James, a traveling gambler, has been missing in action for quite some time now. Although there is no reason to fear for his safety, one wonders where he is and what he is up to.

Prepare yourself to enter a world where the gambler is king and the kings are cards. Where the games come to life and life is one big game. Have some fun in the house of cards.

Winterlands lies in the frozen hills of Gelidus. It is a peaceful place with the usual lords, ladies, and occassional royalty stopping by for a visit. Life at the keep is never dull what with weddings being planned and the stories to be heard from its residents. There are secrets in Winterlands, secrets that become more obvious after wandering the halls of the keep. What are the relations between the people of Winterlands and the ever present direwolves?

There are whispers in darkened corners of taverns all around Aardwolf. From the Dragon Sea to the Western Ocean ships have been disappearing, leaving no trace of the cargo or passengers they were carrying. The kingdoms of Aardwolf claim there is no cause for alarm, but those who frequent the docks think otherwise. Warships laden with cannons have set sail from all the major ports. None of them have been seen returning either. The trade companies have tripled their prices to afford the heavily armed mercenaries they’ve hired to protect their cargo. Those who live by the sea now shutter their windows even on warm, calm evenings and none but the most brave and foolhardy sail the seas these days. There is one word common to all the tongues that whisper in those darkened corners…Pirates.

The pirates have created a contest between several of the pirate captains. The smuggler is betting on one to win and would like your help in winning his wager. Will you help him?

Since the beginning of time, the forces of light and dark have battled. Many years have passed and no one is quite sure why anymore. The light side blames the dark for their evil ways and uncaring attitudes. The dark side blames the light for their easy going, happy-go-lucky ways. Only one person can truly sort all this out. Malcrom has been trying to determine who is truly to blame for centuries. All he lacks are the stories from each side, but he is stuck in the clouds and cannot retrieve the stories from each. Once he gets both sides of the story, surely he will be able to figure out who started it all.

The Overlord has imprisoned his people in a dungeon, and is obsessed with destroying the rangers. Once they are destroyed, he will turn to the next group and destroy them too. The other masters are turning a blind eye to this destruction because the Overlord is lining their pockets with gold. Outsiders have nicknamed the dungeon the Deathtrap Dungeon because no one is expected to escape alive. These people need a hero. Will you be that hero?

Far to the west, past the domain of men, a deep and permanent autumn has settled on the land. The trees stand half-dead and barren, hostage to the constant chill in the air. Streams and creeks flow slowly, their water-ways clogged with leaves. The inhabitants of the land wait, and hope, for a new beginning - a new summer. But year after year, this summer has not come. Though the landscape blazes with autumn red, orange, and gold, these vibrant colours betray the desolation within. Under the beauty is a sickness which threatens to bring the lands into ruin. There are whispers that the fallen lord Fetch, an ancient sorceror, is the source of the unholy blight, his corrupt magic choking the last vestiges of life from the earth.

Conveted Area and Goal - Imperial Nation:

The Star Wars area has been replaced with Imperial Nation. As this is a conversion of an existing area for copyright reasons rather than a new area or an area replacement, you should notice the following:

• Your explored in the area remains the same.
• Any items you had in Starwars will convert to the equivalent items in Imperial Nation.
• Any portals you had to Starwars should now go to the equivalent room in Imperial Nation.
• If you quit in starwars, or have a cp mob in it, they should have become the equivalent rooms/mobs in imperial nation.

The information on the goal itself is:

The Imperial Nation is ruled by Emperor Paliste. He maintains his rule
with the help of the Seven and the creations of the Mad Scientist. Under
his tyranical rule, pain and suffering have become a way of life . Now
a rebellion has formed. Are you willing to help overthrow the Imperial
Nation, and bring peace back to the lands?

