MMORPG Tycoon 2 News

This is just a small update to maintain forwards-compatibility with the new feature builds that are about to start rolling out to our public 'test' branch on Steam, but there are also a few notable changes and bugfixes too.

These are:

• Changed the default "move" hotkey to "z" from "m". This moves it close to all our other placement hotkeys. Note that this only changes the default; if you've already played MT2, your hotkey will remain the same ("m") until/unless you reset your keybindings to default from the options window, but new players will have "z" as their move hotkey. And you can always change the hotkey to whatever else you'd like it to be, also in the 'options' window, if you'd prefer it was something else!
  
• Fixed large characters often getting stuck around corners inside dungeons.
  
• Fixed a pathfinding bug which could cause incorrect pathfinding failures in dungeons containing a lot of doors. (in bad cases this could also result in parties appearing to become stuck, often with glitchy animations as they'd start to move and then fail)
  
• Fixed the "Boss Rewards" tab in the monster information window to only show up when a dungeon boss is selected. Previously it was incorrectly showing up for all monsters, which understandably caused a lot of player confusion since its buttons and settings didn't actually do anything for anything but dungeon bosses.
  
• Fixed UI refresh issues around changing the sync of building prices.
  

More words soon!

-T

Hi, folks! I didn't *quite* get the next feature build ready to go through testing before the weekend (next week for sure!), so I'm consoling myself by putting up this bugfix build instead, which contains fixes for various issues reported over the last week.

The biggest fix is that there was a rendering bug in the last build which caused certain dungeon models to be drawn facing backwards; this affected pretty much every animated object that can be placed inside a dungeon, but was most noticeable with chests, where parties would walk to the *back* of them to open them (because that was actually supposed to be the front!). Now fixed!

There are also a number of smaller bug fixes for things that we've had reported over the past week; it's mostly odds and ends around weird edge cases, but we've got a couple of shutdown crash fixes and things like that in here. Thanks so much to folks sending in crash reports and in-game bug reports! They really do help us to track down weird cases where things go wrong!

-T

Hi folks, another quick update with bugfixes for issues reported in the last couple days.

The biggest fixes are these:

• Fixed some animated objects being drawn at the wrong scale (or not at all!) inside dungeons, dungeon instances, and dungeon UI elements. (this was mostly things like chests and doors).
  
• Fixed a small handful of specific scenery items which were getting bigger every time you performed a "move" action on them. There were 26 of these; all other scenery items were unaffected and worked properly.
  
• Fixed ungrouping scenery items to correctly reinitialise all their placement data. Previously, a scenery item which was grouped, moved with the group, and then ungrouped could wind up moving vertically in surprising ways the next time the terrain changed or during save/loads. Now fixed!
  

And there are a few other minor bugfixes as well. Thanks so much for all the bug reports and feedback, everyone!

-T

Hi folks! Quick hotfix here for the "Editing 2.0" build from two days ago.

New in this build:

• Monsters, NPCs, and players can once again be manually moved around, this time using the same "Move" and "Precise Move" functions we use for everything else, including now being able to select a group of them and moving them all at once. Note that if you move an elite monster or a boss monster, the 'move' will also update their respawn position (whereas regular monsters from a monster zone will keep their respawn point inside their home monster zone even if you move them)
  
• The hotkeys for 'move' and 'precise move' can now be changed in the Options window.
  
• Fixed the character names of new subscribers not being displayed until after a save/load cycle, which was a bug introduced in the last build.
  

...plus of course a couple other less-visible bug fixes!

Thanks for your patience with this, and especially thanks to everyone who pointed out that I'd forgotten to provide a way to move characters around in the new editing system! It should all be good, now!

-T

Hi folks! This update took up a lot more of our "Creativity Spike" time than I'd expected, but I really think it's been worth it!

New in this build:

[h3]
• Multiselect[/h3] Don't waste your time editing each blade of grass separately; grab a whole forest and manipulate it all at once! Want to grab a bunch of scenery along with the nearby buildings and move or destroy them all at once? Now you can! This works for scenery, for buildings, for loot items inside dungeons, and more!
  [h3]
• Scenery groups[/h3] If you select multiple scenery items, you can now group them together! Grouped scenery items act as if they were a single scenery item. So if you've carefully built a whole stack of scenery objects, you can now group them together and move them as if they were a single object!
  [h3]
• Duplicate[/h3] You can now make duplicates of most types of object, including all those mentioned above. Multiselect a building and the scenery around it and just duplicate the whole lot in a single go, to make it easier to set up new areas! Unlike regular 'move' commands, 'Duplicate' lets you place the duplicated objects into new regions!
  [h3]
• Selection filtering[/h3] Accidentally grabbed more things than you intended? Use the toggle buttons in the multi info window to quickly trim your selection down to just the types of objects you'd intended to select.
  [h3]
• Magic select[/h3] Okay, this one is kind of a secret, but since we're all friends here I'll tell you about it if you promise not to tell anybody else -- if you hold 'control' while clicking on a scenery object, magic select will automatically select all other scenery objects of the same type that are currently on-screen. Often very useful when you really just want to move the trees without moving the rocks!
  [h3]
• Did somebody say 'performance'?[/h3] This build also contains some notable performance boosts for larger games! (which is
• awfully* convenient, considering how much easier it is to place thousands upon thousands of scenery objects now!)
  

And of course, this build also includes a bunch of other unrelated bug fixes!

Now, it's worth noting that features like this which make it possible to quickly and easily create tens of thousands of objects are an absolute recipe for "Doctor, it hurts when I do this" performance issues, so it's only fair that I warn you that the amount of scenery you've placed into each region is going to become important during the next part of our development roadmap where your subscribers will start having to contend with your game's performance, so maybe don't go *too* far overboard with the prop placement? But hey, we're all friends here and if you want to make an MMO that requires a monster rig to run, then more power to you!

I have one more major feature I'm working on as part of this Creativity Spike, and I'm hoping to have it ready to go relatively soon, so with any luck we'll be back here talking again very soon!

In the meantime, if you want sneak peaks at what's up next or if you just want to chat and see what folks are creating, come join us on our Discord.

Thanks so much for your enthusiasm and support and especially for all of the feedback and bug reports, everyone; it really makes a big difference for us! Talk again soon.

-T