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BETA TEST July 13th; what's new?

Undone

Codemaster
Stormhaven Studios
Our next stress tests are scheduled for:
Wed. July 13th @ 8pm central
(Thurs. July 14th @ 1am UTC)
The developers will meet in Discord and test for approximately one hour. However, the servers will remain open for roughly 4 hours. The most up-to-date client can be retrieved via the patcher found on your account page.

What's new?
This week we're bringing you a slew of updates including vegetation improvements, rendering optimizations, camera fixes, and design changes. Guess who's back? Back again. Adric's back, I'm telling all my friends!

REMINDER: the servers will be open for 4hrs Wednesday evening. The servers will open again on Friday @ 12pm central and close on Tuesday at 12pm central. See events in Discord for timezone translations.

Bug fixes / improvements:
  • Tech
    • Upgraded Vegetation Shaders.
    • Optimized grass shaders.
    • Improvements to grass materials for more realistic movement and interactions.
    • Player characters will interact with grass as they move through it. This functionality will likely come to NPCs in the near future.
    • Fixed an issue where positive over time effects would show as negative after zoning.
    • Internal armor cost calculations are now integers instead of floats; this should resolve rounding issues.
    • Ground torches now begin sinking into the ground when they have about 20% duration remaining. This is meant to provide a visual indicator that it's nearing expiration and you should consider dropping another. There is currently an issue causing the torch to "pop" upwards when it starts sinking but I'll get that fixed for next week.
    • Camera Improvements:
      • Adjusted collision parameters to avoid issues in tight spaces. I found another Unity bug which breaks the transition from middle-->top rig. For whatever reason the camera decides to move towards the subject when it should not during the transition if certain smoothing parameters are enabled. If the camera movement was fast enough the camera actually moved through and past your avatar which caused your player to turn around before the camera corrected itself. These parameters have been disabled for now which means that camera collision corrections can make things a bit jerkier but it should no longer invert on itself. Unity has already recognized that this is a bug so hopefully we will have a fix within the next few weeks.
      • When the camera is over water we now adjust the bottom rig so that the camera can no longer go below the water's surface.
      • Up/down positions are now reset on initialization in addition to the left/right position. Let me know if this resolves the issue where the camera would initialize looking up or down.
      • Zoom level of the camera is saved and restored between sessions.
  • Environment / Art
    • Disabled vegetation billboards for smaller objects such as seedlings, saplings, and bushes. This should reduce performance overhead of the vegetation system.
    • Adjusted tree billboard colors. More billboard improvements are on the way in the coming weeks.
    • Large Redshore tree stumps are now tinted to better match the surrounding trees.
    • Isolated some props in Dryfoot so that they only show in either Dryfoot OR Dryfoot Stronghold depending on which zone your character has loaded. This should slightly reduce rendering overhead.
    • Fixed some LOD position issues on some props.
    • Fixed tree rendering layers in Dryfoot. Your camera should no consider the trees obstacles in this zone.
  • UI:
    • Improved the readability of the "/time" command. It now only shows the in-game time.
    • Added current season to the "/time" command.
    • Added current ping, game time, and season to the globe icon tooltip (upper right of chat windows)
    • Fixed exception in the Crafting UI that could cause issues with item counts not properly updating.
  • Design:
    • Fixed skinning level on some boars and Wolfsbane.
    • Fixed Quillbacks forgetting how to use some abilities
    • Fixed jewelry missing "Imbued" title when made with flux.
    • Yosef's Hatchet is now usable by all who can use hatchets.
    • Level 5 & 15 mushroom potion recipes returned to the recipe merchant.
    • Crafting experience reduced for recipes which use fewer recources.
    • Updated naming around herbal tea components to avoid some confusion. To make tea you need crushed tea leaves which is a refined material.
    • Chitin and Full Plate swapped for which is heaviest. Order of armor weight is now: Leather < Scale < Half-Plate < Chitin < Full Plate
    • Increased diversity of some creature stats and resists.
    • Open wound procs now bypass armor absorption.
    • Execute modified to rely more heavily on the target's reduced health amount. The ability should be relatively weak when used on healthy targets and quite strong on low health targets.
    • First pass at Redshore itemization completed.
New stuff:
Seasonal Variations
Now that we have finalized our move to Unity 2021 we are starting to tinker with features previously not utilized. The first of which is seasonal variations for vegetation. With this patch you will start to notice subtle changes to the vegetation as the seasons pass. Over the course of an in-game year (roughly 28 days in real time) deciduous trees will lose their leaves, the hue on vegetation will brown, and crops will grow and shrink. These changes are meant to be subtle and just add a bit to the visual variety of the zones. The framework we are building for these changes also paves the way for the eventual implementation of snow, rain, and other weather effects. Here is a quick and dirty video of this in action, keep an eye out for these subtle changes:
  • deciduous trees in the background losing and gaining their leaves
  • wheat & flowers shrink, then grow
  • foliage and ground hue changes subtly over time
(this is me crudely adjusting the season by hand for demonstration purposes only; this effect will happen over the course of ~28 real life days)
Notes:
  • distant tree billboard are not impacted by these changes. we hope to correct this in the future with improved billboards
  • some vegetation may interact TOO much (let us know!). Currently the blue flowers around ember rings move a bit too much, while some bushes do not move at all

