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31

Update Notes / Emps Competitive Season 2 End and Double Experience Weekend!

« on: August 03, 2020, 10:01:26 am »

Hey guys,

Our Competitive Season 2 has successfully ended. I am announcing the winners and schedule a Double Experience Weekend to celebrate! Thanks to all participants and have fun during the upcoming xp weekend.

Competitive Season 2 Winners
Our second season competitive season has ended and I am proud to announce the winners:

• Untouchable: The Fiend
• Richest account: Polina
• Special comeback: Competitive
• Over achiever: Botlife
• Sleep is xp waste #1: The Fiend
• Sleep is xp waste #2: Competitive
• 500 boss kills: Polina
• Clue scrolls #1: Competitive
• Clue scrolls #2: Crandor
• Clue scrolls #3: The Fiend
• Clue scrolls #4: Null 404

Congratulations to all the winners! We will be handing out rewards in the coming days. The winners (#1, #2 and unique categories) please let us know what sword color (and type for unique categories) you would like to receive.

Here's what different colors (and types) you can choose from. Also feel free to contact us in-game for a live preview of the item(s)!



To celebrate the end I am also announcing a Double Experience Weekend. Starting on Friday 12:00 GMT 14th of August until Monday 12:00 GMT 17th of August.

What skills are you going to train?

All the best,
Thomy

32

Update Notes / Updates June 15th - Collection Log, Map Viewer, Wilderness Multi Areas and More!

« on: June 15, 2020, 08:05:09 am »

Hey guys,

Today's update a bit of a larger one with a lot of new features and improvements! Collection Logs have found their way into the game offering you a way to check which unique items you've already collected. The clan chat system has received a major (database) overhaul and now supports display names in the online list. We have a new map viewer interface that also works on the software renderer. I've also rewritten the code that determines how objects are aligned to the floor resulting in much cleaner ground alignments of rocks, trees, cave entrances, fences, etc. I have reviewed and reworked multi areas in the wilderness to make solo content fairer and certain areas less risky. There have also been some engine tweaks over the previous weeks improving and fixing some fps issues in various render parts. You can read the shadow part later in the patch notes if you are interested in the technical details.

Collection Log
Some of you may already have spotted the Treasure chest icon within the Quest tab. It's a new feature called Collection Log. This interface shows you a list of activities that give unique items. The Collection Log tells you how many unique items you collected. I couldn't pre-fill it with all items you've received in the past because some of them can be traded with other players and it is impossible to track an item back to its roots. So only unique and untradeable drops have been added to your Collection Log. Let me know if you think some items are wrongly placed or missing! This is automatically generated from npc drop tables, shopping configurations and minigame drop tables. Here's what it looks like:

Please let me know what other activities or monsters could be added. Also good luck on trying to fill your Collection Log!

Clan Chat Display Names
It has taken a while but I have finally taken the time to rewrite the internal clan chat system to support display names. It was impossible to get different names for user accounts into the old system because it was heavily relying on the user's name for pretty much all operations. The new system will now update a user's display name in the online list as well as clan owners. Clan chat lists are now also alphabetically sorted prioritizing higher ranks first. This counts for the online user list in clan chat tab and the configuration menu with member and ban lists. I had to write a converter to move database data from the old to new system. It worked fine in my tests but let me know if something is missing in your clan chat!

Map Viewer Interface
The map viewer has always been a little bit of a buggy and unfinished project. I've taken the time to rewrite some parts of it and to create an interface where the map background is rendered. You also have a few options to add additional layers or change what is displayed. The worldmap viewer now also works with the software renderer. It might be a bit laggy but it will open and be usable. Here's an example:


Ground Alignment Code
I've reworked the code that aligns models to the floor. That includes items, objects and npcs. I've found and identified several issues on bridges where it wouldn't work properly with determining the correct height. So before the update you'd have items floating on top or beneath of bridges. I've also improved the code that aligns objects to the floor. A good example for this algorithm can be seen on the picture below:

The oak tree is the same model internally but depending on where it is placed it will align differently to the ground. This code was in the game before but it just didn't work well for large objects or on uneven terrain. This change will improve the visual quality of many areas throughout the game.

Wilderness Multi Combat Areas
I've updated multi combat areas in the wilderness because they were quite outdated. The default multi combat area code for eastern and northern parts was removed. There is now multi zones for following areas:

• Bandit Camp and Dark Knight Fortress
• North of GE up to Chaos Temple including lava spots
• Bone Yard and Graveyard of Shadows
• Western part of mage arena
• Frozen Waste plateau (lunar teleport area)
• Revenants cave (except for entrance areas)

I will be having a look how these new multi areas perform but I feel like this is a fairer approach for the wilderness. The spawn locations of Kolodion have also been updated ensuring he spawns in multi-only zones. There are a few new spawn locations but they shouldn't be difficult to find with the hints given.

Shadow Quality and Performance
There have been several improvements to the shadow rendering code. The shadow frustum now moves with your player in order to give your currently rendered scene more shadow pixels. This isn't perfect but quite an improvement to how it was before. The (imaginary) sun position for casting shadows has been moved up to give the scenery a more natural look. For those interested, I have added a calculation for the shadow frustum to be around the current player coordinates instead of the entire loaded map. This gives the shadow render code more pixels for geometry, especially on lower quality settings. I have also removed the very large shadow maps of 8192x8192. Shadow resolutions are now always 1024, 2048, 3072 and 4096 for low, medium, high and very high settings. With this update I can change the light direction easier and theoretically support a day and night cycle at some point.

Game fixes / changes:

• The climb animation for entering Nex lair has been improved.
• The timer for sharing potions when using stat share spells from the Lunar spell book have been increased from 1.5 to 4 seconds. That means that you cast the spell and have 4 seconds to drink a potion that will be shared with players around you.
• K'ril Tsutsaroth's double slashes no longer hit everyone in the boss room.
• A bug where Rod of Ivandis, Crystal shield and Crystal bow wouldn't degrade correctly was fixed.
• Salamanders can now be noted.
• Abyssal cannon now works with the Abyssal master aura.
• The game no longer applies a hit delay for the granite maul special attack when activating its special attack before attacking an entity.
• The cost function for repairing items in your house has been adjusted and fixed. Smithing levels can no longer have a negative impact on repair costs. Moreover, the repair function has been changed which will make repair prices overall more expensive than they were before. The previous -35% cost reduction was just way too much. You now get up to -6% cost reduction from the repair stand (higher level = better) and up to 8% cost reduction from your Smithing level.
• The rune requirements of several Lunar teleports have been fixed.
• The gates leading outside of the Barbarian agility course can now be opened.
• Walking through double doors that automatically close has been optimized.
• Spamclicking Firemaking no longer cancels your current lighting fire animation. Ironmen will now also get their ashes from their burnt out fires.
• The Lunar spell NPC Contact has been fixed. You can now correctly use all dialogue options without them mixing or bugging out.
• Animation and spawn code of Mutant tarns has been optimized. The transformation happens faster and they (hopefully) should no longer get stuck. I have also added 2 additional Mutant tarns to the spawn area.
• The fly animation of Kal'Ger has been reworked to better reflect his current position.
• Armour case in POH can now be used to store shields and defenders.
• Yk'Lagor has received a few adjustments to its drop table and combat mechanics. There is now a delay of 2 seconds for spawns before they start attacking. Their health and attack range has also been reduced. The heal of Necrolord is now 5-25 instead of flat 25. These changes won't necessarily make the fight easier but make it more convenient and easier to play the actual boss mechanics.
• There are now 2 Agility shortcuts for the upper Kalphite queen lair.
• Chalkos, Sidero, Atsali and Chrysos bars can now be used to repair their corresponding smithable equipment. One bar counts for 125% of their bar requirement when smithing the original item. That means that a Chrysos platebody (5 bars to smith and 20,000 charges) can be repaired with 1 Chrysos bar for 5,000 (20,000 / 5 * 1.25) charges. Broken equipment cannot be repaired with bars. They will require a full repair.
• A bug was fixed where it was possible to train skills while being in combat.
• You can no longer get yourself stuck when planting while standing on a Farming patch.

