This is just a small update to maintain forwards-compatibility with the new feature builds that are about to start rolling out to our public 'test' branch on Steam, but there are also a few notable changes and bugfixes too.
These are:
Changed the default "move" hotkey to "z" from "m". This moves it close to all our other placement hotkeys. Note that this only changes the default; if you've already played MT2, your hotkey will remain the same ("m") until/unless you reset your keybindings to default from the options window, but new players will have "z" as their move hotkey. And you can always change the hotkey to whatever else you'd like it to be, also in the 'options' window, if you'd prefer it was something else!
Fixed large characters often getting stuck around corners inside dungeons.
Fixed a pathfinding bug which could cause incorrect pathfinding failures in dungeons containing a lot of doors. (in bad cases this could also result in parties appearing to become stuck, often with glitchy animations as they'd start to move and then fail)
Fixed the "Boss Rewards" tab in the monster information window to only show up when a dungeon boss is selected. Previously it was incorrectly showing up for all monsters, which understandably caused a lot of player confusion since its buttons and settings didn't actually do anything for anything but dungeon bosses.
Fixed UI refresh issues around changing the sync of building prices.
More words soon!
-T
Bugfix - v0.20.38
Hi, folks! I didn't *quite* get the next feature build ready to go through testing before the weekend (next week for sure!), so I'm consoling myself by putting up this bugfix build instead, which contains fixes for various issues reported over the last week.
The biggest fix is that there was a rendering bug in the last build which caused certain dungeon models to be drawn facing backwards; this affected pretty much every animated object that can be placed inside a dungeon, but was most noticeable with chests, where parties would walk to the *back* of them to open them (because that was actually supposed to be the front!). Now fixed!
There are also a number of smaller bug fixes for things that we've had reported over the past week; it's mostly odds and ends around weird edge cases, but we've got a couple of shutdown crash fixes and things like that in here. Thanks so much to folks sending in crash reports and in-game bug reports! They really do help us to track down weird cases where things go wrong!
-T
Hotfix - v0.20.35
Hi folks, another quick update with bugfixes for issues reported in the last couple days.
The biggest fixes are these:
Fixed some animated objects being drawn at the wrong scale (or not at all!) inside dungeons, dungeon instances, and dungeon UI elements. (this was mostly things like chests and doors).
Fixed a small handful of specific scenery items which were getting bigger every time you performed a "move" action on them. There were 26 of these; all other scenery items were unaffected and worked properly.
Fixed ungrouping scenery items to correctly reinitialise all their placement data. Previously, a scenery item which was grouped, moved with the group, and then ungrouped could wind up moving vertically in surprising ways the next time the terrain changed or during save/loads. Now fixed!
And there are a few other minor bugfixes as well. Thanks so much for all the bug reports and feedback, everyone!
-T
Hotfix - v0.20.32
Hi folks! Quick hotfix here for the "Editing 2.0" build from two days ago.
New in this build:
Monsters, NPCs, and players can once again be manually moved around, this time using the same "Move" and "Precise Move" functions we use for everything else, including now being able to select a group of them and moving them all at once. Note that if you move an elite monster or a boss monster, the 'move' will also update their respawn position (whereas regular monsters from a monster zone will keep their respawn point inside their home monster zone even if you move them)
The hotkeys for 'move' and 'precise move' can now be changed in the Options window.
Fixed the character names of new subscribers not being displayed until after a save/load cycle, which was a bug introduced in the last build.
...plus of course a couple other less-visible bug fixes!
Thanks for your patience with this, and especially thanks to everyone who pointed out that I'd forgotten to provide a way to move characters around in the new editing system! It should all be good, now!
-T
Creativity Spike: Editing 2.0
Hi folks! This update took up a lot more of our "Creativity Spike" time than I'd expected, but I really think it's been worth it!
New in this build:
Multiselect
Don't waste your time editing each blade of grass separately; grab a whole forest and manipulate it all at once! Want to grab a bunch of scenery along with the nearby buildings and move or destroy them all at once? Now you can! This works for scenery, for buildings, for loot items inside dungeons, and more!
Scenery groups
If you select multiple scenery items, you can now group them together! Grouped scenery items act as if they were a single scenery item. So if you've carefully built a whole stack of scenery objects, you can now group them together and move them as if they were a single object!
Duplicate
You can now make duplicates of most types of object, including all those mentioned above. Multiselect a building and the scenery around it and just duplicate the whole lot in a single go, to make it easier to set up new areas! Unlike regular 'move' commands, 'Duplicate' lets you place the duplicated objects into new regions!
Selection filtering
Accidentally grabbed more things than you intended? Use the toggle buttons in the multi info window to quickly trim your selection down to just the types of objects you'd intended to select.
