Good evening Rhyldan! We hope you've navigated your April Fool's Day unscathed. While we enjoy a good prank we won't be dishing out any delightful jests today. That isn't to say we haven't squirreled away a few tricks and treats for later. Rambling aside let's dive into this months short and sweet update.
IN GAME DISCUSSIONS:
We want to give a shoutout for all the players in the game that have joined the Q&A’s in game over the last month. The information has been invaluable. The ideas and suggestions given were great. A few of these have been incorporated into our notes for some of the system redesigns. Keep it up, we look forward to more of these throughout development.
Some of these great ideas have evolved around Housing, Harvesting, Crafting and more. The last few days, the Tracking skill and how that can be improved to work better with the new upcoming systems has been most productive as well. Even the little things count.
UPGRADING DEVELOPMENT SERVERS PROGRESS:
New servers were finished, we are about 65% through converting and updating repop to work with the new updated dev server. This progress will continue until the conversion is done. Additional changes will be reflected in the next game update. Once stable and players give the thumbs up, we will then update servers and additional files for Repop Live.
Some of the major work is updating files that will allow the current version of Repop to communicate correctly with the servers and back to the client.
The area we were focused on at the end of last month was Engine/Dev Client communication and ABT’s file structure. This month we are focusing on Client, accounts, and character (player client) communications. The trick is to make sure we keep this consistent and will easily translate to the next update for HE for Repop seamlessly, as well as keep client/server communication working properly on the new hardware.
Some of the challenges and added work we are doing to improve Repop development and then the game is that the server specifically is a combination of changes in how we and AWS provisions the newer servers and hardware (which works with the current version of HeroEngine).
Some of these changes from 2013/2014 to current are the networking drivers and the new way they define networks which is nothing like how it used to work with our older version of HeroEngine, which Repop is currently using. We also have to update several of the libraries such as Python, C++ and so on.
Areas of focus for Repop and this upgrade:
Infrastructure (completed)
Code libraries
Repo HE Framework adjustments
ART DEVELOPMENT PROGRESS:
As the server/Repop upgrade is currently in progress we have been undergoing efforts to move the new art assets onto the Dev server. These assets are both updated versions of current art and new.
For those who've not previously followed our updates, the art optimization effort is ongoing progress. One could think of this as a transition phase for the current art. Existing assets undergo updates to optimize their performance or they're rebuilt in a similar style but will have less of an impact on the player experience. New assets are being created in the same consistent manner.
This process will allow us to meld the existing styles with our updated vision for the art. Players will be able to see this developing transition of art styles in the new Island. This work is going in now and can be seen on the Island on Dev.
Art currently on Dev server:
New Glow Map shader for SpeedTree based flora
Additional cleanup on Character Select
Updated ocean/sea cubemaps (2)
New Environment cubemap (1)
New village houses (exteriors and interiors) (38)
New Walls for the village area (3)
New doors for village and similar buildings (10)
New steps for village areas (4)
New lights and the communication poles (4)
New solar panels and transformers for the Isle power plant (8)
New decks (platforms) for the primary area of the island (2)
New watchtowers (4)
New walls for FPR and RIN areas (5)
New + Updated OWON Red bunkers (4)
New Island Clone Cafe (1)
New lily and lily pads (5)
Over 15 species of trees
February Update: Cohesive Building
READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE: https://therepopulation.com/news/updates/february-update-2019
It is our pleasure to bring you this next development update. As is the case with many of the previous updates, there are several topics we would like to cover, from creative content to issues more technical in nature. Our goal is to always be as transparent as possible regarding the development process, as we re-imagine the world of Rhyldan.
Today's update will cover everything from Roadmap history and the new roadmap outline, the new Starter Island, New areas, the new in-game Timeline, Character Select, Account disconnection issues progress and the new dev servers!
Development roadmap
As we continue with development during this years first quarter no new Additions to the roadmap have been made. We’ll continue to progress on the same planned path for the remainder of this quarter. Because we are all excited, this is the first topic we want to bring to you.
Work to complete goals from the previous year's roadmap continued into the new year allowing us to complete several goals. With so much forward movement it is an exciting time for us and we know you must be as ready to see a development roadmap update as we are to give it.
Updates from the roadmap this past year:
Combat basics updates
Targeting system
Auto-target
Implemented Line of Sight revamp fixes
Astronomy system cleanup and updates
Character Select area cleanup
Player account/character updates and cleanup
Environment adjustments
Area clean up, two areas rebuilt
Island Prototype completed
New Island templates completed in Dev
A glimpse at the current roadmap:
First planned is Inventory
Item System
Ability System
PC/NPC System
Combat Skill Progression
Astronomy System Updates
Horticulture
Races spec system
Factions
Adversarial Camps (Spawners)
Quest/Mission system
Create new NPC's
Updated Guild System
Crafting Basics
Housing Revamp
Combat Progression and title awards
Player Merchants
Player Auction House
World Auction House
UI/UX
A new Roadmap page will be added with the site updates that will contain more detail for this road map as well as additions in the future. The page will be easily searchable as well so you wont have to search throughout older news updates.
Terra Corp. Island
Terracorp island Whiteboxed in dev
The new Tutorial/Starting Island: We are enthused with the progress made on our development server for the new Tutorial Island. Recently, we have completed the final stage of white boxing granting our artists the ability to move forward with the terrain.
They’ve been hard at work sculpting the island's features and completing the vertex painting. Now we have begun texturing the terrain to give it a more natural feeling environment for our players to explore.
Expanding the tutorial region to six areas has allowed us to create a region that will remain an active part of the world in the future. Here on the island players will explore territories controlled by the three factions, neutral areas, festival grounds, an agricultural area, and undeveloped wilderness.
Looking forward, players will encounter a variety of content as we move through build phases. Players can test their mettle and settle scores against opponents in the arena, get their hands dirty on the homestead as they learn farming and hydroponic skills, stroll through the shopping district, or enjoy festival events.
If schedules permit a player could take time to reflect in the halls of the museum whilst being surrounded by history.
Expanding the landmass to multiple areas grants us the ability to use this as the test bed for the main world map. This will allow us to identify additional issues and account for any overhead we may not yet be aware of. Using the Island as our template for the rest of the world we can see where our limitations are and what optimizations and changes are needed. Areas of concern for us are latency issues (lag), area transitioning (zoning) and account stability.
With such a variety of areas, and content planned for the area we have begun to create buildings to represent them. Players will be introduced initially to four new buildings. These will be considerably less temporary and/or industrial in appearance than those currently in-game.
It is our goal to give these assets a more modern and permanent flare that reflects both the humble origins of Terra and the new styles cultivated on Rhyldan. These buildings will be decorated with a host of assets as time passes. Many of which will be of a high tech nature in appearance. We'll continue to update older assets to fit with our new theme.
Our focus has been to create a unified theme that will blend the new assets with those that are currently in-game by addressing issues such as some of the dark almost post-apocalyptic colors and styles. Each Nation will have its own flare that will reflect their uniqueness while still falling into the same style of art.
