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46

Update Notes / Updates October 3rd - Vyrewatch, Weakness System and Engine Improvements

« on: October 03, 2018, 07:45:16 am »

Hey guys,

I'm very happy with how the past 2 updates turned out and improved our overall activity; wilderness especially. I'd like to continue improving the wilderness because I think it's a place that ensures the overall game economy stays healthy by creating demand for equipment and resources. I'm also introducing weaknesses to make PvMing more interesting and to give elemental weapons places where they out-scale demon weapons. The aim is trying to create a system where every high level weapon can be useful at some point. As always there's also a ton of bugfixes and balancing updates. Many thanks for your reporting and feedback!

Vyrewatch - New Necklace
Vampires or also called Vyrewatch have been added to the Wilderness. They range levels between 110 to 140 and are all weak to fire attacks. The strong versions (130 & 140) can be found at the Bone Yard whereas the weaker versions can be found at the Graveyard of Shadows. In general Vyrewatch are not aggressive except for them seeing an opportunity to kill you. I recommend not getting too low health else you may trigger their blood rush and find yourself out numbered in seconds. You are able to collect Vampire blood from every kill which can be used to upgrade the Vyrewatch necklace. The new necklace can also be received as a rare drop from Vyrewatch. The upgraded version degrades after inflicting 15,000 hits and requires 1,000 Vampire blood to be upgraded. Their flying form is also immune against melee attacks. They can be reached with spears and halberds though. The upgraded Vyrewatch necklace has bonuses equal to the best range, magic and melee amulet combined. It also has a passive effect allowing you to deal 5% more damage while also taking 5% more damage.


Weakness System
I've wanted to implement this for quite a while already and am now doing it in a very basic way. Certain monsters now heave weaknesses:

• Fire: Ice wyrm, Glacor, Vyrewatch
• Water: WildyWyrm

Your weapons and spells now have a damage type which is shown in the equipment interface. When hitting an npc with its weak damage type your damage is increased by 25%, accuracy however remains the same. This additional bonus doesn't affect experience gains but let's you kill opponents quicker. Not many monsters have a weakness yet, because I'd like to see the system in action first and gather feedback. If you guys like it I'll continue developing the weakness system. So please let me know!

Cooking Skill
With recent changes to Fishing the experience gains for Cooking are just wrong right now. I've tripled the experience rates and changed the code that decides when to burn food. By default you now require a 25% higher level of the food's requirement to no longer burn it at all. That means if Sharks require level 70 Cooking you need level 88 (87.5) Cooking to stop burning them. Cooking gauntlets reduce 10% of that requirement. With the shark example it'd mean that you need a Cooking level of 79 (78.75) to no longer burn Sharks when wearing Cooking gauntlets. There's one exception: You can't burn anything at level 99 Cooking. Burning food now also gives 25% of the original experience.

GWD Changes
I am really happy with how the drops for top 3 damage dealers turned out, but I think it backfired a little bit in the God Wars Dungeon. I've halved the drop rates of rare and unique items from bosses. Don't worry, the drop rates are still better than before the top 3 damage dealer update if you go in with 2 friends! I've also done some changes to boss combat:

• Commander Zilyana: Attacks faster and harder with melee attacks.
• Kree'arra: Ranged attack is now a Mage attack. It can hit a maximum of 30 unprotected.
• K'ril Tsutsaroth: Melee damage of 2 fast hits increased. All melee attacks are now multi attacks hitting an area of 3x3.
• General Graardor: Melee attacks are now multi attacks hitting an area of 3x3.

The changes listed above are to ensure that bosses are still fun and somewhat difficult if fought in groups and not impossible to kill for people with the best equipment.

Game fixes / changes:

• Ice shield freeze reduction timer fixed - it was 2.5s instead of 5s.
• A bug with spell casting has been fixed that sometimes caused you to attack with your staff. It also makes casting spells manually smoother and less delayed in PvP situations.
• It's no longer possible to click objects when frozen. That means that using stairs or dungeon entrances is now impossible when frozen. The logic behind this change is that being frozen means being unable to move and using objects is actually moving your character.
• The wilderness teleport lever in Edgeville is now working.
• Horvik can now make Dragonfire shields and Godsword blades for 1,000k each. You don't require level 90 Smithing when doing so.
• Killing opponents in the wilderness now gives more ELO. The rules for farming kills and killing the same opponent(s) have been made stricter as well.
• The combat power of Spectrals in the wilderness has been reduced. They now have 242 HP and their defensive bonuses have been reduced by 20. They are already in a dangerous area and thus don't need to be that strong.
• Teleporting now clear freeze timers.
• Projectiles now properly hit flying monsters in the air: Armadyl GWD monsters, flying vampires and KQ 2nd form.
• Weapon poison (p++) can now be noted.
• The equipment screen now shows damage types.
• Autocast button now shows the spell you will be casting.
• An issue with beards on the slayer helm has been fixed.
• A bug with the 2 set piece bonus not activating on Vanguard, Templar and Trickster has been fixed.
• The Demon halberd special attack no longer deals 25% additional damage. You still have 2 hits on larger enemies though. This nerf is necessary, because the halberd just hits way too much in PvP.
• Special attack with dark bow using a quiver has been fixed. The special attack damage wouldn't increase.
• Magic shortbow and Seercull special attack buffed. The first hit now also deals 100% of the damage.
• The Karil set effect has been changed. Your attack speed is now decreased by 0.5 when successfully inflicting damage. It's also no longer possible to fire bolt racks with other crossbows.
• Hit effects (vengeance, recoil, spirit shields, etc.) are now always applied. Also when applying a lethal hit!
• Gilded chaotics can now be bought from the Slayer reward shop. They cost 200,000 Slayer points each.
• A rounding issue for weapon repairs has been fixed. Chaotics should no longer cost an additional 10k to be repaired.
• The barrow rewards chest now has a 1 in 1000 chance to give you one of the 6 new Barrow pets. They are miniature versions of the actual Barrow npc models.
• Monsters that cannot be reached by melee attacks can now be attacked with spears or halberds. In general weapons that increase your attack distance.
• Some Grenwall spawns have been added to the wilderness. The green area south-west of Red Dragon Isle.

Engine fixes / changes:

• The internal way of how animations are pre-loaded and cached was updated. You should find newly loaded animations flicker less in crowded areas.
• The kill logs interface has been overhauled. It should cause less performance issues and no longer flicker. You now also have a button at the equipment tab to open the interface. The ::killlogs command was removed as well.
• Spell icons now appear when viewing spell names in menus.
• On-demand fetcher has been updated. The timeouts of requesting model files have been increased. Every download is now also initially enforced through the custom protocol before trying a http request. Overall this will reduce initial loading and downloading times.
• Searching for items in the bank or for npcs in the kill logs now resets scroll position.
• Worldmap viewer has been optimized. It's now loading the map faster on multi-core systems.
• Destroy option can now be navigated by clicking keys 1 or 2.

Map & Tile System Rewritten
I've completely rewritten the client's internal management of tiles. This goes hand in hand with the map loader and its underlying system managing the area you see. This improves the memory management of the map and loading times. It also sets the first step for supporting gigantic rendering distances without the map being cut off at some point. I've been messing around with rendering distances of 200 and got good 50-60 fps without any optimizations yet! In the end this should also completely remove small loading times and never show map edges anymore. However this is the final version and I'm still pretty far way from that, but the changes in the tile system now allow me to do that. For those of you who are interested in the technical changes: The map has been represented in a 3d array consisting of 4 104x104 arrays representing a plane each. When loading a new map this would have to be fully reloaded with new objects. The new system now consists of a hash table of tiles allowing to add and delete tiles easily.


All the best,
Thomy

47

Update Notes / Updates September 18th - Bug Fixing, PvP Highscores and New Game Loader

« on: September 18, 2018, 05:27:43 am »

Hey guys,

Today's update mainly focuses on fixing a few problems and introduces PvP Highscores.

PvP Hiscores
It's been a while since the PvP ranking update was applied and we've now also collected enough data to properly display rankings on the homepage. You can have a look at PvP ranks here: https://emps-world.net/hiscores#skill,Wilderness,0 With this update I've also overhauled and modernized the Hiscores page.


Game Loader
I've updated the Game Loader. It's now able to update itself properly, news images no longer flicker and have a fading effect when new ones appear. There's now also a Repair Game option from within the settings. The new loader can be downloaded here: https://emps-world.net/play
You don't need to download the new loader, the old one will still do fine.

Game fixes / changes:

• The overload refresh effect has been changed, because it was a problem in PvP and also completely negated any stat reduction effects from any monster. Don't worry, overloads still restore your stats and they can still be used with brews, but the effect has changed a little bit. Overloads now restore up to 6 levels every 4 seconds instead of a full stat restore every 5 seconds. Nothing changes if you take 1-2 zips of your brews, because your stats will be restored immediately. In fact it's even faster than before if you only take 1 zip. So unless you drink your whole brew at once this is a buff. However taking damage of a bgs special attack or drinking 2 entire brews in a row won't be recovered that quickly. My point here is that I don't want to completely counter stat reduction effects by just having the overload effect active.
• A bug with void equipment bonus not showing has been fixed.
• Overkill in PvP scenarios has been re-enabled. It shouldn't be possible to tick eat and avoid all incoming damage. I've made a mistake here and am sorry.
• Blessed dragonhide vambraces and chaps now require level 1 Defence and have had their defensive bonuses adjusted.
• Tyras Guard at the Grand Exchange now has a teleport option to Fight Caves.
• The experience gain for spellbook teleports has been increased.
• Berserker necklace now boosts obsidian claws damage.
• Mithril dragon and green brutal dragon Defence levels have been reduced.
• Broken virtus body is no longer untradeable.
• The kill counters which determine who gets a drop in a PvP fight are now reset when leaving PvP combat and no longer when leaving combat at all. That means that whenever a fight between 2 players ends the kill counters are reset and the next fight will determine who gets the drop.
• Ghost captain can now be found west of Barbarian village offering a teleport to Canifis.
• Falador teleport has been re-added to the quest tab interface.
• Double death trigger is no longer possible when healing after already being declared dead.
• The cooldowns for fighting the same opponent in wildy to gain ELO have been increased.
• Multi spells are now correctly hitting again in PvP.
• A bug with the quiver has been fixed that allowed you to create arrows.

Engine fixes / changes:

• Messages can no longer start or end with spaces. That should fix an issue where a space in front of a clan chat message or command won't let you type it.
• Water that is no longer in camera space is also no longer rendered: frustum culling for water.

I'll now start working on several new wilderness activities. We have a new amulet planned as well as a new boss that drops new equipment. So stay tuned!

All the best,
Thomy

48

Update Notes / Updates September 6th 2018 - Key Bindings, Drop Overhauls and Combat Balancing

« on: September 06, 2018, 05:43:52 am »

Hey guys,

Today's update focuses most on re-balancing the combat triangle and equipment bonuses. We aim at making items more popular for PvP and easing the combat triangle giving you more Defence bonuses against your weaknesses. Special attacks have also been buffed and the early / mid game progress was made faster by improving certain drop tables and combat experience gains.

