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Topics - Thomy

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 ... 14
76
Hello everyone,

I'm presenting you a few changes and tweaks with this update. Please take your time and read through the patch notes, some changes may be of great interest to you!

Bank Placeholders
You can now mark an item in your bank as placeholder. Just right-click the item and select the option. Placeholders will always stay in exactly the same spot in your bank, even if you withdraw the entire stack.

Degradable Equipment
I'm reworking this system a little to clarify things. When dieing with degradable equipment, it will be completely destroyed by default. That means that all barrows equipment is dropped as its destroyed version, as well as elemental whips, bows and staves dropping as their original weapon or upgrade crystal. There was a bug in that system that wouldn't delete the original charges of the item. I'm sorry for that and it's now fixed. I've applied changes to items that have no degraded version, such as auras, imbued rings, etc. In general items that are destroyed when completely degraded. These items are now auto kept and lose 25% of their charges upon death. If the there's less than 25% of their charges left, they are completely destroyed. If such items are lost to another player in the wilderness, they are high-alched and the amount of cash is dropped.

Double Experience Scrolls
There has been quite some discussion on-going on this topic. With this update, I'm introducing a new version of scrolls, which is tradable. Old scrolls remain usable forever, but cannot be traded. The new version, purchasable from the EC store, is tradable. I would like to give every player a chance to get their hands on these scrolls. With this change I've also increased the price of a double XP scroll from 100EC to 150EC.

Very High Quality Shadows and Texture Filtering
More graphical improvements, yay! First of all, I've changed the way how shadow settings are chosen. This is only an internal change, so no need to worry about that. The game client can now use more of your GPUs potential (provided it's available) and thus render higher resolution shadows. Just play around with the shadow quality setting to see how the quality improves or decreases.

I've also reworked the way textures are filtered in their alpha channel. Trees and plants will have a smoother look now. Also the transition between textures has been improved, for instance moss on tree stumps. With this improvement of texture filtering, shadows of trees are also much sharper on very high shadow settings.

Other changes:
  • Health bonus is now shown in the equipment screen.
  • Animation downgrading system overhauled. Animations are now smoothly reduced in their quality the further it is away from your camera position. The amount of players and npcs in an area also plays a role of how much animation quality is decreased. Overall performance of the game should now be steadier, especially in populated areas.
  • Healing splats are no longer shown at the old hit splat system. This is too cluttery.
  • Bank size increased from 900 to 1000 items.
  • Wildywyrm graphically updated. It has received particles and moving lava textures.
  • Vesta's spear special attack max hit buffed from 135% to 140%.
  • Dragon longsword and mace special attack accuracy and strength buffed slightly.
  • Dragon scimitar special attack now costs 50% special energy instead of 75%.
  • Dragon halbed special attack buffed from 115% to 125% damage. The second hit on large npcs also inflicts 125% of the damage now.
  • Granite maul special attack changed. Maxhit reduced from 110% to 100% and accuracy buffed from 120% to 160%.
  • Dragon claws accuracy buffed from 120% to 140%.

All the best,
Thomy

77
FAQ and Rules / Troubleshooting
« on: January 12, 2017, 02:13:47 pm »
Hello!

Don't be upset if the game isn't starting anymore or crashes. I'll do my best to fix it for you. Before we start investigating the issue in detail, please try the steps below to make sure it isn't just some standard problem.

0) Computer Restart
Why is there an option 0? Restarting your computer can often fix a lot of different problems. I recommend doing it before we start to investigate your problem at all. :)

1) Disk Space
Make sure you have enough disk space available in your home directory! Emps-World needs about 300MB free space.

2) Anti Virus / Firewall
Anti virus programs often block everything that us unknown to them. Please add Emps-World as an exception to ensure that it's able to connect to the game servers.
Are you behind a firewall or does your ISP have a firewall? Enable or ask your ISP to enable following ports: 23, 24, 43592, 43594 and 43595.

3) Correct Java Installation
Your Java installation may be wrong or you have multiple versions. Also, newer Java versions make the game run faster!
Uninstall Java completely and get the latest version here: https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/downloads/#jdk17-windows

4) Graphics Card Drivers
Are your GPU drivers up to date? There's a pretty good guide on the Minecraft site:
https://minecrafthopper.net/help/pixel-format-not-accelerated/#win

5) Windows Client
Windows users only: Which client are you using? Jar File or Windows? Try both, some computers have difficulties running a specific one:
www.emps-world.net/play

6) Reinstall Game
Sometimes game files get stuck or are installed incorrectly. Giving it a fresh install can solve a lot of problems.
You can either delete the .emps_world folder in your home directory manually, or use the uninstaller:
www.emps-world.net/uninstall

7) Still not Working
Still doesn't work? Looks like your problem may be more difficult to solve. Please make a helpdesk ticket here and I'll take a look at it personally: https://emps-world.net/forum/index.php?action=helpdesk;sa=newticket
Please provide screenshots if possible. It makes it a lot easier for me to find the problem. Also provide crash logs if they are available. You will find them in the .emps_world folder in your home directory. In Windows that is usually under 'C:/Users/YOUR_USER/.emps_world/'
There may be a sub directory called crashes (if crash logs are available). Please append these in your helpdesk ticket, so that I can see what went wrong for you.

