The Repopulation - Alpha Progress and Screenshots

It's been a hectic 10 days for us here with the launch of phase 2 of our alpha test. The first day saw us slammed with many unexpected issues. Last week's character customization additions brought a bug that was setting a material before players had zoned into a zone and it was causing players to fall through the world, and a slew of other issues. Our web site had a couple of issues which were making it difficult for users to register their keys or download the client. Most of these issues were resolved in the first day however, and these build notes are a collection of numerous daily patches over the course of the past week.

As you'll notice there are many little changes and bug fixes, but there are also a few major ones. We added six new static dungeons this week, which work in a traditional, non-instanced format. We also fixed bugs that were causing our sewer and engagement instances to not work properly at the launch of alpha. Wailing Chasm received many updates, and the result is a lot more content for testers to play with. There are new clothing options, NPCs are more varied, and numerous UI fixes or additions have been made. We've still got quite a ways to go, but things are slowly coming together.

Combat

- Melee weapons will now use less energy.
- We've increased the rate at which you gain Ranged and Martial Tactics skills by 50%, the rate at which you gain Combat Tactics by 25%, and more than doubled the rate at which the Dual Wielding skill goes up.
- We've increased the rate at which you gain Ranged and Martial Defensive skills by 50%, the rate at which you gain Defensive Awareness by 25%
- Significantly lowered the minimum Combat Tactics required to be eligible to perform Critical Hits.
- Significantly lowered the minimum Defensive Tactics required to be eligible to perform Critical Defenses.
- You will now have a chance to raise your skill with a specific Armor type when you successfully defend while wearing it.

Crafting

- There are now crafting stations in each of the control points of Wailing Chasm.
- Genetically engineered pets had their quality levels mixed up previously. The Critical success version was resulting in what should have been the moderate version, and vice versa. This has been resolved.
- The Calibrite Mace recipe will no longer reward an Axe for the high quality result.

Dungeons

- We've added numerous new dungeons to Plymouth and Freedomtown, and they work in a tiered fashion, meaning they are aimed at a certain skill level of player.
- There is a mine in each of the two zones. This mine is a mixture of tier 1 monsters and resources. There are a number of nodes in a dense radius here, but you must be willing to brave the dangers in order to access them. These mines are very small dungeons.
- There is a tier 2 dungeon in each of these zones. In Plymouth this dungeon is populated with Lesoo, where the Freedomtown dungeon is populated with Lingmaa. These zones are more difficult than the mines, and are larger. They also feature bosses with special abilities that are generated when they are created.
- There are new tier 3 dungeon in Freedomtown and Plymouth. These dungeons are primarily targeted at groups of players, and are not filled with solo content. Some of the bosses in these dungeons are low end raid content.

Effects and Abilities

- Added the Acrobatics based ability: Burst of Speed. This is similar to Sprint but works on a separate timer and is based on Acrobatics rather than Survival.
- Brutes now have an Area of Effect Knockback attack.
- Lingmaa now have a poisonous bite.

General

- Tells are functional again. It should be noted that our tell format is slightly different from most other MMOGs. The format is: /tell <playername>, <message>. The reason for requiring a comma is that our characters can have a first and last name at character creation, thus allowing for players to have the same first name so long as they have a unique last name. So an example message would be: /tell erasmus hurt, hey.
- Player to Player trades are now functional. Shift-right click on a player to initiate a trade with them.
- Reduced mission loading time significantly.
- There is now a Lightsource slot, freeing players from needing to use their secondary slot to equip a light source.
- Patch notes can now be displayed in-game after a patch.
- There should no longer be an exceptionally long loading time after a zone has been patched for those in Basic Lighting.
- Fixed a server side bug that was causing lights to not come on in housing or the cities.
- Fixed server side issues that were causing players to fall through the world.
- Fixed a problem that was causing the account page on our web site to function improperly on some accounts, disallowing people to enter their keys without using a hacked in page.

Graphics

- Added numerous new texture/material types for clothing and armor that are usable by players or npcs.
- Players should on longer run in place after stopping.
- We've adjusted our Graphics Options. Medium settings will now only display groundcover Billboards, rather than models. Where High settings will use Advanced Lighting with sun shadows disabled. Very High will have sun shadows enabled.
- The /who command will now also list the players current zone and clan, if applicable.
- Resolved a particle issue where some of our particles were using billboards with missing graphics.
- We've added normal and parallax mapped terrains. Because these features can be GPU or memory intensive we have added configuration options to disable them. Lower end configuration options automatically disable these.
- Weapon fire should now be visible.
- Added a new cave dungeon graphics set.
- Solved a bug in the cloud shader that was causing graphical issues on some systems.
- Fixed the ugly material in the crafting house of Freedomtown.
- Fixed a material related bug that was causing Mohawks to display incorrectly.
- Fixed a bug that was showing a seam on females in Medium Armor without sleeves.
- Fixed a bug that was causing female NPCs who were wearing Medium, Heavy or Ultra Heavy armor to actually be using the mesh of both that armor and the Very Light Armor. The normal clothing was underneath their armor and not visible, but this should result in a small performance boost.