Key Bindings
As most if you have probably already realized, you are now able to bind your F keys to menu tabs. There's also an option to enable pressing enter before being able to chat. This mode allows you to use wasd for camera movement and qe to zoom in and out. You can also enable the option that pressing ESC closes the current open interface. Moreover, it's now also possible to lock your combat experience. You can still see experience gains when enabling this option though.


Damage Soaking
I'm sorry, but I have to admit that this mechanism was bugged... for really a long time. Damage was never soaked and this patch aims at fixing the issue. Before the update damage soaking was a quadratic formula of your maximum defence bonus, which imo is a really bad way of doing it. Your maximum defence bonus now gives a flat soaking bonus. Due to the release of new equipment and their maximum defence bonuses, I have adjusted the maximum damage soaked a little bit. It's now properly working but less than it originally was meant to be intended.

Starting Zone & Game Progress
We have identified that it may be too difficult to progress in early stages of the game. Thus we want to buff the drops of beginner level monsters to make it easier for new players to make money and to obtain useful items.

• Starter sets have been replaced with real item sets: Iron armour, hide and blue wizard robes.
• Drops for monsters around Barbarian village have been massively buffed: Barbarians, Goblins, Wizards, Archers, Hill giants, Moss giants, Tower Archers, Guards. They now drop items up to rune, more coins and larger quantities of resources.
• Monsters found inside the Barbarian dungeon have had their drops buffed. Quantities were increased and rune / dragon items were made more frequent.
• Dragons now drop dragon items more frequently - the chances were doubled.
• Slayer Tower drop tables overhauled. The Slayer level requirement is now taken into consideration and improves the droptable. Overall you will be getting way more valuable drops from monsters inside the tower.
• Thieving npcs now gives more coins.
• New players now get a randomized look instead of the standard one.
• More starting items are added to inventory after completing the tutorial.

Combat Experience Rates
Let's just say I was wrong - 20xp per hit are way too low. We are changing the combat xp rates back to 80 xp per hit. Progress shouldn't be that slow and frustrating in emps. Afterall most of our content is designed for end-game and that should also be achievable in a fairly normal amount of time. The whole experience gained thing before and after level 99 has also been removed. It's always 80 xp per hit.

Softening Combat Triangle - Weakness Bonuses
I think the current system is a little bit too strict on combat styles that are effective on you. I am increasing the defence bonuses of all items agains their neutral and weak combat style. This doesn't have an impact on any damage soaking, but makes you more resistant against magic attacks when wearing melee armour for instance. The same logic also applies to other combat styles with their weak counter parts: Magic beats Melee, Melee beats Range and Range beats Magic. I've also chosen flat numbers, so that the system looks cleaner:

• Neutral bonus: 75%
• Weak bonus: 50%

What does that mean? If a melee equipment piece gave 100 defence bonus, you'll get +100 range defence bonus, +75 melee defence bonus and +50 magic defence bonus.

Fishing - Catch rates and Experience gained
I've adjusted the fishing timers a little, because the catch rates felt a little bit clunky and the amount of fishes obtained were just way too much on higher levels. I've made the catch rates faster on early levels and let the level have a little less of an impact later on. Catching sharks with 70 fishing for instance doesn't feel like you're getting a fish a minute anymore and you no longer get a fish per 2 ticks when having a very high fishing level. The speed curve of catching fishes is scaling better now. To cope with that change in fish gains all their experience gains have been doubled. You'll have to bank less often and will still gain the same amount of experience in the same amount of time.

Wiki Updates
I have recently prepared a system that makes it really easy for us to keep stats of items up to date on the wiki. We will be testing the system within the coming weeks and see how well it performs. If this makes overall wiki updates easier I would also like to enroll the system on NPC data: stats, drops, attack speed, etc. So you'll always be able to view the exact in-game stats on the wiki too.

Game fixes / changes:

• The accuracy bonuses of Infinity robes have been buffed and received a little strength bonus.
• Mystic robes received a slight strength bonus.
• The book of balance now gives Ranged strength and accuracy bonuses.
• You no longer lose as much ELO when losing a fight in the wilderness. It currently is too difficult to reach higher ranks, because you only rank up by only killing others. You can now also improve your ranking by just participating in many fights.
• Accuracy bonuses of defenders have been buffed by 25% (dragon defender +20 --> +25 accuracy). Defenders were a little bit weak when compared with a dragonfire shield or other alternatives.
• Overkill damage no longer exists and thus tick eating is now possible. That means eating at the same game tick when lethal damage arrives let's you live through it.
• Multiple incoming hits are no longer stacked as 1 big hit. This is only a visual change, because I have received complaints about people dying in 1 big hit. This was correct, but the large visual hit coming out of nowhere was a little odd.
• God robes now require level 1 Defence to be worn and have had their defence bonuses lowered. God cloaks now have equivalent stats to god capes: +5 magic accuracy and strength. Their level 25 Prayer requirement stays.
• Corrupt PvP items have been moved to level 40 Defence. That doubles their defence and accuracy bonuses, strength bonuses remain untouched.
• Multi combat spells no longer have an experience gain punishment: Barrages and chin chompas.
• Donator blades have had their attack speed increased. They now have the same attack speed as saradomin sword, scimitars and whips.
• Korasi's sword special attack now costs 50% special energy.
• Splitbark robe parts now give additional magic strength bonus.
• Comp ogre bow Range requirement increased to 71 - it can now shoot Barrow arrows.
• The experience boost of brawling gloves has been increased in the wilderness. They give 200% experience in the wilderness and 150% outside of it.
• Zamorak godsword freeze has been increased from 20 seconds to 25.
• Bandos godsword now also reduces the enemy's prayer points by 25% of the hit.
• Overloads can now be noted and traded.
• Dragon and onyx bolts now require level 61 Ranged to be used. That means you can use them with a rune crossbow.
• God bows level requirement has been moved from 80 to 75. To cope with that change I have increased their attack speed by 1 tick meaning they are now level 75 short bows. God bows also received a special attack that triggers a special effect when used with their appropriate arrow type (e.g. saradomin god bow with saradomin arrows):
  • Saradomin: 50% of damage is drained from enemy prayer points. If attacking an npc this reduces their defence level by 50% of the hit instead.
  • Zamorak: 50% of damage is drained from enemy defence level.
  • Guthix (not yet available): 25% of damage is healed.
  The additional passive perk increasing damage of using god arrows with their appropriate bow has been removed. They now have flat bonuses equal to barrow arrows and can also be used as such by other bows.
• Demon saber and halberd now properly break when lost upon death.
• The charges of newly created elemental weapons have been increased from 5,000 to 30,000. This change brings elemental weaponry more in line with Demon weapons.
• Demon longbow has received +12 accuracy and +2 strength bonus. When comparing it to the demon crossbow it looked a little weak.
• Demon orb has received +4 accuracy and +4 strength bonus. It should be more a little useful as offensive stat booster while giving 0 defensive bonuses.
• Removed the strength level requirement for several items: Vesta, Statius, Godswords, Zamorakian spear, Demon saber & Halberd and Saradomin sword.
• Saradomin sword and obsidian claws special attack now hits 1 game tick earlier.
• Spectral energy drop rates doubled. You just need way more energy to charge equipment than there currently is in the game.
• Ancient statuettes from Revenants now have double coin value. We would like to make killing dangerous foes in the wilderness more valuable.
• A bug was fixed where runes from the rune bag would no longer show up after casting a teleport spell.
• Ghostly roves now give magic strength bonus.
• Accuracy of all special attacks has roughly been increased by 25%. Most special attacks have an accuracy boost of 25% while godswords and other high level weapons gain 75% - 100% accuracy boost.
• All bosses (the ones that count for daily tasks!) now have drops for the top 3 damage dealers. That includes all GWD bosses, Dagannoth Kings, Corporeal Beast, Kalphite Queen, King Black Dragon, Chaos Elemental and Smoke demon champion. Group bosses still reward the top 4 damage dealers.
• The Tower key required to access upper parts of the Slayer Tower can now be found in wardrobes inside the Slayer Tower.
• Banshees can now drop a creeping hand pet with a drop chance of 1 in 1000.
• Party hats strength and accuracy bonuses increased.
• Composite bows now have the speed of shortbows.
• Magic longbow, magic composite bow and demon longbow have received a special attack. It costs 35% special attack energy and is guaranteed to hit the enemy.
• Demon halberd now shares the dragon halberd special attack.
• Torags received additional Defence bonus while reducing its accuracy a bit.
• A bug with the dark bow special attack was fixed that would reduce its maxhit.

Engine fixes / changes:

• Certain data holders in the client have been updated to use less memory. This improves overall performance and memory usage, especially on longer Rendering Distances and in crowded areas. For those of you who are interested what changed: A lot of arrays were int[]s, which used 4 byte or 32 bit per entry. That precision wasn't always needed, because a lot of numbers didn't go higher than 10,000 anyway. I have changed those arrays to be short[]s, which require 2 bytes or 16 bit per entry. This costs less RAM and allows your CPUs cache to load more entries per call speeding up iterations over these arrays: animations, loading models, saving colors, etc.
• Smoothness of compass and minimap have been improved. They are now anti-aliased when rotated and will no longer flicker or have white artifacts.
• Rune requirements now properly in the autocast interface.
• Texture atlases now use 4x anisotropic filtering (only if your GPU can do it!!). This effect makes textures appear less blurry and more realistic when viewed at specific camera angles. I have decided to not make this a setting, because the performance cost is non-existing for low resolution textures in emps.

This update mainly consists of balancing and overall improvements for the game. I want to make certain items more useful for PvP and give newer players an easier start for the game. With the amount of PvP ELO data available I'll also soon be able to put Hiscores online where you can lookup ranks.

All the best,
Thomy



Changes September 7th:

• Barrows equipment charges of newly used items increased from 8,000 to 20,000. I'd like to bring this more in line with other equipment charges.
• Revenants droptables overhauled. Statues are worth more and drop more often. Third-age drop rates have also been adjusted. Statues and third-age drops are now also always broadcasted.
• Amulet position now depends on the platebody model. This fixes an issue where amulets would be invisible on certain armours.
• God robes now share monk robe's prayer bonus.
• Dark bow special attack speed increased. The projectiles now fly and hit faster.
• Reset lamps can no longer be used when items are worn.
• Unnoted overload potions can now be traded.
• An issue was fixed where you couldn't hit through protection prayers when your enemy had low hitpoints.
• NPC defence bonuses have been fixed. There was an issue that globally gave them 15-20% higher stats.
• KQ and Corporeal beast now properly drop items for the top 3 damage dealers.
• The charges of newly used spectral equipment have been doubled. Repair costs stay the same. However the amount of dropped spectral energy upon a kill can now be higher due to higher maximum charges.
• Crossbow limbs now have an alch value.

49

Update Notes / Updates August 2nd 2018 - Wilderness Revival, Ranks, Oldschool News and More!

« on: June 06, 2018, 06:33:13 am »

Hey guys,

I hope you are having a great summer time. It has taken some time, but I have finished a gigantic PvP and balancing update. I aim to find a long-term solution to revive and keep PvP active as well as making it attractive to participate in. I have also overhauled some older systems and fixed a ton of bugs. Last but not least, I have and am still working on an option to turn the current game into oldschool style with only a mouse click!

