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31

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.

32

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

33

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.

34

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

35

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

36

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

37

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

38

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.

39

Update Notes / Updates June 3rd 2019 - Tank Armours, Minigame Improvements and Name Change!

« on: June 02, 2019, 03:49:36 pm »

Hey guys,

This update contains Tank armours & Smithing Adjustments, Minigame Improvements and a Name Change Feature! There are also new in-game ranks and Event Managers are now able to enable double minigame rewards. There have also been several adjustments and fixes to improve overall game balancing. Many thanks for your reports and feedback.

Tank Armours & Smithing Adjustments
Tank armours don't really exist in the game. There's equipment that gives you high defensive bonuses but nothing really that decreases your damage taken or increases your hitpoints. I'd like to introduce 4 new armour sets with their corresponding Defence level requirements:

• Chalkos - level 55
• Sidero - level 65
• Atsali - level 75
• Chrysos - level 85

Each of the sets above cannot be obtained as a drop but has to be smithed, which leads us to Smithing Adjustments. The overall level requirements for smithing items has been reduced by roughly 20%. That means that a rune platebody that required level 99 Smithing prior to the update now requires level 80 Smithing. Experience rates have been left untouched! Training Smithing hasn't become faster but you are able to smith items on earlier levels now. All changes are reflected in the skilling interface as well.

The new tank armours don't give any offensive bonuses but instead give you a hitpoints and soaking bonus. Each set comes with a unique sword that also focuses more on the defense rather than offense. You can obtain the appropriate bars to smith those items from monsters in the game:

• Chalkos bar: Pest Control minigame
• Sidero bar: monsters that also drop dragon items
• Atsali bar: Slayer: Mutant tarn, Gulega, Skeletal wyvern, Abyssal demon, Ice strykewyrm, Vyrewatch, Kalphite Queen and rare chance from PvP crates.
• Chrysos bar: Nex, Demon bosses (increased rates for Har'lakk and Yk'lagor) and rare chance from PvP crates.

Idle Kick Timer
I've increased the idle kick timer from 10 to 15 minutes. Your character will now also start resting after being away for 3 minutes and start sleeping after being away for 6 minutes. The game will log you out after 15 minutes of being completely idle. Clicking anything in the game resets this timer.

Minigame Improvements
I'd like to introduce new and consumable rewards to minigames. I want to make the minigames overall more rewarding for increasing amounts of participation as well as winning:

• Emps-Wars: killing players now grants 0.5 tickets instead of 0.2. Capturing a flag grants the entire team 2 additional tickets as well as +8 for the player who scored. Killing bosses now also grants +8 tickets.
• Pest Control: the maximum amount of tickets you can get has been increased from 200 to 1000. This value is doubled when any double experience bonus or minigame ticket bonus is active. Member grants an additional 10% to your ticket gain ignoring the limit. The maximum duration for a Pest Control minigame now is 6 minutes instead of 10. Portals lose their shields in intervals of 30 seconds instead of 40. You can now also start Pest Control as single player.

You can also buy new rewards now:

• Bonecrusher: Automatically buries bone drops.
• Demon horn necklace: Restores 5-15 prayer points for burying bones. Larger bones restore more points.
• Magic notepaper: Turns an inventory item into its noted form.

Name change
We are now testing the name change feature in the live game before releasing it publicly. Once everything works you'll be able to buy name change tokens from Bolkoy for 1,000EC. I expect this to be soon after this update! When changing your name the following applies:

• Your login details stay the same. We call this your user name.
• Changing your name registers a display name, which is shown in-game and on friends/ignore lists.
• You can change your display name without having to relog.
• User and display names are both unique. Nobody will ever be able to pick your user name as display name.
• Once a display name is no longer used it can be re-picked by anyone.
• Friends list now shows last login and your actual user name in case you are using a display name.

Friend and Ignore List Rework
With the release of name changes I've also completely rewritten your friend and ignore list. You are no longer able to add non-existing accounts to either of the lists. The internal database system for friend and ignore lists also is no longer text-based. This change was needed in order to be able to support the name change feature. There have also been several client-sided performance improvements for rendering friends and ignore list.

Event Managers & Commands
Event Managers now have a dedicated icon next to their name and also received new commands to make it easier to host events. We have great trust in our Event Managers but in case of abuses we have the ability to track the use of every command used at every location. Following commands are now available to Event Managers:

• ::doubleminigame - Enables double rewards for all minigames.
• ::yell - Send a message to everyone.
• ::xteleto player - Teleports to a player
• ::xteletome player - Teleports a player to you AFTER accepting a confirmation box.
• ::tele x y - Teleport to locations across the map to explore areas for events.

The teleport commands cannot be used during combat and will ask the player for permission if teleported. All commands are logged and randomly checked for integrity and valid uses.

Burthorpe Dialogues
The city has received some dialogues to make it feel more alive. Special thanks to JP for coming up with the dialogues and putting them into emps script.

Runecrafting Adjustments
The current state of the Runecrafting skill is a little bit questionable, because crafting runes doesn't feel very good. I've started by sorting out the mess of the skill interface by dividing the level requirements into 2 categories: Runes & All Runes. The first part shows at which level you can start crafting runes and the second shows at which levels you gain what amount of runes. I have also reduced the level requirements for crafting Death, Blood and Soul runes. The level requirements for crafting multiple runes have been reduced. This means you will get more low level runes at earlier Runecrafting levels. There is now also a cap for the maximum amount of runes you can craft. All changes can be viewed in the "All Runes" section of the Runecrafting skilling interface. The aim of this change is to give you more runes for actually training the skill instead of having to rely on good drops or buying from shops.

