The Repopulation - 0.5.6 Build Notes and Screenshots

Where the last few updates have focused heavily on content and playability, this one took more of a turn towards the visuals and interface. Plymouth has a completely new and much improved look from Stadi Thompson. We've also introduced the third revision of our User Interface from Mikael Pettersson. In addition to this you can find numerous changes the weather, fog, cloud, lighting and shadows of the game. To make a long story short, we've improved our visuals significantly while making small improvements to our frame rates. That's not to say the update completely focuses on graphics though, as a number of other improvements and bug fixes went in, as well.


Crafting and Harvesting

- Increased the maximum number of ingredients a recipe can contain.
- Robotics crafters can now create Sorted Robot Parts, which are a component for the new Fix Up Robot ability.
- Fixed a harvesting related bug that was allowing players to bypass needing the proper tool.
- Made a number of adjustments to Pharmaceutical recipes and progression.
- There are now new types of Poxy Flowers.

Effects and Abilities

- We've made more improvements to the stat and diminishing returns system. These changes provide us with more control over ranges, and allow us to make individual stats directly affect certain skills.
- Made improvements to the way negation/dispel abilities work.
- Haste abilities have all had their percentages adjusted.
- Added the Robotics based ability: Fix Up Robot, which is used to heal a robotic pet, but requires Sorted Robot Parts, which can be created by Robotics crafters.
- The Counter-Attack based ability Counter Move has had its skill requirement significantly reduced.
- The Shield Tactics based ability Raise Shield has had its skill requirement raised by one tier.
- The Swordfighting Tactics based ability Counter Slash has had its damage reduced.
- The meditation skill tree has been renamed as Spiritual Arts, and can now encompass more abilities.
- Made many adjustments to Combat Healing abilities and items.
- Fixed a recently introduced bug that was causing Taming to not work.
- Fixed a recently introduced bug that was causing the Gather DNA Sample ability to not fucntion properly.

General
- Faction messages have been disabled. This is an area that we are seeking tester feedback on. We have some hidden factions that we don't want players knowing about, or how to increase those factions as they work with some of the underlying features that are currently a secret. Those factions should never display, but we may re-enable faction messages for generic factions later based on tester response. The positive of not showing them would be that player actions do matter, and players won't know how much they matter, which should keep players acting in line. Many of your actions do have an effect on the world, so killing some hapless Farmer for fun, will have a negative effect most likely. With a hidden faction system you won't know the extent of that. We are open to the idea of placing normal faction messages back in though, and this should for the time being be considered an experimental feature. Let us know what you think on the forums.
- There is now an idle timeout period. If a player sits in one spot for too long this will engage, and eventualy it will remove them from the game.
- Players can now /afk to set themselves as away from the keyboard. This will extend their idle timeout time when done, allowing them to stay in the game while afk longer. It will also place a denotation above their character names on other players ShapeNameHUDs. It will also notify incoming tells that you are AFK and may not respond immediately.
- We've updated the game's installer. The new installer will automatically install our custom font as part of the install process, and is up to date with the most recent changes.
- Fixed some mouse related issues.
- 3D Audio had broken in the port to T3D 1.0 or 1.01. It has been fixed.
- Fixed some PVP related bugs.
- Selecting the High detail setting in Options will now enable Sun Shadows, where previously they were disabled unless you went into Very High.
- You can now camp even if you are in a vehicle.
- Added a cap to the maximum haste that a player or monster can have at any given time.
- Fixed a bug that was causing some NPCs to become stuck in one of their animations after they had died.
- Fixed a bug related to Turbo in vehicles.
- Fixed a bug that was allowing players to skill up on monsters that were a bit too easy for them.
- Fixed a bug that was causing player clothing (not armor) to not properly switch texture when equipped.
- Adjusted the skill up rates of many skills.

