Hello everyone!

Today's update is the final preparation for the Summoning skill which is set to release in August. Testing is available in our dev world for everyone. I've also prepared plenty of rendering engine improvements and various bugfixes. Most of these have already been rolled out over the past weeks but here's the official patch notes!

Summoning Beta Test - ONGOING
I'm excited to show you progress on the Summoning skill! The aim of this test is to get a look and feel of Summoning and obtain feedback from it. I'm sure you have ideas or concerns - please share them with us! The Summoning skill summons familiars that aid you in various ways. A familiar is a monster that fights alongside you. There's various different familiars to choose from. They all come with their individual level and a unique ability. Using your familiar's ability costs Summoning points - every Summoning level gives 10 Summoning points. Your familiars keep their individual level progress when re-summoned but do not transfer it over to different familiars.

I'd like to keep this really simple and just offer some assistance to get you started. The Summoning test is available in world 3 - our test realm. You can log into the world with your normal username and password. Your progress is not saved and you have plenty of developer commands available! Feel free to roam around the test world and fight monsters with familiars. You can withdraw any familiar from your Summoning bag - accessible from the minimap icon after levelling the Summoning skill. You can also craft pouches (not necessary when using commands!) at the Grand Exchange or Taverley.


How to get started:

• Log into world 3 with your username and password.
• Type into chat: ::summoning start
• Open Summoning bag by clicking on Summoning orb on your minimap
• Withdraw pouches (scrolls can be used from the bag) and have fun!

Here's a few useful commands:::setlevel summoning 99 - set summoning skill level
::summoning familiars max/min/99 - set familiar levels
::summoning pouches - spawn all pouches and scrolls into summoning bag
::summoning pots - spawn 4 summoning potions to heal your familiars and restore summoning points
::setlevel hitpoints 10000 - become unkillable
::commands xxx - search for commands
For the final release I still got an introduction quest planned as well as charm drops for monsters. And, of course, your feedback! Take your time, test it and let me know if it's something fun or boring. Are familiars too strong? What are your concerns for the game's balancing?

Summoning FAQ:

• When is the release? August.
• Does Summoning increase combat level to 138? No - this is not planned. You cannot go beyond the maximum combat level of 126. Summoning will affect your combat level the same way how Magic or Ranged does.
• What about PvP? Currently Summoning is disable for single combat PvP. You can use your familiars in multi combat zones though. There is no automatic attacking of players when using abilities. You must specify what player your familiar should fight.
• How do familiars level? By combat. Your familiars gain combat experience when fighting monsters. Every damage dealt gives a familiar 80 experience - same as your combat experience.
• What is the maximum level for familiars? Currently 250 - which is reached at 250M experience. The experience formula for familiars is the same as the skill formula from levels 1 to 99. Afterwards the formula flattens and new levels require a little more than 1M experience.

Known Issues / Under Construction

• Introduction quest
• Sounds for every familiar & ability
• Scroll creation
• Charm drops
• Toolbelt integration
• Balancing

Game fixes / changes:

• You can no longer logout during the cast animation of the telegrab spell. This fixes an issue where you could lose the item you were trying to grab.
• Har'Lakk and Yk'Lagor no longer spawn minions inside walls.
• A bug was fixed where the Kalphite Queen head would not drop.
• You can now shoot projectiles over Lumbridge and Barbarian village bridges.
• It's no longer possible to attack wyrm moulds at the same time to bug their combat.
• Melee experience gains from secondary targets (demon halberd) no longer grant the full combat exp. Hits on additional targets now grant half the exp - just like barrage spells or chin chompas.
• Fremennik rings (i) now degrade to their uncharged version.
• The damage type calculation for non-autocast spells has been fixed. Your damage type is still overwritten when a weapon provides a damage type, such as elemental staves, bows, whips, etc.
• An issue was fixed where the general store prices for various Emps Credits store items was wrong.
• You can obtain the shield in the Warrior's Guild minigame again.
• Various NPCs had their secondary dialogue option fixed.
• An issue was fixed where Lady table would still say she collected your items in a PvP death.

Engine fixes / changes:

• Optimizations have been made to the core rendering code. The way how CPU and GPU communicate has been modernized which results in increased performance. This is also a direct preparation for future updates which will support higher graphics driver versions for additional features.
• A bug was fixed for Intel HD graphics chips where the shadow calculation would always be executed. Sadly Intel HD graphics chips are really bad with deciding what part of the shader code to run and what not. They ignore basic logic and execute what they like no matter what. I've prepared a special shader that is only used on Intel HD graphics chips which all the fancy graphics disabled. That means you'll get maximum performance on your laptops, but cannot enable shadows or fancy lighting in return. It wouldn't run well on weaker graphics processors.
• The texture UV calculation code has been improved to produce less visual edges around objects.
• Shadow calculation code has been optimized. It took lots of power out of weaker GPUs to properly render shadows and the calculation relied on hardware operations that aren't always well implemented. The calculation is now done in a custom shader which gives full control over quality and performance.
• An issue was fixed where the water flow direction between Barbarian village and Lumbridge would sometimes bug out.
• The bounding box calculation for lights has been improved. This results in much better performance with many lights rendered in the game. The way light interacts with water has been overhauled. It'll be a little less shiny but light sources are now properly reflected on the water surface. The radius of lava lights was also increased to make areas around lava appear brighter.
• The game settings has been re-structured. There's now also a setting that sends anonymous system information: RAM, CPU, GPU, OS and Java version. We use that data to determine which devices are most used and optimize the game for that. If don't want your anonymous computer data to be submitted, you can disable it from the settings.
• Opening a door no longer makes the lights of upper floors flicker shortly. The priority for loading animated objects has been changed. You'll now see static scenery first before animated objects load. Players and NPCs are still highest priority.
• Clicking a dye preview a second time in equipment screen interface removes the preview.
• An issue was fixed where your face in the make-over mage interface would not properly update.
• More rivers around the map have received water flow configurations.
• The worldmap viewer now preloads more map chunks. Once it's loaded you'll see less black map pieces.
• The animation smoothing code has been improved. The game tries to find better key frames to interpolate with and caches the result for better performance. There's now also fadeout effects for entity and stationary graphic animations.

I hope you're enjoying the Summoning beta! Please leave feedback on Discord or here on the forums. I'll be gone for the whole of July because I'm travelling through Japan. The release for Summoning is scheduled for August. Depending on the feedback and how well the test goes that will either be in early or late August.

All the best,
Thomy