Good day community! We hope everyone is well and eager to start a productive year off with us.
On Wednesday 13 January 2021 we will release Patch A.00.03.16. This will take place at 10:00 am EST (2 pm GMT). Once the server is back online we will inform you here. Below you’ll find a list of known issues and a link to our patch notes.
CONTAINER SYSTEM: The container system and all subsystems under that are a primary base that all games, especially MMO’s have. A container is basically anything that holds “something”. These can be data containers which tell the system what it contains (such as the Character container that holds all character information) to the player inventory. Other good examples of Containers would be merchant inventory, loot windows, and even your hot/ability bars.
The work that has been done over the last several months has touched upon almost every aspect of the game's core and even areas we did not expect. Due to the extensive redundant stand-alone system, we also touched upon other areas that normally are not related. The nice thing about all this work is that due to the changes and the new Container base, we will be updating you next month about the plans for the GUI rework.
Visually the containers will seem rather unchanged at this time. GUI updates which will include the visual aspects such as the GUI will be coming at a later date. These will be covered in the next monthly article. Players will see an expansion of their main inventory, working expansion bags, and the number of bank slots. An overflow system has been added to these inventories as well.
Main Inventory: 75 increased to 100 slots.
Expansion bags will no longer pull slots from the main inventory. Instead, they will now provide 45 dedicated expansion slots.
Banking Terminals: expanded from 30 to 150 slots.
CHANGES AND THE PATCH NOTES: Rather than overwhelm the players we have condensed the Container System change notes. These notes are High-level descriptions of things that were done for the new container system. There are many components to each one of these and too numerous to detail every individual change. Example: 34 XML/GUI scripts had to be adjusted to work with the new container system.
RELATED STATISTICS:
Server Scripts (added or changed) : 506
Client Scripts (added or changed ) : 399
Numerous script changes also had DOM or GUI/XML changes.
This resulted in 80% of scripts being adjusted in some manner to accommodate the new system changes.
CRAFTING RECIPES: Included in this patch are two new crafting recipes. Originally we had not planned to add new content until the revamp of the item, crafting, and mission system. However, we wished to share at least a small gift with the players for the holidays, and provide them with furniture assets from our art. These recipes are not the most elegant at this time due to working around current system limitations. These recipes however will be rewritten, expanded, and returned to the players once the new systems are in place.
We wanted these recipes to be simple for the players to create. This led us to add some items to the General Goods Merchant, and some patterns to the Crafting Machine shop. Our QA team brought it to our attention that new crafters/players may not be aware of the shop that exists on the Crafting Machine.
THE NEW PATTERNS: When a player opens a recipe they will find the Shop button located on the end right side of the button row. If pressed the Vending Machine will open and display patterns associated with the recipe. If there are no patterns for the recipe the player will instead receive a popup notice stating this to be so. In order to purchase items from this shop, players must select the item then press buy rather than double click the item at this time.
WHERE: The General Goods Merchant will now sell players seven new items related to the new recipes. They are as follows:
Christmas Decor Recipe Book
Nation Decor Recipe Book
Antique White Primary Dye
Red Primary Dye
Blue Primary Dye
Green Primary Dye
Teal Primary Dye
Players can purchase these goods from General Goods Merchants on the mainland. Here are three easy to locate NPCs:
Tuli Afiqahel - Located in OWON Plymouth City
Alexa Medier - Located in FPR Freedomtown
Leslie Wilford - Located in Contested Sept Falls
SOME MINOR UPDATES: Players may notice that we have added some new whiteboxing around the island. These are placeholders for some new art and structures coming later this summer.
Inventory ■ Players may find that the inventory sorting and compress functions may not function.
NPC Carlo Amante located in Plymouth City ■ The mission Amante’s Collections: ■ It May not be offered at this time. If you can not receive this mission you will not be able to interact with him to get the mission Data for the Mob. ■ For those who have completed this mission, Carlo should react as normal.
Revive Skill ■ Skill may not work as intended at this time. We are looking into this matter for future fixes.
Engagement Issue: ■ Players may find that the invading foot soldiers in the Island’s Combat area do not wander or pursue.
The large map has not been updated yet. ■ It will be updated in upcoming updates.
PRE-2017 KNOWN ISSUES:
(Pre-2017)Some players experience very long load times with a black screen for their initial load. ■ We are still looking into this. It should be fixed once we rebuild the current "streaming" system.2020 04 21 Repop swamp01
(Pre-2017) Possible crashing to desktop due to the NPC’s animations loading/unloading during area transitions ■ This will be resolved when we get to the NPC revamp
(Pre-2017) Framerate issues when you have shadows on. Disable shadows if you have lower FPS and/or ping. ■ This will be resolved when we update the shadow shaders/system in beta.
(Pre-2017) Possible crashing if you have a full or nearly full inventory ■ This will be resolved when we finalize and implement the new Item and Container systems
(Pre-2017) Framerate dropping when you turn your camera towards NPC locations ■ This will be resolved when we get to the NPC revamp
Happy Monday community! We hope that everyone is well, and excited to hop into today’s topic. As promised on the 25th, today's article will cover the upcoming patch, and supporting information. First, we’ll review the update itself, the challenges we faced, what to expect next, and a tentative push date for the patch.
CONTAINER REVAMP UPDATE The inventory has been streamlined. Previously the player inventory was handled in a multitude of ways. The backend was handling the player inventory as actual listed items, and a separate vault system that was handling structures as different but actual item types. The old/current way was doubling or even tripling the client to server data/communication. However, the frontend used various GUI containers to display these items and structures with many variations. Our engineer was able to work to eliminate several of these and reduce them to a more reasonable number.
All inventories are now based on the same setup on the backend now. Which removed the duplications. This included using a single code for the container types rather than the various codes that existed.
The method of which data, and how it was replicated to the client, has been altered. The original system did not use replication. The previous team had in place code to attempt the replication process but had not implemented it for use. Instead, the system was sending all information to the client via a remote call every time storage was opened.
Our engineer was able to implement proper replication for both the vaults (city and player) and all its items. What this means is all of the GUI events/updates are triggered from replication events rather than server-generated specific events. Now when a player closes a vault, the replication ends. The vault and item lists are then removed from the client.
