ESTIMATED RELEASE: Around my Birthday :-) (which is 4/22)

ACTUAL RELEASE: 4/17/2001

MOTTO: "Maybe 200 people will click that Amazon thing before the next release?!"

[no, they didn't ]

---------------
CHANGES FOR A52

* COMPATIBILITY: Excellent!.

* GUILT COMES TO WOS. Yes, WoS will now nag you to make a $10 donation every 50 hours or so. It checks every time you return to the well (while online). Please note that if you already had, say, 250 hours of play time, you will see the begging message EVERY visit to the well for the next 5 visits (250/50 = 5) at which point you will be caught up and not be nagged again for another 50 hours. (50 hours of total gameplay time, by the way, afk or not). I had 8000 hours. Imagine my thrill :-)

I seriously encourage anyone who *can* donate $10 with a credit card (and who wants WoS to continue) do so. If you're poor, credit-less, or don't like WoS, then don't worry about it.

And I apologize for being reduced to begging in-game.

* [BUGFIX] Link Names were not being remembered correctly on the main map during your first incarnation of the day. (The truth is a bit too complicated to describe). I believe you would have seen something similar had you returned to the well and then incarnated in a different character which happened to be on the same map. Once you travelled through a submap, however, you should have been ok when returning to the main map.

* [BUGFIX] Fixed a problem with the character level parsing for max training.

* [BUGFIX] Official Ladder score reports should get reported with less hassle to you, the player.

* MP/HP METERS LARGER. Well, if your screen is larger, so are they :-)

* NEW MONSTER FLAG - SAME_ELEMENT_ONLY (value is 2) If you set this flag for one of your monsters, it is limited to only casting spells in its very own element. (I have also made a half-hearted attempt to let you assign unusual element values to monsters as well. But I don't guarantee it works, and it will most likely lead to crashes down the line. In theory, you can use elements 0-255 now. In theory.)

* WELL NOW.. OK.. Maybe I was overly pessimistic. I just made the forest wyrm an element '100' (Chaos) creature, and created a single element '100' spell "Wyrm Breath" which only the Forest Wyrm can cast.

And it appears to work, at least in solo mode. (oh, I also used the new 'same element' flag, of course).

* CAN NO LONGER DISABLE ATTACK ANIMATIONS. So now the pain won't seem so delayed :-)

* MINIMUM TIME BETWEEN HUNT STARTS IS FIVE SECONDS. Previous build required five seconds from END of one hunt to start of next, which wasn't what I intended. (you people are in *such* a hurry!)

* NEW MAP FLAG (64) SUPPRESSES SHADOWS. So heroes and monsters have no shadows on such a map (nor in scenes on that map). Good for space worlds, and maybe underwater worlds as well. Though a really clever programmer would have made the scene shadows controlled by the scene and not the map flag.

* UDP PORT SELECTION OPTION. There is a button "Network Settings" (or something like that) on the "Where do you want to play today" dialog. It has a new option "UDP Port" which defaults to zero (meaning, let windows choose the next available port). If your firewall blocks UDP traffic and you need a known range of UDP ports to unblock, then set this value to the first port of that range. So, if ports 8000-8099 are unblocked, set this to "8000" (and I will use 8000 first, then 8001, then 8002..) I will always start with 8000 each time you run the program, so if you run two copies of WoS or WoS and arcadia and rocket club at the same time, they will conflict. So don't do that. If you don't have a firewall problem, leave this set to zero.

* FROM THE "What was I THINKING file": The "/fight N" command no longer works in multiplayer mode. Its purpose was to aid world developers, not to allow cheat characters to attack non-cheat characters with Black Wraths. I was so focussed on how I removed the ability to earn experience from such monsters, that I neglected the hassle factor. I wonder how many "Hacked Pet" reports were really just this...

* THREE SECOND RULE IS NOW THE TWO SECOND RULE. Now everyone has 2 seconds to place their next move before the first guy can place a new move. The world evolves and reacts. And I believe I mentioned that I fixed the five second rule.

* ADDITIONAL HACKER CHECKS. I check a couple more places for inappropriate modifications of memory. If you have slipped into the habit of memory modifying, I encourage you to slip out of it, lest you trigger mister hack detector. Thanks to Odie and LoveSquall for pointing this one out.

* FIGHT OPCODE LETS YOU BRING IN 'BUDDY MONSTERS' Yes, samsyn listens! Basically, when you make a list of monsters, use negative numbers for monsters you want to fight for you. For example:

FIGHT 1, 2, 3, 4, -4

This would bring in four 'bad' monsters, and one 'good' monster (of id 4. still has to be defined in the monster table).

SO, if you define a 'mercenary' as a monster in the table (and then carefully avoid actually placing any mercenary monsters on the map), then in a scripted scene you can have that mercenary appear and help you out.

The merc will have a green shadow, and enter the scene from the same side as you (i.e. yes, he's really a pet. just a pet who belongs to no one.)

I tested this only to the slightest and teensiest degree.

And yes, in SOLO mode, as a cheater, you can "/fight -255" to get a BW to help you out in battle. But "/fight" no longer works in multiplayer mode, so you can't use it to attack nonPKers.