You stand before a great swamp, spreading out wide over the distance before
you. Carefully continuing onward you venture into the darkest, most
ominous section of the swamp. A sudden feeling of dread overcomes you,
and a deep coldness surrounds you. A loud voice booms, ‘You cannot break
the curse, these souls all belong to me!’ A heavy presence fills the air,
a noise behind you! No! There in front of you! Beside you! You whirl to
face the movement but nothing. ‘Muhahaha! You silly fool, you cannot
defeat me! I am the blackness, the shadows, and nothing at all. Beg me for
a quick death and join the other cursed beings in my domain!’ Drawing your
sword you shout a vow to make this fiend bleed before your death. Laughter
greets you, and two strange billowy forms confront you. One carries a
strange blade of shadow while the other clasps its hands together, long
claws showing. ‘Come, give in to your death and join us brother, the pain
will not last…’ Swinging wildly, your blade meets nothing, a sharp blow
caresses your head, and darkness comes swiftly.

Various creatures of the fens have spread their tokens out amongst the
others in the hopes of gathering help for their plight. Will you be the
one to break the curse?

Long ago the Amazon nation was at war with the centaurs. The three
greatest Amazons stood side by side in the battle. Solari wielded the time
staff in combat at Queen Melosa’s side. By brandishing the artifact,
Solari was able to stop time for a moment. Then Jules focused the power of
the aqua mirror onto the attacking centaurs. The attack damaged the
creatures, and Queen Melosa used the time to throw the pearl of wisdom
high into the air. A searing white light filled the battlefield, and when
it subsided, their enemies were gone; but so were the Amazon’s greatest
artifacts. Years have passed and the artifacts remain missing. The Amazon
nation still searches for these items to help their nation grow in
strength. Will you help them recover their missing artifacts?

Lasher / Aardwolf Interview at MUDdy Hobo

When death looms large; and light grows dim; when the chill air steals the last breaths from your lungs; and eternal night closes in — a shadow of death flickers into being. It is slight and fleeting, its stuff as insubstantial as shadows of light and dark, and soon it drifts apart like curls of smoke. And yet. There are rumors, as shifting and subtle as the shadows themselves, that there are those who can see and catch shadows of death, and collect, cut, and shape them. If so, their arcane techniques are closely guarded. Nobody knows who they are, or where they come from, or what they do with the shadows they catch. They are steeped in secrecy so deep it has become a virulent contagion: plots writhe within plots, ayers of concealment accrete upon layers. The twisted thread of rumor connects these deathly shadow masters with a prosperous bank in a major city. And as far as a name, there is only the “Umbrambuler” — one who walks in shadow.

Many years ago, an asylum was opened for all who were afflicted of mind or body. The Nispeung, together with a very famous wizard named Salin Sutrovld, forsook their nomadic lifestyle and settled in the wilderness to help those in need of their care.

No one was awake when the Order came… and few survived the night. Their leader, Seb Ligalt, wrought havoc and chaos to surpass the most terrifying tales of evil. They killed many, and the rest they imprisoned or enchanted to use in their pursuit of forbidden knowledge.

Have you ever wanted a career in the airlines? Wanted to be a pilot, or a captain, maybe an admiral? Polaris Star Airlines is always looking for a few good people and there are plenty of opportunities for advancement. There is an airship doing business in the Empire of Talsa right now! Go on board, find out if you can rise to your greatest potential.

With their advanced knowledge of combat tactics, soldiers have the ability to flank an exit. While a soldier has an exit flanked, it is very difficult for an opponent to flee or retreat through that exit. A soldier can only focus on one exit at a time, but multiple soldiers in a room can each flank a different exit.

The chances of an opponent being able to retreat through a flanked exit are determined by strength and dexterity. Because the soldier has the upper hand in a flanking situation, having higher stats then them does not ensure any level of success - it just makes it more likely.

Priests are able to use their holy abilities to create a temporary haven in a room, making it somewhat safer. The effect of this spell depends on the status of the room it is used in:

• If the room is entrapped, the trap is removed but the room itself does not get a haven effect.
• If the room is PK, the PK flag is temporarily removed but can still be put back via entrap.
• If the room is not PK, the room cannot be entrapped while the Haven effect is active.

While the Haven affect is active on a room that room is not considered a PK room. This does not mean no PK at all - usually rules apply. For example, you can still attack a (WANTED) player just as you would be able to in any other standard room.

The haven duration and recovery times are based on the caster’s wisdom and luck.

Priests are able to summon the good in their holy power to protect other good aligned players within their party from the effects of Desecration.