Wilderness Update - Rewards & ELO

It's been a while since the wilderness has received an update. This time I don't want to add more PvM into the area, but real PvP with new and unique rewards! Every kill gives you blood coins. The amount you get highly depends on the cardinality of your target, meaning that your opponent's ranking and equipment matter. Following ranks with icons (see icon system below) can be achieved:

• Bronze I - III
• Silver I - III
• Gold I - III
• Rune I - III

Each rank has a unique chat badge which can be enabled at any point through the Equipment Screen. What you are probably also (more?) interested in are the rewards for killing each other in the wilderness: Blood coins. You will find a new NPC walking around Edgeville called Emps Pker wearing Vesta armour. You can trade the person to buy rewards with blood coins:

• PvP crates: Food, potions, selected runes, edgeville teleports and PvP armours.
• Rune bag: Can store 3-5 (member benefit) runes and CAN be equipped in Arrow slot.
• Quiver: Can store 2-4 (member benefit) arrows / bolts and HAS TO be equipped in Arrow slot.
• PvP armour pieces: In case you are unlucky and have a lot of blood coins, you can also buy them directly here. Bear in mind that getting the armours through crates is much much cheaper though!

Icon System - Ranks
I have updated the way icons in front of names are managed and set. We also call these icons ranks, because they are achievements. You can change your icon by right-clicking your name on the Equipment Screen. Ranks can be obtained by certain achievements in-game:

• Donator Icons: Unlocked by having obtained a total amount of EC:
  • 1,800EC - Bronze Donator
  • 10,00EC - Silver Donator
  • 25,000EC - Gold Donator
  • 50,000EC - Rune Donator
  • 100,000EC - Dragon Donator
  • 200,000EC - Dark Donator
  • 300,000EC - Light Donator
  • 500,000EC - Demon Donator

Please bear in mind that the higher ranks are aimed at people who are supporting the game through many months and years!

• PvP ranks: see above
• Ironman: By default on every ironman
• Veteran: How many years you've been playing Emps-World. We cannot go back in time and copy the registration dates of the Emps-Scape, so no registrations longer than 4 years ago count.
• Staff Icons: You will find different mod / admin crowns.

Icons also appear when right-clicking players now. They can be changed at any given point to any image leaving us a lot of space for future changes and improvements!

Run Energy, Resting and its role in PvP
I know this change may be annoying, but the overall run energy system in its current state was just completely broken. You could run forever pretty much no matter what you were doing. While this is comfortable, it removes the point of even having a run energy system as well as the Agility skill. With this update I am changing the way run energy regenerates and the maximum is now at 100 and no longer 255. I have copied the regeneration function from OSRS, which can be found here: http://oldschoolrunescape.wikia.com/wiki/Energy

Energy restoring potions (if you knew they even existed!) were also changed:

• Super restore: +5 energy
• Energy potion: +10 energy
• Super energy: +15 energy

The aim of this change is to make running longer distances more complicated. Outrunning somebody in the wilderness is now possible, especially when having a lot of loot in your inventory or wearing heavy armour. Please don't worry though, this isn't going to affect skilling a lot! You get your run energy fully restored by talking to a Healer.

Claiming Voting Points
I've updated the system to support the usage of proxies and also configurations behind firewalls. The old system was doing an IP comparison of your game login and on the homepage. So voting on your smartphone and trying the claim the points in-game wouldn't work. You should be able to claim your points no matter where you vote now. It's based on your user OR ip address. If one of them match, you can claim your voting points.

Game fixes / changes:

• Grand Exchange now correctly displays the correct amount of coins you get for selling items.
• Barrows slayer task amount is now dividable by 6. Meaning you never have a left-over round during a task.
• Rewards potential interface in Barrows now correctly resets when claiming the reward.
• Bolkoy dialogues have been updated.
• Redberry pies can now be eaten.
• Double agents can no longer be attacked by other players.
• Membership description update.
• Cure plants spell now has a timer and only gives experience when you successfully cured plants. You also gain some farming experience when successfully curing plants now.
• Chaos dwarves can no longer be assigned as Slayer task.
• A bug with Spectral equipment was fixed. When dying with a fully charged item (e.g. Zuriel robe top) you wouldn't get any Spectral energy.
• Skull timers have received second precision instead of minute precision. Your skull is now consistently 10 minutes long instead of something between 9 and 10 minutes. Moreover, there's now also an orb that shows your skull timer.
• The timings of Jad's animations have been improved.
• Items lost in the Kalphite Queen boss chamber are now dropped outside, before you use the rope to enter.
• Levelup messages now properly tell you new activities that you are able to do. This is a copy of the skill advancements tables.
• Slayer tasks can now be extended (doubled) for 50% of their Slayer point reward.
• A bug was fixed where resetting skills with xp lamps wasn't possible anymore.
• You can now properly complete puzzle clues on Farming patches.
• The experience reduction for multi hits (range & magic) has been changed to 50% from 20%. The previous experience gain nerf was just too much.
• Spectrals now hit more through protection prayers. They were never intended to be fully blockable.
• Skipping the tutorial now warns you about not being able to become an ironman account and gives you a starter set. The range starter set now also includes 100 bronze arrows that are equipped.
• The charges of coal bags have bee increased from 1,000 to 10,000. This doesn't apply to current bags but new ones!
• Weapon poison (p+) and Weapon poison (p++) can now be made with the Herblore skill.
• Ranging and Magic potion have been added to Herblore.
• A new Slayer master called Turael has been added to the Barbarian dungeon. Turael assigns solely monsters found in the dungeon and is for beginners.
• Void knight elite defence bonuses have been a bit too high. We found out when testing the defence bonuses of the PvP armour sets. I have reduced the defence bonuses of elite void knight top and bottom by 10%. You won't really feel this change, but it's now more balanced and aligned to existing content.
• The rendering distance for players and npcs inside minigames has been increased.
• Fish monger now sells Varrock, Lumbridge and Falador teletabs. It's still worth it to create those through Construction, because they can only be bought in low quantities.
• Snape grass can now be found around the river of Barbarian village.
• Barbarians, Mages and Goblins now drop Guams, Marrentills, Tarromins, Harralanders and Ranarrs. This allows new users to find and create low level potions with all resources found in and around the Barbarian village.
• Stepping stones in Emps-Wars can no longer be clipped by following. That counts for npcs and players.

Engine fixes / changes:

• A bug was fixed where certain tops would make your arms disappear when wearing dragonhide bodies.
• Sky is now reflected in water and the underwater color depends on the surrounding terrain. There's now also a depth calculation that determines the transparency of water. Basically giving you a better immersion of how low underwater terrain is.
• Items shown in the chatbox (skill advancements) are now more centered and larger.
• Images are now loaded on demand and no longer need to be downloaded before starting the game. This improves initial loading speeds by roughly a minute. It's annoying when joining the game for the very first time to wait for long downloads.
• Underwater terrain is now properly refracted. That means that underwater objects are now also having a ripple effect.
• Upgraded abyssal weapons have received animated textures. They were originally supposed to have such kind of a glow, but due to engine limitations it wasn't possible.
• Camera system has completely been overhauled. It felt very outdated compared to other games. Camera movements no longer have a delay / fade-out effect but is a direct representation of your mouse movements. To make sure nobody is displeased with the change you are now also able to select 5 different camera sensitivities.
• Scaled images now look smoother.
• You can now select fullscreen mode from the game settings.
• Skill interfaces no longer have empty buttons.

Oldschool Emps-World
I've cancelled this project a while ago and also won't revitalize it. However I have been and am currently working on an optional oldschool option, which will give the game an OSRS feeling. This replaces (wherever possible) player and npc data with their oldschool variants. This overwrites their look and animations. It's impossible to replace the map with OSRS data, because their positions differ. I can add new maps though, including Zeah, Zulrah, etc. I'm also able to use all oldschool items, such as the blowpipe, elder maul, twisted bow, etc. I want to finish the graphics option first though before adding such content!


I've attached a screenshot to show how it looks like. You can use all the HD graphic options and combine them oldschool models. I'm not quite sure when this will be finished, because I'm still fighting with serious graphical glitches that absolutely can't be in the release version. Biggest issue currently being boots that have no oldschool replacement model. Maybe I need to manually find some here? Idk... Will keep you updated with media whenever I have more to show! You can also directly follow the progress here: https://trello.com/c/K2rC6upc/60-oldschool-graphics-option

All the best,
Thomy

50

Update Notes / Updates May 20th - Kal'Ger Group Boss, Voting, Daily Activities and SEO!

« on: April 20, 2018, 10:40:33 am »

Hey guys,

Kal'Ger - Level 85 Melee Weapons
A new 4-man group boss challenge awaits! The lair of Kal'Ger can be found deep down in the Barbarian dungeon. It is highly recommended to initially fight the boss with 4 people to learn the mechanics.

This is Kal'ger:


And here are the new Demon weapons:


Good luck on beating him! It may be difficult in the beginning, but once you learn the mechanics it's easier. You also benefit greatly be using a dedicated tank in this boss fight, because a tank can mitigate a lot of incoming damage on your team!

Voting - Unique Rewards
You can now vote for us in order to receive useful and unique rewards! Have a look here: https://emps-world.net/vote
Voting rewards can contain a gilded pirate hat, scythe or cavalier. They are new rare items that can be obtained with a chance of 0.1%. The voting reward tables in general contain many useful items though. So even if you don't get the new rares, you'll still find the items useful. You can choose from 4 different reward boxes, each costing a different amount of Voting Points (VP) simply by talking to Bolkoy:

• Beginner box (5VP): Weapons, armours, resources, teleports, etc.
• Adventurer box (6VP): Weapons, armour, food, potions, ammo, etc.
• Veteran box (7VP): Skilling resources, xp lamps, runes, etc.
• Rare box (15VP): Contains 1 Beginner, 1 Adventurer and 1 Veteran box.

Each box can contain the rare gilded items! We will put the full reward tables onto the wiki as soon as possible.

SEO - Search Engine Optimization
I've been working on this for the past 2 weeks. I've improved our web services, so that they can be found easier by search engines and be indexed better by web crawlers. This is increasing website traffic and search rankings in the long run. I've changed the following:

• Thumbnail images on the front page for news, screenshots and the background.
• JavaScript and CSS minification. Put everything into 1-2 files and minified it.
• Removal of inline css and old html tags, such as <center> or <font>.
• The changes above greatly reduced site loading times. It will be faster and thus be ranked higher for search engines. It's also less likely for people to leave the page during the initial loading time.
• Image and link description tags when hovering over them.
• User-friendly and readable forum urls. Don't worry, you can still use the ::forum command in-game to get topics. The number after the hash symbol (#) displays the topic id when browsing the forum.
• New Play Button popup with proper Windows, Java and MacOS icons.
• Player counter always visible and lazily loaded once player count is available.
• Main page background lazy loading: Thumbnail loads first and full quality fades in when complete.

Minifications and page load speeds apply to the main page (https://emps-world.net) only. The forum is work for another time. I also doubt it's worth the change, because the initial page landing is always on the main page, rarely ever the forum.

NPC Drawing Distance
I've been thinking about this for quite a while and am now implementing it for 4man group bosses. You gain additional viewing distance on monsters during these fights. This will make it easier to spot bosses on larger terrains. I plan on giving you a setting to manually increase the npc and player drawing distances outside of boss rooms. This won't work in the wilderness though!