Debugging - Only if Requested
Sometimes we need to debug the game on your computer to really find the problem. We always investigate bugs on fresh installs to make sure no local files are corrupted. Please follow the steps below and upload the results to the helpdesk.
1) Close all Emps-World clients and delete the game files at: C:/Users/YOUR_USER/.emps_world
2) Don't change ANY settings!!
3) Log into the game and type ::redirectoutput
4) Play / Wait until it crashes
5) Check C:/Users/YOUR_USER/.emps_world for error / crash files and upload those
6) Check C:/Users/YOUR_USER/.emps_world/console and upload both of those files
7) Wait until I've done my magic :)

All the best,
Thomy

78
Hey guys,

I've got some bigger changes ready with this update, which introduce new ways to improve our combat system. Please take your time and read through the updates. The largest change is the introduction of lifesteal and damage soaking bonuses.


New Equipment and Character Design Screens



I've recreated both of the interfaces. They now feature a large version, which also displays your character's chat head. The equipment screen has received 2 new bonuses:
  • Lifesteal: Just like the vampyrism aura. You can now see how much lifesteal your equipment gives.
  • Soaked: This tells the amount of damage your equipment is soaking. I'll explain this change in more detail below.
I've also fixed a bug where equipment screen bonuses would appear in the quest tab or in the music play list. This will no longer happen.



Damage Soaking

With earlier releases of strong weapons and special attacks, your character has become pretty fragile. Also bosses hit like a truck if you don't pay attention or if you use wrong prayers. I would like to give you the opportunity to also build tanky characters. To think about bringing more damage or more tankiness. Now, this cannot be done by just providing more and more defence bonus, because it will just result the chance of not being hit. Yet, an enemy can still deal the full damage on you.

To change this, I'd like to introduce damage soaking. The amount of soaked damage can now be seen on your equipment screen and it's a quadratic function depending on your highest defence bonus. Meaning, that you can stack up a lot of defence bonus in order to reduce the power of incoming hits. The equipment setting tells you the amount that is subtracted from every incoming hit. This calculation is done BEFORE protection prayers, so it's impossible to completely nullify an enemy's high hit.

I know that this is quite a big change, so I'd like to call it experimental for now. We may have to tweak the values a little and think of special scenarios where this system may fail. I'd welcome feedback on this topic a lot! :)


Other Changes
  • GWD boss cash drops buffed. They now drop 75-200k.
  • Ancient Caves drops buffed. Items now drop in larger quantities and herb drops are noted.
  • K'ril Tsutsaroth will no longer spawn an infinite amount of minions.
  • Full Guthan's now has flat lifesteal bonus.
  • Full Torag's now has flat damage soaking bonus.
  • Spirit shields have slightly been nerfed. I reduced their defensive bonuses.
  • Slight buffs to defender accuracy and strength bonuses.
  • Health above entities can now be enabled via the Game Settings. This shows the exact health values above all enemies that are in combat.
  • Hitpoints, prayer and run orbs now start to blink when they reach less than 10%.
  • Aggressive monsters will no longer attack you when being in combat with another monster. Before this update, it was possible that certain monsters would attack you, even though you were fighting another one.
  • A bug was fixed where shadows where flickering during combat.
  • Santa and Jack Frost have left.

All the best,
Thomy

79
Update Notes / Updates January 7th 2017 - GWD, Item Sets and Particles
« on: December 27, 2016, 01:14:19 pm »
Hey guys,

A happy new year! :) I'm changing a few things with this update, so please take your time and read through them.

God Wars Dungeon
I'd like to keep it simple. The GWD is just too easy. I didn't want to make the monsters stronger, because it's not really funny if they are just going to hit you harder or can take more damage. I'm satisfied with their current combat power and don't wish to change that. So, I've thought of special mechanics that will make the fight more interesting and will require you to pay more attention to the actual fight. On top of that, the drops have also been buffed. The amount of resource drops you get is larger now and in noted form.
  • Commander Zilyana now buffs her allied minions. This goes up to 50% of their current combat power. Starlight will drain your prayer points.
  • Kree'arra has received different projectiles with different speeds. They have no special effect, but 'unlucky' or 'lucky' stacks of its projectiles can give you a lot of hits in a short amount of time. Flockleader geerin and Wingman skree can now throw poisoned spears. The poison damage starts at 1, but can go up to 15 depending on the length of the fight.
  • General Graardor has gained the ability to buff the attack speed of his allied minions. Moreover, the lower he becomes, the faster he will attack.
  • K'ril Tsutsaroth: Spawns allied minions and received new attacks.


Grand Exchange Sets
You can now buy/sell item sets on the Grand Exchange. Hovering over the set tells you which items it includes. Every GE clerk allows the exchange of item sets.


Particles
The system isn't yet 100% finished, but I can already show-off some pretty cool graphics! All elemental weapons have received particles. If you don't like them, they can be disable at the game settings.

How do you like the system? What could be done to improve it? Where else would particles be cool?

Changes:
  • Dragon dagger special attack has been nerfed. Accuracy decreased by 15% and maxhit decreased by 5%.
  • Bosses can no longer be frozen.
  • The defensive bonuses of third age armours have been buffed by 10%. The 3rd age amulet's bonuses have also been reworked completely. It gives slightly less accuracy and strength bonus than a fury but more defensive bonuses.
  • Walls in the Revenants dungeon have been fixed.
  • You can now search for places on the minimap. Dungeon locations have also been added there. It should now be easier to find certain places of interest with the minimap.
  • The hits it takes to fully degrade barrow items was increased from 5.000 to 8.000.
  • Lunar spells no longer block walking when casted.(vengeance, heal other, vengeance other, etc.)
  • The mailserver was updated with DKIM records. That will let mailservers classify mails from Emps-World less often as spam.
  • KQ's poison damage now starts at 1 and goes up to 15.
  • Deflected damage can no longer be deflected again (veng of vengs).