ISSUES WE FACED There were many ways that containers and items were listed, categorized, and being handled.
The current items system overcomplicates what an item is considered to be and how they are handled. Rather than a single system that uses gloms and specs to designate types, it separates them into different categories. At this time there are around seven designated “types” for items. These include but are not limited to:
Items - has no attached art and can be consumed in some form. Can be loaded to normal NPC shops for purchase.
Fittings - items used to slot into weapons and armor for stats.
Blueprints - have attached art, designated to be used as “structures”. Must be created from recipes, and can not be loaded to normal NPC shops as “items”.
Loot - items that can be picked up from NPC and Creatures.
Treasure - a secondary way other items are handled that can be picked up from NPC and Creatures.
Quest Items - items that are designated solely for use in missions.
Collections - items that can be picked up from NPC, Creatures, or during Engagements.
Most of the items were not properly indexed. Items did not have parent and child categories. All items are currently their own category, complexing the process for player containers to recognize items being placed, moved or used.
GUI CONTAINERS: There were various ways that the GUI elements and containers were being used to display the inventory and items on the front end. Our engineer had worked on these to eliminate several of these and reduce the number to a much more logical and manageable number of GUI containers. Not only does this help us with faster development later on but also helps give a slight performance boost, as players will not have to load a different GUI element (scripts) for one or two item types.
We believe we have most of these item categories added to the container system on a temporary basis until we finish the Item System Revamp.
Players should be aware the GUI information covered is not part of the GUI revamp. The GUI changes were script and container that relate to the GUI. These changes had to be made because so much was hardcoded in both container scripts, item scripts, and GUI scripts. We’ll be covering more information pertaining to the upcoming GUI revamp in the roadmap update article next month.
THE BIGGEST HURDLE Some of this explains what we just mentioned above, however, we wanted to go into a bit more detail into the development of a new system in Repop.
The largest hurdle our engineer has faced during this system revamp is the upkeep of the old and new systems simultaneously.
As mentioned in the previous articles there will be upcoming mini wipes. Up to this point, we have not had the need to perform any wipes on the current game.
In the future, it will be far more beneficial to the performance of the game and systems revamps to have partial or mini wipes. Currently, we are considering six partial wipes spread out over several systems revamps and the implementation of new systems.
Currently, the new and old container systems have working side by side for existing players to include those who may or may not log in for an extended period of time. This means the system has to maintain and go through all the scripts for any that pertain to those containers that coexist.
This leaves a lot of baggage to maintain. It means that if it exists in the old system it has to be added into the new system to keep that baggage consistent. With the wipes we would no longer have to maintain that excess baggage nor would it have to be included into the new systems.
Another hurdle faced dealt with converting between ABT and TGS systems in a manner, which would account for all items and prevent them from being lost.
The benefits:
Implementing mini wipes with upcoming updates will allow us to develop, test, and push updates faster without the need to balance both old and new systems simultaneously. This also means the game will improve with each update as it will not require the processing of supporting the old and the new systems.
BENEFITS TO THE UPCOMING PATCH Items no longer “load” randomly, or reload every time you change rooms or cross into new areas. Crashing issues related to this particular issue should be resolved now.
Replication has been added to all containers to increase performance and reduce the overhead running. Only the primary identifier data required will load initially and additional data will load only when you need it.
The above means that when we begin the Item system update, the process should be much more simple to convert current items over to the system, as we have been able to make out all the different ways items were handled.
Revamp Validation now validated:
Validation scripts have been adjusted to make sure that player characters are properly attached to their nodes preventing them from being broken or disappearing. Character select should now check for these issues and prevent these breaks thus not allowing the display of blank characters.
When we get to the Character revamp, we will be addressing the remaining issues players may have had when creating a new character. This future revamp will cover the rest of the character and account node issues, eliminating the Garbage Can (ABT’s named Area system for deleted characters that actually still exist) and “Names been taken” when you try to create a new character if you were interrupted leaving the name in limbo.
New Inventory Expansion Bags:
Players will now be able to take advantage of and use the expansion bags 1-8 without inventory space being removed from your main inventory or losing items. The new expansion bags will no longer generate the useless ‘phantom’ slots that many players also found.
The GUI function to close the Expansion bags with a hotkey or “close all bags” is not in-game yet. We will add in a hotkey and icon to open and close all bags when we do the GUI revamp.
New Overflow:
There is now a new system in-game that we call the Overflow System. This will allow players to continue to pick up items despite having filled all 100 main inventory slots, and 40 expansion slots.
Players will not receive a visual cue that they have reached overflow capacity until all 140 slots have been filled. In their main inventory panel, bottom right corner players will see the word Overflow followed by a number in red. This will indicate how many items are being held in the overflow inventory awaiting you to empty items to create room for them.
Players should be able to simply transfer items into a bank vault or sell excess items to receive those awaiting transfer from overflow storage.
Revamp Storage:
Storage function has changed in the following manner. If a player has a storage container open they will only be able to have the singular storage container open. This means that if the player opens a bank while their storage is open it will close the storage container and vice versa.
Revamp Banking:
Players will find that Banking Terminals now have the functionality to deposit and withdraw credits. This function previously existed early in development but was commented out by the previous team. Recent changes when implementing the new system turned this function back on.
BEFORE THE GAME UPDATE The last two steps we have is building a new dll for the game ABT Item/Crafting DB3. We have made enough changes over this past year that the current dll is no longer valid and will cause issues. Then we can build an updated cache.
To do this we must re-enable the command to create the new dll and then the cache. The last test that the QA players will be doing is to test that the dll for the ABT Item/Crafting DB3 is updated and the proper cache is being built correctly and loaded fully.
PUSH INFORMATION: We are still in the process of determining the exact date of the upcoming patch. At this time the patch is tentatively set for January, 6th of 2021. We will release another post with the supporting information, and Patch Notes once we are certain of the date. We'd all like to thank everyone for the patience they have shown us this year, and all the support given by the community and testers.
CONTAINER SYSTEM & PHASE 2 Phase two will include the cleanup and consolidation of the Container System. This may include a mini wipe to clean up and optimize the new Container System and all other systems that were directly or indirectly linked to the containers. This will allow for the leftover baggage from the old system to be removed. This would complete the Container System.
