MMORPG Tycoon 2 News

Hi everyone! It's been a couple weeks since the last feature update, and I've been hard at work! Here's what's new in this new build:

[h3]Big New Stuff[/h3]

• [h3]Quest Rewards Nerfed![/h3]By default, low-level quests now give far less experience on completion than they did before. Previously, a low level quest might give anything up to 1000xp or more when a player turned it in; that's enough to often catapult a level 1 player straight up midway through level 3! Now a default level 1 quest will give only 40xp. This means that your players will level up more slowly and more controllably, and will give you more time to build new areas ahead of them! But also, high-level quests now scale up their rewards to help them keep up with the increasing XP requirements!
  
  
• [h3]Quest editing![/h3] I've completely re-implemented the UI for quest editing! Now quests can be renamed, their rewards can be seen and edited, and (for combat quests) you can set precisely how many monsters must be killed, instead of having only a limited number of choices.
  
  
• [h3]Are you tired of quest editing? Because there's more quest editing![/h3] In addition to all of the above, you can now change the way the game automatically sets XP and Gold rewards for quests; set an approximate number of quests it should take to gain a level, and the game will set XP values for everything across your whole game appropriately! (and you can still override the defaults for specific quests whenever you like!)
  
  
• [h3]Editable leveling curve![/h3] Are your players leveling up too quickly or too slowly? The 'Design' window now has a new "XP & Leveling" tab where you can change how much XP monster kills are worth, as well as how many monster kills are required in order to gain levels! These settings interact with the default quest settings to let you specify how quickly you want your players to gain levels, and also how much of their experience should be coming from quests vs. how much from combat.
  
  
• [h3]Let's do the time warp![/h3] Slowed down the game's wall clock speed, but sped up its calendar! On 1x speed, it now takes 2 hours for a full in-game day to finish (previously was 1 hour); this gives your subscribers a lot more time to play before their playtime per simulated day is over! But at the same time, I've reduced the duration of a simulated month from 30 in-game days to just 5 in-game days. These two changes, taken together, mean that you'll get your first 'monthly' subscription payments after just 10 hours of play on 1x speed, instead of after 30 hours of play (and of course, much less than that if you turn the speed up!). Capitalism is easy, when you control all the clocks!
  
  
• [h3]I want to be big![/h3] Player, Monster, and NPC character types can now be scaled. This ability is available from the 'Adjust' interface on the character model's "torso" piece.
  
  
• [h3]Reduced-Bandwidth Monster Zones![/h3]Monster zones now have approximately half the network bandwidth upkeep requirements they used to have, which means you can have a lot more and larger monster zones using fewer network uplinks!
  
  
• [h3]Player/Monster Unlocks![/h3] You now start a game with three player classes unlocked (previously was two), and four monster types unlocked (previously was three). More player classes and monster types are now unlocked as you gain more subscribers! (Previously, unlocks happened based on maximum player level)
  

[h3]Bug Fixes[/h3]

• Vastly improved CPU load when viewing the Network layer, when many regions were active!
  
  
• Miscellaneous improvements in our interactions with FMOD which hopefully should sort out launch issues for a few players who had unsupported audio devices connected to their computers.
  
  
• Stopped monsters from attacking players while the game is paused.
  
  
• Moved "Game Features" tab from the Overview report to the Design window. Same features, different window!
  
  
• Much better support for window resizing and window minimise/restore, especially during the loading screen!
  
  
• Much better support for UI scaling, for folks with much higher resolution screens than me! (I'm so jealous right now)
  
  
• In "Fullscreen Window" mode, we no longer grab the cursor, so you can now move the cursor to other monitors.
  
  
• Fixed "Optimal DPS" calculations to correctly handle attacks which use floating point numbers (previously Optimal DPS rounded everything down to whole numbers, which meant that an attack which did 0.9 health damage was treated s if it did no health damage at all)
  
  
• High level monsters now respawn with full attribute values! (Previously, they spawned with the health and mana values of a level 1 monster, and then healed up over a short time, which could make them easy kills if someone attacked them immediately after they spawned!)
  
  
• When leveling up, players now instantly heal up to their new maximum health and mana values!
  
  
• We now stop the player from giving two types of monster/player classes/npcs the same name, which could make the game confused.
  
  
• Fixes a crash if you take over control of a character with more than four attacks available.
  
  
• ...and a bunch of other miscellaneous fixes!
  

Thanks for your patience, everyone; this was a pretty big update touching a whole lot of areas! I'm going to try to keep them a little smaller and more focused than this one, in future! :D

-Trevor

This build is mostly minor bug fixes, and trying to improve stability for folks who were having trouble!

