NS4 Change Log

[Joran]

Greetings, NS citizens. I'm starting this sticky thread to keep track of changes we make to the NS4 module code, so that everyone can keep up to date and know beforehand about any modifications we make. I can't believe we haven't implemented anything like this yet, but I suppose now is as good a time as any, right?

The following changes have actually been coded but waiting on implementation for a good long while (a few months, actually - wow, have I really been away that long?). Apologies for that, and I hope that implementing these changes will start the ball rolling for the major updates we've been planning. You guys definitely deserve some more content, right? :)

The following changes have been checked in to the CVS tree, and will be active on the next module build:

- Added the following ferry NPCs (creatures that will be used in the future for transitioning to and from Frostdale and Sunken Isle via ship, they are not active yet):

To Frostdale (Jonan):
NS Old City - Drarry
Falme - Haldir
Ancient Gates - Zek
Grey Shores - Shell

To Sunken Isle (Buppi):
Grey Shores - Shell
Highlands - Ving
Windale - Sulinus
Black Hills - Sulinus

- Upped protection on Frostdale Protector. Gave him a special version of ice dagger used from his halberd.

- Support restoring petrified state after log out (previously it would just kill you)

- NPCs are plot-flagged in haven areas as well as PCs (this includes all indoor merchant areas and a few temples and starting locations). This should help with the vendor-killing and general player silliness.

- Clear actions of a player when detected as stealthed. Should help prevent abuse of HiPS.

- Creatures initiate combat when detecting a stealthed hostile player via non-visual cues (previously they would just do nothing).

- Tiefling/Drow darkness lasts longer to help out the lower levels. (New duration is HD + 5 in turns.)

- Heard creatures within 5 feet are perceived by the AI (previously 3 feet)

- Added generic AoE spell system so all AoE spells can use a common function. This really doesn't affect gameplay except for the few changes to the AoE spells to make them consistent with one another. These changes include:
-- Casters may only create one AoE of a given type at a given location. Certain AoEs such as Storm of Vengeance and Creeping Doom are further restricted to one AoE total (representing the "continued focus" required to maintain them as specified in the D&D handbooks)
-- Casters may perform a post-hoc counterspell of sorts by casting an identical AoE at a location where an enemy AoE exists. For example, casting Blade Barrier on an opponent's barrier will destroy his and allow yours to stand.
-- Damage and duration standardized, higher-level AoEs such as Incendiary Cloud have been given added damage to make them more appealing, overpowered low-level AoEs have been reduced in duration.

- NPCs do not follow through areas anymore, unless they are dominated, summoned, etc.

- Implemented random item drop when killing a hostile player within your own faction's territory. When you defend your faction areas from a hostile player from another faction (not just any hostile player, they must be from another faction), you will receive a random item belonging to them.

- Raising hostile players is disallowed. This is to prevent repeated kill/raise attempts to loot a player's entire inventory.

- In the future, we may consider creating a dialog box when you are being resurrected, allowing a player to allow or deny the raise attempt.

- Monk level contributes to tailoring tradeskill, you should be able to progress to Master Artisan with Monk now.

- No binding to hostile rift shards. Why did we ever allow this? lol...

Feel free to discuss on the boards, however I'm keeping this topic locked so it will only contain change log entries.

Enjoy!

[Lokey]

Changes that snuck in this weekend:

- Ice Efreets and Ice Giants areas and creatures reworked

- Epic Ruin changed to 35d10

- Lesser Isaac's up to 15 1+d4 damage missiles distributed on enemies near target

- Greater Isaac's is now 20 1+d6 as above

- Firebrand reworked, up to 15d6 on enemies, reflex save and evadable.

- Ball lightning up to 12d6 on enemies, reflex save and evadable.

- Delayed fireball fixed (I think).

[Flailer]

A couple of updates to the AI went in today. (crosses fingers)

- NPCs now can use Curse Song and Divine Might feats. Several NPCs updated to use it.

- AI should respond more realistically to darkness now. Let me know your thoughts on it.

[Flailer]

- Decreased the range and aggressiveness for AI darkness detection a bit, especially for dumb creatures.

[Flailer]

New Areas Added: Epic Amazons
- 7 new maps
- Dozen or so new mobs, CR range of 23-36 (once you find it, bring a party...)
- Couple of dozen new items (some levels 21-24, one 25-29)
- A couple of new visual effects

Added support in script for items 21-40 and checking for level requirements for those items.

Enjoy!

Oh, and big thanks to Netrom for tirelessly testing this new area for bugs. If you find some more, I'm sure you can blame him.


[Edit: Congrats to Donan who found the area first. Your heals and rezes await you. ]

[Flailer]

Tweaked bosses, drop rates, and spell lists for amazon mobs.

[Flailer]

* Behind the scenes work that you don't care about but I feel obligated to share since it took so much cursed time: redid the whole source management system for NS4. The upside to you, the user, is that it allows multiple developers to work on files now (which the previous one was supposed to but didn't because it's of the devil) which we're in the happy state of needing. Which, leads to point two.

* Please put your hands together and welcome Netrom to the dev team!