When cast, this spell will add an affect that resists unholy influences to all good aligned players in the priests group. The main effect of this is that the holy shield spell causes desecration to be ignored. It also adds some resistance to shadow and negative damage.

Duration and Recovery time are determined by wisdom and luck. The duration is shorter than desecration and the recovery time is longer. If there is nobody in the group able to receive a holy shield, the recovery timer is not added.

• As announced on Jan 22nd (Announce note #842) the Keepall wish is now 7,000qps and adjustments costs on wishes have been lowered by anything from 20-40%. There will be no refunds for past purchases and there are no further reductions planned, so no need to worry about buying a wish now then it lowering later. Not to say that there won’t ever be any, but none are planned and if that changes, notice will be given.
• Output is now combined for sacrifice, works same as the other combined outputs except total gold is shown. Output is also combined for keep/unkeep.
• You will no longer ‘autoshare’ gold received from sacrificing. Necessary to be able to combine output.
• Ouput is now combined for ’sell all’. Note that haggle and clantax messages are also combined with just a total shown, so if you have the ‘quietsell’ config option set to reduce spam, you might want to turn it back off to see these messages. Sell is the most complex of these so far and ‘fence’ will be very similar, so will let sell get tested out before converting fence.
• It is no longer possible to wake other player’s pets using ‘wake’.
• Fixed the ‘You get You are carrying too many items…’ message when trying to take items out of a container on the floor.
• ‘Scan .’ now works again as an abbreviation for ’scan here’.
• Dual Wield will now improve a little quicker than it did. It *is* still a slow skill to improve.
• It is now possible to resonate keys, but they can’t get stats.
• Adding the ‘check’ option to spellup will show the spells that WOULD be cast rather than actually casting them.
• Changed the fail messages on protection good/evil when trying to cast the other spell.
• There is a new room flag that prevents items from being dropped in the room. It is currently set at Aylor recall and Aard Hotel. Builders please note, this was not added as a wake to make mazes impossible to navigate and shouldn’t be used for that. It is to help with spam in high traffic areas.
• Stats for ‘Holy Intervention’ is now Int+Con not Str+Con.
• There is a new object flag ‘restrung’ that will show in identify. From this point forward, when an imm strings an item that flag will be set. It cannot be set going back because many item descriptions change while the version of the item you have keeps its original description, particularly with clan items. So, we can’t just compare the item you have to the item in the editor.
• With this change in, it is now possible to restring clan items. Usual rules / costs apply.

Your thoughts are appreciated, as always.

A cold icy trail has been packed into the deep snow through the mountains. Passing through the deep mountains. On your way there you notice odd folk who seem to not belong in this cold frigid wasteland. Passing by the many on the path the conversations are not what you would expect. Many seem to be in pain or need a healer. The passing travelers speak of a place which has healers who care not from where you came or what is wrong. They speak of an icy emergency room for those badly wounded. Some of the talk speaks of needing gold or insurance, for like many things in this world, not much is without a price.

Canyon Memorial Hospital is looking for additional nurses to help out around the hospital. If you feel you have the skills and ability, perhaps you should apply.

As Lord Takeda prepares for war, warriors and soldiers aren’t the only things preparing.

Plots and rumours have reared their heads. Prepare your swords and mind to help Lord Daimyo keep his throne.

The villagers of Raganatittu have prayed to their gods for help; help against disease, and help against the dangerous creatures that compete for their niche in the jungle between the Raganatittu River and the mountain ranges to the east. It appears that their prayers may be answered. Ganesha, the elephant god has arrived in the village. Will help arrive from an unlikely quarter?

Harmers are able to use a darker side of their holy magic to surround themselves with an aura of dread. The power of this aura is so great that it interferes with the protective value of a white aura of sanctuary. Any attack made by a harmer using desecration will significantly reduce the level of protection provided by sanctuary on the target. The amount of reduction is based on the wisdom of the harmer.

When fighting mobs, harmers with extremely high wisdom may find that sanctuary is ignored completely. When fighting other players, it is not quite completely ignored, but gets very close.

