How would you treat people differently if that were true? Would you still act the way you do today with everyone you meet in Aardwolf? Could it still be fun if you had to give your “co-workers” a little common courtesy?

No? So how much could you change while still enjoying the game?

Give it a try, if enough people do, Aardwolf will be a better place. If everyone does, the internet will be a better place.

Don’t like this idea? Then d00d ur t3h sux!

Daze has been redone. It no longer prevents multicast. Being dazed means your effective skill in ANY skill or spell is reduced. Points of note about these changes are:

• Daze is bad for skill users as well as spell users.
• Having equipment to boost a skill % over 100 makes you less affected by daze for that skill.
• Daze is easier to tune by simply changing the degree of the effect.
• Weapon skills are also affected, but to a lesser degree.
• Weaponsmaster wish does NOT override this affect - your base skill is automatically 100%, but that does not mean other affects are ignored. With that being said, the daze penalty on weapon skills is slightly less when someone has weaponsmaster.

The affect that some skills have of making you ‘rest’ is gone and is replaced with a ’stunned’ effect - almost the same overall difference, but prevents bugginess with being able to walk away from a fight after being forced to rest etc. Skills that used to both daze and force rest now do just one or the other. Stunned is more annoying in some ways because you can’t do _anything_, but won’t mess up your weapon hits.

Skills that stun do not daze (if they ever did). The list is:

• Bash, Trip, Stun

Skills that daze do not stun (if they ever did): The list is:

• Shield Punch, Sweep, Black Root, Hammer, Bodycheck, Headbutt

Goal / Quest Interface Changes:

Several changes were made to improve usability of the ‘goals’ command:

• Typing ‘goals here’ will show goals in the current area only.
• Typing ‘goals stats’ will show how many times each goal has been started and completed. The ’stats’ option can be combined with other sort options, for example, ‘goals stats byname’.
• New sort options to goals - ‘bytaken’ and ‘bydone’. This means you can do ‘goals stats bytaken’ and ‘goals stats bydone’ to see sorted lists of goal stats.

Other upgrades and fixes this reboot:

• When the thief skills were converted to ‘nofail’, this was only applied to the damage part with the chances of landing special affects no higher or lower than before. The check on sweep for making a character ‘rest’ was missed and landing with every use. Now fixed. (Cadaver)
• Rather than having a single object key for campfires which makes it impossible to customize them, there is a new item type called ‘campfire’. The heal code has been changed to search for this item type rather than a specific item. Expect an announcement shortly with costs once this option is available.
• Using .s or .sn in note write will show the note header as well as content so far (Tymme).
• Using ‘fence all’ or ‘fence all.‘ will now show only items actually sold and not failed items. You will also see a summary of items sold and total value. (Mondaine/Atreidess). Using fence with a single item will still show the usual full output.
• Poker max buy-in is now 100m. (Nasdaq)
• Have lowered the timeout on assassinate a little.
• Changed the message on balor - it reduces health not ‘power’.
• Summoning someone will remove stealth. (Alessandrew)
• Check for improvement on ‘remove curse’ was only working for an item uncurse, not a player uncurse. Now fixed. (Orcwarrior)
• Aylorian Enchantment Clinic (weapon flags) is now included in ‘find’ and ‘runto’ with keyword “enchanter” and “wflag”. (Meeper)
• Both the note editor and description/lua prog editors have a new option. Entering “.sr” will show the content with raw color codes. This is only the actual data being edited - the headers are still colored. (Fiendish)
• Dissolve is now available at healers. Its cost is 100 gold @Wper level@w based on the player of the target. (Sezeku). The healers will now also show how much they are charging you.
• Ftalk was not showing channel tags when friends enter/leave the mud. (Alhena)
• Fixed an obscure crash causing bug in retreat/mobprogs if a mob tries to pull back a player who is retreating. (Domain)

Imperial City of Reme:

Welcome to the Grand City of Reme, where Justice, Mercy, and the Humane
treatment of seagulls is a distant memory. The Emperor has gone mad,
the Empress spends more on her dogs’ breakfasts than the yearly income
of a family of peasants, and seagulls have infested the place.
Want to help? The Priest of Claire is looking for a few brave souls who
might be able to clean up the city!


Land of the Beer Goblins:

Lying. Adultery. Alcoholism. These are considered the key traits of any
politician in this day and age. Though all it takes is crossing the wrong
person and one’s political career can be cut very, very short. Help aid
those who thirst for the blood of Brewington’s Mayor Laporta and the title
of “Beer Drinking Champion” and a lifetime’s supply of beer could be yours.


River of Despair:

The water flowing through this vast river is grey and bitterly cold.
It is the lifeblood and lifeforce of the Aquamarine King, and his
life is quickly running short. A brave adventurer might tiptoe
his way into the tunnels and caverns of the River of Despair, but
he will quickly find himself confronted by legions of spirits,
sprites and ghosts which have taken this place as their home.

The Aquamarine King isn’t happy about it, though, so visit him and
listen to his story to see how you might assist this unhappy monarch.


The Covenant of Mistridge:

Rumors have been quietly making their way around the realm about the
Covenant of Mistridge. Tales of dark magical experiments and insanity
crossed with a lack of leadership make for dark tales indeed. With few
friends to help but many troubles and trials to endure, Mistridge is a
problem looking for a solution. Only the brave and strong need go; the weak
will be grist to evil.


Snuckles Village:

On a cloudless night, a full moon hung majestically in the sky
illuminating Aardwolf. The northern winds blew cold through the realm
forcing many adventurers into their homes. As dawn approached, the ground
began to tremble as magic took hold of the land. Maps began to magically
recreate, memories were altered and roads were formed. As the magic
trembling stopped, it was as if nothing happened. Only, it wasn’t nothing.

A new forest came to be that night. It is almost as if the forest was
ripped out of its existing realm and was neatly tucked away off the trail.
It is a very colorful forest where each tree has leaves of its own color,
each different from the next. The forest is inhabited by faeries who keep
the forest colorful, full of growth and fight to keep the forest alive.
The forest is also inhabited by some strange creatures new to the realm
of Aardwolf. The creatures are yellow in color, medium in size and appear
to be very curious.

Stories ring through the land of this new forest and the creatures that
live there. It seems the creatures were ran out of their old land by
wolves. Unfortunately the wolves followed them and are now also roaming
the forest causing havoc and dismay. Rumor has it an evil wizard has
control of the wolves…

Can you be the one that helps Shay bring peace and order back to the forest?


Masquerade Island:

On a privately owned island, surrounded by shark-infested
waters, a party has been organised. However it is not just
any party, it is a Masquerade Ball. The owner of the island,
Lord Nassah, has invited everyone to attend his Ball. From
the smallest sprite, to the tallest giant, no one is excluded
from this Ball.

The only challenge you have to overcome is to venture
across the seas as he did not reveal the location of
the island.

The rumor floats in the air that the island is not so
safe lately. Are you brave enough to still attend the Ball?
Can you solve the mysteries that roam this island?

• The Oracle spell ‘Eye of warning‘ allows a character to detect stealth in an area. It can only be cast by an oracle, not used from potions, but can be cast on others. There is also a recovery. Characters in stealth/stalk mode will show as (S) or (Stealth) depending whether or not you have ’shortflags’ on.
• You can no longer drop gold in an ‘air sector’ room.
• Vorpal had a 10 level cap on it. Raised it to 20.
• Since skills were changed to improve on success only the check on Death Blow was way too high, making it virtually impossible to improve. Now fixed.
• Goal counter in score was not being counted correctly. Now fixed. Also added a counter to the bottom of the ‘goals’ command to make this easier to check.
• The ‘ansi’ command is now a global alias for ‘color’.
• Beacon of homecoming had some special code to allow it to be used in certain flagged rooms even though they are nosummon. Beacon of light was missing this code, now added. This was originally reported because a Beacon of Light could not be added to Shadowlands entrance.
• Have increased the chances of trivia chaos portal to be a diamond one. They’re still vary rare though. Does anyone have one yet btw?
• Fixed a bug allowing ambush to duplicate affects when the recovery expires and you still have the first ambush.

