The Repopulation = 0.0.4.4 Alpha Build Notes
by J.C. Smith · 01/30/2009 (7:11 am) · 1 comments
This patch brings us a step closer to a larger beta test by targeting lower level areas and focusing on bringing them up to commercial quality. Throughout development we've inserted features at a fast pace, but we didn't focus a whole lot of energy into trying to polish those features, into exact balancing, or into tutorials. This update is the first of what will be a couple patches aimed at doing just that. This includes a number of database, login and patching changes, as well as some server side bug fixes. We went through all of our lower level encounters and balance tested them with different characters, making sure that they were not too difficult for new players. The housing and crafting systems both received significant improvements in order for them to be covered completely in the tutorial. In addition we've added the second wave of combat changes. What was previously ranged combat has now been split into four different skills; Rifle, Sniper, Shotgun and Automatic Weapons Tactics. We also made another wave of performance optimizations for those with older systems. We've also adjusted our profession system to include 26 starting professions, and ensured that each starting profession begins with some useful abilities, items, or recipes. As a result hundreds of items, recipes and abilities were added. We also did a sweeping pass and adjusted the skill requirements on different abilities in every single skill tree. The loot system saw a massive rewrite, that allows us to keep randomized loot, but to be able to filter it more specifically.
Armor now has a movement modifiers that affect your movement speed. Heavier armor will reduce your movement speed and your ability to evade, where the penalty on lighter armor is reduced. Heavier armor of course, does a much better job of absorbing the damage which is taken. Characters who choose not to wear armor will receive no such penalties, but of course will also not have the benefit of damage absorption. Defensive auto-triggering abilities such as Dodging, Parrying and Counter-Attacking are now functional under the new combat system.
There are a few new elements on your UI related to the revamped combat. On the left of your toolbar is now an Accuracy Meter. This will take into account your position (Prone, Croutch, Stand), if you are moving, your weapons accuracy range, etc and give a visual indication of how accurate you should be at this given range. There is also now a targeting UI that allows you to easily switch between which body part that you wish to target. Headshots are the least accurate, but have the highest chance to land critical bonuses, or even outright kill certain monsters. Body shots are median damage, and most accurate. Leg shots can slow or even cripple your opponent causing them not to move if their legs become broken. Arm shots will lower your opponents accuracy, and may render them unable to equip items if their arms are broken.
We improved our previous introduction mission, so that it now covers the basics of the setting, your purpose for being cloned, what is expected of you and guides you through the basics of gameplay. Effort was made to create a quest fork for each of the major gameplay types and to introduce players to the generated and static quest systems through this lengthy tutorial series. By the time players have completed the tutorial they should understand most facets of the game. The areas that this tutorial does not cover currently are Sieges, Elections, PVP, Player owned Shops/Structures. Those areas will be covered at a later time.
Housing is now nearly fully implemented. Previously player housing worked, the rent system was implemented, and the furniture hook inventory had been created, but the housing structures were simple boxed interiors and furniture did not appear in your house, even though you placed it there. As of this patch, dropping furniture into your home will now cause it to remain there permanently until removed. You can adjust your furniture by using the Control Panel, near the exit to your home. Simply drop your furniture into any of the slots that exist for your housing type and they will appear.
Currently we have only fully implemented standard apartments, which we needed to have completed for beta testing. We also have Suites, Luxury Suites and Club Lodges (similar to guild halls) planned prior to release. Suites are in-game now, but they do not have additional hooks at this time. This will probably not happen until after beta testing begins, as other things have a higher priority. Every player starts with an apartment, which features very affordable rent. This apartment has inventory hooks for 1 Ceiling, 1 Floor, 1 Rug, 2 Wall, 1 Light, 2 Corner and 1 Center piece of furniture. Suites add a second room and 13 new furniture hooks, as well as one robotic. Luxury Suites will add a third room with 9 additional furniture slots, one additional robotic slot and 1 machinery slot for adding Crafting Stations. Club Lodges add an additional room which has a third robotic slot, a second machinery slot, a Club Vault space (similar to a guild vault) and teleporter that will allow you to teleport to any city which that society owns. It should be noted that the ability to own a Club Lodge is an organizational perk and will require your organization to have earned sufficient rank in order to purchase one.
Crafting has also seen significant improvement. The previous system was similar to Everquest and Minions of Mirth in that you opened up a Crafting Station, placed the components into it and hit combine. If the components could create anything then it would attempt to create an item. This could result in a failure that used up components, or in producing one of several quality variants based on your skill level and the components used. For example, Tailoring armor uses primarily the same components, but depending on the quality of those components and the skill of the crafter, it can produce widely varying results. Recipes could either be discovered on your own, or buy purchasing recipe books, which you could read for information. These books merely told you the ingredients though, and you still had to manually place them into the crafting station. If you forgot the recipe, you would have to re-open the book, as it was not stored anyplace.
The new system maintains all of the features of the previous incarnation, but it simplifies the process. Now when you purchase and read a recipe book, it saves the Recipes into a permanent Recipe Book, similar to your ability list. When using a crafting station it will now give you a list of all the recipes that you know. If you have the ingredients it will allow you to craft. If you do not, then it will not allow you to craft. When viewing your recipes, they are color coded. The color style is the same as you have grown used to in other games, with grey being trvial, then moving on to green and blue, white being even with your skill level, moving on to yellow, orange and red. There are currently crafting recipe books for each craft but some of the tradeskills do not yet have many recipes. During the process of setting everything up, we have added hundreds of items and recipes to the crafting system, but this is just the beginning. Expect craftables to continue to increase in upcoming patches.
So what does this mean for beta testing? We're not quite there yet, but getting closer. We're about to open up alpha testing to some new players. How fast we move into beta testing will depend on how smoothly this process goes, as well as how quick we can get in the remaining features on our "must complete before beta" list knocked out. We don't have a timetable for this, but it's getting close.
General
- Accounts will now be created from The Repopulation web site, and allow users to create their own usernames and passwords. They can then enter in a registration code to validate the account.
- Updating the patching system significantly. One of the more notable changes is that you will now be able to monitor the overall and file sizes in better detail
- Added a new encryption scheme.
- The loot system has seen a masive overhaul using the concept of various loot tables which can be mixed and matched as necessary, as well as having better control over the number of items dropped on any rarity scale.
- Fixed a bug where after you learned a new ability, the Card icon would remain on your cursor, even though the item was gone. .
- Fixed a time synchronization issue
- Added the ability for certain points of interest to only be available if you are on a particular quest, or if you have a particular character flag.
- Fixed a bug that was causing the client to crash occasionally after death
- Abilities can now be flagged as Outdoor only.
- Added in Triggerable Area Effects. This new effect type allows players to place an item in the area, and for it to continue ticking a specific effect until it is destroyed. For example a campfire can be set up which will heal nearby players until it expires. A trap can be set up that will trap anyone who walks over it. A wall can be created that will need to be knocked down to allow passage. Fire can set onto the ground, burning anyone who passes. The first wave of these effects have also gone in with this patch.