Magic select
Okay, this one is kind of a secret, but since we're all friends here I'll tell you about it if you promise not to tell anybody else -- if you hold 'control' while clicking on a scenery object, magic select will automatically select all other scenery objects of the same type that are currently on-screen. Often very useful when you really just want to move the trees without moving the rocks!
Did somebody say 'performance'?
This build also contains some notable performance boosts for larger games! (which is *awfully* convenient, considering how much easier it is to place thousands upon thousands of scenery objects now!)
And of course, this build also includes a bunch of other unrelated bug fixes!
Now, it's worth noting that features like this which make it possible to quickly and easily create tens of thousands of objects are an absolute recipe for "Doctor, it hurts when I do this" performance issues, so it's only fair that I warn you that the amount of scenery you've placed into each region is going to become important during the next part of our development roadmap where your subscribers will start having to contend with your game's performance, so maybe don't go *too* far overboard with the prop placement? But hey, we're all friends here and if you want to make an MMO that requires a monster rig to run, then more power to you!
I have one more major feature I'm working on as part of this Creativity Spike, and I'm hoping to have it ready to go relatively soon, so with any luck we'll be back here talking again very soon!
In the meantime, if you want sneak peaks at what's up next or if you just want to chat and see what folks are creating, come join us on our Discord.
Thanks so much for your enthusiasm and support and especially for all of the feedback and bug reports, everyone; it really makes a big difference for us! Talk again soon.
-T
v0.20.14
Hi folks!
This is the first build in our "Creativity Spike #2" series of patches. It contains both some new features as well as a lot of bug fixes. New feature up-front:
New region environmental/weather effects!
This adds half a dozen weather effects, complete with color customisation. You can choose from these effects by selecting a region and going to the 'FX' tab in its info window. Note that this is still early days for this system, but I feel like it's ready for real players to start playing with it. Note that some of these effects may stress your GPU's fill rate more than our default rendering does, and so maybe aren't recommended for those running on older Intel graphics chipsets! In this build, these new weather effects are all *off* by default. (We'd love to see feedback about what you think of these, using the 'Feedback' feature in-game!)
And bugs fixed in this build:
Fixed window dropshadow rendering when UI scale is set to any value other than 100%.
Fixed a crash if you changed UI scaling while an object was selected.
Fixed a small memory leak that could happen during game shutdown. (this showed up as a "Not all instances returned to the pool" error message while quitting the game)
Fixed a crash if you destroyed popular player classes and then created new ones all while the game was paused.
Fixed a crash which could occur when a party entered a dungeon if that dungeon was the smallest dungeon possible and was oriented precisely in an east-west or north-south direction.
Over on our discord server, we've just started a competition for folks to create the most compelling boss monster. If you'd like to enter one of your creations in that or just take inspiration from other folks' entries then hit that link to take a look! That contest runs until March 25th.
As for myself, I'm continuing with some more intensive new features over this weekend, and hopefully will have more fun stuff to show off really soon! Thanks so much for all the feedback and bug reports everyone, and we'll talk again soon!
-T
v0.20.11
Hi folks! Apologies for the delay on this update; we've been in the midst of a big office move over the last week, and I'm only just now finally coming up for air!
Here's what's new in this update:
Fixed the "Party wasn't in the expected party manager?" error.
This was occurring if a party was trying to travel from one part of a region to another, but the fastest path it could find involved traveling through another region using a teleporter, and if that other region was outside the party's normal level range. When the party teleported into that other region, it was disbanding because the region was the wrong level for the party, and the game was getting confused about where the party was being stored since it was changing region and disbanding at exactly the same moment. This whole thing is all now fixed; parties no longer disband due to traveling through wrong-level regions on their way to a right-level region, and even if they do disband instantly for some other reason, the game doesn't get confused and generate this error any more! Huge huge thanks to everyone♥ who submitted saves demonstrating this issue; it would have been an absolute nightmare to track down this bug without them!
Fixed a rendering bug which caused dynamic point lights to not draw correctly until after you had viewed the inside of a dungeon at least once, each time you loaded into the game.
Fixed a rendering bug which caused a player's weapons to stop being rendered once a player died. This was only a visual bug; the game knew they still had their weapons, they just weren't being drawn until the next time you loaded into a save.
... plus the usual assortment of small bugfixes and improvements!
I'm hoping to finish up the bulk of our office move tomorrow (we finally got internet up and working at the new office this afternoon!) Big thanks to everyone for their patience through the move, and I'm hoping to be back and showing off some new Creativity Spike #2 features in the very near future!
-T
v0.20.8
Hi folks!
This is a very small update which is getting us ready for a more important update that's coming later this week.
