Quarter 3 Is Here
 

Well, it's that time again! We are releasing the 3rd Quarter Update.

Here are some highlights:

Big Worms
Big worms have had a complete overhaul. They have been completely rescripted from scratch and now function more smoothly. You can see the worms moving under the ground now as they come to attack you and they are a bit more intelligent and stronger.
The amount of experience they give has also been increased. Updated the graphics too!

Lords
Lords, like the big worm, have had a complete overhaul as well and have been completely rescripted from scratch. They are more intelligent now and roam around the main map again, enter haunted houses, and dungeons. The Glok lord now casts a spell sometimes when attacking as well, I think you'll find it pretty damaging. ;)

More effects will be added in the future.

Aesthetics
Well, we have certainly concentrated on aesthetics more this update. Aesthetics are very important for GK, so we took some time to lay out some aesthetic-based updates.

Torches
The main wooden torches have been remade again to use particles completely and no images (unless you have particles disabled).
You can use older versions of the torch by disabling particle effects.

Windmill
The blades of the windmill actually spin now instead of having a 3 frame choppy animation. It is no longer an animation but the spinning is actually script-controlled.

Level Fading
When you enter or exit a level you will notice that you now experience a screen transition.

Player fading
When a player logs in or out and you are watching them, you will no longer just see them appear/disappear. Players will now fade in and fade out.

New Security Measures Have Been Taken
We have added new logging methods in order to ensure your security on GK further from scammers and hackers. For security purposes, I won't elaborate further.

Your Inventory
The inventory has received a bit of an update. You should notice that your inventory will no longer crash when you have a large inventory or have a sack full of items. It has also been improved to fix the bug where some of your items aren't displayed when you open a large sack.

Drastic Changes to the Mudlib
Drastic changes to the MUDLIB have been made in order to provide us with easier and more flexible working procedures. In addition to this update, we are now able to control items better. As a result of this, wands have been fixed so you cannot use a weapon while casting, and potions, scrolls, etc. have been disabled in certain levels (kingdoms core).
Due to this change, pets now also eat the correct amount of food off of the ground when there are stacked foods.

Blessing
Blessing ratios have been shifted to make blessing more difficult in the future. This will increase the value of blessings and make it harder to bless things.

Enchantments
The spawn rate of enchantments such as Enchant Armour, Improve Weapon Damage, etc have been drastically lowered in a preparation to balance out the melee weapon system.

Other Smaller Additions
Other smaller additions have been added, such as the new "/grab" command which allows you to grab people. You may also notice other small changes here and there.
Poison and daggers also no longer knocks back players whenever they get hit by it.
Daggers, axes, etc. should display now while strafing.

Any new places to level? making lords roam again actually made it harder.

I like this update the most so far, especially the boost in EXP and lowered spawn rate of the improvement scrolls.
I noticed the worms are still a little buggy, I hope they get fixed soon.
Thanks for updates. =]

Should be fixed.

No xp on monster death? :(

Love this update, especially about the worms. And the fade in, fade out thing is a nice touch. Hope the inventory can be further updated so that you can expand it so you can organise even a large inventory w/o having to just scroll up.

Finally, Dustari's prize will be revleaed now, hopefully. :D

The effect on the glok lord needs to be changed. It nearly crashed my client, and slowed it to almost a halt (on the new Mac version, which usually runs far better than the Windows one).

I was hoping to see something done about AC=[ but hey this update ain't to shabby.

Good update, although I think there's some pretty obvious issues you need to touch on the next update, rather now then later really though.

Nice updates ^^

Lords need to be fixed a bit. Right now they're way too hard to find, and they give virtually the same experience and the same drops. This makes questing and leveling off of them impractical, effectively forcing lower level players to use Brutals when lords used to be sufficient. I think a good addition would be to add an icon that shows on the map that indicates where a lord is, similar to the way boats are.

Do agree with Chris while travelling lords seems cool (Still havn't found one where the hell are you sending them) it will knock questing badly and also lords won't be used for leveling.

Thanks for the updates, although no critical systems were modified again.

Perhaps they should make it that it will only show the lord on the map when you go and talk to the npc that you trade with. Example, you are looking for the Glok Lord, so you go to the npc that takes glok lord spores and he says "The Glok lord is heading west!, here let me mark it on your map." and it will give a general area / direction that the lord is traveling in on the map for you.
Just an idea :D

What about leveling, though?

Plus, when questing, you generally (or used to) run around the map a few times gathering up a stockpile of lord parts so you don't have to go find a lord every time you talk to someone. It speeds up questing a lot.

Probably the only server with updates :D

As a side point I would like to remind players that this is a return of functionality - not a new feature. Lords used to travel the map, but broke due to poor coding and maintenance by previous administrations. However, with that said - Tigairius and I will be modifying and tweaking all updated systems until we find the "happy point".

While I'm entirely unprepared to indicate the precise position of any quest element or lord, Tigairius and I will discuss the idea of a more generalized position indicator.