- Certain abilities can now be used on whatever item is on your cursor. This is currently used for our new Vehicle, Robot and Tamed Pet repair/veterinary abilities. In the future we may find other uses for it.
- Updated our patching and packaging system to cover some compatibility issues and missing dlls on certain systems.
- When determining if another player or NPC is Killed on Sight, allegiance and whether or not that character is active military is now taken into consideration.
- Added the ability for certain NPCs or Objects to hide their name from players. This is used for things such as Mines or Traps or certain objects that are intended to be hidden or hard to see.
- Increased the delay before the start of an engagement so that the event doesn't begin with only half of the players inside of an engagement as often.
Character
- Characters no longer start with the ability Unthreatening Approach or an OWON Issued Handgun. Unthreatening Approach will be awarded as part of the tutorial, and your weapon will be assigned based on your starting profession.
- When characters begin they will automatically be granted a suffix based on their starting location
- Fixed a bug that was causing new characters to not properly display their titles.
- We have removed the Evaluation and Knowledge skills. These skills were intended originally to allow players to have varying degrees of analysis on items, vehicles, monsters that would improve as they used the skills. As things progressed though, there really didn't seem to be much of a point to them, and they could confuse players. As a result, we decided to remove them.
- We have removed the a number of remnant skills. The features that these skill trees were intended to support have been modified in a manner that rendered these skills useless during the course of development. As a result they were removed.
- Made adjustments to the Title/Achievement storage system.
- When choosing a profession in the indoctrination quest you will now receive boosts to a secondary skill, instead of just the primary skill. There are also now 25 starting profession options. It should be noted that a starting profession merely determines your basic skill levels, you can still master any other skill tree, this just gives you a headstart in certain skills. The professions are: Acrobat, Animal Tamer, Archer, Boxer, Carpenter, Cook, Diplomat, Doctor, Farmer, Fisherman, Gun Crafter, Hacker, Locksmith, Mechanic, Metalsmith, Mercenary, Miner, Policeman, Ranger, Scientist, Soldier, Spy, Trapper, Tailor and Veterinarian.
- Each starting profession now rewards players with a different set of abilities and items that pertain to that profession.
- Rallying Cry and Double Time has had their skill requirements reduced.
- Lowered the skill requirement for Tame Animal
- The Camouflage and Stealth skills have been merged into one skill.
- Merged the Animal Control and Robotic Control skills into a single Pet Control skill.
- Our species kill calculator has been updated to include four new species, and has also been optimized. For those who are not aware of this feature, your total kills vs. these species are tracked and they grant you a bonus when you fight that race, as well as offering other perks.
- Adjusted the reuse times of a large number of abilities
- Added two new First Aid Abilities: Tend Wounds and Heal Wounds.
- Added the Set Up Camp ability. This ability is available through the Survival skill tree and requires Campfire Materials and a Tent. Campfire materials can be obtained by using the foraging skill, or buying them from a store. Tents can be crafted by tailors. While this ability is active players can sit near the camp to regenerate health and energy at an accelerated rate.
- Added the Meditation based ability: Cleanse Body. This ability is a self only Ailment Cure.
- Added the Robotics based ability: Sabotage Robot. This ability does massive damage to a robotic opponent, but takes a while to upload the EMP Virus, and requires a component produced by Hackers.
- Added the robotic based ability: Repair Robot. This allows you to restore the durability on robotic pets.
- Added the Veterinary Medicine abilities: Mend Animal and Heal Animal.
- Added the Initimidation based ability: Intimidate which can intimidate an NPC into picking a target other than yourself.
- Added the Ranged Defense based ability: Take Cover, and the Grenade Tactics ability: Fire in the Hole. These abilities will force you to go Prone, and grant a bonus to your ranged defense for a short time.
- Added the Parry based ability: Riposte. This ability will attempt to counter the next attack.
- Added the Ranged Defense based abilities: Startle Shot. This ability can be used to force a prone target to panic and stand up.
- Added the Ranged Defense based ability: Moving Target. This ability acts as both a movement speed enhancement and a ranged defense buff.
- Implemented the beginnings of the tinkering skill. This skill creates a number of simple items. Many of these are useful in other tradeskills, and some are items in their own right. A dozen new items were created for this skill.
- Added a number of new recipes to the Carpentry skill. This includes some furniture and wooden weapons.
- Added the Acrobatics skilsl: Roll. The Roll ability allows you to roll, increasing your chance to avoid an attack significantly.
- Implemented the basics of the Horticulture system.
- Implemented Automotive Engineering. This skill is used for the creation and repair of vehicles. This includes the Tune Up ability, which is used to restore durability to your vehicle.
- Implemented Veterinary Medicine.
- Upgraded our animal taming system to be within specs. The previous animal taming was like a very long duration charm. The new system brings us into line with where we wanted to be. When you tame an animal you receive an Leash which will allow you to summon that animal back at any time. You may now only tame animals when they are Babies. This item can also be given away or sold to other players. It should be noted though that if players do not have sufficient Pet Control skill, a pet can break free at any time. The stronger the pet, the more likely this is to happen. Baby animals will eventually grow up and become stronger variants over time. These animals are living beings though and you must keep them in good health. They lose durability through use, and they lose additional durability if they are killed in combat. You can replenish this durability with the Veterinary Medicine skill.
- Animal Care is a new ability given to those with sufficient Veterinary medicine. It allows you to restore the durability of a pet. To use this ability you must grab the Pet's Leash onto your cursor and then click on the Animal Care ability. You may need to do this multiple times to get a pet up to full durability again.
Combat
- Heavier armors will now decrease your evasion and movement speed. Lighter armors also pay a penalty, but it is reduced.
- What was previously ranged combat has now been split into four different skills; Rifle, Sniper, Shotgun and Automatic Weaponry Tactics. These are unique skill trees that allow for unique abilities, but all also share the generic Ranged Tactics skill.
- There is now Ultra-Light, Light, Medium, Heavy Armor and Ultra-Heavy ArmorTactics skills, as well as an Energy Tank Tactics skill. These are defensive skills the reflect your effectiveness with that particular type of item. The stat that increases is varies by the armor type when these armors are being used. For example heavier armor will increase your strength, while lighter armor will increase your dexterity.
- Parrying, dual wielding and dodging is now functional under the new combat system.
- Players now have a chance to cuonter-attack based on the Counter-Attack ability. Counter-attacks are like a permanent but minor damage shield that will allow you to return damage automatically from time to time. As this skill increases, it also grants you new abilities at higher skill levels.
- Implemented Combat Healing. Combat Healing is a special skill tree that relies on shots, stims and nanobot technology to heal combat wounds faster than would otherwise be possible. Combat Healing relies on expendable items to accomplish this. Those items can be made by the new Pharmaceutical crafting skill.
