Update 25: Two Updates in One

Written By Nick

We released our 2 Year retrospective at the end of September, but didn’t publish our monthly update. So, this month we have both September and October bundled in a single Mega-update!

With that in mind, go grab a snack and some water. This update is going to be a long one.

No, seriously. The team got a ton done over the last two months.

Enjoy!

Character Art & Concepts

  • Modeled & Implemented Zombie model

  • Created a Horse model for player mounts

  • Started work on new spell effects

  • Supported Urkenstaff with animation and attachment implementation

  • Created Fighter and Enchanter texture bases for Goblin

  • New armor textures created

  • Modeled generic armor pieces such as helm, shoulders, cloak

  • Imported Fighter Plate Armor texture set

  • Set up Helms for use in our editor

  • Class Illustrations (for our website) started

  • Fixed texture seam issues on the human

  • Fixed UV issues on the human model

Environment Art

  • Divided Night Harbor’s geo into multiple subscenes to better facilitate multiple environment artists working on different areas at the same time

  • New buildings and interiors in Night Harbor’s Western Districts

  • New Temple location and Visual added to the Travelers Ward

  • Began Blocking in Hanging Garden Interiors

  • Moved the Zone line for Tomb of the Last Wyrmsbane

  • Expanded the Elite Tomb and Caverns areas within The Tomb of the Last Wyrmsbane

  • Started to build new lower cliff geo in Night Harbor

  • Roughed out multiple areas in Night Harbor's Necropolis District including:

    • General flow for the district

    • Updated Market area

    • Rough versions of tomb facades

  • Added the Necromancer and Shadow Knight class guildhalls

  • Cleaned up the zone seams between Night Harbor and Shaded Dunes zone lines

  • Removed old Night Harbor 1.0 geo from Shaded dunes

  • Added the current Night Harbor 2.0 geo to Shaded Dunes to create more visual consistency between the two zones

  • Did a rough lighting pass on the city geo Added to Shaded Dunes to make it look more "lively"

  • Started building out the Harbor area

  • Updated Oasis areas in prep for Shaded Dunes content revisions

  • Updated zoneline locations and landing points based off the new terrain updates

  • Created a first pass at a copper harvesting node

  • Various additional geo, nav mesh, and lighting tweaks across the Night Harbor, Shaded Dunes, and Tomb of the Last Wyrmsbane zones

  • Onboarded our new Environment Artist

Game Design/QA

  • Quest Content for Night Harbor

  • Tomb of the Last Wyrmsbane Named Mob Itemization started

  • Tomb of the Last Wyrmsbane Population Additions for new areas

  • Added Easthymn Freebooter and Wyrmsbane Denizens Factions

  • Added Wyrmsbane Armor Drops and Factional Quest Line

  • Itemized all Wyrmsbane Named with Unique Loot

  • Added new mob types to Wyrmsbane

  • Expanded population of Wyrmsbane to new areas

  • Modified the levels of existing Wyrmsbane population

  • Zone Line Adjustments in Night Harbor and Tomb of the Last Wyrmsbane

  • Added sounds to many Abilities

  • Misc. Ability, Buff, and Item Adjustments

  • Item Appearances added for most of our current items

  • Initial Point of Interest (POI) system re-implementation (guards can tell you where to find things)

  • Trainers and Merchants added for Trade Skills currently listed (in prep for later)

  • Experimentations with Vendors being picky and/or greedy

  • All items tagged to work with Vendors, MUD interactions, etc

  • NPC Ability Adjustments

  • Modified Starting Stats

  • Made rabid animals more rabid

  • Misc. Itemization Work

  • Misc. Ability/Buff Work

  • Added Archer, Cleric, Fighter, Paladin, and Ranger newbie quests

  • NPC/Mob Population additions to support newbie quests

  • Began work on Shaman and Druid newbie quests

  • Refined some existing quest dialogue

  • Fixed some minor grammatical errors in Quest Text

  • Started writeups for Druid and Shaman Guild

  • Documented Crafting and Creature Senses concepts

  • Completed Utility Spells, Faction System, and Camping writeups

  • Added new Zone Mud Objects in Night Harbor

  • Continued Issue Regression Testing Pass for many open issues

  • Continued Polish Pass organization

  • Added New “Statics” (Useable Torch Holders) in Wyrmsbane for players to interact with

  • Minor Prop & Asset adjustments

  • Onboarded our new Game Designer

Sound/Music

Tech

This has been a month of optimization and re-ogranization. The game is running a lot smoother and faster now! We have gained around 20 additional fps.

