Recent Newsletter/Thoughts

[Songweaver]

Newsletter: check out the building log for the past 5 months

First off, great work Rishte, on all of those crafts! You've done some stuff. A few questions/concerns:

- Is this all of the stuff that's been built in the past five months? I only see Laketown mentioned once, and it was 5 months ago. Is there a "done" list and a "to-do" list for Laketown? I think that'd be a great thing to include in newsletters.

- I see a lot of effort put into crafting aesthetic baubles/etc. This is great! If this sort of effort was also put into adding some new PvE content, fixing sparring, creating new roles, creating good cultural lore for humans, adding interactive progs/areas to the vanilla forest, etc ... then a lot of SOI's problems would be fixed rather quickly, indeed, and I think it'd see some players return.

- Ceredir's quietly made some fantastic additions here and there over the past six months.

- New Beorning docs, waaaayy too huggy for me, and dislike retroactively changing established in-game lore. :p Would have maybe worked better to create a huggier brother "clan" for the Beornings (than completely re-writing their history/Veidreborg's lore). But, to each their own!

- What projects are all of the staff working on right now? Who do we have? Frigga, Nimrod, Meneldor, Ceredir, Ancalagon, Rishte, Cynric, Grommit, am I missing anyone (I'm sorry if so!)? I'd love to know what each staff member's up to on their personal pipeline in these newsletters! I think that'd be a great way to get folks more excited about what's coming down the line. What're ya'll up to right now?

[Bones]

And a pony, a sports car, but not a red one, I hate red. And chocolate coins, a TV, a jet pack.

Some pants too. Oh and when you get me that TV it better not be a Samsung. I told you that before right? I hate Samsung.

Hey next time you put stuff in, make sure I can fly. No, put a pause on what you're doing and make it so I can fly!

I also don't like what you did with my car. I mean I know it's actually a gift and you volunteered it for me, but gimme new rims, a retooled engine, and then put confetti in the air conditioner, so it's cool. At least my idea of cool.

[Brian]

And a pony, a sports car, but not a red one, I hate red. And chocolate coins, a TV, a jet pack.

Some pants too. Oh and when you get me that TV it better not be a Samsung. I told you that before right? I hate Samsung.

Hey next time you put stuff in, make sure I can fly. No, put a pause on what you're doing and make it so I can fly!

I also don't like what you did with my car. I mean I know it's actually a gift and you volunteered it for me, but gimme new rims, a retooled engine, and then put confetti in the air conditioner, so it's cool. At least my idea of cool.

Bones, seriously, there's nothing wrong with asking these questions. I know you don't think positively about Songweaver and his attachement to the lore that he created in the past, but I think he's acknowledging that he'll go with what's done. I see what you're trying to do but I think you're missing the mark and hindering, rather than helping, the conversation.

[Bones]

And a firetruck, and some ninja action figures, and maybe.. Maybe.. Can I have a batman action figure?

[cfelch]

Can we grind up Bones to make our bread?

[Bones]

Kite's the Englishman. And he's in London. Grinding up my bones would just get you ground up bones. And that's not very edible.

[Ceredir]

First off, great work Rishte, on all of those crafts! You've done some stuff. A few questions/concerns:

- Is this all of the stuff that's been built in the past five months?

To be honest, we've been slacking with logging the progress. I myself made a post on our staff forums a few months back, reminding everyone about the different commands we have... and then didn't use them myself, heh. Otherwise the log list would've been about a mile long. Rishte is just awesome and logs a lot (she's about the only person who does!) - but even she didn't log everything.
I'll try to be better!

PS Yep, Rishte is also pretty much a craft-making machine that runs on pure awesome.

[Rishte]

Some things I leave off the Newsletter and 'blog' on purpose because they're secret or in-progress still or they're for Laketown and not necessarily accessible to PCs at the moment.

And yes, I am a machiiiiiinnnnee.

[Rishte]

What am I up to now?

Keeping Beorning being more in line with our vision for the game and continuing with that, same goes with Dorwinion, Dale-men, Gondor, Rohan, Easterlings, etc.

Crafts.

More crafts.

Building.

More building.

Will I be specific? No. Why? Because I don't want to be beholden to time expectations or hear 'but you said....' because things change. I might build this epic thing over here but we as a team decide that the game isn't ready yet so we shelf it for when it is or I might make this craft and we're still in the midst of finding ways for it to really work but the code isn't yet where we need it and we're working on it.

Also. I love to surprise you guys.

[Ceredir]

In other news, over the last five months, Ceredir did (some of these were announced via forums, though):

• The armor & weapons standards overhaul (the code part of it, others did the balancing)
• Made hyphenated names a thing recognized by the engine. This means a sheath will now be "bearing a hand-axe" rather than "bearing a hand"
• De-atonementization/de-paralellization of some of the output - things referring to firearms, mostly, but lots of other things as well. Pretty sure I didn't get all of them, so feedback is welcome!
• Fixed some bugs with NPC archers, added a functioning on_scan cue
• Some background fixes only admins care about
• Some progs here and there.
• Added NPC archers and a way for players to donate arrows to them.
• Fixed the occasional wonkiness of taste output ("it tastes like ,and ,and .") - this one isn't live for players yet, I believe.
• Worked some on Laketown Underlake. Which, I'll be honest with you, pretty much burnt me out for a time when it comes to room descriptions.
• Did some typo/craft/prog/bug fixes, don't remember.
• Continuous work on admin commands documentation, namely progs, cues, and such.

Currently, I have stepped back a little for RL reasons. You'll see me answering typo reports and some typo or bug-related tickets, but I don't really have time to get involved more.

[Songweaver]

+1 Ceredir, +1 Rishte! (even if I don't personally like the retroactive Beorning/Veidreborg re-writes)

I do think a "finished"/"to-do" log for Laketown would be a good thing to contain in the newsletters.