The recovery time when casting desecration reduces as the Harmers wisdom and luck increase.

Note: Mobs with sanctuary tend to have more exp because (A) they are killed less and (B) there is also a 10-15% base bonus for mobs that repop with sanctuary.

Guardians have the ability to safeguard another character. If a character being safeguarded is attacked while their Guardian is in the room, the Guardian will automatically rescue them. If the character attacking the safeguarded character aims back to them, the Guardian will continue to automatically rescue them for as long as the Safeguard affect is up.

How quickly the Guardian rescues the target and the duration of the Safeguard affect are determined by the Guardians intellect and constitution.

• The cleric changes to multicast are no longer affected by int, it is now wisdom only.
• The ranger spell ‘Summon Life’ is now level 14. However, your effective level (for tiers, level at which you can cast) has to be at least the same level as the minimum level of an area to summon life in it.
• There is a new syntax to ’scan’ - using ’scan [filter]‘ will show only mobs with that name. The directions and ‘here’ still override the filter.
• When you try to flee and a player with blockexit is in the way, you will find it harder to escape when their dex is significantly higher than yours. This may need tweaking further in either direction. Blockexit should not be 100%, but when there is a huge stat difference it should take a few rounds on average.
• It is no longer possible to flee from Terminate or Backstab damage.
• There is a change to drop, get and put so that when you move multiple copies of the same item, output will be combined.
  
  Inventory has worked this way for a while, but that is the most simple scenario - you are simply viewing a list of inventory, there is no echo to anyone else in the room, no secondary messages (such as ‘A flaky items crumbles to dust’) and we always know who the viewer is. Once this has been in use a while and is working ok I will expand it to cover give, sell, sacrifice, etc.

Through a deadly valley pass between two cliffs lies the even deadlier Fire Swamp. The swamp itself is home to amazing creatures as well as many perils. How the swamp got its name is not so surprising, but the everlasting war between the fire and water of the swamp continues on. Currently, the river holds sway over the land, but the fire lizards that call this place home want to turn it over to their namesake. If you wish to help the fire lizards, seek out the will-o’-the-wisp.

New Goal - The Fables City of Stone:

The fabled city of stone is under siege. You must choose if your destiny will be one of good or evil. Choose wisely which side you will aid in the coming battle. Spies run rampant, and turncoats are around every corner. So which will you choose.

• Skills can be considered ’same as’, so it will only attempt to cast one of them (default order is by skill#). For example, on this port sanctuary and biofeedback are considered the same. I’m sure some spells that should be flagged were missed in this, so please post as necessary on bugs.
• Skills/spells can be flagged as setting an affect and will not be cast by ’spellup’ if you already have that affect. Sanctuary is a good example of this.
• It will now handle skills. I have to set the command name on those skills where the command does not exactly match the name, otherwise they should be good to go.

There is a new command calls ‘forgetskill’ (forgetspell) also works. You can use this to add/remove a list of up to 30 skills and spells that will be considered ‘forgotten’. A ‘forgotten’ skill:

• Will not be auto-cast by the spellup command.
• Will not appear in ‘practice’ - does still show in ‘learned’.
• Will not show in the ’skills’ and ’spells’ command unless ‘all’ option is used.
• When they DO show in skills/spells, will show in blue.

One way to use this, for example if you have protection good and evil and want your spellup command always to use prot good, simply put protection evil on the list. This isn’t necessary in reverse because they are already flagged mutually exclusive for ’spellup’ and it defaults to protection evil first.

