Changelog

[Kalle]

This is the "public" changelog of the Mortalis Victus game development.

It's here to display the current progress and process of the current push toward the state of "Alpha".

The state of "Alpha" is to be the first in which the game is regarded as a complete game, rather than a large collection of code and data. "Alpha" is also when the first, exclusive/by-invite test game takes place, which will run for approximately 2 weeks to a month, depending on input from the playerbase.

The name "CHANGELOG" is humorously adopted from *NIX-style projects, but will be used similarly here.

The entries (posts) here will only bring up major implementations, so do not expect posts too often.

-Kalle.

p.s. [edit Nov 4, 2004] Post comments, et cetera, in the derived thread here (http://forum.skotos.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=40336). d.s.

[Kalle]

The initial version of the small-mid scale combat system in place, with support for 2+ combatants in any combination of hostility/neutrality.

[Kevin]

A basic states system was implemented, with Kalle's help, of course. He is The Man(TM).

States have to do with things like mud, blood from wounds, dust from the trail, slime from the bog, etc. If you were to swim around in a murky pond, for example, you might find yourself a bit muddy. A look at your arm might say something like "A muddy right arm" or "A mud-caked right arm." Then you rush over to a clean lake and take a plunge, cleaning off the 'state'. Or if you were wounded you would have "A bloody chest" and after healing, the state would be removed and a new one added "A bandaged chest".

[Kalle]

The final implementation for the external forums system was intro'd (internally) this eve. Pretty exciting stuff that opens up a whole slew of possibilities.

Initially, each faction will be able to create a particular type of project (building) which, when entered, will fire up a popup window with an in-game forum for that faction.

Or for that building, however you want to put it.

Each building symbolizes one forum, so one faction can have several root forums by creating multiple forum buildings within the game (though this, of course, will cost time/effort/resources to do).

A forum will be able to have sub-forums but the rules for this are not finalized at the point of writing.

Faction leaders will have (not yet implemented) administrative powers on the forums, and the ability to "lock a person out" if they end up being too disruptive (IC or OOC), and will also have the ability to move posts around, in case the forum has sub-forums, and even edit posts (dictatorship all day long!). Some ideologies might prevent this (democracy-based ideologies probably would put some form of restrictions on the administration, but man, you won't see those types in a couple of ages yet).

Forums will be customizable, but how customizable is yet to be determined - whether they will be customizable on a per user basis or on a per faction basis or whether there will be a preset number of global themes to choose from, or a combo of the above.

-Kalle.

[Kalle]

Liquid-system in place.
NPC fighting in place.
Faction border system (claiming/re-claiming) in place.
Hunger/thirst system in place.

[Kalle]

Faction manipulation in place.
Dynamic map image processing written (but not in place).
OOC voting system in place.

[Kalle]

Faction relationships.
Specifications management
Faction advancements
(several minor, too-numerous-to-list additions)

[Kalle]

Dynamic image processing in place (as opposed to "but not in place").
Project creation resource handling in place.
Revamped combat system initiation behavior.

[Kalle]

Online "getting started" game documentations begun.
Numerous faction-related commands added, such as 'resign' and 'appoint'.
Faction 'type' added (public, restricted, private).
Titles system in place.
Razing structures in place.
Character roster restriction in place.
Faction 'min # of structures' requirement in place.

[Kevin]

'search' function put in place (version 0.1)
body painting function created.
Maps mostly done! Woo!

[Kalle]

Well, it's been nearly a month of no changelog-reports. Doesn't mean we haven't been working, though.

To bundle it all together (I may do a more thorough listing of the numerous additions since last later), we've been preparing for alpha. Those of you on the invite list will receive a short email directing you further, soon.

-Kalle.

[Kalle]

Alpha's over, so we figured we might just as well start this one up again.


Day/night (graphical).
Faction code revised and a few bugs regarding leaving/joining were ferreted out.
Some staff-side faction-related features added (to ease debugging faction awries).
Modified area-claiming code to where the max # of areas is depending on the # of members in a faction.

[Kalle]

Rewrote skills system a great deal to accomodate latest change-in-plans.
Added 'teach' functionality.
Added some cool but secret skills. (You'll see -- eventually.)

[Dusty]

Height and width values set on exits. So smaller folk can squeeze into places that big folk can't.

[Kalle]

Rewrote gutting;

Aborting the gutting process is now possible.
The parts appear in your inventory as they are extracted, instead of all at once when you're done.
System more dynamic (allows e.g. two of the same part, and, most of all, easier on the staff side).