Engine fixes / changes:

• The floor rendering code has received some performance improvements. There was no check to not render areas that cannot be seen. The roof removal code was also improved to only remove roofs that are close to your camera.
• Farming patches are now shown on the worldmap viewer including their location and vegetation details.
• Further performance improvements determining what to render and what not have been made to large rendering distances. This improves fps rates and performance for large rendering distances.
• Dragged items are now always shown on top and only appear in the interface where they can be dragged. If you dragged an item out of the bank interface it won't be shown telling you that this action isn't possible.
• Improvements and fixes have been made to the ::flushmodels command. In rare instances it could crash the game if used in quick succession.
• The scaling mechanism for images has been improved. It was moved from the CPU to the GPU which now draws the image in full quality and resizes it afterwards. This results in sharper overall images, especially for smaller ones found in spell books, potion timers or name icons.
• Several models in the Dagannoth cave have been properly aligned to the floor.
• I've rewritten some core rendering code which allows the game to not pause when the window is resized or moved. Sometimes these events would have been detected as false crashes.
• The WatchDog popup has been reworked. It now has a "send crash report" button which automatically sends the crash report to me so that I can investigate and fix the problem. If the game cannot restore itself to a working state closing the WatchDog popup will also close the game.
• Chatbox has an opacity slider now. Some sliders now also show their percentages when hovering over them.
• The right-click menu can now show up to 128 items instead of 25. With this change the right-click menu now also supports scrolling when too many options are available. You can scroll through it by hovering the top or bottom of the interface.

I've received quite some feedback lately that new bosses our PvM content would be welcomed. I'll try to focus on new PvM content on the next update. This one has been a lot of utility changes, internal cleanup and improvements.

All the best,
Thomy





Patch notes for June 16th / 17th:

• Fires can now be seen by everyone again.
• A few issues with Collection Log interface have been fixed. Several new items and npcs were also added. Thanks for the instant feedback!
• Vyrewatch can now also drop third-age armour.
• K'ril Tsutsaroth multi attacks have been fixed. They should no longer hit the entire boss room.
• Dropped items now show amounts up to 2,147M.
• Construction song has been added to the music list.
• Several adjustments have been made to the clue completion code. It should no longer create steps that cannot be completed because multiple clues steps are trying to trigger and block each other out.
• The ropeswing Agility obstacle is no longer a 100% failure.
• Completionist cape no longer requires 100 Kolodion kills. Since Kolodion was marked as a boss the Completionist cape thought you also need 100 and not 25 kills.
• Astral runes can be smithed again. In fact using any ore or item on furnaces is once again possible.
• The music player has been fixed. Sometimes songs would not play or the game didn't know the current sound / music setting
• Team balancing in Emps-Wars has been improved. This also affects the HP calculation of bosses. The impact of high/low combat level has been reduced meaning that lower combat levels count more towards the team's total strength. An issue with the lobby interface has also been fixed.
• A bug which would not trigger the lap completion of wilderness and barbarian agility arena has been fixed.

33

Update Notes / Updates April 29th 2020 - Farming Patches, Login Screen Rework and More!

« on: April 29, 2020, 07:32:58 am »

Hey guys,

In this update I've added many more patches that you can farm on. I've also given spirit trees more functionality allowing you to teleport between fully grown ones. Our outdated login screen also received a little overhaul improving performance and visual feedback. Competitive Season 2 is also starting soon, have a look here: https://emps-world.net/forum/events/emps-competitive-season-2/?~22079

Farming Patches
I've rewritten the code that handles interactions with farming patches. You will now always be facing the patch you interact with. Moreover you can no longer walk over patches to ensure you cannot get yourself stuck. There's now also more plantation spawns resulting in no more empty spots. This doesn't affect any harvest rates, it's just visual improvements. I've also added about 50 new patches across the entire worldmap for plantations. All new patches being at least 3x3 in size support trees. Spirit trees can now also be used to teleport to other spirit trees you have planted. You can plant more than 5 Spirit trees but only the first 5 will be listed as teleport options.


Login Screen Overhauled
I've reworked the graphics of the game client's login screen. It now looks similar to the elements on the homepage and offers the option to remember your username. The background and logo image loaders have also been reworked to ensure they are rendered correctly. There were some rare instances where the background image would not occur. The login process was also reworked to work in background without affecting core game logic. Meaning that if you disconnect you can still see player animations playing and move the camera. The UI however remains unresponsive meaning that you cannot click it showing you that interactions are not possible at that point. The reconnect code has also been sped up allowing the game to try a reconnect quicker and more often. Here's what it looks like:


Hit Splat Size
I've fixed some issues with scaling head icons and also applied the same mechanism to hit splats. They scale depending on how far you are away from the text in 3d space. This has limiters, so they won't become smaller than 80% nor larger than 110% of their original size. My aim is to reduce visual clutter in larger fights. Hit splats and the HP bar of your player now also always renders on top of others.

Item Drop System and Death Item Timers
I've received quite a lot of reports recently about people  losing their items and requesting them back through our Helpdesk. We have taken a look at some cases and on rare occasions have decided to return items because they were impossible to be picked up in time. I'm now changing that policy that we are not returning any items lost upon death unless of course lost or deleted by a bug. I am additionally changing the death item timers to 10 minutes. That means that your items lost on death will be visible to you for 8 minutes and an additional 2 minutes to other players. This is more than enough time to run back and grab your gear even if your internet connection fails you. Below's a list of all (changed) item timers:

• Item drop: 2 minutes private and 2 minutes public
• Item drop (death): 8 minutes private and 2 minutes public
• Item spawns: public and refreshed every minute

I think this death mechanic is fairer and also won't punish failing internet connections too much anymore. I know that this has been mentioned in the previous update too but I want to make sure this is seen one more time since it's quite a big change!

Watch Dog for Game Client
I've created a watch dog process for the game client that monitors the client's state and gives you a popup in case a crash was detected. It also collects information about the crash and stores it on your computer for a maximum of 3 days. This feature was created to further investigate crashes on certain computers and also collect information about what could have gone wrong. If you get such a popup please send me the file it mentions and tell me what you've done. I will have a look at it and see if it can be fixed in a future update!

Game fixes / changes:

• Smoke demon champion attack animations and damage of magic projectile has been fixed. There could have been issues with other bosses as well that suffered from the same bug of multi projectile hits.
• You can now use the prayer orb to activate / deactivate your current prayers and set your quick prayers. You set your quick prayers by activating the desired and confirming them by clicking on the orb.
• A bug in the hit calculation system was fixed that allowed people to survive killing blows in PvP scenarios. Overkill was enabled a few patches ago to avoid tick-eating but this bug was still allowing it. Damage is now always applied for PvP scenarios.
• You no longer need a talisman for crafting runes. The abyss can once again be used without talismans.
• Being in combat and trying to open your bank no longer prompts the bank pin screen.
• Limbs for crossbows can now be smithed. Along with this change the smithing animation has also been improved.
• The cap for bonus experience gains is now 25k xp instead of 5k and 50k for Invention instead of 20k. This will make the Invention Experience aura and other experience boosts much more usable for various activities.
• Several bugfixes I forgot to mention or kept track of.