- Implemented the Trapping Skill. Trapping allows you to set traps which can either be store bought or crafted. These traps will lay in waiting until someone comes into contact with them, and then will go off. Most traps may also be visually spotted, with varying degrees of size and model to make them easier or more difficult to spot. Some traps can continue ticking after triggered, but most will explode or trigger once and then be used up. The currently implemented Traps are: Sentry Alarm, Flash, Detonator, Ankle Wire, Net, Bomb and Chaos Mine. Each of these has a different effect.
- Added a dark vision full screen effect to the following abilities: Dirt in the Eyes, Poke Eye, and a blinding vision effect to: Flash Trap.
- Elemental damage typse (Cold, Fire, Poison, Disease, Acid, Electrical) have had their additional damage increased on the higher end elemental items (generally melee or special case weapons).
Crafting
- There is now a check when using the /craft command to ensure that players are within range of a Crafting Station.
- Recipe books will now permanently teach you a recipe that you can access easily at any point of your characters career.
- Added a wide variety of new recipes.
- The crafting station UI has been significantly altered to make crafting a simplified process. See above for details.
- Many items have been reclassified into a tiered rarity system (Junk, Common, Uncommon, Rare, Legendary, Epic)
- Added a minimum reuse time for crafting skills.
- Adjusted the harvesting time and pricing on various harvesting items.
- Fishing has been implemented. You can find by clicking on a school of Fish while using a Spear Gun in your harvesting inventory. Fishing is used to obtain components that can be useful for both Cooks or Tinkers. There are currently four different items that can be obtained from fishing. As with all of the new crafting skills though, you can expect more in upcoming patches.
- Implementing a new harvesting skill entitled Gathering. This skill allows you to collect certain items from bushes using Machetes. Gathered items can be useful for medicinal or food gathering purposes.
- Implemented Armorsmithing. Armorsmithing is used to make heavier forms of body armor. The early implementation includes 16 new craftable items form Armorsmithing.
- Implemented Shieldcrafting, which allows the creation of shields. - Implemented Cybernetics. This crafting skill allows you to create implants which grant your character modifiers over time. Many implants come with a tradeoff, however, particularly the cheaper ones.
- Implemented Genetic Engineering. This is a combination of a harvesting and crafting skill which allows you to gather DNA samples from living beings and then create them for use as pets. It should be noted that cloning humans in this manner is illegal and frowned upon. There is an ability called Gather DNA sample which you must use. This ability has a long usage time, so it is best if you use it on a distracted target. You will then store their DNA for later use in crafting. You can then create clones of that species, with varying degrees of power. Higher skill levels of Genetic Engineering allow you to extend these pets and give them special abilities. Genetically Engineered may only be summoned one time, though you can clone new animals as necessary. Over 100 new items were added from this skill.
- Implemented the Cybernetics skill. This skill allows the creation of a number of implants. Added 27 new implants that are created from this skill, along with the accompanying resources.
- Implemented the Pharmaceuticals skill. This skill allows the creation of medical related items, augmentations and components which can be used in other tradeskills. Over 50 new Pharmaceutical items were added.
- Implemented the first phase of the Hacking skill. Hacking is a computer based skill that allows you to hack into computer systems to open sealed doors, or to modify robotics or weapon control computers. We do not yet have locked doors, but we have implemented a few of the other abilities for Hacking. This includes the weapon and robotic hacking skills. They work similar to other crafting skills, but each asks for a specific base weapon type, and then expands it with new components. This will allow you to tweak your weapons or robotics to your needs.
- Implemented the first Cooking recipes. These recipes create food, obviously, of varying quality levels.
- Implemented the first Brewing recipes, these items create drinks with varying effects.
- Adjusted the crafting skill up calculation so that it scales up differently after you pass Elite crafting skill.
- Implemented the Foraging skill. This skill forages around the local area and has a chance of finding food, drink, herbs, or rare items when used. The actual items vary by the location. Some tradeskills require items that were obtained from the foraging skill.
- Implemented the Horticulture skill. The primary functions of this crafting skill are the production of farming deeds, and genetic cross-breeding of plant species. 14 new items were added for this ability.
- Implemented the Trap Knowledge skill. This skill is a combination of a crafting and a tracking skill. On the crafting side, it allows the creation of different traps to be used in the Trapping skill. On the tracking side a roll against your Trap Knowledge will be made when you are tracking in an area that has traps. If that roll is succeeded you will be able to track the trap like any other object.
- Implemented Firearms Crafting. This crafting skill allows you to create guns, rifles, grenades, exploding discs, and other firearm based devices. Over 30 new items were introduced with this skill.
- Implemented the Artillery skill. This skill allows the creation of Launcher and Siege weapons. These are extremely slow firing, wide radius weapons. 8 new items were added for this skill.
- Implemented the Robotics skill. This crafting ability allows the creation of a wide variety of robotic types. From servants to combat.
- Increased the collision box size on Calibrite Ore nodes. This should make them easier to loot.
- Quest items are now checked against when you craft an item.
Graphics
- Added two new blindness/warped vision full screen effect to be used for certain special abilities or objects
- Added a new Mutant model and some monsters based off of it. Mutants are a new species and their kills are tracked as such on the player, allowing species mastery and titles over them, as well.
- Added new door and control panel graphics to houses.
- Added new normal maps and specular maps to existing furniture.
- TSStatic Shapes (trees, some buildings) and waterblocks are now properly clipped by the far clipping plane. This results in better peformance for those who had clipped their far plane.
- Resolved a network related lighting issue.
- Added a Speargun model.
- Added a couple of new trap/detonator models.
- Added a good number of new equipiment icons to accomodate the new tradeskill information.
- Bitmap Buttons can now optionally be rendered without borders, as seen in the target accuracy indicator.
- Added a new tent model
- Impelemented a new T-Rex model, created through Genetic Engineering.
- Added new Dragon models and textures variations. The new models are better looking, better animated and better performant than our previous models.
- Added a new 4 legged robotic model.
Housing
- Furniture will now appear properly when placed into your housing inventory hook slots.
- Housing slots that your home does not support will now be redded out in your control panel. You can still place furniture in these slots if it is of the proper type, but it will not appear in your house. It can be stored there however, and if you upgrade to a nicer home it will then appear.
- Fixed a bug that was causing players to fall through the world after exiting their homes, forcing them to teleport.
- Fixed a bug that was causing players rent paid days to go into the negative.
- Fixed a bug that was causing housing inventory to not be selectable unless your Inventory had been opened previously.
Items
- Added in the first set of deeds. These deeds are crafted by those who specialize in Installations or Horticulture, primarily. Players can control up to 5 different structures based on the size of their city of residence (which they can change). We haven't yet implemented the structure system, however, so for now the deeds exist but can not yet be used. Expect structures and land ownership to in one of the next couple patches.