All the best,
Thomy

80
Hey guys,

I've got a few things ready for today. The changes are mostly cosmetical. Take your time and read through them, they are pretty handy! ;)

Ground Alignment
Monsters are now properly aligned to the steepness of the ground. You can see an example below where the dragon is pointing towards the player and isn't just floating:


Music System
I've never really put a lot of effort into creating a proper music system before. With this update, most (330 out of 350 songs) are clickable in the music interface and will be played in their appropriate regions. This will change some of the songs previously used in certain regions, but therefore gives the entire game a correct music overlay. The system may still contain minor bugs, such as areas having no songs or songs not playing. But that's really minor things that I can fix at runtime. If you find something wrong, just report it! Oh and... if you find over 200 area songs, you can unlock the play guitar emote! :)

Grand Exchange Market
You'll now be able to take a look at the prices of items in the game. I've worked on a homepage tool that takes all trades from the Grand Exchange and plots them on a graph. You can see an example here: https://emps-world.net/ge_plots.php#plot,Manta_ray,391,60


Following things have been changed:
  • Blood altar usability improved.
  • Loading times increased of new regions for high Rendering Distance (RD) settings.
  • Hit effects (spirit shields, vengeance, etc.) are now applied when the hit lands. Before the update they were applied at the attack animation.
  • Item drops now last for 3 minutes instead of 2. Items upon death will now be visible to your account for 2 minutes and afterwards an additional minute to everyone. The initial change of this update didn't aim at making it difficult for beginners to get their items back. I am sorry for that.
  • The client will no longer crash when it fails to load certain models. This could possibly fix a bug in Port Sarim's dungeon (Wyverns) and other loading problems.
  • Alch values have been increased by 25%.

All the best,
Thomy

81
Hey guys,

This is quite a large update. Take your time and read through it, there's a lot! :)

Christmas Event 2016
Only a few weeks until Christmas! This year's event is a little bit of fun and irony. I won't say too much though, talk to Santa at the Grand Exchange! Jack Frost has plans for Christmas this year. Hear him out and decide for yourself if you help him or Santa!
Below's a picture with the possible rewards from the event. You get the rewards out of Christmas crackers, which are obtained by completing present deliveries. The chances of getting one out of the three (reindeer hat, christmas cape and present imp pet) is 1 in 100 for each.


Runecrafting and the Abyss
Runecrafting has always happened in the Abyss. The only thing you had to do was teleporting there and clicking on the appropriate rift. Quite boring, no? You're now able to access the entire Abyss. There's aggressive monster spawns in the outer circle. Getting into the inner circle requires passing an obstacle that requires level 50 in its corresponding skill. The obstacles rotate randomly and there's also one obstacle that has no skill requirement. Creatures of the Abyss drop essence pouches. An item that allows storage of rune essences, effectively allowing you to craft more runes per run! Pouches degrade just like any other degradeable items (barrow armours, elemental bows, etc.) and you can have multiple pouches. Though, only one pouch of a type (small, medium, large, giant) can be used at the same time. So you can't use 2 medium pouches at the same time. However, you can use 1 small, 1 medium, 1 large and 1 giant pouch in one run though. Filling and emptying pouches degrades them. Every rune essence you put or remove from a pouch degrades it by 1. The larger the pouch is, the more charges it has.


Combination Runes
With the update of the Abyss, combination runes are also finding their way into Emps-World. A combination rune is a combination of 2 of the elemental runes: water, earth, air and fire. They count as 2 runes when casting a spell. These runes cannot be bought in any shop and have to be created with Runecrafting. The creation is simple and best explained with an example. Let's say we want to create Smoke runes, a combination of air and fire runes. You can do this by either visiting the Air altar with a fire talisman and fire runes or the Fire altar with an air talisman and air runes. This example is equivalent for any other elemental rune creation. Following new runes now exist:
  • Steam rune: Water and Fire
  • Mist rune: Air and Water
  • Dust rune: Air and Earth
  • Smoke rune: Air and Fire
  • Mud rune: Earth and Water
  • Lava rune: Earth and Fire
Talismans can be obtained by killing Abyssal creatures at the Abyss. We plan on adding talismans to other monster's droptables, but for now, Abyssal creatures drop all talisman types.

HD Ground
I've added a ground shader that combines neighboring textures and mixes their colors accordingly. It removes the overall tile look and feel of the floor and imo looks way much better. You can see an example here:

This setting is enabled by default, because it gives the best quality without the loss of performance. Tested on both my desktop PC (with a heavy GPU) and my laptop (intel chip) with no costs at fps. You can change it if you dislike it though. The graphic settings have been adjusted accordingly. You're no longer able to select different ground textures, but quality modes of the ground that feature all combinations previously possible. Oh, and the default ground textures have also been changed. There's 2 different ones now, one for being inside a dungeon and one for being on surface.