Works in progress:
  • Zones:
    • 3x additional overland zones have had an initial art pass completed
      • Grizzled Peaks - accessed via Highlands, Redshore, and Gorge. Mountainous region with a number of tunnels. High level range (40-50). Has a one-way exit to Newhaven North. This is the snow capped mountains you can see from Redshore.
      • Highlands - accessed via Meadowlands. Hilly region with sparse vegetation and water features. Mid level range (approx 30-40, likely to come after Redshore and Grizzled)
      • Gorge - accessed via Dryfoot. Large canyon-like area. Mid level range (approx 30-40, likely to come after Redshore and Grizzled)
    • Newhaven City: initial art pass has been completed for some time. We are now starting internal testing for a limited area. We will be moving bank, crafting stations, merchants, etc into this zone at some point in the near future.
    • Dungeons: prefab reorg is complete. The Newhaven dungeon (Central Veins) has been delivered and spawning templates have begun being worked on.
  • NPCs: Most NPCs have been converted to a "universal" model that includes the base + ashen variants. This brings us one step closer to getting the ashen variants in the game. They are currently awaiting a VFX and lighting pass. Design discussions regarding how to spawn ashen creatures have been had and we are excited for the direction this is headed.
  • Quests: a number of quests are in the queue for implementation/testing. Internal quest design tool is nearly complete. We are still ironing out the implementation details for content, but once this is complete we can start testing content.
  • Tech: npc improvements, npc merchants.
  • UI: quest dialog redesign, tooltip improvements
  • New clothing & armor is still in the works. Currently working on Scale armor visuals.
  • Crafting TODO list (to be implemented soon):
    • quality determines the final durability
    • more organized recipe merchants
    • crafting & harvesting specializations

Reagent Upgrade System (timeline: after dungeon spawn templates and ashen spawning)
Ember essence collection and spending is next up on the docket of things to do after getting the new dungeons up and running. The first step for getting this in will be allowing you to collect ember essence, which will be followed by spending ember essence on ember monoliths, reagent upgrades, etc. After our recent internal discussions around Ashen creatures we have bumped the priority of this item to be after we get them online. These two will happen in relatively quick succession so the delay is not as much as it might seem.

New Servers! (timeline: 1-3 weeks)
Over the past few weeks I have been receiving shipments of new server hardware. The first of such machines has been built, the OS has been installed, and I am now moving on to the software config phase. Right now we have a single 1U server at the data center which is connected directly to the internet (software firewall). Adding a new server requires us to install a router which leads to a complete reconfiguration of our internal network. When that time comes expect a short testing week (servers will likely be down Mon & Tues) to give me additional time to get the server physically installed, along with any networking and software configuration changes required.