Graphics
- We have modified the Scattersky code so that we can have better control over the fog color on each map.
- Lighting and Shadows have been tweaked in many areas. This should reduce any artifacts indoors, and imporve performance in many cases. In addition to this outdoor zones have had their ambient lighting reduced, and sun brightness increased, which should result in better looking and more varied lighting in outdoor scenes.
- We've made a number of adjustments to the clouds and sky to improve their visual quality and performance.
- The weather system has seen many improvements. The fog gets denser and darker along with the clouds when the weather is bad, it gets much denser during a thunderstorm now, and lightning has also made its first appearance. The transitions between these changes should now be smooth and less noticeable.
- There are new Icons to indicate if an NPC is needed in any of your current quests, their difficulty level in relation to you, or if a monster is geared towards a group or raid.
- Made adjustments to our skinning code. This fixed a nasty network hiccup.
- We've added new materials to many of the objects in game. This includes some nicer normal and specular maps and as well as diffuse and material tweaks.
- Resolved a nearplane clipping related issue.

Items
- Usable items can now be set to be time limited, so that you can not spam click them.
- Usable items can now use skill checks and grant skill raises.
- Adjusted the strength and value of Robotic pets.
- Made adjustments to Item Incumbrance. You will be able to see the Incumbrance in the tooltips.
- There are some new looks to some of the Tier 1 and 2 Light and Ultra Light armor pieces.

Missions

- Generated or static quests can set a flag to automatically recalculate your top skills. For example, your top skills will now be recalculated the minute you choose a profession in the starting tutorial. This allows your character to have the proper categorization icon (see UI changes) and begin having properly configured generated missions right away.
- We put an additional check in when players log into the world that will clear out any old and unaccepted missions. Previously if a player disconnected improperly those missions were sometimes not deleted and it would cause a player to reach their maximum amount of generated missions as a result. This is now fixed.


Pets

- Combots now have a medium ranged attack.

