MMORPG Tycoon 2 News

Hi folks! This update was a lot bigger than I'd expected it to be, but it's finally ready for prime time! Thanks heaps to all the testers sending feedback and bug reports over on the Discord server!

Here's what's new:

• [h3]No more negative damage![/h3]We've entirely rebuilt the interface for editing combat abilities to make it simpler, easier, and more intuitive! In particular, it's now possible to just say that an ability does 5 damage, instead of needing to specify that an ability "adds -5 health".
  
• [h3]Damage Over Time[/h3]Oft-requested support for damage over time effects has been implemented! A single ability may do both static, instantaneous damage, and also additionally inflict damage over time. In this build, each character may only be affected by a single Damage Over Time effect at once; further DoT effects will refresh or replace earlier ones.
  
• [h3]Heals![/h3]Heals have been added to the above, and like damage, are available both as static heals and also as Heal-over-Time effects.
  
• [h3]"Greed is good"[/h3]Adds a "Self Only" option for combat abilities. Useful if you want to give someone a powerful self-heal but don't want them to be able to use it on party members!
  
• [h3]I never drink... wine[/h3]A new "siphon" ability effect type has been added, which lets characters drain health, mana, or rage from their opponent, and add it to their own health, mana, or rage supplies!
  
• [h3]Buffs? Buffs![/h3]A selection of buffs and debuffs have been added, including "Protect", "Stun", "Root", and others.
  
• [h3]Ability icons![/h3]Adds about 300 ability icons to select from, to represent your characters' combat abilities.
  
• [h3]Auto-Rage[/h3]The "Rage" attribute has been reworked, and now works entirely automatically. Previously you had to manually create abilities which would increase its value; now it automatically goes up due to participating in combat without you needing to specially craft abilities to do that.
  
• [h3]Why does my fighter have mana?[/h3]You can now set a class's maximum Mana or Rage value to zero, which will remove its mana or rage bar entirely.
  
• [h3]Combat visuals![/h3]Brand new visual effects have been created for combat effects; these can be selected and configured from the new ability editing interface. There are seven effects and four movement options for their projectiles, plus configurable colors!
  
• [h3]His power level is over 9000![/h3]Combat abilities can now be given a casting time, during which the user must "charge up" to prepare to use the ability.
  
• [h3]For the writers out there (you know who you are)[/h3]The game now automatically writes a tooltip for your combat abilities, but if you really want to, you can write your own blurb to describe your new combat ability.
  
• [h3]Combat ability prefabs[/h3]The game now provides an "Ability Prefabs" space where you can copy abilities you've created. Those abilities can then be imported into other saves! (I'm looking forward to doing this with other stuff in the near future too, but combat abilities is where we're testing the idea first!)
  
• [h3]Combat AI Improvements![/h3]Players are now much better about using their best combat abilities, and also applying heals and buffs to party members, and debuffs to their foes!
  
• [h3]Character Customisation[/h3]Adds another 13 character models to the game, bringing our set of customisable character models from 22 to 35!
  

[h3]Other fixes:[/h3]

• Updated 14 building models with color improvements and lighting fixes.
  
• Fixed the game sometimes overwriting quest names while you were in the middle of editing them.
  
• Fixed players getting stuck at offline flight points.
  
• Fixed players entering the "coastal inn" inn by charging straight through its wall instead of going through the door.
  
• Action bar buttons now show the hotkey to activate them.
  
• Vastly improved the camera and UI interface when controlling an in-game character.
  
• Fixes elite monsters losing their size after a costume change.
  
• Subscribers now sit down to heal faster, after combat.
  
• Monsters now react much faster to being attacked.
  
• Fixed a bug which could cause elite monsters to not be considered ready for combat immediately after loading a save.
  
• Destroying a wall or road now refunds its purchase price, the same as happens with destroying other in-game objects.
  
• Slightly nerfed the time until mana regeneration begins (3 seconds of no mana usage -> 5 seconds of no mana usage)
  
• Changed automatic health regeneration to never occur while someone is in combat. (previously it would begin after 3 seconds of taking no damage, and this could allow someone to begin to heal when their opponent was stuck in a lengthy ability cast)
  
• Added an error message to display in the ability editor if an ability is configured to require too much health/mana/rage for the class to ever actually be able to use it.
  

...and a whole bunch of other bits and pieces. This update was a whole *lot* bigger than I expected it to be, and I'm sorry it's taken so long! But I'm super happy with the changes, and I'm really looking forward to continuing on and moving into what I'm calling our "Creativity Spike". More details on that in the near future!

