Please read these release notes carefully, and remember:

1.) use the /compress command (once) to reclaim some disk space.

2.) watch your 'rating' change with your PK behaviour (if any) (and check out your placement in the Evegreen PK Arena Ladder)

3.) Continue to set a snert-free example for the other players, with my gratitude!

-Dan
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Well of Souls Version A48
Our Motto: "NEXT VERSION, it'll be the quests, stupid!"
Estimated Release: Before Xmas
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* COMPATIBILITY: Excellent! (World designers should read about the change to the "effects.bmp" file (and backup their originals before upgrading)).

Also, be sure to type the command:

/compress

once after upgrading. It converts some files from the old way to the new way (saving tons of disk space). Details below. If you do NOT give this command, you will notice missing buddy/soul info until you do.

* [BUGFIX] 'disable music' setting is remembered again.

* HACKER CHECK PAUSES reduced a little. I have on rather vigorous hacker scan which takes a noticeable amount of time on slower machines. Now it should be considerably less noticeable. Blame Mister Hacker, please. Use this to hate him even more.

* LOTS OF NEW ANIMATIONS FROM JOSH. (more things to throw, more sparkly magic effects), plus artistic tweaks of pixels in existing skins (Josh is a perfectionist, you know )

* NEW MIX SERVER SUPPORTS 'RULES' A48 ships with a new MIX server which lets the admin specify the following rules which apply to players ON THAT SERVER (i.e. these are server-specific). Each rule is OPTIONAL and its absence can be assumed to mean no restriction applies. You set the rules using the MSG button on the MIX dialog, which has a third edit box. Into that you type your rules in the form:

a=1, b=2, c=3, etc.

The actual rules are given here with typical values. You can actually abbreviate the rule name to its first few characters if it is unique.. You can leave off the '=value' if the rule is 'binary' (on or off). Just don't include the rules you don't want to have apply.

maxPlayers=32

Past that don't get allowed on server. Pick a number which meets your needs (my own server lags horribly at 32 people)

maxAFK=10

After this many minutes AFK the player is booted (to make room for someone else). Note that '0' is not a legal value for ANY server rule (turns the rule off), so you have to give them at LEAST a minute of AFK time. Give them a chance to go to the bathroom at least.

minVersion=A48

Players with older versions than this not allowed. Don't bother setting it to anything less than A48. Also, don't set it higher than the currently available version or no one will be able to play on your server at all.

ladder=1

Only Ladder#1 is supported for now. It's the Evergreen PK Arena tournament. If you want fights on your server to be reported to the ladder, you'll need to set this rule.

world=Evergreen

Won't let people use anything but this world. Be sure to spell the world name correctly or no one will be able to play on your server at all. Do NOT use quotes in the name or around the name, or at all. I trim leading and trailing spaces, but you can have a space or two in the middle.

noBleep

This means you don't want people to swear on your server. If they do, they are auto-gagged until they disconnect and reconnect.

noCheat

Won't let people incarnate with a cheat character.

noMod

Won't let people incarnate with a modder character (note: this is DIFFERENT from someone who appears as having a 'mod' in the case where they have a different, but official, version than you do.

noPK

Makes all maps 'safe' from attack by PKer. Makes your server a kinder, gentler place. And unappealing for PKers. You can incarnate with a PK character, you just can't PK.

* BROKEN WEB SERVER SHOULD NOT BLOCK GAME. If, on the extremely rare chance, my bleeping web server goes down, the game will now try to use the 'last known' master server (which 99% of the time will still be correct). Of course, winsock might wait a long time before deciding the web server is down. But this should be a teensy bit better.

* RENAMED POKEDEX TO "BOOK OF DEMONS" (You know I had to do this someday...)

* RENAMED "QUEST HISTORY" TO "DIARY" (now everything is either a book or a diary, with a diary sort of being something you fill in as you go along being the idea, though not entirely general.

* OBSERVATION ABOUT WORLD DIARY. World Authors get to include a ... Oh, I see where I blew it. OK... note to myself: make the diary come from the world, not universal to the game. Silly me. Anyway, AFTER I make that change, world designer's should provide the file "Blank_diary.doc" which will have any preloaded info they want. (only first time users of the world will see this, then it gets copied to their own diary.doc file and cannot be subsequently overwritten by the world designer. (otherwise people's notes to themselves disappear with every upgrade)

I'm rambling

* CHANGES TO QUEST DIARY. I'm fiddling with the HTML which is used to generate the quest diary to make it look prettier (I hope), and it suddenly occurs to me that the TOKEN entries in the quest files can actually have HTML in them if you like... I mean, in all versions of WoS, not just A48. So if you say:

TOKEN 15, "<B>King Felafel</B> is pleased with you."

