BadLands RPG Updates

This is a permanent post containing the latest changes and updates to BadLands RPG. This is nearly identical to the Update Sign you will find in-game. If you subscribe to this post, then you will receive email notice of module changes as they happen. You cannot post comments here, but you can email me or start a new post relating to that version update. Each new version will be at the bottom.

email: qwildurn@verizon.net
web: http://BadLandsRPG.game-host.org/

Qwildurn Bluemoon --(hunteress of evil)--

note: The changes won't appear without a server reset/crash. I usually let the server reset it's self unless it's an important fix.

SF Daishi for DM :)

Hiya Blade here,

I wish to propose SF Daishi for the role of " Dungeon Master " and can vouch for his integrity. I have had the pleasure of playing Neverwinter Nights with him and his family members on a few different servers including the Permanent World " Dalakora ". I understand that he has been working on finding out all he can to assist him DM on Badlands RPG. He has even been the DM for Quildurn on Dalakora if i understand correctly.

May I encourage all those who are in favour to add their post comments to this one :)

All the Best ...........Blade

PS this should help a lot during US playtimes :)

"Blade " is alive and well :)

Hiya, Blade here........

I am reporting back after my computer failed me and has just been returned to me. I am having to reinstall all my software. Congratulations to Q on all his hard work on the server during my absence in the last 3 weeks, excellent progress ............well done. I shall just install up to 1.69 and enjoy the new server in all it's glory. I am hoping that some trace of "Free Blades " still remains, and that i will still have my existing characters ?

All the Best .........hope to see you guys again soon :)

Blade

Ideas for Mega-Spawns

I know there has already been some discussion about this topic in other posts, but I wanted to make sure there was a centrally located forum for it so we can all add our thoughts and try to resolve something that has been an issue since, to quote our noble leader, "dirt was clean" :)

From what I remember of past discussions there are really only 3 basic areas that are a problem; Polar Bear Ally, North Face with the Spiders and Formians, and to a lesser degree, the Beetles. The primary problem areas are the Polar Bear Ally and the North Face when people try to go kill the Shark. There were 2 suggestions made:

1) Make a new world spawn point in the Mad Clerics Tower so that people could simply avoid those 2 areas.

2) Change the triggers so that they either:
a) Only spawn the same amount of creatures regardless of character level
b) Make it so that they dont spawn anything if the characters level is over a certain level.

Personally, of the 2 ideas regarding the triggers I would like to see the second implemented. It is nice when you're Xp'ing to be able to spawn more than 2 creatures when you level up and the Xp starts to drop. That makes it so that an area can remain a viable source of Xp for a long time even as the character begins to move up in levels. Taking that potential away from the lower level characters because of the actions of the upper level characters doesnt seem right.

I would also love to see the idea of the spawn point in the Tower implemented. Having another spawn further up the mountain would be extremely convenient for a number of reasons, and not having to worry about dealing with spawns below (not to mention not having to scare the hell out of the lowbies as you run past) would be nice, and I think it would also add a certain strategic element to the PvP that tends to happen on the North Face. As it is now, people can camp the exit from Northbound if they want, since the only other way in is to either run up through the Lonely Slopes or 'port' in from the Ancient Caverns, and one of those options is very time consuming, while the other is impossible for most builds.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents. Lets get a dialogue going about this issue so that we can come up with some good solutions to a problem that bugs both players and DM's alike.

Joining Forces

With the collapse of House Thanatos, and their leader Belpherond joining Death Dealers. Bloodkins leader Paine Killer and his followers decided It'd be best to join forces with The Arcane Brotherhood and their leader Hellie Layne. Hellie Layne and Paine Killer now share a common goal in controlling the main outposts in BadLands, and to confront Death Dealers and their band of scoundrels to the best of their abilites.

When Horses Attack!!

For all of you who thought it was only Elephants that never forget, I submit to you that HORSES are the ones with the great memories, and WOW can they hold a grudge!