Game fixes / changes:

• Teleport spells and teletabs can now be used during the eating animation.
• Lunar dream spell now restores special attack energy when used.
• Teleblock timers have been overhauled. A bug was fixed where magic protection prayer wouldn't halve the duration.
• The alch values for abyssal whip, bow and staff have been increased to 713k. Abyssal bow and staff can now also be noted and the item picture for the abyssal staff models has slightly been reduced to properly fight into inventory squares.
• The synchronization of door states in houses with multiple attendees has been fixed.
• K'ril Tsutsaroth drop table has been updated. Chaos rune drop was removed and the additional drop chances (5%) were add to Wines of Zamorak. They now drop with a 9% chance instead of 4%. Zamorak brews are now also dropped as 4 doses.
• Emerald bolts (e) now correctly inflict increasing poison onto your enemy.
• Admins and event managers can now use some commands to assist them in navigating through the game during events.
• Adamant crossbows can now be bought in several Range shops.
• Icons you can no longer use are now automatically removed.
• New icons were added: event manager, wiki contributor, wiki admin and youtuber.
• Daily tasks can now be skipped by right-clicking it in the Daily tasks interface. Skipping a task costs 1 EP.
• Dragon claw special attack has been updated. Some of its code has been reworked to better represent its 4 hit special attack. The maximum special attack damage was also reduced by 5%. The max hit is now slightly lower than the Armadyl Godsword. I've also reduced the special attack accuracy from 200% to 150%. This sounds like a lot but dragon claws special attack is designed to get you extra hits if one of the 4 hit rolls is 0. I want to put the weapon more in line with other special attack weapons and not have one very overpowered one.
• Dark kebbits can no longer be assigned as Hunter daily task.
• The Varrock palace garden has had its plants grown and the Master Gardener is also no longer able to noclip through them.
• A clipping issue with Dusk devils was fixed. There was a general error within the npc walking code that caused the issue. It occurred when npc combat reset with them being outside their walking zone. This allowed them to noclip back to their original position and sometimes got them stuck in other objects.
• Items affecting your maximum hitpoints bonus now increase / decrease your hitpoint stat immediately. This effect is only applied while being out of combat.
• A gem bag can now be bought for 100k from the Tokkul shop in the Obsidian caves. It can hold up to 50 gems total and 8 different types.
• A herb sack can now be bought for 10k from the Slayer Point Exchange. It can hold up to 50 herbs total and 8 different types.
• The prayer bonuses from the Initiate set (Emps-Wars reward) have been drastically increased.
• The Constructor outfit now increases Construction experience gain by 1% per item worn and can be traded.
• Items lost caused by death inside the Corporeal beast boss fight area are now dropped outside. Not in the wilderness, but directly before entering the boss fight area.
• Negative weight bonuses now only count when worn. Having the agile set / boots of lightness in your inventory no longer decreases total weight value.
• Runes can no longer be preserved by half the Magic level requirement of staves. This mechanic is rather confusing than useful. I want to introduce better ways of obtaining and preserving runes instead of having to rely on rolls of random numbers.
• Runecrafter outfit can now be bought from the Slayer Point Exchange. Each piece of the set allows you to craft 2.5% more runes.

Engine fixes / changes:

• NPCs will no longer be stuck in animations.
• Shadow quality settings have been updated for modern GPUs. The settings will no longer request gigantic shadow maps putting enormous computational power onto your GPU. This reduces quality by a little (I couldn't tell a difference unless totally zoomed in on a floor tile) but improves performance by a lot.
• New symbols have been added to the game. I was unable to type / copy-paste those, so please let me know if it works! The following were newly added and need to be confirmed: ąčęėįšųūžå
• A graphical issue on the Neitiznot bridges has been fixed.

I wasn't yet able to start the next big project (invention skill) due to an injury of my left arm. I've had issues with a nerve going from my underarm to my hand. It's nothing painful but it caused permanent tingling in my left hand. Which is... well... annoying. Biggest problem was that it started to hurt when typing... so I was forced to take a bit of a break. Doctor said it's nothing serious but if I'm not forced to do computer work I shouldn't. It's still not fully healed but already much much better.

All the best,
Thomy




Fixes of June 4th:

• Chalkos, Sider, Atsali and Chrysos daily tasks have been fixed. They now required 1-3 items to be crafted instead of ridiculous amounts. Their smithing process was also overhauled and should no longer delete too many bars.
• Demon horn necklace has had its stats removed except for a +5 prayer bonus. The prayer amount restored was also reduced by roughly 30%. The item was just being too strong in combination with the bonecrusher resulting in you never ever having to touch a prayer potion during Slayer task while keeping 2 prayers up. This wasn't the intention of the item and thus the quick rebalancing. I will continue looking at it and see if we over-nerfed it or if it's still being too strong.
• Fletching requirements for bronze up to rune arrows, bolts and darts have been reduced to reflect recent Smithing changes.
• Clan chat messages are now properly ignored when the user is on your ignore list.
• Rune bag can now be used again.

I continued to fix our tools and homepage for the upcoming name change feature. It still isn't quite ready but it'll be finished soon! Once I got all the tools and forum name change done as well I'll immediately release it.




Fixes of June 10th:

• Teleblock is now functioning properly again.
• All shields now have a ranged taunt of up to 12 paces. This should make it easier for melee to taunt enemies. This distance is calculated from the npc's closest outer point to your character.
• Entering another person's house no longer requires you to replace spaces in their name with _'s.
• Necromancer bonuses & names fixed.
• Bonecrusher Destroy option changed to Drop.
• Friends list issues displaying wrong names fixed.
• Removing multiple herb sack items no longer deletes them when there's not enough space in your inventory.
• Many parts of the smithing interface have completely been rewritten. It now uses the level requirements from the skilling interface to correctly display the ability to smith items.
• Smelting now automatically uses coal from the coal bag. This also applies when using the superheat spell.
• Using items on the gem bag and herb sack now automatically adds them.
• Using coal on the coal bag now automatically adds them.
• Auto-retaliate no longer triggers when an interface is opened. This will no longer reset puzzles in the Barrow crypts.
• The level requirements for smelting bars have been reduced. The changes can be viewed in the smithing skilling interface. The mining skill keeps its level requirements because adjusting it for smithing would create a huge level gap between levels 70 and 90.

Name change still needs a bit of tweaking until it's fully working!

40

Update Notes / Updates March 22nd 2019 - Double Experience Weekend: April 5th through 8th!