• The Tree of Life area has an extension that will be particularly interesting to Necromancers.
• The max trains you can get while gaining a level (ie, not a powerup) has been increased. On average, going from 1 to 201 will yield around 20% more trains.
• Land of the Fire Newts has been removed - it was a stock area.
• When testing for ’saves’ versus a spell, the affect of STR on the part of the caster and the affect of CON on the victim has been reduced. This will make int/wis more important in whether or not a spell is saved while Con (target) and Str (attacker) now have about the same affect as luck. Level difference also now counts for less which is either good or bad depending what you’re attacking.
• Whenever a spell is cast on you, there is a strength of the spell associated with it which factors into how hard it is to cancel/cure. Whenever you try to cure one of these spells and fail, the strength of the spell is reduced, so eventually you will succeed. This is just some background info. The change is that the amount of reduction on each failed cast has been doubled. Unlike the curative change, this one DOES apply to dispels - so each time someone fails to dispel you the amount the spells are weakened is higher. Overall effect is that this change has no affect on the first time you try to cancel/cure/dispel, but will make subsequent attempts increasingly easier.
• Casting curative spells on yourself such as dissolve will be harder to succeed while in combat. No change out of combat.
• Made a couple of changes to the ‘owned’ command:
  • If an item is in a container, and you are carrying it, owned will show the container rather than the area.
  • If an item you’re carrying is not in a container, nothing is shown you (hopefully) already know the area you’re in.
  • If an item is on the floor, the room name is shown in red.
• Note numbers will now wrap at 999,999 instead of 99,999. Not a big deal, more preparation for a bigger change. The number of lines in a note is now shown in note list as it used to be in V2.
• When an item has the magic flag, it cannot be created with major/minor creation. Sometimes items get into the game without the magic flag that should have it, and when the base item is fixed, existing copies of the item already in the game are not always caught. Major/Minor creation will now check if the base item as well as the instance of an item you are carrying has the magic flag.
• Reduced the lag on the ‘heal’ command a little.

Feedback always welcome, not sure if anyone is even still reading this.

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.

New Area and Goal - Realm of Deneria:

The small province of Deneria, was founded by settlers from the royal state of Fal’Shara. Many years ago, they left their previous home to avoid the invasion of the Artificiers. They finally found a nice place to settle, and the realm of Deneria was born. After some time had passed, many things popped up: The church of Miad’Bir, the druids to the south, and the secretive order of the Nuril. It was shortly after Ceol came into power that strange things started happening. People were dying, many violent creatures (such as kobolds, orcs and goblins) had invaded the forests, and an amythest dragon moving in. Things weren’t right, and suspicion was laid on Ceol.

New Area and Goal - Ketu Uplands:

Past the scarred autumn lands lies a place in turmoil. The nomadic Ketu people have wandered the cliffs and uplands for generation, making camp where they will, never staying for long. But the blight of the autumn lands has slowly begun to seep north eating at the trees, twisting and transforming it into something disgusting. Meanwhile, a great evil has migrated into the caverns, shaking the rock with its piercing cry. Its presence has brought others, lured in by its call and the prospect of blood.

The Ketu are becoming fewer in number. At first, they were safe in their uplands, free from the evil lurking below. But increasingly, the monsters become more and more brazen, staging attacks and raids on the Ketu encampments. As their people dwindle, they face a difficult decision: stay, and risk destruction; or leave, and allow their ancestral lands to fall to ruin.

• There are some changes to setwanted, mostly related to non-pk players using it. If you setwanted someone and you are unclanned or in a non-pk clan, you will receive a new affect that allows others to use setwanted on you for a period of 24 hours. This does not apply when you use setwanted on someone you already have revenge on, or when you use setwanted on yourself.

You can see players who have this affect using ‘who setwanted’. It does not show regular clanned players who can always be setwanted.

• The first free superhero is now a ‘quiet’ superhero. If someone particularly wants to pay for it to trigger double exp they can still use ’superhero loud’. The banner for a first time superhero has changed slightly to reflect this.

Builder/immortal related changes:

• ‘Who builder’ now works.
• Mpdump now shows the program code with line numbers. To see the prog without numbers, append the argument ‘nolines’.
• The ‘mptriggers’ command now shows the new trigger types.

The builder’s port tends to get neglected and usually has fewer people around to ask for help with lua and general building. As there are more people around on the test port, and the test port gets lua/building fixes before anywhere else, hopefully this will make things a little easier for the builders.

It also makes it easier to bring areas live as there we will only have to be concerned with keeping things in sync between two ports, not 3. Then there’s the obvious benefit of running one less copy of the MUD on the server.

If you have an inactive area that you’re interested in picking up again if there are more people around to ask for help then drop us a note on personal.


As always, your feedback, comments and questions on this update are welcomed.

