Transfer to the UDK and New Game Play. news

New Gameplay

• CTF (Capture the Flag) changed to CTI (Capture the Informant) - Hanako no longer will have the classic CTF game mode as the design team wanted to expand on the general concept while getting a little more innovative in their approach. The basic game play dynamic will be one team will be more of in an attacker/capturer position while the other team will be in a defense. The defending team will have a randomly selected player declared as the informant. The attacking team must discover who this player is, incapacitate them through combat and drag them back to their encampment in which they must be held for a set duration. During this duration the defending team can attempt to rescue the informant. *This game mode is subject to change as play-testing may reveal the need for both teams to have an informant and have to play both roles.
• Assassination renamed to Siege - For the sake of accuracy, this game mode has been renamed from Assassination to Castle Siege since it's not a true stealthy assassination. While it can be stealth since the team's will be fairly even - it's more about the raiding of the complex, locating the Daimyo and killing him - rather than sneaking in unnoticed. The raiding team naturally has a more brute force approach rather than stealth.
• Village Battle changed to Village Raid - In lieu of the development of the online tug-of-war campaign system, we felt the need to adapt Village maps to their own game type instead of having essentially two different sub-game types that are essentially both team deathmatch. This modified gameplay will feature set control points in each village that must be captured before the castle level is unlocked.

Online Campaign

• This is an optional server set-up in which server administrators can choose from 3 different campaigns that start at 1 of 3 battlefields. Depending on who is victorious the forces will push the enemy back to a CTI (capture the informant) map. The opposing team will have an opportunity to rebound and push the enemy back to the battlefield. In an attempt to reduce redundancy, we may have alternate maps if teams go back and forth too frequently to the point that only one or two maps are constantly being loaded in. A sweep cycle would feature playing one map from each game mode in this order: Battle->Capture the Informant->Village Raid->Castle Siege - with the three clan's Castle maps being sort the endgame for any given campaign.

Technical Changes

• We took a look at every aspect of the game and assessed the quality of every detail. One of the decisions that was made was to scrap every animation that has been displayed presently in any of the video content. We came up with a much more sound approach to animation and will begin employing it immediately. This will be displayed in upcoming videos within the next 1-2 months.
• Combat system - we decided to, for the time being, remove the ability to attack while crouching and while running. Now perhaps the immediate thought is "Wow, that's extremely limiting." The system is being adapted to a new plant-step style of animation that's used in many current melee games. Basically if you are charging forward and initiate an attack the player will enter a plant-step into the attack thus stopping the forward momentum by the end of the attack. The reason for this is a more realistic feel to combat and this opens the door for much more visually appealing and accurate animation.