« on: March 22, 2019, 08:37:55 am »

Hey guys,

Ready for the next Double Experience Weekend? From April 5th through 8th all experience gains as well as minigame rewards and blood coin drops will be doubled. The update also contains a few bug fixes and addresses drops of random event npcs. Many thanks for the detailed reports!


Game fixes / changes:

• Crossbow stocks and their unfinished versions now have shop values.
• Magic and Range version of the dragonfire shield now require level 75 Magic and 75 Range to be worn.
• Eating will no longer block instant shield effects.
• The rune requirements for Fire surge have been fixed.
• The code for removing objects in POHs has been improved. The map is now less likely to reload when removing objects. There are still some objects that require the map to reload, but you will find them less often. Building rugs is now also easier and no longer gives you 10+ right-click options.
• Random event npcs now have proper noted drops. Their combat levels and powers have also been adjusted for higher levels. Evil chicken no longer drops resources but feathers and has a rare chance to drop an untradeable piece of the chicken outfit.

Engine fixes / changes:

• An issue with looping animations has been fixed. This bug was most present in the Falador party room.

I'll now be starting the next larger project which will probably be a new skill. It'll be similar to RS3's Invention that deconstructs existing items for materials allowing you to create new items. I could imagine the creation of double experience potions and similar boosts through the skill. I've also started basic code to support a name change feature which will allow you to set a display name for your player in the future.

All the best,
Thomy

41

Update Notes / Updates March 3rd 2019 - PvP Balancing, Surge Spells and Prayer Improvements!

« on: March 03, 2019, 08:48:23 am »

Hey guys,

In this update I am cleaning up some balancing issues with PvP, improved overall rendering performance and introduce you to new potions. I've reviewed eating speeds, prayer drain rates, enchanted bolt effects, the Revenants cave and our Music Manager. Some special attacks have also been reworked or buffed to be more useful and less frustrating.

Revenants Cave & PvP Protection Prayers

We've identified that the drop rates of statuettes combined with third-age are a little bit problematic. The Revenants Cave offers really good cash drops that make other monsters look bad in comparison. I don't want to nerf any value of statuettes, but would like to adjust the way of obtaining that gold a little bit. The following have been changed:

• Revenants no longer drop third-age pieces. These drops been moved to Gulegas and Wildywyrms.
• Wielding a statuette won't let you teleport anymore. You need to walk out of wilderness to secure the drop.

I've also changed the way PvP protection prayers work. Rather than applying the protection effect when the hit lands on you, it'll now be calculated when the enemy attack animation starts. This change isn't final, but we are trying out if this works better for PvP. This is also how protection prayers work in OSRS. Damage soaking effects are now also applied when the attack animation starts. This also counts for NPCs with protection prayers: KQ, Corporeal beast and Tormented demons. This change should ensure that your experience drops always reflect your damage. Let me know if you still find scenarios where this does not work.

Eating speeds
I've reviewed our current eating / healing code and compared it to OSRS. I don't think there is a problem with the amount you can heal in a certain amount of time. It enables reactionary gameplay without being out-damaged by some unlucky numbers that leave you no counter play. However I do think that consecutive healing should have a little punishment. That's what I could also find in how OSRS handles healing - they simply delay your attacks. This was already done in emps, but the punishing attack delay only applied when you were about to hit. So if you just hit your opponent and healed up your outgoing damage would not be affected at all. I am now always applying this punishing attack delay. Eating any kind of food puts a 3 tick (=1.5 seconds) delay on your next attack no matter what your current attack timer may be. This does NOT AFFECT the amount of food you can consume or the speed at which you do. This is a change to your dps while healing and not your healing power! The delay for brews is only 1 tick (=0.5 seconds). If you combine a brew with any other type of food it will still be 3 ticks though. Purple sweets have an eating delay of 1 tick.

Rendering Engine Overhaul
Large rendering distances required enormous CPU power, because every single tile (a position where your character can stand on) was marked to be drawn for the GPU. I'm now grouping 8x8 tiles together and decide if they all need to be rendered or not. The GPU buffers already had this mechanism, but the rendering loop was still checking tiles individually. With this update the stress on your CPU is much much lower, especially on higher rendering distances. I had no problems getting steady 50-60fps on my laptop on the integrated graphics chip with 80-100 RD. This gives the game also more time to focus on loading and keeping a more stable fps rate. You will no longer see it change that much by changing your camera's angle. Why am I doing this? I felt like the game wasn't running too well on weaker laptops and wanted to improve the situation. Please let me know if this change improves overall performance for you!

Surge Spells & Teleport to House

I've added 4 new magic spells and a teleport to your house to the normal spell book:

• Wind surge: 7 air, 2 death and 2 blood runes. Base damage: 30
• Water surge: 10 water, 7 air, 2 death and 2 blood runes. Base damage: 31
• Earth surge: 10 fearth, 7 air, 2 death and 2 blood runes. Base damage: 32
• Fire surge: 10 fire, 7 air, 2 death and 2 blood runes. Base damage: 33

For comparison: The base damage of the Ice barrage spell is 30. The damage of wave spells has also been nerfed to better fit their level requirement.

Potion Cleanup
This change focuses mainly on prayer points restoration and addresses prayer and restore potions:

• Prayer potions remain unchanged. They restore 7 prayer points plus your max prayer level multiplied by 0.25.
• Super restore potions no longer restore run energy and 8 prayer points plus your max prayer level multiplied by 0.25. Run energy restoration should be on energy potions.
• Energy potion remains untouched, but the super energy potion now restores 20% run energy instead of 15%.
• You can now make super prayer potions that restore 7 prayer points plus your max prayer level multiplied by 0.35. They are now the best source for restoring prayer points. Super prayer potions can be made by putting large demon bones into a prayer potion (3).
• Prayer renewal: Restores 12 + max prayer level multiplied by 0.43 over 5 minutes. It can be created by combining Morchella mushrooms and Fellstalk potions. The new ingredients have been added to Farming, Herblore and monster drop tables. The Fellstalk herb and its seeds is dropped by high level Slayer monsters that dropped torstol herbs or seeds. The Morchella mushroom seeds can be found as rewards from the Barrows minigame.

