byCarmine

Lots of little changes, hopefully I can remember them all. I’ll work from most recent backwards:

Darkfall:- The critters have been reduced down in the forest and the food that resets there cut down to reflect the ‘tougher’ times. This should be reflected in people’s roleplay and as they ‘stock up’ for winter and find hunting and gathering that little bit harder. Shops will be selling food for a little more too.

Gather:- Tied in with Darkfall, gather is now coded to be effected by Seasons. Gathering will be easiest in Spring and hardest in Darkfall.

Disguise:- This is a skill for Vek’pem Ahyre that was something that was more manually done, but was always meant to be incorporated into code as a passive skill. This has now been done. With this skill Vek can reduce the chance of being tracked by Wolfkin and also reduce the chance of having their thoughts overheard by Dryth as well as lessoning their chance of their identity being sniffed out when cloaked. This is a VERY important skill for Vek.

Quality:- Gatherable items that load with a zone reset now can load with quality (rather than all average).

Dryth:- Two new skills, send and listen. Increases their chances of being successful at both hearing thoughts and sending them to others.

Morhiag:- Reduction of favour gain towards Morhiag when sneaking and hiding.

Backstab:- Currently obsolete and removed as it was crashy. If you want to backstab someone, hide then attack.

Craft:- Bug fixed where sometimes there were two borders at the bottom of the list.

Scan:- Bug fixed where sometimes staff showed up on scan.

Shops:- A few improvements to the NPC buying code.

Despite the lack of posts here, there have been updates. Though mostly small ones, little fixes to bugs as they crop up. A few adjustments to the NPC buying code. Fixes to drinking of potions so that they heal body parts as well as overall health. Though strictly speaking, I’d like to see salves be body part based and potions limited to aiding with the overall health. But that’s a whole different kettle of fish.

One step at a time hmm? Nice to see magic being used by the couple of people out there with channelers.

You can now count coins in your inventory and the room by using it with the optional tag coins. For example: COUNT COINS

This will count you the worth of the coins in your inventory and room.

Another update to coins is that when ever a PC or NPC buys from a shop, rather than continuing to accumulate hundreds of farthings and pennies, it will automatically update it to higher values. Ie: 1000 farthings will become 1 pound.

A few smaller updates this time:

Look!
A new addition to the look command; the ability to be able to look at an item
another person is carrying or wearing. This can be done with the following
syntax:

look [person] [item]

Where item can be worn, or in inventory.

Weapon Quality
Now makes a difference. Poor quality does less damage. High quality does significantly more. Want to hit harder? Look out for a fine weapon.

Quality in Shops
NPCs or Players can choose to have their shops not load items of varying quality. Why would you want to do this you might ask? Higher quality items cost more to load. And for some items, such as a book, currently have no effect in game.

We also intend to set some NPC shops as only selling average items to encourage purchase and crafts from PCs. However, all tools will still be available at varying quality from the general supply store. We’re in the progress of setting this up… not quite sure if it is done yet.. *nudge builder types*

Expansion to East Forest
Working on a small expansion to Eastern Forest.

Flawed Quality Code
Previously the quality code was a bit flawed in that, it was pretty much impossible to gather anything but average (or worse) quality items. Simply because the tools that one could purchase from shops were typically of only average quality.

Varying Quality of Items now available
I’ve updated code so that shops have a random chance of stocking with items of different quality. From awful all the way up to excellent. Of course, you’re more likely to see average than excellent but there is the chance that you’ll be able to buy one eventually. The trick will be to keep checking stores till you find one. The higher the quality tool, (or really any item) the more it is going to cost to buy and the more you’ll make on it if you sell it.

What Does This Mean for Crafters?
So, now we have tools of varying quality, what does this mean? It means that you’ll notice some variances in the quality of them items you gather AND the quality of the items you craft. When you craft, it looks at the lowest quality of all tools used (and also checks your skill) and selects that for the resulting item.

Examples:

awful knife + excellent skin + master leather working = awful product
excellent knife + excellent skin + inept skill = awful product
good knife + good skin + reasonable skill = good product

Make sense? Now… what does producing objects of higher quality mean for the crafter? Basically better profits.

Breakage
Also, your tools are less likely to break if they are higher quality. Break you ask? You haven’t seen that happen before? Now an tool’s quality gradually reduces over use. As it reduces, there is an increasing chance of it breaking when used for crafting.

What it doesn’t do yet:
A better quality sword isn’t going to do more damage. Quality doesn’t effect armor, or food, or anything other than aesthetics, price and tools. For now.