Engine fixes / changes:

• Fog color is now affected by brightness setting.
• An issue with flickering overlay menus has been fixed.
• A few issues within the water shader have been fixed: fog calculation, reflected object color, transparency and water color mixing.
• The visuals of lava has been improved. It's still not perfect but there'll be less overlapping and fewer missing areas.

Good luck in advance for our Competitive Season 2! We will be showing off some of the rewards in the game from now on. In the next updates I will probably be focusing on a new boss and some skilling additions.

All the best,
Thomy

34

Introductions & Farewells / Re: Good bye

« on: April 21, 2020, 07:13:08 am »

I am not leaking any personal or ban related material here but looking at your helpdesk ticket you've been presented the chat logs as evidence. You have been kicked out of the general clan chat for "15 minutes" for swearing. You are making a huge deal out of something that really isn't. We have strict rules in our clan chat and that includes being respectful and using "nice words".

I'm sorry to see you leave the game because of a temporary chat restriction but don't blame our team for enforcing the rules.

35

Update Notes / Updates April 8th & 10th 2020 - Menu Styles, Discord Bot, Aura Buffs and More!

« on: April 08, 2020, 08:15:35 am »

Hey guys,

This update contains changes for many aspects of the game. There's new items obtainable through Silver crafting, a rework for Elemental and Abyssal weapons, Buffs to endgame Invention auras and a few engine changes that improve your gameplay. I've also fixed many bugs reported over the past weeks and added the option for customized User Interface styles. You can choose between modern and oldschool styles.

Menu Styles
You are now able to customize the look of your menu. By default you get the modern gameframe and icons. Click on "Interface Settings" to change set your preferred look.
There's also custom cursors that change depending on what option, npc, player or object is selected. Feel free to disable them if you prefer your own default mouse cursor.

Silver Casting
Several new moulds have been added to Dommik's Crafting store (Al-Kharid & Crafting guild). You are now able to melt Silver bars in a furnace to create new items:

• Saradomin & Zamorak symbols: +10 Prayer bonus and protection from appropriate faction in the GWD.
• Tiara: can be combined with any talisman.
• Runecrafting staff: can be combined with any talisman.
• Sickle: can be operated to grow Mort myre fungi in the swamp from rotting logs. It's also usable on rotting branches and small bushes giving you mort myre stems and pears. Those don't have any usage yet though.
• Silver bolts (unf): can be combined with feathers to get Silver bolts. They require the same level as Steel bolts and are slightly stronger.

Using a Runecrafting staff and Tiara allows you to create combination runes easier. They do not count for runes but will allow you to create runes without needing additional talismans.

Discord Bot
We now have our own official Discord bot that is integrated into the game server. It will forward clan chat from and to discord and offers some utility commands, such as finding drops for npcs. Have a look at our official Discord channel. This is the bot's initial release so it may not always work or be disabled from time to time but feel free to play around with it!

Elemental and Abyssal Weapons
I would like to bring more weapon variety into endgame PvM by improving abyssal weapons and their elemental upgrades through crystals. You no longer lose your abyssal weapon and the upgrade crystal once all charges run out. The item reverts back to its original state without the upgrade crystal. The sink is no longer necessary because of Invention. The maximum charges were changed from 50,000 to 40,000 to be aligned with the reworked aura. I've changed the Whipmaster aura into Abyssal master aura, which increases damage for all abyssal weapons including bows and staves! The creation costs for Abyssal master aura have also been changed: it no longer requires any Demon energy but 100 of each 4 basic energy types. All abyssal weapons have received a special attack that applies an effect depending on their element:

• Ice: freezes your enemy for 20 seconds. It's basically like an ice barrage spell. The freeze is applied on hit and not on cast time.
• Thunder: inflicts additional 15% damage with a delayed hit.
• Fire: puts a bleed effect on your enemy equal to 30% of your damage dealt.
• Nature: increases your enemy's poison damage by 4 up to a maximum of 12.

The theoretical DPS of Abyssal weapons is now similar to the one of Demon weapons. They have a significantly lower accuracy bonus but attack faster.

Invention Aura Buffs
I've identified that quite a few of the higher tier auras are just too weak for their costs, especially those made with Demon energy. I've changed the following:

• Experience boost aura now gives a +50% boost instead of +25%. Please bear in mind that this aura can be used on every single experience gain such as Experience lamps, Pest Control points, etc.
• Demon slayer aura damage increased from 12.5% to 15%.
• Prayer II protection bonus buffed from 4% to 5%
• Prayer III protection bonus buffed from 6% to 10%
• Lifesteal II bonus changed from 4% to 5%.
• Lifesteal III bonus changed from 6% to 10%.

I will be further monitoring how auras with Demon energy perform and adjust them in future updates if necessary. Please let me know what you think of the changes!

Game fixes / changes:

• Construction skill interface now also shows what rooms you can build including their costs. I've also fixed a bug was fixed where the last furniture levels showed null.
• Quiver now uses the first arrow / bolts that can be used instead of the best ones. This change now allows you to choose which ammo to use from your quiver and also change it on demand. Simply swap position of your ammo inside your quiver to change priority.
• Construction rooms can now be rotated clockwise and counter clockwise.
• Fight caves now properly save when completing the final wave and exiting the minigame before claiming your reward.
• The attack animation of Aquanites has been sped up because it was blocking their walking progress for too long.
• Hunting expert west of the Grand Exchange can now string a rabbit necklace for 1m gp for you. Special thanks to JP for writing the script.
• You now get double the amount of combination runes for Runecrafting.
• The bridges of Neitiznot have been fixed. You no longer require an Agility level to cross and also can no longer get stuck while crossing.
• A bug was fixed where dye shards could be turned into dye bottles by withdrawing them from your bank.
• You now get a red chat message when equipment fully degrades and drops to the floor.
• A bug was fixed that allowed you to transform certain items because the game thought they were noted.
• Ancient gladiator animation timings have been improved. It was looking a bit too clunky.
• Trade screen now switches to a two-row layout when more than 18 items are offered.
• Several Agility courses and obstacles have been overhauled. They now look and feel smoother. This change also includes interactions with doors that open, let your player pass through and close again.
• The attack speed of colored Demon longbows has been fixed.
• Areal sounds are now properly playing again. The volume decay effect (depending on how far a sound is away) has been updated. You will now also hear sounds from players fighting monsters further away than before. These distant sounds are significantly more silent than closer ones though.
• Your weight now affects the chance of failing Agility obstacles. Negative weight will increase your chances of passing obstacles.
• The graphics of blood barrage and burst have been fixed. Also the hit and cast timers of several spells without projectiles (barrage, burst, zuriel, etc.) have been updated to better match their animations.
• The werewolf transformation animation in Canifis has been updated.

Engine fixes / changes:

• You now get a warning when attempting to close the game while being logged in.
• The render positions of elemental bows, abyssal bows & staves and demon bows have been fixed. They are now properly aligned when wearing an aura.
• The depth priority of many interfaces has been updated. You will no longer see your player clipping through text on the character equipment screen. This change came with the texture system rework.
• The 300 and 250 fps settings have been removed from the game. They were causing rounding issues with position calculations.
• Animation interpolation code has been further optimized. It now depends on your frame rate and works with graphics and projectiles as well.
• Force movements (climbing over things, Agility, knock back, etc.) has been improved. The position transition is now interpolated and looks less chunky.
• Press enter to chat now properly works when private messaging friends, entering input or having the worldmap open.
• The client-sided walking code has been overhauled. Your position is now interpolated smoother over your fps rate. That means that entity positions will now be more accurate in comparison to server positions.