Additional Bone Drops
I've added small, medium and large demon bones. They give similar prayer experience when burying as to big, wyvern and frostdragon bones. By default all demons drop small demon bones. Following monsters drop medium / large versions:

• Medium: Black demons, K'ril Tsutsaroth minions.
• Large: Smoke demon champion, Har'lakk, Yk'lagor, K'ril Tsutsaroth, Chronozon and Tormented demons

Appropriate drops have also been added to all GWD bosses and Nex.

Daily Activities
You can now gain additional EP by completing special daily activities. Following activities can be completed:

• Duel Arena
• Emps-Wars
• Pest Control
• Warriors Guild
• Barrows
• Kolodion
• Kill any Boss
• Kill a God Wars Dungeon Boss
• Kill any Group Boss

The activities above are listed in ascending difficulty, which is reflected by your combat level. You can get the Duel Arena activity at level 45 combat and the group bosses are assigned for combat levels of 120 or higher.

Additional Membership Benefits
I've taken a look at the membership scenario and identified a few flaws with the system. I am very thankful for membership and am adding additional perks that improve your gameplay:

• Additional 10% minigame rewards: Pest Control, Emps-Wars, Warriors Guild, Fight Caves (Jad) and Barrows
• Additional 10% stackable drops: coins, noted items, seeds, etc.

Har'Lakk, Yk'Lagor and Kal'Ger
I've had a little chat about this and thought about possible flaws with these boss fights. They aren't as popular as Nex, because the fight takes much longer and the drops are comparably worse. I'm increasing the drop chances for Demon weapons from 0.6% to 1%. Resource drops have also received a little overhaul increasing their stacks and replacing some items that aren't very valuable. Overall the reward for killing these bosses has been increased.

Game fixes / changes:

• Another offsetting issue was fixed, which was causing players to not see each other when having awkward timing during teleports.
• Random events can now happen only once every 15 minutes are and much rarer.
• Health regeneration is now disabled during duel arena and death animation. A lucky regeneration tick can no longer protect you from death.
• Equipping Hunter skillcape now activates the skillcape emote icon.
• You can no longer spawn 2 Barrow brothers when passing through doors.
• A door orientation bug was fixed at the south-western Barrows room.
• Colored abyssal items have received an additional level 72 tier. Meaning that if you have level 72 Attack, Ranged or Magic colored abyssal bows, whips and staves now give +3 additional accuracy and +2 additional strength bonus.
• Duellist caps can now be operated and will play an animation.
• Rod fishing animation is no longer constantly replaying.
• All fire giants now drop big bones.
• A bug with decanting noted and unnoted potions has been fixed. In some scenarios the Decanter would handle a noted potion stack as a single item and thus delete the entire stack. I'm sorry for this, it's fixed now!
• A bug with the combat power of dragons has been fixed. Some had a Magic level of 0 resulting in them not hitting anything with the dragon breath.
• Droptables of Ancient gladiators, Ice demons and Abyssal watchers have been improved. All drops are now noted and drop amounts have been increased.
• Finishing a potion no longer adds an empty vial to your inventory.
• Void knights can no longer be attacked with magic.
• Hatchling dragon drops are now Dragon eggs. The egg can either contain a Hatchling or Baby Dragon. Where Baby Dragons are new and are larger than Hatchling Dragons.

Engine fixes / changes:

• Clan chat messages now receive line breaks when they are too long.
• Water can no longer pop through the ground in Catherby.
• Zombie green skin color and ancient wings lilac have been added to the character design screen.
• Character design screen updated. Some torso models have been bugged and were flickering.
• Loading process improved. Objects close to you now have priority when the map is loading. This is the first step towards really large rendering distances. The process has also been put into another thread, meaning that multi-core processors can now load the map without affecting fps too much.

I'm now starting to work on more community features and have the following in mind:

• Daily, Weekly and Monthly Highscores with rewards for the top ranks.
• ELO system: Separate rankings for Wilderness, Duel Arena, Emps-Wars, etc. There will be also rewards depending on how high your rank is. I'd also work on a PvP shop that provides you with supplies when fighting players in the wilderness.
• Activity counters: e.g. how many times you've participated in a minigame or how many tasks you've completed.

A lot of text this time, but there's been a lot of changes! Many thanks for reading.

All the best,
Thomy



Fixes 21st of May:

• Kal'Ger instances.
• Voting issues: It's a bit confusing and I've already got a little overhaul coded. It will work on IP addresses rather than on usernames. So VPNs will work and the homepage can always correctly tell you if you've already voted or not. I've also found an issue where voting points aren't saved correctly. Terribly sorry, but it's already getting a fix!
• Barrows multi spawn problem.
• Kal'Ger dropping items outside of the boss room.
• Clicking areas on the floor when moving around.

Fixes 25th of May:

• Spectrals and Warriors Guild spawns fixed.
• An issue was fixed when planting herbs and mud patches would still stay.
• An issue with rendering shadows and water was fixed, which caused parts not to be taken into consideration for processing. So places that were actually casting shadow or reflected objects wouldn't show.
• Demon saber and halberd now require level 85 Attack and Strength to be worn. Requirements are also shown in the skill interface now.
• Activity tasks now correctly reward you with a combat experience lamp

51

Update Notes / Updates April 20th - Virtual Levels, Membership changes and Barbarian Dungeon!

« on: March 30, 2018, 02:32:55 pm »

Hey guys,

Quite a long list of changes this time. I'd say Virtual levels and Membership are the biggest changes, but you'll also find the Decanter and Experience lamps as rewards for daily tasks useful!

Barbarian Dungeon
I've improved the drops of monsters inside the Barbarian dungeon. The area is supposed to be beginner friendly and give people a decent start into the game. Low and medium level monsters with appropriate drops can be found there:

• Skeletons: drop mithril items
• Ghosts: received a magic attack and drop ghostly robes
• Bats: bones give good prayer xp
• Unholy cursebearer: weak mini boss with drops for up to 4 players
• Chaos dwarfs replaced with fire giants
• Elite dark knights added: stronger black knights dropping medium level armour / equipment
• Baby blue dragons received a droptable.

Here's the unholy cursebearer:

Virtual Levels
You can now level past 99 without gaining any additional benefits. It shows your progress up to level 128 (= 250M xp) the same way as you were leveling from 1 to 99. This option can be disabled in the game settings if you don't like it! There's now also a badge on your skill when reaching the following milestones:

• 110: Bronze star
• 120: Silver star
• 128: Gold star

The screenshot below shows how the skill tab interface with virtual levels enabled looks like. The green total level shows your virtual total level, which can go up to 2,944 when being completely maxed!


Membership
I've decided that the membership system is very outdated and I've removed the requirement from following things:

• Astral rune smelting.
• Entrance to Al-Kharid and the Desert.
• Using pets.
• Pollnivneach teletab.
• Crafting skill.
• Fletching bolts and bolt tips.
• Agility obstacles & dungeon entrances.
• Hunter.
• Shooting star information.
• Thieving.
• Slayer.

To keep track of what's still included for member, here's a list:

• More bank space.
• More GE slots.
• 10% experience boost.
• More space for your house.
• Additional daily task.

This sounds like a drastic change, but I really feel that it's a good step towards making the game feel more enjoyable. I will update the list of member benefits to make sure it's clear what you get with the package!

Daily Tasks & Experience Lamps
You now get a Combat lamp by completing combat related daily tasks (no Slayer). You can choose in which combat skill you want to gain experience. The experience gain curves were taken from RSWiki and interpolated. It's not an exact copy, but very similar rates. The task system was also updated to use the same experience curve. That means that lower level tasks gain less experience and higher ones more experience. The turning point is at about level 60 if compared to the previous system. Moreover, I've also added these lamps as rewards to the EP shop. Lamps are not affected by any experience boosts but membership!

Potion Decanter Bob
You can now decant potions in any possible variation you wish. The mechanism works with noted and unnoted items and always costs 1,000gp per inventory. You have predefined options to decant potions into 3 and 4 sips. However if you wish to decant them into 1 or 2 sips (maybe 5 or 6 in the future?) you can use the Decant-X option to do so.

Improved Graphic Settings
You're now able to pick from a selection of predefined graphic settings called Automatic Setup:


Yk'Lagor
The boss has been out for quite a while now but seems to be really unpopular. I've taken a look and have to admit that he's quite a powerhouse regarding his combat strength. The strength isn't determined by his raw combat power but by the npcs he spawns. I'm therefore reducing the combat level, combat strength and health of the minion spawns:

• Necrolord: 121 combat & 91 health
• Necro archer: 119 combat & 90 health

I have also increased all amounts of noted item drops to make sure this boss is worth killing.

Mail Server Issues
I was able to identify and fix an issue with our mail server postfix. The hostname that it was sending was incorrect, which resulted in some mail providers rejecting our mails completely. I've patched it and there should no longer be mails that aren't delivered. If you are still having problems with the mail system or aren't receiving e-mails, please make a helpdesk ticket and I'll have a look!

Game fixes / changes:

• Granite shield alch value increased and noted version added.
• NPCs around Barbarian village now drop talismans.
• A clipping issue around the Kalphite Queen entrance was fixed.
• Thrower trolls now count towards the troll Slayer task.
• A bug was fixed where opening passable doors while the map was loading wouldn't show.
• The slayer experience gained for group bosses has been increased.
• The prayer experience of bat bones was increased from 90 to 150.
• Swapping two special attack weapons no longer resets special attack activation.
• Fancy and Fighting boots can now be found on the Grand Exchange.
• Bolt effects (only 1 word) are now shown in the equipment interface. The full effect can be viewed by hovering over the bolt item.
• The weapon animations for dharok's axe, anger battle axe and anger mace have been updated. The previous versions were a little buggy and I found a set of animations that fits their style better.
• Multi target spells no longer increase their range when attacking larger monsters. Also a bug has been fixed which allowed you to target enemies with multi target spells through walls.
• Pet dragons can now be found in the GE.

Engine fixes / changes:

• The performance of rendering players on the minimap has been improved. The code that determined if players are in your clan chat or are on your friends list had horrible complexities and were costing some fps. All fixed and improved now though.
• A bug was fixed where the minimap wouldn't update properly when crossing Agility obstacles.
• Animations are now properly preloaded when equipping items. This fixes an issue where equipping a 2h sword and walking would shortly pause your walk animation because it wasn't previously loaded.
• Ground item system improved. You can see up to 5 different items now and all doubles are filtered. So if you drop coins and 10 mantas on top of it, you'll be able to see 1 manta ray model and 1 coins model. This will make it easier to see which items are on the floor.

Water Edges
I've given the water calculation an additional depth test that determines how transparent the edges are. It creates smooth coastlines giving water an even more realistic look. I've also updated swamps, because dirty water has very dithered reflections.


In other News
I've started a discussion about future updates and how the game could be improved. You can read all the details here: https://emps-world.net/forum/index.php?topic=20986.0 There has already been some discussion on-going and I am now working on following things:

• Voting system: already got the scripts working really well, now looking into the rewards. My plans are to create voting boxes, which contain random useful loot and a rare chance to receive unique pets. My aim is to not let these rewards affect the economy at all but it should be worth your time. Probably dyes for existing items that are tradeable and small experience lamps. Thoughts on that?
• Daily minigame task: I'd pick a different minigame every day that is featured, so teaming up becomes easier.
• Daily boss task: An additional challenge once having reached a certain milestone. I definitely want to include the 4-man group challenges too.
• Difficult game mode: This mode will have experience rates lowered by a lot and will get separate highscores. I also plan on receiving unique rare items when reaching certain milestones at this game mode.