- Vehicles, tamed pets and robotics now have a Durability flag which is an indication of how many more times they can be used before dying or being destroyed. The durability can be replaced by allowing an Automotive Engineer (vehicles), Veterinary Medicine (tamed pets) or Robotic Engineer (robots) use a special ability on the items. The abilities vary per type.
- Harvesting Tools (Mining Drills, Power Saws, etc) have been given their own equipment slot. This allows players to harvest resources without unequiping their weapons.
- Heavier armor now affects your movement speed and your ability to evade attacks, where lighter armor has less of an effect.
- Recipe books now offer permanent character flags in addition to the Recipe text. Once you have learned the recipe, you can get rid of the book if you choose.
- Added new recipe books: Basic Carpentry, Basic Body Armor, Pharmaceuticals, Beers and Brews, Centauri Cookbook, Cybernetics, Genetic Engineering, Horticulture, Dying Hair, Modern Hair Styles, Basic Construction, Advanced Construction, Robotics, Crafting Shields, Artillery Equipment, Tinker's Guide, Vehicle Manufacture, and Armor From Hides. This constitutes all of the lower skill requirement recipes, and some of the common upper skill range requiring skills.
- Lowered the prices of Robotics significantly. They are still expensive products, but are now available at a much earlier starting point.
- Added an assortment of new starting items that are given to players after choosing their profession.
- Lasers have seen significant modification. Their range is now signifcantly increased, while their damage has been reduced to compensate.
- Energy based effects will now only do half damage unless they have a power source.
- Sonic weapons now do Energy based damage.
- Added hundreds of new craftable items.
- Added a couple of variants of Spear Guns to the game. These items are used for Fishing.
- Added books to the world. Books generally offer a history lesson, but some books also open up quests if you have a free quest slot.
- A good variety of new food and drink items have been added. Some of these are purchasable on vendors, but many of them are crafted.
- If an Item is a tamed pet leash, it will display the Maturity Level of your pet in the item info window/tooltip.
- Tweaked the stats of many items to bring the balance more into line of what we wanted. In general melee weapons and crossbows were doing less damage previously than rifles, guns or other ranged weapons. We've made moves to try to balance that out.
NPCs
- Adjusted many lower level mobs to make them more appropriately balanced. The newbie areas should be a bit safer, and the progression beyond there should be more smooth.
- Lurkers, Baroe, Vultures and Brutes are now tracked as their own separate species
- Added new unique abilities to Lurkers, Baroe, Vultures, and Brutes.
- Intelligent humanoid mobs now have a chance to drop random trade skill components. The components drop vary by zone.
- Added Baby versions of all animal types to be used with the Animal Taming skill. These are rare.
- Most robotic monsters will now occasionally drop Salvagable Parts, which can be used to create Robot parts by a skilled Robotics engineer.
- Vendor's sales lists are now sorted alphabetically.
- There is now a check when you purchase an item to see if this is an item that you need for any of your active quests.
Quests
- Added a brand new tutorial system which is aimed to teach players the basics of gameplay, as well as allowing players to choose their starting skills in a much more detailed manner than was previously the case. The new tutorial will take you through all of the basics, including: equipping items, using training cards, using abilities and toolbars, pets, crafting, harvesting, tracking, and the quest system. This takes place in the form of a 16 step introduction mission.
- Significant work has been done to our Dynamic Quest system to allow for longer, more epic quests. Quests can now have their dialogs change an unlimited number of times during the course of a quest, and other variables such as the generated NPCs can have their slots swapped during the course of the quest, as well. Multiple quickcheck dialogs are also now supported. The new tutorial provides an example of some of these checks in action. Although this template is not generated in the traditional sense, it utilizes the generated system to allow for multiple starting locations and different NPCs for each, while following the same base template.
- Fixed a bug that was causing certain OWON and FPR rare boss mobs to appear as NPCs and being selected for non-combat quests as a result.
- Added a number of new pieces of loot to the generated quest loot. Thist list now includes recipe books.
- Resolved a bug that was allowing players to have two of the same generated quest templates at once, and causing issues.
- Quest Actions may now be used to grant players another quest. This allows us to chain series of quests together to create truly epic generated quests.
- Quests can now set permanent character flags on your character. These character flags can then be used to make you available for other quests down the road, or to prohibit you from completing the same quest more than once.
- Added the ability for quests to be started by reading books or using items.
- Added "The First Invasion" book quest.
- Added the ability for quests to be updated by entering a certain location.
- Three new Underworld quests are now available to those who choose a darker path in life.
- Increased the rate at which dynamic quests are generated for your character when your slots are not full.
- Resolved a bug that was causing generated quests that ended at the the 4th random npc to not give a reward.
- Players will no longer be flagged as Looking For Work, Available for Covert Ops or Available for Emergency Operations until after they complete a certain stage of the tutorial.
Pets
- Fixed a bug that was preventing pets from attacking.
- There are now three different types of Pets: Robotics, Genetically Engineered and Tamed. Each serves a different purpose. Robotic pets are expensive but offer the widest variety of functions. They serve specific roles and can be used as medical robots, assistance, etc. They are controlled by the PetControl skill, and increasing it will open up new commands and more powerful robots. Robotic pets will never turn on their master. Robots can be used many times, but do require fresh batteries. They will never be permanently destroyed. Genetically Engineered Pets are created by Genetic Engineers, and their specialty is being able to use the special abilities of their race type. They are generally much less powerful than the creatures they were cloned from, however, and each creation is only good for one life/charge. Genetically engineered pets can also be cross-bred by highly skilled Genetic Engineers, resulting in some interesting hybrids. Tamed pets are the final type. These pets must be tamed at a young age, but will grow more powerful the longer they are maintained. They must be maintained properly or they will die. Veterinary skills can keep them going until they mature fully.
- Added a large number of new types of pets from Genetic Engineering and Taming
- The Pet Control skill will now have an effect on how effective you are at issuing certian commands. Robotics are the only pets that will always obey commands. Genetically Engineered or Tamed pets will ignore your commands from time to time, based on their level and your Pet Control skill. There are also some Pet Control based special abilities that you can gain later in your career.
- Pet commands are now given to all new players and appear on your toolbar automatically. They have also been given icons.
World
- Increased the number of mobs in Plymouth
- Doubled the number of mobs in the immediate area outside of Plymouth. This area is not designed to be a heavy hunting ground, but we wanted to increase the number of mobs available for new players who haven't yet found their way.
- Added Schools of Fish to the pond in Plymouth. These are used for Fishing.
- Added some rare spawn Lurkers to the Pond in Plymouth as an occasional detterant to fisherman.
- The Training Grounds and Tunnelwatch are now marked and trackable on the Plymouth Map.
UI
- Created a Tips window. This window is used for new characters, to teach them how to use certain features.
- Removed some vestigal text from the Stats Pane.
- Added a new accuracy meter to reflect how accurate your attacks will be from your current position.
- Added a limb targeting view, which allows you to target certain body parts on your opponent.
