New Addy

That said, the new address is:

hyst.dyndns.org 2453

We’re Back!

…and better than ever! Or, back, at least.

Thanks to Dar, whose prompting is what led us to put the mud back up after some 8 months of downtime. And, let’s see where we with thing thing into the future!

Resale Prevention

I just coded a way to prevent players from selling, then re-buying, and then re-selling an item. Because of the way variable pricing works, you could theoretically have used this method to make tons of gold off of one item, sold over and over again because of the discount you’d gain in buying it. Thus, now you can’t. Or, at least, you can’t do this easily. Hurray, oversight!

- Corwin

Artifacts

I actually got around to adding code for two of the artifact sidequests I’ve been meaning to add for over a year (maybe more).  I created the artifacts way back when, but with no way to actually get them.  Now, there are ways.  This gives a total of – I think – three ancient artifacts that can be discovered.  Whee!  Maybe I’ll add the code for all the others some time soon…

EDIT:    I added another one.  So, now up to 4 recoverable artifacts!  Yeah!

Gold, gold, gold!

I put in an easy bit of fun, new code today.

I was inspired because a) Verity was back and running around a few days ago, and b) Josh came back and was getting Deya and I all nostalgic yesterday.

Anyway, Verity’s trail of running showed me something behind the scenes that I forgot to finish. That made me think that there should be a default instead of – nothing – in its place. Hence, the coding.

The hole: In some circumstances, I set up good things to happen to people who are being karmically shit on. Don’t ask questions. Just note that sometimes some good things will happen to balance out the bad stuff. Anyway, I left a lot of the “good thing happens here” slots with an annotation of said good thing, but didn’t bother to write the code for a lot of those slots. Basically, if you hit slots 1 through 10 or so, the effect happened, but higher slots just said, sorry, you’re taking a raincheck; forever!

Since it was completely obfuscated from a player’s perspective, they wouldn’t know they were missing out on a good thing that was supposed to happen – but I would see it behind the scenes.

To fill in the this gap, I put together a tidy little bit of code called “gold_storm.” It makes gold fall from the heavens and gives a message and creates some piles of gold. Basically, when you hit a good karma effect and the actual effect is missing, I stuck in this one. Everyone loves gold, right? Yay, doing something easy to avoid doing a bunch of things that are hard!

Additionally, this effect seemed fun enough that I set it up as a powers’ command, also.

How Many of What?

After playtesting for a while and then actually realizing what I was looking at one day, I noticed that my heavy-armor-wearer didn’t have a whole hell of a lot of heavy armor.  I know the game, and I should be able to find this kind of thing, you know?  So, it occurred to me last night while trying to sleep, that I could either search the zones directory for each instance of light vs. heavy armor, and count them up – or do this “coding” thing I kinda know about, to have the code count them for me.

The upshot being that I wrote some code to count how many of each weapon and armor type are in the game.  Now, I knew there was a major discrepancy between some (heavy vs. light, swords vs. spears), but… WOW.  It’s huge.

Something will have to be done.

- Corwin

Latest

Haven’t really done much in the last several months.  However, I do add or fix things every now and then.

The latest thing I added is a “Price” command.  This lets you price an object before you sell it.  Essentially, very similar to “appraise,” except that it will tell you (almost) exactly how much the buyer will actually buy it for.  Appraise gives a rough estimate based on your own sensibilities, and is for use when not near a store.  Price is the same as asking someone what they’d be willing to buy the item for,  so you don’t have to find out by selling it and then getting frustrated that you didn’t get what you expected.

- Corwin

Stores, Chests, Lockpicks, & Loot

1.  There are now chests and things to use lockpicks on in various zones.  More doors will be made lockpick-able eventually.

2.  There is a now a guy who sells lockpicks of all three qualities.  He’s not too difficult to find.

3.  Stores now remove all non-original merchandise (stuff they bought from players) at the end of each day (about 9pm, game-time).  These items go in a chest in their stores.

3a. The chests can be picked with a lockpick, if you are daring enough a thief to try.  If you successfully pick the lock on a chest, you can try to take the goods inside.

3b. However, there is a good chance that the merchant will notice and report your ass to the cops.  If an Ordinator is called because you were caught stealing, he will attack you.  If you’re in a peaceful store (most likely), he’ll drag you to a nearby room to beat the crap out of you.  If you’re in a peaceful room with no exits, the Ordinator will slap you with a bounty (or add to your existing bounty).

3c. If you manage to loot items from a merchant’s chest without being caught, the item will be marked as Looted.  Looted items can now NOT BE SOLD in normal stores.  However, if you can find the sleazy guy who sells the lockpicks, he may be willing to make you a deal…

3d. An item that was removed and put in the chest at the end of the day has about a 15% chance of being restocked the following day.

4.  If a store buys over a certain amount in goods each day, it will be able to stock some rarer, better quality merchandise the next day.  Thus, it’s in your interest to sell a lot to stores in order to allow them to get better goods to sell back to you.

- Corwin

Logistic Changes

The last few changes are sort of book-keeping stuff.

1.  Qstat now shows your current attributes in a quick format.  Good for checking for affects, seeing that your Blah is fortified or drained, and then easily checking said attribute, without using the Score command.

2. Random encounters with hunter-types should happen less often in succession.  I have put in a counter to alleviate a player getting repeatedly attacked without a short break.  It should be at least two ticks between attacks now.  That is from the start of the first until the start of the next, though, so keep that in mind.  If this needs to be adjusted to make the breaks longer, that could be done.  Oh, and luck is a factor in this, too.  If you’re really unlucky, you could get attacked sooner…

3. Spamming commands to get faster skillups is no longer viable!  *evil cackle*  So, typing a command and then hitting the repeat (‘!’) button over and over again will now not allow one to increase one’s skill in said fashion.  This was turning out to be especially important for commands that could be entered in quick succession, or that are normally used that way.  I’m looking at you, Repair and Persuade!  Woo!  Hopefully this will not be too noticeable.  If you play the game the way it’s intended, you’ll still skillup normally.

- Corwin

Enchant Weapon/Armor

Enchanting is back in, baby!

That is, I have revamped the enchantweapon and enchantarmor spells.  As blogged previously, you now need to meld a soul with an item to enchant it yourself.  This differs from enchanting at an enchanter, because when you use these spells, the item can get a constant effect attribute bonus.

It is (will soon, actually..) also be possible for the spells to give an item an enchantment, or upgrade an existing enchantment, just as the enchanters can do for you.

Oh, and there is the much beloved chance of backfire.  This version might only blow up the item, but it is also possible for other, horrible things to happen!

Also note that these spells work along with the hone and meld abilities that everyone gets.  Only a select few classes get the enchantweapon spell though, and currently, only one class gets the enchantarmor spell.

- Corwin