I cannot say when all these changes find their way into the game, but I'll be working on them from now on. I've also delayed the new boss a little bit more, because I just haven't been able to get things done yet. Lots of smaller projects and idea compilation were taking up my time.

All the best,
Thomy

52

Update Notes / Updates March 29th 2018 - Clan Chat Rework, Barrows Overhaul and Engine Fixes!

« on: March 14, 2018, 01:08:52 pm »

Hey guys,

I've decided to pick up two old systems and give them a rework to ensure that they are still convenient to work with. This includes a complete rework of the Barrows minigame and a proper Clan Chat. You'll now be getting way more Runes from Barrows and are able to manage rights per user in your clan chat.

Barrows Minigame Overhaul
The minigame has received improved rewards, puzzles, locked doors and a darkened minimap. I've completely overhauled the minigame, because it was running ancient code and improved the rewards. Doors inside the crypt dungeons are now randomly locking and you need to find a path through the crypts to find your way into the center. Before claiming your rewards you also need to complete a puzzle. Don't worry, you've got as much time as you want to complete it, but once you provide a wrong answer the locked doors will re-arrange and force you to find another entrance.


You can now also see which Barrow brothers you've already slain, as well as your Rewards percentage. The looting system has completely been reworked. You can get a maximum of 6 rewards in total. Each brother slain adds one run to the reward system. The Rewards percentage determines how many stackable items you get. The higher it is the higher the amount of runes, arrows and darts you receive will be.



Clan Chat Rework
I've had this project on the schedule for too long and am proud to finally present you a fully working chat room system! You are able to configure your own clan chat and manage rights of users.

You can set individual rights for following actions:

• Enter: Join and read messages.
• Talk: Ability to send messages.
• Kick: Remove users from the chat.
• Ban: Permanently ban users from the chat.

On top of that you can change your chat's name whenever you like (assuming nobody else has taken the name already!) and only the owner can also delete the chat. The general concept of the rights management in clan chat is that you cannot touch any higher ranks. The owner has immunity to everyone as well as admins. The following ranks gain special abilities:

• Lieutenant: Change user rights.
• General: Change channel rights: enter, talk, kick and ban.
• Owner: Change chat name and delete option.

Initially chat and member ranks could be a little confusing, but you can join and take a look at our official clan chat "Emps-World" where we will be applying these rights in a meaningful way and show you how a chat ban be managed.

Attack Option Priority
This setting may be a little bit confusing, so I've overhauled it. Prior to the update this setting was only prioritizing attack options of a single npc or player. So it had no impact on items or objects being on the same spot. With this update the attack option is prioritized over anything. Other entities are still prioritized if they are closer to you - this only applies if being on the same spot. When disabling the setting, any other option but attack is clicked first. Meaning that pickpocketing and talking to npcs is now a simple left-click. Moreover items on the floor are also prioritized when disabled. The attack option on players also doesn't have priority by default anymore, this is now also determined by the setting. All your runs (amount of slain brothers) are added up and shown to you in the rewards interface. When claiming your reward all doors lock and you can teleport out by clicking on the rewards chest again.

Slayer - Boss Tasks
Let's just be honest here... Boss tasks are too short and give way too much experience. Thus I'm reducing the experience gained but increase the task length. In the end the task is still giving the same amount of experience but is longer. The changes will shortly be live on our wiki page: https://emps-world.net/wiki/Slayer I know this change may be frustrating, but the gap between boss and normal tasks was just way too big.

Game fixes / changes:

• The saradomin and zamorak hood and cape from Emps-Wars now count in the GWD as protection.
• Ironmen can now accept aid. This was causing a bug when ironmen where tasking people to be their slayer partners.
• Fletching crossbows has received fixes. You can no longer combine invalid combinations to create crossbows.
• The ancient staff buff was too much - it's now a tier 65 weapon with the same effect though.
• A bug was fixed where your character wouldn't follow enemies when wearing a staff and not auto-casting a spell.
• The DPS calculation for special attacks has been fixed.
• Crossbows (u), crossbow stocks and crossbow strings can now be noted.
• The skulling system no longer resets upon death. This fixes a bug where you'd get a skull after death although you shouldn't when attacking the same enemy again.
• Farmed items can now be noted when using them on Leprechauns.

Engine fixes / changes:

• A z-priority issue with models was fixed.
• Barrow brothers animations overhauled.
• Karil crossbow animation fixed. It's also been sped up so that it cannot reset when firing with 2 quick auto attacks.
• A flickering issue with water reflection was fixed. Their resolution is now proportional to your screen size.

The rework of Barrows and Clan Chat took way more time than I expected. So I have to delay the release of the next boss a little. I expect it to be done within the next two updates. There was also a quest planned for Easter but due to the upcoming Double Experience weekend I am delaying that for one week to make sure it works well and isn't frustratingly buggy!

All the best,
Thomy




Fixes of 30th:

• Broadcasts are working again.
• Clan Chat can now use special characters and uppercase letters wherever you wish.
• Default Clan Chats have been re-added and blocked: Emps-World, Emps, Assistance, Marketing, etc.
• Barrows rewards slightly adjusted. The amount of mind and chaos runes was reduced by a little bit (5-10%). I'm sorry, but it was just way too much!

53

Update Notes / Updates March 14th 2018 - Interface Overhauls, Balancing and Slayer Partners!

« on: March 01, 2018, 12:48:49 pm »

Hey guys,

I've prepared a few changes and QoL improvements with this update. I've also dedicated some time into rewriting old systems to make sure certain skills in the game are enjoyable and convenient to interact with.

Slayer Partners
You are now able to share and complete Slayer tasks with one friend. You can setup your Slayer partner by right-clicking an enchanted gem. Once a partner is chosen it will be remembered until you pick a new one. When being close to each other kills count towards both of your kill count. Moreover, your partner gains 25% of Slayer experience from your kills. Happy Slaying!

Rune Emporium - Buying Runes
We've identified that the Rune store is quite a big target for macroing. Creating an auto-clicker to buy runes can easily be done and is also quite rewarding because of the restock rate. Therefore I am halving the amount of runes available in the shop and it now takes 10 seconds for the shop to restock 1 rune (previously 3s). I do understand that this is going to complicate the process of quickly getting runes, but I think that it's a solution that makes Runecrafting more attractive and solves an auto-clicker problem.

Fletching - Crossbows
You can now fletch crossbows. It is done by fletching different log types into crossbow stocks. These are combined with limbs (bronze - rune and blurite) to an unstrung crossbow. The unstrung crossbow needs to be combined with a crossbow string to create the final crossbow. Crossbow strings can be created by using flax on a spinning wheel, identical to how bow strings are created. The Fletching interface contains the level requirements for crossbows. Daily Fletching tasks now consider strung bows and longbows instead of unstrung ones. Crossbows have been excluded from the daily task list, because limbs can only be received as monster drops.

Interface Updates and Overhauls
Some interfaces have been overhauled and reworked to increase their usability. With this update I've also rewritten the entire fletching and hide crafting interfaces. You're now able to select options 1, 5, 10 and X properly throughout the entire item creation process.

I've updated the jewellery interface to ease the creation process of rings, necklaces and amulets. With this update the Crafting experience gained for jewellery has been increased by 20%.


When clicking on a furnace you'll now get an interface allowing you to pick the bar you wish to smelt. You can also still use the ore directly on the furnace.


Some Fletching and Crafting interfaces have also been overhauled:



Game changes:

• Attack range of granite maul increased. It's now the same as spears and halberds. This makes comboing its special attack with other longer ranged weapons easier.
• Instances for Kalphite Queen and Corporeal Beast have been fixed. They are now properly respawning. Moreover, recycled instance names (bandos instance named "test" and zamy instance named "test" for example) no longer interfere with each other and cause one of the instances to not work.
• A bug was fixed where you could still gain combat experience when dealing 0 damage on a Slayer monster.
• A bug was fixed where you had to click your enemy twice when swapping from a magic to melee weapon.
• Clicking the Glacor is now working properly.
• The run animations for santa and skeleton ring have been updated.
• The smite prayer now drains 25% of your hit in prayer points instead of 20%.
• Ancient staff now requires level 71 Magic and increases the cast range of all ancient spells by 2. Its bonuses have also been updated to be a tier 70 weapon.
• A bug was fixed that didn't load POHs properly when eating while teleporting.

Engine changes:

• Fixed an issue where the images of items wouldn't update when crafting green, blue, red or black dragon leather.
• The quality of interfaces and sprites when using the framescale option has been increased. This change is visible the most at UHD or 4k screens.
• Ground adjustment formulas for npcs have been overhauled. Larger monsters (dragons or larger) will now align better to the terrain.
• A turn animation for players and npcs has been added when there is no movement and they are facing another entity.
• The animation for climbing up stairs no longer blocks walking.

E-Mail Delivery Issues
I've received a few complaints that e-mails aren't being delivered properly. Checked the our mail server and gone through the configuration again. Should be working properly again, some configurations were outdated or missing. I'm receiving all mails on my google account and assume it's thus also working for others. Please let me know if you aren't receiving any mails from the Emps-World server and I'll have an individual look at why your mail provider blocks it.

I hope you're enjoying this update. It's mainly aimed at improving the game and fixes a few bugs. I'll now be starting to work on the next group challenge boss named Kal'Ger. This demon is going to drop new tier 85 melee weapons.

All the best,
Thomy


Updates of the 15th:

• Ironmen can now accept aid. This was causing a bug when ironmen where tasking people to be their slayer partners.
• Fletching crossbows has received fixes. You can no longer combine invalid combinations to create crossbows.
• The ancient staff buff was too much - it's now a tier 65 weapon with the same effect though.

54

Update Notes / Updates March 1st 2018 - Water Reflections, Bugfixes and Engine Improvements!

« on: February 18, 2018, 03:26:46 pm »

Hey guys,

Get your gaming PCs ready, I've added a HD water simulation! Just kidding, the water code runs fast on slow GPUs as well.

HD Water #2
I've overhauled the way water planes are calculated. This block will be a little technical, if you're not interested in it... just have a look at the screenshot below! I've created a water shader that combines the water texture with a ripple and reflection texture. This results in a dithered reflection of the game world in water planes. Moreover, there's also always only 1 water reflection. Meaning that if you're standing next to a pond and the sea, only 1 of the water areas is used for the reflection calculation. You shouldn't really feel that, because I'm smartly switching between water reflection planes depending on where you're closest to. In my next graphical improvements I plan to implement a sun along with a proper skybox and different light sources. This will allow me to give water reflections even more beauty by reflecting the skybox and sun.

I've developped the entire code on my laptop and tested it on an Intel HD chip (weak GPU) as well as on an NVIDIA GT 940M. Low quality reflections were no problem for the Intel HD chip and the NVIDIA ran both, low and high quality reflections without any issues. Nonetheless, reflections are disabled by default on slower GPUs, which are in laptops mostly. You can increase the water quality (and the quality of reflections) by increasing the Water Quality setting. It works the same way as the Shadow Quality setting.

