User Blog: Lippy

Well, I suppose this is one of the least entertaining posts to the blog, but important nonetheless. ;)

This post is mainly for reference about what I plan to do for the project, based on what seems to be the most important issues. Below is a list of changes/features planned for the future, using a priority system. This could perhaps become part of the roadmap. I'll keep it updated from time to time.

Some of the larger projects have milestones. When a milestone is complete, the project is at a stable stage and it's a good idea to merge it into the trunk (ie. it will appear in the next beta or sooner).

The key is as follows for the priority system:

• P1 - Highest priority. Absolutely must make it into beta 5, at whatever cost.
• P2 - It would be really nice if it made it into beta 5, but it can afford to slip and could even be implemented and shipped during beta 5.
• P3 - The least important changes. There's a chance it will make it for beta 5 if it's quick to implement. Otherwise, it's more likely that it won't make beta 5, and will instead be more likely to be implemented before beta 6.

• Game Balancing: Milestone 1 (P1) (done)
• Integrate the weapon speed and skill delay timers into one action timer. This makes sure that players can't use other skills while attacking with melee combat at the same time. (done)
• Get rid of the 'You can shoot again' spam by finding an alternative method of notifying players how long until the cooldown timer runs out for a skill. (done)
• Fix a bug where stats can wrap around after eating too much food of poison. This turned out to be more than a bugfix, as it involved a bit of a cleanup of the code around there, and it takes us one step closer to making food give buffs. (done)
• Game Balancing: Milestone 2 (P1)
• Make dam+x gear do dmg+x% instead. This fixes the problem of having less powerful but faster hitting weapons being affected by damage gear more. Also fixes the issue of it affecting low level players more. (done)
• Rebalance weapons to fit the new damage system. (done)
• Rebalance mobs to fit the new damage system.
• Rebalance all other items. This should take care of most of the current gameplay issues. (in progress)
• Game Balancing: Milestone 3 (P1)
• Tweak bonuses from stats.
• Have ammo drop in stacks of up to 25, then magical ammo may be actually useful.
• Go through the treasurelists and tweak the drop rates of items.
• Tweak bonuses from magical items.
• Dynamic Widget Client: Milestone 1 (P2)
• Rewrite widget code so that multiple instances of a widget type can be open at the same time. This makes having multiple chat windows possible. Also makes it possible for unwanted widgets to be removed from memory. (done)
• Implement widget containers. These containers are special widgets that can hold other widgets inside them, a bit like how different components of a GUI application are held inside a window. The containers should also optionally be able to resize themselves automatically around the widgets inside them, and it can be recursive too as containers can also hold other containers. This makes componentisation of widgets possible. (done)
• Implement an API for context menus. This is the first componentised widget. A context menu is needed for selecting what kinds of messages should go into a chat window, and also stores functions for interacting with widgets. The context menu is activated on right click. It should be possible to move widgets from the context menu, or using ctrl + right click as a shortcut. (done)
• Implement submenus. This is also needed for the chat window filtering feature.
• Implement the chat window filtering feature where the user can decide what types of messages can go into which chat window.
• Dynamic Widget Client: Milestone 2 (P3)
• Implement tabbed chat windows, but keep the option of having multiple chat windows too, and make it possible to detach tabs into a new window and vice-versa.
• Implement widget snapping.
• Dynamic Widget Client: Milestone 3 (P3)
• Componentise all existing widgets.
• Dynamic Widget Client: Features that are not assigned to a milestone yet
• Implement better widget focus. This makes it possible to both chat and fight mobs at the same time without having to erase everything that has been typed so far. (P3)
• Implement skinning through XML files. This should provide much more advanced skinning than we have now. This can only be done after all the widgets have been componentised. The default skin would also need porting to the new XML format. (P3)
• Implement multiple quickslots. (P3)
• Finish Nawerhals. This is planned to be an alternative region and could become a part of either the Human Plane or the Shattered Planes. It is designed to be an independent mapset, about as big as both the Human Plane and Shattered Planes combined, and should provide support for players of all levels. (P3)
• Remodel the Demon Plane. It is currently a mess, and certain high level dungeons can be accessed too easily by low level players. (P1)
• Fix the drain bug. (P1) (done)
• Fix diseases. (P2)
• Make it so that no items can have their attributes hard modified. It should be done through the use of artifacts, which only patch base items in memory. Otherwise there can be problems if we want to tweak an item after it has dropped. (P3)
• Fix food so that players can't stuff their face with more than one food at the same time. (P2)
• Fix food so that it doesn't almost instantly give back full HP, mana and grace to lower level players. (P2)
• Make food more interesting. Have different types of food give different effects, some possibly giving buffs. (P2)

Update 29/05/09: Milestone 3 of Game Balancing has been merged with Milestone 2. A new Milestone 3 has been added to take care of some loose ends.