The name will then be in bold when seen in the quest diary. In fact, if you want to be super cool about it, you could have hyperlinks in the tokens such that people from the soul diary can link to your web site (maybe read the backstory about king felafel or something!) Anyway, that's for hard-working ambitious world designers only. If your HTML requires quotes (like around the URL in the HREF tag), use single-quotes instead of double quotes.

Also, if you use the %Tn directive to print a token name in the chat window, you'll see the whole thing, HTML and all. I mean in that context the HTML will be raw, not interpreted. I'm probably the only one who ever used %Tn, but consider yourself warned.

* SPLASH SCREEN DURING MAIN MAP LOAD. A perversion of a suggestion by Josh, you may now include a file called "splash.jpg" in your world or theme folder. It is shown more or less instantly when you select the world, and stays on screen until the main world map has been loaded. Thus, on MY machine it appears so briefly you don't see it, while on YOUR machine it stays there for an hour - JUST LIKE EVERQUEST!

Once the map loads, you finally get to see the scrolling story line. So, what you get in A48 is:

1.) World Selection Screen (click on 'Evergreen')
2.) Display switches instantly to splash.jpg from the ART folder of the world or game.
3.) Time goes by while the huge maps are loaded into memory.
4.) Display switches to zooming map with backstory scrolling over it.

Hence, just like before only you get to see splash.jpg in step 2 instead of a big black screen.

* MAGIC EFFECTS FILE FORMAT CHANGE. This might affect you if you have customized the file "effects.bmp" in your own world. (If you modified the copy that comes with the game then you already know it made you unpatchable, so I don't care ). Instead of a single file called "effects.bmp" (now gone), there are multiple files: "effects00.bmp", "effects01.bmp", ... "effects19.bmp" where each file holds only ten rows of effects (instead of 32). In the SPELL table you still call out a row number, but now it can go from 0 to 199. row 53, for example, is offset 3 of the file "effects05.bmp" This is the same technique as for attack path images.

And, as before, files 10-19 are reserved for world designers, while 00-09 will change with the game itself (so put your work in 10-19)

* OBNOXIOUS "Listen!" SOUND EFFECT REDUCED IN FREQUENCY. I'm surprised no one has mentioned this to me before. Anyway, that little pixie voice (me on helium) saying "Listen" every time someone types something in chat no longer occurs every time. Now it only happens if this is the first line of chat in 30 seconds (drawing your attention if the chat had gone quiet and is now resuming) OR if the line of chat has your name in it (your ears are burning).

* NEW MAP FLAG - LADDER (16). World Designers can tag individual maps as being 'ladder' maps. Only fights which take place on ladder maps are reported to the tournament server. Note that just tagging the map is not quite enough yet to establish a tournament. But it is a necessary pre-requisite.

* LIMITED LADDER SUPPORT IN A48. Nothing fancy. If a server has the rule "Ladder=1" it means that registered maps report their score results to ladder number 1. For now, ladder #1 is the Evergreen PK Arena map and any fighting on that map will result in scores being posted both to the individual and to their guild, if any. Don't expect fireworks. If you are on a 'ranked' map you will see a little ladder icon (cool, huh?) on the mini-map. If you think you ought to see a ladder but don't, remember that the server has to have the rule set, plus you can't be a cheater or a modder.

Your 'rating' is computed using a modified chess rating algorithm. It rewards you for beating a higher RATED opponent (doesn't care about levels). There is no reward for beating a sufficiently lower rated opponent.

* TICKETS CANNOT BE USED DURING PK ATTACK SCENE TIMEOUT. so, during the 30 second 'post-hit-freeze-thing' you can't use a ticket to run back to the well.

* WELL BUTTON WON'T WORK DURING PK ATTACK SCENE TIMEOUT. Ditto for the 'return to Well' button.

* On-Screen "tell-tale" during skin xfers. I suppose this is a mood-killer, but I put a little text in the upper right "[skin xfer]" whenever you are in the middle of one or more skin transfers. This should help you distinguish one sort of lag from another. If you're sending your skin to 30 people, you will presumably feel it as major lag.

* THE LURCH FEATURE. This one's for you, L! There is a new command, which you should only need to use once (unless you downgrade, which I keep telling you is a Very Bad Idea (tm))

/compress

this command recovers quite a bit of wasted disk space (130 meg in my case) from the sloppy way I record information about other players. I'm still sloppy, but about 10 times less so. Perhaps more will be done in the future.

Note: you MUST give this command once to convert your old style info to the new style. So if you seem to have lost all your buddy info, you probably haven't issued this command yet.