Texture System Rework
This change went live a lot earlier but I'm mentioning the technical changes for those interested. I've changed the texturing system from an texture atlas (openGL 1.5+) to a texture array (openGL 3.0+). This results in overall sharper and smoother scenery. Not only does this modern system look better but it also loads terrain significantly faster. Particles now also look more detailed and smoother. With this change I've improved particle spawns for elemental weapons and the wildy wyrm too. Shaders (programs on the GPU) have been upgraded from openGL 2.0 to openGL 3.0. Computers not supporting these changes will just use the old system. Rendering images and text in-game has also been optimized through that system resulting in higher fps rates and sharper image quality. The game needs to render image scenes less often because of more optimized rendering techniques. These optimizations work for both the old and new systems! Images or letters that are party cut-off by scrollbars are also no longer streamed to the GPU but properly cut with the new system. Full screen and anti aliasing button have been updated to be toggles. The game no longer needs to re-open its window to apply the settings.

Memory System Improvements
I've received a few reports of lag or crashes over the past weeks and investigated the issue. I've improved the game's memory usage by caching less models and transforming them on-demand rather than keeping all transformations. The game used to keep a copy of every model on every position which isn't quite necessary because there is a lot of duplicates with different rotations or ground alignments. You should feel that the game loads a bit quicker, smoother and it will be consuming less memory. The native libraries are now also stored inside the .emps_world cache folder by default and no longer on your operating system's temp folder.

Please let me know what you think of these changes and what you would like to see next? I was thinking of additional bosses or another Invention batch with new auras?

All the best,
Thomy




Updates of April 10th:

Item Drop System and Death Item Timers
I've received quite a lot of reports recently about people  losing their items and requesting them back through our Helpdesk. We have taken a look at some cases and on rare occasions have decided to return items because they were impossible to be picked up in time. I'm now changing that policy that we are not returning any items lost upon death unless of course lost or deleted by a bug. I am additionally changing the death item timers to 10 minutes. That means that your items lost on death will be visible to you for 8 minutes and an additional 2 minutes to other players. This is more than enough time to run back and grab your gear even if your internet connection fails you. Below's a list of all (changed) item timers:

• Item drop: 2 minutes private and 2 minutes public
• Item drop (death): 8 minutes private and 2 minutes public
• Item spawns: public and refreshed every minute

I think this death mechanic is fairer and also won't punish failing internet connections too much anymore.

Game fixes / changes:

• Smoke demon champion attack animations and damage of magic projectile has been fixed. There could have been issues with other bosses as well that suffered from the same bug of multi projectile hits.
• You can now use the prayer orb to activate / deactivate your current prayers and set your quick prayers. You set your quick prayers by activating the desired and confirming them by clicking on the orb.

36

Update Notes / Updates February 24th 2020 - Dye System, Construction Expansion and Adjustments!

« on: February 24, 2020, 10:26:05 am »

Hey guys,

In this update I've improved some older Construction code and added two new rooms: Menagerie and Costume room. There's also a rework for the hit and healing splat system offering better visuals during combat. Last but not least you can buy 7 new dyes for your endgame gear.

Restricted Area Visibility
Rendering Distance allowed you to see anything on the map, even if certain areas wouldn't make sense being rendered next to each other. This happened often in dungeons or minigames. A good example of this would be the Fight Caves where you could see some swampy areas on the south end. I've added border boxes that won't allow you seeing outside of certain areas. Please bear in mind this update isn't working for every dungeon that there is! I will be adding new areas with every patch. Also feel free to report places where it'd make sense!

More Dyes
I've added 7 new dyes that work the same way as Barrow, Blood, Third-age and Shadow dyes. They can be purchased for 800EC each and are usable on a variety of endgame gear. It's now also possible to use the 4 existing dyes on Ragefire, Glaiven and Steadfast boots/gloves. Hovering over dyes in-game will tell you what items exactly can be colored. Below's an example of how all new dyes will look like:

Please bear in mind that you require one dye per item and once used the dye is destroyed! You can however clean your items to get them back into their original state. Items must be fully repaired for the dye and clean process. Please let me know what you think about that system! It's been suggested on Discord a few weeks ago and was greatly welcomed. I am planning to have more of these dyes as rare boss drops from potential hard modes, what do you think?

Construction: New Rooms
I've added two new rooms to the Construction skill: Menagerie (level 38) and Costume room (level 48).

The Menagerie stores pets and allows them to walk in your house. It's only possible to add and take pets during construction mode due to technical limitations. Pets will also only appear and walk through your home when construction mode is disabled.

The Costume room allows you to build 6 different storage containers:
Armour case: melee armours
Fancy dress box: holiday items such as santa costume, chicken outfit, zombie outfit, ghostly, etc.
Magical wardrobe: range armours and magic robes.
Toybox: party hats, halloween masks, bunny ears, donator items, etc.
Treasures: rewards from clue scrolls
Cape rack: capes

Adding multiple Menageries or Costume rooms does not create new storage containers for pets or items! You can build as many of the new rooms as you like but they will function as one and the same room everywhere.



Hit Splat and Healing System
I've received reports in the past that the hit and healing system wasn't always 100% accurate. Meaning that in some cases the health value shown above your player would not be the same as your health orb. I've linked the HP orb, skill stats interface and HP above head of your player, so that they can only show a single value. I've also rewritten the hit and healing system. It will now treat any hit or heal as damage splat. Heals have priority and will also be queued up when happening in the same game tick. Meaning that clicking a Saradomin brew and Manta ray in quick succession will give you a 39 heal splat instead of 23 and 16. Hits can be delayed a few cycles depending on how much damage is being done.

Helpdesk Mobile Layout
It's now easier to view the Helpdesk on phones. I've rewritten some CSS rules to give it a responsive design. Some buttons and menus may not look perfect depending on the smartphone's size but overall the Helpdesk will be use and readable

Pest Control Adjustments
I've heard your feedback and am adjusting a few issues with the minigame:

• Brawlers stun duration is shorter and their attack speed was increased.
• Splatter damage was nerfed by 50%.
• An issue was fixed where one player could appear on the wrong height resulting in all NPCs missing.

Game fixes / changes:

• A bug was fixed that could get you stuck in POH when attempting to teleport around the map edges.
• Teleports now have cooldowns until their animations are finished. It's no longer possible to stack teleports on top of each other when spam clicking spells.
• Changing certain render distances no longer scrambles your position and forces you to relog.
• Furnace in obsidian caves is now working.
• Render distance now has a larger impact on visible npcs and players outside the wilderness. Generally speaking you will see more entities as before.
• Rest in Pieces quest can now be completed again. It was possible to get the game stuck in thinking the Legs were picked up by everyone.
• The amount of magic notepaper bought in the Emps-Wars ticket exchange was increased from 1 to 3 per ticket. You can now also buy magic notepaper in the Events Point store at a rate of 5 magic notepapers per EP.
• Projectile hits being further away than 64 steps or on a different height than yours can no longer hit you. This change was introduced to avoid being hit after teleporting or escaping a boss room successfully.
• Spectral equipment can no longer be traded in noted form.
• Battle robes now count as Zamorak equipment and Staff of light as Saradomin equipment for npc aggression in the GWD.
• Burrow animations for wyrms has been updated. It now shows the burrowed version traveling. The travel time is depending on the distance to the new location and Wyrms have a chance (25% wildy wyrm, 12% others) to target players currently attacking them.
• The construction add room code has completely been rewritten. You can now build all rooms from a single interface. This change was done to support more rooms in the future. I've also started to work on clipping configs inside houses but didn't come too far yet. The aim is to get Construction ready for a Menagerie allowing you to have pets inside houses.
• People can now only join your house when they can see you online. Meaning that putting private chat off or to friends will allow nobody or only your friends to enter.
• Both the rune bag and quiver now store up to 4 items for non-members and 12 for members. This should make it easier to keep most of your runes and ammo in secondary inventories.
• The Menagerie, Garden and Formal Garden can now only be built on ground floor.
• Extreme potions, super prayer and super antifires can now be traded.
• Larger houses now load significantly faster.
• Vampyre blood can now be used to recharge Vyrewatch necklace (b) at any time.
• Restore pool and potions now remove skill orb times once a stat is successfully restored.