We do want to let you know that the selection of nation and initial armor will remain in the character creation process; in the future, these will be moved to the island.Once that is brought into the game after the Character and NPC system revamps, you will be able to chose your initial gear while learning the basics that include the differences between each type of armour and weapons.
The Road to Rhyldan
Like any story, our writers are faced with challenges and unique choices as it evolves. The story of the little planet Rhyldan and humanity is no different. As time has progressed, writers have moved on, and as visions matured the story has seen revisions. In order to ensure the residents of Rhyldan stand the best chance of survival, we’ve altered the timeline of events.
These alterations include expanding to an established colonization time of one hundred and fifty years since arriving. New events and characters have been established in order to make a more consistent and cohesive environment across the world. This timeline lore has been used to shape the visual lore aspects as well. Be it the scarring on the planet's terrain from Star Fall, the hybrid vegetation from debris caches, or the architecture within your cities....
READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE: https://therepopulation.com/news/updates/february-update-2019
We are very excited to give you this months update, as it also includes a patch date for the game update. We have gone through several iterations of tests, each one bringing us closer to being able to push a Normal Update for The Repopulation. We are finally there! The past weeks’ tests were excellent, and we are comfortable to give you this long-awaited game update!
Live Game Update:
On Tuesday, 18 December 2018, we will be bringing servers down at 09:00 EST am for the 00.01.12 Update. Servers will be down for about 12 hours.
If you are wondering why our first official full update is 00.01.12 it is because we have moved ahead of just the initial combat update that was planned, 00.00.01. While part of the team was working on cleanup to be able to have a successful push, the rest of the team continued our regular development at the same time.
Each game iteration moves the version number up. This work included but was not limited to Combat, Combat updates, New Ghetti Gorge, Art clean up and Plymouth Control Center. For more information on how we do our patch versions, you can visit this news update here: https://therepopulation.com/news/updates/update-feburary-progress
What has been done so far:
As you can imagine we've covered so much since our last patch. Here is a brief look at some of the highlights of that work.
Combat: The combat system has seen some upgrades. we've added an auto facing option toward the enemy and changed how the camera direction changes with engagements in combat. The code for the Ability Bar has seen an overhaul which should resolve many issues relating to the activation of abilities. The Line of Sight (LOS) code has been altered to correct the issue where NPC’s or players block LOS. Our Programmers also corrected the issue which left players in the combat stance after combat was over.
Performance: We were able to review high problem areas and learned how and why performance issues affected gameplay.
We also disabled the siege system. This system will remain offline until a later date when it has been revamped as well as a number of other key systems which support it and other aspects of the game. These systems include but are not limited too: PVP system, Vehicles, Cities/Nations, and the astronomy system (our Timing system).
The weather system which currently ties into the astronomy system continues to be a topic of concern. We've made several changes to the system overall with the enhancement of FPS performance. Players should find that by default the weather system visuals have been disabled. The visual portion of the system was causing havoc for some players. No worries for crafters the mushroom timers are still working and will produce as before.
Players should find that the Auto Config for video will now work as intended which means you can have the game set your graphics for performance. Other changes have been put in place to help performance issues. One such change was to disable the engagement located in the Contested region of Mt. Ash, Fort Pharynx. This was due to the numerous issues it was causing in the areas around the engagement.
Area Rebuilds: We have rebuilt two areas in-game this year. The first being OWON area of Ghetti Gorge. this area was rebuilt from scratch to include new terrain landscapes, flora, and trees. We've noted a positive FPS performance in the area and those adjoining since the removal of a cave which led to nowhere, and the addition of new trees and flora.
Most recently we rebuilt the OWON area of Plymouth Control Center (PCC), This included implementing a new floor-plan for the area, and asset improvements. This area has greatly been enhanced in terms of performance. We still have some work to do to finish the area which includes small detail however, we believe it has come along nicely.
A brief overview of some of the work done this year:
This past year has been quite busy and productive. Alongside the development cleanup and optimizations to be able to make this push, we have also focused on other aspects as a team and in our individual departments. To give you an idea what our small team does, here is a brief rundown (honest, it really is brief):
WIP Unfinished PCC elements:
Though we have gotten the bulk of the revamp done in Plymouth Control Center, it is not complete yet. This is still a work in progress. We have put a lot of work into this to give the players a taste of what is to come in the next year. However, there are some things that have not been completed due to other systems needing to be fixed up, adjusted or revamped first. Below is a list of some of the unfinished build tasks for PCC.
What is planned for first quarter 2019:
The first Quarter of 2019 will be a busy time for us. Our first priority will be fixing issues from this patch. This will also enable us to plan system revamps by having a fresh look into what is broken. Then determine what order to proceed with fixes and revamps. We are looking forward to seeing what you as players find in the world as you continue to test.
We'll progress from there with ongoing projects such as coding, art cleanup, GUI changes, in addition to any issues that crop up during development.
This year has allowed us insight into how ABT built their systems, and how they relate to one another. This reverse engineering and documentation will allow us to optimize how some of these systems perform. During the review of these systems, we realized there are some that are out of date and will require changes so they integrate properly with systems built since them. This process helps us to plan and build systems for the best possible outcome the first time. Which saves time by preventing the need to rebuild them later in development.
The art clean up is another large-scale ongoing process. We've had the opportunity to feature some of the modified assets such as the rocks, flora, and buildings in our monthly update articles. We did not receive the raw files for all of the art during transfer. As a result, we will need to rebuild some from scratch as well as create new models that fit our needs.
Another important project for the first quarter will be the GUI cleanup. It is during this time we will begin the groundwork for a complete revamp of the GUI. This is partially due to the fact we have encountered a number of problems relating to the GUI to include how it ties into other things. Work on this system will include cleaning up scripts, files, and what code that we can without breaking everything. We'll continue to gather information concerning the depth of all the systems the GUI effects. This information will determine how we alter our current plan for the revamp. This revamp will take place later this year.
What is planned for spring and summer:
Our proverbial plates will continue to be full as the year progresses towards the Fall quarter. During this time updates will still be spaced apart until we've reduced overhead enough to allow for clean, and regular updates.
We'll use this time to progress with two of our projects we've discussed in previous update articles. These being the Inventory system and the construction of the New Starter island. We are delighted to be moving forward. The construction of the Island is a process we look forward to sharing with the community. Information gathered during this build coupled with your feedback will help future builds move along more smoothly.
We’d like to start off by wishing everyone a ghoulish Día de Muertos, All Hallows Eve, Samhain and Halloween! As October winds down it brings with it our monthly update. So let's jump right in.
Test Patch Update
The last two tests we did gave us some very valuable information. With the additional cleanup, we’ve progressed 30% further than our previous push attempt.
This has given us valuable data to base the direction of Novembers testing. On saying that, documentation and cleanup will continue. We hope to have some more specific information for you in coming news updates!!
PCC (Plymouth Control Center)
At the beginning of the month, we gave everyone a glimpse of the coming revamps for the area Plymouth Control Center. We’d like to touch on this region once more as we bring the month to a close.