Let me explain. Yesterday I logged on with my 'Shade' wizard Belpheron and promptly bought a horse. I didnt know that toons with a 'non-typical' body type cannot ride horses, and when I found out I had Belpheron react in an appropriate manner; he killed it. Well, that made everyone in Dozo angry and they started chasing poor Belph, who ported out and stayed away for the rest of the night.

Then today, I forgot and came back to Dozo with Belph on my way to the Mines and for some reason, there was a HERD of horses around the stable, just kinda hangin out and looking shifty. When they spotted Belpheron...well...see for yourself!












Can anyone say "Stampede"? :P

BadLands Finally Made it to 1.69

That's correct! BadLands RPG is finally up and running in the new 1.69 upgrade.

It is not without it's bugs, but all you old chars are there along with all your PW info.

If you find bugs, and you will, this is as good a place as any to post them. I will address them all in due time.

New subraces are not getting wings and tails. I will fix this.

New players are finding BadLands RPG and think they own the place. Even though the 1.68 and 1.69 share the same servervault and database, the new world is being changed. Are you really going to let some noob think he/she can take-over your world? Get the update and join in the fun.

I still can't get a sceenshot, but players are riding horses. Lot's of players on now.

Q

The 1.69 Upgrade is Public

It took so long I had begun to think it would never get finished and I almost forgot about it. The 1.69 Upgrade is now available. As I had feared, Fast French does not work with 1.69 NWNX2 does work with 1.69 and works with our existing database. But, but, but, (yes I stuttered), a conversion needs to made.
Fast French was built on the foundation of NWNX so the conversion should not be as bad as it sounds. Fast French and NWNX are 3rd party programs. They both act as a server monitor and will restart the module if it crashes or lags to hard. Also, they both take care of the data-base interface. The good news is NWNX can work with the data-base Fast French uses, MySQL. This means we won't lose our existing data. Data like: Boss Drop items, Guild stuff, bind location, the location we were (with in the last 15 seconds) when we logged off or crashed.

Until I can find or make a fix to this problem, BadLands will be using 1.68. If you upgraded to 1.69 and want to go back to 1.68 Bioware has that available.
http://nwn.bioware.com/support/patch.html
You can also find 1.69 in other languages here.

1.69 has many new things:
8 new tile sets
100 new monsters
rideable horses for players
new armor
The list goes on. It's almost like a new game.

Back to the dungeon I go, Master.
Qwildurn

Mage Battle Royal.

There was still an abandoned fortress: Emerald.
Osiris Ellow, Cain's cousin and Belferond's long time arch-nemesis wanted it for his guild, the Arcane Brotherhood.
Knowing that few would stand in his way, Pellastrina Dark Desire stepped up and took the challenge. Ellow would have to beat the woman if he wished to capture the fortress..

Like melee fights, arcane spellcaster matches can end really quickly.. Pellastrina started the round by casting defensive spells.. and Osiris, fearing for his life, thought it'd be wise to set up Epic Warding and Epic Mage Armor..



While I was a little busy saving the screenshot, Pellastrine had won the match.. I didn't see what happened but I came back in time to see Pellastrina teaching Osiris some "unusual" tricks..



Ellow, showing his keen mind, quickly demonstrated how well he had learned Pellastrina's arcane lessons. By dispelling the former Thanatos' mage's spell mantle, he left her open and casted his missile storms on her.. Being the fragile woman that she is, Pellastrina couldn't take that much damage and was left unconscious.




Another round started but it was getting pretty clear who would come out victorious in the end..







Pellastrina, showing some outstanding willforce, got up and challenged Osiris Ellow once more. Sadly she was in no condition to put up a fight anymore..