Following things have been changed:
  • The scan range for the wilderness scan clue (level 25-55) was increased from 22 to 25. Moreover you can no longer get this scan area in easy and medium clue scrolls.
  • Puzzles will no longer occur in easy or medium clue scrolls.
  • Clicking areas for rifts in the abyss (Runecrafting) improved.
  • Elite clue scroll drop table modified. Dragon items removed and chances for other items adjusted.
  • Dragon darts accuracy nerfed from 87 to 65.
  • God bows accuracy increased from 107 to 121 and added 5 additional ranged strength bonus.
  • Clicking areas improved for bridges and the duel arena viewing area. Your character will now walk to the exact ground spot that you clicked on. This bug also fixes a problem where lighting fires would appear beneath bridges or items dropped on bridges were floating in the air.
  • The items on ground system on the client's end has been reworked. It was improved to gain performance (maybe +1 fps) and a bug was fixed where items on the floor wouldn't show anymore.
  • Snowballs are now worth 0gp.
  • Abyss teleport animation updated.
  • A bug with the elite clue scroll droptables was fixed.

Merry Christmas!
~ Thomy

82
General Discussion / Clue scroll droptables
« on: November 23, 2016, 05:54:38 pm »
Hey guys,

The clue scroll update is pretty much done. Before I release it though, I'd like to have some feedback on the droptables. You can find them here:The drops aren't final and I'm open for suggestions! I couldn't think of any more drops, but maybe you got something in mind? Also, how do you like the new droptable format? :)

All the best,
Thomy

83
Update Notes / Updates November 28th 2016 - Clue Scrolls
« on: October 31, 2016, 10:39:26 am »
Updates of November 29th:
  • Several clue scroll problems fixed.
  • Grand Exchange slots increased from 6 to 15. Non-members can use 6 slots.
  • Every puzzle clue has a solution now. It was previously possible to get unsolvable ones.


Hey guys,

It's been a while since the last update, but this one is pretty big! :)

Clue Scrolls:

This has taken quite a while, but it's finally ready! I've done my best to create some funny and difficult riddles for you. You'll probably be most interested in the rewards. Please give our dedicated wiki staff some time to finish the full articles: I don't want to take away too much, so I won't get into all the details. Clue scrolls are pretty much self-explanatory. The more difficult the clue becomes, the longer the completion takes and the more difficult the clues will be. You can only have one clue per type of a time, so: 1 easy, medium, hard and elite clue scroll at a time. Elite black armour and 3rd age druidic have no skill requirements. These armours scale with your levels up to 70 (black elite) and 75 (3rd age druidic). Cosmetic items have no requirements. Other items share the requirements and bonuses of their non-decorated parts (heraldic, dragonhide, robes, etc.).

Every clue scroll has a drop chance of 5%. Stronger monsters drop more difficult clues. Elite clue scrolls will be dropped by following monsters:
  • Ice Demon
  • Abyssal Watcher
  • Ancient Gladiator
  • Obsidian Dragon
  • Corporeal Beast
  • Wildywyrm
  • Chaos Elemental
  • Chronozon
  • King Black Dragon
  • Mithril Dragon
  • Kalphite Queen
  • Tormented Demon
  • Smoke Demon Champion
  • K'ril Tsusaroth
  • Zakl'n Gritch
  • Kree'arra
  • Commander Zilyana
  • General Graardor
We will add lists of monsters that drop hard, medium and easy clue scrolls to the wiki in the coming week.

Game changes:
  • Red dragons have been added to the wilderness.
  • Steel and iron dragon spawns in Rimmington's dungeon have been adjusted.
  • A bug was fixed that occurred when loading 2 map regions at the same time, effectively mixing them up.
  • Some of the hill giant champions in the Rimmington dungeon have been replaced with Lesser, Greater and Black demons.
  • The internal file updater has received some improvements (models, sounds, animations, maps, etc.). It was possible for it to break and so map regions stopped loading completely. I was able to track this issue and fix it. There should no longer be maps that don't load properly. If you still experience issues, type ::reloadmap and make a bug report.
  • KBD armour now scales up to level 70 equipment.
  • Dragon staff model was updated. It now looks like an actual dragon staff with a dragon's head on top of it.
  • FPS settings interface changed. You'll now be able to select from 30, 50, 60, 80 and infinite fps. The 40 fps was removed and replaced by 80.
  • Experience reset lamps can now be noted.

All the best,
Thomy

84
Update Notes / Updates October 24th 2016 - Spooky, spooky Halloween!
« on: October 02, 2016, 08:08:41 am »
Hello guys,

Halloween Event - Kolodion
You may have been wondering... what has Kolodion been doing all this time? He's been hiding in the wilderness and is finally ready to come back! I'm introducing a new kind of bossing system and would like to know and see if you guys enjoy that or not. Kolodion will spawn at a random location in the wilderness every 30 minutes. You can ask the Wilderness guide in Edgeville about Kolodion's current spawn status and location. Kolodion is using a new drop system. Everybody participating in the fight against him will get a drop. The only restriction to that is, that you need to hit at least 10 on him. So this means, that you can kill him with as many friends as you like, everybody will get a drop. The drop tables are especially good, because the event takes place in the wilderness and the boss can only be killed once every 30 minutes! Also... you can fight for the loot from others! ;)

Halloween Event - Grim Reaper
On top of that, the Grim Reaper has arrived again! He wants you to slay npcs in order to obtain Skulls. These Skulls can then be exchanged for rewards. The reward pool includes the raven pet from last year's event. You can also find the very rare drops from Kolodion in it: Mini Kolodion pet, Spider wings and a Pumpkin lantern. All these items will remain as super rare drops from Kolodion after the Halloween event ends.


