Obviously, I am unhappy about this, but such is life.

Changes to the packet format require that all players upgrade. People with different versions will not be able to play together. Only the newer version players will be 'safe' (new packets could potentially crash a player with an older version, though I make every effort to prevent this)

Your characters are safe, however (no changes required.)

There are a few other goodies in A60 (like seeds no longer disappearing, I hope) so it's not a total loss. Still, it hasn't been cooked as long as I'd like, and you know that's not generally a good sign.

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ESTIMATED RELEASE: Tonight
MOTTO: Darn you pesky script kiddies! Get off my lawn!

DEVELOPER INFO: http://www.synthetic-reality.com/wosDev0.htm
GOLDEN SOULS: http://www.synthetic-reality.com/donate.htm

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CHANGES FOR A60

* COMPATIBILITY: Excellent! But I had to change the packet format in an attempt to frustrate the recent rash of hackers, so A60 won't be compatible with earlier versions (your characters will be fine, you just won't be able to play with people running older versions).

* [bugfix] The "untamable" and "0% chance" warnings on spells should now only be seen by the person casting the spell.

* [bugfix] By george, I do believe I found the problem behind disappearing seeds (et al) and it only took about 8 hours and the consumption of 12,000 seeds to do it. Maybe more than 8 hours, come to think of it. Time flies when you're eating seeds.

Since this is probably the 10th time I have devoted a day to fixing the disappearing seed problem, I think this is officially the most horribly complicated-to-discover bug of all time, WoS-wise. Basically, in the end, it was the moral equivalent of a threading issue, only all the culprits were windows messages within a single thread. Let's hope this really is behind us now.

Second in line of horribility was the Disappearing buttons bug, which in the end I believe is due to the Windows function WritePrivateProfileString() disturbing the current directory on some versions of windows (but not all). Could well be an official bug (like the wacky versions of the rich edit control which were shipped with the early release of Windows 2000.) But I am now immune to such inconstancy on the part of Emperor Gates.

* Party members should no longer miss out on the early part of the scene. It used to be that a laggy connection could result in party followers not seeing the first few things which happened in a scripted scene when the leader entered it. This could be dialog, shop buttons, or even missing characters. This was due to some transport layer efficiencies (you don't get data for scenes you are not in, but there was a gray area from the moment YOU think you are in the scene, to the moment the MIX server thinks you are in, and packets during that window were never seen by the laggy client.)

Of course, it was great for bandwidth to not send you that data, so this is a small step backwards, bandwidth-savings-wise.

* new slash command "/clear" empties the chat window completely. Not a cheat. So finally you can gossip about the boss and delete it quickly :-) By the way, I increased the size of the scroll-back buffer a couple releases ago (so that all the data from the battle simulators could be seen). Hopefully this didn't create any new problems, but one must tread carefully with the rich edit control.

* 'confused' cheat/modders cannot accidentally hit/give to non-cheat players.

* Found some weird scene problems in parties (which seem to have appeared about the time I added cut scenes...) Anyway, I took the opportunity to address a lot of little party snafus (like making sure that scene clients see NPCs facing the same direction as the scene host... and other squirrely little facts). Please note: although never mentioned explicitly, it is a good idea to not have more than 32 frames (or so) in a monster/villager filmstrip.

* Bringing up a Web Panel no longer puts you into a weird unkillable mode, capable of soul capturing, etc. Park on a link or something before opening a web panel. The game continues beneath the panel.

* If you are on the web panel when someone PK attacks you, then the web panel will disappear automatically and you will be PK Attacked.

* However, if you are truly idle (haven't touched mouse or keyboard for a few minutes) you are still protected from being PK Attacked, as before.

* Character 'rating' now changes only if the fight occurs on a "ladder" map (Map flag "ladder", whether the server is a ladder server or not). In Evergreen, this means PK Arena)

* Cheat characters who accidentally summon pets while on-line will no longer lose their pet (they will just refuse to come out.) Freeing your pet, under such circumstances however, will cause it to be lost.

* %Rn macro no longer crashes with n=0 (which is a silly value to pick in the first place, of course..)

* Golden Souls No longer see Guilt Trip Page every 20 hours. They see it every 15 seconds! No.. just kidding, should be spared ever seeing it at all.

* If the person in question has disabled "send skins" you should no longer see the option to fetch their skin.

* Soul Diary Peppier, due to:

1.) Only loads full list of names the first time you use it. (d'oh!)

2.) Pops open immediately, showing old info about character, if any.

3.) When slow-pokey laggy ping response from character arrives, page updates with newest data. (this is most likely the delay you were most noticing before.)

* Failed spells are no longer ever magnificent

* You can no longer FLEE a fight until it is your move. The fleeing itself is still 100% effective. The message is the same as for a sticky fight scene: "you try to escape but are drawn back in.. blah blah blah"

This is an extremely gentle flee failure, but I expect to hear lots of bad things about it in any case.