Work within the region is winding down leaving us to focus on terrain and flora placement. PCC will now tower above the remnants of a dried river bed. Marshy terrain making up the landscape below.
During clean up many props were discovered in various locations around the zone. Some of which have now been removed from the area. Balance is an ongoing concern when planning for the world revamp. That being such we are interested to hear what you think is too little or too much when it comes to:
Hacking Terminals
Crafting Stations
Banking Terminals
Skill Imprinting Stations
Etc.
Since we haven't reached the patching stage we thought we'd mix things up a bit. Rather than a featurette we've prepared a video from a developers perspective. We thought you may find it interesting to see for yourselves a glimpse of the work that goes into creating an area. So please enjoy, and let us know if you'd like to see more content like this in the future.
We have had a number of issues being able to push content into a patch, this is believed to be because there is a lot of leftover old work which needs to be cleaned up, which has lead us into doing just that.
Currently, we are working in a large amount of spreadsheet data, and data parsing in order to work out everything that is deletable, this will be done over time and in phases in order to decrease the amount of data The Repopulation is trying to push when doing a patch. We have started off with working on the GUI, and over time will move to other systems.
Essentially we have been documenting what classes are used where and in what scripts/XML files, and also which Controls are used where and in which scripts/XML files. Controls are the GUI parts you see as the interface, these are defined in XML and then used by XML or Script. Any button you press, or any window you move is a control, or made up of multiple controls.
We use parsers to document all uses of classes and controls, then go through and check dynamic creations too, this work is a mixture of having scripts to run and manual checking. This information then runs through some checks to see which scripts and controls are not used anywhere. With that list we then check over and delete what isn't used. We do this for controls, which then frees up class data, and then we run through the process again for classes, which in turn will free up more. This will eventually get rid of a lot of bloat.
What the results were:
1205 XML Files
2128 Client Scripts
2751 GUI Controls
3605 Client Classes
We have yet to run the actual deletion phases, but the first phase looks to be a deletion of roughly 5% of the DOM object bloat and 15% Control Bloat, as we do more phases, that amount will increase.
Over the next few months, we will be doing all of the cleanups we can, checking everything that is used, and eventually re-creating problematic GUI elements to be more efficient, and freeing up even more. After the GUI we will move on to other systems, and clean up what we can there as well.
Test pushes will be attempted at regular intervals. Once we've accomplished a successful push we'll begin compiling a patch for public release. Upon patching publicly we'll continue our development plan and further cleanup.
What these test pushes tell us:
Where the cleanup has an affect
How much further the prior clean up got us
Where the next timeouts occur
What areas we need to clean up
In the future we will also be remaking a lot of the GUI for the new systems and other system adjustments made.
Welcome Michael
Saving the best for last: We are very excited to introduce our new team member, composer Michael La Manna.
Michael has over 14 years of experience in the music industry from producing and remixing some of today's top artists to composing for film, television and game production. Michael began his career in the late nineties as the founder of the electronic group Sonic State. He released remixes for artists such as Limp Bizkit, Orgy and Godhead, and was propelled into the underground rave scene, performing live at multiple venues. With the continued success of SonicState, he established the independent record label and produced tracks that were to be played on radio stations and in clubs around the world. Today his work as a solo artist can be heard in multiple video games, commercials, television and film.
Have a listen to some of his work at https://www.mlamanna.com
Today's update is to spotlight some of the team's recent work. The following information is to provide a developers side glimpse into what we've been up to most recently. We hope you enjoy and look forward to your feedback.
The location of Plymouth Control has a long history of edits since it was originally created. Our revamp brings the area to revision number four. Those who've been here for some time may have known it as either Plymouth Canyon, Plymouth Control Station, or most recently Plymouth Control Center. While the name hasn’t changed the visuals and functionality have over the years. This revision’s focus was to clean up the area, increase performance and do the prep work so we can finally finish it with the lore in mind.
You may be curious as to what the purpose of this pre-revamp work is right now instead of later during the world revamp. So we will jump right in.
Data Overload!
It came to our attention that the area Plymouth Control Center had several issues that could possibly hinder our upcoming patch test. This data is being replicated across multiple areas that are linked to PCC and can cause slowing frame rates, low fps in the area and larger than normal hitching. This hitching and eventual frame rate drop is caused by the amount of data that is being loaded and unloaded, as well as the order of it doing so.
Those issues were as follows:
Cleanup on Aisle Four
By addressing these issues we were able to further reduce the enormous amount of data that could potentially cause things to time out during our patch test. We are working at cleaning up the server and the game itself. The content for this area will not suffer from the reduced data. Instead we’ve reduced data while actually adding more visuals, and leaving additional space for future content to be placed during the world revamp.
Some of the ways this is done can be seen visually with the art assets themselves. By reducing the number of actual objects we can improve performance for the area and for the client. So in this case, instead of building an area using individual wall and floor tiles, we can build this in 3ds Max and export it in chunks or pieces and with a simple placement of one asset, we can then drop the rest in to fit into place and reduce the number of textures, assets and total draw counts. This is what we did with PCC, while adding a bit more to the world. By doing this, it allows us the room to add more clutter around the area (and world) that will help make it feel more alive and lived in.
As an old mentor of mine once said, "A poly saved is a poly earned." This was told to me over 20 years ago, and still applies to this day. It means we have more room to be able to add a bit more from art itself to features and functionality.
To give you a better idea of how much our changes have affected the area we’ve listed the before and after totals below.
Befor: 48,251 Total HB Node counts for all asset types
After: 6,709 total HB Node counts for all asset types
We plan to do a test the type 2, Normal Push, next week. Pending our findings from this test we may or may not need to proceed with additional pre-world revamp work on two additional areas. You can find below an informative summary of the different patch types. As always we encourage your feedback be it positive or otherwise.
Push Types
As we had explained in past updates, we have three types of pushes built into HeroEngine. We figured we would go into a bit more detail about these three types since some still had questions about the differences. If you still have questions, please feel free to ask them and we will do our best to answer them.
Last year we worked on making the version of HE that The Repopulation is on to work with our current Full Push system. There had been a lot of changes and updates to the HeroEngine systems over the last several years that The Repopulation was not included in since the Code Freeze in 2014 and Repopulation shutting down in 2015. Now we are currently working on the second type, Normal Push.
Here are the three types and what makes each one different.
Testing... and More Testing
With most of the work done in Plymouth Control Center and surrounding areas, the HeroEngine engineers will be doing another round of tests later this week once they get the go-ahead from the Repop dev team. The surrounding areas are done, including Ghetti Gorge. So what is left for the developers to do?
Though we still do not have an estimated time of when this will be going live, the Repop team is working hard on several aspects of the game and have not stopped. What started out to be a combat update is also turning into a cleanup phase with some new content to push and test for the Island then World revamp. We will continue to update you and once we have been able to do a successful test push without time out issues, you will all be the first to know!
We enjoy openly conversing with our community about ongoing development. Our internal testers from the community have been a tremendous help and we want to thank them for all the valuable input and finding issues like textures and helping with ideas on how playable the areas are. We are excited for when we can bring this update live to everyone.
