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Happy Monday community! We hope that everyone is well, and excited to hop into today’s topic. As promised on the 25th, today's article will cover the upcoming patch, and supporting information. First, we’ll review the update itself, the challenges we faced, what to expect next, and a tentative push date for the patch.

CONTAINER REVAMP UPDATE
The inventory has been streamlined. Previously the player inventory was handled in a multitude of ways. The backend was handling the player inventory as actual listed items, and a separate vault system that was handling structures as different but actual item types. The old/current way was doubling or even tripling the client to server data/communication. However, the frontend used various GUI containers to display these items and structures with many variations. Our engineer was able to work to eliminate several of these and reduce them to a more reasonable number.

All inventories are now based on the same setup on the backend now. Which removed the duplications. This included using a single code for the container types rather than the various codes that existed.

The method of which data, and how it was replicated to the client, has been altered. The original system did not use replication. The previous team had in place code to attempt the replication process but had not implemented it for use. Instead, the system was sending all information to the client via a remote call every time storage was opened.

Our engineer was able to implement proper replication for both the vaults (city and player) and all its items. What this means is all of the GUI events/updates are triggered from replication events rather than server-generated specific events. Now when a player closes a vault, the replication ends. The vault and item lists are then removed from the client.

ISSUES WE FACED
There were many ways that containers and items were listed, categorized, and being handled.

The current items system overcomplicates what an item is considered to be and how they are handled. Rather than a single system that uses gloms and specs to designate types, it separates them into different categories. At this time there are around seven designated “types” for items. These include but are not limited to:

• Items - has no attached art and can be consumed in some form. Can be loaded to normal NPC shops for purchase.
• Fittings - items used to slot into weapons and armor for stats.
• Blueprints - have attached art, designated to be used as “structures”. Must be created from recipes, and can not be loaded to normal NPC shops as “items”.
• Loot - items that can be picked up from NPC and Creatures.
• Treasure - a secondary way other items are handled that can be picked up from NPC and Creatures.
• Quest Items - items that are designated solely for use in missions.
• Collections - items that can be picked up from NPC, Creatures, or during Engagements.

Most of the items were not properly indexed. Items did not have parent and child categories. All items are currently their own category, complexing the process for player containers to recognize items being placed, moved or used.

GUI CONTAINERS:
There were various ways that the GUI elements and containers were being used to display the inventory and items on the front end. Our engineer had worked on these to eliminate several of these and reduce the number to a much more logical and manageable number of GUI containers. Not only does this help us with faster development later on but also helps give a slight performance boost, as players will not have to load a different GUI element (scripts) for one or two item types.

We believe we have most of these item categories added to the container system on a temporary basis until we finish the Item System Revamp.

Players should be aware the GUI information covered is not part of the GUI revamp. The GUI changes were script and container that relate to the GUI. These changes had to be made because so much was hardcoded in both container scripts, item scripts, and GUI scripts. We’ll be covering more information pertaining to the upcoming GUI revamp in the roadmap update article next month.

THE BIGGEST HURDLE
Some of this explains what we just mentioned above, however, we wanted to go into a bit more detail into the development of a new system in Repop.

The largest hurdle our engineer has faced during this system revamp is the upkeep of the old and new systems simultaneously.

As mentioned in the previous articles there will be upcoming mini wipes. Up to this point, we have not had the need to perform any wipes on the current game.

In the future, it will be far more beneficial to the performance of the game and systems revamps to have partial or mini wipes. Currently, we are considering six partial wipes spread out over several systems revamps and the implementation of new systems.

Currently, the new and old container systems have working side by side for existing players to include those who may or may not log in for an extended period of time. This means the system has to maintain and go through all the scripts for any that pertain to those containers that coexist.

This leaves a lot of baggage to maintain. It means that if it exists in the old system it has to be added into the new system to keep that baggage consistent. With the wipes we would no longer have to maintain that excess baggage nor would it have to be included into the new systems.

Another hurdle faced dealt with converting between ABT and TGS systems in a manner, which would account for all items and prevent them from being lost.

The benefits:

Implementing mini wipes with upcoming updates will allow us to develop, test, and push updates faster without the need to balance both old and new systems simultaneously. This also means the game will improve with each update as it will not require the processing of supporting the old and the new systems.