- The toolbar/tomegui has been significantly altered. This was done to allow it to be viewed properly in 800x600, for those with older systems, and also to trim away some unnecessary buttons. The only game altering change here is that you have now have 34 buttons on your toolbar instead of 40, but we will be adding additional pages in a future update which will nullify that negative
- UI Buttons can now be highlighted by the tutorial.tip system to help players learn the UI.
Attached are a couple images of our new character models in Very Light Armor. These are a work in progress. The female features some contrast between the different body parts which is noticable in the shots, but it gives a rough idea. The male model is 3100 polys and the female is a tad less.
Armor now has a movement modifiers that affect your movement speed. Heavier armor will reduce your movement speed and your ability to evade, where the penalty on lighter armor is reduced. Heavier armor of course, does a much better job of absorbing the damage which is taken. Characters who choose not to wear armor will receive no such penalties, but of course will also not have the benefit of damage absorption. Defensive auto-triggering abilities such as Dodging, Parrying and Counter-Attacking are now functional under the new combat system.
There are a few new elements on your UI related to the revamped combat. On the left of your toolbar is now an Accuracy Meter. This will take into account your position (Prone, Croutch, Stand), if you are moving, your weapons accuracy range, etc and give a visual indication of how accurate you should be at this given range. There is also now a targeting UI that allows you to easily switch between which body part that you wish to target. Headshots are the least accurate, but have the highest chance to land critical bonuses, or even outright kill certain monsters. Body shots are median damage, and most accurate. Leg shots can slow or even cripple your opponent causing them not to move if their legs become broken. Arm shots will lower your opponents accuracy, and may render them unable to equip items if their arms are broken.
We improved our previous introduction mission, so that it now covers the basics of the setting, your purpose for being cloned, what is expected of you and guides you through the basics of gameplay. Effort was made to create a quest fork for each of the major gameplay types and to introduce players to the generated and static quest systems through this lengthy tutorial series. By the time players have completed the tutorial they should understand most facets of the game. The areas that this tutorial does not cover currently are Sieges, Elections, PVP, Player owned Shops/Structures. Those areas will be covered at a later time.
Housing is now nearly fully implemented. Previously player housing worked, the rent system was implemented, and the furniture hook inventory had been created, but the housing structures were simple boxed interiors and furniture did not appear in your house, even though you placed it there. As of this patch, dropping furniture into your home will now cause it to remain there permanently until removed. You can adjust your furniture by using the Control Panel, near the exit to your home. Simply drop your furniture into any of the slots that exist for your housing type and they will appear.
Currently we have only fully implemented standard apartments, which we needed to have completed for beta testing. We also have Suites, Luxury Suites and Club Lodges (similar to guild halls) planned prior to release. Suites are in-game now, but they do not have additional hooks at this time. This will probably not happen until after beta testing begins, as other things have a higher priority. Every player starts with an apartment, which features very affordable rent. This apartment has inventory hooks for 1 Ceiling, 1 Floor, 1 Rug, 2 Wall, 1 Light, 2 Corner and 1 Center piece of furniture. Suites add a second room and 13 new furniture hooks, as well as one robotic. Luxury Suites will add a third room with 9 additional furniture slots, one additional robotic slot and 1 machinery slot for adding Crafting Stations. Club Lodges add an additional room which has a third robotic slot, a second machinery slot, a Club Vault space (similar to a guild vault) and teleporter that will allow you to teleport to any city which that society owns. It should be noted that the ability to own a Club Lodge is an organizational perk and will require your organization to have earned sufficient rank in order to purchase one.
Crafting has also seen significant improvement. The previous system was similar to Everquest and Minions of Mirth in that you opened up a Crafting Station, placed the components into it and hit combine. If the components could create anything then it would attempt to create an item. This could result in a failure that used up components, or in producing one of several quality variants based on your skill level and the components used. For example, Tailoring armor uses primarily the same components, but depending on the quality of those components and the skill of the crafter, it can produce widely varying results. Recipes could either be discovered on your own, or buy purchasing recipe books, which you could read for information. These books merely told you the ingredients though, and you still had to manually place them into the crafting station. If you forgot the recipe, you would have to re-open the book, as it was not stored anyplace.
The new system maintains all of the features of the previous incarnation, but it simplifies the process. Now when you purchase and read a recipe book, it saves the Recipes into a permanent Recipe Book, similar to your ability list. When using a crafting station it will now give you a list of all the recipes that you know. If you have the ingredients it will allow you to craft. If you do not, then it will not allow you to craft. When viewing your recipes, they are color coded. The color style is the same as you have grown used to in other games, with grey being trvial, then moving on to green and blue, white being even with your skill level, moving on to yellow, orange and red. There are currently crafting recipe books for each craft but some of the tradeskills do not yet have many recipes. During the process of setting everything up, we have added hundreds of items and recipes to the crafting system, but this is just the beginning. Expect craftables to continue to increase in upcoming patches.
So what does this mean for beta testing? We're not quite there yet, but getting closer. We're about to open up alpha testing to some new players. How fast we move into beta testing will depend on how smoothly this process goes, as well as how quick we can get in the remaining features on our "must complete before beta" list knocked out. We don't have a timetable for this, but it's getting close.
General
- Accounts will now be created from The Repopulation web site, and allow users to create their own usernames and passwords. They can then enter in a registration code to validate the account.
- Updating the patching system significantly. One of the more notable changes is that you will now be able to monitor the overall and file sizes in better detail
- Added a new encryption scheme.
- The loot system has seen a masive overhaul using the concept of various loot tables which can be mixed and matched as necessary, as well as having better control over the number of items dropped on any rarity scale.
- Fixed a bug where after you learned a new ability, the Card icon would remain on your cursor, even though the item was gone. .
- Fixed a time synchronization issue
- Added the ability for certain points of interest to only be available if you are on a particular quest, or if you have a particular character flag.
- Fixed a bug that was causing the client to crash occasionally after death
- Abilities can now be flagged as Outdoor only.
- Added in Triggerable Area Effects. This new effect type allows players to place an item in the area, and for it to continue ticking a specific effect until it is destroyed. For example a campfire can be set up which will heal nearby players until it expires. A trap can be set up that will trap anyone who walks over it. A wall can be created that will need to be knocked down to allow passage. Fire can set onto the ground, burning anyone who passes. The first wave of these effects have also gone in with this patch.
- Certain abilities can now be used on whatever item is on your cursor. This is currently used for our new Vehicle, Robot and Tamed Pet repair/veterinary abilities. In the future we may find other uses for it.
- Updated our patching and packaging system to cover some compatibility issues and missing dlls on certain systems.
- When determining if another player or NPC is Killed on Sight, allegiance and whether or not that character is active military is now taken into consideration.
- Added the ability for certain NPCs or Objects to hide their name from players. This is used for things such as Mines or Traps or certain objects that are intended to be hidden or hard to see.