We wanted to update you on the progress of the patch, hotfixes, and a bit of current work. as always we thank you for your patience and feedback. This update goes in to a more technical aspect for the elements we are currently working on, within HeroEngine and The Repopulation.
For past news that we have posted this year check out the following news:
With the combination of effort of both the Repopulation development team and HeroEngine engineers, the work continues to progress. Though we still do not have an estimated timeline yet, we can say we are getting much closer to being able to push this update.
The Process: Pushing content is an incredibly complicated endeavor in an always live, massively collaborative, real-time environment. It involves not only one physical server; but potentially lots of physical and virtual servers, databases and client processes. To say the debugging environment is complicated, would be a wildly inaccurate depiction of the scope of the issues.
When something goes wrong; debugging the issue requires a massively diverse set of skills ranging from C#, C++, Oracle Plsql, Oracle DBA level issues, networking infrastructure, interactions between geographically diverse physical or virtual servers, physical hardware issues, HeroScript Language (HSL), HeroEngine Editing commands (CLI), and a bunch of other interlocking technologies/standards/physical constraints.
The current difficulties: Initially, we encountered some issues that appeared to be issues of new content not being sent to the destination “old” server during an update. A very confusing state, since we have never in more than a decade of operation seen anything of this sort.
This made us reevaluate all of our previous assumptions based on past experiences with other games and products, forcing us to start at the most basic level of debugging. Questions we asked ourselves: Was the network working, was there an issue with the physical machines/network cards/etc? Were there storage issues, was DNS working? And so on for countless other potential issues.
As we eliminate these questions as possible problems, we have to ask additional ones to continue the process of elimination. With the elimination of the most basic of possible issues involving the HeroEngine, things grew more complicated.
What we’ve discovered: The Repopulation has pushed the edges of what HeroEngine was designed to accommodate. That is not to say what in The Repopulation was done is “wrong”. Rather, in addition to a much older version of HeroEngine, they pushed the envelope significantly further than we ever anticipated from a performance, storage and content perspective.
Our Resolve: This experience with The Repopulation has shown us that there are areas within the engine we can improve moving forward to support such use cases we did not anticipate (even if in some cases they were non-optimal implementations).
We continue to make improvements and optimizations at almost all levels of the engine to support games with a vision as expansive as The Repopulation. Thank you for your patience, as we try to make the vision of the various games on HeroEngine meet your expectations. It is not easy, but we will get there!
Weather Changes
To increase performance a bit more for this update we have looked into the weather system a bit deeper. We have started some repairation and adjustments to the weather system, this does not include visual changes yet or any kind of large overhaul. The main changes will be to performance, efficiency and making it easier to use on the developers side.
We have also added an option under ‘Video Settings -> Particles’ to turn weather on or off. This is mainly for testing and will allow players who don’t like the current visuals or have performance issues to turn it off. This setting defaults to off, so if you want to check out and test the weather, you will need to turn it on.
We will be moving the weather in to a better replication method, and also cleaning up some of the other issues which were not seen until recent fixes. The weather system will also be visited again in the future for a bit of an overhaul which will drastically help us as we remake the world.
Please remember this is only the preliminary adjustments, there will be an overhaul of the weather to come in the future:
There are currently some known issues which are being worked on, some of these may persist in to the patched version as we do not wish to delay the patch for these changes, however overall weather will be in a better state than it currently is on live.
Updating Plymouth Control Center
While we were going through the different systems to help find areas of the game (game areas and systems) we also looked once more at the player reports of troubled areas from the past and current.
Plymouth Control Center is one area that has been reported by many players as being almost or totally unplayable. This area in particular has 13,505 nodes loading and unloading for players. The average for any MMO is between 1,000 and 6,000. Some areas in Repop are in this range even with content. However, some are much higher as seen in Plymouth Control Center and in most housing areas.
Please remember that this will not be the final build, this is only a clean up of the current area so players can get in, do missions and explore without the fear of crashing.
What we are doing: If players find any other areas excluding housing, that are unplayable due to a large amount of latency and fps below 15, please let us know. Give area name.
Doors and Lifts:
One of the things we noticed early on was the issue with doors and lifts in the game. Doors currently teleport players to an arrivial point instead of opening and closing as you see in other games. Using HeroEngine States system, we are able to create doors that open and close, as well as lifts that go up and down. Here are a few things we are working on in this area right now.
Doors: Type and function of the current “doors” in game. Some into new rooms, some into new areas.
Why we removed the current "doors": We realized that some players were finding these undocumented “doors” and teleporting to other old areas of the game/test areas and were getting bugged or stuck.
There might be more that we are unaware of, if players find visual doors that port them to another location, please let us know on the forums or in ticket with area name and location.
New tools in Dev have been and are being created to speed up our clean up and development process now and for the future.
Real Doors: New real working doors will be introduced into the game in this patch. First set of working doors can be seen in Plymouth Control Center. These real working doors will be included in the new Island as well as the rest of world once we begin the world revamp.
Lifts: You may have taken note of the lifts, particularly in Plymouth Control Center that move in an exaggerated manner.
Lifts are being recreated so we can place them anywhere in the world, this is work you will eventually see in a number of places around the world, we are also looking to have it so they can move in any directions and move smoothly. The current iteration of Elevators does not allow this, if you consider them actually working at all.
Possible options we are looking at currently for lifts in the game, starting with Plymouth Control Center:
Starter Island Update
As programmers and the HeroEngine engineers continue to work on systems for clean up, performance gains and most of all the updater, the content team is still working hard on the Island. The new starter island updates here:
A few things we still need to examine and test with the changes made:
World Map
In September of last year, we released a preview of the new world map. Since then we've worked to consider multiple forms of content that will populate these new areas. These cover a wide scope as they are influenced by many systems as well as art.
The somewhat less glamorous side of this includes work to build documentation for our Game Design Documents (GDD). This includes naming conventions, terrain requirements, terrain texture guidelines, and biomes.
Biomes play a large role in many of the steps of the world rebuild. While building the prototype map we considered the weather and vegetation for a total of 8 biome types. These consist of Taiga, Forest, Veld (tropical), Volcanic, Common, and three transitional biomes.
You may have seen some of the work that has taken place to create assets in previous update posts. This work is ongoing and will span to the polish phase. Some assets will be placeholders while others will be permanent. All permanent structures, creatures, and flora/rocks have and will continue to be modeled based on biomes and faction.
Content is currently working to ensure locations that are NPC/Mission centric are planned out for building phases. This includes lore drafts, kiddie drawings (diagrammed outline of city/town), NPC list, and Mission List.
During the first phase of building only the existing content will be moved into areas. New content will not be created until supporting systems are in place. Art being an exception in some cases.
Art has been a very forward-centric player in many of these posts. Though to be honest there are so many things being planned and or created to support this world rebuild.
Things for us to consider with the world revamp includes:
Plots Planning
Art Assets
Intelligent Species
City/Areas
We appreciate your patience during this somewhat slow, but fruitful process. Our team has put forth a lot of work to identify problem areas, in preparation for the next update. Optimization of trouble areas and creation of new Dev tools continue to be the priority at this time. It is our hope that you found this update informative.