Task overview for Container Phase 2:
Optimizations to the current changes to increase performance
New unified Item system development
Item optimizations to prepare for the next phase of development
QA player testing
Possible Mini Wipe (after additional QA Player testing).
Possible Compensation Merchant (TBD) - This merchant would help assure players do not lose progress due to the mini wipe. - Will assist players in testing the Container System.
KNOWN ISSUES/CHANGES: We ask that players please be aware that there are some known issues and possible issues that may arise after the patch. If needed hotfixes can be deployed to remedy issues.
(New) Possible invisible or missing items due to possible conversion issues.
(New) Double-clicking on items to move to the bank does not work. Drag and drop does work.
(New) Due to how items are handled and improperly indexed, visual counts may not display correctly.
NEXT MONTHS ARTICLE: Next month will be updating our Roadmap early! We will be releasing the updated roadmap next month during the next News Update!
We wanted to give you a quick but informative update during this special time. We know posted news has been sparse for the last 6 weeks as we have been very busy, but we really enjoyed all of the one on one with our community.
This is more a teaser of what is to come than anything, however, we wanted to let you all know that we have been working hard and have not given up!
I want to give a special thanks to all the players and testers! We have all been busy working and testing, and this has really paid off.
So, Thank you! As always, it has been great working and talking with all of you on Production (Live) and on Test.
HOLIDAY CHEER GAME UPDATE! As many of you may have noticed, we have added in some holiday cheer throughout the Island and the Mainland. Decorations have been hotpatched in over the course of the last several weeks.
Various trees and presents can be found throughout the world. We hope you enjoy the small touches and additions this year. We plan on having a little surprise for all current players as well. Stay tuned!
You can find the trees and decorations throughout the island, especially around the Embassies. Odwerki had worked hard to decorate the FPR and OWON areas, especially the main cities.
Now onto the good news...
PATCH DAY IS COMING We are so happy to announce that our current work on the Container Update is completed. The current QA testers are going through the final changes that we finished on the 23rd and the 24th of December. Monday, the 28th, we will be updating once more to let you know more details.
We do not have an exact day yet for the update push, however, we can say it will still be pushed out to you all within the Holiday season.
There are still a few things we are waiting on feedback from. We want to make sure that we have a playable push, with accurate information for the Game Update as well as any possible hotfixes and smaller updates we may need to push for the next few weeks after.
⠀ TESTING AND PERFORMANCE BOOST During early testing and development for the Container Revamp, we found one large issue that was causing an additional drain on player and server resources during gameplay.
All NPC’s had an on-tick function that was causing NPC’s to constantly check (And players to check NPC’s) stealth setting. On-tick means that every 1-2 seconds. The scripts were constantly running over and over. The more NPCs you had in an area the more that were actively running.
This has since been disabled and removed. It does not affect your gameplay, skills, or abilities. This only affects the scripts that were constantly running in the background.
NEXT NEWS UPDATE We expect to have the next big news update next week. Along with more information on the game patch. The information we will be covering will be a bit, even though it mostly covers the Container System, we will be touching on other systems that had to have some adjustments.
Good morning community, Happy Halloween, Dia De Los Muertos, Samhain, and Diwali! This month's update is a progress report. Since our last post, the team has been hard at work. As the progress continues with the new container and inventory system, we have also been able to identify a lot of issues that have plagued The Repopulation and opened up some of the bare bone causes for inventory bugs in the game. This allows us to compare the old/current system to our new systems in development now, and those being designed. To make sure we are able to learn from the mistakes of the past team and our own and make The Repopulation even better.
So let’s dive right in, and show you what we’ve been up to...
CONTAINERS:
There has been significant progress with the container and inventory systems. This is thanks to the hard work of our engineer and the support of our testers. The testing process uncovered both expected and unexpected issues as well as positive forward motion.
When the systems are implemented players can expect to see two distinct changes to their personal inventories. Each player will now have 100 default slots. In addition to their main inventory players will receive 8 expansion bags/tabs, each with 5 default slots. Giving the player a total of 140 slots. In the future, we’ll introduce tier levels to allow players to expand their slots further. This will come once the containers are fully implemented.
WORK PROGRESS ESTIMATION: We estimate the system to be between 80 to 90% in completion of its first stage for patching. This puts us on schedule to release the first push to test in the next few weeks. Our agenda currently includes identifying and resolving bugs, and non-associated items for conversion. This is a somewhat tedious process as there are around 3,750 items currently in-game. We are continuing to test and fix these items as they are identified, but realize there is a possibility there will be more to fix/update that we missed. Due to this players can expect smaller updates or hotfixes to follow as we fix them.
IMPLEMENTATION WORK: In this phase of implementation, players will find that the sort function has temporarily been removed as a system feature. Its removal is due to the different levels of complexity of both the Item System and the “sorting/compressing” feature. However, the function will be reintroduced once the new Item System is in place. This strategy is being deployed in this order to reduce workload redundancy. If we were to implement a newly revamped sorting system at this phase it would not work with the new item system and would require removal and replacement once the system is in place. Rather than do this we have opted to wait until the system is complete so that sorting will work with the new indexed item system.
NON-INDEXED ITEM PROBLEMS: Currently, items in-game are not properly indexed. The existing implementation exists in multiple applications. Because it is not a solitary application it causes conflicts with its versions and the new system. It was found that due to this some items became unusable, or invisible. These phantom items were found to be associated not with the system but the player's character node. We’ll continue to sort through all the items with the testers in search of any that appear to be buggy in nature. From there we’ll trace, fix, and convert them to the new system.
BONES:
In more calcified news testing unearthed an interesting find. While investigating an item related bug we found the NPC character models have a few more bones than we expected. When we say bones what we are referring to is one of the basic building blocks of a character. Bones can be used on a character to mark a position for things such as Sound nodes, Particle nodes, weapons, and effects.
The existing character models have a bone count that exceeds 80. While it isn’t unheard of to use this many bones we’ll be reducing this number somewhere around 70. This will be implemented when we address the character models. You may be curious as to why we’d reduce the number. In our case, it is to improve performance. When you exceed 70 bones you can run into issues. These include issues we’ve seen present in The Repopulation. Listed below are examples.
