Glimpse of production - 2005-04-25

[Xavier Antoviaque]

The glimpse of production is some space I use to bring to your attention some of the current production works - meaning, what the devs are currently working on. Read the patch release process to see how we work afterwards to introduce the changes into the live version of the game.

I] Random selection of bugfixes

Our current focus is on a general spring clean of the game. '''This time, the spring clean doesn't bring any small new features : the devs have been focused on bugfixes - more than 100 have been worked on over the past two weeks !''' A random selection of some of these bugfixes follows.

1) Better graphics when lots of characters are showed on the screen



To improve the rendering of the scene when there are a lot of characters on the screen (like during big events), the devs are working on the following improvements :

• The maximum number of polygons for displaying characters (basic 3D objects which are used to build the whole scene) is being increased
• Screenshots will now always be rendered using the highest resolution
• Your own character will no longer degrade when there are crowds of characters
• There has been some discussions about modifying the load balancing algoritm which controls the number of polygons displayed for each character (the nearer the character, the better it is displayed).

2) Transparency

• When the mouse is over a window, your character will not be transparent anymore
• Even with transparency at the maximum, your character will still be visible when putting your mouse over it

3) Game configuration

• DirectX handles the windowed mode differently than the way OpenGL does, so some work was needed in order to have luminosity/contrast/gamma setting working correctly when Ryzom is windowed and uses the DirectX driver.

4) NPC merchants tuning

• The NPCs will now accept to buy tools that have been sold by NPCs - so, if you have bought tools that you weren't needing, you will be able to get back some of the cash.
• Some items were appearing twice on the merchants interface; it was confusing for some players, and generally made it more difficult to sort out the list.

5) Inventories

• The total number of slots currently used will be displayed on the inventory window, so you know more precisely how much space you have left. But remember to also keep an eye on the bulk gauge !
• The inventory is getting some speed-up improvements (loading time, scrolling), which are necessary due to the increase in size of the inventories.
• The teleport tickets will be stackables - you'll be able to buy a lot of them without polluting your inventory.

6) Date

• Instead of just having the current time displayed on the map window, you will now get the full current date here. Now you won't have any excuse when you'll be late on Atys

II] Chapter III : The outposts



We are also increasing our focus on preparing chapter III : we are '''preparing the introduction of an early version of the outposts on the Advanced Test Server'''; the first version will only provide the features that we want to test and tune first (about 30% here) : subsequent features will be added as testing progresses. If you want to join the ATS testers, have a look at the ATS registration form.

III] Events



1) [Story] Legend of Loria

The Guild of Try and the Tryker elders requested some help from the homins to get back the Box of Loria, stolen by Desann and her evil twin servants. It is said that the recovered box contained an ancient parchment with semi legible writing - but one still has to decipher the old text...

2) [Fun] Miss Atys

A beauty contest was run in Pyr, to decide who was the most lovely, stylish and composed lady of Atys.

--
Xavier.