Our next stress tests are scheduled for:
What's new?
We spent a great deal of time this week pouring over data trying to find a memory leak in the server. Did we find it? The short answer is: I don't know. I found a few things that may have been contributing but since we cannot reproduce the memory leak in our local environment we have to wait until you all hop in and do what you do. At some point this evening I may kick you all off to deploy a new server build for even more testing.
Other than the memory leak hunt, we spent some time tidying up the client to further reduce the memory footprint of the game. Emotes are making a comeback as well (please see the section below for details). Finally, most of the crafting recipes now pay much closer attention to the raw material properties of what something was made with. Because of this, stats on already crafted items may have shifted.
REMINDER: the servers will be open for 4hrs Wednesday evening. The servers will open again on Friday @ 12pm central and close on Sunday at 11:59pm central.
Bug fixes / improvements:
Emotes
This week we are adding a small batch of emotes to the game. These will ultimately function similar to recipes in that you will be able to learn them from items, quests, npcs, etc. For this test however, we are loading you up with all of them from the get-go so you can test them out. There is currently no UI for these, but you can run the "/emotes" command in chat to get a list of those currently known by you.
The current lineup is: bow, cheer, clap, cry, dance, insult, kiss, laugh, point, salute, shrug, think, wave, yawn. Each can be executed by a slash followed by the name of the emote (i.e. "/clap"). Any movement or rotation will cause the emote animation to cancel. Consider all animations a WIP. The likely plan is to give players ~2 emotes to start then allow you to earn the others as you progress. Would love to hear your thoughts on which you should start the game with!
Handheld items load asynchronously
In our continuing effort to reduce the memory overhead of the client most hand held items have been added to the addressable system (we recently did this with all NPCs & resource nodes). This system allows us to only load things into memory when they are needed. Previously all textures, meshes, etc relating to weapons were loaded in memory at all times. This also means that weapon visuals may be delayed in showing up. Hopefully it won't be a noticeable difference!
Crafting Updates
Crafted equipment now derives stats from the raw components used for specific components. For example, the material used for the blade of a sword will offer specific bonuses where the same material used in the grip or guard will offer something else. Previously, all material values were averaged together creating very similar crafted goods. Materials should now appear to be a bit more focused in their usage.
Arrows/Bolts now have 3 components: a tip, a shaft, and fletching. Tips can be made from either bone or metals, shafts can be mode from wood, and fletching is made from cloth (fletching may eventually come from feathers via new creatures, or merchants). The materials used for each component with contribute to different bonuses. As a result - arrows will no longer stack universally (i.e. Rough Wolf Bone Tipped Jute Fletched Oak Arrows). The fletching recipe has been added to the Forestry profession.
Works in progress:
Stat Consolidation (timeline: ...)
We are planning to drop the per-damage-types for HIT & PEN which would clear up a number redundant feeling stats. The rough plan is as follows:
Reagent Improvements (1-2 weeks??)
(update March 16th)
Thanks to some discussions we will likely be refactoring (code stuff) reagents so that they only supplement abilities rather than replacing abilities. This should make it so level 1 reagents are still useful if that's all you have. For example: say a level 1 bandage gives you a static +2 to your heals, when your base ability upgrades from leveling you would still have the benefit of that level 1 bandages +2 heal. Upgraded reagents via the ember essence system will likely stack on new effects rather than replacing the base.
Unity 2021 Upgrade (timeline: no idea, still waiting on Unity to identify a critical bug causing huge cpu usage spikes every few seconds)
In a recent Unity update (2021.2.8f1) some rendering tech we utilize for vegetation stopped working. This update fixed a number of bugs, but introduced a nasty one that prevented us from upgrade for a number of weeks. The bug has been fixed in the latest update (2021.2.12f1) but alas, Unity decided to introduce some significant performance regressions on macOS preventing the update. I need another week or two to continue performance testing before I can push out 2021 builds.
What do we get out of upgrading to Unity 2021? Here are a few ideal gains:
Known Issues:
Wed. March 16th @ 8pm central
(Thurs. March 17th @ 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. This is not a test of the full game; we are continuing to build a solid foundation before moving forward with additional features.(Thurs. March 17th @ 1am UTC)
What's new?
We spent a great deal of time this week pouring over data trying to find a memory leak in the server. Did we find it? The short answer is: I don't know. I found a few things that may have been contributing but since we cannot reproduce the memory leak in our local environment we have to wait until you all hop in and do what you do. At some point this evening I may kick you all off to deploy a new server build for even more testing.
Other than the memory leak hunt, we spent some time tidying up the client to further reduce the memory footprint of the game. Emotes are making a comeback as well (please see the section below for details). Finally, most of the crafting recipes now pay much closer attention to the raw material properties of what something was made with. Because of this, stats on already crafted items may have shifted.