- Increased the delay before the start of an engagement so that the event doesn't begin with only half of the players inside of an engagement as often.
Character
- Characters no longer start with the ability Unthreatening Approach or an OWON Issued Handgun. Unthreatening Approach will be awarded as part of the tutorial, and your weapon will be assigned based on your starting profession.
- When characters begin they will automatically be granted a suffix based on their starting location
- Fixed a bug that was causing new characters to not properly display their titles.
- We have removed the Evaluation and Knowledge skills. These skills were intended originally to allow players to have varying degrees of analysis on items, vehicles, monsters that would improve as they used the skills. As things progressed though, there really didn't seem to be much of a point to them, and they could confuse players. As a result, we decided to remove them.
- We have removed the a number of remnant skills. The features that these skill trees were intended to support have been modified in a manner that rendered these skills useless during the course of development. As a result they were removed.
- Made adjustments to the Title/Achievement storage system.
- When choosing a profession in the indoctrination quest you will now receive boosts to a secondary skill, instead of just the primary skill. There are also now 25 starting profession options. It should be noted that a starting profession merely determines your basic skill levels, you can still master any other skill tree, this just gives you a headstart in certain skills. The professions are: Acrobat, Animal Tamer, Archer, Boxer, Carpenter, Cook, Diplomat, Doctor, Farmer, Fisherman, Gun Crafter, Hacker, Locksmith, Mechanic, Metalsmith, Mercenary, Miner, Policeman, Ranger, Scientist, Soldier, Spy, Trapper, Tailor and Veterinarian.
- Each starting profession now rewards players with a different set of abilities and items that pertain to that profession.
- Rallying Cry and Double Time has had their skill requirements reduced.
- Lowered the skill requirement for Tame Animal
- The Camouflage and Stealth skills have been merged into one skill.
- Merged the Animal Control and Robotic Control skills into a single Pet Control skill.
- Our species kill calculator has been updated to include four new species, and has also been optimized. For those who are not aware of this feature, your total kills vs. these species are tracked and they grant you a bonus when you fight that race, as well as offering other perks.
- Adjusted the reuse times of a large number of abilities
- Added two new First Aid Abilities: Tend Wounds and Heal Wounds.
- Added the Set Up Camp ability. This ability is available through the Survival skill tree and requires Campfire Materials and a Tent. Campfire materials can be obtained by using the foraging skill, or buying them from a store. Tents can be crafted by tailors. While this ability is active players can sit near the camp to regenerate health and energy at an accelerated rate.
- Added the Meditation based ability: Cleanse Body. This ability is a self only Ailment Cure.
- Added the Robotics based ability: Sabotage Robot. This ability does massive damage to a robotic opponent, but takes a while to upload the EMP Virus, and requires a component produced by Hackers.
- Added the robotic based ability: Repair Robot. This allows you to restore the durability on robotic pets.
- Added the Veterinary Medicine abilities: Mend Animal and Heal Animal.
- Added the Initimidation based ability: Intimidate which can intimidate an NPC into picking a target other than yourself.
- Added the Ranged Defense based ability: Take Cover, and the Grenade Tactics ability: Fire in the Hole. These abilities will force you to go Prone, and grant a bonus to your ranged defense for a short time.
- Added the Parry based ability: Riposte. This ability will attempt to counter the next attack.
- Added the Ranged Defense based abilities: Startle Shot. This ability can be used to force a prone target to panic and stand up.
- Added the Ranged Defense based ability: Moving Target. This ability acts as both a movement speed enhancement and a ranged defense buff.
- Implemented the beginnings of the tinkering skill. This skill creates a number of simple items. Many of these are useful in other tradeskills, and some are items in their own right. A dozen new items were created for this skill.
- Added a number of new recipes to the Carpentry skill. This includes some furniture and wooden weapons.
- Added the Acrobatics skilsl: Roll. The Roll ability allows you to roll, increasing your chance to avoid an attack significantly.
- Implemented the basics of the Horticulture system.
- Implemented Automotive Engineering. This skill is used for the creation and repair of vehicles. This includes the Tune Up ability, which is used to restore durability to your vehicle.
- Implemented Veterinary Medicine.
- Upgraded our animal taming system to be within specs. The previous animal taming was like a very long duration charm. The new system brings us into line with where we wanted to be. When you tame an animal you receive an Leash which will allow you to summon that animal back at any time. You may now only tame animals when they are Babies. This item can also be given away or sold to other players. It should be noted though that if players do not have sufficient Pet Control skill, a pet can break free at any time. The stronger the pet, the more likely this is to happen. Baby animals will eventually grow up and become stronger variants over time. These animals are living beings though and you must keep them in good health. They lose durability through use, and they lose additional durability if they are killed in combat. You can replenish this durability with the Veterinary Medicine skill.
- Animal Care is a new ability given to those with sufficient Veterinary medicine. It allows you to restore the durability of a pet. To use this ability you must grab the Pet's Leash onto your cursor and then click on the Animal Care ability. You may need to do this multiple times to get a pet up to full durability again.
Combat
- Heavier armors will now decrease your evasion and movement speed. Lighter armors also pay a penalty, but it is reduced.
- What was previously ranged combat has now been split into four different skills; Rifle, Sniper, Shotgun and Automatic Weaponry Tactics. These are unique skill trees that allow for unique abilities, but all also share the generic Ranged Tactics skill.
- There is now Ultra-Light, Light, Medium, Heavy Armor and Ultra-Heavy ArmorTactics skills, as well as an Energy Tank Tactics skill. These are defensive skills the reflect your effectiveness with that particular type of item. The stat that increases is varies by the armor type when these armors are being used. For example heavier armor will increase your strength, while lighter armor will increase your dexterity.
- Parrying, dual wielding and dodging is now functional under the new combat system.
- Players now have a chance to cuonter-attack based on the Counter-Attack ability. Counter-attacks are like a permanent but minor damage shield that will allow you to return damage automatically from time to time. As this skill increases, it also grants you new abilities at higher skill levels.
- Implemented Combat Healing. Combat Healing is a special skill tree that relies on shots, stims and nanobot technology to heal combat wounds faster than would otherwise be possible. Combat Healing relies on expendable items to accomplish this. Those items can be made by the new Pharmaceutical crafting skill.
- Implemented the Trapping Skill. Trapping allows you to set traps which can either be store bought or crafted. These traps will lay in waiting until someone comes into contact with them, and then will go off. Most traps may also be visually spotted, with varying degrees of size and model to make them easier or more difficult to spot. Some traps can continue ticking after triggered, but most will explode or trigger once and then be used up. The currently implemented Traps are: Sentry Alarm, Flash, Detonator, Ankle Wire, Net, Bomb and Chaos Mine. Each of these has a different effect.
- Added a dark vision full screen effect to the following abilities: Dirt in the Eyes, Poke Eye, and a blinding vision effect to: Flash Trap.
