MMORPG Tycoon 2 News

Hi folks! Every once in a while we release an update containing only "under-the-hood" changes, and this is one of those. A lot of people don't really care about the back-end technical stuff, and that's totally fine; please feel free to skip down to the 'Also in this build' bugfix section at the bottom of this post if that's you!

But for me, the most exciting parts of this update are up here at the top, and maybe you'll like them too!

New in this build:

• New save file format!
  
  Previously, when saving a game we saved out three separate files; the save itself, a tiny "meta" file which contained information
• about* the save, to be used in the desktop interface and elsewhere (this is how the desktop knows how many subscribers you have in every save file without actually loading them all), and a screenshot of the save to be used in the desktop launcher interface. Now we save all of those three things into a single file. A "monosave", if you will. This dramatically simplifies backing up saves and submitting them in bug reports and etc; there's only one file to copy and sync, now!
  
  The most exciting part of this is that the new "monosave" file format is forwards compatible with old versions of the game; saves from this build
• can* still be loaded in older builds! (I'm downright
• smug* over figuring out how to make that work!)
  
  

  Side-note: we are still saving out a separate 'meta' file when we save, just in case somebody does want to jump back to an old build of the game which would prefer to have those meta files, but starting from this version of the game we only read 'meta' files when loading really old saves which aren't in the new monosave format.

  
  
  
• Better handling of file system errors!
  
  If you run out of disk space while saving the game, we now tell you about it and let the game keep running, so you can alt-tab out and maybe clear up some room then try again!
  
  
• Better handling of file errors!
  
  Previously, if you tried to load a corrupted or truncated save file, the game would do its best to load as much data as it could from the file, but would then leave the rest of the data empty; in a worst-case scenario, it could act as if it had successfully loaded your save but leave you with a brand new and completely empty game! Now we'll instead pop up an error message to let you know that the file was corrupt or unreadable, and return you to the in-game desktop interface so you can try loading one of its periodic backups instead.
  
  
• Running low on disk space?
  
  We now check for low available disk space while you're in the in-game desktop interface, and we'll display a warning message if your disk is almost full, just as a gentle reminder that you might want to clear up some space before starting or loading into a game.
  
  
• Saved pathing
  
  Wait, what's this one doing way down here? This totally belongs right up at the top, certainly above the boring back-end technical stuff like "new save format"!
  
  In this build, we now save and restore the paths that players were following at the time of the save. This fixes an
• old* old bug which caused players who were on flight paths or on board vehicles when a save happened to fall off of them after a load. (which could often wind up with those players drowning in the sea or ending up in inactive or high-level regions and then re-spawning somewhere super inconvenient).
  
  Similarly, players who were waiting at a vehicle depot when the save happened will continue waiting there after the save is re-loaded, instead of changing their minds and wandering off to do something different!
  

Also in this build:

• Fixed a bug in the previous update which had the "alchemy_desk_a" scenery item displaying the "alchemy_desk_b" model. Oops!
  
• Fixed a bug which was causing gravity to not be applied to certain combat effect sub-particles (water droplets, little bits of gravel falling off of larger rocks, etc); this has actually been broken since the Dungeons update and nobody had mentioned it to me!
  
• Fixed tab colors for second-level tabbed window interfaces (for example, in the ability editor and in the character model editor); unselected tabs were being drawn in the same color as selected tabs, which could make it tricky to see which tab was selected! Now fixed.
  

Thanks so much to everybody who did early testing of this update!

Will talk again soon!

-T

Hi again, everyone! I'm excited to present our latest content update, containing our new "Sinister" theme of buildings and scenery items, and also incorporating some other new features!

New in this update:

• Sinister assets! Up first, in this update you'll find a new set of "sinister" functional buildings, a new dungeon entrance, a new wall style, and several new scenery items to use to decorate all your most ominous regions.
  
• Lighting on the world map! We've brought over tech from our dungeon rendering, and scenery items which look like they should be casting light into the world (lanterns, campfires, etc) now actually do so on the main world map, the same way they do inside dungeons! This means you can now make super thematic 'nighttime' regions and illuminate them using lanterns and other set dressing, instead of always requiring sunlight everywhere!
  
• General scenery cleanup! In this build we've also updated more than 80 of our old scenery items, fixing many minor issues (tables which were missing triangles when viewed from underneath, a cleaver which accidentally was embedded into a table by its handle instead of by its blade, etc). In general, we've worked quite hard to make sure these changes are subtle enough that you probably won't notice them and they shouldn't break any builds which had been using the old scenery items.
  

This update also has a whole bunch of other quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes:

• Fixed players on flight paths or on vehicles falling down to the ground after a save+load cycle. Additionally, players waiting for a vehicle at a dock at the time of a save will now continue waiting for the vehicle after the load occurs, instead of choosing to go do something else instead.
  
• Fixed a very rare crash bug which could occur if you started to change the destination of a quest but aborted out of doing so by clicking on a scenery placement tool that you had never used before.
  