As always we appreciate your feedback be it positive or otherwise.
If you have not caught up on the news for February and March, you can find those articles here: https://therepopulation.com/news
It is Developer update time! In this update we have included progress on the Repop cleanup, recap of the A.00.00.00 update, new changes/fixes coming and some new additions coming into the next Repop Update.
We have a new survey up:
This one is asking about your current gaming systems so we have a good idea of what our development target is now and for the future. You can find the new Technical Survey and others here: https://therepopulation.com/media-gallery/surveys During this process, we'll continue to release additional key surveys to gather your input.
As always we welcome your input be it positive or negative. Feel free to post your feedback on our official, and steam forums. We welcome you to join us in our Discord channel anytime here https://discord.gg/eSJDk2Q Don’t forget the Official forums as well. Our developers are checking these daily, so share your thoughts, questions, game play, cool guild events and screenshots: https://therepopulation.com/forums
The Update:
We know everyone is desperately waiting on this update, especially with the combat changes. We share your frustrations. We have been doing multiple pushes and tests each week, while tracking down the problem areas. The overall size of the total game and 5+ years of assets and scripts as well as the trouble scripts/areas are slowly being reduced. Each try we find the problem area, clean it up, test and try it again. Each attempt gets us closer to the ability to use HeroEngines Live Push system. There are many changes coming down the pipeline with this latest patch.
To summarize quickly, with this patch we'll be seeing; UI Changes, changes to the map, changes to the combat and tradeskill systems, nation changes, skill tweaks, along with some temporary tweaks while we revise and re-code certain systems.Though we have another option to do a full push, this would not help us nor you in the long run. At some point we have to do this clean up so we can begin using the HE Push system as is done for other games.
This clean up work will continue beyond this update, with the goal to be able to do systematic and regular clean updates for you. We are still working on many other things despite this delay, so development and optimizations/bug fixing does continue. We will keep you updated. While part of our development team continues to work towards the current update, other staff members continue to work on content for future updates. This helps diminish both information harvesting and design time during future development. Our Content Team is feverishly working on documenting current systems while planning redesign/updates.
Graphical and World changes:
Work is currently underway to update and polish the assets that will be used when creating the new Starter Island and later, the rest of the world map. You will notice some of these assets present in Ghetti Gorge, located in Timbertol. This area was in need of maintenance which allowed us to improve performance by reducing draws and texture calls. This in turn slightly improved performance in surrounding areas. Seams to adjacent areas were fixed by creating a new heightmap for Ghetti. We also relinked areas removed during 10.1 and 10.2 which will allow players to pass from ghetti into the surrounding zones.
Other geographical tweaks include the Plymouth City spawn point which will now spawn players in the correct place. Purplefield and Souza Springs will now have Scrounging regions added in as well. From now on Kaavo Ridge will properly display as Kaavo Ridge opposed to the name, “Fana plains” that seemed to randomly display in various places. A temporary change will be made to the Engagements located in Fort Pharynx. These Engagements have been disabled temporarily due to a number of issues. They will be recreated and brought back in the future.
In upcoming updates, the first major world update will be the new Starter Island. The premise of starting with the island as the first world revamp release is two fold: Provide some visual feedback whilst creating the world, Provide the player base something that will also allow them to see what type of world the new assets will be able to create. What we do and learn from the new Island will be going into the world when we get to that stage. So player feedback will be important.
There will not be new content yet on the Island, this will only be the new layout with some of the new art. Content such as quests/missions, NPC updates and such will be added as we rebuild those systems. There are some dialog changes to help clarify some of missions and help new players begin their journey in Rhyldan. If you have been around for a while, you might recognize some of the older/original NPC’s and dialog.
Changes have been made to the Scrounging mechanic which will allow players to once again scrounge in one place without incurring an immediate penalty affecting the quality of the obtained water. That does not mean that a person will be able to go afk and scrounge however, because the penalty will still be in place for scrounging too long in a specific region. The goal behind this was to alleviate the harshness imposed by the system since before would penalize people for scrounging too long, in one spot while also penalizing them for scrounging in the area. This caused a sudden drop in the resources given to the player instead of a gradual drop in quality. That said, this like all things is open to adjustment based on how well the mechanic works. So if you still find it is too severe please do provide some feedback!
Getting back to the technical side of things, tweaks are going to also be made concerning the day/night cycle of the game. This means that one day cycle in game will be one hour long. So for clarification daylight will last 30 minutes, and night will last 30 minutes. This is subject to change as time goes on, but is being done so that shadow/time of day shaders can be put in place while also redoing sync issues across the different zones. Related to this, an issue with skydomes unloading and resetting across zones has now been fixed. All areas will now display the same skydome, or time of day.
UI changes:
There are some nice UI adjustments in this update. A few of the areas that were reworked involved additional tweaks to the Character Creation and Character Select. We added a few quality of life changes. These involve the various buttons and elements of the UI that people encounter as they first begin the game.
Combat:
Oh boy, lots to say here. But it's a good thing I promise! First of all, when attacked, your target will automatically be set to the attacker ONLY if you do not already have a live/hostile target. The use of one's abilities has been redone so that abilities will now accurately reflect if and when it is possible to use them. Additionally the ones that require you to be in front of and facing the target will no longer fail since using this ability will rotate you to face your target.
The third item on the list of tweaks is the, “Auto Face On Attack” option. It has now been renamed to, “Auto Face Enemy Target” and will behave as such when enabled. That is, when attacked or when attacking; the character will turn to face the enemy AND keep turning to face the enemy as the target moves about. Now this will disable for the duration of that fight if you manually turn, or move your character.
Along the same lines, the camera will rotate so that you can view the attacking entity. Much like the rotation however, if you rotate the camera it will stop auto rotating to match the character. Your character however, will continue to rotate towards any newly hostile or engaging enemies. Much like the auto rotation of the character, when re engaging future hostiles the camera will default to automatically rotating unless the camera is manually rotated.
Saving the best for last regarding Combat; LOS and combat states have been redone so that if a player, or an npc stands between your character and the engaged target there will no issues attacking due to the lack of line of sight. Additionally, upon ending of combat whether it be due to the target being out of range, target is dead, you are dead, etc ; the combat animation pose will now be set to end.
Trade skills: Changes and Tweaks!
Fixes have been made to the following tradeskills. No major changes have been made as of yet.
Going forward, the recipe book, “Basic Metalworking”, will now also contain the recipe Curved Glass Production. This will allow for the creation of the item, “Curved Glass Pane”, which can be used to craft other items. A metal guard will now be needed to craft the following items: The Electrical Knuckle Blade, Electrical Light Blade, Heated Light Blade, Acid Light Blade, and the Chilling Knuckle Blade.
Next, the Robotics tutorial quest will now allow you to build up your robotics skill to 75 by using the given components through building, and breaking down the tutorial components. Feel free to delete them after you are done since the widgets and gadgets will have no use as of this time.