[Kalle]

Modified combat to resolve attacks when an actor's turn ends, instead of waiting until the actor attacks.
Limited amount of items "in the air" to 1 for each combatant. Somewhat unnecessary, due to the aforementioned change, but ackalas.
Modified combat to require that the weapon is wielded. Good part about that is that the combatant needn't mention the weapon in their attack (stab foo with my jav -> stab foo).
Fixed some odd bugs in diceroll-resolves.
Wielding and unwielding weapons now takes one turn, if the actor is in a fight. (thus, approaching someone wielding a weapon is an actual threat now, since it means you ARE ready to stab them in the guts)
Each time a character is knocked unconscious, the cost to revive them increases slightly.

[Dusty]

Predators created. You hunt them much the same as you do other animals. These just have the added bonus of hunting you in return. ;)

Back to work,
Dusty. :D

[Kalle]

Act (freemoting) now allows the usage of +<charname>. E.g. "act gives +Larry a triumphant grin." would show up as "Kalle gives you a triumphant grin." for Larry.
Did some craft-related improvements.
Fixed some bugs related to claiming land in areas where the surrounding areas were exclusively owned by sibling-factions.
Added a limit on # of controlled beasts based on skill.
Added time bar that graphically displays the progress of e.g. gathering resources, working on projects, and so on. Zealous only, unfortunately/inevitably.

[Kalle]

Added 'idle' command for combat (used to let the turn pass to the next combatant without doing anything).
Added 'tailor' skill, which was in reality merely an extraction from the previously generic "turn" command. Tailor is used to turn something into clothing, specifically.
Further enhancements to craft system. Something seriously kick ass in place that I won't spoil here.
Fixed bug in naming-of-beasts feature (name it Joe, then name it Lucy, and it'd respond to both).
Added a new @offline feature -- produce. Previously mentioned that factions now produce production based on # of members; the "production limit" in the ideology is described as "production per person per day". The produce feature, when used, will boost your production up to 100%.
Registered some domain names (mortalisvictus.com, .net, .biz and .info) which will be used for a future, official MV web site.

[Kalle]

This is the first "changelog" post in quite some time, and it spans across the hiatus that the team took during parts of March and April. So, forgive it for being a tad lengthy.


Updated death code to include true death (not merely unconsciousness).
Fixed referencing in naming system. (bug)
Idle command added (doing nothing during one's round in combat).
Some admin-related enhancements for craft-related commands.
Knowledge system clarified (it was a bit of a mess, and the alpha-testers didn't even realize it existed, most likely).
New "inform [target] about [category] [subject]" command (knowledge feature).
Some anti-abuse features improved/added.
New "faction show" command, used to display productivity within a particular faction.
Modified auto-feed feature in factions to require 1 kg food/member.
Fixed "faction move" command. (bug)
Repairing structures require a base ingredient. E.g. repairing a clay hut requires clay.
Some standard SkotOS help topics added (e.g. "information").
Fragile things break when thrown.
Resources in stock decay based on resource-specific settings.
Decay is now reported in "faction resources" output.
"Resources spent" added to "faction resources" report.
Characters that are deleted whilst unconscious are now disconnected (taken out of the world).
New command "faction supply [direction]", used to supply a project site with resources from a faction's stockpile.
"faction resources delegate" now allows scheduling. For example, "faction resources delegate daily 1 fur to lucy's faction" would delegate, that's right, 1 kg of fur to the faction lucy's faction every day, provided 1 kg fur was in stock.
Some not-to-be-mentioned-just-yet objects involving the new beta game area were built.
Supplying resources now go to the faction in focus. Supplying is still done at the well-of-souls, but can now be directed at a particular faction instead of the roof only.
Two new functions (related to each other): "seal" and "unseal". Sealing a building means only that faction's members may enter it. Read help topic when available, as this is a little too detailed to describe in full here.
@offline "repair" feature in place.
@offline feature "produce" added. Produce means your character will produce up to 100% more efficiently (production points) that day.
New craft system written and slowly falling in place.
Some new projects added. You'll find out.
Slicing things can now be "stop"-ped. Instead of having to 'leave', you now simply type "stop". The "stop" feature is slowly being added to all the busy functions.
Souls may now be revived (by immortals and admins).
New "exposure" system in place. This is cool but more or less impossible to describe. You'll notice what I'm talking about. :)
Prepare code made more dynamic, using exposure instead of hard-coded "heating".
Administrative tools for exposure (and a multitude of other things) added. (SkotOS)
Cooking (heating) made dynamic, using exposure instead of hard-coded property-handling.
Slicing made more dynamic and less hacky.

[Kevin]

I know I have other things I could put here, but I can't rightly think of what they are. So here's what I did just do:


Renaming of areas feature. A faction may now rename an area it has owned for 30 days. This will change the brief of the area (You glance at Weeds Mighty Firepit), as well as what you see when you enter (You enter Weeds Mighty Firepit).

[Kalle]

Added cap to @offline at 48 hours. Thus, only the last 48 hours count if someone has been gone for longer than that, when being given @offline bonuses.
Fleshed out taming/beast control feature a bit more. Made it more difficult, in general.
New beast control feature added: attack.