New Area: Hatchling Aerie

Whispers abound about a far off mountain range where dragons are born and
bred. Many an adventurer has gone off in search of the treasure hidden there,
a Gem of great importance, only to never be heard from again. Already the
evil is spreading and there are rumors of dragons laying waste to a great
city. Can you succeed where others have failed and return all the gems to
their rightful owners? This is the first of the draconian ascent areas, and
replaces dragon tower.

4 other new goals were added:

Diamon Reach:

Travel through time in the Ruins of Diamond Reach to help the Baron by
lifting the temporal curse. Return to the Baron of the Future with proof
of your success in the past to claim your prize! Those who learn to deal
with the nature of the curse may eventually master it and bend it to their
will. While the possibilities are timeless, it all begins by taking the
initiative and investigating the results of what has already happened by
searching the ruins themselves.


Chaprenula’s Lab:

Nestled deep in a Mesolarian rainforest, you will find the tiny
principality of Albandi, so named after the Princes Albandi of
nine gloriously uninterrupted generations. Under pressure from
the current Prince Albandi IX, the Grand (and Mad) Wizard Chaprenula
has resolved to create a magical army to defend the tiny land and
subjugate its people. With the assistance of his naïve followers,
Chaprenula experiments with the living and the inanimate to create
creatures of remarkable diversity, and maniacal menace.

Is there no one in the realm with the know-how to rid the world of
Chaprenula’s abominable creations for once and for all?


Yggdrasil - The World Tree:

Long have the gods of Aegir planned for the final battle and defeat; their
Ragnarok. Not everyone is willing to give up. Even if Ragnarok is coming and
can’t be avoided, perhaps there is still something to be done. It may be the
Destiny of Yggdrasil to suffer defeat with the gods, but there are some
people who have an idea or two. Join forces with them and postphone Ragnarok.

It won’t be easy, but there’s likely to be great rewards to be found.


Gladiator’s Arena:

***********************************************************
Gladiator - glad·i·a·tor (noun)
1) A person, usually a professional combatant, a captive, or a slave,
trained to entertain the public by engaging in mortal combat with another
person or a wild animal in the Arena.
***********************************************************

All throughout history, Man (and most other races) have fought.
Wars, for virtually any reason (or often none at all) occur constantly,
and in every war a slew of Heroes are created. Most of these Heroes,
usually the best fighters of their time, went on to spend the rest of
their lives fighting for sport or show. These men were called Gladiators.

Even in times of peace, men honed their fighting skills, then fought
in competitions (often times lethal ones) for prizes or outright pay. These
men, too, were called Gladiators.

For thousands of years, Gladiators have been the most feared and
respected men of their times. These are the men most skilled at virtually
every form of combat, with every type of weapon and against every type
of foe imaginable. In many parts of the world, they are nearly a religion
unto themselves, worshipped as walking gods.

Over the millennia, as nations and empires rose and fell, one thing
has remained constant; the love of the sport.

In modern times, enormous stadiums have been built to house tens of
thousands as they watch the best Gladiators in the land compete in a myriad
of challenges, with the blood flowing freely. The greatest of these, the
Gladiator’s Arena, has stood like a nation unto itself for more decades
than any alive can remember, allowing Gladiators of all races to train or
compete to the delight of the enormous crowds of spectators. For a small
fee, of course…

You will notice that the very first item highlighted is the fact that all global free classchanges and rebuilds were reset, so if you’re in the thief class and really hate these changes you are welcome to try a different class with no charges or penalties.

• The global free classchange and free rebuild have been reset. Note these these are on/off flags - they do not “stack”.
• Backstab now has lag like any other skill. The recovery on it is gone. The lag is shorter than most skills, but is still there.
• Scorpion Sting is now called Scorpion Strike and is Ninja only. This skill is not applied to backstab hits.
• Balor Spittle is now venomist only. It’s recovery time can be reduced a little with higher dex.
• Only assassin can get the last enhanced backstab hit.
• Sweep can now be used on flying mobs if the player is also flying. Have also changed some of the messages on sweep so that it having a ‘daze’ chance makes more sense.
• Thief now gets enhanced damage at level 14.
• Most thief skills have a max damage they can do. This has been increased a little for each skill.
• Spiral now does the damage type of your primary weapon.
• Backstab is easier to land at lower levels/stats. Level difference is less important in chances to land. You will also notice failure less often at max stats.

There has been an additional change to almost all thief damage skills. Thief skills now work more like spells in that when they ‘fail’, they don’t fail completely. Damage is reduced and you don’t get a chance to get the special affect if they have one (such as poisons), but the damage part will still work.

Damage itself is pro-rated based on percent practiced as with attack spells. Some thief skills that were particularly hard to improve have had their chances increased some. The base damage and the chance to get the specials themselves are still based on the same stats.

Skills affected by this change have been marked nofail - they are:

• Green Death, Sweep, Spiral, Marbu Jet, Kobold Spray, Raven Scourge, Cobra Bane, Hydra Blood, Black Root, Burnt Marbu, Kobold Stench, Circle

Thief Subclass Additions

Several new thief subclass abilities were added this reboot. They are:

Bandit - Fence:
The bandit class has a new skill called ‘Fence’ that allows them to sell an item from anywhere. The maximum potential amount received for a fenced item is the default shop price, or 50% of it’s value.

Of that max potential, half is determined by your skill in fence and half is determined by dex and luck combined. Fence itself does not fail once you have the skill, unless the resulting amount comes out too low.

Items that could not normally be sold to a shopkeeper also cannot be fenced, and items over 20,000 gold in value are too expensive to be fenced. As this activity all takes place between thieves on the underground market, clan tax is avoided. You will also find that underground dealers don’t haggle, the price is the price. The good news is that crime really does pay, and they never run out of gold either.

The same syntax that works with ’sell’ also works with fence. Please be careful when fencing items, unlike selling to shops where you often have a chance to buy it back if you sell in error, fenced items are non-recoverable.

When selling items, bandit will have an automatic +10% chances of actually haggling. The haggle itself is no better (it can’t be because of buy/sell price overlap issues). Not intended to be a big deal, just a small bonus. I imagine most bandits will fence now anyway.

Bandit - Pilferage:
The new skill ‘Pilferage’ is an automatic bandit skill. Whenever looting gold from a mobile, a bandit has a chance to find additional gold on the corpse. The amount varies up to 30%, determined by skill percent and luck. If the bandit is leading a group with autoshare on, everyone gets their share of the increased amount.


Bandit - Haggle:
When selling items, bandit will have an automatic +10% chances of actually haggling. The haggle itself is no better (it can’t be because of buy/sell price overlap issues). Not intended to be a big deal, just a small bonus. I imagine most bandits will fence now anyway.


Bandit / Ninja / Assassin - Nimble Cunning:
The new skill ‘Nimble Cunning’ is available to bandit, ninja and assassin only. It is a low level skill which gives the user a slight boost in dex and luck.


Venomist - Cell Potential:
The new skill ‘Cell Potential’ is the same thing as Nimble Cunning, but for venomists only and also adds some con.


Assassin - Stalk:
The assassin skill ‘Stalk’ allows an assassin to sit in a room undetected. They will not be seen until either the skill wears off, they leave the room, they attack something or an oracle spell is used (see below).


Ninja - Stealth:
The ninja skill ‘Stealth’ is like ’stalk’ except it lasts until the ninja attacks something. A ninja in stealth also cannot be ambushed.

Notes on stealth/stalk:

• When a thief is in stealth/stalk mode, they do not appear in the ‘invisible’ count on who (otherwise ‘who room’ would give them away).
• You also do not see them entering/leaving the room.
• Mobs with progs that have detect hidden set can still see chars in stealth, othrerwise too many area quests will break. So can clanguards.
• When casting area attacks, if you cannot see someone because of stealth, they are not a valid target.
• Transportation spells DO remove stalk, they do not remove stealth.
• Interfering in a fight in a way that would normally trigger revenge will remove stealth.

