Greetings everyone, below you'll find a short list of some of the changes and improvements we have made to Malu in today's patch. It isn't as much or as extensive as we would hope, but that is almost always the case right? Without further adieu lets get into it:
Build improvements
Shaders and lighting caches were rebuilt and regenerated, this should mean less odd shadows or baked-on dark patches where things were altered in the environment.
Worldspaces updated and improved. Worldspaces are the actual 'tiles' of terrain and they are all stitched together like a quilt. We just went through and fixed a bunch of bad tiles and metadata associated with them, given the size of the world of Malu, its not likely that you have run across a bad WSpace, but it could still have affected performance, no longer.
Merchant system upgrades and populating. We are now building race and type specific merchants and their inventories. This will mean that you won't have Qulinta armors being sold on a Toljon encampment's potion merchant, for example. Each merchant as a table of item codes for what they carry, how much, the cost and when it is replenished, we are now in the process of making new merchants and giving them these unique tables of items.
Various errors fixed or noted. There were and are a lot of general and random errors within the build its self and as with every patch we try to find, understand, and solve as many faults, errors and bugs as possible. This patch has those fixes as well, and in cases where we couldn't figure out a fix just yet, we've noted errors for later fixing. Keep reporting anything you find though, its always good to have more eyes on a system.
In-game systems and functionality
Quest system upgrades and improvements. Still very much a work in progress, but nearly every aspect of questing has been targeted for overhaul and expansion. Quest givers, quest building, quest components and even quest logs have been looked at and an initial pass has been completed in this patch for those systems. Expect further enhancements and increased functionality as we bring more manpower and time to bear on this very important system.
Malu coin system prototyping. Malu coin is the placeholder for our in-game currency as a free-to-play system for real money transactions (RMT). We're in the middle of initial testing and implementation of them, and setting up the back-end to support them. Things like making sure each transaction is logged, currency exchanged properly, content delivered to the customer as ordered and safety measures put into place to protect both us, and our players from any problems, hiccups or malfeasance. Given how important this system is, it will likely see extensive testing and validation (which means further patch updates for a long-term period) before we make it a full-on live feature.
Mini-map and GUI improvements. Regarding the mini-map we are bringing to bear quality of life improvements in terms of information feedback. Things like differing colors and symbols to denote the various entities and landmarks in the world around you the player. The GUI improvements are more generalized, and encompass things such as better button shapes, colors, placement and information feedback like showing what is selected or not, moving through lists, and tooltips or item descriptions. This transits nicely into the next improvement which is the inventory system, which involves a lot of the GUI improvements, as well as scripting fixes and optimizations to make inventory and inventory management an easier and smoother experience.
In-game assets
We've created from scratch, improved, or transplanted from our UE4 build various assets into our BW build. These include the Boba, Thorn and Twisted trees as well as several revamped grass textures for the flora generation system. A few particle FX were also added and enhanced and several static assets already placed in the world have received some minor tweaking of shape, polycount, texture or material to generally improve them.
Finally we've had some world building passes. Specifically the Jolah areas got some extra attention to beautification with additional meshes, NPCs, spawners and terrain formations. At the same time the Swamp area continues to be populated with a similar list of assets as we build it up to the same level as our starter areas. Expect further swamp updates as that work continues on.
Thats about it for this patch, again, not as much as we'd like, but given the amount of things to do keeps growing, its good to get patches out often, and get feedback on what you have, than to wait too long and change too much at once, in my opinion. News of the next patch will be along presently, as it becomes available, it will be pushed to the forums as soon as possible. For now, enjoy the changes we have now, and please give us feedback as you go out into the world of Malu! We strive for constant improvement and your input is invaluable to that improvement process! Have fun out there people!
Respecfully,
Stormtempter
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We are working on release dates on fourms, this information should be fairly soon. We are not moving as fast as we would like but we have brought new people back on the team and we are slowly speeding up production as well.
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