[Kalle]

Huge improvements made (Karen is my new hero) to NPC behavior. This will gradually be put in place, and the effects are totally phenomenal.
The "petting" response behavior in NPC's changed from the alpha-style "purr" to individual behavior. (Thanks to Karen, again.)
New control feature: guarding. An NPC can be ordered to guard a location. When it is guarding, anyone entering the area from a faction that is hostile toward the owner of the beast's faction, the NPC will automatically engage in combat with the person. If the person retreats, they will be forced to leave the way they came.
(Small) tame animals may now be picked up. Simply type 'take (name)'.
NPC's now react when a hostile person enters the environment by fleeing (most of the time). Tame animals will respond happily to seeing their owners, as well.
Some general NPC-related optimizations put in place.

[Kalle]

Beasts now regenerate (slowly) over time. So if they've been wounded, they will eventually heal up. This includes both wild and tame.
Fixed some bugs related to roster capacity.
Added bless&curse interface. Nothing implemented player-wise yet, but the underlying system is now in place.
Unsafe actions implemented. Unsafe actions are specific actions which are regarded as "offensive." Any such actions will make the actor temporarily unable to decline combat challenges. Examples of such actions are: repairing (building), razing (building), claiming (building or area).

[MV Karen]

I have no clue what to say about I have been doing but since I know people read this...

Did bunches of zones.
Did bunches of items for zones.
Did animal response things.
Did animal description things.
Bugged Kalle, and Kevin relentlessly.

[Kalle]

Some namespace restructuring to integrate food and drinks further with the rest of the world.
Removed 'bone' name-reference from collarbone, shoulderblades, and spine. Thus, if you are carrying a bone from a gutted animal, you can now target it as "my bone" without getting "Do you mean your collarbone, your shoulderblades, your ..." anymore.
Further integrated exposure.
Bug-fixed exposure in regards to items that were rotten and were made rotten, again, over and over, instead of disintegrating.
"Finish food" in place. Works just like "finish drink", but for food items. Basically, if you're carrying a piece of food and want to eat it all, you 'finish' it.
Disconnecting during a battle is now handled properly. Those left on the scene are able to simply walk out of the room to cancel the fight. They may also remain for as long as they wish, in case the disconnected person returns and the combat is to continue.
A nasty surprise was added.

[Kalle]

Added new area to CharGen.
Bug-fixed project code.
Added a good amount of new construction projects.
Modified gather @offline feature to gather based on resource difficulty instead of simply taking "1 kg". This feature is now invaluable, especially when building something "big."
Fixed abuse-bug that would allow a person who was online for a long time to acquire @offline bonuses for time ONline.
Working on a site can now be "stop"ped.


Most of the work has gone into chargen, though. Fixing it up, brushing it up, tweaking NPC's to give better responses, etc. A huge amount of work that, I think, has paid off well. Heavy stone off chest.

Getting readier every day,
-Kalle.

[MV Karen]

Um

Did more stuff, with things.

* Filled out new areas/edited areas (8)
* Added NPC behaviors
* Added NPC details

[Kalle]

Environmental prerequisites for projects added. This means some projects require that you build them in specific areas.
Project prerequisites for environments added. This means some areas only allow certain projects.
Added tradeposts as a buildable project.
Trade routes were put in place. Two factions may establish trade routes with each other, providing they both have a tradepost. The tradeposts are then connected, and items put up for trade in one tradepost will be automagically available in all the others. Tribal factions are restricted to one trade route. Villages may have up to 3.
Factions with a mutual trade route see the other factions' members on the who-list.
[ faction trade ] command added, used to put up resources for trade in a tradepost.
[ faction establish ] command added, used to establish a trade route with the owner of the tradepost in which one is currently standing.
[ faction cut ] command added, used to sever a trade route with another faction.
[ faction resources manufacture ] command added, used to convert production points into trade points.

[MV Karen]

Since my last log :

Added more detail to areas (17)

[MV Karen]

10 more areas all detailed out n'stuff!

[MV Karen]

6 more areas done which means ....... I FINISHED MY ZONE! *gets a beer*

[Kalle]

Since my last changelog, I've more or less exclusively put all my efforts into recoding the projects code. The projects system is used to set up "to be constructed" buildings, aka projects, and it has been completely separated from the craft system until now.


Projects may now be limited on a "per faction" basis. Example of such is the tradepost.
The 'town' ideology was added.
[ faction ideology see [ideology] ] command added, and is used to display information about an ideology other than the faction's current one. The ideology must be known to the character in order to see it.
"No night" flag for day/night graphic changes put in place, for indoors areas.
Inactive people are (eventually) removed from the statistics page(s).
Wrote "project code version 2.0" which is fully integrated with the new craft system, instead of being a system of its own. Projects now inherit values from the resources used in making them, and they are now able to take ingredients based on feature rather than by object-reference alone. This additionally means that the project 'look' is modified. Instead of saying 'you need deer hide' it now says 'you need some(thing): textile and sturdy'.