Aardwolf MUD V3 - 6 month review

It has been 6 months since V3 of Aardwolf went live. Hard to believe that so much time has passed already. One of the most surprising things about V3 has been the general stability and lack of any major issues.

Anyone with MUD coding experience can imagine the potential nightmare of going live on a rewritten codebase with hundreds of active players. We have come out of it in great shape and the credit for that goes to the detailed and endless V3 testing process. The folks who helped with that know who they are, and we all owe you a big thank-you!

Looking at other progress in the past 6 months, the major updates to the mud since v3 are:


Lua / Mobprogs:

The integration of Lua with the MUD and the conversion of close to 4,000 old mobprogs to Lua is easily the biggest single project. Many players helped with converting the mobprogs to Lua and overall, the project has been a huge success. Lua itself is extremely lightweight, greatly extends the capabilities of the scripting system and is very stable. It is the first time ever I have not regretted not building Aardwolf with LPC from day one.


Goals:

The goal system originally came about because I needed to rewrite the mud school and wanted it to be more interactive with player progress tracked at each stage.

While developing the framework to track progress through the Academy I found myself thinking “It would be great if all area quests could use this”. Eventually, it turned into the goal system we have today.

The task hints came later, which was the last major feature to goals and made a huge difference in how goals are played.

At the time of writing we now have 41 goals live and plenty more to come. Not everyone sees the value in them, but overall they have been an extremely popular feature.


The Academy:

The academy itself has been very well received. Some players don’t like the fact that it takes so long to go through, but there’s a lot to cover.

We have also receive a lot of compliments from other mud admins on the depth of the academy. It is worth noting that with the framework now built into the mud, the academy itself is 100% Lua. In theory, any builder could create a new “academy” in their area.


Mushclient:

Mushclient was another “not planned” project, or at least not to the level we took it. I contacted Nick Gammon to see if he would mind me releasing an “Aardwolf version” of Mushclient which would basically be mushclient+some plugs pre-installed to help new users play the MUD.

Nick got interested in the project himself and made many changes to Mushclient and actually even wrote most of the plugins. The telnet options and tags systems also came out of this project.

Since the first release of the Aardwolf version, Mushclient itself has had some fantastic upgrades including the addition of many image handling and processing commands, clickable hotspots and hovering windows. The second release of the Aardwolf version will be some time away, but will be worth the wait.


Blog:

Creation of this blog. I’m still not convinced it is worth it in terms of time spent updating it that could be spent on the mud itself, but will give it at least 6 months. Readership is very low and feedback is non-existent.


Areas:

Several new areas and stock area replacements were added: Onyx Bazaar, Rosewood Castle, Cloud city of Gnomalin, Adaldar. Many other areas were significantly tidied up or remodeled for their goals.


Subclasses:

At the time of writing this, 20 new subclass skills/spells have been added, which means we’re only just beginning the full implementation - subclasses will be the main focus of the next 6 months. Many of these are so much more than ‘just a new skill’. For example, the chaos portal changes were a full rewrite of the chaos portal system. Ambush is a whole new type of affect. Navigate and Pathfind use pathfinding code that was new in v3.


Server Move:

Although the impact on the player base is (hopefully) minimal, moving servers is always a huge task. It always sounds like something that shouldn’t be, but it is.

Moving the mud itself is the least complicated part other than the volume of data. The website, clients, pictures pages, etc etc are all very time consuming. Getting the servers out of Orlando into a more stable environment was worth it though.


Everything else:

The sections above are just the bigger single changes. There has been so much more, some of the highlights include: runto/runprefix, identify wish, ice ages + auto-qreset, many updates to support room and object scripts in lua, autopk toggle, ignore on channels, the gold/other values for > 2 billion, glance, rawcolors and hundreds of minor fixes. (Side note, my own personal favorite as a player is ‘runto’).

Challenges/Disappointments

It is great to list the things we’ve been able to do, but also worth a look at the things that didn’t work out so well.


Player base:

Almost all MUDs have had a tough year in terms of reducing player base. I’m not sure why this year in particular as most of the big popular MMOs have been out for a while now. Players leave a MUD for many reasons, and those reasons often have nothing to do with the MUD itself - family, work, other hobbies, etc. The idea of playing a text game is so alien to the average teenager today that we just don’t get the backfill of new users as older players naturally move on.

I do strongly believe MUDs have a lot to offer, if I didn’t I’d put up a 404 page and be done. The MUD is still very actively developed and we have so much more to come. We need to figure out how to reach others who might be interested in MUDs. Word of mouth is still the best advertisement there is - so tell your friends!

None of this is to discount the fact that some players do leave MUDs for reasons to do with the MUD itself. Their tastes change, there are changes in the MUD they don’t like, or they don’t think progress is being made quickly enough. This last one I’m sure is quite common with some of the folks who left Aardwolf over the last year. Unfortunately, it was a necessary evil while V3 was developed. But it is done and we’re past it now.


Participation:

There was a time when almost everyone built the MUD, it was a community effort. That seems to be shifting more and more towards “entertain me!”. That isn’t necessarily a problem in itself, but we’ve had a hard time engaging people in building, helping test new features, creating graphics, writing guides and whatever else needs to be done. If you’re a player of Aardwolf and interested in helping with any of these things, please contact Lasher on the personal board.


Subclasses:

While a good start has been made on subclasses and it is moving now, I wish we were further ahead. This has taken way too long. 6 months from now I hope to be able to say we’re close to done .


Client:

The client itself is a great start for new users. The challenge here is having to prioritize (and subclasses win) … it is going to be a while before we get to fully convert the plug ins in the original version of the client to take advantage of the mini-windows and other features recently added to Mushclient.

Looking Ahead:

As already mentioned, subclasses are the main focus for the next 6 months. The rest of this is a list of “things we’d like to do”. In no specific order and with no guarantees:

• More PK games / action. Subclass abilities themselves will go a long way towards this.
• More “end game” activities. This is vague. It’s hard to come up with features that will last indefinitely (such as campaigns) vs a one-time event that eventually everyone has done and you’re back to square one just a year later.
• Further work on the client.
• Integrate the forums with the web.
• Experiment with some graphical maps overlayed in the Mushclient mini-windows.
• Build out races - v3 has a lot of potential for races that is not currently being used.
• Find new ways to promote and attract people to Aardwolf.

Would love to hear your feedback on this post in particular. What have we missed on the achievements/disappointments lists? What are some of the high and low points for you on Aardwolf in the past 6 months? What would you have liked to see mentioned that isn’t?

Just a small update as this reboot was not scheduled - it was an emergency reboot to resolve a connection/DNS issue that was causing some players to be unable to login.

• The very first time a character superheroes, it will be free of charge. They will see a banner reminding them of the importance of questing on their next remort.
• When casting spells that have a primary class set, the stats that determine multi-cast chances have changed. The affect of luck has not changed and the chance of bonus casts for using a primary spell vs non-primary have not changed. If a spell has no primary stat set, int is the default. Skills are not affected by this - skills already use whatever stat makes the most sense for them.
• Too much overlap with Divinator and the other cleric/paladin subclasses. Changed the subclass name to ‘Inquisitor’. Feel free to read up on the term and suggest some nice evil skills/spells. Divinator had unique spells or skills, so this should not matter in terms of abilities.
• Increased the base damage on the ranger rainbow spell a little.

New Immortals

Citron, JustMe and Lumina are now immortals. Congratulations to them - we are sure they will be great additions to the Aardwolf admin team!

