Hello everyone,
This build is a bit different in that I have removed over 45000 lines of code!
What has changed?
- PTR Database has been wiped due to back-end changes to data structure
- Code has been removed in it’s entirity for the following:
- Items
- Equipment
- Spells
- Hotkeys
- Highscores
- NPCs
- Monsters
- Skills (melee, defence, magic and distance)
- Complete redesign of how the client manages it’s in-game UI
- All stats have been completely reworked as per the new maths backing the game’s progression and combat
- Totally new stat foundation
- Effective stats are the aggregation of your equipment, magics, masteries and vocation stats
- Complete redesign of stats UI, likely many more changes to come as things progress
- 4 different magic specializations
- 11 different weapon masteries
- Vocations are now separately trainable on a single character
- You will be able to switch vocation by speaking to an NPC in town
- Magics and Masteries are global across all vocations
- Each Vocation has it’s own level, so you could be a level 22 knight, 300 ranger, and 12 shaman
- Mana now functions as a unique resource across different vocations
- Mana for Mages and Shamans
- Rage for Knights
- Focus for Rangers
- Various new translations as per community submissions, big thanks to everyone who continues to help with this 🙂
- Mirage Armoury API updates https://ptr.miragerealms.co.uk/v1/armoury/Fhox
- Vocation levels are now visible
- Magic levels and exp are now visible
- Mastery levels and exp are now visible
What do we test?
So many things have changed in the code as per the removal of so much. It is highly likely that unrelated things might now be broken, so really this build is about testing stuff works. Don’t take for granted that because something worked in the previous PTR that it will work now, it absolutely could have been broken with this build. Client UI might work on Desktop but not Android and visa-versa so things might work on one platform but not another, there’s really a lot of scope for broken stuff with this build.
Why did all that code get nuked? Simply put, I realised as I started to try and proof-of-concept the new stats stuff that is going to form the fundamental core of the game’s combat interactions that in doing so I broke a huge amount of code that wasn’t in use. This took me almost an entire day to get compiling again, and it’s code that isn’t even active or useful at the moment. I figured this would happen every step of the way with the new stuff and figured it would be most time efficient to take a week and purge the codebase now rather than constantly be battling old code that would need rewritten eventually anyway.
What next?
Next week I will be working on:
- PTR test command to allow players to switch vocations if they are safe and out of combat
- This will allow me to get all the code in place for vocation switching and ensure everything works correctly
- PTR test command to allow players to set their level, with the server calculating and giving them the equipment stats it would expect them to have at that level
- This is going to allow us to test scaling content and all the maths of combat and itemisation without needing to implement items or equipment
- PTR test command to allow players to set their equipment class to light, medium or heavy
- This is going to allow us to test to a rudimentary degree the difference wearing a full set of each class makes to your survivability vs damage. This is really important as itemisation across these 3 classes of gear should be impactful, with players opting to “mix and match” to suit their playstyle. With this in mind, going “all the way” with either DPS, Tank, or middle-of-the-road gear, with “every stat point should be noticable” in mind, should be significantly impactful to survivability and damage output.
- PTR test command to allow players to tell the server what kind of weapon they are using
- This is going to allow us to test masteries and magics, as well as make sure attack power and spell power is being applied correctly
- PTR test command to allow players to summon monsters that expire after a few minutes at any level
- This is going to allow us to test scaling monsters and all the maths of PVE combat very easily
- Implementing the core logic for each type of resource
- Mana replenishes when you aren’t hungry
- Rage grows when you hit something or are hit by an auto attack, decreases out of combat
- Focus grows when you hit something, decreases out of combat
With the above in place, we will be positioned perfectly to (through extensive community testing) get the balance and maths of progression and combat absolutely spot on before progressing with adding items, equipment, crafting, etc. It is my hope that by getting everything into a place where it is easy for the community to test all of the fundamentals of the game’s mechanics, we will be able to focus entirely on finding the fun.
Once we have all the maths in a good place and feel like the base PVE combat, power, exp, time to kill etc at any given level makes sense then the next step will actually be to implement spells, cast times, buffs, debuffs, AOE indicators etc and start experimenting as a community with making the gameplay of combat fun through spell mechanics, rotations, etc.
This time around I am really trying to do this right.
- Get the maths right
- Get the fun right
- Build the game out as appropriate around this (items, crafting, etc)
Cheers,
Fhox