Progress Reports (2011)

Shadow Infusion rank 30 now correctly gives invulnerability, rather than immunity.

Forgot to update the mindshield help file. Fixed.

Demon and Mist Vortex weren't properly recharging. Fixed.

The Rejuvanation spell now has its own burnout, the burnout no longer blocks the non-enhanced version from being cast, and it has a 2 minute recharge.

You now automatically earn your boost at the start of each day.

You no longer suffer damage over time while unconscious.

Extended the max age from 400 to 500 on the MWI stats page.

The age 400 elemental scion (mage) subclasses now get the regular bypass talents instead of the Great versions, to avoid blocking other talent choices.

Worked on version 7 of the protocol snippet, adding several new features.

Demons were getting the second hellfire bolt automatically, instead of with rank 10 Pathway. Fixed.

Mages now get a second firebolt, icebolt and lightning bolt at rank 10. Also added Temporal Lock and Temporal Shift spells for them.

Redesigned Shadow Infusion (as well as vortex, stoneskin, etc) following feedback on the mud and forums.

You can now type 'armour invulnerability'. This works like another immunity layer, but is only granted by infusion-like powers and spells.

The 'armour' command on its own now shows the overall soak percentage to 1 decimal place.

Added an Umbral Flesh talent for vampires, and Chaos Vortex for demons.

Reduced the AP cost and tech delay of mist vortex.

Added simple speech code for mobs.

Added support for 'evil' twins entering war, they use the speech code.

Treants now smell of 'nature magic'.

Added a Morning Star Expert talent, which negates the bounce-back.

Handicap now gives an additional immunity layer.

Removed the UTF-8 linedraw characters.

Partially added code for grouping.

Tweaked the safe times.

Players can now fabricate their own private dojo on their home plane.

Fixed an issue with event mobs walking all the way to the centre of their spawning area, rather than stopping once they enter it.

Fixed a bug whereby lords would no longer attack each other in chaos war (because the word 'the' was removed from their name).

Treasure recruit wasn't giving the 'invest' command, fixed.

Added the Multiplay module for tracking alts.

You no longer earn or lose primal for killing an alt.

There's now a handicap stat which boosts everyone to age 600 during PK (Nexus and Winterland only). Skills and stances are also treated as 600 during PK (at least for uncapped stuff - you still need the first 100 to get the main bonuses). Higher age players will still have a big advantage, but one-shot kills should be rarer. Note that the handicap stat isn't used if you've got more than one character in the same world.

Fixed the 'never miss' flag for weapons.

Can no longer create characters called 'None'. Need to do 'Someone'.

Started changing 'kill' mode to use the improvised combat AI.

Succubus Devil skin warp now benefits from the Great bypass talents.

Serpent Form now uses the correct 'rise' tech.

The three Blow talents weren't working. Fixed them, and also reduced the delay penalty of Mighty Blow and Focused Blow.

Infernalists no longer spawn in Teardrop Village.

The 'centre' command now clears your target, if any.

Some minor help file updates.

Fixed some combat message mistakes.

Implemented the mirror shield and unerring spear (avatar tournament rewards).

Added a separate shape for mist form, so it no longer has the wraith body parts.

Bless now gets +2 attack/defence per rank from Fang Forging.

Made some fixes to the negotiation code.

Added Ninja Blade Mastery as a requirement for Thrown Dagger Expert.

Vampires and werewolves can now forge demonsteel.

Buying boost no longer clears safe mode. It now extends safe by 30 mins.

Some enhancements to dungeon mobs.

The 'whois' command now shows support for xterm-256-color.

Promethean juggernauts and behemoths now split into smaller versions of the same age, so they're not a waste of boost.

The improvised combat AI can now use two-handed weapons.

There's now a message sent to other players when you dispel magic on yourself.

Started implementing a random demon generator.

Visor of Vision now provides decent soak across the board.

Added an "improvised fighter" flag for mobs, they now calculate fighting techs of the fly based on their current weapons, style, etc. Currently this is used for mage-summoned elementals, and the random demons.

Tech ranges are now limited to 300 feet in dungeons.

Sense powers can now location dungeons.

Event mobs now make their way back home if they spawn outside or are pulled out of their area.

Shields can now be assisted to give +50% defence.

Corrosive Hydra now gets +2 Fumes of the Pit and +2 Fires of the Volcano, instead of +4 Fumes of the Pit. This gives it a more balanced bypass for its dual damage breath attack.