Prayer Adjustments
I've reviewed and reworked the way the prayer drain rate (prayer point you lose per second) is calculated. I've taken following page as inspiration and implemented identical drain rates: https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Prayer
This change slightly increase the overall prayer drain rates, but also makes equipment with prayer bonuses more useful. With the addition of new prayer potions this won't affect PvMing too much but is rather targeted at PvP where running out of prayer is now a more likely possibility. I've also updated the level requirements for Magic & Ranged Chivalry & Piety prayers. Combining all offensive prayers is also no longer possible

Music Managing System
I've found and fixed a bug that would not highlight found songs correctly. I've also updated several areas with songs that were previously missing:

• Neitiznot islands
• God Wars Dungeon
• Barrows & Har'Lakk
• Glacors & Yk'Lagor
• Kal'Ger
• Ancient caves
• Pest Control
• Blood altar

I was also able to find a list of pretty much all missing song ids and was able to patch a few areas where the song id was missing. So in theory it should be possible to configure all 352 songs at some point. I now also have the ability to add custom song names to the music list - Blood altar being the first example.

Enchanted bolt effects
I've reviewed and reworked the effects of enchanted bolts a little bit to make sure they are useful in PvM and PvP scenarios. They will not out damage ancient bolts, but can be useful in various situations. I also identified and fixed a bug where bolt effects would not correctly show their application animation on players.

• Sapphire bolts (e): Reduces enemy prayer points by 10% of your current prayer points. You also steal half of the reduced enemy prayer points and add them to your prayer points. When fighting monsters this effect restores 2 prayer points.
• Emerald bolts (e): Inflicts 3 poison damage that can stack up to 15.
• Ruby bolts (e): Now deals 20% of enemy's current health instead of 10%. This is still capped at 30 though.
• Diamond bolts (e): Completely ignores the enemy's defence and guarantees a hit. The damage is also increased by 15%.
• Dragonstone bolts (e): Ranged strength bonus reduced from 116 to 108.
• Onyx bolts (e): Ranged strength bonus reduced from 116 to 110.

While Crossbows give you great damage they are over performing when compared to other weapons or combat styles. I don't think crossbows themselves are the problem, but enchanted bolt effects. I didn't want to nerf the attack speed of crossbows, but I am changing the proc chances of enchanted bolts. By default the proc chance is now 15% instead of 20%. Onyx & Dragonstone bolts (e) were reduced down to 10% and emerald bolts (e) increased to 30%. The reason behind this change is that onyx bolts (e) were even stronger than ancient bolts while also providing a free heal every few hits. Dragon bolts (e) have the potential to deal 24 additional damage (assuming active Overload potion) allowing you to hit 80+ quite frequently. They have a natural counter with antifire potions, but I don't think it should be necessary to require PvPers to have them with you all the time. A small reduction in their max hit and proc chance should solve the issue and bring more variety to Ranged PKing.

Game fixes / changes:

• Teleblock is now halved when mage protection is active. There's now also a chatbox message telling the duration of the teleblock.
• The animation timings have been updated for teleblock and all bind spells. This is only a visual improvement!
• Restoration pool now properly restores prayer points. It also acts as a chaos altar boosting your maximum prayer points by 10% for 5 minutes.
• Monsters can no longer die in the middle of a teleport or special action. That means you can no longer kill any of the Demon bosses while they perform a jump or are flying across the map. This fixes an issue where minions spawned by Har'lakk would never despawn.
• Har'lakk no longer spawns random minions during the fight. To cope with this change the HP of minion spawns have been increased from 75 to 90.
• Spirit shield protection special has been updated. It now blocks any kind of incoming damage, also deflections from vengeance.
• Bows firing 2 arrows now require at least 2 arrows in your ammo slot or quiver.
• Certain fully degraded items are no longer duplicated.
• Several clue scroll places for digging that could not be accessed have been fixed.
• The 2nd hit of a special attack now counts towards the Pest Control total hit counter.
• Morrigan's javelin special attack has been updated. The special attack damage multiplier was reduced to 125% from 135%. The initial hit now deals the full special attack damage and applies a bleed effect of equal damage. The bleed effect no longer ticks in 6 total hits. It has been changed to hit 5 onto your opponent until the total damage has been dealt. The bleed effect now ticks every 1.5 seconds instead of every second and is registered as magical blood damage. This means you can use the Protect from Magic prayer to reduce the bleed damage. It's also possible to stack bleeds now. The damage of stacked bleed effects will be combined and tick as higher damage. So if 2 players spec you the bleed will tick every 1.5 seconds for 10 damage instead of 5.
• Morrigan's throwing axe special attack max hit buffed by 10%.
• The stat restore effect of Overloads has been weakened for PvP zones. This excludes minigames but includes the safe wilderness in Al'Kharid. Overloads restore up to 6 missing levels of lowered stats every 2 seconds. In PvP zones they will now restore up to 2 missing levels of lowered stats every 2 seconds. The idea behind this change is to make stat lowering special attack weapons and effects not worthless while still being able to use the overload effect for brew healing.
• Combination runes now properly show their amounts for Magic interfaces.
• NPC aggression inside minigames has received a little adjustments. Monsters now always walk up to the player inside the Fight Caves minigame. Prior to the update they would just wait at their spot when not seen by the player. The Italian boot safespot has also been fixed.
• Unclippable cell doors inside Rogue's castle have been removed.
• A bug was fixed where fully degraded weapons that got unequipped were deleted when there was no space in inventory. They now correctly drop on the floor.
• A lot of actions can now be used when being 5 seconds out of combat instead of 10: Quest tab teleports, trading, banking, skillcapes, skilling, xp lamps, etc.
• Zaryte bow now has an accuracy bonus of 124 instead of 106. It should have never been weaker than God bows.
• Vesta spear special attack: The special attack delay has been removed and the damage is now applied in 2 immediate and 1 delayed hit.
• Vesta longsword special attack max hit increased by 5%.
• Statius warhammer special attack max hit increased by 15%.
• A lost vyrewatch necklace (b) upon death now drops remaining vampire blood on the ground.
• You can now smith range and magic variants of the dragonfire shield. They come with different colors and appropriate combat class bonuses.
• Butterfly nets can now be properly equipped again and used for catching butterflies.
• Daily tasks can now include Hunter and Construction skilling tasks. PvP kills have also been added to daily activity tasks.
• Construction skill interface now also contains all required building materials.
• Random events can no longer spawn inside objects.
• Spell effects no longer have double the accuracy to hit.
• Prayer bonuses for Templar set have been doubled.
• You no longer hear an armour block sound, but the player hurt sound when being hit by an enemy hitting non-zero on you.
• The Armadyl godsword special attack damage has been buffed by 5%.
• Teleporting now also cancels all incoming spell effects. That means that you can no longer be teleblocked, frozen, etc. during a teleport animation.
• Special attack cost for Zaryte bow and Seercull have been reduced from 75% to 60%.
• Holiday quests no longer count towards the completion requirement of the Completionist cape.
• A visual bug with dragon claws was fixed wher the 3rd and 4th hit sometimes would not be shown.