Guardian Angels
Due to the feedback on the forums, I've decided to increase their price. I don't want to completely remove these items, because I do like the concept. The internet sometimes yields disconnects and lags. It'd be a shame if people lose items to such unforeseeable events. The price of a GA is now 1000EC. I know this is a big increase of its price, but in the long run it will make the item rarer and thus less used. New accounts still start with an active GA.

Following things have been updated:
  • Further progress on the clue scroll system. This can't be seen, but I thought it's worth mentioning.
  • New world boss mechanic added: bosses spawning at certain locations for a certain amount of time. Kolodion uses that mechanic. I could imagine re-using that system in the future to place evil trees or stuff like that in the world. Something similar to shooting star. Activities that take place on special times.
  • A bug was fixed where experiences gained in the Herblore skill showed too many bonus xp.
  • The game loader has slightly been reworked. The Emps-World.exe program can now be pinned to the windows taskbar. If you wish to do so, please download the new windows client here: https://emps-world.net/play. The loader's internal starting code was hardened and shouldn't be causing troubles on certain computers anymore.
  • Membership information updated.
  • Maploader timeout increased. Some people were claiming that areas didn't load properly. I'm not 100% sure what causes this, but I assume it happens in environments with low fps rates. It should be better with this update.

Been pretty busy lately, so there isn't much progress with clue scrolls. They will be the next big update though. :)

All the best,
Thomy


EDIT: Kolodion droptables: https://emps-world.net/wiki/Kolodion_spider
I will update the item icons later today, I need to go now! :)

85
Update Notes / Updates - October 1st, 2nd and 3rd 2016 - New Ways
« on: September 18, 2016, 01:24:49 pm »
Hey guys,

With this update I'd like to change a few things in Emps-World. Some of you may like the change, some of you won't. Though a common fact that we can agree on, is that the population has become smaller over the past few months. I'd like to make the game more appealing to new players and offer them ways of competing with old veteran players. I don't want to destroy the game for old players, but definitely want to give people an easier start.

Barbarian Village
I would like to move activities closer together, so that our smaller player base meets each other more often in the game. I've therefore moved some activities to Barbarian village. I've added, removed and replaced some trees and ores. I've also found HD versions of maple trees. They look really good. ;)
  • High level trees and ores added.
  • Rune essence mine added south of barbarian.
  • Prismatic altar (enter runecrafting altars) added west and east of the village.
  • Chicken spawns have been added to the north-western part of the village.
  • 4 whiteberry bushes have been added to north-western area. The bushes are now also depletable.
  • Farming patch was added south of the village.
  • Extended tutorial npc (thomy ;D) was added to Barbarian village, showing off some areas and aspects of the game.


Runecrafting
This has been planned a long time ago already, but never fully finished. Prismatic altars have been added around the world. I'm sparing you guys the difficulty to find specific altars, so every altar can be used (with the appropriate talisman) to enter the appropriate rune altar. Don't worry, the abyss system still exists. This is just an additional way of crafting runes without having to run through the wilderness and without having access to the abyss teleport. Talismans will be added in the coming updates as monster drops, or can be found at special locations on the floor.

Emps Credits and Membership
I'm completely fine with the credits system and also think that having credits to buy in-game items is okay. Membership doesn't really have many benefits, which is something I'd like to change. An active membership from now on gives you a 10% xp boost on everything. Moreover, double experience scrolls can now also be purchased for 200 Emps Credits. This change is experimental and definitely not final. I will see if the overall game benefits from having the possibility to buy experience boosts. This is mainly an option for new players, who don't want to waste too much time leveling. The aim of changes to the EC store is also to raise a larger budget for advertisements. I'm currently reaching the limits of what can be spent on advertisements and would like to expand that. Afterall, I would like to see Emps-World growing again. :)

Event Points Shop
I'm redesigning the EP shop a little bit. I've removed the double experience scrolls as well as Edgeville teleports. To compensate for the removal, I'm releasing auras. The initial update contains 6 different auras:
  • Vampyrism: Heal by 5% of damage dealt.
  • Penance: Increase defence by 10%.
  • Sharpshooter: Increase range accuracy and strength by 5%.
  • Runic accuracy: Increase magic accuracy and strength by 5%.
  • Brawler: Increase melee accuracy and strength by 5%.
  • Poison purge: Poison damage is changed into healing.
Auras work like any other degradeable item (e.g. ancient equipment). They come with 1,000 charges and crumble to dust. Auras are not tradeable.

Duel Arena and Staking
The (in)famous duel arena might have become a problem for the game's economy. The entire GE system isn't properly working anymore, because high level gear is rarely being sold on it. Not only I could identify that hoarding has become a big problem. There's accounts with hundreds of armours and weapons in their banks; effectively locking them away from new players. I'm therefore no longer allowing stakes to contain items. The only items people are allowed to stake are perfect gold bars, member tickets or cash. This may sound like a radical change, but overall the game will profit from it. Nothing will change for stakers, they can still bet their money on fights and the economy won't suffer from item starvation anymore. At least that's the current idea and plan of the update. As previous changes have shown, this could go towards the wrong direction too. If I don't see this working out within a week or two, the change will definitely be reverted.