On a related note – the hacking minigame, going from the tutorial forward will once again give you a message if you have the correct sequence, but not the skills to create the programs used in Robotics crafting and abilities.
Nations:
Nations will no longer be able to have more than two cities. This is a forerunner to both the world and Player Nation revamps that will focus on adding more features and functionality to the nations, and cities sieges.
Misc changes/tweaks:
Vehicles will temporarily be set to only carry a maximum of one individual due to a bug that was found in the coding related to how vehicles handle additional passengers. This is only temporary until the coding for this system can be redone.
And last but not least; players will no longer make use of the /help updatecraftingdb command. The command will be going away since it is a leftover from when the crafting database would not update automatically provide the new database file when updating the game. To complicate matters the command itself would sometimes end up corrupting the crafting database because of how it would download the file. As such we will now be making use of steam to include the new database file when patches are released.
This about covers all of the major changes that are coming down the pipeline for the new patch! As always, things are subject to change and feedback. If you all have any questions or comments feel free to let us know!
Welcome to 2018! First off, we would like to thank all of you - the players! Your feedback, testing, suggestions and ideas have been incredibly valuable to us in bringing life to the world of Rhyldan. We look forward to your continuous participation and enthusiasm throughout the year of 2018!
We are excited to present our first update of the year, which also includes an updated roadmap. Here, we will explain some of what we have been doing and what to expect during the year. You can discuss this topic here on our forums.
A new survey about combat will be released in the next few days. This survey is to get a good idea of players old and new, their thoughts and general take on games in general and in The Repopulation. Once this survey is up, we will update and give you the direct link. If you have not taken the other surveys, it is not too late, you can easily go to this link and take them any time at The Repopulation Surveys.
What we have done this month
During January we have been focused on moving new development forward, while cleaning up and patching content from the 10.2 update. The dev team has also managed to clean up and remove over 500 unused areas from the dev server and the next build. This will speed up build times and help reduce cache and file sizes for players, improving performance and gameplay for everyone.
The new targeting system has been finished and is currently undergoing thorough testing. We've continued extensive development in our Prototype world in preparation for art, content and new maps. Currently we are finishing the new Tutorial/Starter island on the Prototype server and once we've pushed this to live, we'll begin focusing on player and player nation housing placement and spacing. Testing will be done on the Prototype, and when approved the development will begin on the dev server for the rest of the world.
We have been “whiteboxing” in our Prototype world in order to test and create a clear design idea before pushing forward with developing on the dev server. This allows us to test, change and alter without adding conflicts to the current code, as well as preventing clutter on the dev server. This means smaller sized updates to the players that don't include all of the unwanted or unneeded data as well as art.
Process for much of the world and art development: (Note that not all development needs to be done on the Proto world) Prototype World -> Dev Server -> Staging (testing) -> Live (Novus)
Planned update schedule
Our goal is to get to an 8-10 week update schedule. This does not include live pushes and hot fixes. We are looking at the first couple to be around 8-10 weeks since this will have the greatest amount of changes. One such example is the new world revamp. We want to give the players a full map instead of a partial world, so this will take the longest time development-wise and as a result will have a longer wait time.
Example timeline for world revamp. (This includes several steps, but the very basic process is as follows):
Work involved in the world revamp does not include new content, it will have the old content, just adjusted to fit the new world. New or replaced content will come in upcoming updates.
New Update and Patch number system
New patch number system will not be based on date (year, month, day/version), but instead based on the type of update.
Game state: A= Alpha, B= Beta, L= Live
00.00.00 = First set of numbers: Major update with a lot of changes or new systems, can include bug fixes.
00.00.00 = Second set of numbers: Medium update, small updates, medium changes, can include bug fixes.
00.00.00 = Third set of numbers: Small updates, minor changes, bug fixes.
Upcoming Update A.00.00.01
The upcoming patch will be pushed next week to test/staging. Depending on the feedback from our internal testers, we hope to have the live push around two weeks after that push. Players will be told when we push to test.
Basic list of changes and updates (including any and all changes, eg: gm tools, etc.)
Next Update A.00.01.00
The second update for Condorslug will be A.00.01.00. It will include the new Starter Island map. Additional changes will be announced in future updates as well as roadmap updates reflecting any changes or current systems being worked on. Development will be done in phases, so content replacement will come as we develop and finish other systems down the line. New and adjusted content will also be added throughout the development process. This work will begin 1-2 weeks after the A.00.00.01 update depending on what you, the players find needing to be hotfixed or patched.
The New Roadmap
Road map is a living document - it may and will change as we progress though. No dates have been stated due to the amount of work involved for a small team. Bugs and fixes can slow down or change the order below. Players will be updated on any and all changes here.
Roadmap list
This is a WIP (Work in Progress) Please make sure to note that the order listed below may change based on what is found based on priority or any complications that arise. If you do not see your big concern on this list it does not mean that we do not have it on our internal list or is not part of this these updates and features. Please do feel free to give us feedback and ask questions about these on our forums.
Combat Targeting System
• Cleaned up targeting added
• New Auto target
• New/fixed auto face option
New Tutorial Island Terrain
• New Tutorial Island terrain and basic layout using old content
• Additional areas in the world will be added as we develop/build with additional updates
• New content will be added to island as new systems are updated
Inventory fix
• This will be ongoing as we move through other systems
• New optimized inventory (container system) for players
• New default inventory/container space
• Added inventory/container options
Astronomy System
• There are currently several Astronomy systems in place. We will be rebuilding a single system and optimizing it so it runs better and no duplicate information is being called.
• Fix player out of sync with each other
• Fix player out of sync with the server
• Fix astronomy based spawns
Harvesting
• Ongoing process until all related systems are linked and working
• New Harvesting Models
• New Harvesting Methods added
• Build New optimized harvesting system
• New Harvesting UI
• Updated Survey system
Horticulture
• This will be an ongoing process until all areas related are connected.
• New farming and horticulture system based on the Harvesting
Races spec system
• Base race spec system to unify multiple systems into one
• This will be the base for all PC and NPC race and faction systems afterwards
Factions
• Unified faction system that includes Nations, NPC’s and players
• Will develop primary and second factions for players
• New UI/UX panel, factions will be visible to players
NPC System
• New NPC system, to unify and optimize based on the Race Spec system
• Will be ongoing in stages
• NPC container
• NPC Factions
• NPC replacement as we progress through content
Adversarial Camps (Spawners)
• New core system
• Adversarial sub systems
• Integrate Faction system with Adversarial camps
• Start placing them in the world
Quest/Mission system
• Ongoing development that will continue through several stages
• Build new Dynamic Mission system
• Unify all quest/missions
• Bring in Faction system and other subsystems
• Begin creating new missions
• Create and start adding Generated quests
Create new NPC's
• Ongoing development that will continue through several stages
• Build new NPC system tools
• Update NPC systems based on required needs
• Bridge/add above (appropriate) systems, such as Factions
• Create and replace NPC’s in stages
Updated Guild System
• Updated Guild permissions system
• Additional functions to be built
• New GM tools for Guild assistance
• Updated UI and UI/UX functions
Crafting Basics
• Ongoing process, which will require extra attention and testing through several phases
• Create new Crafting Containers
• Optimize crafting skills and abilities
• Optimize and update crafting recipes
• New crafting options to be developed
• Remove redundant recipes (such as fake Blueprints for housing items)
Housing Revamp
• This will be continued development as we develop additional feature and test them. Ongoing process
• Basements will be seperate from the world but part of the plot
• New Housing system to be developed
• 3 (three) housing subsystems/types to be developed and added to the world
• Continued updates to help accommodate most housing needs
• New Housing containers
• New Housing “packup” method to be developed (to make it easier when players move)
• UI/UX updates
Combat Skill Progression
• Ongoing progress as this will take into account several systems above and below.