- Elemental damage typse (Cold, Fire, Poison, Disease, Acid, Electrical) have had their additional damage increased on the higher end elemental items (generally melee or special case weapons).
Crafting
- There is now a check when using the /craft command to ensure that players are within range of a Crafting Station.
- Recipe books will now permanently teach you a recipe that you can access easily at any point of your characters career.
- Added a wide variety of new recipes.
- The crafting station UI has been significantly altered to make crafting a simplified process. See above for details.
- Many items have been reclassified into a tiered rarity system (Junk, Common, Uncommon, Rare, Legendary, Epic)
- Added a minimum reuse time for crafting skills.
- Adjusted the harvesting time and pricing on various harvesting items.
- Fishing has been implemented. You can find by clicking on a school of Fish while using a Spear Gun in your harvesting inventory. Fishing is used to obtain components that can be useful for both Cooks or Tinkers. There are currently four different items that can be obtained from fishing. As with all of the new crafting skills though, you can expect more in upcoming patches.
- Implementing a new harvesting skill entitled Gathering. This skill allows you to collect certain items from bushes using Machetes. Gathered items can be useful for medicinal or food gathering purposes.
- Implemented Armorsmithing. Armorsmithing is used to make heavier forms of body armor. The early implementation includes 16 new craftable items form Armorsmithing.
- Implemented Shieldcrafting, which allows the creation of shields. - Implemented Cybernetics. This crafting skill allows you to create implants which grant your character modifiers over time. Many implants come with a tradeoff, however, particularly the cheaper ones.
- Implemented Genetic Engineering. This is a combination of a harvesting and crafting skill which allows you to gather DNA samples from living beings and then create them for use as pets. It should be noted that cloning humans in this manner is illegal and frowned upon. There is an ability called Gather DNA sample which you must use. This ability has a long usage time, so it is best if you use it on a distracted target. You will then store their DNA for later use in crafting. You can then create clones of that species, with varying degrees of power. Higher skill levels of Genetic Engineering allow you to extend these pets and give them special abilities. Genetically Engineered may only be summoned one time, though you can clone new animals as necessary. Over 100 new items were added from this skill.
- Implemented the Cybernetics skill. This skill allows the creation of a number of implants. Added 27 new implants that are created from this skill, along with the accompanying resources.
- Implemented the Pharmaceuticals skill. This skill allows the creation of medical related items, augmentations and components which can be used in other tradeskills. Over 50 new Pharmaceutical items were added.
- Implemented the first phase of the Hacking skill. Hacking is a computer based skill that allows you to hack into computer systems to open sealed doors, or to modify robotics or weapon control computers. We do not yet have locked doors, but we have implemented a few of the other abilities for Hacking. This includes the weapon and robotic hacking skills. They work similar to other crafting skills, but each asks for a specific base weapon type, and then expands it with new components. This will allow you to tweak your weapons or robotics to your needs.
- Implemented the first Cooking recipes. These recipes create food, obviously, of varying quality levels.
- Implemented the first Brewing recipes, these items create drinks with varying effects.
- Adjusted the crafting skill up calculation so that it scales up differently after you pass Elite crafting skill.
- Implemented the Foraging skill. This skill forages around the local area and has a chance of finding food, drink, herbs, or rare items when used. The actual items vary by the location. Some tradeskills require items that were obtained from the foraging skill.
- Implemented the Horticulture skill. The primary functions of this crafting skill are the production of farming deeds, and genetic cross-breeding of plant species. 14 new items were added for this ability.
- Implemented the Trap Knowledge skill. This skill is a combination of a crafting and a tracking skill. On the crafting side, it allows the creation of different traps to be used in the Trapping skill. On the tracking side a roll against your Trap Knowledge will be made when you are tracking in an area that has traps. If that roll is succeeded you will be able to track the trap like any other object.
- Implemented Firearms Crafting. This crafting skill allows you to create guns, rifles, grenades, exploding discs, and other firearm based devices. Over 30 new items were introduced with this skill.
- Implemented the Artillery skill. This skill allows the creation of Launcher and Siege weapons. These are extremely slow firing, wide radius weapons. 8 new items were added for this skill.
- Implemented the Robotics skill. This crafting ability allows the creation of a wide variety of robotic types. From servants to combat.
- Increased the collision box size on Calibrite Ore nodes. This should make them easier to loot.
- Quest items are now checked against when you craft an item.
Graphics
- Added two new blindness/warped vision full screen effect to be used for certain special abilities or objects
- Added a new Mutant model and some monsters based off of it. Mutants are a new species and their kills are tracked as such on the player, allowing species mastery and titles over them, as well.
- Added new door and control panel graphics to houses.
- Added new normal maps and specular maps to existing furniture.
- TSStatic Shapes (trees, some buildings) and waterblocks are now properly clipped by the far clipping plane. This results in better peformance for those who had clipped their far plane.
- Resolved a network related lighting issue.
- Added a Speargun model.
- Added a couple of new trap/detonator models.
- Added a good number of new equipiment icons to accomodate the new tradeskill information.
- Bitmap Buttons can now optionally be rendered without borders, as seen in the target accuracy indicator.
- Added a new tent model
- Impelemented a new T-Rex model, created through Genetic Engineering.
- Added new Dragon models and textures variations. The new models are better looking, better animated and better performant than our previous models.
- Added a new 4 legged robotic model.
Housing
- Furniture will now appear properly when placed into your housing inventory hook slots.
- Housing slots that your home does not support will now be redded out in your control panel. You can still place furniture in these slots if it is of the proper type, but it will not appear in your house. It can be stored there however, and if you upgrade to a nicer home it will then appear.
- Fixed a bug that was causing players to fall through the world after exiting their homes, forcing them to teleport.
- Fixed a bug that was causing players rent paid days to go into the negative.
- Fixed a bug that was causing housing inventory to not be selectable unless your Inventory had been opened previously.
Items
- Added in the first set of deeds. These deeds are crafted by those who specialize in Installations or Horticulture, primarily. Players can control up to 5 different structures based on the size of their city of residence (which they can change). We haven't yet implemented the structure system, however, so for now the deeds exist but can not yet be used. Expect structures and land ownership to in one of the next couple patches.
- Vehicles, tamed pets and robotics now have a Durability flag which is an indication of how many more times they can be used before dying or being destroyed. The durability can be replaced by allowing an Automotive Engineer (vehicles), Veterinary Medicine (tamed pets) or Robotic Engineer (robots) use a special ability on the items. The abilities vary per type.
- Harvesting Tools (Mining Drills, Power Saws, etc) have been given their own equipment slot. This allows players to harvest resources without unequiping their weapons.
- Heavier armor now affects your movement speed and your ability to evade attacks, where lighter armor has less of an effect.
- Recipe books now offer permanent character flags in addition to the Recipe text. Once you have learned the recipe, you can get rid of the book if you choose.
