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: Hi guys, it's been a while since my last news post, so I wanted to give you some insight into what I've been working on. The next update is not going to happen this weekend as I'd hoped -- the new camera still needs more work (see below). So now I'm tentatively aiming for the weekend after this one, but it's a pretty big update, so no promises! Here's what's cooking:
: Bug fixes: I've been working on getting some of the more irritating (to me, anyway) bugs fixed. That includes a lot of auto-move bugs that have cropped up with the new Unity upgrade, missing GUI sounds, and camera issues (see below on that one).
: New camera: The current camera system has been replaced with all new code. This is a big task, and I'm still testing/debugging it, but I like the results a lot: it feels a lot smoother, doesn't pop out of dungeon walls, and avoids unnecessarily zooming in and out when people walk behind you.
: BTW - do you use the first-person camera mode regularly? I haven't spent much time on that with the new camera. It still works, but it's not as smooth as the behind-the-shoulder camera. I'm curious how important a priority you feel that is.
: Another BTW - speaking of annoying bugs, there's a lot of known GUI issues. But instead of trying to patch up the existing GUI, we've contracted another engineer to work on a complete replacement using the new GUI system from Unity 5. (The existing GUI was made for Unity 3 and is extremely hard to work with.) That rewrite has been going on for a while now, and is still a ways away from going live -- I don't have a definite timeline, but at least a few months away. Rewriting the entire GUI is a huge task! But it's looking good, and it will give you a lot more freedom to move GUI elements around, as well as resize fonts, tweak chat colors, and other often-requested features.
: Monster Visibility Rewrite: monsters can often see you through walls, and they aren't supposed to be able to. Until that's fixed, it's very hard to tune a dungeon's difficulty. But fixing it has proven very hard. This is another place where the code is from literally 5 years ago, back when I was prototyping in Unity 3, and it just doesn't work as well in Unity 5 for very subtle reasons. So I'm doing a complete rewrite of monster visibility using some new features of the Unity 5 engine. I'm hopeful that this will fix it, and so far it all works great -- but the real test will be when you guys test it.
: Animal Handling Tweaks: after looking at the Animal Handling skill, I realized it really isn't in that bad a shape, aside from some bugs and unintuitive bits. It needs to be easier to reliably get your pet to attack something (which will be doable with a new basic-attack ability), and the pets themselves need a lot of balancing and AI work, which is underway. And, of course, there needs to be more. More pets, more differentiation of gear, more build possibilities. I'm not sure how far I'll get on Animal Handling in the next update because I'm still working on pet AI. But at the very least, pets will behave a bit better.
: Pig Rewrite: the Pig skill has been rewritten. I pretty much did this as a way to take a break from bug-fixing, but it's also a way to test out some of the ideas I have for the upcoming Bard skill, because the new pig is basically an animal-bard. (Not that they play music, they just fill that sort of group role.) I think the new pig is pretty powerful and has interesting possibilities, although pigs are still not especially good at dealing damage. But that's okay.
: Treasure Tweaks: a couple months ago I made solo-monster loot drops much better. I overshot the mark a bit, actually, to the point that group content is often seen as obsolete. This is a tricky balance, because I don't want to undo the soloability improvements, but group dungeons need to yield better treasure (for time spent) than soloing, because they're harder.
: The main change is that boss monsters will have much better loot drops, including good chances of dropping Legendary (5-ability) items. In fact I think I'll make Legendary loot be a boss-monster-only type of thing, removing the small chance of dropping it from solo/crafted gear. (But crafters can still get 5-ability items with max-enchanted Epic gear.)
: I'm also nerfing solo-drops a bit -- but just a bit. Like I said, it's a tricky balance. I've lowered the chances of dropping Epic (4-ability) items, and will probably remove the minuscule chance of dropping Legendary (5-ability) items, but otherwise leave things alone. I'm not confident that'll be enough to make grouping feel like it's worth the extra effort, but I want to take small steps here.
: I'm also working on the quality of epic and legendary loot rolls. Too often, those higher-tier items end up having multiple generic effects on them, instead of skill-specific effects. This isn't intentional, it's just due to how the system rolls items. So I'm tweaking the algorithm to make them have more skill-focused effects and fewer generic effects.
: Guild Quests: The biggest feature in the update is guild quests. Guilds will be able to undertake a couple of quests each week, and all guild members can work toward completing those quests. These are shared quests, so you'll actually get quest-updates as your other guild members work on the tasks with you.
: I mentioned that guilds can only undertake a couple quests per week. Why is that? Because I don't want guild quests to feel like they overwhelm the rest of the game. It's still possible for that to happen if the guild leader picks quests that are very difficult for your guild to complete, but typically I'm hoping for guild quests to just be something you pitch in and help with here and there, rather than something you dedicate whole weeks of effort to.
: There are several unanswered design questions here so I'll talk more about that soon, but I'll just say that I'm excited by them, and I'm making some new content to tie into the new guild quests. And, of course, the new guild levels you earn by completing the quests.
: Okay, that's about it.
: PS - Thanks again for submitting bugs! They are not going into a black hole -- we haven't been able to respond to too many recently, but they're still being filed and worked on! Please keep it up. You'd probably be surprised at what I don't realize is still broken.
: Edit: I forgot a big feature! Player work-orders. You'll be able to go to a sign in Serbule and say that you want to pay X money for a stack of a certain item. You pay the money up front, and if your order isn't filled within a week, you get the money back (minus a small fee). You can also cancel it early if you want.
: Other players can view the sign and search the orders by item type, filling the ones they can. I'm hopeful that this is a more practical way to get intermediary items like fletching boxes, blacksmithing bits, hammers, etc., so that players don't feel obligated to try to raise all the crafting skills on their own.
