Wednesday, October 8, 2008

The Version 94 Update

There are a few things that should be explained in better detail about this update.

  1. The New Favored Class System.
  2. The changes in the Player Death System.
  3. Some areas / bosses were imported from BadLands 2083

1) The New Favored Class System allows sub-races to use Favored Classes like Cleric and Paladin. It is not complex at all. The server simply gives out extra XP so Bioware can take away. You get the correct XP for your build. It is not retro-active. Older characters will still use the old system. Only new builds will get the new Favored Class System.

2) The changes in the Player Death System are complicated and and involved. The server has always had trouble keeping track of who killed who and what killed what. Most critical was the PVP deaths. The fix was to set player death to a more traditional style DND death where your not dead until -10 hit points. I actually liked it better when it was life or death and no in-between. In resolving that issue, the players were sometimes left in state of not being able to die or respawn.

I have now addressed that with this structure:

  • Any hit points between zero and -10 is unconscious and bleeding to death.
  • If you have a high Constitution, you will slowly heal. (Obtainable at build time.)
  • If you have a low constitution, you will slowly die.
  • If you have an in-between constitution, the server will roll the dice to see if you live or die.
  • If you have regeneration, from any means, you will slowly heal.
  • Any player may heal you with normal means to prevent your death.

I have made a noob quest just for the purpose of getting you some regen as early as possible. The Ink Monkey in the Tattoo Parlor will offer you a quest. You can't do it after level 15 and it can only be done once per character. She is a talkative girl and rambles on a lot. The first few players that tried the quest did not understand what she said, so I will explain.

She lost her Ink Gun while running away from a big-ass skeleton. The Ink Gun is in a random place. Each time it gets found, it will appear in a different spot. There is a 20 minute mean time between quests. That means after it is found, the quest won't be available to other players for 20 minutes.

3) The Skeleton King was imported from Leaf Stone's BadLands 2083 and it's drop is not set as a quest yet. The Theaters have been imported from 2083 and are DM run only until we get the import bugs worked out. The area under Newport Sewers was imported and the secret door works now. Brawn Crumple was imported and is in / near the Lower Mines. Qwana Hole was imported and is in / near The Tunnel. I am hosting BadLands 2083 for Leaf Stone and have his permission to "steal" from him.

Any questions, comments, complaint about this update can be said here. Player thoughts are the best source of expansion ideas. And I am working on a Lich Sub-Race Quest. Hopefully that will be included in the 95 update.

Qwildurn Bluemoon

7 comments:

darianthebold said...

Sweet ..more for everyone ...bosses , subraces , drops , arenas and a few little fixes. Even a new area and spawns ..... what more could u want?

Deimonos said...

Yes, that was a big update, 2nd to ver 89 when Forgotten Coast, Lands and Crystal City were uploaded to the mod.

Qwildurn said...

darianthebold said...
what more could u want?


You really, really don't want to know!

Simon Hawk said...

darianthebold said...
"what more could u want?"

I propose adding the Jade JenX.hak....lol

Qwildurn said...

The only real reason BadLands does not use Hak-Paks is simple: A player without the correct Hak-Pak can't log-in. Without being able to log-in, you don't know what Hak-Paks are needed. CEP 2.1 would be a better first choice for Haks.

We do use a few Over-Rides. That can have issues as well, but does not prevent players from logging-in and playing.

If you've never used CEP, there is some really cool stuff in it.
Flying PC Players!
Flying Dragons. Big Dragons UP in the sky way above your head.

There really is a LOT of excellent stuff in Hak-Paks. A person could probably build an entire world using only Haks and ignore ALL the NWN content. But, from a players view: How do we know which Haks to get? Also, with a slow connection it could take DAYS to download all those BIG haks. (only Darian would be stuck there)

I'm not trying to be negative or demeaning. There really are a lot of good Haks to choose from. Getting them to the players so the (new) players can log-in is a problem.

Qwildurn said...

Ok, the new update has been up a while and has a few bugs. The Favored Class System that seemed to test good in our pre-test has failed in real-use. I had to make it retro-active to older toons. This helped a lot. But there still seems to be a minor XP drop. My Male, Deep Orc, Bard, PM, RDD, level 35, ECL 2 was fighting in a group against "Impossible" Werecats and Jaguars. I should have been getting 640 XP but only got 614.

Another thing is new and not related is the Disarm Feat.
I was shown how to test for players using disarm. I fully support players trying to disarm players. I made some changes and we tested it as good.
On a successful Disarm Attempt, a roll of 18, 19, 20, (using 1d20) the attacker should get a server message saying "TRUE DISARM". The weapon will no longer go into the attackers pack, but onto the ground, AND, the server will not destroy that weapon when it cleans out the trash. The weapon will stay on the ground until a player picks it up. This gives the looser a chance to pick it up first. If you've lost a weapon because the server ate it while you had to respawn or run-away, the weapon should still be there (unless a player....stole it).
I did not address how Monsters disarm players. When a monster disarms you, the weapon usually stays in your pack. In DM mode, I have seen Black Betty disarm players and get the weapon in her pack. Kill her and you will find the weapon in her corpse.

Qwildurn said...

I fixed the Favored Class System on Friday and reset the server. I did not have time to post a comment then. No other bugs have been reported to us that I know about.

Q