• It is now impossible to gain exp while linkdead.
• Have lowered the cost of reowning a chaos portal from 3tp to 2tp. No reason other than to help the market for them a little now there’s more around.
• Changed Psi primary stat back to luck.
• When you have someone on ignore, you will no longer see them on channels. They do still show in history. ‘Say’ is not considered a channel.
• The ‘gills’ wish will now allow you to move across water without flying or needing a boat.
• Removed the code from SH campaigns that occasionally gives a wider level
  range. The idea was worth a try but didn’t work out - too many level locks
  in mobprogs etc messing it up.
• ‘Goals’ will now show ‘Locked’ next to unopened goals you are out of
  range for.
• There is a new object flag ’saveable’ - makes an item saveable regardless of level but it DOES still count towards item limit. Only 205 or higher can set this on an item and it will only be allowed on “once only ever” items or a very strong reason why some other item should have it.
• Skin will no longer create items with color codes in the keywords
• Fixed a bug in charge allowing negative moves if you initiated it with
  moves between 200 and 249.
• Thanks to Fiendish who went through and assigned coordinates to the actual areas, bigmap can now be used while inside an area and will show the location of that are on the continent. You will show as * rather than * which indicates you are inside an area.
• The ‘coordinates’ command will also show when you are inside an area the has coordinates assigned.
• If you have coordinates tags on and coordinates can be displayed based on the area you are in, they will now be shown.
• Ambush will no longer fire while fighting - being engaged in combat
  actually cancels an existing ambush in the same way that moving does.
  Because of this, I have lowered the recovery time on it.
• Gaias Revenge cannot be reflected with spirit shield. It can still be
  absorbed by another ranger.

New Priest Subclass Ability - Rehallow:

Priest has a new spell similar called ‘rehallow’ that will allow
them to improve a hallowed light slightly. Extremely wise priests may
be able to improve the item further from time to time. Unlike reskin
this does not rearrange that stats, just randomly adds to one of them.
As a hallowed light always has at least one stat (hitroll), this spell
will always do something. As with reskin, recommended time to cast is
after all other enchants are done as rehallow checks/respects no stat
max settings.

3 new goals were added:

The Graveyard:

The Graveyard used to be a fine resting place. Over the years, Henry has worked hard and well. Now, though, he is not able to keep evil creatures and all kind of riff-raff out. If you’re looking for a career in graveyard management and funeral directing, drop by for a visit with Henry. Just listen to what he has to say. You might find the opportunity irrestible.

Gold Rush:

The City of Gold needs your help! The fighting between Marshall James and Mad Dog Jake is really starting to cause problems, and all they want is someone to get rid of one of these brothers. So head on out to the Gold Rush and see what you can do for Quanah Jones and the other citizens of this city.

Desert Doom:

Desert Doom is a dusty barren place full of warring tribes. These
tribes are the sons of Ajid, the ones peaceful ruler of this realm.
Do you think you have what it takes to restore peace to this
war torn arid place? Seek out Tryk, the collector of spirits to test
your skills.

• Auto assisting in PK has been moved out from regular auto assist and
  there is a new command ‘autopk’ that defaults to off. You need
  both autoassist flags on to assist in a PK fight.
• A lot of subclass skills are going to affect PK and an Avenger having
  revenge on you won’t be pleasant, loopholes to trick people in pk/revenge
  need closing so that PK can expand further.
• The requirement to be outside for Gaia’s revenge to kick in has been
  removed. This is a pretty large buff to Ranger.
• I have put the Psi primary stat back to int. This is the most important
  stat for a psi - having it be luck just for the sake of being different
  doesn’t make sense.
• Two new tags ‘roomchars’ and ‘roomobjs’ that wrap around the
  character and object lists in a room. If a room has no characters or
  objects you still see tags - if you are capturing this to another window
  you’ll want to capture the fact that there is nothing in the current
  room.
• Runto will now show the location it is heading to.

New Area: The Abyssal Caverns of Sahuagin

For centuries, there have been rumors of a vast city found in the lower
depths of the ocean inhabited by a cruel and brutal race known as the
Sahuagin. These monstrous sea devils will often attack and capture
merchants or sailors traveling on the seas between the continents of
Aardwolf. There are stories here and there of a rare case of a survivor
escaping the cold, wet cells of the Sahuagin. The dark whispers of endless
days of torture, cannibalism, and captives being fed alive to sharks cause
you to shiver with revulsion. The Sahuagin have a particular hatred towards
the peaceful aquatic elves that also inhabit the oceans. In a recent
skirmish between the elves and the Sahuagin, the Elvish king was captured
and dragged down to the underwater lairs. His fate his unknown, but it is
suspected that he is still being kept alive for entertainment purposes.
Hundreds of elves have died while raiding the dark meandering caverns,
desperately searching for their king. But, time is running out if the
stories of brutal torture are true. The elves are in dire need of help.

3 other new goals were added:

The Desert Prison:

Ever want a career in the King’s Dungeon Keepers? Over at Desert Prison,
there’s a job - right at the top, Superintendant. Naturally, it won’t be
easy, the tests are hard and many, the hours long and the pay short. Still,
if you’re looking to do a job well, talk to the people in the village.
Chances are they’ll be just as eager as you are.

Empire of Aiighialla:

If you are one looking for great power, travel to the rift of Ziminiar. Walk
the Imperial road and seek out a wise assemblyman in the city of bandraoi.

Jungles of Verume:

In the vast Jungles of Verume you can discover many histories of the people
of Ushak, a lizard civilization that has existed for many ages. Once they
survived on warfare, now they strive to live a life of peace. On the other
side of the island the Tabaxi, a race of humanoid cats live a life of
leisure and relaxation. They spend their days playing pranks and tormenting
the lives of the children of Ushak. The day remains for proof of the King to
be found and all hope restored.

The spells ‘Strike undead‘ and ‘Blast undead‘ are like lower level versions of necrocide - they will always target the mobs lowest resistance and only work against undead.

Avenger:

The Avenger class has a new spell called Righteous Anger‘. While affected by this spell, all damage done by an avenger against someone who has wronged them will be doubled. The spell can be cast while in combat.

Shaman:

Shaman has a new ability called ‘Gaias Focus‘ which allows the Shaman to fix the damage type done by Gaias Revenge to one of the four types that are usually randomly chosen. It cannot be cast while Gaias revenge itself is up, but otherwise there is no recovery on it. The 4 damtypes are air, earth, cold and water. Syntax: cast ‘gaias focus’

Not new spells, but the durations of Totem Force and Totem Guidance have been increased to the point that Shaman with high wis and con will have periods during which the two can overlap.

Crafter:

While all rangers have the ability to skin corpses to make their own armor, experienced crafters are able to study the construction of a previously skinned piece of armor and rearrange it. A crafter will usually find a way to improve any skinned item, regardless of other enchantments that may have been placed on it. Once a crafter has studied and rearranged a skinned item it cannot be improved further.

The skill ‘reskin‘ randomly rearranges the stats on a skinned item and adds a random stat. The real value of this is that it will work no matter what other enchants have been used. It sets the recharged flag on the item - was no point using up a flag when recharged will work just fine for this. You must be at least the level of the item to reskin it.

Hunter:

The hunter class has a new skill called ambush‘. To use this skill, type ‘ambush [target]‘ - if a player or mob with the name [target] enters the room you will attempt to attack them. Abbreviations do not count, the full name or keyword must be used (on a mob with multiple keywords, only one full keyword is necessary). Normal attack restrictions apply so the attempt to attack them can fail for many reasons.

If the ranger moves while ambushing, the affect is removed. The ambush affect is also removed after an attempt on a target whether it is successful or not. You will notice that ‘affects’ shows the target of the ambush - this is the first affect of that type.

In terms of the target entering the room - ambush is checked when a character walks into a room, when a character arrives via a portal and when a mob resets. This does mean that you can attempt to ambush a mob that does not exist yet and will attack it upon repop.

If more than one character is attempting to ambush the same target in a room, the last one to walk into the room (regardless of order of ambush itself) goes first.

When a character is ambushed, they are incapacitated for a period of time based on their con and luck vs the ambushers con and luck, but a minimum of 5 seconds. A hunter cannot ambush another hunter - keep in mind that some mobs are hunters, and other mobs will _sometimes_ be hunters (if not assigned subclass is random at repop).