[[Category:Game Blogs]]
: Bug fixes: I've been working on getting some of the more irritating (to me, anyway) bugs fixed. That includes a lot of auto-move bugs that have cropped up with the new Unity upgrade, missing GUI sounds, and camera issues (see below on that one).
: New camera: The current camera system has been replaced with all new code. This is a big task, and I'm still testing/debugging it, but I like the results a lot: it feels a lot smoother, doesn't pop out of dungeon walls, and avoids unnecessarily zooming in and out when people walk behind you.
: BTW - do you use the first-person camera mode regularly? I haven't spent much time on that with the new camera. It still works, but it's not as smooth as the behind-the-shoulder camera. I'm curious how important a priority you feel that is.
: Another BTW - speaking of annoying bugs, there's a lot of known GUI issues. But instead of trying to patch up the existing GUI, we've contracted another engineer to work on a complete replacement using the new GUI system from Unity 5. (The existing GUI was made for Unity 3 and is extremely hard to work with.) That rewrite has been going on for a while now, and is still a ways away from going live -- I don't have a definite timeline, but at least a few months away. Rewriting the entire GUI is a huge task! But it's looking good, and it will give you a lot more freedom to move GUI elements around, as well as resize fonts, tweak chat colors, and other often-requested features.
: Monster Visibility Rewrite: monsters can often see you through walls, and they aren't supposed to be able to. Until that's fixed, it's very hard to tune a dungeon's difficulty. But fixing it has proven very hard. This is another place where the code is from literally 5 years ago, back when I was prototyping in Unity 3, and it just doesn't work as well in Unity 5 for very subtle reasons. So I'm doing a complete rewrite of monster visibility using some new features of the Unity 5 engine. I'm hopeful that this will fix it, and so far it all works great -- but the real test will be when you guys test it.
: Animal Handling Tweaks: after looking at the Animal Handling skill, I realized it really isn't in that bad a shape, aside from some bugs and unintuitive bits. It needs to be easier to reliably get your pet to attack something (which will be doable with a new basic-attack ability), and the pets themselves need a lot of balancing and AI work, which is underway. And, of course, there needs to be more. More pets, more differentiation of gear, more build possibilities. I'm not sure how far I'll get on Animal Handling in the next update because I'm still working on pet AI. But at the very least, pets will behave a bit better.
: Pig Rewrite: the Pig skill has been rewritten. I pretty much did this as a way to take a break from bug-fixing, but it's also a way to test out some of the ideas I have for the upcoming Bard skill, because the new pig is basically an animal-bard. (Not that they play music, they just fill that sort of group role.) I think the new pig is pretty powerful and has interesting possibilities, although pigs are still not especially good at dealing damage. But that's okay.
: Treasure Tweaks: a couple months ago I made solo-monster loot drops much better. I overshot the mark a bit, actually, to the point that group content is often seen as obsolete. This is a tricky balance, because I don't want to undo the soloability improvements, but group dungeons need to yield better treasure (for time spent) than soloing, because they're harder.
: The main change is that boss monsters will have much better loot drops, including good chances of dropping Legendary (5-ability) items. In fact I think I'll make Legendary loot be a boss-monster-only type of thing, removing the small chance of dropping it from solo/crafted gear. (But crafters can still get 5-ability items with max-enchanted Epic gear.)
: I'm also nerfing solo-drops a bit -- but just a bit. Like I said, it's a tricky balance. I've lowered the chances of dropping Epic (4-ability) items, and will probably remove the minuscule chance of dropping Legendary (5-ability) items, but otherwise leave things alone. I'm not confident that'll be enough to make grouping feel like it's worth the extra effort, but I want to take small steps here.
: I'm also working on the quality of epic and legendary loot rolls. Too often, those higher-tier items end up having multiple generic effects on them, instead of skill-specific effects. This isn't intentional, it's just due to how the system rolls items. So I'm tweaking the algorithm to make them have more skill-focused effects and fewer generic effects.
: Guild Quests: The biggest feature in the update is guild quests. Guilds will be able to undertake a couple of quests each week, and all guild members can work toward completing those quests. These are shared quests, so you'll actually get quest-updates as your other guild members work on the tasks with you.
: I mentioned that guilds can only undertake a couple quests per week. Why is that? Because I don't want guild quests to feel like they overwhelm the rest of the game. It's still possible for that to happen if the guild leader picks quests that are very difficult for your guild to complete, but typically I'm hoping for guild quests to just be something you pitch in and help with here and there, rather than something you dedicate whole weeks of effort to.
: There are several unanswered design questions here so I'll talk more about that soon, but I'll just say that I'm excited by them, and I'm making some new content to tie into the new guild quests. And, of course, the new guild levels you earn by completing the quests.
: Okay, that's about it.
: PS - Thanks again for submitting bugs! They are not going into a black hole -- we haven't been able to respond to too many recently, but they're still being filed and worked on! Please keep it up. You'd probably be surprised at what I don't realize is still broken.
: Edit: I forgot a big feature! Player work-orders. You'll be able to go to a sign in Serbule and say that you want to pay X money for a stack of a certain item. You pay the money up front, and if your order isn't filled within a week, you get the money back (minus a small fee). You can also cancel it early if you want.
: Other players can view the sign and search the orders by item type, filling the ones they can. I'm hopeful that this is a more practical way to get intermediary items like fletching boxes, blacksmithing bits, hammers, etc., so that players don't feel obligated to try to raise all the crafting skills on their own.
[[Category:Game Blogs]]