REMINDER: the servers will be open for 4hrs Wednesday evening. The servers will open again on Friday @ 12pm central and close on Sunday at 11:59pm central.
Bug fixes / improvements:
- Tech:
- Adjustments to how item counts are updated. This is now fully server authoritative and should keep item counts in sync preventing the 0 count bug. "Should" is the key word here. Previously, the client would make a request, the server would answer, and they would both do the same reduction. Somewhere along the way something was happening causing them to get out of sync.
- If your password is longer than 86 characters the client will return "Password too long ". This is a temporary fix
- Fixes to how we handle show/hide helm. The setting should be more consistent.
- Fixing an issue where bonus stats on weapons were being double counted
- Fixing an issue where negative numbers were rounding in the wrong direction. Movement speed modifier on ability tooltips will now read -60% as opposed to -61%!
- Fixing a bug that was causing health & armor weight to be recalculated mid-way through a level
- You can now right click an item in your inventory to move it to your bank.
- Another project-wide pass at reducing texture resolutions in situations where it should go unnoticed. Let me know if something looks considerably worse. In theory this should reduce the overall memory footprint of the game for everyone.
- Deconstruct now has a chance to produce refined materials rather than raw materials.
- Art / Environment:
- Reducing the intensity of bleed VFX
- Newhaven North, Meadowlands, and Dryfoot environmental fixes.
- New region has opened up in meadowlands.
- UI:
- Buff/Debuff duration UI is now colored blue/red depending on the effect is positive or negative.
- Optional components can now be deselected in the crafting UI
- Design:
- Gathering tool durability decay is now a fixed rate rather than a fixed percentage
- Fixing Screen trigger count to be On-Hit instead of On-Perform-Hit
- Fixing typo in Weak Point
- Reagent drop rates and amount dropped increased for most reagents
- Dropped bandages are now equal to crafted
- Assist gives advantage to your defensive target for more hits
- Aid has increased effectiveness
- Higher tier tools now require gathering level instead of adventuring level
- Slightly reducing heal threat.
- Dryfoot humanoids now drop coin.
Emotes
This week we are adding a small batch of emotes to the game. These will ultimately function similar to recipes in that you will be able to learn them from items, quests, npcs, etc. For this test however, we are loading you up with all of them from the get-go so you can test them out. There is currently no UI for these, but you can run the "/emotes" command in chat to get a list of those currently known by you.
The current lineup is: bow, cheer, clap, cry, dance, insult, kiss, laugh, point, salute, shrug, think, wave, yawn. Each can be executed by a slash followed by the name of the emote (i.e. "/clap"). Any movement or rotation will cause the emote animation to cancel. Consider all animations a WIP. The likely plan is to give players ~2 emotes to start then allow you to earn the others as you progress. Would love to hear your thoughts on which you should start the game with!
Handheld items load asynchronously
In our continuing effort to reduce the memory overhead of the client most hand held items have been added to the addressable system (we recently did this with all NPCs & resource nodes). This system allows us to only load things into memory when they are needed. Previously all textures, meshes, etc relating to weapons were loaded in memory at all times. This also means that weapon visuals may be delayed in showing up. Hopefully it won't be a noticeable difference!
Crafting Updates
Crafted equipment now derives stats from the raw components used for specific components. For example, the material used for the blade of a sword will offer specific bonuses where the same material used in the grip or guard will offer something else. Previously, all material values were averaged together creating very similar crafted goods. Materials should now appear to be a bit more focused in their usage.
Arrows/Bolts now have 3 components: a tip, a shaft, and fletching. Tips can be made from either bone or metals, shafts can be mode from wood, and fletching is made from cloth (fletching may eventually come from feathers via new creatures, or merchants). The materials used for each component with contribute to different bonuses. As a result - arrows will no longer stack universally (i.e. Rough Wolf Bone Tipped Jute Fletched Oak Arrows). The fletching recipe has been added to the Forestry profession.
Works in progress:
- Zones: 4x additional overland zones have had an initial art pass completed
- Redshore - accessed via Meadowlands & Dryfoot. Large tree forested region. Mid level range (approx 25-40)
- Highlands - accessed via Meadowlands. Hilly region with sparse vegetation and water features. Mid level range (approx 30-40)
- Gorge - accessed via Dryfoot. Large canyon-like area. Mid level range (approx 30-40)
- 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.
- Dungeons: 2 additional "large" dungeons have been laid out. Before implementation we are working on a general method for spawning these rooms so that they can be populated far quicker than we were able to do previously. This includes NPCs and gathering nodes.
- NPCs: fully custom Bear, Elk, and Spider models are complete and awaiting integration into the game. Ashen creatures are nearing completion as well.
