Hey guys,

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

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

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


Game fixes / changes:

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

Engine fixes / changes:

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

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

All the best,
Thomy

I guess I get my fan out to cool the toaster now, simple but significant update.

Great update as always!

First to comment. Cool update!








:kappa:

Noice update , well done :>

😐

just do somehow noted vials only players own shops. or packs 1 pack = 1k vials.
for example maybe i cud buy 1 vial pack per day, by talking with general shop owner or something like that. after buying pack of vials i can buy that again after 24 hours or 12 hours.

Nice update. Well done

I understand updates were amazing overall but death animation is still in need of tweaking, I tried it at Red Dragons and Elite Melee/Range/Mage Warriors - doesn't feel like it was changed a lot. Just giving you a feedback on part where players were concerned the most.

I understand updates were amazing overall but death animation is still in need of tweaking, I tried it at Red Dragons and Elite Melee/Range/Mage Warriors - doesn't feel like it was changed a lot. Just giving you a feedback on part where players were concerned the most.

Actually those two have pretty much perfect animation timings? The drop appears right after the animation is finished. Is it in general the length of the animation? This update made items appear directly after the death animation has finished.