Oracle:

Oracle has a new spell called ‘Sense Danger‘ that has a change to show ambushes in an area. There is a chance to ’save’ the spell. When the spell is saved, the Oracle will still sense danger of some kind, but will not be able to determine specifics. As other features are added to the game that fit in this spell they will be added, right now it just detects ambushes.

• When a navigator casts chaos portal, if their first attempt is a continent they will try again. This does not mean they won’t hit a continent room, it’s just a second chance not to. There is no new skill/spell for this, it is just part of the Chaos Portal spell. If a navigator wants the chance to land a continent, they can add the argument ‘continent’ to the cast.

• Blank chaos portals are now available as a tpspend option for 5 trivia points. The syntax is ‘tpspend bcp’.

• There are some new types of blank chaos portals. These are random when buying chaos portals with tpspend and when using ‘merge chaos’. They are also rare, and only a navigator can turn them into active CPs.Silver : Impossible to land on a continent, areas only. Still sets ownership.

Platinum : Chaos portal has a 50% chance for the target to be the room the navigator is standing in. Does not set ownership. When the room is not the room navigator is standing in, continent room still impossible.

Diamond : Chaos portal will always be to the room the navigator is standing in, will always turn into a golden cp and will not set ownership. These are incredibly rare, you may never see one. Then again, you could see one the day after reboot, all down to chance.

When using silver and platinum, existing chances for the final CP to be golden are not affected.

Ranger - Merge Chaos:

Nature is Chaos, Rangers understand Nature. Crafters in particular understand the chaotic nature of certain artificts found within Andolor and can recyle a small amount of magic from those artifacts into a
new creation.

Basically, the spell ‘Merge chaos’ allows a ranger to combine 5 existing chaos portals into a new blank chaos portal. Extremely powerful rangers may even be able to lower the number of portals required.

Great care must be taken when using this spell to make sure you don’t accidentally destroy CPs you don’t intend to. When you cast ‘merge chaos’ the code will check your inventory for 5 unkept chaos portals and list them. If you don’t have enough it will tell you. Study the list carefully and make sure these really are the portals you want to merge, then use the syntax cast ‘merge chaos’ confirm to complete the spell.

Other Code - Main Changes:

Campaigns:

Superheros can now take a new campaign each day. There are some differences between SH campaigns and regular campaigns:

• There will be more targets to kill.
• Every now and then, the level range will be completely random and
  not restricted to SH mobs.
• The 24 hour timer starts from when you request a cp. So if you take
  more than a day to finish your current CP, you’ll be able to do another
  one right away.

Pk:

By default, a player using area attacks will no longer initiate PK with another player. Once you are in combat, they will work fine. A player should attack someone because they wan’t to, or in response to someone in-range attacking them - not get tricked into attacking massively higher level outlaws / raiders. If you want to make an area attack include ALL targets in the room including potential pk targets, add ‘all’ to the
cast - for example ‘cast ultrablast all’ or ‘charge n all’.

Spells/Skills modified for this are: Earthquake, Hand of Justice, Ice Storm, Ultrablast, Ice Cloud, Wrath of God, Call Lightning, Death Field, Fire Breath, Fire Rain, Purge, Toxic Cloud, Charge.

Goals:

Just one new goal this reboot - the infamous Helegear Sea converted by Ariel.

Navigator Spell:

Navigator has a new spell called ‘timeshifting’. When this spell is up, each time the player’s lag is checked, it has a chance to reduce the lag a little. The overall effect is that they will recover from spellups slightly faster, be able to cast in combat slightly faster, etc. The downside is that the Navigator can only manipulate time once - the ‘timeshift’ dodge does not work while this spell is up.

Other:

• Gamestat 10 shows subclasses of players online, broken out by primary
  class.
• Desolation at the high end of stats (>450) is now more powerful. You
  won’t notice any difference at lower stats. (Cordelia)
• Increased the base damage on Gaia’s Revenge a little.
• This was mentioned on general board a few days ago - reconnecting no
  longer bypasses any skill lag or lag from other commands. It does still
  clear client-side command queue, nothing I can do about that.
• Options to the goals command:
• goals notdone : Shows goals you haven’t completed yet. (Bremen)
  goals new : Goals you haven’t completed OR opened yet. (Atreidess)
• For quite a while you have been able to lock/unlock a door if the key for
  the door had been left in the room by another person. You can now do the
  same with container. (Tsubaki)
• Ravi now uses sayto instead of “say” for all feedback. (Cecil)
• Have renamed the ‘Craftsman’ skill to ‘Crafter’.
• Mobs in the room can prevent pick lock or bashdoor. This was also
  happening if the mob was a pet or charmed mob. Now fixed. (Sirene)
• Most v2 clanskills will now show sfail tags on not known or already
  affected. Most v1 clanskills that add affects are not actually considered
  ’skills’ by the code so there is no skill number to report. These are
  going to be more complex to change. (Ninja)
• If you have the identify wish, identifying an item by an means (appraise,
  bid, etc) will show the full information of the item. (Jaenelle)

• Gold on hand, bank accounts, clan donated/taxed amounts and clan account themselves can now be over 2 billion. The limit is 50 billion, which can also be easily increased if needed.
• Entering an argument after ‘inventory’ will filter the list displayed to only items where either the keyword or name matches the argument. For example, ‘inv sword’ will show only items with sword in their keyword list or name.
• Access to the newbie channel now continues up to level 50. The limit of 200 hours online still applies.
• You can now see coordinates in Vidblain. Entry room is still random.
• Minor bug in call upon faith made strength weaker than the other stats, now fixed.

New Area: Onyx Bazaar

Ancient stone archways mark the entrance to a cavern of sensual delights and desperate despairs from the Land of Evilstar Coast. Off the Sea of the Horn, a casual shopping day can turn into a world of pain for some or a multitude of pleasures for others. Don’t forget to pay your respects to those in charge or surely you will lose everything you hold dear.

On Market day, those with the means, the will and the way, may enter the market and thrive, or die trying. What cannot be bought above can be both bought and sold in the Onyx Bazaar. Both buyers and sellers, beware!

3 other new goals were added:

The Port:

On the surface, the Port appears to be a peaceful seaside town, with little of interest to offer the average adventurer. But within the town’s underbelly, certain nefarious individuals are recruiting for
organized crime. Ambitious thieves may wish to pay a visit to The Port, but only if they have the skills and the stomach for it.

Black Lagoon:

Alas, there is a great scourge threatening the planet. Time is of the essence! Do you, great adventurer, have what it takes to make the perilous journey deep under the lagoon?

Nottingham:

Robin Hood and his Merry Band of Outlaws aren’t quite so merry. Maid Marion has been captured by the Sheriff and is languishing in his dungeon. Try as they may, they have been unable to get her released or rescued. Things look bleak indeed.

Unless there is a brave soul who might like to help? Defeat the Sheriff, rescue the damsel, all those things that sound like an old legend. Might you be the one to do this? Chances are there will be a reward. Unless
you’re one of those rich folks that oppress the needy!

Nottingham, where things are as simple as they seem. Or maybe not.

Note: Very abbreviated descriptions. For full information see the helpfiles on individual skills/spells.

Navigator:

The spell ‘beacon of homecoming‘ creates a beacon in the room that a navigator can return to by casting the ‘homecoming‘ spell.

The homecoming spell itself can be used from a norecall room but NOT a prison room. So, you can use a beacon to port into a prison room but not out of one. When a navigator uses homecoming, group members in the room are also transported. This is useful for groups, but also means you should take care when grouping with a navigator as you can never be sure where they will port you to.

The spell ‘beacon of light‘ creates a beacon in the room that allows a navigator to find a path to from anywhere in the same area. The path has to be huntable, but otherwise works just like ‘find’.

The skill ‘navigate‘ is used by navigators to find the path to their beacon in an area. The syntax is ‘navigate beacon‘. Although this is the only use for navigate right now I may add other things to it later on,
so might as well get people used to using the full syntax from the start.

The command ‘beacons‘ will show a navigator where their beacons are and the time remaining.

