These are the release notes for version A46.================================
Well of Souls Version A46
Our Motto: "I just can't hack it any more!"
Estimated Release: Before Halloween
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* COMPATIBILITY: Excellent! (changes to the book of options means you will get reset to default options so check them and reset them as you like)
* HACKER SUSPENSION. If the game detects you using a memory hacker/trainer (for example, to set your Attack points to a huge value), it will place you on suspension and you will lose the ability to play over the Internet until the suspension wears off. Continued hacking will increased the suspension duration exponentially, resulting quickly in AN INFINITE SUSPENSION. There is no reprieve from suspension, so please stop using gamehack et al. Don't let your little sister use a hack either. I don't distinguish who used the hack and it affects the entire game, NOT just the character you were using. You do NOT want to be suspended. PLEASE heed this warning. I don't want to have to reply to people who feel they didn't understand, or they only hacked once, or a friend hacked for them. It doesn't matter. Use a hack, go to jail. Three strikes you're out! (actually you get more than 3 strikes, but not a lot more).
* LAG-O-METER. typing the command "/lag" opens a floating dialog which shows any skin xfers in progress plus a graph of bandwidth usage. If you dial in your modem speed it will show how much of your modem is 'left over', if any. (measures WoS usage only, of course). Probably pretty useless, but fun in its own way.
* WILL REUSE SKIN XFER SLOTS AS NEEDED. There is a built-in limit of 10 skin transfers at a time (presumably that would mean lag-city, and I doubt it happens TOO often, but the lag-o-meter will let you know). Anyway, often a skin transfer will abort due to packet loss, but will optimistically leave a receive channel open all the same (you see this as the lag-o-meter showing ever more pending skin xfers with no actual data going by). It used to be that if you left the program running long enough you would allocate all 10 slots and then no more skin xfers could occur until one of those slots completed (or you restarted the game). Now, I will give up on the 'oldest' such slot and redirect it to a new skin request as needed. Net result: being AFK for a long time will successfully collect more skins. Or it will crash. Who knows. Life is a mystery.
* DIRECT SKIN XFER. Well, I only call it that since people expect it to have that name (all skin xfers are 'direct' anyway). What this is, is a way (via the right-click MAPS menu) of saying "I want this guy's skin right now please" This will restart a xfer which might have been aborted for data loss. It won't let you ask for a skin you already have, however. And you can only ask for skins, you can't cram them down someone else's throat. They can still refuse to send by turning off "send skins when asked" in the FILE menu.
* PKER ATTACK COMMAND. The right-click MAPS menu has a new command "ATTACK PLAYER" which challenges that player to a fight. I haven't completely finished this yet, but my plan is: 1.) only PKers can attack other PKers (except on 'dangerous' maps where anyone can attack anyone). 2.) PKers cannot refuse such an attack. 3.) It basically just makes the attacker 'camp' and pulls the target into the camp. 4.) You have to be a party leader (or not in a party) to challenge. 5.) If the target is in a party, his whole party is challenged. (parties might have non-PKers in them, and they would be summoned into the camp, but would be protected by the normal rules about that sort of thing).
This also means that in general, you are no longer pulled into nearby camps or fights unless you have been specifically challenged. One thing I haven't finished is the way to intentionally enter an existing camp or fight (obviously I want that to be as simple as clicking on it - as distinguished from its suddenly appearing beneath you). Also, I need to make sure that scene lock works properly for non PKers (PKers cannot lock their scene).
I tried to think ahead to support varying sorts of challenges, but for now this is all you will see.
Again: the ATTACK PLAYER option just drags your target into the scene (and they must be close enough, etc.) The actual fighting in the scene follows the same rules as before.
* PKER RULES SEEM TO WORK. The rules outlined above are now fully implemented. It's cool. You'll like it. I command you to like it. No, now you must LOVE it! You love it so much you will buy a mug! Two mugs! Your brother in law needs a mouse pad! Buy! buy! buy!
* ENTERING AN 'OLD' SCENE SHOWS PLAYERS AT THE CURRENT LOCATION. So, if you come into a battle already in progress, you are more likely to see people standing around than suddenly walking onto the screen along with you. This probably has some sort of strategic impact, but overall I think it makes the lag less unbearable.