Quest and Equipment Tab
The equipment tab has received 2 new slots (auras and wings) and the quest tab has completely been redesigned. I've removed the Falador teleport, because it's no longer needed. We've added buttons with new icons for e-mail registration, membership and maxhit checks. The top line contains information about the current world and player count. What do you think about it? Like or dislike it? What could I do to make it better? :) It's already planned to add 'custom' teleports there. You'll be able to choose from several locations. But this is something for the next update.


Other changes:
  • Dialogues can now be continued by pressing the space button.
  • Multi model buffering is now the default rendering mode. Don't worry too much about this, it's an internal technique of achieving better overall performance (fps boost).
  • Mud patch models (farming) have been updated.
  • The maximum experience per skill was increased from 200M to 250M. The reason for the change is, that hiscores now save who has reached maximum experience first. Allowing us to effectively create a rank 1 player, which previously wasn't possible.
  • Wings now have their own equipment slot and can be worn with any other items. Their stat bonuses have been reduced, because they no longer count as amulets.
  • Wizards around Barbarian village now drop Edgeville teleport tabs too.
  • Healing effects are now shown with purple hit splats.

All the best,
Thomy



Changes of October 2nd:
  • Auras are no longer usable in the wilderness and duel arena. They still work versus NPCs in the wilderness, in safe PK zones and in minigames. Moreover, newly started auras now contain 10,000 charges instead of 1,000. Yes, this change is big... but 1,000 charges just deplete way too fast.
  • Wings and auras are now always disabled in the duel arena. You can still wear the items, but they'll have 0 stats and no effect.
  • A bug was fixed where HP bar was wrongly shown when eating.
  • More healing feedback were added to special attacks, guthans, magicks and bolts.



Changes of October 3rd:
  • Double experience scrolls now give 1h of double xp instead of 20 minutes. They still cost the same amount. If you had a lot of scrolls banked, yay, you're a lucky one! :) They still remain untradeable though.
  • Internal logging system for shops updated.
  • A bug was fixed where wearing capes wouldn't update your character model.

86
Hey guys,

A few things have been changed and update. Please take your time and read through them, some of them may be of great interest to you! :)

Prayer Responsiveness
I've seen some talk about prayer flicking and thought that this should actually work in emps too. I've therefore revamped the prayer system to support prayer flicking. The prayer reduction code used to trigger when your attack animation started. That leaves 0.5 - 1 seconds space where changing your protection prayer won't work. Now, the protection prayer reduction is done at the time of when the hit is inflicted. Resulting in now effectively being able to avoid hits with super fast reactions. Also deflect effects are instant with this update. That includes the vengeance spell, spirit shields, ring of recoils and tormented demons. The aim of this update is to become more responsive to what happens in combat. There shouldn't be a large delay between what the server calculates and what you see on your screen.

Price Checker
This has been requested many times and I also wanted to do it many times, but there's been other projects on-going during these times. I've now finished the price checker. It has taken a bit longer than expected, but it's ready and fully usable. You can add your entire inventory to it or search for any particular item. The items added to the price checker also won't delete unless you hit the 'Clear' button or relog. Adding items is using the Grand Exchange search option. Item prices are also taken from the Grand Exchange. The price checker features a small and a large version, just like the bank or any other newly added interface. Take a look yourself:


Shadow Improvements
I've improved the quality of shadows. You can see a comparison below:


Game changes and fixes:
  • Swamp salamanders updated. They have increased attack speed and tars have received range strength bonus. You can now also use lower tier tars with higher tier salamanders. Salamanders degrade after 200 hits in combat, have mercy on those animals!
  • Potions can no longer 'lower' already boosted stats. That means that drinking an attack potion after a super attack potion will have no effect.
  • Items from the EP shop can now be found in the Grand Exchange search interface.
  • Drop rates of keys for the key ring in the Smoke Demon Champion dungeon have been increased to 2%. It's now a 1 in 50 chance to get them instead of 1 in 167. I know that this is quite a big change, but the boss is rarely done by anyone. Also, low drop chances can be extremely frustrating when you're dry on hundreds of kills.
  • A bug was fixed where dragonfire projectiles would never hit when protecting from magic.
  • A bug was fixed where reflection damage would ignore protection prayers. Resulting in enormously high hits being reflected (spirit shield effects, vengeance, etc.)
  • Heights on the Grand Exchange plaza have been fixed. Entities were floating a tiny bit in the air when standing on the stone tiles.

I don't have any progress to show on clue scrolls. The internal system was prepared to support any kind of clues. I can't say when they'll be ready, but I'm currently working on them. :)

All the best,
Thomy


Fixes of 18th of September:
  • Bank tabs 5-9 can be used again while moving items.
  • Shadows of removed roofs are now correctly casted.
  • Multimodel bufering is available again.
  • Performance improvements to shadow rendering. Lower shadow settings won't render distant shadows anymore, resulting in overall higher fps rates.
  • Obsidian claws' special attack is hitting again.
  • Grand Exchange and Price Checker prices should now be more accurate. Instead of taking the average of 120 items it now takes the average of 40 items. That should result in faster price changes when the market changes.
  • A bug was fixed where monsters could attack through walls.

87
Update Notes / Updates - August 27th 2016 - Dagannoth Kings
« on: August 10, 2016, 03:45:59 pm »
Hey guys,

Welcome to a new, but familiar old-style dungeon and boss experience!


