MMORPG Tycoon 2 News

[p]Hi folks! What, this? Why, it's only the single biggest performance boost we've ever shipped, why do you ask? :D[/p][p][/p][h2]Headline features:[/h2]

• [p] [h3]Much faster game simulation![/h3] With this update, even the largest saves we've received from players are now running at or near full speed on our test machines! This is a CPU-side optimisation, and I expect that the biggest improvements will be seen by players with large games, many players logged in at once, and at least three or four active world regions, with bigger savings the larger your world gets. There will likely be little or no difference for people who currently have just one or two regions active, and folks who are GPU-limited due to huge amounts of placed scenery will still be GPU-limited. (But hopefully running the simulation at max speed at least won't make their frame rate actively worse any more) [/p]
• [p] [h3]More use of background threads for AI![/h3] In this update, all player planning has been moved from the main thread to background threads. This means that (for example) five players all randomly happening to choose the same frame to rethink what they want to do will no longer cause frame rate microstutters! Those big choices about where to go and what to do are all now happening from background threads.[/p]
• [p] [h3]Compressed model data for all buildings and scenery models.[/h3] Making models require less data in VRAM improves rendering performance! (this will matter more for folks on low-end hardware, though) [/p]
• [p] [h3]Icons as event indicators![/h3] In this update we replace the "+XP", "+LVL", "-LVL", "DEAD", and "IM" floating text indicators with localization-friendlier icons. There are still a few more of these text indicators to convert over to icons, and the specific icons being used in this build are not final, but I feel like this is already a big improvement! These new icons can still be turned off using the view options settings button near the top right of the HUD, the same way the text ones could.[/p]

[p][/p][h3]Other notable changes:[/h3]

• [p] Fixed a bug which caused GMs who are currently searching through game logs to find evidence to incorrectly show their status as "Failed to find evidence" while they're doing it. Oops![/p]
• [p] Fixed a bug during panic logout scenarios where players would not consider nearby potential inns as places to go to logout if the inn had a high price set. (the 'price' on an inn is the price to move into that inn as a permanent home; merely logging out there - especially in an emergency - is always free). This was causing spurious "Couldn't find an inn to log out" messages, even when plenty of inns were available![/p]
• [p] Fixed dungeon ambiance sounds continuing to play if you quit directly from a dungeon view to the in-game desktop.[/p]
• [p] Fixed a bug which caused buzz to stop giving any new-subscriber benefits at all if buzz grew past a total value of 1,000. (the intention was for the benefit-per-extra-buzz to reduce at that point, but what was actually happening was that the whole benefit was being removed once you were past that threshhold. Now fixed!)[/p]

[p]...and a whole bunch of other more minor tweaks and bug fixes![/p][p][/p][p]So, an update on me: A week ago, I tested positive for Covid. Luckily, this build had entered testing several weeks before that, so I didn't have to do a lot more work on it; just monitor the bug reports from players and QA, and it all went quite smoothly, so delivering this update hasn't disrupted my rest too much! (honestly, writing these release notes is the most work I've done since testing positive!)[/p][p][/p][p]In terms of the illness, I actually feel pretty good now; almost all my symptoms have gone away over the last few days, leaving only a small cough and a gravelly voice to remind me that I'm sick. But the rapid tests are still returning positive Covid results, so I'm going to continue taking it easy and mostly just resting until they say otherwise! I'm hoping it won't be too long; I'm *super* excited to get moving on with the next big update![/p][p][/p][p]We'll talk more soon, and I'll post another announcement with how I'm doing if the Covid diagnosis drags on too much longer.[/p][p][/p][p]-T[/p]

Hi folks! A small bugfix/quality of life patch today:

• Weapon sizes for a character can now be adjusted in the costume editor. (use the 'Weapon Scale' slider while adjusting the character's right arm to change the weapon's scale). We also now do some better placement of weapons if you change the model used for the character's right arm!
  
• Fixed an issue which could cause the character type buttons in the class, NPC, and Monster design lists to occasionally flicker for a frame if you had more than 9 of one type of character and scrolled down in the window.
  
• Prevent the user from setting a buggy building as 'online' while a developer is trying to debug it (naughty naughty!) :D
  
• A few other miscellaneous fixes to the behavior of certain UI widgets inside grid widgets.
  

As always, big thanks to folks who've reported bugs and issues! Next up is a new 'Performance Update' (official name yet to be determined), which will soon enter public testing and should come to the live build in a few weeks!

Talk more soon,
-T

Hi folks! This is just a small patch with a couple fixes and improvements.

Changes in this patch:

• Fixed already-placed monsters and NPCs not being given or updating their weapons when their character type's assigned weapon types are changed. (This was working in the initial release of the Weaponry Update, but was accidentally broken as part of a bugfix in Hotfix 1)
  
• The character model editor preview now shows the character with a randomly selected one of the weapon types assigned to the class. If you'd like to change it, you can set the preview weapon to be used over on the model editor's "Settings" tab, and also change the ilvl of the weapon being previewed.
  
• If you feel like a character's greatsword just isn't 'great' enough, or its dagger just isn't stealthy enough, you can now adjust the scaling of a character type's weapons, as an additional slider on the "Adjust" interface for the character type's right arm. (I need to find a better, easier-to-find place to put this, but it's functional over here for now!)
  

...also localisation updates and a couple other small bug fixes!

Talk again soon,
-T

Hi folks, this is a second hotfix build that fixes two more extremely rare crash bugs that the hotfix from a few hours ago didn't fully catch.

I believe we should be good now! Thanks so much to everyone who reported issues!

Talk again soon,
-T

Hi folks! This is a hotfix build for the Weaponry Update from a couple days ago.

This update should be mostly unnoticeable; it's just fixes for miscellaneous bugs reported to us from that build.

These include:

• Release trailers which include new player classes now show those new player classes using the weapons they're supposed to be using, instead of showing them all carrying swords. (oops!)
  
• Fixed a crash which could happen when you unpaused the game, if you had destroyed and then replaced a player character class while the game was both online and paused.
  
• Fixed single-frame animation glitches visible in the Ability preview window if you changed the character's model while viewing the ability preview.
  
• Set up an archery target in the ability preview window, replacing the Giant Ominous Sphere Of Darkness™ as the target of previewed attacks.
  
• Fixed an issue where pooled checkbox widgets were not being properly reset before being reused elsewhere in the UI. I
• think* this was entirely benign, but it put some scary-looking messages in the game logs so I've fixed it!
  
• Fixed a few small (once per run only) memory leaks; about 10-15kb of RAM was being leaked in total, and was reclaimed when the game exited. Not a big deal for anyone, but it makes my dev tools happier!
  

As always, huge thanks to everybody who filed bug reports or otherwise contacted us with issues; it makes such a huge difference to finding and fixing issues to have several different reports of each!

Talk again soon.
-T