BENEFITS TO THE UPCOMING PATCH
Items no longer “load” randomly, or reload every time you change rooms or cross into new areas. Crashing issues related to this particular issue should be resolved now.

Replication has been added to all containers to increase performance and reduce the overhead running. Only the primary identifier data required will load initially and additional data will load only when you need it.

The above means that when we begin the Item system update, the process should be much more simple to convert current items over to the system, as we have been able to make out all the different ways items were handled.

Revamp Validation now validated:

Validation scripts have been adjusted to make sure that player characters are properly attached to their nodes preventing them from being broken or disappearing. Character select should now check for these issues and prevent these breaks thus not allowing the display of blank characters.

When we get to the Character revamp, we will be addressing the remaining issues players may have had when creating a new character. This future revamp will cover the rest of the character and account node issues, eliminating the Garbage Can (ABT’s named Area system for deleted characters that actually still exist) and “Names been taken” when you try to create a new character if you were interrupted leaving the name in limbo.

New Inventory Expansion Bags:

Players will now be able to take advantage of and use the expansion bags 1-8 without inventory space being removed from your main inventory or losing items. The new expansion bags will no longer generate the useless ‘phantom’ slots that many players also found.

The GUI function to close the Expansion bags with a hotkey or “close all bags” is not in-game yet. We will add in a hotkey and icon to open and close all bags when we do the GUI revamp.

New Overflow:

There is now a new system in-game that we call the Overflow System. This will allow players to continue to pick up items despite having filled all 100 main inventory slots, and 40 expansion slots.

Players will not receive a visual cue that they have reached overflow capacity until all 140 slots have been filled. In their main inventory panel, bottom right corner players will see the word Overflow followed by a number in red. This will indicate how many items are being held in the overflow inventory awaiting you to empty items to create room for them.

Players should be able to simply transfer items into a bank vault or sell excess items to receive those awaiting transfer from overflow storage.

Revamp Storage:

Storage function has changed in the following manner. If a player has a storage container open they will only be able to have the singular storage container open. This means that if the player opens a bank while their storage is open it will close the storage container and vice versa.

Revamp Banking:

Players will find that Banking Terminals now have the functionality to deposit and withdraw credits. This function previously existed early in development but was commented out by the previous team. Recent changes when implementing the new system turned this function back on.

BEFORE THE GAME UPDATE
The last two steps we have is building a new dll for the game ABT Item/Crafting DB3. We have made enough changes over this past year that the current dll is no longer valid and will cause issues. Then we can build an updated cache.

To do this we must re-enable the command to create the new dll and then the cache. The last test that the QA players will be doing is to test that the dll for the ABT Item/Crafting DB3 is updated and the proper cache is being built correctly and loaded fully.

PUSH INFORMATION:
We are still in the process of determining the exact date of the upcoming patch. At this time the patch is tentatively set for January, 6th of 2021. We will release another post with the supporting information, and Patch Notes once we are certain of the date. We'd all like to thank everyone for the patience they have shown us this year, and all the support given by the community and testers.

CONTAINER SYSTEM & PHASE 2
Phase two will include the cleanup and consolidation of the Container System. This may include a mini wipe to clean up and optimize the new Container System and all other systems that were directly or indirectly linked to the containers. This will allow for the leftover baggage from the old system to be removed. This would complete the Container System.

Task overview for Container Phase 2:

• Optimizations to the current changes to increase performance
• New unified Item system development
• Item optimizations to prepare for the next phase of development
• QA player testing
• Possible Mini Wipe (after additional QA Player testing).
• Possible Compensation Merchant (TBD) - This merchant would help assure players do not lose progress due to the mini wipe. - Will assist players in testing the Container System.

KNOWN ISSUES/CHANGES:
We ask that players please be aware that there are some known issues and possible issues that may arise after the patch. If needed hotfixes can be deployed to remedy issues.

• (New) Possible invisible or missing items due to possible conversion issues.
• (New) Double-clicking on items to move to the bank does not work. Drag and drop does work.
• (New) Due to how items are handled and improperly indexed, visual counts may not display correctly.

NEXT MONTHS ARTICLE:
Next month will be updating our Roadmap early! We will be releasing the updated roadmap next month during the next News Update!

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