The dagannoth cave has been expanded; Whilst the people of Rellekka have been searching to expand their revenues by means of a touristic boat tour to Waterbirth island, dagannoth infestations have manifested further in the depths!

Under Waterbirth island you can find our old dagannoth dungeon, with expansions deeper within, including the fabled Dagannoth kings. Dagannoth Supreme, Prime and Rex represent the combat triangle, and can only be faced together as a trio in a multiplayer zone.
Each Dagannoth king has it's own attack style and resistance against one of the combat styles.

On par with their attack style, they all drop 1 or more of the scrolls required to upgrade the Fremennik rings: Warrior, Berserker, Archers' and Seers'. These ancient scrolls will imbue the rings with more power, but can only contain this power for so long until the ring falls apart.

Relevant to this update are the following changes:
  • A warrior jumped ahead into the tourist business of Rellekka: he will give you a tour to Waterbirth island from Rellekka docks.
  • Rellekka chief has sent out a squad to Waterbirth island and it's vincinities, but the group hasn't been heard from since. Bardur is currently looking for them on Waterbirth island and could use your help finding their remains. He has some rewards that might be attractive to prolong your stay or make off the island with extra loot.
  • Dagannoth cave has new inhabitants (besides the Kings): Rock lobsters.
  • Rock lobsters drop Fremmenik helms, blades and shields left by Fremennik warriors.
  • Dagannoth bones prayer xp reward slightly buffed.
  • The ghost captain in the Wilderness has relocated his teleport location to the top of Waterbirth island. Although it is still a shorter walk to the dagannoth cave than the direct Lunar spell, it offers a dangerous but quicker and cheaper road compared to the Rellekka tour. The lunar spell is still the fastest way to reach the caves.
  • The Avatar that informed players about the third age armours has left the Dagannoth dungeon.

Changes and bugfixes:
  • Since there have been a lot of bug reports on items lost on death, I've added an items lost on death timer. When you die, you'll see a timer of 2 minutes showing how long your items will be visible on the ground. Please bear in mind that people are able to pickup your items after 1 minute, so there is no guarantee that your items will be on the ground if you reach them after one minute.
  • Al kharid sailor now has an option to directly travel to neitiznot.
  • Duradel will now assign a maximum of 25 spectrals per task.
  • For the following slayer tasks you receive 20% extra slayer xp: Revenants, Spectrals, Tormented demons, any boss, Gladiators, Abyssal watchers, Ice demons.
  • Spawns reduced for Gladiators, Abyssal watchers, Ice demons and Hellhounds in the Ancient caves.
  • Ironman accounts can no longer accept aid from other players.
  • Abyssal cannon buffed, its attack speed is 1 tick (0.5s) faster.
  • Korasi's sword and obsidian claws have been buffed. Their special attacks were made more accurate. Moreover, obsidian claws gain attack distance when the special attack is enabled.
  • GWD bosses defence level equalized. Certain GWD bosses were just tankier than others (especially bandos). I've equalized their defence levels down to 220. That's a minor nerf to their defence power.
  • Ruby (e) bolts were not actually damaging you, but the enemy since the new hit splashes update. This has been fixed. Also, the ruby (e) special effect will now only trigger if you hit more than 0.
  • Experimental command for puzzle boxes added. You can type ::clue to open a puzzle box. Please bear in mind that logging out of the game resets the progress! :) You can request a new puzzle box when the current one is finished. This will later be implemented into clue scrolls and is just there for testing purposes right now.
  • Drop chances for rare items in the ancient caves increased.
  • Drop chances of obsidian claws increased.

All the best,
Thomy

88
Update Notes / Updates - August 7th 2016 - Ancient Caves
« on: August 02, 2016, 05:10:58 am »
Hey guys,

Ancient Cave
It's finally there, our brand new dungeon with new and unique items. The dungeon's entrance is located at the western coast of Rimmington.

You'll be able to obtain 6 new items, all requiring level 80 in at least one combat skill. You'll find a set of new and uniquely combined stats with these new items. The requirement to enter the ancient caves is level 30 Agility and membership. Good luck on your killing trips!

Bosses and NPCs
I'm still not pleased with the current state of emps' bosses and other npcs. Due to the changes of the protection prayers, some bosses are still really strong. I'm therefore decreasing NPC's overall accuracy values to make higher level armours more valuable. I definitely want high level armours to be strong and good in PvM situations.

Dropped Items
Items dropped by players, monsters, etc. are now shown for a maximum of 2 minutes. When a player drops an item somewhere, it's shown privately for 1 minute and another minute publicly. The change was made to reduce the amount of junk that's constantly dropped in populated areas and to reduce the time a player has to retrieve back lost items upon a death.

Other changes and bugfixes:
  • Spectral's combat accuracy nerfed.
  • Tormented demon's accuracy and max hits nerfed by a bit.
  • A bug was fixed where protection from magic didn't decrease the maxhit in PvP scenarios.
  • A bug was fixed where all agility tasks were shown as Karamja arena rounds.
  • God bow's attack speed increased by 1 tick. They were just out-classing upgraded elemental bows completely. God bows can fire special arrows and have a higher attack range than upgraded elemental bows. To cope with their nerf, I've increased their accuracy bonus from 92 to 107.
  • Freezing immunity timer increased from 1.5 to 2 seconds. The freezing immunity timer is activated after your freezing period ends. It makes you immune to any kind of freezing spells for its duration.
  • Dragon droptables updated. They're now all consistently dropping their corresponding dragonhide armour.
  • Cannonballs can now be smithed from steel bars. One bar results in 4 cannonballs.
  • Duradal now assigns Ancient gladiators, Abyssal watchers and Ice demons.

