents that fill certain roles. For example there is already a Project Manager AI running the Trello board, keeping track of what changes in Progress and comments on tickets. It has deep understanding of Birthright as a project and what plugins and technologies it is built on.

Because of this new AI help with deeper technical discussions, and super fast probing of Unreal Engine source files, the foundation of a new battle character structure that is very optimized is on it's way.

So for the next Major patch it will include a new completely custom built character used in Combat, for superior scalability.

Unreal Engines Mass Entity system is fully used both for custom Movement pathfinding and full AI multi-threaded batch processing. Removing most of the CPU bottlenecks currently in game.

While the plan is still to use Skeleton Meshes for Players and Humanoids/Monsters (might change in future), for Undeads the plan is to use VAT (Vertex Animated Textures).
Currently Horses use VAT to remove the cost of Skeletons and Animations.

For Undeads this would mean they can scale up to massive amounts and be more of a zerg than armies.

This is an exiting project cooking and very much needed for performance in larger Battles and Sieges. And of course multiplayer replication is a core of it, much more performant though and with new better ways to solve things.