Patchnotes April 2009 World Map Our main goal in this patch: upgrade the world map to better suit a growing mud, and serve players with screenreaders better. ● Fully persisted wilderness ● Universe of many planes instead of just one Multiple modes of travel. ● Areas and the world are now seamlessly connected. Take one step north at the gate, and you walk onto Alora! (Here is Tarsonis, dumped in a desert for testing). The area outline shows. ● Overland room exits are 'real' now, meaning all skills and spells that require exits will function on the overland map. (Scan, Flee, Gravity code, etc). 1 / 14 Illustration 1: Seamless travel between areas and world Travel To cut down on travel time but still provide enough space for exploration, treasure hunting, and harvesting, alternative ways of transportation have been made available. Travel mode While in travel mode you can move anywhere from 3 to about 80 miles at once, depending on your transportation. The map matches your travel speed. ● Walking is 3 miles at once, or 9 miles if your walk speed is 25+. ● Mounts travel at 21 miles at once. ● Flying allows 9 miles max speed. ● Any followers in your party move with you at your speed. ● Certain sectors have drinkable liquids beyond water. ;P. While in exploration mode you move 1 mile per step and you see every detail, useful for finding hidden areas or rare reagents. When getting close to a landmark (for example, the spires of Tarsonis), you 2 / 14 Illustration 3: Exploration Mode, I can spot the entrance. Illustration 2: Travel Mode, at 8 miles. automatically enter exploration mode to make it easy to enter it. Whenever underground, you are automatically in exploration mode. ● room-to-room walk delay changed, 200ms for light load, 300 for medium, 400 for heavy ● When lacking a mount, mounts can be rented at shops that function like phantom steed, staying for a few minutes. Scale and Shape The new Alora at the time of writing is approximately 16 times as large as old Alora, allowing much more exploration. Still, with a mount you can travel from destination to destination a lot faster than before. New Alora can be best described as a disc that floats in the abyss. Several hundred mining layers deep, it thins out towards the edges to only a few layers. The Abyss is deadly! Plunging into it means instant death. Landmarks Be it cloud piercing mountains, glittering spires, or an abandoned old house, landmarks will guide you towards places of interest. Coordinate System A sextant now leads you to the historical, magical or social center of the . The player calculates his coordinates based on the readings of the sextant, reading how far they are planar west, center or east, and planar north, median or south. On Alora this reading could be "You calculate your location 10 planar west, 4 planar south.", meaning they can get closer to its center, Tarsonis, by moving to the 10 east and 4 north. Old maps-in-maps As the world is large enough, maps-within-maps are no longer needed. 3 / 14 Player Structures Like areas, player structures are seamlessly integrated on the world map. Any change to it reflect on the world. You can build new structures near founding stones, as long as its outside the building radius of nearby structures. All rooms you create must be within 2 or 8 rooms of the entrance, depending if you own a hut or a citadel. Regrettably, you can only build citadels on the surface of the world at this time. To migrate your old citadel to its new home, type 'construct anchor' near a founding stone to plant it there. Location is final. Waypoints Waypoints have been simplified; you can now travel 1 mile for each movement point you have, or 3 miles when mounted. Players with the 'double travel distance' ability get to travel twice as far on the same movement points. Teleporting mounts have zero movement cost, and are the only way to travel between planes. Followers are always taken with you when you travel, the system assumes they share your transportation. Since your old waypoints have no meaning on the new map, they are cleared. Waypoints are capped at 250. 4 / 14 Illustration 4: Me expanding my citadel Crafting Crafts now respect your available free time. Crafting Skills Your skill in a craft is reflected by level. Whenever you craft an item, you are rewarded with XP. Crafting Limits No limits in the number of crafts you can adept; Whenever you level a craft, you also level your craftmanship. Any craft XP gain follows your craftmanship level, and decreases over time similar to class levelling. Individual skills are usually capped at e950. Craft Level Provided you have all the required skill ranks for a recipe, you can craft common quality items up to your craftmanship level. (So a e1000 craftsman, e500 swordsmith can craft common swords up to e1000, or good or better quality swords level 1-e500). Craf Locking You can freeze or unfreeze craft advancement by typing 'craft lock <craftname>'. This allows you to stop levelling a craft if you do not want to improve it. Learning the new crafts Your old crafts are exchanged for credits. 