Titans now hurl spiders with Precise Throw when on a spiderweb.

You can now rapidly close a store by trying to summon it while it's already summoned.

Fixed an issue with safe mode messing up the combat messages when attacking pets - this may still need some tweaking.

Added some more autohelp messages.

Fixed a bug with maps using the max age for your subclass rather than the age cap for giving karma.

Updated 'clearhelp' to factor in the search strings.

Centaur scouts (war recruit) no longer try to display a distance in their warning messages.

Enlightenment resolve was gaining only 1% armour per rank from Divine Insight, rather than the 2% per rank mentioned in the help file. Fixed.

Fixed an issue with failed tech commands being repeated multiple times (eg trying to headbutt while lying prone).

Turned 'the' into a proper name prefix, like 'a' and 'an', to fix the inconsistent colouring and capitalisation.

Maxed characters (age 500 and 100% potential) can now earn karma from maps.

Mobs will now tell you if you're out of range when they attempt to sell you something.

Finally fixed the issue where you couldn't see your mount if you were invisible or had your eyes closed. You can now always see yourself, as well.

You can now assassinate people who can't see you (not even partially), even if you're not behind them. However you can no longer assassinate people you can't see fully.

The justification code now properly handles colour codes.

Crowns and wing-spikes can now be bloodforged.

Help requests that have no associated help file are now logged.

When a new character enters the game, their first session (i.e., until they reconnect) is logged. Let's see if we can pin down a common cause for leaving.

Added a 'wound' dynamic tag for combat messages.

Fixed a bug which allowed buildings to digest corpses.

Fixed some dynamic description issues.

Dark Slayer and subclasses branching from it have had their Aura increase chance reduced from 10% to 5%, the extra 5% has been moved to Grace.

Fixed yet another digestion issue. Hopefully that's the lot.

Typing 'who where' no longer shows you what buildings people are in if they're in the Nexus.

Fixed some minor issues with the stealth version of backstab - it can no longer hit swarms, and the attack described as hitting the chest now actually does so.

Improved the help search to ignore case, colours and newlines.

Form of Water now gets improved movement rate when wet as well as when swimming, and ignores all terrain penalty as well as currents.

The 'home' command now accepts optional coordinate positions.

The 'mermaids' war recruit no longer dismisses Offence and Defence.

You can now type 'prompt normal' or 'prompt default' to restore the default prompt.

Changed the Ratling trigger to a more generic shopkeeper trigger, and fixed a bug whereby the shopkeeper wasn't worth double primal despite being an event mob. Added three new cyclops events.

Expanded the autohelp.

Padded cloth can now be shadow crafted and moon weaved.

Fixed 'weapon feet' to include cooldown bonuses.

Slightly adjusted the ninjatou stats. It can now be crafted from shards.

Lords of War now automatically surrender after 100 turns (previously only the God of War would surrender).

Reworked the help file for the Assassin Training talent to make it clearer.

Updated character descriptions to handle armour that covers both the forearms and hands.

The ninjatou throatslit/backstab was using the wrong mastery talent. Fixed.

Mammothskin is now craftable by vampires and werewolves.

Classing dungeons now collapse after completion, the same as task dungeons.

The Mist Walker talent is now available at age 100 instead of 200.

Desert Wolfkin now applies to Draconic Rage.

Aliases are now limited to 50 instead of 20.

Greater Shark Spirit and Draconian Jaws didn't remove the cooldown penalty for eating. Fixed.

Added code for creating a nickname based on a character name.

Added a dynamic help system along with an 'AutoHelp' config option.

Added an automatic search when no help is found on the specified subject.

Fixed a couple of crash bugs, one in the IsSafe() code for pets whose masters were no longer online, the other related to dungeon initialisation. Also fixed an event bug which crashes in cygwin but never seemed to crash on the server - strange.

Added the Ninja Blade Mastery talent and a Ninja concept (with appropriate gear proposed by Shin).

I was without my laptop for a couple of months before the repair guy finally admitted he couldn't fix it. In the meantime I'd picked up a netbook, but I found it too awkward for working on the mud, so I ended up taking a break from God Wars II for a while. I decided to wait until April to get a new laptop, as I wanted a UK keyboard and English language operating system.

However I did use the time to create "Supernaturalis", a God Wars themed cap-setting for the Savage Worlds tabletop roleplaying game, as well as the "Savage Armoury" rules for designing weapons and armour. I also created a few tools for Savage Worlds, including a combat simulator, NPC generator, and adventure generator.