Optimizations

  • Navigation Optimization to support bigger gaggles of angry mobs

  • Client netcode revamp. It is a lot more organized now

  • Lots of client performance optimizations

  • Rendering changes that have lead to higher framerate

  • Scenes are broken down for better Async loading

  • Client Entities have been reimplemented with an ECS framework

  • Optimized various GCAllocs

  • Optimized various processes

  • Zoning and Loading are more asynchronous now and also better masked from the player

  • Navmesh fine tuning

  • Zone loading smoothing

  • Refactored repop. Can now be done partially for faster iteration.


Fixes

  • Fixed robes

  • Fixed ranged attacks that have broken with some Physics changes

  • Fixed players being able to reach items out in the world no matter how far away (stretchy, grubby hands!)

  • Fixed ability impact VFX (along with other VFX enhancements)

  • A group member leveling up no longer makes you lose your UI

  • Fix NPC texture overrides and skeleton glowy eyes

  • Fixed Human animation blending

  • Fixed other simple animation controller blend issues

  • Fix simple animation controller blend issues

  • Refactor unity animation controller to work for our use case

  • Fixed some packets sometimes growing past the connection MTT

  • Fixed Ashira textures

  • Fixed POIs. They no longer lead you astray

  • Added missing and non working buff message chat filter buttons

  • Fix to sometimes missing buff addition messages

  • Fix showing naked entity models for a second before clothing them

  • Fix spawn volumes picking wrong locations very close to their center

  • Other various bug fixes

  • Fixed an issue where pet owner got no kill credit if pet did 100% of the damage

  • Fixed a crash around navigation queue on zone repopulation

  • Shaded dunes navmesh fixes

  • Fix for zoning/death while using an activatable ability

  • Fixes and improvements around Wwise integration, including the infamous teleport "techno remix" bug

  • Fix for the "Look" action button not being clickable

  • Fix bug where a physics buff launches the player up into the air randomly upon zoning or respawning, which causes them to fall to their death

  • Fix controls lasting past death/zoning

  • Dressing Room design tool fixed!

  • Fix item descriptions while interacting with merchants

  • Fix animations while running via holding both mouse buttons and pressing random WASD keys

  • Fix aggro and spell casting for charmed pets. Charmed pets can now buff your party.

  • Fix negative mana regen can make you lose mana

  • Make dropping an item drops it at your feet instead of a random location around you

  • Item drop tables refactored to be more predictable and understandable

  • Fix race conditions with entities ready to be deleted but not yet deleted

Additions and Improvements

  • Improved internal debug messages

  • Added sound events for all types of attacks and a lot of actions

  • Adjusted NPC flee behavior for more satisfying chases

  • Lots of threat changes: Resist and miss threat, buff base threat, sitting threat, distance threat, low hitpoint threat

  • Lots of aggro changes: Readjusted priorities and thresholds to pull off current target

  • Threat consistency fixes

  • Sitting threat

  • Low hp threat

  • Social aggro changes

  • Adjusted slowing when low HP

  • Day/Night cycle is now 45 minutes

  • Allow negative resist numbers

  • Combat damage calculation changes

  • AC changes

  • Added more messages to buffs and buff fades

  • New ability effect Disengage

  • Proc on hit buffs

  • Stacking buffs

  • Hunger/Thirst refactors

  • Monks have special h2h damage tables

  • Walk/Run animation blending changes

  • Bard songs completely reworked. They now use the gameplay volume system.

  • Bard gameplay has been reworked. They play slightly differently but much more sandwichy and strategic

  • Sitting while feigned death now makes you cancel feign death for all you EQ monk players

  • Support for Aura type abilities

  • Particle effects can now sustain on entity as long as the buff lasts

  • Particle effects adjustments

  • Mez now sustains a particle effect around head of the mezzed mob

  • Texture blit layers (not fully working yet. This is a job for November)

  • Do not do a cast animation if sitting and using an ability that can be used while sitting

  • Capes! Cloth physics! (initial pass, to be iterated on)

  • Pickaxe model and pickaxe animation/sounds for mining

  • Harvest with right click instead of left click

  • Harvest node refactors: Can be harvested more than once and have multiple drop tables. Process is more logical. Puts rewards on your cursor

  • Fixes to model loading that were causing models to stop loading, or load up with the wrong size

  • Helmet slot and model loading

  • Skin now has highlights and shadows

  • Moon textures added

  • Human brow fix

  • Models now stream in and are asynchronously loaded. Are unloaded when not needed anymore.

  • Smoothed texture and model loading process

  • Refactored grow/shrink to be able to stack

  • Corpses are no longer always naked

  • Corpses no longer unpack all bagged items in their inventory

  • Player corpses now maintain their illusion model and shrink/grow size

  • Initial support for female player characters

  • “Statics System” created (including data-driven doors, lifts, switches, torch holders)

  • POI system expansion, including: NPCs can now direct you to other NPC’s relative location

  • Changed POI prompt method

  • MUD actions expansion (includes: /taste, /smell, /push, /pull, /drop, and more)

  • Implemented a new Widgets system. Allows you to create temporary objects in the zone. Will have a massive amount of applications!