UI

- We have integrated UI revision 3. As you can see many areas have been completely redesigned on the UI. There are still several things that need doing, but we took a step towards our final UI in this update. We'll describe the individual changes below.
- All windows now have a new background frame, there are a couple different versions of these frames, with different windows using different frames. In general though it should be easier to drag or close the new windows and they should look better.
- Many of the windows are now titled.
- The map now tracked color coded points. An orange point indicates a point of interest, and an NPC is represented in Blue, and group mates will be represented in purple. Hovering over the any of the dots will display the name in a tooltip. Tracked objects also appear on the map.
- Fixed a bug that was causing mouse over tooltips for items or abilities to sometimes open and close rapidly instead of staying on.
- The Crafting UI has seen some significant changes to accomodate a large recipe selection.
- Fixed an alignment bug on the Skills Pane.
- The Mission helper window now has more space for text on each mission, as well as a new appearance.
- The Map is now located in the upper right hand corner of the screen. The controls are now embedded on top of the map. You can drag the map by dragging the header area on the top of the map.
- The buffs window is now just to the left of map and docked to the top of the screen.
- Each player in the group now receives their own mini-box with vitals information.
- The Group Window now includes an icon next to each players name that indicates that at which they are most skilled. For examples players whose highest skill is a medical skill would have a first aid indication next to their name, where one who were skilled with melee weapons may have a mace as an icon. The purpose of these icons is to allow others in the group to have a basic idea of what it is your character does best, and thus help determine a possible role for each player in the group. It should be noted that characters could be equally skilled at multiple skills, but this will only select an icon from the field at which they are the very best at. Take it as a guideline, and not a rule. It should be noted the current icons are programmer art and will be replaced in the near future.
- You can now monitor your groupmates Energy and E-Shields from the group window.
- If a player is Idle or AFK it will appear next to their name on the ShapeNameHUD.
- If players try to login but their character is timing out in the world (from a linkdeath for example) it will give them a message indicating such and an estimated timeout time.
- Healing now has its own type of Pop Up Text that will appear above players heads when it occurs.
- Pet damage will now appear in the Pop Up text.
- The breath (underwater) and casting bars have been moved to their own location on the main GUI. They will only appear when necessary.
- There is now a target window that will pop up on top of the action bar. This windows will appear when you have an active target, and will display their Health, Energy and Shield levels, if applicable. If you are attacking that target, the border will appear in red to indicate such.
- There is now a pet window that appears to the right of the group window if you have a pet. This is a miniature window that will display your pet's name and health. If they are in engaged in combat, the border will turn to red.
- The status panel used to be on the upper left hand side of the screen previously, and indicatd your health, stamina and energy, as well as providing a drop down menu to access each of the different windows in the game. The status panel has been removed, and is now included as part of the Action Bar. More details on that below.
- The action bar UI has merged with the Status Bar and the Window Selection menu in one streamlined interface to conserve screen space. Your vitals can now be found in the middle of the rows of action bars. The twizzles to change pages on the action bars are now located to the left and right sides of the action bars themselves. The Window selection menu has been merged with the old quick jump menu. This menu now has its own left and right buttons allowing you to cycle through diffferent pages of window information. The icons currently being used are temporary programmer art, and will be replaced soon.
- The default zoom on the Character Selection 3d Preview and New Characer Previews has been zoomed out so your head will not be at the edge of the window.
- The Siege Window now features a color coded window. The border of this window will be green if you are in a friendly control point, and red if you are in an enemy control point. It will still show the damage level of the current control point, as was previously the case, but has a new look.
- The Tracking window will now update slightly faster than previously.
- Fixed several issues with the UI for the conning system. It should now give more accurate results.
- Traps should also no longer have a conning indicator, as they are hidden.
- If a monster is sufficiently stealthed, they will not indicate a Con indicator until they become spotted.
- When you increase a skill, it will now be echoed into your Chat Window, as well as appearing in the pop up text above your character. This should make it easier for players to monitor their progress through the logs.
- The Looking For Work, Looking For Group, Available for Covert Operations and Available for Emergency Response toggles have been moved from the PDA Window to the Social Window. There is also additional text here to make each feature be easier to understand.
- The PDA Window has been split into two different windows: the Mail Window and Auction Window. The layouts have also changed somewhat, and the screen space has been reduced.
- The DNA Window and Auctions Window can now be added to the bindable keys from the Auctions Window, if you desire. By default the Auction Window is toggled with the U key, and DNA Window with the semi-colon key.
- The Chat Window, and Chat Tab Window are now attached as a single window and have a new skin.
- The chat tab that you are currently using will have a highlight around its border to make it easier to recognize.

World

- Plymouth has undergone a major facelift. Expect to see more of the same in the other zones soon. The zone is still being tweaked at the time of the patch, and you may find some things like rocks floating in mid-air or signs that are floating, etc. In some cases spawns may be in odd locations, etc. This will continue to be tweaked as we go. What we do want feedback on is any performance related issues with the new zone, or general suggestions or comments.
- Improved our random spawning system so that we have more exact control over the frequency at which different monsters can be spawned from the same spawner.
- There are now patrol paths down the roads in Plymouth for wandering NPCs.
- Fixed the pathing of a number of NPCs in Plymouth.
- Added Occlusion Blockers to the walls in Wailing Chasm, which should improve performance in those areas.
- Fixed an issue with instances that was causing players to not be warped into the proper instance.
- Resolved a bug that was causing Turrets to turn and aim, but not fire on enemy players.
- Human NPCs are no longer allowed to cast teleport spells in combat.
- The Vulture species Charging ability has been reduced. The haste associated with it has been reduced, and the evasion bonus has also been reduced. The reuse time has been increased.
- The Hokfig Shell special ability (for Hokfig Species mobs) will still cause them to attack slower while it is in effect, but it the rate at which it slows them has been drastically reduced.
- Resources have lost their patrol priviledges.
- Made adjustments to the Resource to Monster ratio in Plymouth. You'll now see more monsters, and less resources.