A slow week for the game. Mail and Messages on COM now have paging, so you can load older mails/messages. There was a major bug that brought US III down twice, it's patched. There are 3 new elixirs from the Witch. The Poucher bow received it's new look (Also other new sprites are ready for upcoming items)
New Code Functions:
- open_stand - close_stand - bank_retrieve - bank_store (fixed) (Thanks to D.Coles on Github for the PR's)
Early Access: Week 101 in Review
This week comes with one overdue but major addition: The Tutorial! :)
The first iteration is simple, but it allowed me to eliminate the Newcomer Mode / Pro Mode duality - right now, the first step goes through the interface, and the second step introduces the Code and the X/Snippet interface
Other Changes:
- Guide articles now have Prev / Next buttons - Newcomer Mode is no more, with the Tutorial added, the top buttons are unified and simple - CONF is now simpler
Early Access: Week 100 in Review
I wanted to release the first version of the Tutorial this week, but instead tackled another important challenge, Code documentation accessibility and finally merging the Game Guide and the Code Guide
The new interface, in my opinion, makes it really practical to search Code functions, references etc., Guide articles are linked if they include explicit search phrases, there are also hand selected MDN topics that are linked
Since Code functions aren't individually documented or finalised yet, this doesn't solve the problem at hand, but definitely makes things much easier, feels really good that everything now comes together, I guess the next stage would be to improve the linking, for example, when you type "cm" - a direct reference to the Character event and how to handle it should come up
New Guide Entry: https://adventure.land/docs/guide/multi (Multiple Ways to Run Multiple Characters)
In the coming days, plan to slowly re-write and extend the Guide with Code examples, data references etc.
Not sure about the extent of the Tutorial yet, it will duplicate some efforts too, but I guess, even if it just teaches the player about the interface, makes the player do various things, go to various places, makes them attack, use a skill with code etc. - even that could be enough - it would also eliminated the need for the "Pro Mode" - and the interface could always be simple - thinking of re-styling the top right buttons too, however don't have any bright ideas yet - minimally CODE, COM, SKILLS, GUIDE, CONF would be there, TRAVEL could go into COM - Actually the SKILLS could be moved to the top of the skillbar too, but it could look bad, and possibly makes things more complicated for a new player that skips the tutorial
Early Access: Week 99 in Review
Biggest addition this week is probably the Explosion and Blast properties, added an easily craftable bow and a prototype great staff with these properties (the bow is super weak, the staff is strong), one is for physical attacks, the other is for magical attacks - going to refine other properties and abilities in the coming days too
Improved / implemented the all recipes interface, also added recipe shortcut to the item information window
The witch becomes a new crafting NPC, the first craftable has the prototype recipe of Snake Oil, which became a debuffing potion this update - also refined G.conditions, only ones that have the `.bad` flag get debuffed - even if they have the `.persistent` flag - In the future, Priest skill won't be able to deny the persistent conditions
And merchants get new trade slots!
Early Access: Week 98 in Review
New Attribute: "mp_reduction" / Skill MP Reduction - Reduces the MP usage of skills with a % New Item Ability: "restore_mp" / Restore MP - Instead of using MP, restores 2X with a % - 5X effective against humanoids
Received a video review: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/835979727 - It was very eye opening, thanks HappyCerberus - While it was clear the docs have been lacking for some time, it was good to get a wake up call, seeing his initial struggle helped me better formulate an approach to solve this problem
Still unsure how to merge the old "Guide" and the "Code" guide, it's confusing having 2 seperate approaches - actually, it's more like 3, "Guide", "Code Articles" and "Code Docs / Reference"
One thing is clear though, instead of slapping a new player with a "Coming Soon"'ed Guide, they should at least be welcomed with a basic tutorial that shows them and makes them do the basic things, like opening the CODE UI for the first time etc.
First addition in this prioritised direction was to add "Inspect" buttons everywhere, and improve the show_json() internally with added buttons and annotations - now all characters, monsters, inventory items got an Inspect button, also the item and monster references received a small UI clarification
New Items: - Mana Gloves (Names are a work in progress) - Mana Amulet - Belt of MP Reduction - Exoskeletal Arm - Diamond Key (Unlocks the next bank teller)
Other Changes: - "humanoid" property on Monsters - "MP Cost" now appears as "A.MP Cost"
Small Improvements / Fixes: - Inventory clicks now toggle the item (Thanks to MauranKilom) - Fixed a Rogue issue that misset .s.block (Thanks to egehanhk and Rising) - trade_buy() extended and added trade_sell() (Thanks to egehanhk) - Fixed skills getting Invalid Date's as cooldowns (Thanks to Allure_) - Shells are now announced (Thanks to earthiverse) - Messages are now stripped from Zalgo modifications and weird Unicode's, Smileys
Event: Holiday Season + Week 97 in Review
Overall a very productive and happy week, after the well reception of the new Co-Op Grinch, I intend to introduce regular bosses or events that mimic the same community response
Ice Skates and the North Star didn't receive their stats yet, Ice Skates will be the first item with a property that works in only one map - it will likely be the first example of a special stat, I might make it a special stat that only comes with an item, and convert the rest of the scrolls to special stats that are attainable by scrolls
Jayson came up with a carriage solution that will allow every pet to be mountable, admittedly most will be for fun as riding a Goo doesn't have any practical use
Changes:
- Inventory activated skills with "inventory" array as a property - Fiery Throwing Stars and Snow Flakes for Rogue's - Monster with "1hp" property now have 1000x global drops (Thanks to earthiverse) - Fixed the re-appearance routine of chests when you move from map to map - Skills now have a "hostile" flag, you can't use hostile skills in safe zones - "global" flag for monster added for "Grinch" - chest drops on characters
Ps. Snowballs have a hidden feature!
Early Access: Week 96 in Review
First of all let me start by saying that weeks 91, 92, 93, 94, 95 were all wasted - overall, in total, the toll of moving to a new home, a new lifestyle, was close to 3 months to game's development
I moved to a place away from the city, a home that enforces a healthy lifestyle by design, away from all the distractions
Even though I moved this week, I'm slowly adjusting to it, and things are getting more productive by the day - I hope I'll be able to keep it up
It's so easy to lose momentum, yet, regaining it takes a lot of time, in the coming weeks, I'll probably stick to small changes and improvements until my brain gets re-wired
As for the Week 96:
- Implemented Fire Resistance (placeholder, only avoids the status) - Implemented Freeze Resistance (placeholder, only avoids the status) - Snowball (upcoming, graphics are ready) - New "lucrativeness" multiplier and cgoo's boosted in XP - Determined the new holiday season items and the achievement (Thanks to everyone on Discord) - A slow start to the Holiday Season today!
Most of the new additions should be live next week
Early Access: Week 90 in Review
Another slow week but managed to complete the animating cosmetics, like the bat hat that moves with you and the flaming eyes
Going to introduce some of them as rare drops from Halloween bosses this week
Early Access: Week 89 in Review
Halloween event is up to a slow start, working on new cosmetics to introduce during the event - these new cosmetics will animate too!
Early Access: Weeks 86,87,88 in Review
It was a dark three weeks. Initially I decided to concentrate on moving to my new home. It's far away from the city, in a serene place where I can just concentrate on work. I shouldn't have stopped working on Adventure Land, didn't expect things to drag on this much. There's still at least one week to go.
Apart from minor bugfixes, there was almost no progress, one promising bugfix is for the location correction routine, it seems each correction was faultily stopping characters on the client side, while they still continued to move on the server, this caused the cascading corrections that probably most of us experienced at one point
Planning to start the Halloween event this week, and enrich the event continually