100% old craft gives enough credits for one e500 craft skill. While crafts go up to e950 you can only boost up to e500. You can pool credits gained for many crafts towards a single craft. Craft Item Quality The old normal, special, exceptional item categories have been replaced by item quality. Common quality items are equal to old exceptional category items in stats. Each step above common increases the effective item level by a few. This makes common items worth using, while its worth your time to gather good, exceptional and finally unique equipment. ● Common: Old Exceptional ● Good: effective level1 +1 (equals+8 epic levels) ● Superior: effective level +2 ( equals +16 epic levels) ● Exceptional: effective level +3 (equals +24 epic levels) ● Unique: effective level +4 (equals +32 epic levels) Old special items are converted to superior quality. Items crafted from reward materials (emeralite) are 1 These are normal levels (levels 1 to 50). Epic levels count as 1/8th normal level. 5 / 14 automatically unique. Craft Success Whenever you craft you will always get a useful product. While you can get better items with multiple attempts, even the common quality items are not that far behind the superior ones. Crafting something you are unspecialized in, or above your specialism level, will always create a common quality item, never above. On average it will take a few minutes to create superior items, half an hour to create an exceptional item, and several hours of non stop crafting to create a unique item, depending on your luck. Ofcourse, you could always create a made-to-fit item! Made-To-Fit A skilled crafter can create a made-to-fit item for any online player, or a player on their account. This ability can be used once per day. Made-to-fit items are always of exceptional quality, but bound to the target. This facilitates the casual crafters that do not have huge amounts of time to spend, while there's still sufficient value in creating unbound exceptional items the regular way. Unique Items There is a slight chance crafting creates a unique item. Upon creation of a unique item, it is bestowed a epithet (one in one the worlds languages, and one in common). 6 / 14 Recipes Players can collect recipes, by leveling crafts or collecting them from loot or shops. Recipes usually require a skill of certain level, some resources, and can produce of varied quality. XP is rewarded for completing a recipe. Crafting by Cookbook All your recipes are accessible via the 'craft' command, allowing you to browse organized by category. You can unlearn recipes at will. Crafting by Resource Simplified interface; all your products are created via a single command. By typing 'process <resource>' a list is presented of all recipes that take that resource as an ingredient, allowing you to quickly convert a resource to a product. Collecting Resources You can harvest resources on the world map by using the 'harvest' command. Each harvesting activity has its own skill. Unlike the old system, you will destroy any resources you are not skilled at harvesting, and salvage all you are skilled enough for. Finishing half-crafted products If you abort the crafting process you can continue it at a later time by typing 'use <halffinisheditem>'. Retired Substances Some substances were retired to give the remaining materials a more clear use. This mainly affects wood, and processed leather. Retired materials are exchanged for remaining substances of equal or greater worth after the patch. New Substances The old crafting was pretty metal centric. To give all crafts their own place the metal, cloth, leather, bone substance groups have been completed so they can shine, each in their own way. Each group has at least: ● One abundant training substance (bronze) ● One abundant adequate substance (iron) ● One rare enchanting favorite (mitril) ● One rare practical finisher (draconite) ● One extremely rare superior finisher (meteorite) ● One giftable legendary material (emeralite) Other changes: 7 / 14 ● Dwarven Steel available! Need e450 smelting for the recipe, 1 dwarven tincture, salvagable from ebur roots, primarily found in loose soil, and a lot of ingredients. ● To prevent a collapse of copper economy, added coal as the most abundant mining resource and make copper secondary. also decreased copper gains per vein. An alchemy recipe allows converting copper to coal, and reverse. All ore smelting requires 1 piece of coal. Godforges > Craft Boosters Everywhere on alora you can encounter godforges. Whenever you craft in the same room as a craft booster, your finished product will have gained extra affects. Weapons can be imbued with a runeword. All godforges have been ported: Frost, Lightning, Storm, Acid, Poison, Birthing, Crystalling, Rumbling, Divine and Holy. Godforges are scattered over Alora. Multiple versions of each type of godforge exist at any given time. Not all forges reside underground. Earth god The god of the earth has re-awakened! Substances & Armor Material engine has been replaced with something more flexible. ● Formerly cloth only baboos now only usable on flowing materials ● Formerly metal only baboos now useable on all inflexible materials ● Formerly non-cloth baboos now usable on all non-flowing materials ● Natural armor: all substances suitable for light/medium/heavy armor that are non-artificial ● Light armor: all substances with light armor tag. ● Medium armor: all substances with medium armor tag. ● Heavy armor: all substances with heavy armor tag. ● if user has overlapping armor skills (natural & light/medium/heavy), the best is used. ● in case of overlapping armor skills, both are trained. ● item spell (resonance) functions on all artificial substance items. ● item spell (needles) functions on all tailoring substance items. ● item spell (ridges) functions on all leatherwork substance items. 