What's New?
With Veeshan's Peak now having been released for a little over a month, and following some adjustments seemed to find it's stride, everyone starts to look to what's next. I think that's where I come in...so in no particular order, developments in progress, and some other news:
♦ Food QuestsFollowing a significant outline by Skankie, there will be stat food quests added for every 2nd Tier. This will include using some until now unused zone trash loot, along with specific items for the quest. This isn't expected to be massive stats, but it will be substantial enough to be a benefit.
♦ All-In-One Mount questThis is a project exclusively worked on by Ogru, that will require the player to have collected all of the Tier dropped mounts, as well as some additional quest tasks, and results in a clickie item from which you can choose any of the mounts, plus a new one. This looks to be an exciting addition, and the new mount should certainly be worth the time.
♦ Plane of Innovation (Champion's Symbol Upgrade)This is going to be a fairly straightforward quest zone, resulting in an upgraded Champion's Symbol. It's a combination of kill and collect quest, and while it will take some time to complete, it certainly won't be worse than collecting Souls in Sunderock. It will require the turn-in of the original Champion's Symbol, so you won't have both.
♦ Tier 11 - Dragonscale HillsThis will be my first full progression Tier development, and assuming I can execute the plans I have for the zone, I think it will be an exciting addition to EZ.
♦ News: int64, hp_regen_per_second, DPS toolingThis is all related to new EQEmulator server code additions that Akkadius has made in the past couple weeks. While some of it has uses outside of EZ, much of it was done to help us.
• First up, is the updating of HP, Mana, Endurance, Damage and Hate to int64 from int32. What is int64 and int32 you may be asking? int64 and int32 are basically number limits, ranging from -2147483648 to +2147483647 for int32 increasing to -9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to +9, 223,372,036,854,775,807 for int64, that can be used by a program. In EZ's case, with our astronomical damage, and damage bonuses, we can quite easily exceed the int32 limit, at which point the calculation overflows and the resultant number is less than it should be, or quite possibly negative. While we don't do 2.14 billion damage directly, because of the way that damage bonuses (critical hits/blasts) are calculated, it is possible to overflow int32 during the calculation itself, which still results in lesser or negative damage. With this server code update, Akkadius, and the other EQEmu wizards, have made it possible to likely never have to worry about this issue again, 9 quintillion is a big number...
• Secondly is the addition of a new npc_type database entry, hp_regen_per_second. By using this faster than normal (I believe standard regen is a pulse every 3 seconds) hitpoint regen, it is possible to tune NPC's to expected damage per second, and counteract some of it without resorting to Veeshan's Peak style self buffs. This closely ties into:
•Lastly, in game DPS information. This is a GM tuning tool, but will allow me to observe fights and easily retrieve benchmark DPS data from specific classes, which will be tied into future zone scaling.
All of these improvements are massive for us, and while Akkadius makes anything coding related look absurdly easy, it was no small endeavor, but will really allow me freedom moving forward. Big thanks to Akkadius and the EQEmu wizards for the work on this. Because the change to int64 required the modification of a lot of moving parts, I will be asking for everyone's help to test it for stability on the Test Server. While it has passed scrutiny from the EQEmu developers, we would be foolish not to verify it on Test before deployment to production. I'll make an additional announcement once Test is updated and testing is needed (we should be able to pull current character data over to test). You don't need any particular skills to help in this way, you just play the same way you normally do, see if anything doesn't work correctly and report it if not, so please don't be afraid to help.
I don't have specific timelines for new content releases, as these new server code changes require some changes to so made to plans, but testing must be done on Test first.
and...I want to thank everyone who stuck with it in Veeshan's Peak while it went through some initial growing pains, and patience with me as I continue to learn. This work continues to be very rewarding, and a great privilege to get the freedom to work on content for this server.
For Akkadius & Rent,
-Draca