Engine fixes / changes:

• Position of amulets has been finetuned. There was an issue with amulet of glory on female black dragonhide body.
• Scrollbar rendering has been improved. The up/down arrows now have a hover action and the chatbox scrollbar buttons have been fixed. Using the mousewheel to zoom or scroll an interface will now also work with uncapped fps rates.
• Moving interfaces has received a few tweaks. You can no longer move an interface over the chatbox, minimap or inventory.
• An issue with the running animation for staves and whips has been fixed.
• Clicking areas for ground aligned npcs have been improved. The rotations were only done in the GPU but left out in the CPU for hovering and clicking checks. The model on the CPU is now aware of its full rotation.
• The quality and smoothness for interpolated rotations in animations has been improved.
• Clicking areas for small objects and npcs now dynamically increase to make it easier to be able to click on small things.
• Interface scaling now uses interpolation and looks much smoother. Certain artifacts of text or images not blending in correctly have also been fixed. You should no longer feel like your UI looks very blurry when using that setting.
• Clicking areas for fixed-screen mode have been fixed.

There will probably be a few adjustments in the coming days to fix bugs or other balancing issues. I'll then start development on the next big update and got a few things in mind:

• Invention skill: deconstruction of items to obtain materials that allow you to craft powerful utilities. These could aid you in combat, improve skilling, improve xp rates, etc.
• Construcion batch #2: dungeons & menagerie
• 3D sound engine
• Quick prayers
• Fully accessible Karamja: A quest that introduces Karamja including the jungle and Marim (Ape atoll). The map would be configured with new skilling activities and a fully accessible Karamja area.
• OSRS players & nps: This would update the visuals of your player and npcs (where possible!!) to look similar to OSRS characters. Having the same map is an impossible task, because of all the differences in positions. I'd basically have to rewrite the entire game to achieve that and I doubt that'll ever be worth the effort and time. What could be done is to introduce OSRS maps as new and separate areas. We'd have 2 versions of the GE, barbarian village, etc. However I feel like this would be really confusing and also unnecessary. I've already started this project a while ago, but stopped due to the amount of issues and bugs that occurred graphically and logically. Would this still be a thing?
• Fight kiln - a new single player minigame with 3 new capes as reward.

I've listed a few things that I've thought of recently and have been planned in the past. What are your thoughts on this? What would you like to see in the game this year? Not all things mentioned above require an equal amount of development time. I'm just interested in the rough direction updates should be going.

All the best,
Thomy




Fixes March 7th:

• Runes from the Rune bag no longer display double for Surge spells.
• Teleport to House now grants Magic experience.
• Prayer renewal potions can now properly be noted and their effect is stored when logging out.
• Prayer restoration upon death is now properly working.
• Morchella mushroom spore plantations can now properly be interacted with. There was a bug that wouldn't let you rake them from special angles.
• Restoration pool and staircase Construction daily tasks have been removed.
• The tutorial NPC Thomy in Barbarian village was fixed. You can now either correctly abort or play through the tutorial.
• The login code has slightly been adjusted. Some people had issues when logging into the game. I've slowed down the login process by 2 seconds to ensure no data corruption or disconnect happens during that time. Do not worry about this - Unless you are fully logged in nobody is able to see you!!

42

Update Notes / Updates January 25th 2019 - Activity / Kill Log Overhaul and Completionist Cape!

« on: January 25, 2019, 08:58:01 am »

Hey guys,

I hope you've all had a great Christmas and a happy New Year! I've also taken a little break and spent some time with my family and friends. The update of today contains the Completionist cape, a rework of the Kill Logs, adds counters for various activities and releases 7 new pets that are rewards from the Pest Control minigame. Santa has also finally decided to leave the Grand Exchange and will be back next year!

Completionist Cape
You can now obtain the Completionist Cape by visiting the top floor of Varrock's museum. Requirements to wear this cape can be found in the museum when clicking on the cape and may be changed at every update! Wearing the Completionist cape requires having completed most of our content many times.

Colours can be changed dynamically through the colour picker or by providing RGB values. I've decided that it's easier to select and use colours in RGB space rather than HSL (RS comp cape) for those interested. The colour picker is in HSL space, because imho that is a more natural selection of colours. You are also able to load and save up to 10 presets, the first preset is the cape's default colours and cannot be overwritten.

Monster Kill Log
I've decided to completely rework the Kill Log interface to increase its usability. You are now given your kills as a table, which can be sorted alphabetically, by total kills or by your streak. The third column called streak allows you to set a unique counter for every monster that you kill. You can reset it at any given time. The interface also allows you to search for a given monster. The bottom row has a selection or pre-defined filters:

• All monsters
• Boss monsters
• Slayer monsters

Please let me know what you think of it and how it could be improved in the future. Below's a screenshot showing off the Monster Kill Log interface:


Activity Completion Log
With a rework of monster kill logs I've decided to also create an interface where you can see counters for numerous activities. I'm sorry to say that I cannot travel back in time and collect data of previously completed activities... so most of the counters will start from 0.