* WOS JOINS THE CHESS FEDERATION! Well, not really. BUt now your character gets a numeric 'rating' based on the same algorithm as used in chess. You will initially be given a starting rating based on your level. After that your rating goes up and down as a result of PK fighting (non-PKs will stay with a fixed rating.. actually maybe I will suppress the number there to avoid undue competitive feelings).

Anyway, the way chess ratings work is you get more points by beating a powerful opponent. So pounding newbies won't raise your score as much as fighting an equal, or a superior, will.

The goal of this is to re-focus PK goals. To get a big score, you have to leave the newbies alone. Woo hoo! positive feedback!

Note that this is NOT the honor system and a 'win' can never make your total score go DOWN. A win will always raise your score a smidgeon. A loss will always lower your score a smidgeon. The size of the smidgeon is based on the relative player ratings.

And yeah, I put this in here coz I am doing it in synChess.

* NEW SERVER RULE. If you set this rule in your server:

noBleep=1

Then any use of a 'hardcore' bleep (the default bleeper list of the game) will trigger an auto-gag on the player for that server (they can chat elsewhere, but are muted for the remainder of their visit to your server).

No, you can't have a custom bleeper list per server, sorry.

My hope is that some people will choose to run 'free speech' servers where people can be as blue as they like, while others run 'child-friendly' servers.

And yes, someday I will add filters to the MIX server list so you can select from servers which meet certain criteria (ping time, rule set, player count, etc.). But probably not until there are always more than 10 servers around. Should that day ever arrive.

* POKEDEX, I MEAN BOOK OF DEMONS, IS SORTABLE. As a small gift for Josh, and world designers in general, I suppose, I made the BoD sortable by name, element/level, and ID.

I also default to the un-zoomed monster skin image, to spare Josh's sensitive eyes from the "big pixels" You may or may not have known that clicking on the image toggles between two sizes (if possible) and plays the GROWL sound effect when the monster gets BIG and the PAIN sound effect when the monster gets SMALL.

* NEW IF CONDITIONAL "#" tests current map number. As in:

IF #3,@weAreOnMap3

Where the map number matches the index in the quest files MAP table. This is useful if you have some scene which you use in more than one spot (for example, as a ticket). Well, maybe it isn't useful at all.

* NEW OPTION: Quick NPC Bubble Pops. In the book of options you can now elect to have the Non-Player character's speech bubbles pop more quickly. When this is engaged, bubbles pop more quickly when they have less text in them. (note: if you miss a line of dialog, it is, of course, in the chat window, for your reviewing pleasure).

OK OK... I apologize for dragging my feet on this one, it makes the scenes a lot more fun. I am even defaulting it to ON, so you'll have to turn it off if you want the old 10 second bubbles to return.

* NEW QUEST TABLE: "EQUIP" Check out quest.txt for the details, but this OPTIONAL table lets you override the equipment category names "Helmet", "Boots", etc for your world. If you don't HAVE this table, you will get the default values. Note that the HANDs are defined in a separate table.

* NOTIFICATION ON DISCONNECT. While not 100% guaranteed, you are now quite likely to get an official error message whenever you lose your connection to a server. (without having to wait several minutes for a series of 'everybody else has disappeared' messages.) With such baby steps do we march towards progress.

* TICKETS CAN NOW BE BOUND TO SCENES. I imagine there will be some odd side effects to this, and you need to consult items.txt in A48 for the complete documentation, but if you add YET ANOTHER dot-arg to the end of the previous lengthy list of arguments, it will be seen as a scene number, and attempting to use the ticket outside of that scene will fail.

But if the ticket itself starts a scene (dream sequence) that new scene will then be the current scene number, and what happens if you try to use the ticket there is anyone's guess!

* NEW BACKGROUND IMAGE OPTIONS: bkEquip.jpg and bkDemons.jpg, in the ART folder of your world or theme, will be used as the background images of the EQUIP and Book of Demons screens (instead of re-using bkSpells.jpg for all three).

Please note: I do NOT guarantee that the information displayed on top of these backgrounds will never move around (it almost always moves a little from one version to the next). Hence if you try to get all clever with your custom background, be prepared to have to re-do it periodically.

* MINOR PK ATTACK CHANGE. Maybe if I bury this down here no one will notice Basically, if you have declared yourself AFK you cannot initiate an attack. Also, if you are truly AFK you cannot be PK Attacked. Note that just declaring yourself AFK does not protect you, but actually leaving the room for a bit does. It's magic.

Now, if I can only figger a way to have it impossible to get rezzed when you are truly AFK, it will solve several nasty problems at once. Perhaps this needs to be a personal preference however.... the goal is to protect you from multiple death/rez/death events while you aren't around.