-Kalle.

[MV Karen]

Thanks to Kevin's tool, I fixed all the areas with objects that should have been details... GO KEVIN!

Put a creepy thing in. Got it working. Kevin and Kalle showed me how. GO KEVIN AND KALLE!.

[Kalle]

Pardon delay. I went to Sweden Rock Festival (it was awesome) and had two teeth pulled, but here's what's been done since last:


[ project disband [direction] ] added. This command is used to remove a project site before it has been finished. Resources (including production) are lost.
Expanded craft system a bit.
If an unconscious body is left in a tribe's land (any tribe's land, including an enemy's) for 8 hours, it is auto-revived for twice the cost it would take to revive that body normally, by the tribe owning the land.
After 48 hours, an unconscious mortal will die.
Characters now grow older as time passes, and this is apparent in their appearance.
A faction with less than 0 production points for 4 days will be auto-disbanded.
Working on a project now includes a chance to invent another related project.
Some projects are now in-born knowledge. Thus, anyone can set them up, provided they have the necessary privileges and resources. These currently include: tent, altar, lean-to.
Buildings deteriorate, and need to be repaired occasionally.
Project sites now properly display the finished structure's size.
Crafted products now respond adjectively.
Bug-fix in component system.

[Kevin]

I should probably do this more often, but here goes:


Put resources into two new areas for beta.
Created sprites for some new structures.
Created some new structures with Kalle.
Worked with Kalle on a sacrifice function, where people can sacrifice things to gods. (not enabled for human sacrifice...yet.)
Created a function where you can block an exit for a time.
Created a small area you will want to know about.. IG. ;)
Created several objects, with the help of Karen, that are now findable in one or both of the two new areas.
Made various findable objects random in description, with the more valuable being more rare.
Fixed some problems with the search code.
Other things I cannot remember at the moment.

[Kalle]

Craft system's mixing feature is now forgiving of ignorance when mixing two equal values together, which means if a person does not have knowledge of the color "turquoise" and they're mixing two turquoise-colored pieces of clay together, the result will still be turquoise.
Optimized statistics functionality.
Repairs statistics added to "faction show" output.
Implemented day/night detail-hiding for details such as "shade", which should only be visible during daytime.
Taming a beast that has been previously tamed by someone else is now impossible.
Worship-system implemented.
Dynamicised the day/night switch a bit.
The gutting skill is no longer in-born.
[ knowledges ] command added, a sister to the [ skills ] command.
Optimized map generation code.
[ health ] command added, used to display hunger, thirst, weariness and health.
Enabled chargen short-cut path.
Beta launch schedule stored in chargen code. Anyone finishing the chargen after 7 pm the 24th will not end up in BAGP.
Added bonus for going from young to adult (increased endurance and strength).
Added bonus for going from adult to old (increased wisdom).
A limit on deletion was added, where a player may only delete one character every 7 days. This includes both reincarnation and deletion from the roster page.
The character deletion-mechanism has been modified slightly, to allow usage of the same character name multiple times. After deletion, a character name will be made unavailable for 365 days (or 31,536,000 seconds, to be exact)
Converted all existing craftable objects to use the new craft system.

[Kalle]

Mon-Wed, we had a pre-beta run with a couple of people, who did an admirable job testing and suggesting some of the newer systems in the game. Part from that,


Buddies online (see @buddy) are now listed on the login page.
Name-locks fully in place.
Optimized death code.
Some help topics added.
Set up beasts to spawn into beta areas.
Bug-fixed teach code.
Bug-fixed component system.
Modified fire place code to ignore if something was NOT placed on, over, or in the fire.
Bug-fixed mix code.
Faction affiliations now emit to the affiliator.
Bug-fixed faction code when a member who was only affiliated was disbanded from the faction.
Fixed timebar. It is now actually fairly accurate.
Removed bug-riddled SAM set up which used to spawn new chatter bodies for the player. Replaced with pretty flowers.
All in-born projects and products are now visible by typing 'knowledges'.
Teaching is now more intuitive thanks to a more intelligent skills cache.
Bug-fixed char-delete feature.
Improved user-friendliness of the user-unfriendly troll.
Widened availability of bulk settings.
Changed 'drag <target>' from toggling between dragging and releasing, to only drag, and added 'release <target>' as the complement. A character may only drag one thing at a time, as well.
Hut of wisdom added. (Hee hee hee.)
Faction supply code fixed to actually work with the new project system.
Training grounds added. (Hee hee hee.)
Control action is now stoppable.
Study command implemented.

[Dusty]

A new zone has been added including 40+ rooms. It can be accessed via the beach. Enjoy!

Ta!
Dusty.