The Old Cathedral:

The senior priest of the old cathedral, Aaron, is old and weak. He doesn’t
get around as well as he would wish. There are beings who would like to
takeover the cathedral for their own warped purposes. Although the reward
for a good deed done well may be a well done good deed…Aaron might be
able to reward the faithful who helps him.

Qong:

Qong! Is it country or creature? Or the sound of a gong? Perhaps you
have heard it in legend and song? If you find yourself lost on a sparkling
sea, and a gigantic shadow falls upon thee, well then look up and see.
Climb into the citadel, floating over the waves, and unravel the ruler from
rabble and slaves. Solve the riddle of Qong and welcome the day when all of
its wealth is a short wok away.

Who is the true big cheese in Qong? Is it Qong? Is it Jack? Take a spin
with a salesman through Qong, find the big cheese, and then return to him
again with a savory morsel of a similar substance to achieve your goal.

Lake Sen’narre:

The tritons of Sen’narre Lake are an old race. They understand the waters
like no one else. There is much to learn from them, and the elder is happy
to talk to visitors. In your quest for knowledge, you can put his teachings
to use as you explore the rest of the lake and surrounding land. But do not
neglect the other water-dwellers, for the simplest of creatures may
sometimes reveal ancient secrets, even without the aid of speech.

ShadowLands:

Beyond the vast wastelands that are the Shadowlands, the clans of Rokugan
gather in their camps, planning their next move against the evil army of
Fu-Leng.

Ye Ronins, warriors without daimyo, return to your home, and find a place
once again amongst your people.

Council of the Wyrm (1):

Ages ago, in a lost era, Aldanon, the death dragon and his minions ruled the
world through terror and fear while Abazel, the Great Demon unleashed his
creations upon the world. The creatures of good rose against the forces
of evil and sealed them in the Council of Wyrm. There to remain contained
until heroes could destroy them. All the heroes to date have failed. Do you
think you’re ready to become a hero?

Council of the Wyrm (2):

A good dragon is rumored to have been trapped within the Council of Wyrm.
After coming to Wyrm to help destroy the evil, and bring peace to the land,
the dragon was trapped. Help the dragon escape the evil of Wyrm if you choose.

But be warned, it won’t be quick or easy.

The Den of Thieves:

On one of your adventures into the town of Dortmund you hear some
nice gossip going around. They say the tunnel under the mountain is
finally finished and open for business. Not one to miss out, you
decide to go check it out for yourself. Upon arrival you see quite
a few toll workers, yet all signs read that the toll is optional.
You decide not to spare any change until you see what was built and
on that note you step inside. Within the cold walls are various
travelers and surprisingly, a large amount of thieves. Too many
for your taste as you can feel your gold grow lighter. You decide to
find out who runs this tunnel system and head for the office. When
you arrive you come face to face with the notorious thief, Jumpsteady.
Now realizing you stumbled on nothing less than the thief stronghold
you flee as fast as you can from this place

Do you dare to travel the tunnels the thieves claim. Face the
legend that is Jumpsteady and see how it all began. Watch the events
that unfolded years before the Killing Fields incident. The invasion,
the battle, the loss. Learn the true origins here, and the coming
of the Lotus Saga, if you dare…

Help Wanted

The Den Of Thieves, or as Aylor likes to call it, the Marsh and
Dragon Road Tunnel System is hosting a parade for the great Ivar. The
man who is organizing this event is shrouded in great mystery. He seeks
your help in making sure the thieves don’t spoil his grand celebration.

Other MUD changes this reboot - December 6th 2008:

• Using ‘tell -h’ will no longer reset your ‘replay’ counter. This was causing problems because if you did ‘tell -h 2′ with 5 tells outstanding, the other three might never be seen.
• Have extended the amount of time that notes survive on most boards. Personal is now 28 days (was 14). Ideas/feedback went from 30 to 60. Some of the less ’serious’ boards went from 10 days to 30 days.
• You can no longer get a defender flag if you are in the clan that is being raided.
• You cannot take or use items owned by others when they are online, but you can if they are not in the game (to give friends a chance to rescue equipment etc). There was a bug in that if you made yourself unable to see the person online, the code acted as if they were offline allowing you to take/use the item. Now fixed.

