Aardwolf – new skills and code changes, Dec 30th 2008

Important MUD changes this reboot – December 30th 2008:

In addition to the changes listed below, an important player file update was made this reboot. Objects, rooms and skills are now stored in compressed format. This has been heavily reviewed on the test port but please let us know of any issues. Compressing files this way will allow us to store more pfile info in the future by lowering overall disk i/o – disk access is currently out largest bottleneck.

New Necromancer Subclass Ability – Zombify:

The necromancer spell ‘zombify’ can be used to corrupt the soul of mobs, effectively turning them undead. Once a mob has been zombified, the necromancer bonuses from spells such as strike undead, blast undead and necrocide will work against those targets. This spell does not work against players, clan guards or mobs already undead. The save is based on shadow damage type, so mobs immune to shadow are also immune to zombify.

New Priest Subclass Ability – Pray for Absolution:

There is a new priest spell called ‘pray for absolution’. For an appropriate tithe, a priest can cast this at any time and be forgiven for their sins. For a cost of 25 gold for each point of alignment shift, the priest’s alignment will be set to 2500.

New Harmer Subclass Ability – Pray for Damnation:

There is a new harmer spell called ‘pray for damnation’. The harmers god demands payment in blood rather than gold. If the caster does not have enough health to sacrifice, their prayers are ignored. For a cost of 5 hit points per alignment shift, the harmer’s alignment will be set to -2500. This means that only larger players can move from 2500 to -2500 as it requires a 25,000 hp sacrifice.

Other code changes this reboot

• Have modified the Psi skill ‘timeshifting’ so that it doesn’t block the Timeshift dodge, but approximately halves its success rate. Timeshifting is under-appreciated, the lowered lag on ALL commands (including attacks) really can make a difference over time.
• The Knight subclass no longer has any lag on a successful charge.
• After casting Eye of Warning or using Entrap, a character will have a 5 minute ‘noquit’ affect. When the game is rebooting or an ice-age is pending, these events override the ‘noquit’ affect and allow you to quit anyway.
• Clan guards have been changed a little:
  • Their stats are now even, wis/con and luck are no longer lower than other stats.
  • Their primary class is random, so is their subclass within their primary class.
  • Their actual stat amounts are no longer randomized (although it was only ever within a +/- 10% range. This is not apply to hp, mana or moves – they are still random within a range similar to the old ‘dice’ ranges.
• Increased the effectiveness of the ‘sharp’ flag some.
• Tell triggers and speech triggers will now ignore the following characters: ! . ‘ ” ; , . This includes the speechexact and tellexact triggers. The exception is where a prog has an “all” trigger and then the builder is doing the speech compare within the prog itself. This means that, for example, if a trigger is ‘leave!’ then ‘leave’ or ‘leave.’ will also trigger it. The question mark was intentionally left out of this.
• Fixed a bug in spell fail tags – spells such as inertial barrier that can only be cast on self would report an {sfail} tag with the second parameter implying it had been cast on another.