September 2010
11 posts
Sept 1st to 29th Changelog →
Lots of good changes in there. Any questions? :)
O/C tweaking
A quick tweak to order/chaos today: The system now calculates the # of active players on either side and uses that ratio to adjust points rewarded, capped at a range of 0.5 to 2.0x.
In other words, with the current stacking on the Chaos side, chaos will receive half (*0.5) the points they normally would.
Order, on the other hand, will receive double (*2.0).
These multipliers will be viewable in...
WatchThe birth of Alexandria, visualized with Gource.
Progress update
Not quite a change log, but here’s progress on some of the major aspects of the next update:
Virtual containers / Cross-account vaults : 95% - Functioning, needs polish.
Global searching of vendors : 80% - Functioning, needs gump front-end.
In-game character changing (possibly cross-account): Just needs a gump.
Event system : 100%, just needs some basic events (like...
Virtual containers ARE possible.
It’s not quite working yet, but I’m closing in on it: Containers that can be opened anywhere in the world, from multiple locations, by multiple players at the same time. This will be the framework for cross-account vaults, guild vaults, stuff like that. Cross-account vaults, the test case for the technology, are 90% working. That means that as the system stands, once I fix the last bug...
What I'm Working On This Month...
August 2010
1 post
July 2010
2 posts
Tale of a Test Subject
So, there’s this NPC.
When it spawns, it starts spamming debug AI info.
What it did tonight was run around the room picking up everything in sight, then ate all the apples/drinks it had picked up. Thing is, I’d only written the “Hunger” section of the AI, so why did it think it was a hoover? Did it somehow think that leather armor was a tasty snack?
Turns out I forgot...
June 2010
15 posts
Silence since ML
Yeah, I’ve been neglecting the blog thing and getting on Ventrilo. FIxing bugs and tweaking things, as well as investigating some design ideas, has been taking up a lot more time than I’d anticipated.
I’ve got one more system up my sleeve, though. I’ll keep working on it on weekends/nights in the coming month, and hopefully get it launched just in time for another dev...
Couple days of bug squishing
Been mostly working on the ML bugs on the test center the past couple days. We’re having a dev meeting today to set a timeline for getting ML live. We really need you all to play TC as much as you can for the next week or so to find any more bugs - that way they won’t end up on the live server.
What do you mean I'm "warlocke85"???
Seriously? 84 other WarLockes?
Nah, not really, but today was spent mostly working on a system where we can link unique identifiers (like AIM names) to player characters. It’s good for private messaging, mail, auctions, and a hundred other things where having 10 people named “Bob” might be confusing. It’s just that by default, it uses your character name. And if you...
Hey, progress!
Got a lot done today. The Item Affixes system is done, including the code to sell them in a gambling fashion in stores throughout the world. So hey, that’s awesome. Did a lot of testing. Seriously. I tested it enough to see what happens if both my backpack and bank are full. Coincidentally I created an item with 99% total resists. Not bad for about 50mil in spending…
Also did a good...
Quick ITS changes
I took maybe an hour today and tweaked the following in the Instanced Theft System:
Artifact generation is now affected by luck (Luck/75 is subtracted from the 1-1000 roll, with <= 1 being level 10).
Added 3 artifacts each to levels 9 and 10.
Added a new “Signet Ring” artifact that adds a direct bonus to artifact generation rolls. There are currently two of these in different...
Long day.
1AM. Spent about 5 hours struggling with getting this blasted system working properly, but get it working I did. Tomorrow I’ll wrap up integration with weapons and jewels, finish writing the seller item (half written as of this post), and it should be time for a demo video. Really annoyed that this system is taking so long, it really wasn’t supposed to. Might have to triage some of the...
2 tags
Ghosts from the past...
Spent most of today’s work time planning various stuff:
A system whereby we would be able to produce champion-style creatures very easily (that is to say, creatures with interesting special abilities). Such a system would allow for, say, ten new superchampions, instead of the planned two-ish.
About 5 months+ worth of event planning, including the return of a ghost from Alexandria’s...
A Commit Message
This is the SVN commit message for the code I just uploaded to the dev branch:
Added IModifiable interface, ModifiedFlag enum. Did mod handling on BaseArmor. Changed ArmorQuality.Lacquered to use IsLacquered, a member of IModifiable, & fixed Lacquer logic to match. Still left to do:
Proper prefix/suffix selection & application in BaseAffix.
Integrate IModifiable with...
What's that?
It’s the weekend? And I told myself I wasn’t going to work on Lexia on the weekends? Pfft. 3 hours isn’t REALLY work, right? Right.
Besides, I’ve got suffixes to design.
Postal Service - post by snicker7
So I mentioned that if WarLocke got his monies, I would do the PostalService engine for intrapersonal ingame communication for no charge. In addition to that, as you all know, I also handled all of the ML integration which was a task in and of itself beyond what I expected. Never have I wanted to just yell “FUUUUUUUUUUUUUU” at my monitor so many times.
So, the PostalService engine.
...
Prefixes and Suffixes
One new feature I’m working on is a system where you can purchase “unidentified” items on display in various shops throughout Britannia. They’ll run 50K, and will yield one of the following:
Low chance of Foil Weapon / Armor / Jewelry: Negative effects on damage and defense, or just plain normal.
Usually the item will be crafted with a runic generator, with diminishing...
1st and 2nd Progress
So, yesterday I did a bunch of small fixes:
Trash chests now privately do their “mmm!” thing above them (instead of the player’s head, that was just strange). Your logs will remain free of NOM NOM NOM spam… from other players, at least.
Recall runes are now hued to 951 when marked in Felucca. Pretty trivial change, but why not.
Soul stones may now be used in areas...