A player reported to us about an issue which can result in Steam deleting a game's saves when logging out of one Steam account and into a different one on a single computer account, if both accounts have access to MMORPG Tycoon 2. This issue isn't just us; this affects any game which saves into a single file path per computer login. (often this happens through Family Sharing, and similar features).
I mentioned this in the last update, but I've been working on a workaround to stop Steam from doing this when switching accounts, and that change is being tested by the team right now. But I wanted to put up a build with a warning message on the desktop interface, to encourage people make backups of their own saves in the meantime, just for extra safety and so that even folks who don't read patch notes will see it the next time they run the game!
As I said above, this really only affects people who are logging out of their steam account and into a different one on the same computer and same computer login account, and I *think* (but can't absolutely confirm) that it probably only affects people who turn *off* Cloud Sync for the game. I *have* reported the issue to Valve, and am hoping they'll fix it because I'm pretty sure it'll be affecting a lot more games than just us!
Also in this update:
Updated the compilers being used for Windows builds. This fixes a number of minor bugs around file operations for players who have Unicode characters in their usernames on their computer (these were silently failing attempts at file renaming, and were instead going through the 'slow path' of explicitly copying files into their final location before deleting the originals, instead of just renaming them in-place)
Added a workaround for the persistent "couldn't open 'shot.jpg'" launcher screenshot errors that seem to pop up every time we release a new update. Now, if we can't open the image file, we just continue to run without it and we'll try again the next time we enter the desktop interface.
And that's pretty much it for this very small update! I was hoping to have an initial revision of multiselect ready for people to play with by now, but this save file issue has kind of put everybody here on panic stations as we try to ready an update and a migration process that's going to work for *everybody*. Right now, I'm expecting to be back working on multiselect from *tomorrow*, while other folks on the team carry on testing of the save file change.
Thanks so much for your patience everyone, and I'm sorry for missing this issue until now, and big apologies to anybody who was affected by it! Also, thanks so much to the players who finally brought it to our attention a few days ago! :)
-T
Bugfixes - v0.20.5
Changes in this build:
The game will no longer load data from unpacked zipfiles. We've had way too many crash reports from folks who had extracted the zipfiles in earlier builds and are now trying to run the latest version of the game using data files from older builds! :D This should stop that from happening. (honestly, you want to load data from the zipfiles anyway; it makes loading into the game so much faster!)
Fixed area-effect attacks used in PvP duels affecting players who weren't a part of the duel.
Made party formation more attractive around taverns.
Fixed 'stun' and 'root' status effects to work correctly. ('root' can't move but can still attack, 'stun' can do neither)
And of course a whole bunch of other miscellaneous bugfixes, fixing bugs reported to us both via crash reports and via in-game bug reports. Thanks so much to everybody who's been sending those through!
Also, while I'm here, here's
a general development update:
We have another technical update coming very soon; we've had some reports of trouble with save files from folks using multiple steam accounts from a single Windows account, so I'm going to be moving game data into a different folder structure to try to make Steam Cloud Sync more robust in that situation.
This change will require us moving everybody's save data into a different location, which is frankly kind of a terrifying change for me, since it's touching literally everybody's save data all at once, but it'll put us into a much safer folder structure once everything has been moved, so it feels like an important change. We just need to test rigorously before rolling out the change!
We're into internal testing on this data migration process now; if the testing gives us the all-clear then I'm hoping to roll it out publicly maybe sometime next week!
In terms of new game functionality, I've begun making progress on multi-select, which I'm planning to have as the first new feature in the 'Creativity Spike' series of updates that we're working on now. The idea with multi-select is to make it possible to select a large group of objects and destroy them all with a single command, or (eventually) move them as a group, or maybe even create duplicates of whole groups of objects. The first release of multi-select will *probably* just do the "select multiple things and destroy them all at once" part, with other functionality to follow afterwards. But we'll see how I go with it!
As always, thanks so much for your support and feedback, everyone!
-T
Hotfix build 2 - v0.20.3
Hi folks! This is another little bundle of bugfixes for the recent Dungeons Update.
Bugs fixed:
Fixed a bug which was preventing NPCs from receiving their designed combat abilities.
Fixed a crash that could happen after destroying a combat ability on a dungeon boss, if that ability was explicitly being used in a boss fight phase script.
Fixed the "mmoEffectInstance::IsDone()" crash which could occur when a dungeon instance shut down while a player was being healed.
Fixed several UI bugs.
Fixed the visual selection effect after a game window resize or resolution change.
...and several other fixes and small improvements, all based upon bug reports and feedback from players over the past two days. Big thanks so much to everyone who has taken the time to submit reports about the issues they've experienced!