* REMOVED A CHUNK O' LAG. While nothing will make actual lag your friend, I found a spot where you were being forced to wait an extra second or two when you entered someone's scene before you saw the monsters. So, this might seem nice to you now. But if you were seeing a six second lag, this is only going to cut a second or two of that.
* PEOPLE WHO DISAPPEAR LEAVE SCENE. If someone leaves the game gracelessly (i.e. they crash or pull the plug), their character should disappear from the scene as soon as you notice they are gone. Also, if they were hosting the scene, you should pop out of it. Also, if they come back into the game before you noticed they disappeared, you should also pop out of their old scene (and not suddenly see their well scene on top of your current scene or something goofy like that). This goes for parties, as well. When they disappear, you should no longer be in their party.
* POINTING TO SOMEONE ON MAP ONLY HIGLIGHTS ONE PLAYER. So, I try to figure out the player you are pointing the 'closest to' (aim for the center of their shadow on the map). It used to be pointing at a group of people clustered together would light up all their names in an unrecognizable splat. Since the right-click on map menu kinda depends on selecting exactly one person, this seemed like the right thing to do.
* NO LONGER STUCK IN WALLS. Thanks to Chuck P. sending me a copy of his goliath character, I believe A46 will no longer have the problem of your character appearing in the middle of the map [(128,128) to be exact] and then be stuck if that happens to be impassable terrain. Also, if you DO get stuck in the terrain (take off your water boots, for example), you should no longer be treated to an infinite loop system freeze when you try to walk out.
You'll have to wait for A46 to be able to recover your stuck characters 'gently' (the deleting/renaming of the .ter file will still work as an emergency fix until then, but is a bit dicey if you don't get the file back exactly right before the next patch)
Anyway, analysis of 'goliath' showed HOW it was stuck and allowed me to have an auto-fix for that condition, but it didn't explain WHY it was stuck. There is some sequence of events which leads to the problem in the first place and I am still looking for that.
* FIXES BROKEN PET STATES WHEN YOU INCARNATE. Just in case your pets were in a funky state when you left (as was Az's case)
* PREVENTS A FEW MORE HACKS. By no means all, but a couple of the more popular memory hacks should stop working.
* EVEN NEWER ATTACK PATHS. Josh has drawn a bunch of attack cartoons, I broke it up into multiple files so world designers could make their own and still use defaults. Animation timing is improved for appearance. STAB attack delays ATTACK pose until src is near target (i.e. run up to monster, THEN swish sword). lunges always face monster. leaps face monster during attack and turn away during retreat. New syntax for specifying attack paths: path.image.flags.weather.fx, as in "1.2.3.4.5" means path=1, image=2, flags=3, weather=4, and fx=5. So if you ran off and added paths to yout world files, you are all screwed! I suspect I'm the only one with a lot of work to do :-(
Oh, also the "/paths" command is gone (use the book of options instead). And a confusingly new command is added:
"/path p.i.f.w.x" sets the 'override attack path' to the specified value. This then becomes the ONLY attack path used in the game until you set it to something else (or restart WoS). It's for world designers to try out path values before putting them into the MONSTERS or ITEMS tables.
Since you can now have up to 200 animations (A45 limited you to 32), they are now stored in 20 files, 10 animations per file. So animation 146 is at offset 6 of the file "attack14.bmp" in the ART folder. You can override individual files in your WORLD or THEME art folder. In general, the game engine will provide defaults in the 0-99 range with world designer unique creations expected to be in the 100-199 range.
The new ITEMS.TXT file in Evergreen should document how this works. If it doesn't, remind me :-) (NOTE: this format is CHANGED between A45 and A46, so I mean A46 will document it, and I propose world designers wait for A46)
* SIGNIFICANT PACKET REDUCTION. I found a way to significantly reduce the size of a couple packets which are sent frequently. (yay). Unfortunately, to see the improvement, everyone has to be running the new version. I think I came up with a reasonably clever way of having this remain compatible with older versions and yet benefit new players, but remember: a single old player in the game will disable the new feature for everyone.
* FIXED MULTI-STAGE FIGHT PET BUG. I think I fixed it, at least. I was able to see why your still-alive pet was being removed from the scene after you beat a stage. Now that pet remains until it dies or you recall it.
* MODDING IS CHEATING. It looks like the mod detection circuitry is working well enough, so I have added the bit where a modded character is treated like a cheat character in battle (i.e. cannot give stuff or hit first). Continue to pay attention to any warnings you see about "this will mark your character as a cheater". Those warnings are now completely true.