Items

- We've added a slew of new items into our boss mob tables. I wanted to take a moment to clarify some confusion with regards to our boss system. During the course of your adventures you will see many named mobs in the regular mob spawn rotation. Most of those are not what we consider bosses, those are just slightly more difficult variants of regular mob spawns who have an increased chance at loot. Their loot comes from the standard mob drop tables for that type of mob though. Our true bosses work a bit differently, and most of them have names that should make them recognizable as bosses. Some of these have unique pieces of loot, while all of them have a shared loot table of other monsters of their race or type within that tier. Bosses usually have generated special abilities, and may require special tactics to defeat.
- Soldiers at control points will now drop higher quality loot.
- Added some new random crude weapon loots that can be dropped by humanoid monsters.

Missions

- We've introduced a new character DNA system. This system allows missions to reward players with splices of DNA that will increase their ability to skills of their choosing. It is designed to counter the need for grinding out skill points. This process is performed by using a new machine inside of the Cloning Facility buildings.
- The Freedomtown version of the tutorial should now be able to properly track the cloning facility.
- Fixed a bug that was causing quest journal entries to not properly display NPC locations or Enemy Faction names under certain circumstances.
- The Cloning Officer should no longer be involved in generated missions.
- Your looking for work flag is now toggled on by default.
- The Weapon Runner quest should no longer send you to the other side of the world.

Pets

- Crawler pets will now use Ranged Attacks and will target Unarmored body parts.

World

- We've added six new static dungeons. These dungeons are scattered throughout various zones and are traditional static mob dungeons, and not instances. They can be found in Plymouth, Freedtomtown with varying difficulty ranges and population groups.
- We've added a variety of direction signs. These signs are found at important points along the roads to make it easier for new players to find different locations.
- Made numerous adjustments to Freedomtown in an attempt to make the zone easier to navigate on new players. The largest of these changes was moving the Crafting Workshop building into the main part of the town. It is now located near the Cloning Facility.
- Baby animals should spawn more frequently than was previously the case. This should make things easier for animal tamers.
- Added baby animals to Wailing Chasm.
- We've added a lot more variety in our NPC's skin colors, hair, facial hair, etc.
- Wailing Chasm now has a military recruiter and bounty collector in Pontoc. These recruiters and collectors will change their faction based on who controls the control point.
- Added Crafting Stations to Pontoc Lookout, Pontoc and Blue Canyon.
- Added two new Control Points to the Wailing Chasm.
- Added a very large Lesoo encampment in the middle of Wailing Chasm.
- NPCs will now walk at a more reasonable rate.
- Added new exploration points to Wailing Chasm.
- Wailing Chasm now has clouds.
- Reduced the difficulty levels of normal NPCs (vendors, citizens, etc) who reside in control points.
- Increased the size of the zone in regions to and from Wailing Chasm.
- Cipriano for the Freedomtown tutorial should no longer be stacked too closely to his female companion. This was causing him to be hard to interact with.
- You will now spawn more in the center of your house, rather than in the corner.
- You can once again enter the Sewers under Plymouth. You will need to have one of the missions that takes place in this zone in order to enter, but only one player in the alliance needs to have the mission.
- Players were getting stuck after zoning into engagements This has been fixed.
- The Freedomtown Cloning Facility is now a trackable map marker.
- Added trackable points of interest to Wailing Chasm.
- Brutes now have an Area of Effect Knockback attack.
- Lingmaa now have a poisonous bite.
- The Invasion engagement was crashing players when they zoned into it. This has been fixed.
- Vultures now have a longer duration sprint that allows them to close the distance on players.
- Added new raid encounter and single group boss spawn locations to Freedomtown.
- Added numerous new boss monster templates of varying difficulty levels.
- Vulture Queens and Royal Guards have had their difficulty level reduced.
- The road to the Training Grounds in Freedomtown should be easier to spot.
- Fixed a couple of cracks in the road in Plymouth.

UI

- There is now a DNA pane on the Character Window. This is used for manipulating the new character DNA system.
- Your most recently used character will now be stored in your preferences and automatically highlighted when you log in. You can still switch to another character at this point, but it should save you from needing to reselect your main character because you have another character with a name that is higher up in the alphabetical listing.
- There is now an options to Invert your mouse or adjust its sensitivity in the General Preferences.
- Mission loading images had been a low priority item which was broken since the port to Torque 3d. This has been fixed.
- Fixed the Wailing Chasm map.
- Fixed a bug that was causing you to lose your mouse cursor temporarily after dragging an Ability to your action bar.


You can sign up for the alpha or get more information at: www.therepopulation.com