Here's what the new water looks like:

Camera Usability
I've updated the way the in-game camera works. Moving towards a direction (x/y) now cancels out the opposite direction: You don't need to pause when rotating the camera from left to right or vice versa. You're now also able to move the camera's y angle further down. There is now a check for the camera to clip the terrain, so you can no longer view anything that is below the surface. Prior to the update it was impossible to stand on a hill or mountain and look up to your character.


Game changes:

• Some issues with the following code have been fixed. There was a problem when using auto retaliate that would give you additional attacking distance when using ranged or magic. Another issue was fixed when attacking players with melee weapons having a greater attacking distance than 1.
• The attack sound for spears has been fixed. Some attack styles had an incorrect one.
• A bug was fixed where the death of bosses was carrying on their current actions. This was happening when Nex died during her flight animation, carrying the damage calculations to her respawn.
• Operating items (games necklace, ferocious ring, amulet of glory, etc.) is now no longer possible while another action is done: agility, alching, etc.
• A bug with instances was fixed where bosses would no longer respawn. This was related to the boss healing during death animation and the game not properly detecting the npc as dead since its hitpoints wasn't 0.
• Auras now correctly cost 20EP.
• The level requirements for Agility's daily tasks have been increased:
  • Wildy: level 80+
  • Brimhaven: 45+
  • Advanced barbarian: 75+
• Weapon configurations for meat tenderizer have been fixed.
• Slayer task messages including plural monster names have been corrected.
• Glacors no longer randomly spawn their minions. There was a bug that they were respawned when Glacors were dead.
• Having a spear equipped no longer bugs following NPCs and players.

Engine changes:

• Disabling ground decoration no longer removes walls at the Karamja agility course.
• Water and lava calculations overhauled.
• The dart attack animation is no longer blocking movement.
• A few performance issues with rendering the minimap have been identified and fixed. You should find your game running smoother now.

I'll now start working on our 3rd demon boss dropping new tier 85 melee weapons. It will again be a 4-man group boss challenge. After this boss I'm open for suggestions. I have the Summoning skill in mind, a more difficult firecape minigame (new cape!), a long quest or achievement diaries. I'll probably put a poll online to see which update gains most interest! You can already let me know in a comment below what you'd prefer though.

All the best,
Thomy

55

Update Notes / Updates February 8th & 9th - Taunts, NPC combat, Yk'Lagor and more!

« on: January 19, 2018, 05:03:16 pm »

Hey guys,

I've got a few interesting game changes ready and am proud to present our 3rd group boss to you: Yk'Lagor. Who is dropping brand new level 85 Magic weapons.

Shield Specials
I've added a new button to the attack interface, the Shield Special ability. Different shields will now have different abilities that aid you in combat. Some shields already had abilities (spirit shield, dragonfire shield), which can now be used by clicking that button. By default every shield has the Taunt ability. I will now explain all shield abilities currently available:

• Taunt: Forces an npc to attack you for a certain amount of time. I recommend reading the next section for more details about NPC aggression.
• Protect: Protects you from all damage by a given amount of time. Spirit shields have this effect and its duration is 2.5 seconds.
• Dragonfire: Fires a dragon breath at your enemy.
• Freedom: Breaks all freezes and gives you freezing immunity for 2.5 seconds. Chaotic kiteshield (newly added) currently has this ability.
• Elemental boost: Gives every elemental spell from the normal spellbook a +2 base damage boost.

The duration of a shield special can be seen at the number, which is in the brackets near the effect name. So for example Taunt [20] means that you can taunt an enemy for 20 seconds. Taunting has no cooldown, but it comes at the cost of having to skip your next attack.


NPC Combat Target
With the ability to taunt npcs, I've also changed the way they behave during combat. Especially the target switching code, because I have to make sure that taunting npcs cannot heavily be abused and doesn't create any strange scenarios. I'm summarizing the way npcs behave during combat in the list below:

• New targets are selected every 4 seconds. That is about 1-2 attacks before trying to find a new target.
• New targets are always selected if the current target cannot be attacked. That happens if you try to run away from an npc, died or teleported away.
• Taunting gives 2 seconds complete immunity to target switching. Also if you teleport away, die or are too far away!
• Taunting gives complete immunity to random target switching. The npc won't start looking for new targets as long as it can attack you.
• Taunting an enemy gives them taunt immunity for 10 seconds.

Yk'Lagor
Deep down the depths of the Asgarnian dungeon a new dangerous foe has appeared, Yk'Lagor. A thunderous demon that's supposed to be fought in a group of 4 people. Every participant (up to a maximum of 4) gets a drop from the boss and could be lucky to get the new level 85 Magic Demon wand or Demon orb.



Engine changes:

• Projectile angles smoothened across travel time. They'll no longer flicker and change their rotation angle quickly. An animation downscaling bug was also fixed. Projectiles animations will now also have smoother animations.
• Defensive autocast button added.
• The way objects are adjusted to the ground has been improved. It's a visual upgrade for rocks, tree stumps, etc. on the floor.
• Certain buggy triangles flying in the air have been removed. They existed in Camelot, Ardougne and Edgeville.
• I've improved the way objects are loaded when a new map is loading. I wasn't really satisfied with the results of trees shortly flickering and then switching to their stump state. The same thing was happening to rocks. I've updated the game to try to avoid such scenarios and it's been working really good so far. You should see less objects flicker when their state is changed. The ::reloadmap command was also overhauled and is now handled by the server instead of the client.
• The smithing interface now has a 'Smith All' option.
• Experience gains are now properly added up. If you're fighting lots of enemies with a multi target spell you'll now only see 1 experience drop per game tick instead of one per hit.
• The animations of floating rocks in water have been fixed.
• The minimap icons of trees and rocks have been updated. Some were missing and the information also wasn't shown on the map viewer.

Game changes:

• Spam-clicking stairs in POHs can no longer bug your character and place you on top of roofs.
• Spectrals now pause their attack when you're starting to attack another player in the wilderness. This fixes an issue where the attacked player couldn't fight back.
• Spectral equipment lost on death, that hasn't yet been degraded, will no longer turn into coins, but Spectral energy. This was a bug before the update.
• A bug was fixed where teleporting enemies would leave unclippable spots behind. An example of this happening are Abyssal demons, which would stop walking around after a certain amount of time.
• Shenven can now assign all monsters available in her dungeon.
• Most of Shenven's cave are now a multi combat zone. Gladiators, Dark beasts and half of Abyssal demons are still single combat.
• The experience gains for multi target spells / effects (ancients & chin chompas) have been reduced to 20%. I do realize this is a really harsh nerf, but the amount of experience you can get without having to use any additional resources is just way too big. Especially with recent changes introducing new multi combat areas.
• The hits of multi target spells / effects are now instantly shown instead of 1 game tick later.
• Abyssal demons have slightly been buffed (2 maxhits and ~10% accuracy). They were too weak for a level 124 opponent. Still hitting nothing on me when using protection prayer and decent gear. This is a change aimed at long trips without any sustain.
• The usability of melee weapons with larger hit distances has been improved. You'll now stop before your opponent whenever they can be reached and eating also no longer moves you towards your enemy.
• Chaotic kiteshield can now be bought with Slayer Points.
• Broken Torva, Virtus and Pernix can no longer be equipped. The broken parts could still be equipped but gave no bonuses. To resolve the confusion of the items still being usable, they now simply can no longer be equipped.
• Archers around Barbarian village can now drop studded (g/t) bodies and chaps.
• The heraldic drop table of clue scrolls now contains green and blue dragonhide (g/t).
• Autocast spells no longer reset when relogging.
• God capes now require level 60 Magic to be worn.

Please let me know what you think of these changes! Especially how it feels to be able to taunt and tank monsters. Is it useful? Do we need more items or more techniques for it to become more useful? Let me know!

All the best,
Thomy



Changes and Fixes of the 9th:

• Hundig slayer tasks have been fixed.
• Yk'Lagor can now be assigned by Shenven.
• Yk'Lagor no longer has a lifesteal bonus except for the last stage. The chance for spawning a random minion has been adjusted. Randomly spawning minions during the fight has been reduced by 2.5% and the chance of spawning a Ranger is now 2/3. This change doesn't affect the spawns of phase changes (jumping into the middle).
• Items dropped on death are no longer inside the boss area of Yk'Lagor, but outside in the lobby.
• A bug in the code of following NPCs was fixed. This also fixes a problem where you would still move towards your enemy when attacking with a spear.

56

Update Notes / Updates January 19th & 21st 2018 - Bugfixes and Wilderness PvM Improvements

« on: December 26, 2017, 12:01:45 pm »

Hey guys,

I hope you've all had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! In this update I'm attempting to fix a few annoying issues and am improving certain aspects of the game. Please take your time and read through the changes.

Boss Instances
I wasn't really satisfied with the way instances worked and it also sometimes was really confusing. I'm not changing the system that instances don't immediately destroy when there's no longer an active player inside. There's now a 2 minute timer that needs to pass before an instance is completely deleted. This change also fixes a problem where hitting a boss once inside an instance and immediately leaving had counted as a kill and yielded an item drop. Moreover, Smoke Demon Champion and Kalphite Queen can now be fought in instances.

Player / NPC Position Issues
I still wasn't very satisfied with the maploader, because there was the possibility that certain players or npcs would just disappear in certain scenarios. This includes walking around in Edgeville and fighting Har'lakk. I've fixed those issues, but am unable to verify if it really works flawlessly in all situations. It's rarely occurring and isn't that easy to track down. In my tests I couldn't reproduce the disappearance bugs anymore, so they seem to be fixed. Please let me know if I have to investigate this problem in more detail! Overall, I'm pretty sure the issue is fixed now though.

PvP Armours - Spectral Equipment
Ancient energy is now called Spectral energy to avoid communication issues when talking about ancient equipment (torva, virtus, pernix) and spectral equipment (morrigan, zuriel, vesta, statius). Where ancient equipment was ambiguous before the update.
Thanks to a topic pointing out that PvP armours (vesta, statius, morrigan and zuriel) are in a really bad state right now, I'm now changing the way those are obtained and degrade. (topic: https://emps-world.net/forum/index.php?topic=20613.0) Before the update, you'd have a really small chance of obtaining a corrupt or non-corrupt PvP item. This was really frustrating, because the chances of obtaining one were really rare and thus the whole equipment was also never really used a lot in PvP areas. Spectrals now only drop corrupt items (3% drop chance) and a fixed amount of Spectral energy (80-120 per kill). You can create the non-corrupt version by upgrading its corrupt version with 6,000 Spectral energy. This equals to fully repairing a non-corrupt item. When a non-corrupt item is lost on death or completely degrades, it turns into its corrupt version and can be upgraded again. With this change all non-corrupt items are now untradeable. Morrigan's javelins and throwing axes also need to be upgraded from their corrupt versions. However once upgraded they'll never degrade. You require 50 Spectral energy per axe or javelin to upgrade (max 100 at once).