I've added a few activities that I find interesting to be counted. Do you have any ideas for other activities that could be counted and put into this interface? Please let me know!

Pest Control Pets
You can now buy 7 different and iconic pets from the Pest Control minigame. Each pet costs 15k pest tokens and cannot be traded with other players.


Additional Map Spawns
I've found that some objects weren't properly spawned. They simply were missing their configs and turned invisible. Barbarian village will now contain several new objects. This also counts for several other areas around the map.

Game fixes / changes:

• Rest in Pieces quest fixed. You can now properly continue the initial dialogue and finish the quest.
• Desert War quest finetuning. The fights show now properly start with proper aggression and timings. Before the updates some bandits could get stuck or not fight correctly. Slash Bash is now also able to clip through npcs.
• Tormented demon block animation fixed and head prayers are now properly shown again.
• Projectile hits can no longer be queued up when a monster dies.
• Items can no longer be unequipped while doing the max cape animation.
• Iron up to rune bolts can now properly be poisoned. The poisoned ammo wouldn't register properly prior to this update.
• The passive lifesteal bonus of onyx bolts (e) has been removed. The healing proc was fixed and now shows properly.
• Cannonballs are now properly deleted again when used by hand cannons.
• High and Low level alchemy can now be used on every item. A warning will pop up for valuable and untradeable items though.
• High level alchemy spell cast delay lowered from 3 seconds to 2. Meaning that you can now cast the spell once every 2 seconds instead of 3. This will make the overall alching process much smoother and also faster.
• A bug in Duel Arena was fixed where doing a skillcape emote wouldn't unequip items set by rules.
• Emps-Wars minigame npcs now respawn when a new round starts. That will fix position issues and ensure all stuck npcs are properly reset. Interactions with the barriers that leave your lobby are now also smoother.
• Clan chat now supports temporary bans of 15 minutes, 1 hour and 24 hours. Upon banning a player you are presented a selection of options.
• New wings now grant protection in the GWD.
• A restoration pool requiring level 92 Construction can now be built inside your house. It removes all negative effects and also restores Special attack energy.
• Santa and the Christmas tree have left the Grand Exchange. I hope you've had fun delivering presents!
• A bug was fixed where non-members could use placeholders in bank tabs reserved for members only.
• The max hit button within the quest tab has been replaced with a button to view your activity log. Your hit details can be viewed on the Equipment Screen so the max hit button has become somewhat obsolete and thus was replaced.
• A bug was found that made issuing random events extremely rare. You should now be seeing the mime event as well as combat events during skilling more frequently. With this fix the drunken dwarf event has also completely been overhauled.
• Beer stations inside POHs can now be built with any beer item that matches. You no longer need special beers out of other houses for this to work.
• Smoke demon champion now requires level 90 Slayer to be assigned and killed.
• Dragon claws special attack was completely overhauled. It was a little bit buggy and dealt less damage than it actually should have done.
• Fully degraded items are now unequipped. If there's no space in your inventory they'll be dropped to the ground.

Engine fixes / changes:

• Special attack hover now tells you the special attack's effect. It's the same description as hovering the weapon.
• Image and text scaling has been improved. You will experience better quality on smaller laptop screens and UHD or 4K monitors.
• Normal and ancient magic hover boxes inside the spell book interface have had their positions fixed.
• Animations of gargoyle statues in front of Slayer Tower have visually been updated.
• The software renderer has received various visual fixes. It hasn't been updated in a while and a lot graphical issues could successfully be resolved.
• Player and NPC attack option priority can now be set separately.
• The performance of rendering images and text of sub interfaces containing scrollbars has been optimized. The GPU is now cutting out the scrollbar area properly and the game no longer needs to do that manually. This removes fps drops when opening or scrolling in interfaces.
• The particle system has been updated. Quality of multiple particles stacking on top of each other is now improved. Particles with higher transparency values are rendered first.
• The way map objects are spawned has been improved. Map overlay objects (magic trees, additional rocks in barbarian, etc.) are now spawned from within the actual map loading code rather than placed as overlay later on. That will fix flickering issues and could also solve problems where the wrong object is displayed after a resource has depleted.
• Pet actions are no longer the default left click option. You now always need to right-click pets in order to talk or pick them up.
• The positioning for female Bronze - Rune claws has been fixed.

This update is one of the largest I've ever done at once. I hope there aren't too many bugs throughout all the new content. Please don't hesitate to report issues on Discord or in the Bug Reports section: https://emps-world.net/forum/bug-reports/
Good luck on your Completionist cape grind!

All the best,
Thomy



Fixes of 26th:

• Various rendering issues within interfaces have been fixed: Bank, kill logs, chat, etc.
• Kolodion kills now properly count towards the Completionist cape requirement.
• A bug with the counter of obtained blood coins was fixed. I had to reset all existing values, because they were completely random. Sorry!
• Doors inside the Barrows minigame are working again.
• Random event spawns are now more random and limited to once per hour. This immunity resets when you relog!
• An issue was found that was the reason for many npc despawns in random scenarios.
• Clan chat bans from the Emps-World channel are now logged in punishment history.
• Completionist cape requirements and progress can now also be shown by right-clicking the Max cape.

43

Update Notes / Updates December 5th - Winter Special, New Wings, Gulega and Fixes!

« on: December 05, 2018, 08:43:31 am »

Hey guys,

This update contains a collection of changes and fixes as well as re-enabling present deliveries for Christmas. There's also 5 new wings in the donator store and a new high level Slayer monster has appeared in the mage arena (level 50+ wilderness) dropping the Zaryte bow.