BONE RELATED ISSUES:
Items that seem to disappear.
Offset Items
Clipping
Odd movements of body parts.
Odd bends in body parts.
Reduction in animation quality.
BONE USAGE AND LIST: The usage of these excess bones increases draws and rendering times for players and NPCs. Listed below are some of the bones we will not be used in the updated models. These are examples of bones you wouldn’t typically see in a model, exceed the average number used, or are paired with bones where they typically wouldn’t be. There is one we aren’t quite certain the intended use of as well.
2 clavicle bones (on top of the chest+spine bones) Generally not needed with spine+chest
INTERNAL TESTING: As you may have gathered from earlier in the article we are now in a phase where testing moves down the chain to the internal testers. Our QA members are currently testing all the inventory containers. Their focus is to identify all items that are broken due to there being no indexing, naming rules, or associations in the original systems.
As they find and document these items our engineer will continue to work to correct them. I’d like to thank all of them for their hard work and for supporting the game.
As we move closer to a patch date we will continue to keep you updated, and release an official patch article and build notes. As always we look forward to your feedback be it positive or other. We appreciate the continued support from our community and welcome those interested in our game to join us. You can find us in our Discord channel, and the main The Repopulation forums. Stay safe, and have a spooky Hallows eve.
Good morning community! Our apologies for being slightly behind our normal posting schedule this month. You may have noticed this month is a familiar topic. You may notice there are not as many images for this update because this article is focused on what we have completed and will be pushing to the test server in the next few weeks. This is a technical update and will be covering two topics.
First topic: A major fix/improvement:
We are including a significant fix that is currently on Test. This revamp is to the NPC Stealth management system and will help improve performance slightly at this time, but will increase with each pass of work to adjoining systems and subsystems. This issue was found to cause major overhead on the server as well as client side.
Second and more familiar topic, Item and Containers:
The first phase of the Item and Container system is done! We are excited to give you a technical update on our progress. This section will be more about the work we have completed than plans and design as prior updates. We welcome all comments and questions since this is more about the technical development stage we are at. We are more than happy to explain all aspects of the achievements the developers and testers have made.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Stealth Management Update:
As many of you are aware, the old NPC’s and areas have caused issues with performance, especially in heavily populated areas filled with NPC’s. Our engineer happened to be in a heavily populated (by NPCs) area when he discovered one of the major root problems with performance and areas with NPC’s in them.
The stealth value for NPCs on the server was temporarily disabled, though still running. This meant whether the NPC was stealth or not, it was always telling the client that it’s not.
THE PROBLEM:
1. System data and latency: ⠀⠀⠀[a] Every few seconds (possibly every 10 seconds), the server was collecting all entities within the ⠀⠀⠀player's spatial awareness and checking if they were stealth or not ⠀⠀⠀
August Update: Container System and Item Tiers
Good morning community! It has been another busy month of development for the team. So let's jump right in and discuss recent work, the coming Container System and supporting subsystem Items and its tiers. These systems will not be implemented for some time, but we want to help familiarize you with the coming changes.
Before we transition into our main topic I'd like to touch on the continued work to clean up ticket issues. As always we are thankful for all the feedback and support we receive from the community. We’ve recently brought on additional QA members. We’d like to extend a big thank you to them and all of those who send in bug reports. It is thanks to all of you that we are able to identify existing issues.
In an ideal setting, we could address each issue as they are found. However, with so many systems in need of overhauls, it can feel like a slow process. We appreciate your patience and look forward to each issue we can mark as resolved.
We've looked into several reports of harvesting nodes spawning inside of assets such as rocks and trees. This issue is occurring due to the nodes spawning outside of their defined regions which is not as intended. Our engineer will be looking into what changes were made to the default settings by the previous team. Once these changes are identified we'll work to revert them, and begin reviewing troubled regions' areas.
In previous articles we made mention of generated missions players receive by mail not completing as intended. We believe all generated missions affected by the issue have been identified and corrected. Should a player complete one of these missions, and find it remains on their mission log with a green checkmark we ask that they please send in a bug report.
These are just two of the issues we've recently addressed. You'll find a detailed patch notes list included with the future patch as normal. Please be aware that our patch cycle has been every six weeks, but our next push has not been scheduled. This is due to the amount of work that must be completed first. Once we have a projected patch date we'll make it public. Once again thank you for your patience.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Container and Item System:
We believe a critical part of future revamps being successful includes the players understanding why these changes are being made. As with many of the existing systems, there are hurdles that we must clear in order to fashion a smoothly running game. The most difficult part of this system overhaul we currently face is the sheer scope. There is not a single system left unimpacted by these changes. To better understand just how much is affected I’d like to go over a portion of data that belongs in a container.
In general, when you think of a container you think of your player inventory. What items you wear, consume, and gather. However, it is a little more complicated than that. The inventory system itself is actually a subsystem of the Container System. This also means that the Item System is anything data-wise that goes into a container. A container can hold anything from skills, UI bars, gear, etc. This creates a web of information that all tracks back to the rootnode.
As mentioned previously all systems are affected by the container and item system. Because of the multiple systems that were previously created, we must unify all of these under a single system with subsystems to allow us to create more cohesive and unified systems. For example, in order to alter the containers, you must adjust some aspects of the items. As changes are made it will become difficult to ensure nothing is broken in the process. ItemWikiItemHierarchy
Essentially, this work will be carried out in a manner that will allow us to have two systems, implemented in very different ways, fully functional side by side. It would be ideal to be able to build out a new system that is completely separate from the existing but that has its own set of challenges. It would also become increasingly difficult to make sure the new system could support all of the features that are already implemented with the old system.
Other supporting systems must be addressed with care in order to ensure the changes implemented fit well with the existing system. This includes the Item system which is essential due to so many aspects of the game and the way items are stored in inventory, replicated, associated, and exposed to all the game systems that need them. As you can imagine every change we make creates its own chain reaction of necessary and dependent changes throughout the server and client. So each change we make creates a chain reaction of additional bugs that must be fixed and adapted to the new system.
An example being the backend handling of items and containers that have many UI components that are impacted with each change. This means work will be done back and forth between various areas such as the server, client, and GUI.