I've also visually changed the way corrupt armours look like. The picture below shows Corrupt Zuriel (left) and normal Zuriel (right):



Engine updates:

• Further map loader improvements have been done. I've been on holidays and developed Emps-World on my laptop and I wasn't quite satisfied with how the map was loading. I know that laptops have worse performance than desktop PCs in general when playing games... but I knew it could be done better. There'll now be less fps drops when a new map is loading. This is felt especially when being on a laptop and using high quality ground settings, because that needs additional calculations.
• The equipment screen no longer shows flashing npcs when being transformed into a snowman. With this patch the performance of rendering the equipment screen has also been improved.
• Blood altar can now be accessed correctly again. Its water plane has also been fixed as well as walking and clicking areas.
• Brightness setting now affects water color.
• Camera height changes have been smoothened out. You feel this when traveling over hilly terrain. Your camera won't instantly jump/down anymore, but do it in a smooth transition.
• Animation pre-loading has been improved. You will find less flickering effects when an animation is loaded for the first time.
• A bug was fixed where clicking objects on bridges or upper terrains wouldn't register the walking queue. (Al-Kharid and Canifis bank, Port sarim, etc.)

Game updates:

• Granite maul special attack finetuning. Activating the special attack without being close to your enemy won't buffer your attack timer anymore and stop you from attacking immediately. It's basically a bugfix. The attack speed has also been reduced by 1 tick (0.5 seconds) to make it easier and faster to weapon swap and attack again after the special attack.
• The "I've lost the items" message in scripts (lost delivery notes during Christmas event for example) will now tell you which item (in that case the delivery notes) are required to continue the dialogue. This response has been causing a lot of confusion.
• Heal spells from the lunar spellbook are now correctly working again.
• Dragonfire shield special attack (right-click operate in equipment screen) has been fixed. You'll no longer get stuck during PvP scenarios.
• A bug was fixed where disconnecting and reconnecting to the game immediately wouldn't spawn any npcs anymore.
• Santa has left the Grand Exchange and will be happy to meet you again later this year.
• Commander Zilyana can no longer be bugged into a wall.
• More damage bonuses can now be seen in the equipment interface: Slayer helm, salve amulet, chaotic weapons, anger weapons, etc. The additional damage shown in brackets assumes you're hitting the correct target.
• Swapping staves is now consistently saving the state of your current spell. There was a bug when swapping staves that both had uniquely casted spells (zuriel & ivandis for example).

Since our previous 2 bossing updates (Nex and Har'Lakk) have been a great success, I'll now be focusing on a third boss. It'll be a challenge with similar difficulty and the drops will be brand-new tier 85 Magic weapons! I'll try to get it done with the next update, but I cannot promise a release date.

All the best,
Thomy



Fixes of 21st:

• Noted corrupt items are no longer invisible.
• Non-corrupted items can no longer be traded.
• Non-corrupt items now correctly turn into their corrupted versions upon death.
• A bug was fixed where autocast spells have been reset when swapping weapons. Your autocast spell only resets when swapping spellbooks or when swapping between staves that can only cast a single spell and staves that can cast spells from the spellbook.
• A coloring problem with corrupt spectral items was fixed.
• Random staff attack interfaces should no longer appear.
• Ending a Pest Control minigame will no longer show you invisible npcs.

57

Update Notes / Updates December 26th 2017 - PvP Improvements and Bugfixes

« on: December 23, 2017, 02:48:18 pm »

Hey guys,

This update couldn't wait until next year, so I'm rolling it out shortly after Christmas. It's mainly to stop people from abusing the Christmas event by creating tons of new accounts. The changes aren't too big, but interesting for PvP scenarios. Please take your time and read through the changes!

Range / Mage Hits
I've changed the way distant combat hits are calculated internally. Before the update, the hit would be calculated whenever the projectile hit the enemy. So whenever a spell or arrow was hitting your enemy. With this update, the calculation is done when the projectile is fired. So whenever you shoot the arrow or start casting the spell. You can now estimate or calculate your next hit by taking a look at the experience gained immediately after shooting an arrow or casting a spell. I've changed this in order to make combos easier in PvP scenarios, where you need to know the next incoming hit for a follow-up attack. You can also no longer gain experience for overkills (hitting higher than your enemy's health).

Item drops in Instances
Instances have introduced a new way of accessing bosses, but have also come with new complications and misunderstandings. Prior to the update, you weren't able to get back items out of certain instances, because instances themselves were deleted after death. I'm not changing this system, but you'll now be able to see and pick up items that originally belong to you in every instance. Resulting in being able to pick up your items no matter if you're in an instance or not. This doesn't count for items that can be seen by everybody though! So items lost in an instance cannot be picked up by others.

Engine updates:

• The loading speed of new areas have received some further adjustments. It'll now lag less on slower computers.
• The anti-aliasing option is now disabled by default on computers using intel HD chips. This improves performance a lot on slower computers. I've been testing this myself and got 60 fps at pretty much any area with shadows disabled on my laptop.
• Ironman messages are no longer handled as staff messages in clan chats and can now be hidden properly.

Game updates:

• I've received quite a few reports about people getting stuck when trying to enter instances in the GWD. I was able to reproduce the problem when having the auto-retaliate option on. Entering instances now temporarily disables auto-retaliate to make sure you're not getting stuck while trying to enter an instance. I've also added additional checks if you're frozen or currently cannot pass a door that will stop you from entering an instance and thus avoid you from getting stuck.
• The granite maul can now do 2 special attacks in 1 game tick. This gives you the opportunity to do 2 (or 3 if timed well) consecutive hits. Since this a huge buff to the granite maul, I'm nerfing its special attack accuracy down from 160% to 100% (osrs copy).
• Cutting onyxes into bolt tips is now correctly working again.
• Smite effect is now inflicted at the start of range / magic projectiles instead of when the hit occurs.
• The Christmas event now requires a total level of 200.
• It's no longer possible to bug your attack animation when wearing snowman hats after relogging.

I hope you've all had a Merry Christmas.

All the best,
Thomy

58

Update Notes / Updates December 20th 2017 - Christmas Event and Bugfixes!

« on: December 07, 2017, 04:14:08 pm »

Hey guys,

Sorry for the delayed update, but I've been ill last week and couldn't really work on too much. This was planned to be released 1 week earlier.

Christmas Event
Same procedure as every year, Santa! A wild Christmas tree has appeared south of the Grand Exchange including presents, snow drifts and Santa himself. Talk to him to do a miniquest and find out a little secret that he's been hiding for quite a while. You'll also meet Jack Frost again. I've re-enable present deliveries and all old Christmas events. In fact, you have to do the old events first before being able to do the newest. Christmas crackers can also be obtained again with a very rare chance of receiving salty claw hat and candy cane (1 in 1000). As well as traditional Christmas outfits, reindeer hat, present imp, Christmas cape and snowman hats. You'll know what to do with snowman hats after completing Santa's miniquest!


Engine updates:

• Map loader overhauled another time. I wasn't quite satisfied with the results especially on slower computers. I've improved the loader to minimize fps stuttering and to minimize loading / waiting times as much as possible.
• The way the map loads when being in a POH was improved. It'll no longer refresh everything when building a new room. Several clipping issues have also been fixed.
• Worldmap viewer now shows additional details (trees, rocks, etc.) and not only landscape anymore.
• Certain chat heads (pets and non-humans mostly) are now larger.
• The chat heads of colored pernix items have been fixed. You'll no longer have a black mouth and black eyes.
• Fixes to shadows in regions where upper heights aren't shown (Slayer tower, corporeal beast).

Game changes and fixes:

• Rugs are no longer clipping with stairs in POHs.
• Ancient longbow's accuracy buffed.
• Ancient arrows and bolts strength bonus buffed.
• Picking up ranged ammo (knives, darts, etc.) no longer overwrites your arrow slot.
• Broken Demon crossbow and longbow can no longer be used in their broken state.
• Onyx can now be cut into bolt tips again. There was an interference problem with recharging the regen bracelet.
• The charges of newly started poison purge aura have been increased to 20,000. It degrades every time you are hit, which can be used up quickly when being hit by multiple enemies.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a very good time! This is probably the last update in 2017 unless I have to do some bug fixing. The next year is going to start with new weapons and bosses for Melee / Magic. After that we can open up another discussion topic what things you'd like to see in 2018. Maybe Summoning?

All the best,
Thomy

59

Update Notes / Updates December 6th 2017 - Har'Lakk, Range Balancing, Spell Tweaks and More!

« on: October 28, 2017, 09:17:17 am »

Hey guys,

It's been a while since the last update and thus this topic is a little longer. I've done my best to keep things as short as possible, so that everything can be read quickly. We've got a new boss and some tweaks for the Ranging skill introducing proper longbows, new arrows and new bolts!

Engine / Performance Tweaks
Quite a lot of people were complaining that the game was lagging. I've investigated the issue and was able to tweak some things in the engine that will improve fps rates overall. I was able to identify and fix a few problematic rendering issues. The game runs best on a dedicated graphics card. If you've got a laptop with 2 graphics cards, make sure Emps-World runs on the high performance one! Intel HD chips (primarily on laptops) are known to be slow and really can't get you 60+ fps with maxed out settings. I'll now be stopping to improve the game's performance, because it's been the only thing I was able to do in the past weeks. I want to focus on content updates rather than improving the game engine more and more. I've also received quite a few reports about invisible players, areas not loading properly, flickering objects, etc. I'm still working on getting all graphical glitches fixed, but it should already be in a really good state right now. These problems are coming from the aggressive loading method I'm using. If you enter a new area, your game doesn't pause and loads new data on-demand resulting in smooth loading processes. While this sounds really nice in theory, it's a nightmare to program it. That's the main reason for certain objects not loading properly or players disappearing. However, it's already working out quite nicely and will be free of bugs in the future.

Spell Effects
I've been watching some wilderness fights and this has been a topic for quite a while now: The hit chance of spell effects. Magic hit chance and spell effect chance have always been one value and with this update I am separating them. The chances of successfully applying a spell effect on your opponent is double your accuracy. So even if you've got only a chance of 30% to hit your enemy with a magical attack, the chance for a spell effect to apply is 60%. This change may sound harsh, but I think that freezing spells in the wilderness have lost their purpose. The damage output is fine imho and I don't want to change that.

Har'Lakk
Up for a similar challenge as Nex? Har'Lakk is going to give you another tough fight! You can enter the boss lair north-west of the Barrow hills. If you cannot find the spot, use the minimap and simply search for Har'Lakk. The boss drops items for the 4 top damage dealers and can be instanced. It is highly recommended to face this enemy as a team. The best drops you can get are the Demon longbow and Demon crossbow; new level 85 Range weapons. These weapons allow you to fire Ancient arrows and Ancient bolts, which will boost your dps by a significant amount.

I've tried my best to get Har'Lakk down on my own... but I couldn't get it done. Maybe you can show me how to properly get a solo kill?

Here's the Demon longbow and crossbow:



More Ranging Tweaks
I'd like to make longbows more useful in the game and am thus introducing their weapon type. Whenever arrows are used with a longbow, they give you additional +30% Ranged strength to compensate for their slower attack speed. This results in much higher dps and makes them a valid alternative to shortbows.

The Ranged requirement and thus crossbow requirement for enchanted bolts has been increased by some levels each. You now require a level 71 or 72 Ranged weapon to fire dragon or onyx bolts. The strongest ammo shouldn't be usable with lower level crossbows, because it results in too much damage on weaker equipment. Enchanted crossbow bolts with their level requirements are now also existing in the Range skill guide.