Winter Weekends
Some of you may have already heard or read about our winter weekend special. We'll be having double xp, double minigame token, free member and event weekends through December. You can read more details and obtain the full schedule here: https://emps-world.net/forum/news-announcements/emps-world-winter-weekends/?~21532

New Wilderness Slayer Monster - Gulega
A new and dangerous foe has appeared inside the Mage arena (wilderness). Their best drop is the Zaryte bow (1 in 250) introducing a new tier 82 shortbow. It has infinite ammo and needs to be repaired after 20,000. Gulegas require level 89 Slayer to be killed.

Its droptable will soon appear on the wiki. Due to the recent demand in vials I've given it a common 80-120 noted vials of water drop. That's not completely solving the problem of obtaining vials, but it will definitely ease the process on higher accounts.

General Wings
All bosses from the God Wars Dungeon have received a special wing type. These resemble the actual general's look rather than their god:

• Kree'arra wings
• Nex wings
• Graardor wings
• Zilyana wings
• Tsutsaroth wings

Christmas Event
I've enabled the Christmas event(s) from the past years. I'm still looking into the creation of new items and rewards, but you're already able to complete or ruin parcel deliveries. The Christmas tree along with snow drifts have also been re-added into the game!

I've also slightly edited the floor and created a snowing effect through the particle system.

Helping out the Chef, Taxidermist and Big Fish Exchange
Special thanks to JP for creating a new miniquest, the Taxidermist and Big Fish Exchange through emps-script. You can start the miniquest called Helping out the Chef north-east of Barbarian village. The Taxidermist can be found in Canifis buying unused slayer head drops for good money. Harry in Catherby exchanges big fishes (bass, swordfish, shark) for 100 noted small equivalents. If you're also interested in adding content to the game through the scripting language, contact us on Discord!

Game fixes / changes:

• NPCs will no longer be aggressive while being inside the tutorial of Thomy showing you the game.
• You can no longer equip all items from the bank interface.
• Kal'Ger now correctly resets his attack phases when getting out of combat.
• A bug within the Construction code was fixed, which allowed you to stay registered inside a house although already having left it.
• Items that can no longer be equipped will now automatically be unequipped.
• Teleports now make you invincible when being casted instead of when being applied. That means that the moment you start teleporting it's impossible to die during that animation.
• Several items have had their options fixed: coal bag, enchanted gem, yo-yo and pouches.
• The attack interface of crossbows has been reworked. It now shows an image of a crossbow instead of a bow.
• Cyclopses now share the drop table of Hill giants. Defender drop rates remain untouched.
• Resetting skilling actions now also properly resets your current animation. Meaning that turning away from mining a rock or an event occurring forcing you to stop doesn't only cancel your action but also the mining animation in this example.
• Following monsters have had their drop tables improved: Bloodvelds, Warped terror birds, Cave horrors, Aberrant spectres, Smoke and Dust devils, Goraks, Nechryaels, Dark beasts and Mutant tarns. These drop tables were quite old and outdated and needed additional refinement. Slayer monsters should be profitable kills, especially the ones having a high requirement to be killed. Please allow us some time in order for the changes to appear on the wiki too!
• Mutant tarns combat behavior improved. The npc now has a size of 2x2 instead of 3x3, attacks faster and received additional attacking distance. This change was done in order to reflect the buffed drop rates.
• Brutal green and Mithril dragons no longer drop 2 dragon bones. Green brutal dragons now drop 1-4 (was 1) green noted dragon hides and mithril dragons 4-12 (was 6) noted mithril bars.
• An issue with sending emails to walla emails has been fixed. The provider would not render e-mails if they contained the @ symbol.
• Halloween event has officially ended. You can still complete the quest and buy rewards, but Skull drops have been disabled.
• Several items can now properly be equipped again. Special thanks to the following topic and reporting the items: https://emps-world.net/forum/bug-reports/unequippable-items-list/?~21478
• Plank Make spell now completes a full inventory (28) instead of 13 logs in the same amount of time.
• Items lost upon death inside the Barrows minigame are now dropped at the graveyard entrance.
• Alching valuable or untradeable items now shows a warning. The price trigger to show the warning is currently set at 300k. That means if an item alch value or GE value is above 300k you'll get a warning if you really want to alch the item.
• The block animation of demons has been updated.
• Easter ring can be equipped again.
• Demon wand and orb now correctly degrade upon death.
• A bug with degrading barrow equipment was fixed. It will no longer be unequipped when processing from 50 to 25 but instead when going from 25 to 0.

Engine fixes / changes:

• The worldmap viewer now caches more images. It should thus be less laggy and buggy once fully loaded. The mouse moving speed was also reduced to make sure the area you scroll to can mostly be seen. If you are having performance issues I recommend not zooming out too far and to wait for it to be initially loaded once!
• Item stacks are now properly rendered on the floor. Prior to the change you couldn't distinguish a 2 arrow drop from a 5 arrow one.
• Internal color or icon codes can no longer be used in chat rooms. You can still type them in your chat box, but they won't appear to anyone else.
• Smooth animations have been revamped. They're now properly interpolated and some flickering issues have been fixed. I've also added an option to turn off animation smoothing completely in case you prefer a more older and classic style.
• Flickering issues have been fixed when npcs are transformed. This fixes a problem where KQ or Kal'Ger turn invisible for a short amount of time.
• The way non-map objects are loaded into the game has been reworked. Prior to this update mining a rock or cutting down a tree could cause a short flicker effect before the replaced object (rock or tree) appeared. There will be no more flickering issues when new objects are spawned onto the map.
• The particle system has been extended to allow static spawns through out the world map. The first example of this new particle system is shown at the Grand Exchange - snowing effect.
• The position transition of head icons has been smoothed. The will flicker a lot less.

I hope you're all having a great time

All the best,
Thomy



Fixes of 6th:

• Gulegas and Aquanites have received sounds.
• PC portals are clickable again.
• Present Deliveries have properly been enabled.
• NPC death animations no longer suddenly stop and flicker.
• Rest in Pieces quest can now be continued.
• Repair option in houses now correctly shows the item name.
• Entities no longer randomly face north after walking diagonally.