• Optimize skill progression
• Clean up combat math
• Include new title systems
Combat Progression and title awards
• Ongoing process as we continue to develop above and below systems
• New Progress system (while keeping it skill based) (no point mini game will be added)
• Titles and award system to be added
• Updated UI/UX
Player Merchants
• Optimized player merchants
• New limits and benefits to be added
• Easier Search and Purchase methods
• Updated UI/UX
Player Auction House
• Ongoing process, as it depends on several integrated systems
• Optimized Player Auction house developed
• New fully indexed search system
• New methods to access the Player Auction House
• New UI
World Auction House
• Optimized World auction house
• Additional methods to be added to access the World Auction House
• New fully indexed search system
• Updated UI/UX
GUI/UX
• Will be ongoing process as we proceed through each system
• New Windows based on each system and stage
• Added customization functions (movable windows)
• Optimized windows and panels
• New UI style
The servers will be going offline at 12:00 PM EST noon (5:00 PM GMT). Down time expected to be 3 hours.
We are very excited to announce that the 10.2 update is coming to a PC near you. Patch day will be on 20 December, tomorrow. Yes you read that correctly. The patch will be coming tomorrow.
To celebrate the end of the year and the hard work that went into ABT 2015.10.2 update, we are also putting the game on sale on Steam. Please help spread the word and invite all of your friends. The sale price will be 35% off for the Holiday sale.
A New Start: With the new update the world also has a new name. You will now see Novus for US East. Europe server has been put on hiatus. This server has not been removed, and we will be ready to open it up once we have a larger community and more features in.
This update does include a full wipe. Since so much has been reset or adjusted, we thought it was only fair to do the full wipe at this time. This is an excellent time to test out the updated beginner content and put in bug reports and post suggestions on the forum.
► New server name when you log in named Novus
► You will log in with your regular account as always
► You will need to create a new character
Highlights of what is included: A large number of Backer NPC have taken up residence across Rhyldan. You can find them in areas such as: Rinji City - Jenu, Howling Hills, Faolan Hollow - Wailing Chasm, and Kaavo Hold - Kaavo.
Culinary Arts now contains new recipes and changes which work with the new Nutrition System. This system is how attributes from plants will pass to Culinary crafted foods. They pass along Nutrition compatible recipes, stacking up buffs as they pass along from recipe ingredients to recipe results.
Try a new look with one of the new hair or eye dyes found in the recipe book Modern Style. You’ll find a mixture of Dark Hair Dyes, Light Hair Dyes, and new Ocular tints.
Melee Weapons Crafting has received a skill point spread balancing pass. This included raising or lowering the minimum skills on recipes, tweaking the point spread, adding or removing difficulty tiers from recipes, and changing the minimum difficulty on recipe results.
Some of the Patchnote Highlights:
Other changes of our own include:
For more information please visit the Patch Notes here:
►PATCH NOTES◄ or
►FORUM POST◄ to discuss and ask any questions
Silver, Gold and Platinum Tiers and Purchases: This release will offer only Silver tier for purchases at this time. Our team was granted access on November 20th, 2017 to additional Backer information from 2015 and prior, while we were already in the final testing of this release.
In-game compensation has been and continues to be an open discussion with the Repopulation community and will include things like In-game Tokens, expanded inventory options and more.
Bug Reporting: With this last update of the year, we do expect to see some bugs crop up. We do have in-game bug reporting, as well as our forums. Please make sure you submit those bugs in game when you find them. If you have any questions, our forums and discord channels are always open and we are more than happy to address and discuss these with you. Our short and long-term goal is to bring you a game you enjoy and are proud to share with your friends and family.
Upcoming expectations: Changes will be coming over the next quarter, this will start with some basic terrain and area changes for the new Starter areas. Though the content itself will remain the same, this will be a preview of what the new world will look like. Once we have completed the new world this will be pushed and we will be able to start pushing some of the updated or newer systems. Do note that some systems might be disabled for a short time just before we push the updated ones. We will let you know when this work is ready for testing and when those changes will come in.
10.2 Development Update
Dev 10.2 Updates- What is coming
We recently released 10.1 out to the public earlier this month on 8 November, 2017. We have also pushed a number of fixes, including harvesters over the last couple of weeks. You can review both the patch notes and the hot fixes that were pushed earlier this month here:
10.1 Update: https://therepopulation.com/forums/repopulation/build-notes/updated-10-1-build-notes-13182
10.1 Hotfixes: https://therepopulation.com/forums/repopulation/build-notes/11-13-2017-hotfixes-13203
Internal Tester Need Apply: We are looking for good and dedicated internal testers for 10.2 and all following patches and updates.
With your help, this will allow us to provide more thoroughly tested updates and spend less time working on bugs that our early access players might find. Remember, the more people we have in, the more we can find and fix, and the more you have fun with other players!
To apply to be one of our internal testers, please visit this link: https://goo.gl/forms/ng3Our16jmsfRu3T2
Make sure you visit the forum post https://therepopulation.com/forums/repopulation/news-and-announcements?p=125776#p125776 to comment and join in on the conversation. Let us know what you think!
Option of Merging to one server- Community Question: As players may know, 10.2 is going to include a wipe of all characters and a fresh start with the economy. It has been mentioned by several players that it might be a very good idea to temporarily turn off the EU server and have the population and community merged so they are all building in a single place on a new US East Server. Being that the wipe is occurring with this update and the populations are low on both servers, we thought it would be the perfect time to merge the community into one.
If we decide to bring up only the US East Server after this wipe, we would be disabling the EU server until later in development, after more systems are completed and the community grows again. This would allow players to make fresh characters on the server or move their current US East Characters across. We have several options on how we can handle this and would like your input now and in the future when you think we are ready to reopen the EU Server.
We want to know how the community feels on this, and would like to see where the decision lays.
10.2 and Condorslug (A01.00.00) Update: Due to the sheer amount of work ABT put into the 10.2 Update we have decided to adjust the release cycle slightly. To avoid confusion and bring the development cycle closer to the players, we have decided to release the 10.2 alone first along with some of our improvements, then focus on Condorslug (A01.00.00) and subsequent release of smaller patches and updates.
This should mean the players can see and contribute to the changes and will help internal testers, and players, with easier bug reporting.
10.2 Stage Testing: Today we pushed ABT’s final build out to staging, it includes some of our own work with a lot of clean-up, notes on this are below. This is a big milestone for us as we no longer have multiple different builds on different servers. The servers will have the same updates at the same time moving forward.