In order to overcome the current limitations and issues of the existing system, there are certain key changes that we have to make. This includes implementing a better architecture, as mentioned above, for managing all items and inventory. Our end goal is to improve efficiency and stability with these systems. This means simplified scripts, reduced redundancies that exist in the current system causing unneeded overhead and processing both on client and server side. These in turn will save time and add flexibility for future development and easier bug tracking. ItemWikiItemAppearances
As work has progressed we’ve taken note of some areas that need particular focus. These include ensuring better handling of items that can be visualized such as equipment, weapons, etc. The system is also in need of improved item stack handling.
Our plan is to stand up the new/improved system alongside the current system and develop a strategy for converting the player’s inventory automatically to the new system. In general, the conversion should not be too difficult. Our engineer has performed testing alongside his work and his findings support this.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Items and Tiers:
Much like the Container System we face the task of unifying the items into a singular system. Currently, there are multiple systems in place that handle the items in a less than an ideal manner. Our goal is to create systematic unity which in turn will assist players to identify their skill levels and reduce the feeling of randomness. Our new system will ensure creation of an item will not include components of a higher tier than the item being created. This also reduces the players’ need to level out a skill completely before attempting the item or being forced to outsource the item.
The current system was created without levels, experience gain system, or an integrated faction system. Current crafting recipe skill levels were not set with unity or faction in mind. This is partially due to the number of people who worked on their creation, early stages of some systems, and the manner they were documented.
This left us with some items that feel well thought out and complex while others feel forced and overly simplistic. We’ll be working to create items with proportional tiers and who feel as though they fit with the other crafting categories. This will allow for consistency and a reasonable learning curve. With these adjustments, players will be able to eventually create complex and unique items. It’s important players be able to pick up the system without feeling as though they are being led on with constant hand holding.
We will be using a system of tiers and sublevels. These will consist of Tier-0 to Tier-6, ranging from an initial soft cap of 0 to 5999 skill points. Listed below you’ll see an example of how tiers will be broken up. Please note that the levels you see below are used to measure crafting difficulty progression between recipe and items not character levels.
Gaining skill levels as you do now will not change. However, how we organize and label each tier will be added in to give a cohesive and logical progression going from the most basic and simple items to more complex items.
With the new Container System, we will have room to expand these Tiers and Skill Points in the future as the game grows. As well as adding additional recipes and items which are currently hindered by the existing system, we’ll continue to update the community on adjustments made for experience gains and curves as development progresses. We look forward to when we can release a full featurette for the coming systems, and surveys based on them. As always we look forward to your feedback be it positive or otherwise.
This year has been one with many hurdles for everyone. Some more than others and we are truly appreciative of the continued support of our community. We wish you all well in these difficult times and hope you all stay safe.
July: Item System and Updated Roadmap
Good Day community! Before diving into this month’s article we’d like to wish everyone a happy, and safe Independence Day. It has been a very productive six months for our team. This month we are going over a) this year’s recap, b) the Item system and c) our updated roadmap. Looking back, it has been a great year.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀1ST AND 2ND QUARTER RECAP:
The first three months of the year were dedicated to improving performance on the island. We deployed three patches during this time. Patch A.00.02.29, and A.00.02.36 in January, and Patch A.00.02.39 in February. Thanks to player feedback we were able to address several issues to include crashing. During this time we continued to add optimized art assets, sculpt terrain, and update various content for the new starter island.
The following three months were just as busy as the previous three. In April we deployed two more patches, A.00.02.41, A.00.02.42. This month included a large number of art asset additions and optimizations. Work continued to improve performance to include the slight reduction of area size from 590x590 to 567x567.
June brought with it our sixth patch of the year, A.00.02.45. New assets quickly took the place of the island whiteboxes during this phase. The visual changes have made the island feel much larger over time. Additional water scourging was added to the island and harvesting regions adjusted. We continued to address any issues with content that arose as well. This patch also brought with it fixes for mainland area issues, NPC placement adjustments, and art asset additions.
The estimated release of our next patch is eight weeks from now. Like many, Covid-19 has required adjustments to our schedule. This in turn has slowed our progress down slightly. Despite this, the team has continued to put a great deal of effort into their work. Which brings us to the topic of system design. We are excited to go into detail about the next system design currently in progress. You’ll find more details on this topic below in our updated road map.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀CREATING AN ITEM SYSTEM:
The current item system contains a mixture of items that are used, useless, or unusable that can not be deleted. All of these items required documentation and review. This process has taken a considerable amount of time. This is partially due to the lack of indexing and not using mutable data, but instead hard coding these things into the scripts. Despite this, we’ve been able to document and sort the existing 3369 items so we can move forward with the new design.
Understanding what is part of the current system allows us to consider which items should be remade under the new system, and which will be removed or replaced. It also helped us determine what is missing from the current system data-wise.
We have been able to start documenting how we will rebuild the item system from creating top level (core) classifications to subcategories under those. Listing out all possible specs and fields for items under those classifications, then start building the item database.
Once we have a base of items created (not all that will end up in-game) we will start working on the crafting functionality for each of those items. At this point, once we are able to create any item under any category and subcategory and tested, we should be ready to start the multiple pushes from development to production. Multiple pushes for the Item system are needed so you, the players are able to test each function and we have a working solid core for all aspects that fall under the Item System.
This may change, but here is the base we have right now so our two programmers can get started on the new system once the foundation is finished. Below is a sample of the classification (top level categories) and subcategories of items and our process of documentation:
There is a lot more other than just this. We have worked out flow charts and tables for each cat and sub cat with all possible fields and modifiers that will work with that item type. This extensive documentation (currently at 19 pages just for the item system) also lets us know what to have as visible fields for you when you are examining an item in the GUI. Our spreadsheets and database of items will be much larger.
There is a lot to consider when creating an item. Below are some of the questions we have to ask as we review what is in-game now, and how we want to optimize, categorize and display the items to you. Here are a few questions we have asked and reviewed.
How is it classified?
Does it need a visual, and if so, what type (icon, mesh, text reference, all of the above)?
What is it used for?
How will or can the item be used?
Will the item have modifiers?
If it does have modifiers, what are all possible modifiers for that classification?
What is its durability?
Does it have decay?
Does it use triggers or scripts?