New in this build:

• A fix for a few rendering issues very early during the loading screen. These
• ought* to have been harmless, but I've seen a number crash reports -- mostly from very old Intel graphics chipsets -- which seem like they might be related, so.. I cleaned it all up, in hopes that it'd solve issues on those Intel graphics chipsets!
  
  
• Upgraded our FMOD library from version 1.07.04 to 2.00.07. (It was almost four years old!) This seems to have worked around problems for at least one tester!
  
  
• Fixed the ‘elite monster’ placement tool to only offer to place monster types, not player classes or NPCs. (oops!)
  
  
• Fixed monsters to immediately update their name and other information if you changed the name of their monster type.
  
  
• Fixed GUI 'meter' widgets to display values above their configured maximum. This can make a big difference for a region's capacity, or for a 'buzz' amount, or for the number of people waiting in a login queue, all of which would commonly exceed their default "maximum values". Now fixed!
  
  
• AI Change: Previously, new subscribers usually would not play as newly created classes until they had been awarded a FotM tier. Now, new subscribers will instead flock to new classes before they're rated, as they're new and exciting and
• might* be amazingly awesome!
  
  
• Fixed an only-reported-once crash if your ‘desktop.vrt’ desktop file has somehow become highly corrupt (say, by someone going into it and deleting all of its contents but not removing the file itself)
  
  
• Fixed an only-reported-once crash if the user has deleted some (but not all) of the crash data from a previous run which hasn’t yet been reported.
  

Hi, everyone! It's been a little over a week to get here, but the long-awaited 'Abilities' update has finally landed!

• [h3]Add new abilities to your player and monster classes![/h3] You can now add or delete combat abilities from Player, Monster, and NPC character types; do it from the character editor's "Abilities" tab in the Design dialog.
  
  
• [h3]Players can now gain abilities as they level![/h3] Each ability can now specify the level at which it becomes available. Monsters and NPCs learn these new abilities automatically, but Players need to be taught by a class trainer. Learning a new ability is very rewarding for players, and makes them happier!
  
  
• [h3]Did I say 'class trainer'?[/h3] Yes I did! You can now place class trainers to train your players to use their new abilities, when they go up a level. Note that class trainers will only train players of the same class as they are, so be sure to place one for each class somewhere near wherever you’re expecting players to level up!
  
  
• [h3]Did I just say that class trainer NPCs can use the same classes as players?[/h3] Yes I did! All NPC types can now use any of the available character types, whether player, NPC, or even monster. Want to have a friendly bear who gives your players quests? You can do that now! (note: "Class Trainer" NPCs can only use Player model types; NPCs and monsters don't require training!)
  
  
• [h3]Did I say 'performance improvement'?[/h3] Er.. well, actually, no I didn't! But there's another big performance improvement in this build, as all our pathfinding calculations have now been moved into a background thread, and a few other expensive calculations have been smoothed out. This should give a nice frame rate boost to those really big games, and iron out the responsiveness troubles some folks had when setting the game to its highest speed in those games!
  
  
• [h3]Literally half the RAM usage! (for large games) [/h3] I fixed an issue which was causing players to store their complete play history in memory, instead of keeping only the history of their most recent play session. Purging this unused historical data, on extremely large games, tends to drop our overall RAM usage in half!
  
  
• [h3]Fly over the water![/h3] Players no longer die when taking a flight path over an inactive region; as long as they remain on the raven, they'll continue safely to their destination! There are still a few bits of UI awkwardness around placing such a long flight path, but it's now at least possible to use a flight path to travel to or from an island to a nearby bit of shoreline!
  
  
• [h3]Super-mega-ultra widescreen support![/h3] Fixed a bunch of rendering bugs which had been affecting players with extremely widescreen monitors! I am jealous of your monitors!
  
  
• [h3]UIScale improvements![/h3] For those on 4k monitors, our UIScale system is now much more reliable and should now 'just work'! I am jealous of your monitors, too!
  
  
• [h3]Want screenshots?[/h3] I've added a "HUD Toggle" function that you can bind a key to, in the 'options' screen, to clear the screen to make screenshot capturing easier.
  
  
• [h3]The Most Recent Save Problem[/h3] We've stopped trusting the OS to tell us what save file is most recent, and now track this ourselves, which means the game should no longer (for new saves after this build) ever pick the wrong save file, when you use the 'Connect' button!
  
  
• [h3]The "Level Two" tutorial![/h3] Added a new tutorial, triggered when your first player reaches level two, to explain character unlocks, point toward ability editing and class trainers, and give some basic advice about setting up a level 2 region. Just like the game's starting tutorial, this won't appear again after you've completed it once in any save (unless you start a new game with the "Play Tutorial" option enabled)
  

...and there's a list about four times that long of miscellaneous bug fixes and smaller improvements! This is definitely the biggest update we've sent out so far! Thanks so much for all your patience and feedback and bug reports while I was putting all of this together!