There is no recovery on homecoming/navigate, only on actually creating the beacons. Beacons also do not save so quitting / reboots will remove them.

Hunter:

The hunter subclass has the ability ‘pathfind pet‘. If their pet is in the area, and a path can be reached via hunt, it will be shown.

Necromancer:

Necromancy is a tricky business, the dead don’t always want to be brought back and often attack their would be master. Over the years a successful necromancer will become well practiced in dispatching the undead back to wherever dead things go.

Necromancer has a new attack spell called ‘necrocide‘. This spell is can only be used to harm a mob flagged undead or a vampire, but when used the damage type will always be whatever the target is the most vulnerable to. This not only increases damage, but means the chance of the spell being “saved” is also lower.

Necromancer has a new spell called ‘Detect Undead‘. When this spell is up, undead will show in the room with either (U) or (Undead) depending on your flag settings.

Evoker:

Odins Spear - basically immolate with lightning type damage. Not *all* subclass abilities need to be complex.

Oracle:

The spell ‘Eye of passage‘ will show which key opens a locked door. It only works on locked doors - even if an open door is usually locked. It does not work in clanhalls and you must be at least the level of the
low end of the area range for it to work.

The spell ‘Eye of discovery‘ can be cast on self or another target and will display a random unexplored room. It has a 30 minute recovery that is reduced a little by wisdom.

There was debate on whether to put these live at all yet. They are hardly going to incite everyone to rush to Oracle, but that doesn’t mean useful little additions can’t be added along the way.

Getobj Lua Function Documentation / Examples

New Object Properties available in Lua:

obj.loctype returns one of :

New Lua Object Trigger Type: Expire
There is a new object trigger type : ‘expire’. If an item has a timer, any Lua scripts attached to an expire trigger will be executed just before the item is removed from the game.

Most of these changes were added to make use of the expire trigger type. You need to be able to know where an item is when it expires to decide what to do. You might want an item to damage everyone in the room or blow up a door to the north (open it) when it expires, but need to know if it is actually in a room first. Another item may have an expire script that does something to a player holding it - before proceeding you need to be able to make sure the item is actually being carried by someone.

To see the infamous exploding pie triggers and how simple they are, check out the bottom of:

Lua MUD Object Prog Documentation

Please note that rawDamage is not yet tested or documented and should not be used until announced.

Runto Command:

The runto command provides basic speedwalk capability using the directions listed in the ’speedwalks’ command.

When standing at the Aylor recall, typing ‘runto [area keyword]‘ will execute the speedwalk to that area.

From anywhere in an area that has find locations, ‘runto [find location]‘ will execute the speedwalk to that location. For example, from anywhere in Aylor you can type ‘runto bank’ to go directly to the bank.

As some find locations and area names/keywords overlap, the order of priority when using runto is:

- exact match on area keyword
- exact match on find location in current area
- partial match on area name/keyword
- abbreviation of find location in current area.

To see a list of speedwalks with keywords use ’speedwalks keywords’

To see a list of find locations in your area, use ‘find all’

Runprefix Command:

The runprefix command is used with runto to add default start commands before a ‘runto’ to an area is executed.

For example, if your default recall is a private manor and the path from your manor to Aylor recall is west then north, you could use:

runprefix run wn

This would mean that runto now works from your manor.

If you use an aard amulet with serial number 123456, you could make your runprefix:

runprefix hold (123456;enter

Because some clients will interpret the semicolon character themselves, you can also use a comma or tilde (~) in a run prefix and they will be converted to semi-colons.

5 new goals were added:

Sundered Vale:
An aid worker has traveled from Aylor to the Vale to help out. Unfortunately, she doesn’t seem to be able to find her way through the destruction. Travel to the Sundered Vale and see if you can help.

Arisian Realm:
The city of Arisia has long prospered under the aegis of the Goddess, and her whims have steered the leaders of this fair city for centuries. Not so many years ago, Arisia rose up in war against her sister city, Eddore, in retaliation for offenses against the Goddess.

Now once again, the Goddess is displeased, and it’s up to a bold adventurer to find and solve the problem. Find your way to her sacred Sphere, and speak to the Crystal Dolphin who contains her power.

Unearthly Bonds:
The realm of Unearthly Bonds is a Guild where humans and dragons join together in lifelong partnership. The Guild House is spread over a large area containing a pristine lake, meadows, classrooms, and pavilions.

However, as with any place, a criminal element has taken root underground. Criminals venture forth, and now a necklace has gone missing. Should you choose to help, you will be deputized to find and return the stolen necklace.

Drageran Empire:
Welcome to the Empire. The land lives in a careful balance between peace and war. However something threatens to disrupt that balance. An assassin has appeared in the Empire. But who is the target? That is less clear. You are hereby recruited to find the assassin and rescue the target.

Aardwolf Zoological Park:
The Aardwolf Zoological Park is filled with wonderous animals of every sort. Ever wanted to come face to face with the Grendel, or pet the silky soft fur of a chinchilla? Well, now’s your chance.

Unfortunately, it’s vacation time for Aardwolf, and all the snotty, platter-faced brats and arrogant, snide teens are out in force at the zoo, and only one of the Zookeepers is doing his job. Head on over to the Manager’s office to see if you can lend a hand!

• There is a new command called ‘glance’ which is basically the same as ‘look’ but does not show room desc or map. (Cera)
• Navigators casting doorway can now reach level 200/201 characters. All other checks still apply.
• Removed lag on ‘page’ when the target is yourself. (Rathik)
• With spelltags, true seeing was not giving ‘already affect’ tags when you alread have all the detects, making it constantly try to recast.

With this type of trigger now in place, it makes sense to revisit room progs and command blocking to add the new types of prog.

Tasks Command:
The goal/task system has been rewritten to help with the problem of keeping
track of hints you get at various stages. The ‘tasks’ command now shows a
summary of hints as you unlock them, making it much easier to work with.
Full details on this can be seen at:

Background information on the taskhint system

To see the old abbreviated list, use the ‘tasklist’ command instead.

Additional new arguments to ‘tasks’ are:

tasks : see all open tasks.
tasks here : see open tasks in current area.
tasks : see open tasks for a goal.
tasks all : see all tasks for a goal.
tasks : see a single goal task.

Goals Command:
The ‘goals’ command now shows all visible goals (there are none hidden at
time of writing).

If the argument to goals exactly matches a goal keyword, you will still
get the goal detail page for that goal. Otherwise, new options are:

‘goals open’ : Show only open goals.
‘goals completed’ : Show only completed goals’.
‘goals [from] [to]‘ : Filter by level range.
‘goals ‘ : Search based on a name.

The default sort is by level, these options can be combined with any of
the above:

‘goals … byname’ : Sort by name.
‘goals … byrating’ : Sort by difficulty.

The number of goals completed also now shows in score under quest time.

2 new areas were added:

Cloud City of Gnomalin:
Stories are told of an ancient race of short, stumpy little people who stole children and left gifts. The legend says that they were always about, but hidden from ordinary sight. Over the centuries their population diminished until most thought gnomes were the stuff of fantasy or the imaginary playmates of children. Recently, however, evidence of the existence of gnomes has appeared in the southern reaches of the mesolar. In the midst of a grassy field, a flattened area is sometimes occupied by a huge airship designed and constructed by the gnomes to transfer cargo and visitors to the city held within the clouds above. Quite amazingly, the city seems to hold together just fine, although the wind does cause slight shifts in the walls now and then. Venture forth, then, and brave the flight. The Cloud City of Gnomalin awaits you.

Adaldar:
Long ago, in the beginning of time, Mannyn the High God swept his hand across his realm, creating two powerful people who were to live in harmony with one another the Elves and the Trolls were born. Mannyn had 2 sons, Aethoryn and the eldest, Gleon. Mannyn, after countless centuries of ruling his domain, began to tire. He wanted to move out and see the world. He finally decided it was time to leave, he placed the control of his lands in the hands of his two sons, and quietly left. It wasn’t long before Gleon (being the Eldest) started to covet his brothers half, he felt that succession should have fallen completely into his hands. Gleon gathered the Trolls and formed them into an army, launching them against the elves. Aethoryn horrified by his brothers actions, quickly united the elvish tribes under one banner, and formed up for defense of the lands and cities.