* Added two more bosses to the Amazon area. One of which only appears at certain times... [Spawns fixed]

* Tweaked more properties of the Amazons. Think we should be done except for more spell tweaking probably.

* Put in a fix that *might* adjust some of the auto-hostility properties. Notice anything?

[Netrom.dk]

* Monks should now be able to attain Master Artisan in tailoring again

* You will now get XP when you kill a NPC with a trap (YAY)

* The faction related areas have been narrowed so you wont get items for defending your faction if your far away from your city (unless that area does belong to your faction ofcouse) -please make comments if you get/loose items in some odd area

[Flailer]

Updates today:

Think of it as 'exploit fix day'

* You need to be of a proper level in order to use a scroll. Ie, no casting Shapechange 17 as a level 1 caster. You should be able to cast scrolls that a normal caster of that level should be able to cast.

* Same goes for other items with magical properties (such as, formian planar link)

* Summons summoned inside haven areas are no longer invulnerable when you lead them out (Netrom was all over this one)

* Have a DM wand that *should* restore subrace properties. Still working on job bonus properties that were lost on some chars. See your friendly neighborhood DM for application.

[new character creation problems should be fixed now too]

[Flailer]

Changes going in today represent the work of everyone on the dev team. I'll try and give proper credit to all the hard work and hours and hours of coding and testing done by everyone.

NC JOBS:
Jobs for the Northern Coalition are in. Talk to Marshal Christoph in the NC Barracks to get your assignment.
* NC Vigilant Job (done by Netrom)
* NC Border Patrol Job (done by Flailer)

NC was chosen because the jobs we came up with were the most similar to NS. Now that the learning curve for the current dev team has been scaled for the job system in NS4, future jobs for other factions should come more quickly and be a bit more interesting.

There may be some job blocking early on as more people than normal try and complete the same job. Patience advised.

SELF BUFFING AI:
You can thank our latest dev, Zing, for this one. Mobs that meet certain requirements (ie, high enough level, smart enough, etc) will buff themselves with buffing spells and feats on spawning rather than waiting until in combat. Mobs also rest when buffs wear off and rinse and repeat.

The good news: NPC spell casters are no longer pushovers in combat.
The bad news: NPC spell casters are no longer pushovers in combat.

AI STEALTH:
Zing again turned his steely scripting prowess to a first pass at giving NPCs with a proportionally high skill in hide/move silently the ability to go into stealth. No fancy HiPSing....yet.

DRAGONSHAPE REWORK:
Well, it's happened. Dragonshape (and all epic shapes) require pure druid or shapeshifter levels. All those with your dragonshaping monks (you know who you are) will no longer be able to shift into epic shapes. With as minimal impact on the DM team we hope possible, we'll allow those with non-pure dragonshape builds to have their char set to level one and level up a new char to the same level so you can take all druid/shapeshifter levels if you want to.

The reason for this was the difficulty in developing new areas that scale for other builds and still be competitive for dragonshape builds combined with monk. It just wouldn't happen.

Dragonshape also now has damage reduction of 5/25 instead of 6/40. On the upside, the damage on the claws was upped a bit.

-------

Probably a few other changes in there that I'm forgetting about, but those are the most major. Work has already begun on the next round of faction jobs and many more changes are in store.

Edit: Also, NS Messenger quest token no longer stacks with monk speed. Monks with Messenger quest speed bonus and haste being faster than DM speed was a bit *too* fast we felt. Netrom tackled this one.

Feedback, comments, and bug reports welcome.

Enjoy!

[Zing]

Changes to NS4 8th December 2005.

The Dev team would like to thank you all for your feedback regarding the new features we added recently.

In response to this feedback we have updated the server today with modifications that we hope will improve things further.

AI SELF BUFFING/STEALTH
This now occurs on a creature by creature basis as defined in the master database. This should help considerably to reduce CPU overheads and therefore lag

JOBS
Job dialogs editted.
Solutions to a few known bugs with jobs are still in progress.

Please let us know if you have any input on the above.

Your Dev team

[Flailer]

NS4 got a little spruce for Christmas. Happy Holidays!

[Zing]

Tonights update has mainly consisted of updates to the AI. You guessed it folks your lives might just be a little more difficult now

Mobs now have better STEALTH, improved ENEMY AoE DEFENCE, shrewder SELF BUFFING ROUTINES and more intelligent COMBAT TACTICS!

You're Welcome!

However this stage being complete now leaves me free to overhaul the summons a bit which means that while it may seem that I'm working against you I'll now be working for you...see how that works?

[Netrom.dk]

Players that get outcast now got it a little harder.

-They loose any job benifits they had in their old faction (old outcasts might keep them though)

-They no longer gets items or xp for defending their old faction, but will loose items if killed by a defender of their old faction.

Please report any bugs on this.

[Zing]

-Summons have now been revisited and changes have been made across the board.

Please feel free to give us your feedback as some tweaking will undoubtedly need to take place.

Summon type is now directly affiliated with alignment and bonuses are applied where appropriate...

-The CR of Unknown Evil has been reduced.

-Traps related death in pvp no longer causes a XP penalty.