The plan for the next big new sprint of work is going to be working on bringing back multi-level region support, and then implementing basic localization support!

Hi, everyone! I've just rolled out one more set of hotfixes for various bug reports ("bugs report"?) since the last build!

New features in this build:

• Adds 'sideways' model part adjustments for costume editing.
  
• Adds a 'destroy' tool to the 'NPCs' action bar tab. For all your NPC-destroying needs!
  
• Players can now travel from one region to another purely by flight paths; it's no longer required to open a mountain pass in addition to the flight path.
  
  If they'll reach, flight paths can even cross over empty sea regions to islands, and players will now consider using them to spread out or to move to a more level-appropriate region, the same way they use mountain passes. EDIT: Oops, some of the other updates stopped this part from working! We'll get this going again in a near-future update. :)
  

Bug fixes in this build:

• Fixed players getting stuck if they accidentally stray over a region boundary into an inactive region (typically this would only happen at sea boundaries). Now those players are immediately killed for their trespass, and are respawned at the nearest available respawn point in the region they came from.
  
• Fixes players becoming stuck in too-high-level regions and being unwilling to move back into lower-level regions.
  
• Players no longer attempt to use buildings if they would be unsuccessful at doing so. For example, if a player can't afford to buy a weapon, they won't try to buy one and fail. If a hotel is full, players won't attempt to move into it and fail.
  
• Much improves the discrepancy between number of users who log in when the game is set to normal speed and when the game is set to fastest speed.
  
• Potential new subscribers now think about the value of your game's purchase price when deciding whether or not to buy. If your price is set much over the default price, then these customers may now decide not to purchase your game,
• even if* they could afford it! This resolves the mild exploit of setting an absurdly high purchase price, which new subscribers would pay out of their savings without even noticing that it was a surprisingly high price. (Apologies! This exploit was fun while it lasted!)
  
• Elite monsters placed inside a monster zone are no longer "owned" by that monster zone, so modifying or removing the monster zone no longer automatically destroys those elite monsters. (NOTE: This only affects newly placed elite monsters in this version or later; eilte monsters placed using earlier builds still belong to the zones they were placed inside)
  
• "Common Thought" heatmaps are now much more visible when "bloom" is disabled in the Video options.
  
• Fixed a bug which caused a subscriber to not discard the quest chain they were working on, if they gained a level from the quest XP reward while in the process of turning in a quest from that chain. They would discard all
• other* out-levelled quest chains they'd been working on, but not that one, which could result in high-level players continuing to do one low-level quest chain before deciding to move to a new region which better suited their level.
  
• Fixed a very subtle bug which could result in a single subscriber being logged in
• twice* with the same character, when a region's login queue is active. This would result in that character moving quickly, as if they were using a speedhack, and then continuing to move around in the world even after "logging out" (and could even result in a crash if they unsubscribed!) This bug fixed itself every time you saved or loaded, which made diagnosing this bug tricky!
  
• Fixed building placement/movement logic to actually only place/move buildings in regions where it thinks it's legal to do so, instead of only telling you that it couldn't place a building there but doing it anyway if you told it to.
  
• Vastly improved the generated meshes for bandwidth-covered areas on the network view (vertex counts are down about 90% compared against what they were in the last build!).
  
• Fixes "Negative buzz" HUD meter vanishing, after you've taken and released control of a monster.
  
• Fixes a lot of "daily" reports and graphs incorrectly "wrapping around" as we move from month 1 day 30 to month 2 day 1.
  
• Fixes flickering of network objects during placement.
  

...and the usual set of more minor miscellaneous bug fixes as well! Thanks for your patience and support as I've been gathering all of this together, everybody! I'm looking forward to focusing more on exciting new features, for the next update!

This is just a little update which fixes a persistent problem experienced mostly by players using Macs with AMD graphics cards. This update fixes terrain rendering for those players!

Changes in this build:

• Fix for Mac/AMD terrain rendering glitches! (I've had a report that this same fix also fixed a persistent rendering bug for one PC user with an NVidia GPU, which surprises me, but I'll totally take credit for that fix too!)
  
• Disables gamepad input, which previously was wired up to camera movement. This change means that folks who happen to have a badly calibrated gamepad connected to their computer no longer have to cope with a drifting camera!
  
• ...and a whole bunch of little bug fixes, based upon feedback and bug reports!
  

Thanks again to everyone who's been playing, sharing, and reporting feedback, requests, and bugs! I'm really excited to show folks what's up next for the game! :D