I'm sure in the long run I'll see the point for all this but at the moment I'm kinda disappointed.. It seems everything we address is ignored and we're given trivial stuff in it's place.. Worms update is nice, lord update is nice, and I'm sure the security update is nice as well but just my opinion players would have been more excited with new places to level rather than edits to old ones.. I really hope there are changes to the resists,poison, and other things of this nature that we constantly ask for before Q4... :asleep: I would gladly delete this and change my view point if our concerns are addressed and time line given on when we could expect such things.

Though I don't fully wanna be the negative Nancy here so I will say at least Tig is doing something as compared to years ago with Bjorn nothing we ever addressed ever had a chance in hell at being looked at.. I guess I'd just like more feed back from development rather than things being so "top secret" Area 51 style..

Updates sound great, nice work. :)

Not wasting my last 300g or reupgrading until either a holiday or something that I think is worthwhile comes out. Honestly these updates don't really do much except enhance gameplay visually. I'll stick to my level 10 trial and just annoy people with heals.

Lol @ the people commenting on the update that don't even play.. you're completely missing the big picture here... We've been asking for the 3-4 same things for YEARS now and we get pretty windmills and lights..

idk i personally feel like i got jewed out of 3 months of waiting. srsly quarterly update with pretty much nothing but visual updates? come on

omg
edit: also the updates hurt me more than they help me now i lag when switching levels and get lamed, so by the time I come outside im poisoned so I have to turn light effects off and now i cant see when im casting.

I have over 800 hours of gameplay on GK, I may not play anymore but I used to play a lot. Besides, you don't need to always play the server to appreciate the amount of work put into the updates. Things are getting done, that's a good thing, and even though you may have wished for other updates as well, that still doesn't nullify the Quarter 3 ones.

Yes it does we've asked for the same updates since what like 05? and prolly before and yet this is what we're given... I said it's cool at least something was being done but it still doesn't change the fact that that actual players concerns that are complained about on a weekly basis are STILL ignored. You'd be the go to guy on updates right Gambet? Maybe you can come make some for us here on GK that lead to it's death like your updates did on Maloria.

I would have been happy if it took 3 months to rescript the crypt even thought it would have only probably taken you a day or 2;[

owned.

I see complaining related to nothing being done about stats. I'm not sure if players really realize how sensitive the systems underneath can be when changing them, if they don't take their time and test these things, it can go terribly wrong, and lead to you complaining even more than usual.

Provided GK rarely sees updates except around holidays and so on, I don't think you guys should be yelling at them to force the change. Let it happen when it happens.

Also I'd imagine developing for GK involves some interaction with Stefan before things can actually be done, thus putting update speed back further. Anyway nice work and good luck with your next update.

Rescripting the crypt shouldn't take 3 months though.

I'd be as understanding as you are Jerret? if it wasn't the same complaints for the past 4 years.. I'm not putting the sole blame on Tig by any means.. I'm glad he's attempting to do what he can.. this is more for Stefan.. he needs to pull his head out of his ass and realize Zone is dead while GK's player count is rising.. stop putting the effort into a dead project and give GK his paying player base what they've been asking for FOREVER.. Do you realize how annoying it is to see things that say "slay angel" for example and there's never been a damn Angel on the server? Finish the aspects of the game already ffs... If all the monsters were in the game that are talked about in the random books you find in shops this server would be legendary!

Here is a perfect example:

This beastiary contains:
---
*** Olog-hi ***
(fast movement)(infravision)(armour +100)(resist magic -100)(resist electricity -100)
---
*** man ***
(normal movement)(wield weapon)(archer)(wear armour)(wear ring)(read scroll)(fire wand)(use rod)(skill user)(spellcaster)(unaggressive)

Found that in the shop just now.



What irritates me more than anything is not the trivial updates it's the fact that the development is kept so secret leading us to believe it was going to be something amazing.. that's like listening to Trance song and anticipating the beat drop just to have the song end suddenly..

Solution to the difficulty in finding the lords: When one visits the npc's which speak about the specific lord locations, a marker is set on that players map writing either BomyL, GlokL etc. Lords still have to be found, but with experience lord hunting can be made alot easier than just running around aimlessly, as if hunting for one of those escort npc's which simply tell you 'She's somewhere on Main Island'.

While it may be a return of functionality, it's still a new feature - it wasn't there before, and now it is. Maybe it was better the way it was right before this update rather than how it is now. It sure seems like it right now, but I'm confident you and Tig will come up with a solution or revert the changes so that lords works out nicely again.

Put a thing in MMT (like the quest board) that gives the current general location of lords.

Is that going to address the issue on weapon damage from deo's thread? if it does then :cool:

When servers like Kingdoms and Zone are creating updates that are actually going to be promoted, you guys should take a step back and think "would I upgrade to play because of that?" For this set I think the answer for most people would be a no. It feels like it's a whole bunch of appetizers and missing the main course that Kingdom needs.

Your windmill looks absolutely fab though!1 10/10!

Haha no

That will prob never be fixed.

Finally someone else gets the point that isn't an everyday player.

I find this funny because months ago Tig made a windmill on Delteria dev that did this.

At least I think it was him

We had quite a few restrictions, which we're trying to get fixed over time; but realize this is not half of what we had originally planned for Q3.

We will be changing the current updates to better suit the players over the next few days though.

^^ kewl