Known Issues:
  • Terrain textures have a bit too much tiling. This will be resolved shortly.
  • Character creation & editing camera on Apple Silicon MacOS is bugged. I isolated the issue and submitted a bug report with Unity (still waiting to hear back).
  • Not all ember rings and/or POIs are proper map discoveries. This is especially true in Dryfoot, Dryfoot Stronghold, and Redshore. Discoveries and map uncovering is a WIP and will be revisited soon.
  • Tooltip positions are off for shorter tooltips on the right side of the screen.
  • Zooming the camera while holding right mouse button on macOS can cause your chat window to scroll. This is not intended behavior.
  • Deconstructing crafted items returns junk 100% of the time.
  • cannot roll on loot while unconscious
  • not all clothing/armor has visuals
  • Dragging a group-nameplate in the group window will set the wrong pivot point for the group window and the whole thing will drag a bit weird.
  • typing chat text may occasionally become invisible. unfocus your chat window and trying again a few times typically resolves this.
  • Sometimes when you respawn you don't end up at the proper Ember Ring --> if this happens please report the position where you died via the "/report" command or "/debugposition" (if using debugposition you'll need to paste the value here)
 
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Do we have more recipes added other than the mushroom? Hoping to see silver and gold available as well as the missing Forrestry for teak and fir.

Do we have any idea yet when Redshore will have named mobs and a good loot table? I know Chameleons have a little bit already.
 
Do we have more recipes added other than the mushroom? Hoping to see silver and gold available as well as the missing Forrestry for teak and fir.
Adric just got back - he had a lot of catching up to do. We're still working our way there.

Do we have any idea yet when Redshore will have named mobs and a good loot table? I know Chameleons have a little bit already.
Yes. That's what this point in the patch notes refer to:
First pass at Redshore itemization completed.
 
I really liked having the actual time shown with the /time command. Any way to make it optional, instead of just getting rid of it or is there another way coming to show actual time (like a clock)?
 
I really liked having the actual time shown with the /time command. Any way to make it optional, instead of just getting rid of it or is there another way coming to show actual time (like a clock)?
i too liked having the time show my actual time. i didnt feel the need for a clock on the ui and i need to be able to keep track of time in game haha. this is gonna be an adjustment for me.
 
the first pass has been completed as in they came up with a loot table. it usually says when the named mobs have been added.
So with that then I will take it that loot has been established but not implemented. Which then still leaves Redshore as a dead zone of sorts. Just an exp farm with nothing to offer that meadows and Dryfoot cant provide. Gathering resources In Redshore is semi pointless seeing the lack of higher tier recipes we're still needing.
Maybe I'll come back in a month and see if there's been any new additions to be able to continue testing.
 
So with that then I will take it that loot has been established but not implemented. Which then still leaves Redshore as a dead zone of sorts. Just an exp farm with nothing to offer that meadows and Dryfoot cant provide. Gathering resources In Redshore is semi pointless seeing the lack of higher tier recipes we're still needing.
Maybe I'll come back in a month and see if there's been any new additions to be able to continue testing.
You are all reading way too far into this. Rares and new items have been added to redshore.
 
I really liked having the actual time shown with the /time command. Any way to make it optional, instead of just getting rid of it or is there another way coming to show actual time (like a clock)?

Do you think having /time and /localtime would meet your need? This was mostly from my own experience of /time giving you two times and having to figure out which one was local time and which was one game time being annoying.
 
I would like any option to tell actual time, so whatever you feel is good is cool with me (shorter is better, lol, so maybe /ltime, and /time). It may be weird but sometimes I want to know time without taking hands off keyboard to reach for phone, or tab out of game. If i am in the flow doin something, I just like to see it ingame.
 
Hot fixes for the weekend:
  • Fixed issues with the camera wigging out randomly (mainly in meadowlands). The camera may still get slightly jumpy around water but this is a WIP.
  • Adjusted some vegetation to reduce interaction bending.
  • Added interaction bending to some bushes.
  • added "/localtime" command to display your local time.
  • Fixed issues with deconstruction XP being calculated incorrectly
  • Fixed missing props in Dryfoot
  • Fixed pricing on level 20-30 recipes.
  • Added level 30-40 recipes on the merchant just outside of the North Newhaven gate.
 
Redshore names are right on time. Was gettin frustrated, doing the vanilla grind there

New server hardware is friggin awesome! That mean more playtime soon? :)
 
New server hardware is friggin awesome! That mean more playtime soon? :)
Unlikely to get more playtime as that time gives us a chance to breath, test updates, and do database maintenance. But a new server should make the current playtime even better!
 
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