Suddenly, Kha'Leesha, Queen of the Underdark and her twin sister came out of nowhere and caught Osiris off-guard, grabbing him and the harmless gnome that was passing through and had stopped to watch the two mages fight.
But that wasn't the end of those two. Pellastrina, who was alive and resting near the stone conjoint, heard Osiris cursing the elf and rushed to see what was going on.
Using her strong spells on the elf, Pellastrina dropped Kha'Leesha to her knees and saved the day.. not before scolding Osiris for his lack of... "attention"..

Upcoming Changes to BadLands RPG

Some of you are hungry for new stuff in our world.
So am I.
I did start a lot of changes a few months ago and had to put BadLands on hold for a while. I'm ready to get back at, but not with the same All-Consuming-Obsession that I had in the past.

I have been talking with Leaf Stone recently about his baby, BadLands. Leaf is the original author of BadLands, just in case you didn't know. Leaf made several offers to me about BadLands.
1. To let me merge both modules together. That is, to bring the Bosses, Boss Areas and Boss Drops as well as anything else, like the Bone Bash Theater, into BadLands RPG.
2. The 1.69 upgrade (currently beta 9) does not work with our existing database and server monitor. (It's barely working now). When I mentioned this to Leaf, he offered to do the work to change over to a different program that works better.

Other changes coming soon are:
3. A lot of good ideas you-all brought up in this Blog.
4. A new Trap System for Rogues I have been working on. Terry helped test it too many months ago. I need to finish it and import it.

Changes that are "in-works":
5. New areas added to the Mad Clerics Tower atop Sheelo Mtn.
6. A +6 upgrade shop for strength based melee builds. +6 AC mostly.
7. Some new monsters. Some of you have seen the DM spawned Snow Slaad.
8. Some new bosses and new boss drops for melee builds.
9. Changes to some existing bosses. I will only say this much: The new Medusa can turn any player to stone now. . . . . Of course I include some form of limited protection. . . . . . Oh, by the way, Statues are forever. (note to self: all statues need pigeons)
10. Did I mention the new . . . . oops, that would spoil the surprise.

Items 5 through 10 are in various states of disrepair. 1 to 4 will come later.
I will be happy to review anything you build with the tool editor. If I like it and it "fits" BadLands, I will add it to our world.

qwildurn@verizon.net
Qwildurn Bluemoon

Recent Tournament Results

(Thanks again to the DM's that hosted the battle and took these great screen shots and written descriptions for me to easily post, Simon Hawk)


Everyone grouped at Hot Cave of Madness for the fortress battle.
Free Blades had Thor and Lycan.




The other side, the combined forces of Chimeria, Phury Shadowblade (both from Shadow Blades) and Merin Kensai (Warlord of the new Sword Saints guild)



First bout ended quickly with thor dev critting his opponents..



Second was no different and ended with Free Blades winning easily..



Then Chimeria had to leave and Merin/Phury team had a new member coming to their aid, the mighty Uthlari Rendflesh from Death Dealers.
Merin and Phury were already down but Rendflesh was calm. He came striding into the battlefield and with strong hits, he bashed Lycan to oblivion.



and then went after Thor. After a couple of minutes of a well balanced brawl, Rendflesh got the upper hand and Thor had no choice but to retreat. Trying to heal himself, the free blader couldn't dodge nor block Rendflesh's attacks, so he was defeated in this epic battle..



After everyone left, it was up to Uthlari and Lycan. Good and old 1 vs. 1.
Uthlari gave his best. Couple of strong and deadly hits on Lycan but the latter knew how strong the half-orc was, so he relied on his divine powers to defeat the DD member.
2 well placed harms and Uthlari was badly wounded but he didn't give up, he kept swinging. Lycan said the magic words and another harm came flying into the orc's body and he couldn't fight anymore..
Free Blades had won the Fortress Battle!!



It was time for Lycan to choose wich fortress he wanted. And he thought UD was a good choice.