And so on!
Once the categories were determined we were able to begin fleshing out their default subcategories and modifiers. This ranges from what Prefix to use to how many text fields (mutable data) could an item have for different categories. These items tie into other systems as well. Skill, inventory, crafting, etc. Which means considering how they are affected by Tiers, and scripts.
There are items that must be charted out for Tier success and failure rates based on item and player data. Others are interactive items that require the use of a script. All of this information must be considered before creating a new list of items for the future list.
The player Inventory system development (part of the container system) will then begin once we have the core item system done. We will let you know more about the player inventory later this summer.
UPDATED ROAD MAP: Outside of patch content, the first two development quarters of the year were spent designing different systems and planning for revamps. These include the Item and Inventory systems. We’ll address these topics along with our plan for the rest of this year.
Here is our updated roadmap. As you can see more things have been added to the “past year” section. We are excited to enter this next phase and eventually start pushing out the new systems to go with the island and soon, the new mainland world connected to the Island.
ROADMAP TASK COMPLETED THIS YEAR:
✓ Combat basics updates and adjustments
✓ Targeting system and Auto-target adjustments/refinements
✓ Implemented Line of Sight revamp
✓ Astronomy and Time of Day (ToD) system finalization
✓ Shader clean up, new shaders, shader optimizations
✓ Environment adjustments for Island and world rebuild Templates
✓ Character Select area cleanup
✓ Player account/character updates and cleanup
✓ Player Character expansion with new Alpha Supporter group/titles
✓ Multiple Area clean up on Mainland
✓ Four Mainland areas rebuilt for better performance for current gameplay
✓ New Island released with 6 land and 16 ocean/sea areas
✓ Art asset cleanup
✓ New art styles added to the island (and some areas of the mainland)
✓ Core foundation for Item system (WIP, see below)
✓ Core art for harvesting assets completed
✓ New default environment, lighting and TOD system completed.
✓ New geological art (terrain assets) completed
✓ New flora systems (trees, bushes, plants and dynamic detail) completed
✓ New interior and exterior system for buildings completed (no more sunshine or rain inside buildings)
✓ New “rooms” (Default exterior, default transition, default interior, default cave) systems and environments
✓ New oceans and waterway systems completed
✓ Final templates for terrain, oceans and coastal areas completed (and used for the island).
✓ Created and added working platforms, lifts and doors.
A GLIMPSE AT THE UPDATED DEVELOPMENT ROADMAP.
Website and forum updates
Item System (new system)
Adjusted container system (new system)
Crafting Basics (new system)
Harvesting basics (new system)
Player gear basics (new system)
Horticulture (new system)
Factions (new system)
Adversarial Camps (Spawners)
Races spec system (new system)
PC/NPC System (new system)
NPC Pathing and navmesh updates (revert to engine default then update)
Quest/Mission system (new system)
Updated Nation System Revamp
Housing (Revamp + new system)
Ability System (new system)
Combat Ability and Skill system (new system)
Combat Progression and title awards (new system)
Player Auction converted to World Auction House (new system)
Player Merchants (new system)
Job Billboard system (new system)
Additional Updates to the new single Astronomy System
Start of World Rebuild (area linking (seamless) and rough sculpt
New fully functional clean UI/UX with modular style
We also will be doing the first HE update sometime after we finish the core Item system. When we do this, it will cause much breakage across most of the old systems. At that point, we will begin the parallel development for those systems. We are not sure when we will be doing the first HE update, but we will let you know when we do, and what we expect to experience, or have experienced. Update schedules will then be estimated based on that breakage.
Doing stepped HE updates will allow us to start bringing up to date. DX11/12 will not be in the first few engine updates pushed to Repop. That is still to be announced.
Your continued support helps us progress with our project. We appreciate all the feedback, and tickets we receive from the community. We hope that everyone will enjoy the coming changes and testing with us. As always we look forward to your feedback. Please stay safe during these difficult times.
The month of May has been quite productive. We want to start this month's update out with a big shoutout to all the players new and old for their help, reporting bugs, and suggestions.
Before we dive let’s begin with announcing our next scheduled patch date. Monday, June the 15th we will be launching our next patch push. The server will come down at 10:00 AM EST for approximately four hours. We’ll broadcast our normal warning on the server before bringing it down. Once it is live we’ll post an update to let you know.
We have been able to do a lot over the last month on both the island and the mainland. So let us get started with updating you on the progress for the next game update, the island, and then move onto the current mainland areas.
We have now replaced most of the whiteboxing with actual art models. I want to especially thank those players that met me in-game over the last several weeks and gave ideas, suggestions for art, layouts/placement, styles as well as having the privilege to show off some of the new harvesting trees and plants to come your way later this year. It was a lot of fun and the feedback has been amazing! I hope to be able to continue doing this at least once a month with everyone. It has been a great tradition to have.
ISLAND HARVESTING REGIONS
Reports of missing harvesting regions on the island alerted us to an issue where region sizes had changed to be unusually small. These were addressed and double checked across the entire island in all six areas. All harvestable resources in the area should appear as intended after the patch.
OWON DISTRICT (STRT_01) New wall sets: OWON finally has their own walls. All whiteboxes that were in place for these walls have been removed and replaced with OWON’s own dark style. You can see the new walls and an observation deck over by the combat training facility. In the future, each nation will have its own style that will reflect that nation.
Training Signs and Banners: We have added new training signs to help guide the players through their combat training. As we progress, the new NPC’s will be placed in these areas for the new systems. We will be adding additional signs and banners as we move forward with the Item, Skill and NPC systems. We have also added in a few new banners.
An Experiment: We are testing out a new asset management technique built into the engine, called “ rooms” in the OWON district. This room we hope will help with some of the NPC load and unload between the areas, especially when you look towards an area heavy with NPC’s in another area.
Example: You are in the REC district and look towards the OWON district and FPS drops (for a moment or as long as you look in that direction. The two spots that we are testing this out is on the Martial training platform and the shooting range.
Additional Water scrounging nodes: We have also added additional scrounging in this area. Players will find one location which they can scrounge for water after the patch. This area is the small water garden in front of the OWON Embassy.