* NEW BOOK OF OPTIONS. You know how I love to spend 8 hours totally re-writing something which already works just to do the same thing in a slightly different way and possibly add some bugs in the process? Well, I guess it only took an hour but I re-did the Book of Options so that now the options appear in a (scrolling) list box. he idea is that now I can add more options without having to worry if they fit on the dialog or not. You now have to DOUBLE-click an option to toggle it, however. Past experience tells me that now that I have 'done it right' I will never add another option, so it will be a totally pointless exercise. Still, the code is somewhat prettier as a result.
* STUPID PETS STAY STUPID. I imagine there will be two schools of thought here, but now a pet with 0 wisdom will NOT gain wisdom, even if you try to train it (it will appear to be getting smarter but then snap back to stupidity). The GOOD news is that you can train up a stupid monster to a high level and be sure it will always use a physical attack. The BAD news is that stupid pets are a bit crankier than wise pets and will be quicker to turn wild on you. Note that pets you already have are not affected by this change.
* STORE HAS CORRECT 'EQUIP' GLYPHS. I hope. If you went through all the work of customizing the equipment icons used on the EQUIP screen, they will now appear in the store as well. I hope.
* GUILD DIARY REPLACED BY "SOUL DIARY" In preparation for the integrated guild stuff (first cut in A47, could it be?!?) and due to a general lack of enthusiasm for the old name, I have renamed the window to "Soul Diary" (and no, I haven't updated the help file). But I also added some features to it, such as:
- can now sort by alpha or by sernum
- shows last known skin
- shows a teensy bit more info
- nicer layout in general
For the most part it looks the same as before, and the new info for other players won't appear until the next time you scan them. But overall, I think it's a step forward.
* NEW BOOK: "Book of Gaiea". Well, this one is pretty silly, but I always wanted to do this so bear with me. This opens a floating dialog with a map of the earth in it (the real planet earth). On this map you see some dots representing where the players are. Left-clicking zooms IN and right-clicking zooms OUT. SHIFT-clicking sets your own location. Clicking on a name in the MAPS list highlights than spot on the earth map. I just thought it would be cool since we're such a hip international crowd.
* ALL SOUL ITEMS AVAILABLE (+stuff). Either via a quest, or back at the cheaty Rune Ruins, you should be able to pick up all soul items now. All soul items are now level 99 (or is that old news?) Soul items have been given attack paths which make them slightly more interesting to use. New gregorian chants for book spells, Gob catapault throws gobs, "Basil," Soul Boots are fast like cowboy boots, Springwell frog no longer gives frog boots, Warpath is level 97
* MONSTER SPELL-PICKER UPGRADED. You should see more variety in spells cast by high-wisdom monsters now - not just nova nova nova.
* NEW SCRIPT OPCODE: "GOTO EXIT". This just boots you out of the scene and back to the map (as if you pressed the EXIT button in the scene).
* NEW MENU: GUILDS. Yep, it looks like the integrated guild stuff is more or less completely functional in this version after all! What a surprise! There are three things in the GUILDS menu:
- Guild Hall (shows list of current guilds)
- Create Guild (lets you make a new one)
- Change Uniform (your character can belong to multiple guilds, but can only 'play on the behalf of' one guild at a time. This lets you change guild 'uniforms' (a uniform is just the guilds acronym - "LoD" "WoS" etc, which now appears next to your name in the MAPS list (no more making a new character with an acronym built into the name!)
Guild membership is OPTIONAL!
Don't freak when you see the old guilds aren't on the new list. And the list will probably be a little shakey as bugs are found. Go ahead and create guilds as you see fit, with the understanding I might delete one or all without notice just because I can.. I mean because I had to for development reasons.
When you right-click on a player who is wearing a uniform, you'll see two new options:
- Read about Guild XXX
- Petition to join guild XXX
If you petition to join a guild, you will appear on its 'Petitioners list' The guild meister for that guild will have to edit your record and give you an official title in the guild (no limits on titles other than they be alphanumeric). If they set your title to anything other than "Petitioner" or "Reject" then you are IN the guild and can wear the uniform.
I hope you enjoy this feature, as it was a long time coming.