The New Hardware and ISP is Working

I just want to say that I think the new server hardware changes, including the new ISP, are finally working well.
I have resolved the "crashing without players" issue by adding a "dummy" script that forces some constant activity. It generates about as much activity as one player. I've been able to play alone on BadLands RPG, BadLands 2082, and BadLands 1095 for several hours each without a crash. Unless we get a constant 40 players this should not create any lag. I can alter it to turn it's self off/on at a certain number of players but until that's needed I won't.

I am currently hosting three modules, RPG, 2082 and 1095. Mostly just to see if I can. Partly so players can see what the original BadLands was like. Which brings up the question, "What is original?" BadLands 1095 was the last public release by the original author, Leaf Stone. From that common point all other BadLands modules have gone separate directions. BadLands 2082 is Leaf's continued direction which I host for Leaf. As to why BadLands 1095 was made public and Leaf suddenly made such drastic changes to BadLands is a whole new blog and a lot of BadLands (dirty) history would have to be retold. I was a part of this history so most of it would be first hand.

I did set the DM list on all 3 mods to be the same, but it's unfair to expect anybody to actively DM more than one mod.

The downloads are being sent at full speed and what took 45 minutes now takes about 5 minutes to download. And it does not seem to make the server lag like it used to.

http://badlandsrpg.game-host.org
qwildurn@verizon.net
Qwildurn Bluemoon

Let us Port up the Mountain beyond North Face :)

Hiya Blade here,

I have some thoughts & observations which if implemented might save us from some of the problems of the " Mega Spawn ".

In my experience, worse than the Polar Bears, is when Legendary chars want to go get their new Shark Boots. I have about 20 chars that could use this upgrade, and it is increasingly difficult to find a time when the server is quiet enough to send your level 50+ up to the shark without causing some disruption to other players. The last few times I have taken to going invis from Northbound through the Beetles on South Sheelo and round the back way to Lonely Slopes to avoid causing spawns on North Face where people are more likely to log in and want to play.

What i would like is some sort of equivalent to " Snow Pipes " to get us up the mountain higher to say where the new +6 Crafting Stuff will be :)

Maybe this Port Stone could be Level Limited to Level 41 ?

I tend to leave my characters bound in the UDark, but for those that bind in Mountain Shelter it can be useful to capture the outpost in the UDark, so that you can port your champions down there without running through the sewers.

Another observation (Hope this isn't too much of a spoiler ), but the Ancient Caverns Outpost allows the option to port to a number of locations around the Game World, maybe this sort of thing could be implemented more ........ " Greater freedom of movement " to alleviate these problems when moving the higher level chars around :)

All the Best ...........Blade :)

Hardcore Server and Hardcore Players?

Hardcore Server and Hardcore Players?

Deimonos_85 and I were chatting in emails and I just have to repeat this. ROF-LMAO

Deimonos_85 said: "Oh yeah, that guy is just weird. I was playing with him and a couple more in the mines, and he kept bugging me for a complete relevel.. and the "You are hardcore" after seeing my Deep Orc dev-crit a Trog made me laughed real loud.."

LOL :) BadLands IS Hardcore minus the permanent death, no respawn for players. Few would ever make level 15 if is was set to "Death is Forever".

Q

Hell hath no fury...

... like a DM scorned.

Ok people, here's a bit of advice for you to make all our lives a little better. If you're a high level character in a lower level area, PLEASE kill the monsters you spawn whenever possible. We're all guilty in one way or another of mega-spawning monsters that end up killing lowbies trying to XP their characters. Well this past weekend somebody (not me) mega spawned a massive amount of bears and left them on the mountain. Guess what happened next? Thats right, our very own Qwildurn walked right into that huge pile of pissed-off teeth and claws with his new character and got ripped to shreds. Why is this such a big deal you may ask? I'll tell you why, it's a big deal because Qwildurn is the host and DM of BadLandsRPG and when you piss him off, bad shit happens. Hellie Layne and a few others paid with their lives that fateful day. I don't like dieing for other peoples mistakes so please kill your mega-spawns if you're walking through an area.

(The picture below is an example of how to kill the mega-spawned bears.) :P