- Design: implement high level abilities, loot table adjustments/population, more crafting recipes.
- Considering giving a native "bonus" to each of the roles. For example, maybe a base defender gets +10% damage mitigation, and if you take the defender flavored specialization as a striker/supporter you get +5% damage mitigation. Still working through what the bonuses would be for Striker/Supporter/Controller.
- Quests: a number of quests are in the queue for implementation/testing
- Tech: npc improvements, npc merchants, smoothing out sit/stand animations. Continued work on reducing the client's memory footprint.
- UI: quest dialog redesign, tooltip redesign
- New clothing & armor is still in the works.
- Expect some chest spawn changes next week!
Stat Consolidation (timeline: ...)
We are planning to drop the per-damage-types for HIT & PEN which would clear up a number redundant feeling stats. The rough plan is as follows:
- DMG - split this up into 1H, 2H, Ranged, Ember, and Mental
- HIT - universal - applies to all damage types
- PEN - universal - applies to all damage types
Reagent Improvements (1-2 weeks??)
- [DONE] Reagent's are no longer required for using specific abilities.
- [DONE] Merchants no longer sell reagents
- [DONE] Reagents dropped throughout the world provide substantially more powerful effects than the "fallback" ability.
- NPC's will drop a single type of Ember Essence (name is a WIP) that will "fill up" a permanently equipped Ember Stone. The amount of essence per creature will vary and it will be automatically split amongst group members similar to how coin currently is. Specific ember creatures such as ashen variants will likely drop more of this essence than others.
- The ember stone is not something you traditionally "Equip" - it is a permanent fixture to your character that cannot be removed, traded, banked, etc. In order to obtain ember essence you must earn ember essence through adventuring.
- Ember Stone's will have a maximum amount of essence they can hold. Later on down the line we may allow the player to unlock/earn an upgraded Ember Stone with a greater capacity via questing or something similar.
- Ember essence can be spent at special crafting stations to upgrade your reagents. The current rough plan is to start with two variants: a) make the reagent do the same thing but more powerful, and b) have the reagent change in some way to provide a different "flavor" which will vary contextually depending on the ability. As time goes on we will add more variants.
- We are also considering allowing players to spend their Ember Essence on the following (please note that all of these are CONSIDERATIONS and still up for discussion):
- use ember rings and/or hollows as a summoning stone (which could be a summon from within the same zone, or maybe across zones depending on the # of people involved)
- hearthstone like ability that would return you to the nearest ember ring/hollow (which would come with a long cooldown)
- adding a temporary "aura" to ember rings that would provide longer-lasting temporary buffs for those near the ring
(update March 16th)
Thanks to some discussions we will likely be refactoring (code stuff) reagents so that they only supplement abilities rather than replacing abilities. This should make it so level 1 reagents are still useful if that's all you have. For example: say a level 1 bandage gives you a static +2 to your heals, when your base ability upgrades from leveling you would still have the benefit of that level 1 bandages +2 heal. Upgraded reagents via the ember essence system will likely stack on new effects rather than replacing the base.
Unity 2021 Upgrade (timeline: no idea, still waiting on Unity to identify a critical bug causing huge cpu usage spikes every few seconds)
In a recent Unity update (2021.2.8f1) some rendering tech we utilize for vegetation stopped working. This update fixed a number of bugs, but introduced a nasty one that prevented us from upgrade for a number of weeks. The bug has been fixed in the latest update (2021.2.12f1) but alas, Unity decided to introduce some significant performance regressions on macOS preventing the update. I need another week or two to continue performance testing before I can push out 2021 builds.
What do we get out of upgrading to Unity 2021? Here are a few ideal gains:
- Engine bug fixes
- Rendering bug fixes (black screen no more?)
- New decal tech
- New skybox tech
- New dedicated server build target. This lowers the memory footprint of the server which should yield better server performance.
- Potential for a native Apple Silicon build.
- Improved code & rendering performance
- Improved editor performance which would result in more productivity from the team
- Better performance analysis tools
Known Issues:
- your screen may at times turn all black. to fix open the options menu, disable reflections for a moment, and then reenable them.
- 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)
I need more details on the following issues/topics:
- For those of you who have experienced the client eating a big chunk of memory: how large does the memory footprint get? How long had you been playing before it got that large (/played command will tell you)? Any idea at what rate it was climbing? If you load into a different scene via zoning does the footprint reduce back to normal?
- For those who are getting the "Cannot interact while busy" message could you provide more detail on what you were doing just before this started happening? Does relogging resolve the issue?
- For those of you who respawn at a location you suspect is incorrect: can you make sure to do a "/report" while standing exactly on your backpack? I need the precise location in order to debug these.
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