* CHEAT CHARACTERS CANNOT RELEASE PETS INTO SCENE. They can still use them in battle, but if they 'free' the pet it just runs away (instead of attacking everyone in the scene or, more importantly, becoming available to be captured by someone else in the scene - who then benefits from a potentially hacked pet)
* MAX MONSTER LIMIT FOR PETS ENFORCED. If you have a pet X whose 'natural level' exceeds yours, it will escape you if you try to use it. This means no more pet Black Wraths (unless you keep them in your pocket, I suppose)
* NEW CHAT COMMANDS TO OPEN WEB PAGES. To facilitate viewing pages you can now type the URL into the chat window by preceding it with a slash. As in:
/http://blah
or
/www.blah
The url MUST start with 'http' or 'www'
* NEW PERCENT SIGN KEYWORDS. Much as "%3" will be replaced by a random insult, two new commands are available which I will describe by example:
%L level name of scene host ("emperor")
%C class name of scene host ("magic-user")
if not in a scene, these use YOUR info.
%Cn class name of class n (1-whatever)
%Ln level name of level n of scene host's class.
%L-1 the scene hosts NUMERIC level ("99")
* NO MORE PP 'FARMING'. I could have sworn I already cut this out (getting PP for healing monsters) but it looks like I missed it. Anyway, you can still heal a monster and then bash it for awhile, so it's not impossible to stretch a monster out for awhile. It's just hard to do that with a jelly since you tend to squash it with your weakest weapon.
* PK TIMEOUT RULES IMPLEMENTED. These affect the new PK ATTACK command only. (right-click on someone and select PK attack to start a battle with them. that makes YOU the attacker and them the victim).
1.) if either side uses a weapon, their FLEE button is disabled for 30 seconds. So if you want to flee, you have to let the other guy pound you for 30 seconds first.
2.) the ATTACKER is stuck in the scene for 30 seconds in any case, even if the victim flees before fighting.
3.) You have to wait a bit before using PK ATTACK again. If you do it too much, the time you have to wait increases. If you do it seldom, the wait time decreases. Once a minute is considered "pretty darn frequent" just to set your expectations. If you and a pal want to do a million PK Attacks in a row, you might just take turns being the attacker. That should take a minute of your life easily
* NEW SPELL TABLE FLAGS. Hidden in the "minimum required level" field is now a 'flags' field (using the new 'dot' trick), so level = "1" still means "level 1" but level = "1.1" means Level 1 with flag 1.
flag 1 means "Monsters cannot use this spell" (pets neither).
flag 2 means "Heroes cannot use this spell" (actually it just means it won't appear in the Learn Spells list. You could give the spell as a quest item if you wanted your hero to visit the King Slobber and learn a mystical slobber spell not normally known to humans.)
* NEW MONSTER TABLE FLAGS. Read the bit about spell flags to get an idea of how it works, but same deal for monsters, only instead of the LEVEL, it is built into the SCALE argument (just after the skin name of the monster)
- scale = "0" means normal scale
- scale = "0.1" means normal scale and FLAG 1
Flag 1 means "Not Tamable" (cannot be tamed no way and no how). Josh asked for it. Blame him! :-) This is how a world designer makes some creature with a low level and yet still not let it be tamed. Now, you don't get any feedback for this, so it just adds to the world's mystery.
* NEW SCRIPT "IF" CONDITIONS. You can now test a couple new things, which I will describe by example:
IF P, @isAPKer
IF Pn, @hasPKedNTimesOrMore
note that the PK count isn't working yet, so this is a heads up. P by itself should work (just tests if they are a PK character)
IF M, @isACheater
IF M1, @hasPlayedVersionedCopy
IF M2, @hasPlayedModifiedCopy
IF M4, @hasDisabledAVoidMods
The only ones which I expect to make sense are "M" (is a cheater) and "M2" (has modded).
* [BUGFIX] Fixes a round-off error which occured in the yield calculation on your stock portfolio when you reached around 20 million GP total equity (2 to the 31st power, divided by 100 to be exact 21.474 million). We should all be so lucky. I did NOT switch to the new yield calculation math since to do so would render everyone's portfolio corrupt. (sigh). And it's not worth causing that kind of pain for the improvement. However, this fix should keep you set until yo have 2.14 BILLION gp in the bank. then you're screwed :-) That will be a lesson in greed.
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