All the best,
Thomy

89
Screenshots / Looking for HD Screenshots
« on: July 24, 2016, 04:14:54 pm »
Hey guys,

I'm looking for high quality screenshots for our front page's image slider. It can literally be anything, fighting a boss, skilling, interacting with another player. Anything you like, as long as it's an in-game screenshot! The images should be 1920x1080 and with maximum graphic settings. Also make sure that private chat is hidden and possibly clear the chatbox if you've found a nice view (::clear).

The images can be similar to those 2:


Thank you,
Thomy

90
Update Notes / Updates - July 31st 2016 - Game Balancing
« on: July 13, 2016, 09:31:07 am »
Hey guys,

I've got some larger changes ready, so please take your time and read through them. They're targeting the wilderness and protection prayers!

Protection Prayers
Yes, we have to nerf them, 90% damage reduction just seems too much. We don't want to make protection prayers super bad, so their protection value will now be 80% instead of 90%. Bosses still won't hit a lot, but it's noticable now.

Freezes and Binds
I've identified that with the protection prayer changes, binds and freezes are just too low. When protecting from magic, your opponent can easily escape when binding / freezing them. Thus, I've increased spell's freezing timers and protecting from mage no longer reduces them by 50%, but by 40%.
  • Bind: 5s -> 10s
  • Snare: 10s -> 15s
  • Entangle: 15s -> 20s
  • Ice rush: 5s
  • Ice burst: 10s
  • Ice blitz: 12s -> 15s
  • Ice barrage: 15s -> 20s
The freeze of an ice barrage, with a magic protection prayer on your opponent, will be 12 seconds. You take the freeze timer and reduce 40% of it, so 20 - (20 * 0.4).

Spectrals
These monsters are too easy to be killed and have too good drop rates for obtaining the actually best armours in-game. I want to address the problem of ancient items overflowing the market and thus following things will be changed:
  • Corrupt parts drop chances: 1.6% --> 1.2%
  • Normal parts drop chances: 1.2% --> 0.8%
  • Doubled the repair costs for ancient items.
  • Corrupt parts now have 1500 charges instead of 3000
  • Spectrals combat power increased. They can run and will do pathfinding and have more accurate hits. Their punishing prayer mechanic has been removed, you're free to pray against them again.

Performance Improvements and Shadows
You'll find yourself getting higher fps rates in the game now. I've optimized the engine to support dynamic shadows and higher detailed lightening. You can read about all the details here.

New Donator Items
With this update, we're releasing 3 new donator items: Skeletal wings, tail and cape.


Smaller bugfixes and changes:
  • Planting guams now requires level 3 Farming and planting potatoes now requires level 1 Farming.
  • Korasi's and Obsidian claws' special attack is now correctly displayed as magic attack.
  • Watchmen in Burthorpe's castle have finally gained the ability to walk.
  • Trolls now drop big bones.
  • Troll general has received a drop table. There's now also 3 different troll generals around Trollheim, they're all equally strong and share a common drop table.
  • Burthorpe wall and roof textures have been updated. This includes the warrior's guild too.
  • Further fps improvements, especially in crowded areas and with large rendering distances. The animation system was majorly reworked to properly support distant animations. Animations far away from your character are rendered in a worse quality, which is hardly noticable because of the objects being far away from your view.
  • Obsidian claws accuracy bonus increased from 120 to 140.
  • Tormented demons have had their elemental crystal drop chances doubled. To cope with this change, they've been made significantly stronger (accuracy boost + new mechanic). A bug was fixed where damage deflection didn't properly work. Moreover, they gain combat power depending on the deflected damage and temporarily get level 0 defence when their damage deflection spell is active.
  • Soul altar teleports updated. You'll now be teleported directly to the altar instead of having to walk a path.
  • Binds and freezes are now removed when teleporting somewhere.
  • By operating your full slayer helmet you can view how many monsters are left for your slayer task.
  • The following weapons have been tweaked in their accuracy: Vesta's spear (special buffed), Morrigan's javelin (nerfed), Dark bow (buffed). Accuracy means the chances of inflicting a hit on your target and does not affect the height of the hit. These changes better reflect the current status of the weapons, their attack speed and their stats compared to other level 80 weapons.
  • You can now link to individual forum threads by typing "::forum id" ingame, where the id is the forum page id.
  • You can now remove your ironman status at tutorial island, including directly after you decided to become an ironman there. If you do this without finishing the tutorial, you can choose to select ironman status again. If you already finished the tutorial and come back to remove it, you cannot regain it! If your ironman status has been removed due to griefing (hack) you can post a ticket in the helpdesk, after verification of any player interaction your status may be restored.

Ancient Caves
I'm sorry to say, but I was unable to finish the new dungeon. I can already present some details about the new cave though. You'll be able to obtain 6 new items dropped by 3 new monsters. These new monsters will be a new and tough solo challenge. Each of them has a unique combat mechanic that you need to learn in order to be able to kill them effectively. Below is a picture showing all of the 3 new monsters:


All the best,
Thomy

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