8 / 14 ● item spell (wood/stone) functions on all woodcarve, stonecarve and bonecarve substance items. ● fixed bug preventing thorns on ironwood items. ● Everlasting substances (emeralite) never break ● Bandages can be made from all flowing materials. ● Splints can be made from truewood and wood materials. ● Divine and scourge damage types now damage objects. Mining Mining is directional. Given the scale of the world mining no longer supports claiming locations. Whenever there are resources available you will mine those out first, allowing you to stripmine. Prospecting allows you to scan several layers deep into the mining walls. ● Mining slowly drains your movement. ● All your summons can assist in harvesting, provided they have the right skills. They never destroy any materials if they fail. (Xorns have 100 mining skill per fec). ● Mine smell allows you to see further in the mines. Stability ● To dig up or down, you must be in a reinforced room (except when you are on the surface). ● You can only mine up, down and directly north, east, south and west. ● You can encounter unstable walls near faultlines: Mining them from a non-reinforced mine will collapse your mine and kill you! Unstable walls have a red background color. ● You can encounter impenetrable rock called voidstone: You can stripmine the resources contained in it, but you cannot clear it, and anything but everlasting picks will have at least 50% chance to break. Voidstone walls are colored cyan. ● You can craft supporting girders from lightweight and heavyweight materials. You can use light girders to reinforce layers 1-24 of the mines, and heavy for 25+. 'use girder' to reinforce the room. Gemstones While the metals are nice for crafting, gemstones are the miners road to riches. Each gemstone you dig up can be worth a few gold to millions of gold, depending on its carat, luster (dull to brilliant), and innate value. You will encounter: amber, citrine, carnalian, garnet, zircon, obsidian, jade, topaz, ruby, sapphire, emerald, opal, diamond, blue diamond, sunstone, moonstone and bloodstone. Uncut gems are worth 1/4th of its cut value. 9 / 14 Misc Changes ● Removed drag (malfunctioned). ● Flying no longer gives a sight range advantage. ● Supermob will no longer generate a 'you spot where (obj/room) is hiding' message. ● Sethome no longer allows setting home indiscriminately. ● Identical vials, like potions, are group-labeled now. Combat ● Change to flee increased (but still 50% chance to fail). ● DR increasing Abilities now properly increase DR instead of decreasing it. Death ● Bards no longer stop playing when someone dies, but only when they themselves die. ● Permadeath characters only delete in situations which would normally pop a corpse. ● Rooms with no-supplicate no longer summons corpses on a fail. ● supplicate corpse no longer takes XP when it fails. Minimap ● Highways are highlighted. Accounts ● Maximum number of characters on any account increased to 32. Shops ● Maximum sell price increased to 1.000.000.000. ● Whenever a shop is destroyed, items are no longer ejected! Pets ● Pet drinking no longer clears drink container. ● Feeding a pet toys causes them to use it. ● Added pet effect that changes its genus. ● Volley of chirps fixed. ● Fixed 'furry ears eared' spelling mistake for pets.. ● Troll Regeneration trait now called Troll Genus, changing any pet with it to a troll subtype. ● You can issue commands to sleeping minions now, so commands like 'wake' are no longer blocked. Players do get a short message the follower is asleep. ● 'burst of fire' pet ability now shoots fire arrows. ● Fixed all 'winged winged' errors in pet traits. ● bumped number of active 'old trick' effects on a pet from 20 to 255, causing less talents to suddenly stop working. Inventory ● Overall item stacking should now be improved (Some items had sockets when they shouldn't, causing stacks to split for no reason). Experience 10 / 14 ● As a thank you for playing players are now rewarded 2500xp every day they play. This reward is given after 5 minutes online time. ● Online characters (be it playing or IDLING) receive a reward comparable to one kill every 5 minutes. Mud responsiveness / Timing We've added several changes to improve mud overall responsiveness. ● Moved cooldowns to millisecond system for better precision. ● Mud heartbeat changed from 250ms to 50ms (meaning worst case you have to wait 50ms for a command to trigger due to server sided lag, instead of 250ms). ● Autolook now waits 300 ms before triggering, allowing fast walking without overloading the mud or spamming you. ● The mud will send data to you without artificial delays, allowing a much smoother response. ● rogue dash now decreases walk delay with 300, 200 and 100, but never below 100ms. ● Traveling troop decreases walk delay with 200ms, but never below 100ms. ● Save delay increased to 4 seconds. ● burry delay changed to 5 seconds. ● Drinking/Quaffing/etc. delay changed to 500ms outside combat, 3sec in command. ● Room to room movement now properly uses mount delay. Casting ● Acid arrow, breath, cone, fist, meteor, now properly damage spell target instead of the caster. ● Spellcasting delay changes: ● Instant spells take 200ms ● Base spell delay: depends on spell ● For each complexity above spell complexity, casting time decreases by 25ms. ● Each fec adds 250ms to the casting time. ● Each rgy rune adds 1 second to the casting time. ● Each tar rune adds 500ms to the casting time ● Free hands divides spell delay by three ● One occupied hand halves spell delay. ● Spell delay is never lower then 500ms for non-instantaneous spells. ● race based spells fastest cast speed set to 1sec, and are unaffected by haste or free hands. Combat ● Base weapon speed: 5 to 8 seconds ● Skill modifier: -2.5s to +3s ● Weaponspeed improving runewords improves speed by 500ms, 1.5s and 2s ● Each fec increases weapon speed by 250ms. ● Unarmed weapon speed decrease: 2000ms ● Non-weapon speed decrease: 4000ms ● Zeraphins Celerity, -500ms to -1.5s ● Weapon speed cannot drop below 1s for jabs, 2s for thrusts, and 3s for lunges. ● Offhand dualwield weapons are twice as fast as normal. 11 / 14 Todo Vehicles Vehicles have not been coded yet. Caretaker Changes ● Online map editing. ● Areas can be anchored to the world map, and exit rooms assigned. The mud builds an area silhouette and places the exits at the right locations. ● Online editing extended with editing: ● Achievements ● Planes ● Landmark ● Quests ● Scripts ● Encounters ● Substances ● Skills ● Recipes ● Adding 'notes' to rooms, objects and mobiles, to indicate intention. ● Enter edit mode with 'edit'. Add new things with 'new', list current with 'list', and edit with 'edit'. ● goto can be used on the world map now: goto <plane> <x> [y] [z] ● Script engine rewritten. ● Support for /strict/ targeting (so no more player with a mob name breaking progs) ● there are a lot more triggers available. ● Scripts are no longer limited in length. ● Added 'block' command. it halts the mud program, and blocks any action that triggered the script (if possible). ● Planes and Sectors can have scripts, which trigger on any room that are part of them. ● Exits can have scripts. ● new script flags: ● self Script activates for myself or anyone holding/equipping me. ● other Script activates for everyone but me. ● partymembers Script activates for my partymembers, or partymembers of anyone holding/equipping me. ● leaders Script activates for party leaders. ● players Script activates for players. ● npcs Script activates for npcs. ● minions Script activates for minions (pets or charmed). ● friends Script activates for friends of me or anyone holding/equipping me. (I am passive towards). ● enemies Script activates for enemies of me or anyone holding/equipping me. (I am aggressive towards). ● equipment Script requires that I am equipped. ● inventory Script requires that I am in inventory. 12 / 14 ● onfloor Script requires that I am not carried. ● Added wildcard matching to ACT trigger. (topic script 'match', allows things like *west* or *w?est*). ● Added 'noprompt' flag for cutscene rooms. ● Added 'highway' flag, adding this to rooms highlights them as the main route. ● Removed idle timeout when writing scripts. ● Added script delayed events mpevent Syntax: mpevent <player> <eventname> <delay> Example: mpevent $subject player_jailed 8 Gives the builder a way to fire a secondary script after a few seconds. Attaches an event to <player>. When the cooldown is reached the player generates an EVENT in the room, triggering any EVENT scripts that match the eventname with its wildcard, and $subject becomes the player. Keep in mind: - The event is not guaranteed to trigger! Design your scripts accordingly! - The event does not trigger if the player logs out before cooldown. - If an identically named event is triggered, the old event is replaced. - The event always fires in whatever room the player happens to be in; if the player walks around the trigger is not cancelled! ● Quest Engine Rewritten ● Many new triggers ● Quests are now stored with areas, allowing easier transfer between codeport and mainport. ● Objects as quest masters (room or inventory.). ● Significantly changed quests can be re-done by players. ● Added 'scripted <key> <objective description>' objective to quests, which should be triggerable by 'mpquest complete vnum key [player]'. ● 'mpquest complete vnum key [player]' will complete the quest for the player, where 'mpquest complete vnum key' without an actor will complete the quest for every player on the quest. ● mpquest start vnum [player]' will activate the quest for the given player, provided the player meets the prerequisites. ● added new 'accepted' script to quests, which is triggered right after the quests are accepted. ● $actor and $room now available in quest progs. ● Quest rewards are now more generic, so they can be reused in recipes, shops, etc. ● You can give achievements after completing quests. ● Quests can now glue an NPC to the side of the player, to follow them around. (quest edit, objective purge). ● If the player logs out, the mob is removed. ● if the player logs in, the mob is restored. ● if the player finishes or aborts the quest, the mob is cleared. 13 / 14 ● When escort is killed, the quest fails. ● New Escort NPC only triggers: ● STARTED_ESCORT triggers right after escort NPC joins player party. ● CONTINUED_ESCORT triggered after escort NPC is restored after player logs on again. ● ABORTED_ESCORT triggered after player aborts quest. ● FINISHED_ESCORT triggered after player completes quest. 14 / 14
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