And it looks like you can kill a mercenary if you like and s/he won't fight back (nor can the script engine detect it and punish you for it.... oh.. hmm... I wonder... hopefully you won't earn any XP or PP for killing a friendly merc. Hopefully a merc won't kill other humans in the scene who aren't on your team. (probably will). Hopefully mercs work in multiplayer (might not). Man, what a sloppily introduced feature! World designers: Use it sparingly.

In case, I was unclear, even though you use a negative number in the FIGHT opcode, they monster ID is the positive version of that number. Don't go adding negative monster IDs to the monster table or the world will end as you know it. So.. monster ID 5 in the monster table, will fight FOR you if you say -5 in the FIGHT opcode. Usually, a good mercenary 'monster' would not also be placed on the map as a regular monster, right? You'd want "Pirate Steve" to only show up in certain scenes, right?

* NEW SERVER RULE: "noEavesdrop." This disables the eavesdrop feature (which lets you hear everyone on the server, no matter how 'far away' they are. With this rule on, you will only hear people who are 'near you' (visible on the same map with you, in the same scene with you, in your party, or who address you by name, or who shout.) Um, you can still 'eavesdrop on all heart buddies' so it isn't a 'privacy' feature, just a 'chat encapsulation' feature.

My guess: this will lead to more shouting on ALL servers (by the very people you hoped it would filter out) "Idiot shouts HEY WILL SOME1 LEVEL ME THE BLEEP UP!!!!".

* GOLDEN SOULS FOR SALE. Another cheap gimmick to try to earn enough money to cover my WoS bills... A52 will give you the option of buying a "Golden Soul Activation Code."

Once you have one of these, you enter it into your copy of WoS (via the Help About.. panel) and thereafter all characters on your PC show up as "Golden Souls."

This will also change your soul ID to the one embedded in your activation code, so your buddies will have to re-hat you.

However, you will NOT lose control over your existing characters, even though your soul ID changed. Coz Golden Soul Computers don't hassle you about that. (of course, moving a golden soul character to a non-golden soul computer will trigger the modder thing, so either enter the same activation code into both computers, or buy a second one.)

As to sharing Golden Soul Activation Codes... well, each computer still needs a unique soul ID to play in the same game, so use your own judgement (i.e. the only sanctioned reason for doing this is to move characters between two of your own computers).

Even Golden Souls can be gagged, muted, banned, etc. No amount of cash buys you the freedom to be a snert :-)

What, you ask, are the benfits of being a Golden Soul?

1.) Your name will appear in Gold, not white, in the MAPs player list.

2.) You get a slightly different little icon (and I mean slightly)

3.) Everyone will know that I like you better than everyone else :-)

4.) You get the 'relaxed rules' for moving characters between golden computers. (Plus you can recover from a crashed hard drive)

A pleasant side effect of this change is that you (everyone with A52) can click in any column of the player list to select a line (instead of having to scroll back to the left to do it.) I have NO idea why the behaviour of the list control changes in this way, but I'm happy all the same.

* NEW 'IF' CONDITIONAL: Check if item is EQUIPPED.

So, like this:

. IF E45, @item45IsEquipped

As opposed to:

. IF I45, @hasAtLeastOneOfItem45

And, as usual, it is only checking the scene host's equipment and items.

* NEW 'IF' CONDITIONAL: Checks how many times you have killed this monster, or been killed by it. This has an optional second argument if you include a decimal point. I will document by example:

IF KM23, @hasKilledAtLeastOneMonster23

IF KB23, @hasBeenKilledAtLeastOnceByMonster23

IF KM23.4, @hasKilledAtLeastFourMonster23s

IF KB23.4, @monster23KilledHimAtLEast4Times

Hope that makes sense. And I haven't tested this at all!

* SPELLS CAN NOW BE LIMITED BY CHARACTER LEVEL AS WELL AS ELEMENT TRAINING LEVEL. This feature is crammed into argument six of the spells table. For example:

5.0.32

Means "must be trained to level 5 in element, flags are 0 (no flags), character level must be 32 or above).

Unlike most other spell restrictions, the character level restrictin makes the spell NOT EVEN APPEAR in the "learn spells" dialog until they reach that level.

If you leave this off, as in:

5.0

or even, the lowly

5

Then it is assumed anyone of level 0 or above can learn the spell if they meet the other criteria.

* CHEAT CHARACTERS CAN NO LONGER PK ATTACK. You'll just have to camp with each other if you want to duke out a couple of cheat characters.

* PETS ARE NO LONGER PERMANENTLY STUPID unless their 'base monster' has zero wisdom. So, if you negligently allow a wise pet to drop to 0 wisdom, you can bring it back from stupidity.

* NEW OPTION IN THE BOOK OF OPTIONS: "Don't let me use cheat codes." (and this defaults to ON). Until you turn this off, your requests to use cheat codes will be ignored (well, actually you get a popup explaining you need to turn this option off before you can use cheat codes). Once you have already tagged your character as a cheater, this won't prevent you from using additional cheats.

* NEW QUEST (don't get your hopes up, it's only one scene long, and it isn't really a quest, and I stole the idea from LGH. And it is a *teensy* bit mean-spirited, though I like to think of it as being a *tutorial*)