Engine fixes / changes:

• The code to determine text and head icon height has been optimized. It's no longer taking the weapon but only the player head into consideration.
• Staff of light recolors, descriptions and names have been fixed.
• Several wall decoration placements (wrong rotation) have been fixed.
• An issue with aligning the same type of ground items to the floor has been fixed.
• The bag interface (rune bag, quiver, looting bag, energie bag, etc.) has been updated. It now supports an infinite amount of items and dynamically adds a scrollbar if needed. I've also updated the interface's clicking areas making it easier to close it by clicking on terrain. This is a technical change and won't give your bag items infinite space!

What do you think of expansions on skills such as the 2 new rooms for Construction? There is a great topic suggesting new things for various skills: https://emps-world.net/forum/suggestions-ideas/few-skilling-ideas/?~22031

All the best,
Thomy

37

Update Notes / Updates January 14th 2020 - Pest Control Rework, UIM, HCIM and Bugfixes!

« on: January 14, 2020, 10:42:21 am »

Hey guys,

Happy new year! This is our first patch in 2020. Today I present you a full rework of the Pest Control minigame. It features multiple difficulty modes and allows you to collect more pest points. There's also Ultimate and Hardcore Ironman modes with separate Hiscores as well as plenty of adjustments and bug fixes.

Pest Control Rework
With recent updates and hardmode bosses the Pest Control minigame has become a bit buggy and also outdated. I've rewritten major parts of the minigame to make it more enjoyable. There's now 3 different boats offering you 3 different difficulty modes. The black flag contains most difficult version and the white flag the easiest.

There have also been several Pest Control related changes and fixes:

• Portal orientations have been fixed. They are now facing towards the center of the minigame.
• Pest Control now scales its difficulty depending on the amount of participants. Before this would be done in 5 player steps whereas now it counts every single player.
• Splatters no longer explode in front of structures but explodes when getting near players or upon death. The splash damage has also been increased and now scales with the npc's magic level.
• Ravagers now target walls, barricades and doors. Destroyed structures will now be fully passable for everyone. The damage done to structures scales with the npc's max hit.
• Shifters can now teleport to their target more than once.
• Brawlers no longer block walking paths but gained a stun attack.
• More void knight variations spawn in the center of the Pest Control map.
• Bandages have been added that can be used to heal other players or void knights.
• Difficulty affects the amount of Pest-tokens gained.

There's also a competitive mode including Hiscores for the most difficult version but I'd like to test the minigame first to see how different rounds perform. I'll keep you updated on this and show Hiscores on the homepage as soon as possible!

Multiple Clients
We never had full support for running multiple clients. In rare instances local files could get corrupted resulting in crashes or visual bugs occurring in-game. I've rewritten the cache handling part which improves reading / writing speeds and ensures that it's impossible that multiple clients are writing into the same file. It's now possible to load up 2 clients while downloading the game without having to fear any data corruption issues.

Ultimate & Hardcore Ironman Mode
You can now create ultimate and hardcore ironman accounts by talking to the Quest guide on Tutorial Island. The new ironman statuses can only be assigned to newly created accounts while doing the tutorial. Hardcore ironmen only have one life and ultimate ironmen are not allowed to use the bank.

Game fixes / changes:

• Tormented demon animations have been updated.
• Textures for grass in Camelot have been updated.
• The dagannoth area has been reworked a little. Animations of ranged attacks were updated and more variations of Dagannoths have been added. Dagannoth mothers now come in 6 different types each having a unique attack.
• The maximum sizes of the herb sack and gem box have been increased from 50 to 200.
• Looting bag can no longer be used outside Wilderness, Edgeville bank or Grand Exchange.
• Picking up items while having a secondary inventory item with you (looting bag, quiver, herb sack, etc.) will now automatically store picked up items. Picking up 250 noted herbs while having a herb sack will put 200 into the herb sack and 50 in your inventory.
• A bug with global item spawns was fixed. An error could occur which would not let you pickup global spawns in Barbarian village.
• An additional minute was added to dropped items. Items become public after 2 minutes and disappear after 5 (up from 3) minutes.
• Fight Caves completion can now trigger through kill logs by having killed Jad at least once.
• The Slayer task of killing Jad can now be completed in the hardmode Fight Caves. The task is completed once one Jad is slain.
• You can now be assigned Koz as Slayer task once you completed Fight Caves.
• The maximum amount of friends was increased from 200 to 400.
• Kicking a person from clan chat now has a warning that needs to be confirmed.
• The Grand Exchange Price Chart now allows you view prices of up to 5 years ago.
• Selecting your house style now also affects where your house is located at. Leaving your house will place you in the appropriate area. You are now also able to enter your house from all available house portals across the worldmap. Have a look at the house styles to find out which places exist!
• The looting bag and other inventory extending items can no longer be destroyed in the wilderness.
• Items can no longer be destroyed while being in combat inside the wilderness. It shouldn't be impossible to delete or save items from enemies in dangerous zones.
• It is now possible to remove a bank pin completely and to change verified pins immediately. You now only need to wait 10 days if you don't know your bank pin.
• The timer of Fight Caves (hm) has been fixed. It's now showing hours, minutes and seconds correctly.
• Relogging in the Fight Caves no longer restores your hit and prayer points.
• Ancient statuettes now also block you from teleporting when being in the looting bag.
• There's no longer a random animation delay when 2 players are fighting. This resulted in it seeming like one player was attacking faster whereas it was just a delay for an animation to play. This is only better visual clarity!
• Using the wilderness ditch will now always work no matter where you click.

Engine fixes / changes:

• A bug was fixed where projectiles (arrows / spells) would not properly follow entities on large rendering distances.
• CTRL + G can now be used to toggle all in-game interfaces. It's the same as using ::cinemamode command.
• An issue with the spawn rate of global particles (snow fall at GE) has been fixed.
• Ground items now show their amount and show a hover box.
• The RNG option for the Music Player was fixed. There will now be new random songs after the current one has finished playing.
• Animated textures & Animation optimization settings have been removed. They are and are now always enabled by default, which is how it should always have been.
• Demon orb's moving texture can now be seen better.
• Moving textures have received some adjustments. There should no longer be faulty parts on fire capes or magic trees.
• An issue with loading custom map objects upon the initial loading time has been fixed. That could cause magic trees to not be visible outside Barbarian village when logging in there.
• You can now search for people in friends list, clan chat and ignore list.
• Open interfaces now have proper drawing priority over chat orbs and split private chat. It's however still hidden underneath the chatbox. It shows what you can click on top.
• Trade and duel requests now have proper time stamps in front of them.
• A bug was fixed where items on the floor could not be clicked on rare occasions.
• An issue with overlapping water and lava textures has been fixed.
• Walking through entities (players & npcs) no longer makes them flicker or shortly disappear. They'll only be hidden when standing still.