RIN DISTRICT (STRT_02)
Platforms: An update was done to the platforms to reduce the poly and vert count. The textures were also updated and tweaked to fit and match the area better. The current environment had made the platforms too bright at noon, almost blinding. Though we may have some assets that are very bright and refract the light, these are not ones we wanted to be too bright.
Resource spawn Nodes: The resource spawn nodes were adjusted to prevent overgrowth, and try to keep the nodes from spawning on the roads. With the current system and range, you may still see a few spawns yet on the road and path behind the barracks.
Additional Water scrounging nodes: We have updated scrounging in this area. Players will find two locations that they can scrounge for water after the patch. These areas are the small pond behind the RIN Embassy and the small pond under the shopping district bridge.
ISLAND WILDERNESS (STRT_03)
More Detail: the wilderness has changed quite a bit since the Islands debut. Players will soon be able to enjoy a more lively view from the research platforms. The landscape is now populated with various bushes, cactus, trees, and rocks. The nearby swamp has seen the addition of various rocks and cyprus knees.
Players will also discover that the dunes to the northeast have gotten a bit of colour.
Additional Water scrounging nodes: We have also added additional scrounging in this area. Players will find a large area that they can scrounge for water after the patch. This area will include most of the adjacent swamp.
REC DISTRICT (STRT_04)
The Flight Deck and Shuttle port in: When you come back to the Island you might want to check out the new additions to the flight deck and the port if you have not seen the progress over the last several weeks. It has grown from a lonely platform to a full service Shuttle port. It now even houses the Nation Shuttles on the upper level.
New pallet Jacks and other detail: A few bits of clutter were added, sitting alongside an old one near the loading dock on the flight deck. Players will soon notice new assets such as pallet jacks, new towers, and tanks that relate to the Port Repair shops for the nations. These new cylindrical tanks are part of a new group of assets which will be seen commonly throughout our future builds. They will range in color to specify their intended uses such as blue hues for water, and red hues for chemical storage.
Additional Water scrounging nodes: We have also added additional scrounging in this area. Players will find three locations in this area which they can scrounge after the patch. These are the inlet which flows under the shuttleport, and lake adjacent to the adjoining area by the Museum, and the crescent-shaped lagoon on the southwest of the island.
Medical Center: Players find themselves in the medical center as their first stop on the island. Since the islands debut the building has been updated many times. Soon players will notice the medical center now has finished rooms! Yes, those whiteboxes that were once walls and an intake desk are now fully fledged out. Thank you again to our players that helped me work out the room layouts. Hopefully, we will have some REC medical staff start moving in by the end of the summer.
FPR DISTRICT (STRT_05)
Crafting Hall: A new crafting hall has been built. It is still empty yet, however you can now see the basic layout for when we begin placing the new NPC’s and implement the first stage of the new crafting system later on. The new crafting hall for FPR will have a focus on electronics, computers, tech and of course, some of those cool vehicles.
The new building includes four outer rooms, and an outdoor crafting court and of course a place to craft some of those larger items out back.
Additional Water scrounging nodes: We have also added additional scrounging in this area. Players will find two locations in this area which they can scrounge after the patch. These are the small pond behind the shopping block and by the fishing hut and small docks.
New small pub and lounge: If you travel to the shopping block in the FPR District, you may find a new pub and lounge. It is small, quaint but it will have a lot more added in upcoming updates. We plan on adding a lot more to the buildings. Each one will be its own unique shop that may help players explore the island a bit more.
Unnamed FPR Inn: Next to the bar before you enter the shopping block we have added a new inn. At this time, we only have some whiteboxing in place and a few generic furniture pieces that you would expect to see inside. This will be updated later one we have finalized the inn rooms and updated the interior model. Please feel free to check out the upstairs and the small rooms for rent. In Beta, we plan on opening up the rooms for players to “rent” giving each their own door. Other missions are planned to work between the pub and the inn.
AG DISTRICT (STRT_06)
Agriculture Center Farming: We have updated Garage Bays and doors, as well as the maze field. New tanks and other clutter have been added to the farming area to build out the area a bit more and start to add a little life. These industrial assets will be used in other locations that focus on machinery, robotics, farming and of course genetics.
Additional Water scrounging nodes: We have also added additional scrounging in this area. Players will find six locations which they can scrounge for water after the patch. These include the two areas around the Agricultural Flora Research grounds with glowing runoff water and four areas along the bandit islands.
Agriculture Center: We have added new walls and a platform inside the Agricultural Flora Research grounds. Additional flora and assets were placed to help fill out the area and get some of the most basic assets in place for new content coming later this year.
Some of these new assets and changes are the walls, a platform observation deck and sewer intake/outtake from the glowing runoff water on the sides. You may also see some glowing mushrooms now that fit the corrupted spot on the island.
MAINLAND TUNE-UP
As we have mentioned often, your bug reports are a great help to us. We have spent a good deal of time concentrating on the island as it is our testbed for future changes. However, we understand that content in the existing game areas is still important to you all. While we are not currently creating new content, we have taken time to make corrections to some existing issues. These changes will be included in our next patch. Below you will find some of those changes listed for you.
AREAS
Oasis Valley Watchtowers an area located in the Plymouth region of OWON is now in better working order.
The main inhabitants of the outpost will now stay spawned unless killed and respawn on a proper timer.
To ensure that the NPC attacking or inhabiting the area no longer able to pass through the platform and wreak havoc or become unusable art assets have been changed.
Paths have also been adjusted to ensure the NPCs have a better chance of surviving attacks if players are not present to assist them.
The interior has been rearranged to allow for better access to the NPC as well.
NPC who shared appearances have been adjusted to make identifying them easier, and reduce the number of repeat appearances.
Plymouth Control Center an area located in the Plymouth region of OWON has also seen a brief pass of work.
NPC will no longer stand in huddled groups. They will now be found in areas more suited to their functions.
Players will soon be able to view an OWON Shuttle on both platforms.
Banshee’s Hollow an area located in the Wailing Chasm region of FPR.
NPC that should have been merchants have been amended with the proper Glom to allow them to sell Armor, and Firearms.
Professions have been amended on NPC located in the structure known as the Evening Star Lounge.
Freedomtown an area located in Freedomtown region, FPR
Players will soon be able to view an FPR Shuttle at the shuttleport.