War has raged for countless years, Manynn finally returned to reclaim his kingdom, but instead, he found a battlefield, he visited his sons, and after asking them what had happened, they ignored him, war continuesto rage.

The stock areas New Ofcol and Circus were removed. New Ofcol because Gnomalin replaces it, and Circus because it was linked in New Ofcol and the number of people using the area was close to zero. Removing all stock areas is still the plan, with the exception of Descent to Hell and the Underdark. There were both Farside areas which we have permission to continue using.

The Dwarven Kingdom was redone by Arial to add a nice new low level goal.

The Amusement Park is different than most of the goals, it’s just meant to be fun on the rides. Most of the rides/games are also playable after you complete the goals.

Both of these goals also have unique rewards that you might not even notice what they are right away … but are very useful in a number of situations.

• There is a new command called ‘rawcolors’. Turning this on will make the MUD send all output to you with color codes on. Useful for cut/ pasting with color, but I wouldn’t try to play that way.

• With spelltags, true seeing was not giving ‘already affect’ tags when you alread have all the detects, making it constantly try to recast.

Feedback welcome as always. Particularly interesting in your thoughts on the new ‘goals’ and ‘tasks’ commands. I personally found Hotel Orlando and All in a Fayke Day much more fun to go through with the task logs tracking the hints.

The website was moved earlier in the week and the test port / builder’s port have been off site for a few weeks now. So this is it, once we get a comfort level with stability, the T1 can go. Overlapping costs for a month or two is a pain, but worth it to make sure the MUD is in good hands at Softlayer before being fully committed. The Aardwolf.com website and the test port are at Liquidweb in Lansing, Michigan. Hopefully this means a situation in which both are down would be extremely unusual.

3 new goals also came in with the reboot:

• All in a Fayke Day which is a very detailed and complex quest and definitely earns its ‘difficult’ rating.

• ST:TNG which is smaller and more straightforward quest, but still has a couple of twists and an optional bonus extra.

• Rosewood Castle which is a remake of Amador to lose the Wheel of Time theme. Not that there is anything wrong with the Wheel of Time, but we’d like to work out the areas based on other’s intellectual property over time and it made sense to change this one while it was being converted for goals. ST:TNG on the other hand would be a complete rewrite of the area - that one can wait.

• The client now supports ; for command separation, making it much more useful for pasting speedwalks into.

• There is a split-screen mode for reading scrollback more conveniently.

As always, feedback is welcome. Is anyone reading this, or is the time better spent on the MUD itself?

Check out the screenshot below, hard to believe it is even a mud:

The following links give all the necessary info on the client:

Aardwolf client download page

List of available plugins

Aardwolf client screenshots

Client help and FAQ

Comments, bug reports, etc welcome…

There are new goals and tasks in the following areas:

• The Death Gate - Lumina
• Sirens Oasis Resort - Nikkei
• Pet Store - Tymme
• Gallows Hill - Domain
• Gilda and the Dragon - Citron
• Island of Lost Time - Citron
• Faerie Tales 1- Citron

Each of these areas has a helpfile listing basic info on the goal.

Still looking for help converting other areas if anyone is interested.

• Campaign targets will now automatically be sorted by area when the campaign is requested for area type campaigns. Room name campaigns remain the same. (Ivru)

• There is a new wish - ‘wish for popularity’ adds 40 more friend slots.

• There are several new tags types (see ‘tags’ command) and the format change previously mentioned is now in place.

• Some shopkeepers buy nothing at all and are there only to sell, these remain the same. All other shopkeepers will now buy all item types.

• Whenever an item is sold to a shopkeeper, the price it will pay is reduced based on how many it already has. This reduction amount has been lowered - you will generally get more for duplicate items.

• The amount of gold shopkeepers replenish has been increased greatly. It took around 3.5 hours for a shopkeeper to go from 0 gold to full, now it takes about 30 minutes.

• Running with the new mapnames/mapexits tags on was not showing them, now fixed.

• Using ‘listen’ on a mob now uses ’sayto’ rather than ’say’, so only the person doing the listen sees it.

• ‘Quest reset’ is now a global alias to ‘qreset self’. (Feight)

• It was possible to steal 1 gold from mobs that don’t actually have any, ultimately leading to what you see below. Now fixed. (Felt)

• You get -1 gold coins from the hacked corpse of the High Priestess.

• Fixed ’seared by’ message not showing weapon name correctly. (Culpable)

• Blockexit was working even if you didnt have the skill yet. Now fixed. (Craven)

• Fixed trailing space issues in ‘find’ and ‘goal [whatever]‘. (Nulonna)

• Typing ‘rebuild’ with a third argument anything other than valid trains arguments will now give an error rather than proceed with a normal rebuild. (Starky)

• Minimum chance to succeed at blockexit (regardless of stats) reduced slightly. (Windu)

One of the problems we consistently faced was how to handle configuration. If the MUD needs a player to have specific options on for a plugin to work, we have to make sure they’re actively in the game and at a prompt to send the commands to activate them. The alternative is relying on players to manage numerous tag and config settings themselves. This is not practical for new users.

To try to solve this, we experimented with various tags but it was never quite right. Nick suggested we look into the possibility of telnet negotiation and after some research we settled on using telnet code 102.

The first phase was to make the mud accept telnet 102 codes because most clients can send them. The general structure of a telnet sequence of this type is: IAC,SB,102,data,data,…,IAC,SE. To send these in Mushclient you do:

SendPkt (string.char (255, 250, 102, 5, 1, 255, 240)

To send the same in zmud:

#sendprompt %char(255)%char(250)%char(102)%char(5)%char(1)
%char(255)%char(240)

This tells the MUD to do something, as if you had entered a command. However, the point of this is that it happens at a level of communication lower than anything to do with commands, timeouts in the game or player state. It works completely independently of where your character is at.

The particular sequence above turns on channel tags. This would work if you were afk or in note mode. If you were at a login prompt (no character loaded yet), it would remember those flags and attach them to your character when you logged in. The only time this wouldn’t work is if you were link dead as there is no socket to receive the options. As the mushclient plugins initialize themselves on connection, this is not an issue.

For enabling plugins and making sure the player has the right tags on in the mud this is extremely helpful. Any client that can send the above codes can use these sequences. The list so far is provided below. To use any of these, send IAC,SB,102,option,1 or 2 (on or off), IAC,SE:

So, this solved the problem of the client being able to affect player settings in the mud without needing to care if they’re at a prompt to receive the commands. As a bonus, it also cuts out a lot of “spam” the player would see as output from regular commands sent to turn tags on for each plugin.

What it did not solve is the problem of how can the client know for sure whether you’re active, in note mode, during a login sequence or otherwise paused and unable to receive game commands. By default, clients would be able to send these sequences but not receive them - the client would eat them as telnet sequences not negotiated.

Nick decided this whole setup had enough value to other muds to be worth implementing in the client itself, and did so somewhat extensively. Plugins can listen to telnet 102 sequences and even “wake” and do something on receiving one. You can see his own post about how this was integrated into Mushclient by reading the Mushclient 4.31 release notes.

Having the client capable of receiving these telnet negotiation sequences means that the same can happen in reverse - Aardwolf can send status back to the client without the client having to trigger on anything.

For example, the tick timer in use in the custom Mushclient plugin is always in sync - it receives a telnet message on every tick regardless of the player being in note mode etc. For controlling plugins such as spellups, whenever you go from note mode to active mode to afk to sleeping, the client knows about it.

The telnet sequences being sent from the mud to the client, once type 102 negotiation has been completed, are:

Whenever the player switches from one of these states to the other, the codes are sent. These are easily extendable. For example, it probably makes sense to have a 100,8 which means “Sleeping/Resting”, although this information is already available in statmon.