This update contains a lot of small adjustments and fixes. I haven't decided the next big project yet but I think it will be more difficult content similarly do the Fight Caves (hm). I was thinking of new bosses or other hard modes for Nex. I don't think the Demon bosses need hard modes since they are already considered to be rather difficult? I wouldn't mind developing a Demon boss that can't be killed very often though.

All the best,
Thomy






EDIT - Fixes:

• Bank booths can now be used to note items.
• Friends list now correctly shows maximum of 400 friends.
• Can no longer get stuck when trying to pick up an item that goes into a secondary inventory.
• Leaving houses can no longer get you stuck.
• The Koz Slayer task now requires you to only kill one.
• The contents of any secondary inventory (looting bag) are now always lost upon death. There have also been further fixes to the looting bag improving usability when adding non-stackable items. It's also no longer possible to stack non-stackable items. Moving items in secondary inventories is now also possible.
• A bug with picking up items you are already wearing was fixed.
• The kept items interface has been updated. It now shows items lost of secondary inventories and is sorted by item value. This order is also kept when items are dropped to the floor upon death. Valuable items drops upon death will also appear on top.

38

Off-Topic / Re: Tormented Demons

« on: December 22, 2019, 08:55:18 am »

Can you have a look and tell me if it's better now? The "teleporting" is due to them moving around and their attack animations not giving enough time for the walk animation to play.

39

Update Notes / Updates December 10th - Christmas Event, Discord Presence and Faster Map Loading

« on: December 10, 2019, 10:43:42 am »

Hey guys,

The annual Christmas event has been enabled. Deliver presents to people across Emps-World for unique rewards. There have been improvements to the Map Loading code that reduces loading times on slower machines. I've also added the ability to show your gaming status on Discord.

Christmas Event
You are once again able to deliver presents to random people. I've increased the pool of people you need to deliver presents to. Every delivery rewards you with a Christmas cracker that can be opened by using it on another person. Both you and the person used on will receive a random Christmas item. You can view all the obtainable items here: https://emps-world.net/wiki/Christmas_cracker


Discord Rich Presence
Our game client is now able to display your location in the game as well what you are training currently on Discord. The game checks for new actions every 5 seconds. This feature can be enabled and disabled from within the game or on Discord.

Faster Map Loading
I've rewritten how the game loads map chunks when you load into a new region. The model combination code for GPU buffers has been multi-threaded. It's now putting less stress on actual game rendering resulting in stabler fps rates while also delivering significantly faster loading times. This change was made in order to improve loading times for slower machines and to properly be able to use high Rendering Distances on faster machines.

Game fixes / changes:

• A bug was fixed that allowed you to duplicate Ancient armour and Vyrewatch necklace upgrades.
• Upgraded void invention gear can no longer be traded.
• Arrows are no longer infinite in the Duel Arena.
• General Graardor no longer cancels an attack animation with his minion buff animation.
• The Grand Exchange winter map along with the Christmas event have been added.

Engine fixes / changes:

• Shadow camera position no longer moves outside of the map loader. This results in much calmer shadows while almost not affecting visual quality and performance.
• Fog rendering code has been optimized.
• Snow flake particles are now moving around randomly to give it a more natural snow fall feeling.
• The brightness of non-textured parts has been reduced. This improves the look of skin tones as well as the brightness of models when textures are disabled.
• The clip height (roof removal) for several tree crowns has been fixed. They will no longer be removed when roofs aren't seen.

I hope you'll have relaxing winter holidays. There won't be another double xp weekend but there will be double xp Christmas as well as double xp New Year! Meaning that double xp will be enabled December 24th through 26th as well as December 31st through January 2nd.

All the best,
Thomy

40

Update Notes / Updates November 28th - Fight Caves Hard Mode

« on: November 28, 2019, 09:21:31 am »

Hey guys,

This update is mainly aimed at a single player experience. I've added a hard mode version of the Fight Caves offering you new monsters to battle and new best-in-slot obtainable lava capes. There has also been an overhaul of in-game projectiles and their timers as well as some bugfixes.

Fight Caves Hard Mode
A more difficult version of the Fight Caves have been added. You can try the Fight Caves hard mode after having completed the normal Fight Caves version at least once. Don't worry, previous Fight Caves completions also count so you are likely to be able to immediately try out the hard mode. The foes follow a purple color scheme and are stronger versions of their Fight Caves variants. Upon successful completion of the minigame you are rewarded one of 3 new lava capes. The color is chosen by dealing most damage with a certain combat style:

• Orange lava cape: melee version
• Green lava cape: range version
• Purple lava cape: magic version
• Blue lava cape: Combine the 3 capes above

The final boss also has a pet variation. You may turn in any lava cape for a 1 in 50 chance to obtain the pet. With this update the dialogues of Tzhaar-Mej-Kah have been updated depending on your progression state through the Fight Caves. You can ask him about the Blue lava cape as well as for the new pet.


Projectile Timers
I've found a bug in the code that was calculating the timings of projectiles: flying arrows, magic spells, etc. Instead of coming up with some nasty fix I decided to rewrite the projectile timing calculation system. Firing arrows or casting spells in combination with finishing graphics and hit splats will now look smoother. Please bear in mind that it may not be 100% identical to the system before because this one focuses on correct animation timing. This change is purely visual and has no impact on your damage or accuracy. What has changed is the ability to time magic / range attacks with melee attacks better. It's a little bit easier (1-2 ticks depending on distance) to stack damage onto your enemy. I have also removed the fixed hit delay for barrage spells and Zuriel's staff. The delay now depends on the distance between you and your opponent.

Game fixes / changes:

• Infernal mages now properly show in the Kill logs Slayer category and have a level requirement for them to be killed.
• Jad now spawns 4 healers when at half hp. The magic and range attacks are now also alternating a fixed amount of time: 2 mage attacks, 2 range attacks, 2 mage attacks, etc.
• Firecape equip requirements have been updated. You now need to have completed the Fight Caves at least once to equip the Fire cape. It can still be traded and previous completions also count.
• The healer in obsidian caves is now a TzHaar.
• Dragon claws can now be noted.
• Kal'ger flight animation has been fixed - there will be no more teleporting back. His ranged attack has also received a sound.
• Completionist cape now requires the completion of Fight Caves normal and hard mode.
• The Halloween event has once been disabled again. You can still spend your skulls throughout the year though.

Engine fixes / changes:

• Head icons now scale with the distance they are away from the screen in 3d space. You will find close head icons to be larger and distant ones smaller. Health bars / values and spoken texts are unaffected by this change.
• The textures of Ancient Caves whirlpool near Rimmington are no longer invisible.

I feel like the hard mode system is a good way to revive old content and add another layer of difficulty for veterans. What are your thoughts on this? Would you like to see more hard mode variations for bosses and other minigames or monsters?

All the best,
Thomy

41

Update Notes / Updates October 31st 2019 - Halloween, Homepage Layout and Referral System

« on: October 31, 2019, 11:23:36 am »

Hey guys,

I've enabled the annual skull drop system. During Halloween you have the chance to get an additional currency (skulls) by killing monsters. These skulls can be exchanged for unique rewards by talking to the Grim Reaper upstairs in Draynor Manor. I've also updated some homepage code and implemented a beta for a referral system giving and new players rewards for following an invitation link.


Halloween Event
The annually skull collection event for Halloween has been enabled. You can spawn either Muncher or the Skeletal raven pets and collect skulls by killing monsters. These can be handed in to the Grim Reaper for unique rewards. The event is enabled half way through the completion of the Draynor Manor I quest.