  • Gameplay Volumes

  • Gameplay volumes can now cast, buff, prevent entry/exit to spaces

  • Gameplay volumes can now be attached to an entity

  • Create gameplay volumes via ability and buffs

  • Interact with gameplay volumes and statics via abilities

  • Designers can use MUD actions, Statics, Gameplay Volumes, Widgets, and similar systems with each other via data

  • Quest turn ins process changed to prevent issues where an error prevents client from receiving rewards

  • Quest rewards now go to the mouse

  • Can now hand in multiple quest handins to complete a quest multiple times in a row

  • Added data driven Race/Class Matrix, UI selections up to date

  • Changed Warden class to Beastmaster

  • Added better loading screens (Thanks Goblin!)

  • Now when you die in the zone in which you are bound, you will fully zone. (Instead of not zoning as before), simplifying the logic and cases around respawn so that behavior is consistent regardless of where you are bound

  • Force close bank, any open world containers, any open corpses, and any open bags upon death

  • Force close corpses if you move too far

  • Consent now fires off messages. Still does not work across zone lines though.

  • NPCs will now stop what they are doing to look at a player who is interacting/hailing/vendor/trainer/banker, and after 10 seconds the NPC will resume their business

  • Non-player-pet NPCs now kill steal players if the NPC gets the last hit (No more letting guards help finish off your mob!)

  • Mobs can now climb stairs, drop down ledges, and warp to target

  • NPC Stat balancing

  • NPC Mana values rebalancing

  • New ability effect create new NPC

  • NPCs can now gate to their bind

  • NPC On Hit Procs

  • Added support for spell casting and ability sounds

  • Added logging out via "camp" with interruptible countdown, allowing your character to leave the game world at the same time you do now

  • Camp now sends you directly to character select

  • Zoning while invisible now works!

  • Added alias /me for /emote

  • Say and combat ranges have been reduced so things feel localized

  • Emotes now range limited the same as Say

  • Added more GM commands

  • Coins can now be dropped

  • Tester login workflow levelled up!

  • Now using new launcher/patcher

  • Error messages now displayed around character creation, if name is already taken, etc…

  • Character name field has been moved to final page of character creation

  • Encryption!

Editor

  • Subscene loader in support of Environment Art’s Night Harbor changes

  • Added Graphical Ability Editor (Unity)

  • Added Graphical NPC Editor (Unity)

  • Added Integrated Race/Class Matrix Editor (Unity)

  • Finished new MnM Data Editor Proof of Concept using BlazorUI

    • Factions Editor

    • NPC Editor

    • Abilities and Ability Effects Editor

    • Can retrieve icons from Unity and render as JPEG

    • Race & Class Editor


User Interface

  • The hotbar now saves and loads

  • Added support for hotkeys activating hotbar buttons appropriately (i.e. items do any effect instead of simulating a click)

  • Pressing a number key while an ability is on your cursor now attempts to memorize the ability in that slot

  • Created framework for user settings

  • Added settings UI, accessible from the escape menu

  • Added UI scale setting

  • Added volume sliders in the settings

  • Made item stack size numbers more visible

  • Added EntityStats module to encapsulate stats and changed events, and added them to entities

  • Refactored common behavior of LoadFromSpawnEntityPacket() into base class

  • Moved addon connection calls from inventory UI manager to its own class

  • Converted many of the labels in inventory UI to be reactive to client state changes

  • Client cursor selection and interaction fixes. Works much more predictably now.

  • Targeting and tab targeting fixes. Works much more predictably now.

  • Added more automated token text for ability messages and buff messages for more consistency

  • Click on nothing is now an action, allowing dropping items into the world and removing ability icon from cursor

  • Pressing escape does more logical things now

In Closing

As you can see, we got an incredible amount of work done over the last two months.

We’ve also been fortunate enough to add two more team members to our ranks.

Welcome Luna (design) and Baloo (environment art)!

We’ll get more details about them posted on our website soon.

In the meantime, thanks for your continued support. As you can see, we’re keeping up the pace as we head towards the end of the year.

And we’re actively working to hit our goal of being able to get folks in to play with us as soon as possible.

With that, and all of this progress in mind, we do however want to remind you about that fact that we’re still early in this process.

The proof of concept is coming together nicely. But, we want everyone to remember that this is a marathon, not a sprint, and we never promise anything more than we can show.

So, come check out our livestreams, check the VODs, and hit us up on Discord if you want to how things are progressing firsthand.

Thanks again!

Nick
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