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Emps-World => Update Notes => Topic started by: Thomy on June 15, 2020, 08:05:09 am

Title: Updates June 15th - Collection Log, Map Viewer, Wilderness Multi Areas and More!
Post by: Thomy on June 15, 2020, 08:05:09 am

Hey guys,

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

Collection Log
Some of you may already have spotted the Treasure chest icon within the Quest tab. It's a new feature called Collection Log. This interface shows you a list of activities that give unique items. The Collection Log tells you how many unique items you collected. I couldn't pre-fill it with all items you've received in the past because some of them can be traded with other players and it is impossible to track an item back to its roots. So only unique and untradeable drops have been added to your Collection Log. Let me know if you think some items are wrongly placed or missing! This is automatically generated from npc drop tables, shopping configurations and minigame drop tables. Here's what it looks like:
(https://emps-world.net/img/updates/collection_logs.22099.jpg)
Please let me know what other activities or monsters could be added. Also good luck on trying to fill your Collection Log!

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

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

Ground Alignment Code
I've reworked the code that aligns models to the floor. That includes items, objects and npcs. I've found and identified several issues on bridges where it wouldn't work properly with determining the correct height. So before the update you'd have items floating on top or beneath of bridges. I've also improved the code that aligns objects to the floor. A good example for this algorithm can be seen on the picture below:
(https://emps-world.net/img/updates_no_preview/ground_alignment.jpg)
The oak tree is the same model internally but depending on where it is placed it will align differently to the ground. This code was in the game before but it just didn't work well for large objects or on uneven terrain. This change will improve the visual quality of many areas throughout the game.

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

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

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

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

Game fixes / changes:

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

Engine fixes / changes:

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

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

All the best,
Thomy





Patch notes for June 16th / 17th:

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

Title: Re: Updates June 15th - Collection Log, Map Viewer, Wilderness Multi Areas and More!
Post by: Ez Gh on June 15, 2020, 09:54:39 am

Very nice update. I like few quite a lot. Thank you.

Plus lookin forward to a new pvm content.