Homepage Layout
I've added a play button for smaller screens. These updates also includes improvements for mobile screens that want to view in-game screenshots and news posts. An issue with the screen size for mobile devices was also fixed. It's no longer able to scroll the x-axis on the main page. Size of next and previous image slider buttons were also increased for smaller screen so that they can actually be used by touch devices. The aim was to improve usability for mobile users. Please let me know what you think!

Referral System
It's now possible to enter a referral user when registering a new account. Inviting friends to the game now gives you and the invited person bonuses and rewards in-game. Please bear in mind that we are still testing the system and cannot promise rewards. The idea is that referring new users earns you EP while new users get voting boxes making their start easier. Every referral and referee is examined manually to avoid cheating attempts.
You can find your referral link here: https://emps-world.net/account#referrals

Game fixes / changes:

• Highscores now properly show display names.
• Activity highscores now only show the best score of a player instead of every score.
• Invention upgrades can now be noted properly.
• Kal'ger now needs to do 3 attacks per phase in order to be able to advance to the next. This change was done in case people finish a phase during the demon's flight animation. This fixes a bug where the flight animation looked buggy.
• Mining animation and its sound are now synchronized better.
• Prayer points no longer reset when enabling prayers during the login process.

Engine fixes / changes:

• An issue with a faulty sound delay calculation has been fixed.
• Newly spawned players & npcs are now synced better with the server's direction they are facing.
• Slayer monster head drops can now properly found on the Grand Exchange.

I'm currently working on Fight Caves 2 which will reward you with 3 new best in slot capes. The difficulty of the minigame is designed to be doable in endgame gear. I expect this to be finished by the end of November.

All the best,
Thomy

42

Update Notes / Updates October 11th 2019 - Hiscore additions, UI Improvements and Bugfixes!

« on: October 11, 2019, 08:33:36 am »

Hey guys,

The Invention update of last month is looking really good. Thanks for all the intense testing and bug reporting, it's really been helpful for me. I've adjusted a few aura charges here and there but I think the overall balancing of the skill should be fine now. This update mainly consists of fixes and usability improvements throughout the game.

Activity Scores
Several scores for bossing activities have been added to the Highscores page: https://emps-world.net/hiscores#skill,Nex,0
I've also reworked the skill and activity selection menu to improve usability and make it easier to select a single skill or activity. I will be adding more highscores for various activities and minigames as well as add selectors for given timespans, e.g.: top top scores for current week / month. Let me know what you think!


PvP ELO Decay
All Rune PvP ranks will now decay when not having fought an opponent within the past 7 days. The decay is 5% of the total ELO and cannot bring you below Rune I rank. This check is done daily in the morning (6:00 AM server time) and aims at bringing more activity for the top spots. Once your ELO has decayed it cannot decay again for another 7 days.

Game fixes / changes:

• Silk can now be used to remove poison from weapons and ammo.
• Artefact drops in hardmodes (GWD) are now broadcasted.
• Looting bag can now be bought for 20k blood coins. It holds up to 24 items and can only be filled inside the wilderness.
• Upgraded elemental whips, bows and staves now have 50,000 maximum charges instead of 40,000.
• Hardmode bosses now count as boss Slayer task.
• Hardmode boss HP has been increased and their minion's HP has been decreased. This doesn't increase difficulty much but enforces you to encounter and play their attack mechanics instead of hitting minions after the fight.
• Lunar spells have been integrated into the magic casting system. Meaning that you can queue up to 1 spell (similar to normal magicks / ancients) and can no longer overlap spells with other combat actions. The only exception for this casting system is the Vengeance spell on yourself. It can always and instantly be activated.
• Blue & black wizard robes can now be deconstructed for Robe energy.
• The dialogues for spirit outside of Revenants cave have been updated.
• The maximum charges for all poison auras have been increased by 100% (2k --> 4k charges for deflect). Poison purge and heal auras now both have 2k charges.
• WildyWyrm will now drop items for the top 2 damage dealers.
• Multiple glacors will no longer start attacking you when using their special attack twice in a row. The attack animation for their special attack was also sped up to avoid animations not showing for a later attack.
• K'ril animations are now always cancelling each other out resulting in every attack animation always showing initially.
• The map loading part for Construction has been rewritten to solve a few bugs that can occur when you teleport to your house while another map is already loading. There is now also a limit (7 seconds) for being invisible to others while the map is loading. This invisibility timer (was always in the game) only kicks in when rendering a new player, so people won't just be gone when the map loader starts.
• Chronozon can now be instanced and drops items for the top 2 damage dealers.
• Boss kill requirements for Completionist cape have been fixed. Kill counts over 100 counted for other bosses too.
• Commander Zilyana hardmode now properly drops the Saradomin artefact.
• The ban / mute tool has been updated to improve usability.
• The clan chat "Emps-World" is now shown as "Emps" in the chatbox to preserve space for longer chat messages.

Engine fixes / changes:

• The "Empty" option for items is now prioritized when holding down SHIFT or CTRL.
• The drop model for gladiator maul is no longer invisible.
• The positioning for battle robe, armadyl and bandos gloves has been improved. Please bear in mind that it won't be perfect for every weapon because their model doesn't have a 100% accurate animation skin. So not every animation can properly rotate them.
• Fog calculations have been updated to properly work under water and at map edges.
• Head icons & particles now share opacity of their parent model. Meaning that they become invisible when the player or npc model becomes invisible too. Health bars and values are always shown and are not affected by this update.
• Loading floor tiles is now limited and will affect the fps rate less when new regions are fading in.
• Sliders have been added for certain Game Settings:
  
  The light-green buttons are slider elements that offer more customization for their setting. I've also added a chat height option which allows you to change the amount of rendered chat rows. UI scaling code was also reworked and will work a little smoother.
• Improvements to textures have been made. A few gradient textures leaving artifacts due to incorrect UV coordinates were removed from clothing. I've also fixed a bug that could leave invalid UV textures when changing equipment that would not change your character's triangle count. That is highly unlikely but it could still happen. The color and texture combination code was also rewritten to improve visual quality for floors.
• Some engine core code that handles entity movement, entity overlay and camera rotations has been rewritten. It has been moved into the rendering process and is aligned with the fps rate. That results in smoother camera and entity movements. It should also fix rare encounters where entity positions were wrong.
• Timestamps within the chatbox can now be activated. The time format is automatically selected depending on your computer's language settings. It should be the same as your windows setting.
• The chatbox can now fully be hidden by clicking a tab twice.
• Server time has been added next to the online players counter.
• Ban messages are now properly shown again.
• Losing connection to the game no longer forces the game to reload the map. The reconnect screen has also been updated.
• Ankous and Nechryaels now drop noted unicorn horns. You are no longer forced to kill those mythical creatures for their horn dust!

I'll now be focusing on an invention patch #2 and more hardmodes to offer similar upgradeable equipment the Invention skill already offers. That includes Fight Caves 2 with new fire capes as reward.

All the best,
Thomy

43

General Discussion / Re: Truth - mainly for thomy to read.

« on: September 23, 2019, 11:40:05 am »

If you misunderstood my response feel free to read your helpdesk ticket again. There will be no unban.

44

Off-Topic / Re: xp lamps

« on: September 10, 2019, 01:53:09 pm »

It was fixed today, thanks!

45

Update Notes / Updates September 3rd 2019 - Invention, Hardmode Bosses and HD Textures!

« on: September 03, 2019, 07:26:12 am »

Hey guys,

I am proud to present you our first and unique new skill: Invention. We've had many discussions about the game's economy and how difficult it is to maintain prices for item drops. The skill aims to solve that problem by introducing a sink for most unique boss drops. You can read more in the dedicated Invention section below. There's also an initial implementation start of Activity Hiscores to boost competition for boss runs, minigames, etc. As well as a lot of fixes and engine improvements. You're now also able to select higher quality textures with 0 performance impact.