Hi folks! This is a compatibility update with a bunch of small bug fixes, but mostly containing just compatibility fixes so that Combat 2.0 saves can be loaded and played in this version.

Early testing of Combat 2.0 is now rolling out to our 'test' branch; feel free to switch over to the 'test' branch if you'd like an early peek at the new ability editing systems! (Right-click on the game in Steam and choose 'Preferences...' from the context menu, then switch to the 'Betas' page and choose to take part in the 'test' beta build, then let Steam update your game!)

But in terms of what's changed in build 0.17.199:

• Fixes a black screen rendering bug on OSX, when the "bloom" visual effect was disabled.
  
  
• Fixes an uncaught exception which could occur if you typed a number too big to be stored in a 32-bit integer into a text entry widget.
  
  
• Fixes floating point number formatting to round numbers correctly. (When rounding to one decimal place, previously the value 1.79 was just truncated and displayed as 1.7, where now we round it correctly and display it as 1.8.)
  
  
• Fixes a crash which could happen if a party was near the border of a concave region, next to an unowned region and one of the party members died in such a way that the midpoint in between every party member was inside that unowned neighboring region.
  
  
• Fixes players ignoring obstructions while on their way to do a quest.
  
  
• Fixes player respawn behaviour when in a region where there are no operational respawn points. (this is now treated as a 'bug', and affected players file trouble tickets so that gamemasters will come and respawn them)
  
  
• Fixed a crash which could occur if you received and clicked on a "this class has no usable attacks" alert before you had ever clicked on the Design window (I believe this was only possible after loading a saved game)
  
  
• Fixed a flight path corruption problem which could sometimes occur when undoing a path placement point by clicking the right mouse button.
  

...and a whole bunch of smaller bug fixes. No new features in this small update, as those are all happening over in the Combat 2.0 updates, in the "test" build! I'm hoping to bring those over here to the "default" build within a week or two, once they're fully tested and all of the new art assets are in!

Thanks for your patience everyone, the UI for the new Combat 2.0 editing systems took a *lot* longer to design and layout than I expected, but I'm really happy with what we have now and we're finally in the home stretch on it!

Hi folks! This is another bugfix update, while most of my development effort is going into the upcoming "Combat 2.0" update.

Newly fixed in this build:

• Improves the appearance of selection rings around parties and party members.
  
  
• Fixes display of party members in the "Party Info" window (which sometimes could be displaying outdated information or no information at all).
  
  
• Fixes an AI bug which could result in players in parties appearing to float or sink into the ground, after dying and respawning.
  
  
• Fixes parties to regroup after a party wipe, instead of continuing to charge one by one straight into the same monsters that killed them before.
  
  
• Fixes a crash which could occur after destroying an elite monster which was the target of a quest.
  
  
• Fixes a crash which could occur while quitting to the title screen after changing video mode from Multisampled antialiasing to SMAA or no antialiasing. (Or the other way around)
  

...plus updated localisation data and miscellaneous other minor fixes.

Thanks for your patience, everyone, while Combat 2.0 is being assembled! Please feel free to join us on our Discord server (there's a link in the game's desktop interface); that's where I'm showing progress on Combat 2.0 and taking Combat system feedback from players!

This is another little hotfix, mostly just addressing issues reported from the last build. New in this build:

• Adds a first pass at Steam Rich Presence, which will show your current subscriber and active player count in your friends list, while you're playing. Currently, this count updates once per minute.
  
• Fixes a crash bug which could occur during game shutdown if you quit the game using Alt-F4 (or equivalent OS force-quits of the game; this crash would happen
• after* autosaving, so no actual game progress would be lost)
  
• Adds a “Next feature at:” line to the main header window at the top left corner of the screen, showing what version number you need to reach to unlock your next new technology. (suggested by @cow over on our Discord server)
  
• Fixes the visibility of region level numbers when the bloom visual effect is disabled. (previously, these were very hard to see without the 'glow' shader!)
  
• Fixes minor rendering issues on the level selection widgets used for assigning level ranges to regions, and for assigning levels to monster zones.
  

...plus miscellaneous other minor fixes and adjustments.

Most of my development effort at the moment is still focused on Combat 2.0, which is getting closer! I'm trying to get it out to folks within the next week or two! Thanks for your patience, everyone; the combat system adjustments have been taking a lot longer than I expected, but I'm finally really happy with the way they're shaping up!

Hi folks! This is a quick hotfix to address a common issue reported in yesterday's update.

New in this build:

• Fixes a crash bug introduced in yesterday's build which could occur while placing a mountain pass.
  
• Fixes some confusing error messages while placing mountain passes.
  
• Updates localisation data