Once we have done the initial testing for the 10.2 staging, we will begin bringing on the old and new testers. Each person that had applied and been accepted will be given permissions to log into the Test Stage server through either Steam access or Stand Alone access.
Stage testing is expected to take between 1-2 weeks of QA testing. Anything major found will be fixed and a live update done. Minor changes and adjustments will be added to the current dev build and pushed to staging in the next cycle. Though there is no absolute timeline yet for the 10.2 update and subsequent Condorslug updates, we do not expect the time frame to be too long between Testing and the release of 10.2. Afterwards, we will be able to focus on a rhythm that is focused on quality updates
The 10.2 Update: This patch is everything from 10.2 of ABT’s, the patch notes are here: https://therepopulation.com/forums/repopulation/build-notes/15-10-2-build-notes-11137
When this patch is released we are past the point of using anything from ABT, putting us at a good point to start renovating and revamping the systems to give similar outcomes but more efficiently.
As mentioned, we will also be doing a wipe with this patch. Players will be able to login as normal, and be prompted to create a new character in a fresh world.
The patch does include a number of elements to do with ABT’s Tier purchase system, so character slots and inventory slots will differ. We haven’t touched any of this yet, but all feedback we get from you is good for when we get around to adjusting the systems involved with inventory, character slots and a few other adjustments and optimizations.
There are a few fixes from ourselves which we feel are ready to be implemented, it’s only a small list, but the highlights are:
Beginning of new terrain shaders (some parts of the world will not be finished yet)
A very large amount of client caching reduction, this is a start on making things more efficient, but will not be anything too noticeable at this period of time.
Hints should no longer be popping up on your play screen, instead there is a small icon near the mail icon which you can click, this will show you all unread hints. You can still view the hints inside the database as before.
The cursor has been revamped, there might be small issues with it, but it should be a lot cleaner than the previous version, this is only hardware cursor, so if you have any issues with it let us know.
How 10.2 will be released: With the push of 10.2 going to staging, internal testing has started. There are a lot of patch notes and systems for testers to look into, but we are hoping it won’t be very long until we can push out to Live with a wipe.
When the Staging build feels good, we will push it to Live using same process as we did for 10.1, keeping an eye out on any required hotfixes or live pushes in order to make sure the game is playable.
What not to expect until further patches are done Though there is a lot coming into this patch from ABT, we also have a lot of smaller fixes and optimizations that have made it into this update. However, there are aspects that will not be able to come into the 10.2 update.
In order to provide the quickest development times possible, we have planned out a series of optimizations and adjustments to multiple systems. Most of these will be done in stages. As each is worked on you will start to see the performance gains as well as updated and new features.
Below is a list of some of the things that many of you have asked about but will not be completed or in this update.
► Area Transition Crashes: The area zoning issue isn’t going to be an instant fix, there are a lot of culprits causing this one, ranging from inventory and replication, all the way up to how areas are actually created and used. Problems still occur because:
Trying to do everything via streaming synchronously
The methods for inventory management are causing extreme stress
GUI is synchronous and replicated, causing more bandwidth use for everyone
Many other systems are also fully synchronous and replicated to all clients including:
Harvesters
Adversarial camps
Player Housing
Skill and Combat information
And more...
When you combine the amount of information being transmitted back to the individual player when they are transitioning to another area, you can see/feel the amount of information being received. It is worse for the players when the bombardment of all of this information as they get closer to a populated area (player cities, npc's or pc's).
The reason why some players experience this more often than others is in part, the above, combined with a) isp and speed b) wired or wireless connection, c) pc specs d) what else is using resources on the players pc.
Over time as the systems get cleaned up and or revamped you will see this problem dissipate over time. We have cleaned up a few of the most critical systems in the 10.2, so some may see a slight improvement already. We want to make sure that all players, no matter location, system specs or bandwidth can all play and have an enjoyable experience without the area transition crashes.
► New Areas: The New Tutorial and New World areas will be coming at a later date, after the systems are actually fixed up and usable again, we don’t want to fall into the trap of doing the current content, then redoing the system, then redoing the content again. You will probably see these starting to come into play with A02.
The first that you will see in upcoming Condorslug (A01.00.00) will be the new tutorial terrain and eventual layout. Terrain and World changes will be coming in first, then as systems are revamped you will see more changed to have a smoother game play experience. A lot of planning and details have already been done for the Tutorial and the World, and as we know the release details on these you will be notified.
► New Art: The new art will be coming in upcoming updates as we progress through the new World layout. Organization, optimization and new art will be replacing or updating the current in game art to help performance and give an updated and unified style to the game.
► Hardcore Server: There are a few patch notes about the Hardcore Server adjustments, please note that we will not be releasing a Hardcore Server any time soon, so these notes can be ignored for now.
When it comes to the Hardcore servers we have a lot of other systems which are going to need testing first, getting a base game working well, and having everything implemented correctly. As we get closer to having these systems done we will evaluate the population of the game and see if we want to put up a Hardcore server or explore the avenues of having optional areas/rulesets within all of the other servers. (For example an area of the game with hardcore rules which players may or may not want to enter)
What to expect after 10.2 As we let the Condorslug move out you should be seeing performance increases over time and other new systems coming in to play, some systems may be turned on and off between the incremental patches, as each system is coming up we will notify the community and have testing on them.
During development, we do want to make sure that players can expect some of the older systems disabled for a short time while we work on the new systems.
Whether some of the systems will be temporarily disabled or not will be determined by the amount of work and the performance hit it has for you, the players. We will notify you ahead of time if we do have to disable any systems temporarily between patches and updates.
Some examples would be:
Faction System
Harvester System
Adversarial Camp System
Inventory System
Client GUI improvements
... just to name a few. We are also looking at the crafting, combat and character art in the future.
We have not forgotten about the other game systems either. As we progress through the more taxing systems we will update you and even ask for some of your more in-depth opinions and ideas when we start approaching the systems like combat. However we want to make sure we have a good base to do these systems and clear planning to reduce the amount of rework and the time it takes to get you as the player.
How A01.00.00 (Condorslug) is planned to be released Moving onward from having 10.2 released we will be working fully on Condorslug, the current plan is to release it in smaller incremental patches, and every patch should slowly improve performance. These patches will come in the form of:
“A01.00.00”… “A01.01.00”... “A01.02.00”... “A01.03.00”... “A01.04.00”... “A01.05.00”
The “A” stands for Alpha. Each major update will change the first set of numbers (A01.00.00), medium and more regular updates will change the middle number (A01.00.00) and smaller patches you will see the last number increment (A01.00.00). Eventually as we move into beta you will see the first letter change (B01.00.00). Last stage just before release will be changed to RC01.00.00, for Release Candidate.
Welcome to 2018! First off, we would like to thank all of you - the players! Your feedback, testing, suggestions and ideas have been incredibly valuable to us in bringing life to the world of Rhyldan. We look forward to your continuous participation and enthusiasm throughout the year of 2018!