New skill: Invention
Our new skill, Invention, consists of 2 basic concepts:

• Item Deconstruction: obtain energies
• Item Creation: transform energies into new items

Deconstructing items gives you energies that can be transformed into either degradeable auras or equipment upgrades. You can train the Invention skill wherever you want as long as you own an Invention Energy Box. It can be obtained by having a chat with Manglethorp, who can be found south of the Grand Exchange. Click on the Invention skill and you will get a map marker.
We also already prepared the wiki entry for Invention: https://emps-world.net/wiki/Invention
Not every item in the game can be deconstructed, only those found within the Invention skilling interface or on the wiki page. I have plans for more energy types and upgrades in the future.

Oh yeah... and here's the skillcape emote nobody has seen yet:


God Wars Dungeon Hardmodes
There's now hardmodes for bosses in the GWD: General Graardor, Kree'arra, K'ril Tsutsaroth and Commander Zilyana. The fight is more intense and aimed at a group of 3 people. You will probably require a dedicated tank because some mechanics will deal a lot of unblockable or difficult to block damage. Fighting hardmode gives every participant a 3% chance for a new and unique drop: Artefacts. Those are needed to upgrade GWD equipment via the Invention skill. The other drops remain the same and will reward the top 3 damage dealers.

Here's a picture of the Zilyana hardmode fight.

Activity Highscores
I've implemented a system in-game that tracks completion time for boss instances and stores every completion. The completion time is transformed into a score value and will be listed as highscores on the homepage. I am still working on visualization for the homepage and need some test data. You can already see your score when clearing a boss instance but it is not yet compared with others. My aim is to create weekly and monthly top players for several categories with unique reward containers.

Game fixes / changes:

• Home teleport can no longer be spammed.
• NPCs have been made easier to taunt, especially bosses. They will now focus you even if you are further away from them than other players.
• The invincibility frames after a teleport have been increased. We don't want you to die by a projectile right after teleporting.
• Hunter potions can now be noted.
• The gates west of Canifis leading into the swamp can now be used.
• The Falador party room was updated. Balloons will no longer get stuck on the floor and the timing for popping balloons and items dropped afterwards has been improved.
• Silly jester stick can now be equipped.
• Tank armours are now lost upon death and fully degrade during the process.
• Rugs no longer remove staircases in POHs.
• Unholy cursebearer now correctly registers as undead monster.
• The calculation for price checker has been updated. Most recent trades of an item now have a higher impact on the price calculation. There is a cap so manipulating prices won't be possible. I would like the price checker to reflect recent changes faster though.
• Several "members only" texts have been removed from the game since they haven't been accurate for a while.
• Dieing with a herb sack or gem box will now drop its contents when being in the wilderness.
• Animations for stringing bows and crossbows have been sped up to better reflect the creation process.
• The timing of animations on stairs has been improved.
• Magic and Ranging potions can now be noted.
• A bug was fixed where adding friends would delete people from the ignore list.
• Golden chaotic weapons can now be properly repaired again.
• Caught butterflies now correctly boost your stats again and can no longer be used inside the duel arena when the no potions option is enabled.
• A lot of item descriptions (mostly invention & several others) are now synchronized between server and client. Meaning that the description is guaranteed to always be accurate. This will reduce the amount of work required for future balancing patches.
• The equipment requirement interfaces are now automatically generated and can be changed without requiring a server restart. This makes it much easier to guarantee that correct skill requirements are shown and to add new items in the future.
• You will now be notified when dropped items upon death are moved outside of a boss room.
• A flashing arrow is now shown on top of items you've lost upon death. The arrow removed when your death timer runs out (3 minutes) and hidden when you are more than 100 steps away from your death location. The flashing arrow is removed when either your bones are picked up or when the timer runs out. The death timer orb & flashing arrow are disabled when another player kills you - there is no drop for you to pickup.
• Completing a Slayer task is now mentioned in your chat including the amount of slayer points gained.
• The charges for upgraded elemental gear has been increased from 30,000 to 40,000. Once all charges are lost the item fully degrades and no longer refunds either a whip or an elemental crystal.
• Ticket gain at the Warrior's guild is now affected by double xp timers.
• The code for using various item teleports in the game has been updated. It will now only consume the item when you are definitely able to teleport. This includes ring of duelling, amulet of glory, games necklace, void seal and ferocious ring.
• Additional inventories now show their current and maximum capacity.
• Event Point store no longer sells auras. Don't worry, you can still use your old auras but not get any new ones! A clue scroll box has been added that can hold any clue scroll or reward box. It can be upgraded 3 times to increase inventory size. This upgrade is permanent and stays when the box is lost.

Engine fixes / changes:

• Players are no longer floating on GE tiles.
• The worldmap viewer's text descriptions now have priority over icons. Some area names could not be read because they were hidden beneath icons.
• Searching in large banks (1,000+ items) will no longer cause flickering. There was a problem with the game client not being able to cache more than 1,000 item instances, which is necessary for searching.
• The header text in skilling interfaces now has priority over scrolled content.
• While scrolling you are no longer able to move or click interfaces. This fixes a problem where quickly moving the scrollbar up would move the entire interface.
• The general "make interface" for bows, crafting, smithing, etc. has been overhauled. Fonts have been changed and text now has proper line breaks if it's too long to be displayed:
  
• Holding down CTRL in any interface now prioritizes the "all" option. This works in every interface that gives you an options menu.
• Holding down SHIFT key now also activates all actions the CTRL key does.
• Optional higher quality textures can now be enabled:
  
  It brings more detail to models by using original texture colors without much filtering applied.
• Protection prayer descriptions have been updated. They now contain the exact values applied when activated.
• The quality of images and scaling has been improved. You'll no longer find white borders around interface images. It's now also possible to increase the UI scale to 2.25 and 2.5 for 1440p and 2160p monitors.
• An issue with water planes on multiple heights has been fixed. Water will no longer lose its transparency & shader code. Water reflections still only appear on the water area closest to your character.
• Modern hit splats have been updated to cause less clutter during intense fights. The total duration of how long a hit splat is active has been reduced by 25% and the fade out animation has been sped up.
• A few animation artifacts have been fixed: windmills and boxtraps flickering. Overall the process of animation smoothing has been improved and will cause less flickering for repeated animations.
• The positioning of several interfaces has been updated. This was done to ensure that interfaces always open at mostly the same position on your screen.

Thanks to everyone who has tested the Invention skill in our test world and gave feedback. It has taken quite some time to design and create a custom skill from scratch. I hope you'll enjoy a new skill and aren't too sad about all max and completionist capes being unequipped.

All the best,
Thomy




Further fixes (September 4th):

• Ferocious ring teleports no longer dupe themselves and bug out inventory slots.
• Invention daily tasks can be completed.
• Invention xp rates for anger weapons, comp ogre bow and hunters crossbow increased.
• :: can now properly be used again in clan chat.
• You can now type longer messages in-game. The message will auto scroll and auto linebreak.
• The restock timer for shops has been doubled. It now also resets when somebody buys an item.
• Barrows equipment can now be fully repaired again.
• A visual issue with water reflections of roofs has been fixed.
• Run energy aura now requires energies you can obtain for its level requirement.
• The amount of charges tier 3 auras have has been increased. All auras have had their charges restored, so nothing's lost! Have a look at the wiki for the exact numbers: https://emps-world.net/wiki/Invention
• XP lamps can now give Invention xp.
• Hardmode bosses are now properly recorded in kill logs.
• Silk can now be used to remove poison from items.