Sept Falls an area located in Fal Sept Region, RIN
Players will soon be able to view a RIN Shuttle at the shuttleport.
Obsidian Bastille an area located in the Mt Ash Region, of the contested area
Now has two working rest areas.
The rest area for the bar known as The Macuahuti will now function properly and allow players to use resting associated abilities.
Miscellaneous
Blair Ridge located in the region Plymouth of OWON has received terrain changes to remove a large pit on the mountainside. Players should no longer find themselves trapped there in the future.
GENERATED MISSIONS:
There were reports of generated missions that would not complete as intended. Instead, they remained on the player’s mission list with a green checkmark. This left the player unable to interact with the NPC again, and without reward. Our engineer was able to help address a script issue that corrected the root of the problem. Missions that have been identified to have this issue are being addressed and corrected as found. Some missions which have been corrected are:
I’ve Been Cheated
An urgent Request
My Muffin Cravings
Cheer up…
Running Weapons
Note: If a player has the broken version of these missions they will first have to abandon them to potentially receive the corrected version via mail at some point. The corrected version will be available in our next patch.
KNOWN ISSUES
Listed below are some of the known issues. Please be aware that some issues will not be addressed until their associated system is revamped. However, most issues will be corrected in a timely manner and patched accordingly.
Fitting associated issues will be addressed with a system revamp in the future.
The Catch a Nacoot! mission on the island can not be completed due to a script issue with the associated prop. A fix is being looked into.
Players can still complete a taming mission for the nacoot if they visit the Master Tamer in the Area Strt_05 - FPR District. They will be directed to the forested area near the Genetics Platform to tame one of the wild nacoots.
Issues with the Mount taming ability have recently been reported. A fix is being looked into.
Mission reward balance - some of the existing missions and engagements give rewards that are very unbalanced at this time. This will be addressed in the future with a revamp to the Mission, and Item systems.
Some Generated Missions will not complete as intended and remain on the player’s mission bar with a green checkmark. These should be reported with the mission’s name and will be corrected in a timely manner.
Alpha draw order issue: For example, if the player is on the coast of Area Strt_03 you may notice the new bushes in the coming patch seem to be cut in half or load strangely. This issue will be corrected once the hero Engine Version is fully updated in the future.
As always your feedback and reports help us to determine what is in need of correction. Should you find yourself in an area where missions do not complete, or the NPCs do not spawn please make sure to report the issues you find. Some issues may not find resolution until systems are revamped, but those that we can correct beforehand we are happy to address. We look forward to your feedback and appreciate your continued support. Please take care of yourselves in these uncertain times, and be well.
Good evening community! We hope everyone is doing well, and not feeling too stir crazy. On the 8th we released patch A.00.02.41. On Wednesday 22 April 2020 we will be releasing a small bugfix update patch. This will take place at 10:00 am EST (2 pm GMT). Once the server is back online we will inform you here. Below you’ll find a list of known issues and a link to our patch notes.
This update includes fixes and updates for the Island and a few patches for the mainland issues that players have found. In addition to the fixes we have also started working on some of the details across the different Districts. This includes terrain detail as well as some clutter added to a few of the areas, including OWON and its embassy.
Along with the newer issues and bug fixes we were also able to reduce a few more of the long standing bugs and issues. If you find any that are not listed here or in other "known issue" threads, please let us know so we can continue to improve the game.
UPCOMING FOR SPRING AND SUMMER: We plan on adding the bodies of water that comprises the Stara Baska Sea. Depending on how the testing goes, oceans will be expanded and the heightmaps that are raised to join the seas seamlessly will be removed. Additional clutter and detail will be added now and throughout the spring and summer game updates. This will continue our Stress Test on the island and finalize preparations for the World Revamp.
Read our full Article and Patch notes for Build: A.00.02.42 HERE.
March/April Update: Terrain and Area Optimizations
Good evening Community! It is once again time for an update and patch announcement! Testing on the island has been going very well. We’ve recently moved on to a new strategy to reduce some of the heightmap issues on the island. We’ll discuss these more in-depth below. As always we want to extend our thanks to the community and testers for helping us continue our work. With your help, we hope to continue improving the game and your experience.
This has been one heck of a month. We hope that everyone is doing well, healthy and or recovering and most of all, not going completely stir crazy. The most important message I want to give is: Be well and be safe!
Our own two teams have also been affected by the current COVID-19 situation, however, other than some delays and a lot more business work on my end, we are all good, and this month's update will be released. On behalf of both HE and TGS Teams, we want to thank all of you for your support and encouraging messages.
Game Update: 08 April, 2020 @ 10am EST (5 am GMT)
Now, onto March’s update.
This month's update is going to consist of major improvements, most of them planned, but we owe a great deal of thanks to our testers and players. The Island has received a revamp, with several changes to improve performance as well as being flushed out a bit more. The best thing? Performance!
The best thing we want to report is that we have been able to identify many of the causes of the 02 related crashes with a lot of help from all of you. We hope to have removed 98% of the crashing issues. This work is not done yet and will be ongoing. We still have more work planned:
Item system
Item database
NPC Set up and systems
Found and fixed:
Additional shaders that did not belong (unity shaders, max script shaders),
Altered default scripts and shaders
Deleted default scripts and shaders
Missing textures and directories
The above listed helped us remove much of the crashing. Some of these listed also helped contribute to the extremely large heightmap node data file (the terrain nodes).
The changes and fixes to these scripts will also improve mainland performance as well.
THE WHITEBOXES
2020 04 07 Repop update medbay01I first want to thank all the players that were in the game and helped with layout ideas, as well as a few good suggestions and issues. Moving things around in real-time in the game with the players was a lot of fun and those that helped you will see some of those suggestions in this update! Being able to show ideas and changes with the player's input was great and I must give a shoutout to the HeroEngine team. Only on HE could we do this. I really look forward to doing this more in the future with the players!
You will notice that several of our whitboxes have been replaced. New and updated buildings have been added in and the whiteboxes are slowly going away. The layout has also been adjusted slightly. Some of the new buildings you will see still fall in the same scope and style, but give added diversity for the area and the nations.
Read the full article here: https://therepopulation.com/news/updates/game-update-optimizations
