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Emps-World => Update Notes => Topic started by: Thomy on September 16, 2021, 08:35:09 am

Title: Updates September 16th - Skilling Pets & Many Minor Overhauls
Post by: Thomy on September 16, 2021, 08:35:09 am
Hey guys,

In today's update I have a lot of smaller reworks and improvements that I've seen as problematic over the past months. One of the major aims was to improve the game on slower devices because it just was not performing as well as it actually could. Most of these smaller updates already went live a while ago as incremental client patches. The largest part of this update is Skilling Pets, which can now be obtained randomly while training skills.

Skilling Pets
You can now find Skilling pets while skilling. The chances of obtaining those are quite rare but do scale linearly with the amount of experience gained. Additional modifiers are included when being a member and also the amount of total experience points in a specific skill. The modifier for receiving a combat pet are halved because experience gains are generally higher than those of non-combat skills. You can receive pets multiple times and having a full inventory will just drop the pet item on the floor. You can find a list of all skilling pets in your collection log.

Below's a screenshot of all pets:
(https://emps-world.net/img/updates/skilling_pets.22241.jpg)

I'm sure you'll find your favorite pets. Good luck hunting for those! :)

Invention
I've added many more items that can be deconstructed. That filled up the skilling interface quite a lot and I decided to group certain items together. There's no longer every bronze item listed with every energy you get but instead a group of bronze items. You can still find the list with all details on the wiki though.
(https://emps-world.net/img/updates_no_preview/invention_decon_groups.jpg)

Item Sprites
The way item sprites were calculated was a bit questionable and also very outdated. In order to fix some bugs in the old system I decided to rewrite it. Item icons are now rendered as 64x64 pixel sprites and downscaled instead of 32x32 pixels. This results in much better visual clarity of items and fixes visual problems that existed previously.

Shadows
I've identified a few issues with shadows regarding their performance and the way they looked unless being on the highest setting. I've reworked the shadow filtering technique from a simple anti-aliasing window to a poisson filter. This results in sharper shadows with increased performance. This gives us higher quality shadows for a bit less of GPU power required than before. It improves gameplay with shadows on lower-end devices and increases visual quality on high-end machines. I basically modernized the way shadows are smoothed out. I have also implemented cascading shadow maps. That is a technique which renders the shadows of distant objects in lower quality. This allowed me to put shadows on basically every model on higher graphic settings. We now have nicer shadows that render performant. Let me know what you think!

Sprite Positions & Minimap
I have reworked the internal Sprite positioning system which now supports comma values. That results in much smoother minimap transitions, experience drops, hit splats, etc. Any kind of moving text or image is affected by this. This change allowed me to create a zoom option for the minimap. You can use your mouse wheel while on top of the minimap to zoom in and out. There's a limit of how far you can zoom out because you might hit too much of unloaded terrain. Clicking the compass sets the minimap zoom back to its original value.

Camera
I have rewritten the camera system. It was tedious to use for mathematical calculations and also being juddery. You could feel this especially when moving around or zooming in/out. Moreover, the game was doing the same calculation many times per rendered frame. The new system brings better performance for slower systems and a smoother experience when using camera controls.

Boss Drops
It has recently been pointed out that there is no real advantage trying to solo a boss. I'm introducing a minimum and maximum drops system for bosses. You will get at least two drops for killing a group or hardmode boss. That means a solo attempt will result in 2 rolls on the drop table rewarding the much more difficult fight. I understand that this increases the amount of drops for solo kills. However, bear in mind that duo or trio kills are much quicker and result in way more drops than soloing! This is a small QoL improvement for trying to solo group content. The resource drop amounts for hardmode bosses are now also scaled by 120%. If the boss drops 100k in normal mode, it will drop 120k in hardmode.

Login & Reconnecting
I've reworked the way you login or reconnect to the game. The process was sped up by a lot and will now transfer all data required immediately when logging in. This results in a much faster initial load as well as smoother reconnects should your internet connection get interrupted. Online timers such as being in combat or in the wilderness are unaffected by this change. The rework is about quicker and smoother logins.

Game fixes / changes:
Engine fixes / changes:
I hope you'll be enjoying this update. It took a while to put everything together and get it to a release. What would you think of letting your pets drink dye bottles to change their appearance in a future update?

All the best,
Thomy
Title: Re: Updates September 16th - Skilling Pets & Many Minor Overhauls
Post by: Lv Persavoz on September 19, 2021, 04:47:48 am
The skilling pets are dope!
Title: Re: Updates September 16th - Skilling Pets & Many Minor Overhauls
Post by: Thomy on September 19, 2021, 12:02:25 pm
The skilling pets are dope!

Thanks! Got a favorite one? :D