44

Update Notes / Updates October 26th 2018 - Halloween Event and Double Experience Weekend

« on: October 26, 2018, 08:26:22 am »

Hey guys,

Halloween's just around the corner and I've also prepared some items fitting the theme! I'm also scheduling the next Double Experience weekend and released some QoL changes. As always also quite a few fixes and engine improvements. Thanks for your reports and feedback!

Halloween 2018
You are able to obtain Skulls again after completing the Draynor Manor I quest. Please don't forget that you need the Muncher pet following you in order to be able to receive skulls! A new skeletal Raven pet has been added to the shop that also counts as Muncher when collecting Skulls. Moreover you can now buy 3 possessed hats that fit the overall Halloween theme well. The may or may not have a hidden special ability.


Double Experience Weekend - November 2nd through 4th!!

Time for another Double Experience weekend. Also time to start stacking up resources!

Game fixes / changes:

• Member tickets can no longer be staked. I don't think it's a good idea to be able to stake membership. It encourages stacking up member tickets and devalues them a lot imho. I've noticed that a lot of them have been staked recently and am thus disabling it.
• The Tool Leprechaun now also notes cleaned herbs for you.
• You now have an up to 70% chance to steal another gem from the Gem stall. The chance increases with your Thieving level.
• Bob and the Construction workshop now give you an option to repair all items in your inventory.
• Slayer partners can now extend their tasks too.
• Closing the client now keeps you 15 seconds online instead of 10 when being in the wilderness. You shouldn't be able to escape fights by logging out.
• Kalphite Queen now spawns 2 minions. They need to be killed in order for her to be respawned.
• You are now able to equip items when having the bank opened. Simply right-click the item you wish to equip in your inventory while your bank is open and you will have an Equip option.

Engine fixes / changes:

• Minimap rendering overhauled. It's now smoother and also faster. Minimap transformations and rotations are now done on the GPU than on the CPU. This reduces loading times and increases your fps rate - especially with higher Rendering Distances.
• Worldmap Viewer overhauled. It has become a little slow with the recent rendering improvements. The system was designed to speed up rendering and not creating maps. The new worldmap viewer system now also benefits from the rendering improvements and will load much quicker.

The new wilderness boss couldn't quite make it into this patch, but I'm looking forward for it to be released in the next one. My plan is to give it a new ranged weapon drop (crossbow or bow) that has a strong special attack. I am also looking into something similar to OSRS' dragon thrown-axes, so that there's also a range variant of the granite maul. I'd also like to introduce Karambwans or another similar food type in the coming patches. What do you think about that?

All the best,
Thomy

45

Update Notes / Updates October 17th - Large Rendering Distances and Performance Tweaks

« on: October 17, 2018, 07:51:00 am »

Hey guys,

I've started pushing the emps engine towards its limits and am now offering you even further Rendering Distances! There have also been several performance improvements and tweaks that ensures less lags and smoother loading screens. I want the game run well on toasters while also offering good graphics. The game will now run smoother, especially on multi-core computers.

Larger Viewing Distances & Performance Tweaks
You're now able to set viewing distances of up to 160 - the previous maximum was 100. The map size is now also scaling with the viewing distance. Please bear in mind that large viewing distances are currently only possible on really powerful computers! This requires loading way more data and also more performance in drawing everything. I've also reworked the way the floor is loaded resulting in better loading times as well as increased quality - floor textures loaded in an atlas with anisotropic filtering. Water shaders have also slightly been reworked. The depth calculation was wrong and the blue water didn't seem very natural. Reflections are now also brighter - they were missing a brightness coefficient. I've also changed the clicking areas for npcs that are far away from you. The additional clicking area factor now depends on the distance from you to the entity. Making it easier to click close entities and more difficult to click the ones far away. This can only be felt when playing with large rendering distances. I often miss-clicked on npcs that were too far away and identified that their clicking areas were just too big.

There have also been performance improvements that makes it easier for the game client to handle large amounts of models. Ground decoration is now also rendered in a separate call and only the closest models are rendered. Distant grass or rocks on the floor are no longer rendered when too far away giving you less performance loss at large rendering distances.


Game fixes / changes:

• The NPC death animation system has been reworked. I have taken the timers from the actual animation configuration out of the client to determine how long an animation takes. Monsters should no longer have flickering death animations and will now drop their items exactly when the animation ends. Some monsters may drop their items sooner and some later after this patch. I have also fixed an issue where an npc would still be alive for 1-2 seconds until starting to play the death animation. The timer is now between 0 and 1 second depending on the death animation duration. Please also bear in mind the server needs at least 1 tick (0.5s) to determine and flag an NPC as dead. So that's the minimum amount of time a death animation needs to be delayed. I've also added an additional delay to the death animations of KQ and Corporeal Beast to ensure they don't get stuck between a walking and death animation.
• Aggression radius inside Fight Caves has been fixed. Sometimes npcs wouldn't walk towards the middle in order to attack you.
• The drop system has been rewritten. It's now internally based on the player's name instead of the player's id. That fixes a problem where people would randomly get the drop of another person when logging in and receiving a recycled player id.
• Har'Lakk minion spawns have been tweaked. They should no longer stop attacking you and thus also not stay alive when Har'Lakk dies.
• The amount of vials in the General store have been increased. I cannot put noted vials into the store, because they could simply be bought in 1 go, making the shop run out of vials constantly. I am still thinking of solutions to be able to obtain more vials though!
• Vyrewatch necklace (b) no longer turns into dust when lost.
• KBD's defence level has been lowered from 145 to 135. It's supposed to be an easy boss for medium levels and may be too difficult to kill with low-level gear.
• The game is now listening on ports 23 and 24 again. This means that connecting from school and uni networks should be possible again!

Engine fixes / changes:

• Water planes at Aquanites have been fixed.
• Brightness setting has been fixed.
• Issues with clicking NPCs has been fixed.

I'm continuing work on wilderness updates. There will be a new boss and also a new fishing spot. I'm trying to keep Trello as up to date as possible: https://trello.com/b/QGPVa5en/emps-world Bear in mind it's a flip chart and nothing in there is guaranteed to be in the game!

All the best,
Thomy