The only other notification being sent from the mud to client via this mechanism at the time of writing is 101,1 which means “the mud just ticked”.

Unfortunately, for this half of the project, most clients won’t be able to make use of the messages unless the clients themselves are changed to negotiate receiving telnet 102 sequences then make the data available to their scripting engine. CMUD can accept arbitary telnet SB sequences (see comments), but is the only one I’m aware of other than Mushclient. If you know of others, please post in the comments.

The ‘102′ protocol has the potential to be extremely useful for many things between the client and the MUD server. As there is no fixed protocol after the 102, MUD owners could provide many messages available for consumption by players of their games interested in creating their own scripts.

This whole thing may not go any further than Aardwolf <–> Mushclient, or could become a new standard widely used. Either way, it is cool to have been part of creating something new like this and even if nobody else adopts it, we’ll get a lot of value out of it. More to follow…

In many ways, these are harder than converting everything to Lua was. The conversion to Lua had a very well defined outcome for each prog that was converted - it should do the same as it did in ROM mobprogs with the exception being some of those issues that were fixed by additional options in Lua.

The goals system requires a deep understanding of the level in question then deciding how best to lay out the tasks. Once that is done, you have to figure out the ways people might break the tasks then once testers get at it, each area has a few crazy day of lots of posts/fixes to be made. More on this can be seen at the original “conversion to goals” walkthrough.

Some enhancements are still needed to the goal interface itself, but for the most part the addition of the help files for each area that has a goal is answering most of the questions people have - other than how to solve the quests themselves that is.

While reviewing the areas converted so far, we’ve found some common mistakes on style and created a list for other area converters to watch out for. While these are about the goal conversion, they can easily apply to any kind of area design in general. Posting them to the blog will make them more accessible to people while they work on the area conversions:

1. Paths to solving?:

In general, dont make finding a goal itself be a big puzzle. Within an area the clues can be obscure (see ft2), but they MUST be there, somewhere. Don’t assume the player knows Aardwolf and will automatically try things such as ‘listen’ that an experienced player would. This is why the lower level call of heroes etc say “blah blah blah. Perhaps you should listen to him?”

If a task requires a player to figure out how to do something, don’t make them also play a game of “guess the syntax”. If I have to feed a dragon to get to the next step, don’t make “feed the elf to the dragon” or some other obscure syntax be the only thing that works. I would be able to give the food, or just type “feed dragon”. If you have a “push button” trigger, make “press button” work too. It takes 10 extra seconds.

2. Hanging Items/Tasks:

You might have one task that gives an item and the next task assumes the player must have the item. This may not be true, items can be lost in all kinds of ways and while saying “Dont lose it!” is useful advice, it doesn’t help if someone now has a goal that is uncompletable, ever.

There has to be a way around this. If you want to make it so that not having the item means they have to start over, fine. If you want to make it harder to get the item a second time, fine. But it needs to be possible. If items are being used to mark some event, remember you can also use taskflags.

Sometimes players need to figure out the correct mob to give an item to. For example, in the first version of Siren’s Oasis resort, you had to find the right contestant, but giving the quest item to the wrong one meant they just kept it. Not a big deal if the mob can just be killed to get it back, but nokill mobs or mobs much bigger than the general level of the area will need to have a give trigger for ‘all’ that returns the item.

3. Say Vs Sayto:

By far the most common error is sending messages intended for the character triggering a script to the entire room. This is probably because it was widespread in old mobprogs, but they should be cleaned up as we work through the area for lua. For example:

say("Well done "..ch.name.."!")

Anyone else in the room would see this. When a say is directed at the player, use:

sayto(ch,"Well done "..ch.name..!")

The same problem occurs a lot with emote. Instead of using:

emote(" thanks you for your help!")

Which everyone in the room would see, use:

echoat(ch,"$n thanks you for your help!",LP_CAPS)

4. Visibility:

Make sure that mobs opening goals have all detects and are nomove. In most cases they should also be nodamage/nokill. You may also need to make mobs that give/close tasks also have detects. You do not have to make these nokill, but consider the flow of your quest overall and how a mob being killed might affect it.

In lower level quests in particular, checking if a mob is alive in the game somewhere (mobexists) and giving a different message to the player may be necessary.

5. Bottable Items:

The counter to #3. Watch out for situations where items can be repeatedly gotten over and over very easily, particularly if they have any value for sale to a store etc. If an item has value only as part of an AQ, you might want to consider putting an appropriately long timer on it using:

obj.timer = 3600 — seconds, this would be an hour.

6. General cosmetics:

A number of scripts had to be cleared up where there were echos over 80 characters that don’t wrap nicely in a client that autowraps. If you have 3 lines 100 characters long each, they’re going to look ugly: 80 char line,
then a 20 char line, then an 80 char line, etc.

Put spaces in the output where it makes sense and unless it really breaks the look of the area, combine multiple says/saytos into a single one.

With the academy, a lot of the time spent on it was probably in this, but it really does make an important overall difference.

Likewise, if a mob’s script talks about waiting a while before doing something (example … a few minutes later the king returns with…), put a pause in there.

7. Flooding Inventory / Abusing nokill mobs:

Giving/receiving items play a huge role in AQs. If the mob is questable, killable and part of an receive/give prog, then the received item should be purged/destroyed when prog fires. If the mob is nokill, then its inventory shouldnt be floodable. It also should not be used as a storage such that one can give it items, log out and log in alt to steal it back from the mob.

Those are the most common issues so far. Avoid these and if your quest works at all, it will probably have a pretty easy ride through testing. None of these are overly complex, but combined really make a difference to the overall feel of an area quest.

Combined with the stat window and small map window - this puts it light years ahead of the standard interface for new players whether that is the java client, fmud, telnet or even a mainstream mud client that hasn’t been configured or had plugins added yet.

The video itself is rough, but gets across the idea. The link below is a short movie file showing movement between a few areas and Mesolar with the bigmap plugin on. Notice that it shows the continent name at the top, coordinates at the bottom and minimizes itself when you leave a continent. If you cross the border between one continent and another, the screen is updated with the correct continent bigmap.

Aardwolf Bigmap Movie

Development continues on additional plugins. Move updates to follow..

There are new goals and tasks in Childs Play, Peaceful Giant Village, Hotel Orlando and Faerie Tales 2.

These are generally more advanced than the goals so far (excluding the academy) and can require a lot more exploring to solve. Faerie Tales 2 in particular is difficult.

Read ‘help goal solving’ for tips if you really get stuff on a goal. Or just move on and try later. None of these HAVE to be solved to make it through the game.

• The ‘goals’ command now has information on recommended level and relative difficulty (for the level) when you type ‘goals [goalname]

• There is a new command called ‘tags’ that allows you to put tags around various parts of game output to make scripting easier. Just ‘tags’ with no arguments to see a list. Sometimes you will want to connect from a different client - typing “tags off” will temporarily turn off your tags without losing your settings. Just use “tags on” to turn them back on.

• There is another new command called ’statmon’. This dumps out your stats in a format that is easy for clients to parse, after every prompt, or if prompts are off, whenever you would normally receive a prompt. See ‘help statmon’ for what the stats are in order.

Although it is not officially released, anyone who download the mushclient test and is comfortable with changing their connection settings to the live MUD instead should be able to use those tools now. The stat window relies on ’statmon’ being on. The map window requires maptags and ‘tags mapnames’ plus ‘tags mapexits’ to be on if you want those in your map window.

• Telekinesis was doing the wrong damage type. Now does bash damage as stated in the help. (Magish)

• Yell no longer goes through note write. (Bremem)

• Identify now shows duration on lights. (Kuw)

• When using something like ’school of horror’ as an argument to areas and speedwalks, the intent was always to match the whole string, not each word. Now fixed. Also, Speedwalks command will no longer search builder name. Areas command still does. (Dras)

• Fixed shortmap being off with tags captured - an extra blank line was being displayed so if you were redirecting the map elsewhere, you’d get an extra line between room