• Fixed a bug which caused map generation to not be entirely repeatable when regenerated from the same seed. (this should make it possible for us to debug some extremely rare map generation bugs in future!)
  
• Fixed a bug which could result in a (non-functional) selection-box being drawn in the desktop interface.
  
• Mac and Linux builds no longer treat receiving a "SIGTERM" signal as if it was a crash (because it isn't one! It was just a polite way for one program or the OS itself to request another program close itself)
  

...as well as a bunch of other minor bug fixes, and updated localisation data!

As I mentioned with the last update, the next big thing I'm personally working on is a major revamp to game progression; how your game's version number goes up, how you unlock new technologies, and how you unlock character type slots; I'm very excited to write more about that in the next big feature update! And we have a couple more, smaller feature releases that will come out between now and then.

More details soon. And once again, huge thanks to everyone for your enthusiasm, support, feedback and bug reports throughout development! It all makes such a big difference to me and everyone else on the development team! :)

Talk again soon,

-T

Hi folks! This is just a quick hotfix build for bugs reported during the rollout of the scenery brush update.

In this update:

• Fixed a floating point imprecision issue which could very rarely cause a piece of scenery to treated as both
• inside* and also
• outside* of a brush stroke at the same time, which resulted in that single scenery item being placed and then removed again within a single editing action, which
• really* confused the game's undo system!
  
• Fixed a very rare placement issue with flight paths, teleporters, and vehicle depots, which could occur if you were playing in a window and clicked and dragged the mouse cursor out of the game window in the middle of placing the
• second* flight point, teleporter, or vehicle depot on a travel path.
  
• Fixed cursor briefly appearing to teleport across the screen when tapping the 'z' key during an object placement.
  

It's a really small hotfix this time! Big thanks to the folks who reported the issues above! Will talk again soon.

-T

Hi everybody! Today we have a much-requested feature, a brush interface for placing down groups of scenery objects!

New in this update:

• Scenery brushes! Each scenery placement tool can now be put into a "brush" mode, where you can scatter scenery items across an area with just the sweep of the mouse. There are several different patterns available, with customisable densities, brush sizes, scale and angle randomisations, and more! Individual placements are of course still available, and scenery items placed using a brush can be further adjusted the same as any other scenery items!
  

Additionally, this update has a whole bunch of other minor quality-of-life fixes and improvements:

• All dropdown menus all now have a downward-pointing triangle on their right side, to indicate that they can be clicked upon
  
• Disabled 'undo' and 'redo' functionality during the initial game tutorial to prevent a possible soft-lock.
  
• Changed the MegaTooltip window so it won't place itself partially off the bottom of the screen.
  
• Added some missing description strings for the new vehicles from the last travel update.
  
• Fixed mouse movements affecting camera rotation if you were holding a keyboard "rotate camera" button (default-bound to 'q' and 'e')
  
• Moved the Wall/Path placement help messages to smaller, dark-background windows in the bottom right of the screen to match the appearance and positioning of other help text windows. (previously these had been larger blue windows in the top left)
  
• Vastly improved the handling of in-progress pathfinding queries when map edits happen, especially edits which touch multiple regions simultaneously (destroying mountain passes, multi-region flight paths, etc)
  
• Fixed issues with deleting a travel building while in a placement tool that had been trying to use that travel building as part of a new path placement.
  
• Fixed dungeon fog settings sometimes temporarily being applied to the main world map view, immediately after leaving a dungeon interior view.
  
• Fixed several issues caused by the use of keyboard hotkeys to switch between editing tools while in the middle of drag operations.
  

...as well as a bunch of other minor bug fixes, and updated localisation data!

The next big thing I'm working on is going to be a major revamp to game progression; how your game's version number goes up, how you unlock new technologies, and how you unlock character type slots; I have plans to improve all of these! I'm very excited to write more about this in the next big feature update! And of course, we also have at least one big content update planned between now and then!

More details soon. And once again, I have to give so many thanks to everyone for your enthusiasm, support, feedback and bug reports throughout development! It makes such a big difference to me and everyone on the development team! :)

-T

Hey folks, this is a very quick update with a critical fix that snuck past us during the Travel update!

Each time you launched MT2, the first save you loaded would work normally, but if you then exited back to the ingame desktop interface and loaded into a second save (or the same one again), the map wouldn't build correctly and buildings would be unplaceable and subscribers would have many pathfinding issues -- especially when they're in a party.

This build fixes that issue; you should now be able to load into saves as many times as you like and have them work every time -- apologies to everybody affected! The programmer responsible (me) has been scolded and sent to bed without dessert so that he can think about what he did.

This update also contains the following unrelated fixes:

• If you try to place a building somewhere where players can't travel (on top of buildings, etc), the error message for that has changed from "Off map" to "Unwalkable terrain", which I feel is more understandable.
  
• Fixed the "Undo" hud element to adjust its positioning on screen if the game window is resized or the fullscreen resolution is changed.
  
• When sending a screenshot is enabled, bug reports now send us the screenshots at your window's native resolution, instead of always cropping/scaling to 1920x1080.
  

-T