I'm changing the level requirement of dragon arrows and introduce 2 new arrow / bolt types:

• Dragon arrows: require level 60+ bow
• Barrow arrows: require level 71+ bow
• Ancient arrows: require level 82+ bow
• Ancient bolts: require level 83+ crossbow

The point of this change is to create a gap between low and high level Ranged gear. Prior to the update you'd get almost the same damage of any bow that used dragon arrows. You can now use higher level arrows with higher level bows, which gives higher level bows a real power-up. However with this changed I am forced to nerf the arrow strength of arrows by 10%. Otherwise the newly introduced arrows would outperform everything. Barrow and Ancient arrows can be poisoned as well. The projectiles of poisoned dragon, barrow and ancient arrows have received a different model. It can now clearly be seen when you're firing a high-level poisoned arrow.


Engine changes:

• Fixed screen mode updated. It's now usable and scales appropriately with your monitor. If you've been a fan of the fixed screen mode, I recommend trying it out now and adjusting the frame scale setting in order to make it bigger.
• I've identified quite a significant fps drop when new regions are loading. I can't remove this completely, because loading a new region just requires some loading time. However, I've changed the way a new region loads a little. The minimap is now refreshed after the region is fully loaded, which has a smaller impact later on on fps drops. I've also sped up the way floor is loaded. Overall the fps drop still exists (has no fix), but is a lot less impactful than before.
• Fog calculations overhauled. I now have support for more foggy areas and the way fog is calculated was also adjusted. This may result in an increase of fps on slower systems and fixes some transparency issues with distant objects.
• Animated objects are now properly replaced and are no longer flickering. This issue existed pretty much only in Agility courses, especially in the Karamja one.
• A bug with character / npc clones has been fixed.
• The option to select Pick Mode has been removed. By default the software pick mode is now used, which is faster and isn't an ancient openGL technique that's long deprecated.
• Minimap viewer has received some improvements. Certain maps would not load and edges of walls wouldn't display.

Game changes and updates:

• Kolodion respawn timer changed from 30 minutes to 15 minutes.
• Certain minigame npcs have had some of their combat issues fixed: Spectrals, barrows, etc.
• Zamorak and Saradomin bows have been buffed. Their unique arrow effect has been turned into more reliable and flat +8 arrow strength bonus when used with their appropriate bow.
• Karamja Agility course has received a little overhaul. Animation timings were improved and a few bugs have been fixed.
• The dragon arrows reward in the Barrows chest has been replaced with Barrow arrows.
• Nex and ancient warriors/rangers/mages now drop Ancient arrows.
• Dragon arrows can now be fletched. All dragon arrow drops have been replaced with dragon arrowtip drops.
• New arrow types (barrow and ancient arrows) can now be fletched.
• Crossbow stand animation has been updated. Crossbows will no longer be inside the player model.
• Bolt animation updated. You can now see what type of bolt you're shooting (includes enchanted ones). The start and flight animations have also slightly been improved.
• Non-members can now use one additional bank tab and members two. Resulting in a storage of 11 bank tabs and 1200 items in total.
• Halloween event has been removed. You can no longer get any skulls as drops. However, the miniquest including Roddeck and the Grim Reaper can be done any time.
• The spawn timer of Shooting Stars has been reduced by about 60 minutes. A new star can now spawn in 60-90 minutes instead of 120-180 minutes.
• Cabbages can now be harvested! You may have to re-plant them in order for this fix to apply.

The past weeks have been quite stressful for me, because I had a lot of other irl things to do. I'll now be looking into the Christmas event. After that I'll make sure Melee and Magic also get a brand new tier 85 weapon with a similar boss challenge!

All the best,
Thomy

60

Update Notes / Updates October 27th 2017 - Halloween, Combat Improvements, Modelling and More!

« on: October 08, 2017, 07:37:14 am »

Hey guys,

I've got many different changes and updates ready for today. Please take your time and read through them, especially our spooky Halloween event!

Halloween
I've added a new miniquest for the event! Talk to Roddeck in Draynor's Manor. I won't spoil you with any details, but here's a screenshot of Muncher:

Who's Muncher? You'll find out during the quest.

DPS and Accuracy
I've added your current dps and accuracy values to the attack style tab. These values depend on current enemy you're fighting, so don't be upset if your dps becomes lower on bosses! In detail: The last enemy you've hit. With this update, I've also tweaked the accuracy formulas a little bit to make sure you're not constantly hitting 0s on your enemy. This also affects the accuracy of enemies though. This change is only felt in situations where you or your enemy are be really tanky, so boss fights or high level PvP scenarios. Your weakness is no longer protecting you literally almost completely from damage. It also makes sure that your minimum hit chance doesn't fall below values where you're basically not going to hit anything anymore.


I've also furtherly taken a look at the current dps values and found quite a few flaws in the system, especially with how bows and crossbows work. Bows are in general faster than whips and staves, so their max hit should be lower.

Here's a summary of what combat balancing changes were done:

• Thrown weapons were nerfed, because they were outclassing other ranging weapons by far. I've reduced their strength bonus and accuracy by about 15-20% to make sure they are in a spot where they are useful, but won't be overperforming. They are more useful against low defence targets, but will get inaccurate against stronger enemies and thus less effective.
• Morrigan thrownaxe special attack buffed.
• Spirit shields: They are just way too strong. I've reduced their offensive bonuses from 15 to 10 and strength bonuses from 10 to 7. In my opinion a shield with defensive bonuses and a useful operate option shouldn't straight up outclass defenders.
• Arrow strength reduced by 25%.
• Bolt strength buffed by 20%.
• Special attack of magic shortbow and seercull has been nerfed, the 2nd hit now deals 60% of its original damage. This change was necessary to ensure your opponent cannot 1 hit you by just pressing on the special bar. Fast weapons have their strength in speed and not special attack.
• The accurate ranged style now gives 20% bonus accuracy instead of 10 additional accuracy. You give up 0.5s of attack speed when using this attack style, so you should really benefit from it.
• Dark bow special attack max hit buffed. With the nerf previously done to arrows, this needed to be adjusted.
• Accuracy bonuses of Dharok and Guthan increased from 121 to 138.

Engine updates:

• Shadow angle has been adjusted. Before the patch shadows were drawn as if it was sunrise or sunset, whereas now as if it's noon. Please bear in mind that this doesn't mean that game times are possible. There's still a lot of lighting work required for that to work well.
• Further improvements to ground textures. The game now detects more different kinds of grounds.
• Major adjustments to the maploader have been done. Alpha and non-alpha models are now correctly separated and rendered. This increases performance on slower computers and ensures correctness of what's behind windows. I've also identified quite a few problems when new regions were loading, such as mispositioned npcs and/or objects in the scene. I've intensively tested and fixed everything that I could come across. I wasn't able to reproduce npc or object misplacements anymore, but please let me know if they still occur to you! Most reports I've seen came from Emps-Wars or Pest Control.
• Resting animation no longer shows particles and weapons/shields.
• Local teleporting (no new map is loading) no longer refreshes the player list. You'll feel this change especially in crowded agility areas or at boss fights where you can be knocked back.
• Shadows of roofs or terrain above you (Slayer tower) is now correctly casted without having to reload the upper structure. This is basically a small bugfix for shadows.
• Music player overhauled. New songs now buffer while the current song is fading out. Resulting in a smoother transition between old and new songs. Quickly switching between songs will now also cancel out old ones and only play the new one.
• A bug was fixed where animations could completely cancel out on slower machines, e.g. mining.
• Fixed an issue with items being dropped while the map was loading. This could rarely bug out items and make them invisible.

Game changes and fixes:

• Poison purge aura has been fixed. It now heals correctly.
• Effect Restoration code for leaving special areas (houses, duels, minigames, etc.) has been changed. You'll no longer lose all potion effects and stat restoring now depends on the situation. Leaving houses will no longer restore your prayer points or clear poisons. However leaving minigames will still do so. I've reviewed that part carefully and picked situations where negative effects should be cleared and where not.
• Shop value for colored max capes increased.
• Following monsters now also get the Slayer helm damage bonus on their minions: General Graardor, Kree'arra, K'ril Tsutsaroth, Commander Zilyana, Nex, Glacors, Smoke Demon Champion, Nechryael and Chronozon. The effect was already working on minions in fight caves, but I'll mention it here nonetheless.
• Nex combat has received slight adjustments to ensure that all of her important animations are shown. Phases are now checked once every attack cycle and thus cannot cancel out some of her attacks. Moreover, aoe attacks now freeze Nex for 2 seconds instead of 1 to ensure everyone can clearly see that a dodgeable attack is incoming.
• Items lost at the Smoke Demon Champion are now dropped outside of the boss room.
• Inferno Adze can now be used while being in your inventory.
• Godswords attack speed decreased (buffed) by 0.5 seconds. This has been a bug for a long time that I haven't ever noticed.
• Attack speed of gladiator maul decreased (buffed) by 0.5 seconds.
• Wilderness obelisks are now teleporting correctly again.
• Certain music areas have been expanded (dungeons, GE, etc.)
• Nex is now dropping a pet version of herself.

Modelling
I've created a custom model format for emps, which allows us to import and create models from 3rd party programs. We've created a mini nex version and flying pet dragons:


Oldschool Emps-World
I haven't really found time to develop it besides the current game and also probably won't in the future. I'm going to drop the project, because it won't be worth the time and effort. Creating a completely new game is imho a bad decision and would split the community apart. We've also recently grown and I'd like to continue developing what's proven to be successful. Nonetheless, I'll have a look at optionally enabling an oldschool look in the game for a more classic feeling.

I hope you enjoy this update! Let me know what you think of it with a reply below. I'm also sorry for not releasing a new boss by the end of October as promised, but the Halloween event, combat rebalancing and dps investigations were quite a hit on the development stack. I'll see to get it done as soon as possible. However, I am revealing some details of the upcoming bosses: It will be a similar challenge to Nex and 6 new weapons are planned; 2 per combat style. The requirements will be 85 in the respective combat skill and the weapons are coming as 1h and 2h variant. My aim is to make those weapons rather accurate than strong, so that they'll be useful in PvM but mediocre in PvP.

All the best,
Thomy



Fixes and Changes of 28th:

• I've taken a closer look at spirit shields and their equipment alternatives and reverted their bonuses back to their original state. However, with this change, I'm also adjusting the ice shield: It now has the defensive bonuses of a tier 80 shield, but has its strength bonus changed from 10 to 5. I do realize that this is quite a big change, but it effectively can't just be a power-up to a spirit shields. I would like to keep spirit shields in their current state of being power shields. Meaning that they are giving you good offensive bonuses at the cost of defensive bonuses. This only works if other shields don't follow the power shield trend and thus the ice shield had to be adjusted.
• Doors in houses are working again.
• A bug with obelisks in the wilderness was fixed, which could get you stuck.
• Certain pets can now be used as non-members: Muncher, Raven, Pet dragons and Present imps.
• Pet following formula has been updated. Pets won't disappear anymore when teleporting and won't get stuck after using stairs.
• Maxhit tooltip for magic shortbow and seercull updated.
• The bolt ranged strength buff of 20% is a little bit too much. I've adjusted it to be 15% of their strength before the update, so it's now a 15% buff instead of a 20% one.
• A bug was fixed where teleport graphics would flicker.