- Added new recipe books: Basic Carpentry, Basic Body Armor, Pharmaceuticals, Beers and Brews, Centauri Cookbook, Cybernetics, Genetic Engineering, Horticulture, Dying Hair, Modern Hair Styles, Basic Construction, Advanced Construction, Robotics, Crafting Shields, Artillery Equipment, Tinker's Guide, Vehicle Manufacture, and Armor From Hides. This constitutes all of the lower skill requirement recipes, and some of the common upper skill range requiring skills.
- Lowered the prices of Robotics significantly. They are still expensive products, but are now available at a much earlier starting point.
- Added an assortment of new starting items that are given to players after choosing their profession.
- Lasers have seen significant modification. Their range is now signifcantly increased, while their damage has been reduced to compensate.
- Energy based effects will now only do half damage unless they have a power source.
- Sonic weapons now do Energy based damage.
- Added hundreds of new craftable items.
- Added a couple of variants of Spear Guns to the game. These items are used for Fishing.
- Added books to the world. Books generally offer a history lesson, but some books also open up quests if you have a free quest slot.
- A good variety of new food and drink items have been added. Some of these are purchasable on vendors, but many of them are crafted.
- If an Item is a tamed pet leash, it will display the Maturity Level of your pet in the item info window/tooltip.
- Tweaked the stats of many items to bring the balance more into line of what we wanted. In general melee weapons and crossbows were doing less damage previously than rifles, guns or other ranged weapons. We've made moves to try to balance that out.
NPCs
- Adjusted many lower level mobs to make them more appropriately balanced. The newbie areas should be a bit safer, and the progression beyond there should be more smooth.
- Lurkers, Baroe, Vultures and Brutes are now tracked as their own separate species
- Added new unique abilities to Lurkers, Baroe, Vultures, and Brutes.
- Intelligent humanoid mobs now have a chance to drop random trade skill components. The components drop vary by zone.
- Added Baby versions of all animal types to be used with the Animal Taming skill. These are rare.
- Most robotic monsters will now occasionally drop Salvagable Parts, which can be used to create Robot parts by a skilled Robotics engineer.
- Vendor's sales lists are now sorted alphabetically.
- There is now a check when you purchase an item to see if this is an item that you need for any of your active quests.
Quests
- Added a brand new tutorial system which is aimed to teach players the basics of gameplay, as well as allowing players to choose their starting skills in a much more detailed manner than was previously the case. The new tutorial will take you through all of the basics, including: equipping items, using training cards, using abilities and toolbars, pets, crafting, harvesting, tracking, and the quest system. This takes place in the form of a 16 step introduction mission.
- Significant work has been done to our Dynamic Quest system to allow for longer, more epic quests. Quests can now have their dialogs change an unlimited number of times during the course of a quest, and other variables such as the generated NPCs can have their slots swapped during the course of the quest, as well. Multiple quickcheck dialogs are also now supported. The new tutorial provides an example of some of these checks in action. Although this template is not generated in the traditional sense, it utilizes the generated system to allow for multiple starting locations and different NPCs for each, while following the same base template.
- Fixed a bug that was causing certain OWON and FPR rare boss mobs to appear as NPCs and being selected for non-combat quests as a result.
- Added a number of new pieces of loot to the generated quest loot. Thist list now includes recipe books.
- Resolved a bug that was allowing players to have two of the same generated quest templates at once, and causing issues.
- Quest Actions may now be used to grant players another quest. This allows us to chain series of quests together to create truly epic generated quests.
- Quests can now set permanent character flags on your character. These character flags can then be used to make you available for other quests down the road, or to prohibit you from completing the same quest more than once.
- Added the ability for quests to be started by reading books or using items.
- Added "The First Invasion" book quest.
- Added the ability for quests to be updated by entering a certain location.
- Three new Underworld quests are now available to those who choose a darker path in life.
- Increased the rate at which dynamic quests are generated for your character when your slots are not full.
- Resolved a bug that was causing generated quests that ended at the the 4th random npc to not give a reward.
- Players will no longer be flagged as Looking For Work, Available for Covert Ops or Available for Emergency Operations until after they complete a certain stage of the tutorial.
Pets
- Fixed a bug that was preventing pets from attacking.
- There are now three different types of Pets: Robotics, Genetically Engineered and Tamed. Each serves a different purpose. Robotic pets are expensive but offer the widest variety of functions. They serve specific roles and can be used as medical robots, assistance, etc. They are controlled by the PetControl skill, and increasing it will open up new commands and more powerful robots. Robotic pets will never turn on their master. Robots can be used many times, but do require fresh batteries. They will never be permanently destroyed. Genetically Engineered Pets are created by Genetic Engineers, and their specialty is being able to use the special abilities of their race type. They are generally much less powerful than the creatures they were cloned from, however, and each creation is only good for one life/charge. Genetically engineered pets can also be cross-bred by highly skilled Genetic Engineers, resulting in some interesting hybrids. Tamed pets are the final type. These pets must be tamed at a young age, but will grow more powerful the longer they are maintained. They must be maintained properly or they will die. Veterinary skills can keep them going until they mature fully.
- Added a large number of new types of pets from Genetic Engineering and Taming
- The Pet Control skill will now have an effect on how effective you are at issuing certian commands. Robotics are the only pets that will always obey commands. Genetically Engineered or Tamed pets will ignore your commands from time to time, based on their level and your Pet Control skill. There are also some Pet Control based special abilities that you can gain later in your career.
- Pet commands are now given to all new players and appear on your toolbar automatically. They have also been given icons.
World
- Increased the number of mobs in Plymouth
- Doubled the number of mobs in the immediate area outside of Plymouth. This area is not designed to be a heavy hunting ground, but we wanted to increase the number of mobs available for new players who haven't yet found their way.
- Added Schools of Fish to the pond in Plymouth. These are used for Fishing.
- Added some rare spawn Lurkers to the Pond in Plymouth as an occasional detterant to fisherman.
- The Training Grounds and Tunnelwatch are now marked and trackable on the Plymouth Map.
UI
- Created a Tips window. This window is used for new characters, to teach them how to use certain features.
- Removed some vestigal text from the Stats Pane.
- Added a new accuracy meter to reflect how accurate your attacks will be from your current position.
- Added a limb targeting view, which allows you to target certain body parts on your opponent.
- The toolbar/tomegui has been significantly altered. This was done to allow it to be viewed properly in 800x600, for those with older systems, and also to trim away some unnecessary buttons. The only game altering change here is that you have now have 34 buttons on your toolbar instead of 40, but we will be adding additional pages in a future update which will nullify that negative
- UI Buttons can now be highlighted by the tutorial.tip system to help players learn the UI.
Attached are a couple images of our new character models in Very Light Armor. These are a work in progress. The female features some contrast between the different body parts which is noticable in the shots, but it gives a rough idea. The male model is 3100 polys and the female is a tad less.
Torque 3D Owner Chris Cain