Classchange command:
There is a new option to classchange. Adding ‘noskills’ anywhere in the command will do the following:

• Skills that you have in both classes will NOT be reset.
• You receive no practices.

This basically results in loss of practices put into skills in your current class that you will not have in your new class, but does remove the need to repractice everything in the new class. After chatting with a few people it seems this option / idea is more popular than I thought.

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 desc and exits.

Feedback, comments, questions welcomed as always.

We have reached a point where many players feel like they need add-ons in their client to enjoy Aardwolf fully. I can see the need for this and tend to agree. If we accept that these things are needed to fully enjoy the game, then the game should provide them. As a free MUD (let’s leave the debate on that phrase for another post), it makes no sense for us to tell players “Sure it’s free, but to really play you need to buy a $25 client”. Existing MUD players understand this, a new player won’t.

The end result of all this effort should be that a player generally does not feel the need to program the client themselves or buy a different client to enjoy the features that Aardwolf has. They may add a few helper aliases and triggers, but that’s about it.

Cmud users tell me that the scripting capabilities in that client go further than Mushclient. I don’t know Cmud well enough to comment on that one way or the other, but for the sake of this post let’s assume it is true. That is perfectly ok - if a more technically inclined player wants to buy Zmud/Cmud for enhanced scripting of their own, I would never attempt to discourage that. It is a fine product that has done many things to bring MUDs forward in general over the years.

By the time someone knows enough to care about any perceived improvement in scripting engine of one MUD client over another, they don’t need my help creating their capture windows and triggers anyway. They are not the target audience for this project.

This project is aimed at a player new to MUDs wanting to enjoy the game and providing a nice client to help them with that. They might be persuaded to download and install a client, they’re probably not going to be persuaded to download a client, download some separate plugins, figure out how to install the plugins and experiment with the best configuration options to check for playing Aardwolf. These folks are the target of this project.

With that being said, every plugin being developed will be driven by new tags added to the mud itself. Those tags are fully visible and available to script developers for other clients. Users (or developers) of other clients are welcome to submit equivalent plugins to be downloadable from Aardwolf.com. There is no proprietary or undocumented protocol being used to favor one client over another.

Even with Mushclient (and other clients), there have been some excellent plugins created by people over the years. Other players start to use them then rely on them. However, the original authors then move on. Later, when something changes in the game, the scripts don’t work anymore and the people using them don’t know how to fix it.

V3 going live broke a lot of scripts people were using and really made this problem clear. The Mushclient plugins being released here will be officially “supported” by the MUD itself and if game output changes, they will be updated.

So why Mush over the other free clients? At the start the main reason was because we already have a lot of people using it, some plugins were already out there as a starting point and it was “good enough”. It is very actively maintained and even if that were to end, the source code is available. When I asked Nick about the possibility of creating a single-install for Aardwolf with plugins already enabled and he turned around and sent me the NSI installer script, it was a no brainer.

We’ve exchanged several emails since then and a few enhancements in the client itself to make this project simpler have already been added to mushclient and are in version 4.29, which is already released. Maybe you can get that kind of turnaround and help with other clients, maybe not, I see no good reason to look around.

MUSHclient also runs on Linux platforms, under the Wine system. This lets players who are using Ubuntu, Red Hat, and other flavors of Linux also enjoy MUSHclient, and the plugins released here.

The only goal in all of this is to make Aardwolf easier to play for people new to MUDs. Not to try to declare one client better than another or to make other plugin writers irrelevant. Once people start to rely on something to enjoy the game, wherever possible the game should support that and make it available to everyone.

The Aylorian Academy was a first step towards making it easier to learn how to play Aardwolf, and the addition of the Flash Mud Client to the site is an improvement over the Java Client for folks who want to quickly try out the game.

The problem still remains of what they do afterwards? Installing a MUD client with no aliases, triggers, etc is only marginally better than no client at all. Configuring a client for the first time can be complex. A person that has never played a MUD before is not going to invest the time and energy when they’re so used to other games that just do it all for them.

