ROADMAP & GAME UPDATE A.00.03.41
Good day community! We hope everyone is having a great Friday. Our team is wrapping up February with a small patch and heading into March by releasing the updated Roadmap.
PATCH A.00.03.41: Today we launched a small, but major patch. Read our patch notes HERE.
We focused on the major and some minor bugs that appeared after our Container update. During this update, we were able to find a plethora of methods that items were created. Though this did cause additional unknown issues, it has helped with tracing down how these were done in the current system.
We want to thank ALL of the players that played, tested, and reported the issue, and thank you all for the patience over the last two weeks!
FIXES:
This list may seem small but it was quite the undertaking as the amount of work that needed to be done backend to make sure all was working for the players was in place and intact.
- Buffs Apply correctly:
■ Rest Area Buffs
■ Item Buffs
■ Entertainer Buffs - Buff Timers now work
- Can apply multiple buffs
- Fixed and removed 12 GUI Chompers: These caused multiple errors both backend and at times, GUI bugs for players.
- Adjusted the bank and inventory conversions to attempt to avoid the issues that occur with banks, equipped items, and fittings.
OUR CURRENT FOCUS:
Our current focus for the next 4 weeks is continued bug fixing, Neighbour system inspection, and prep work for the new Item System. We are quite excited to have reached this phase, but we also want to make sure that the game is playable and there are no game-breaking bugs with the current systems.
- 4-week push for bug fix
- Neighbors system inspection
KNOWN ISSUES:
- NPC Carlo Amante located in Plymouth City
■ The mission Amante’s Collections:
■ May not be offered at this time. If you can not receive this mission you will not be able to interact
with him to get the mission Data for the Mob.
■ For those who have completed this mission, Carlo should react as normal. - There are still colored whiteboxes on the island (White and colored boxes)
■ These will be replaced as we update the areas and complete the artwork - The large map has not been updated yet.
■ It will be updated in upcoming updates. - PRE-2017 KNOWN ISSUES:
- (Pre-2017) Some players experience very long load times with a black screen for their initial load.
■ We are still looking into this. It should be fixed once we rebuild the current "streaming" system.2020 04 21 Repop swamp01 - (Pre-2017) Possible crashing to desktop due to the NPC’s animations loading/unloading during area transitions
■ This will be resolved when we get to the NPC revamp - (Pre-2017) Framerate issues when you have shadows on. Disable shadows if you have lower FPS and/or ping.
■ This will be resolved when we update the shadow shaders/system in beta. - (Pre-2017) Possible crashing if you have a full or nearly full inventory
■ This will be resolved when we finalize and implement the new Item and Container systems - (Pre-2017) Framerate dropping when you turn your camera towards NPC locations
■ This will be resolved when we get to the NPC revamp
WHAT’S NEXT:
The next 6 months are going to be a very busy time for us. With the focus on the new item system, we will be touching so many systems that are currently in the game. Once the new system itself is completed, we will have to begin recreating the current items with the new system. We discussed the option of creating conversion scripts, but as we all found out from the Container System revamp, there are so many different ways (classifications, categories, and specs) that the current items were done, it would be faster for us to remove any unused items in-game and recreate the current ones.
We plan on doing a few game updates that will help players cycle through and test the new system. Players will be able to tell which are old and new items based on the icon styles. Once the system is complete and we see it is working, we will make the final sprint and then push all new items and do the mini wipe.
- Item System (Huge revamp)
- New/Updated items based on the new Item System
- Continued GUI redesign and revamp
Outside of our patch content, the next development year will be focused on rebuilding the new systems that we have designed and start getting these out to the players. This includes the Item System and the GUI style and new optimized functionality. We will be giving you more information as we progress through the remaining design and the actual development.
With game or any software development, planning and designing ahead of time is most cruitial. This allows developers to know what they are building and why, as well as help sort out any issues that may arrise later on. One of the steps is creating mockups and prototypes to go along with the detailed documentation. This we have done and are showing you a snippet of what the new developers UX for the new Item System. Though it may be a lot of work up front, this will allow us to be able to create dozens of items in an hour instead of one over the course of hours.
Here is our updated roadmap for the for 2021. As you can see we have been adding a bit more to this list as well as a new colouring system to help the players identify where the mini wipes are planned. From this point forward, you should start to see more performance gains not only on the Mainland, but also on the Island as well.
(Triangles next to text denote possible wipe sections)
■ Website and forum updates
■ New fully functional clean UI/UX with modular style (WIP)
△ Item System (new system) (Next)
△ Crafting Basics (new system)
△ Harvesting basics (new system)
△ Quest/Mission Dialog system (new system)
■ Factions (new system)
■ Races spec system (new system)
■ PC/NPC System (new system)
■ Player Merchants (new system)
△ Horticulture (new system)
△ Adversarial Camps (Spawners)
△ NPC Pathing and navmesh updates (revert to engine default then update)
■ Player gear basics (new system)
■ Ability System (new system)
■ Combat Ability and Skill system (new system)
■ Combat Progression and title awards (new system)
△ Updated Nation System Revamp
△ Housing (Revamp + new system)
△ Player Auction converted to World Auction House (new system)
■ Additional Updates to the new single Astronomy System
■ Start of World Rebuild (area linking (seamless) and rough sculpt
■ Job Billboard system (new system)
■ Updated/Stylized UI/UX with modular style
ROADMAP TASK COMPLETED THIS PAST 6 MONTHS:
- ✓ New container system (Built new Container system and mapped and adjusted multiple item types)
- ✓ New Inventory system for players and guilds (includes the new working expansion bags)
- ✓ NPC Pathing and navmesh updates (Cleaned up Pathing and Navmesh to reduce LOS issues)
- ✓ Updated Nation System Revamp (Cleaned up and revamped current system to work consistently)
- ✓ Additional Updates to the current Astronomy System (reduced 7 parent files to 1, reduced number of files from ~130 to 24)
- ✓ Adjusted Adversarial Camps (not rebuild)
- ✓ Cleaned up and recreated multiple shader files for better appearance and performance on Island and Mainland.
- ✓ Revive and other miscellaneous bugs fixed
■ for Mainland missions, encounters, and other Skills/Abilities.
System Redesign: (Not Development)
- ✓ Item System Design completed
- ✓ Factions Design completed completed
- ✓ PC/NPC Statistical System Design completed
- ✓ Combat Ability and Skill system Design completed
- ✓ New GUI style and functionality Design completed
We also will still be doing the first HE update sometime after we finish the core Item system. When we do this, it will cause much breakage across most of the old systems. At that point, we will begin the parallel development for those systems. We are not sure when we will be doing the first HE update, but we will let you know when we do, and what we expect to experience, or have experienced. Update schedules will then be estimated based on that breakage.
Doing stepped HE updates will allow us to start bringing up to date. DX11/12 will not be in the first few engine updates pushed to Repop. That is still to be announced.
Your continued support helps us progress with our project. We appreciate all the feedback, and tickets we receive from the community. We hope that everyone will enjoy the coming changes and testing with us. As always we look forward to your feedback.
Read our article in our news section HERE.
Click here to join in the conversation and comment on the forums Here!