After discussing some ideas with Nick Gammon, the author of Mushclient, we have created a custom version of Mushclient that, when installed, will:

1. Install a number of Aardwolf specific plug-ins with it.
2. Run a script that will determine the user’s desktop size then open various extra windows based on their screen real-estate. The font style and size are also set automatically.

The script has been tested on every resolution my laptop supports (12 different settings between 800*600 to 1920*1200) and works fine. The main point of this was originally to auto-configure and install some plugins for Aardwolf, but I made some code changes to improve the plugins while I was in there. The stats andmap windows are shown below and you can check out the example screenshot for the full layout.

For users of other clients, these are all tag driven and can be developed using basic triggers, depending on what your client supports. For existing Mushclient users the plugins will be made available individually.

Other than the auto-install, the cool part about the stats window is that it automatically updates everytime you see a prompt or battleprompt. No prompt configuration is needed for this, just an additional config toggle. Notice also that the map window includes the room name and exits.

For packaging up Mushclient itself, Nick kindly provided the NSI script he uses to package up Mushclient for release. A weekago I’d never so much as written a line of code in Mush or used NSI, so working on this has been fun.

It is not quite ready for release yet, it still needs some tidying up. There is also a lot of registry hacking in the NSI script, some of which can come out based on some recent changes Nick made to Mushclient itself.

Having a single download / install that gives new players what they need to get started with Aardwolf is a good step forward, particularly as the development of a custom client it as the end of a very long “todo” list.

I was going to include a section on “Why Mushclient?” here but the post is long enough already, so that can wait for a follow up post.

As you can see, the fact that there hasn’t been a reboot / announcement note of changes on the main MUD for a few days rarely means “nothing is happening”.

The base download will include map capture, stat capture and a spellup plugin. A channel capture plugin will be included but off by default. Speedwalking will be built into the MUD itself with a ‘runto’ command. Appreciate your comments on this. What else do you find essential to play Aardwolf?

It also seemed like a great idea to have the server right there, if anything went wrong with it there would be no waiting for a tech somewhere to decide to take a look. It was a great idea then, but now, having a 4 year old, I’m away a lot more. If you’re away for the weekend there’s no tech you can call to take a look at a server problem.

Then let’s look at the weather. In 2004 we were down for 2 full weeks after Hurricane Charley because power was out across most of Orlando. We would have been down again for 8 days then 5 days if we hadn’t temporarily moved the server to a backup provided by Dale at Wolfpaw. Anyone watching US news this year knows it has been a crazy weather season already.

For both security and performance reasons, I refuse to run anything but the MUD itself on the server itself. Because of this, we require multiple servers. This is main reason I didn’t go with hosting last time the contract came up for renewal - it gets expensive. We’ve reached a point where the machine specs you get for the price means we can get 2 more than adequate servers for not much more than the T1 cost, so that’s another reason to move ahead.

So, the server is moving. I’ve spent a lot of time researching web hosts, reading forum posts and got it narrowed down to LiquidWeb and SoftLayer. (Sidenote: if you ever have to do this, ignore the “top 10 host” type sites, they’re worthless. They’re all paid links and the highest bidder goes to #1). Players have been pinging these providers on and off and, in terms of ping times, they’re both about even. They’re also generally both much more responsive than the current link which makes sense; a fully redundant data center should beat a single T1.

As we’re going with two servers anyway, and the MUD / Website already run on different domains (Aardwolf.com and Aardmud.org) I’m going to get one server with each of these providers - one for web, builders/test ports, email and the second for the live MUD server itself. This means there should never be a time when both the website and the mud are unreachable. Moving the test ports in the next week or so and we’ll see how that goes…

Having a blog will also allow us to cover a level of detail on changes and the reasons behind them that would not be appropriate for the announcement board.

Finally, reposting announcements to the blog will allow people to subscribe via RSS to see what is changing in the MUD.

The design needs a lot of work at the moment, but as you can see, will basically be the same style as the Aardwolf web page.

I decided to require user registration before comments can be posted. There is no value to anyone if I spend half my life tracking down spam rather than working on the MUD.

Well, that’s about it. Comments welcome. Good idea? Bad idea?