P4Ns Dev Log

CptSky · 06/12/2016, 15:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by pro4never

It's a shit ton of dialogs. My new source at least designed with proper inheritance for NPCs. No one on apex would want to bother with 'classic' sky pass because the rewards suck. In newer conquer though TQ revamped it to give things like study points which will make it actually useful.

Less work, larger audience, better rewards. Kinda a no brainer to write it there.

For NPCs that were existing around the patch ~4351, you can find most of the official dialogs and logic in the COPS v6 - Enhanced Edition's Lua scripts.

e.g. For the sky pass :

Spoiler

Code:

--
-- ------ COPS v6 Emulator - Closed Source ------
-- Copyright (C) 2014 - 2015 Jean-Philippe Boivin
--
-- Generated from official database ([email protected])
-- the 3/30/2015 7:46:50 PM.
--
-- Please read the WARNING, DISCLAIMER and PATENTS
-- sections in the LICENSE file.
--

function processTask30122(client, idx)
    name = "Tientsin"
    face = 1

    if (idx == 0) then

        if hasItem(client, 721156, 1) then

            text(client, "JailGuard is nearby. Try your luck to find it out.")
            link(client, "Thanks. I will.", 255)
            pic(client, 61)
            create(client)

        else

            if hasItem(client, 721155, 1) then

                text(client, "You did pass the 2nd floor. I will keep my words. Take the passport and find Jail Guard to get into Violet Jail.")
                link(client, "Thanks.", 1)
                pic(client, 61)
                create(client)

            else

                if hasItem(client, 721154, 1) then

                    text(client, "You haven`t passed the second floor of Skypass. So you can`t enter the Violet Jail.")
                    link(client, "I will get the passport soon.", 255)
                    pic(client, 61)
                    create(client)

                else

                    if hasItem(client, 721153, 1) then

                        text(client, "Hey. Are you sent by DevineArtisan and Hades to get WaterRing? They have tried many times in vain.")
                        link(client, "I might have a try as well.", 2)
                        link(client, "Alright, I give up.", 255)
                        pic(client, 61)
                        create(client)

                    else

                        text(client, "What brings you here?")
                        link(client, "Just pass by.", 255)
                        pic(client, 61)
                        create(client)

                    end

                end

            end

        end

    elseif (idx == 1) then

        spendItem(client, 721155, 1)
        awardItem(client, "721156", 1)

    elseif (idx == 2) then

        text(client, "Good. If you want to get the Passport from me, pass the sceond floor of SkyPass first!")
        link(client, "No problem.", 3)
        link(client, "Ok. Wait a moment.", 255)
        pic(client, 61)
        create(client)

    elseif (idx == 3) then

        awardItem(client, "721154", 1)

    end

end

~~pro4never~~ · 06/12/2016, 16:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by CptSky

For NPCs that were existing around the patch ~4351, you can find most of the official dialogs and logic in the COPS v6 - Enhanced Edition's Lua scripts.

e.g. For the sky pass :

Spoiler

Code:

--
-- ------ COPS v6 Emulator - Closed Source ------
-- Copyright (C) 2014 - 2015 Jean-Philippe Boivin
--
-- Generated from official database ([email protected])
-- the 3/30/2015 7:46:50 PM.
--
-- Please read the WARNING, DISCLAIMER and PATENTS
-- sections in the LICENSE file.
--

function processTask30122(client, idx)
    name = "Tientsin"
    face = 1

    if (idx == 0) then

        if hasItem(client, 721156, 1) then

            text(client, "JailGuard is nearby. Try your luck to find it out.")
            link(client, "Thanks. I will.", 255)
            pic(client, 61)
            create(client)

        else

            if hasItem(client, 721155, 1) then

                text(client, "You did pass the 2nd floor. I will keep my words. Take the passport and find Jail Guard to get into Violet Jail.")
                link(client, "Thanks.", 1)
                pic(client, 61)
                create(client)

            else

                if hasItem(client, 721154, 1) then

                    text(client, "You haven`t passed the second floor of Skypass. So you can`t enter the Violet Jail.")
                    link(client, "I will get the passport soon.", 255)
                    pic(client, 61)
                    create(client)

                else

                    if hasItem(client, 721153, 1) then

                        text(client, "Hey. Are you sent by DevineArtisan and Hades to get WaterRing? They have tried many times in vain.")
                        link(client, "I might have a try as well.", 2)
                        link(client, "Alright, I give up.", 255)
                        pic(client, 61)
                        create(client)

                    else

                        text(client, "What brings you here?")
                        link(client, "Just pass by.", 255)
                        pic(client, 61)
                        create(client)

                    end

                end

            end

        end

    elseif (idx == 1) then

        spendItem(client, 721155, 1)
        awardItem(client, "721156", 1)

    elseif (idx == 2) then

        text(client, "Good. If you want to get the Passport from me, pass the sceond floor of SkyPass first!")
        link(client, "No problem.", 3)
        link(client, "Ok. Wait a moment.", 255)
        pic(client, 61)
        create(client)

    elseif (idx == 3) then

        awardItem(client, "721154", 1)

    end

end

I already finished the system but thanks for the offer. The main thing was all the spawn locations cause I didn't have the npcs so I had to calculate 75 diff locations for spawns so took a bunch of time for that

<edit>

Interface still progressing nicely. No major hurdles so far.

My goal is to finish up the rest of the 'sub windows' this week. I'll leave skill icons for later as that's a big job and not something I'm well suited to.

Once all the tabs for player info are finished I'll prob leave it for now as it's not anything that important.

As you can see this still requires a few tweaks such as re-coloring the battle power numbers (will be done when I re-do all combat #s) and the up down buttons but that's all pretty minor stuff. Focusing on the overall 'flow' of those windows for now. So far I really prefer this tabbed layout as it feels a lot more user friendly.

Santa · 06/12/2016, 23:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by pro4never

It's a **** ton of dialogs. My new source at least designed with proper inheritance for NPCs. No one on apex would want to bother with 'classic' sky pass because the rewards suck. In newer conquer though TQ revamped it to give things like study points which will make it actually useful.

Less work, larger audience, better rewards. Kinda a no brainer to write it there.

I didn't realize you had to have the same reward that TQ did when you use their quests, my bad on that one.

"Larger audience" how many players does your new server have?

~~pro4never~~ · 06/12/2016, 23:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by StarBucks

I didn't realize you had to have the same reward that TQ did when you use their quests, my bad on that one.

"Larger audience" how many players does your new server have?

Most of our quest rewards are similar to 1.0 or slightly modified. Skypass was a very unpopular quest in 1.0 as it took 20-30 min to do and only gave like some gold, 3-5-10 mets. It of course could be made useful but we're a year and a half online with apex so it's unlikely anyone is going to care about some new way to make mets when there's plenty of high lvl ppl who have hundreds or thousands stored up that they are willing to sell.

The new source is not public. Aiming for a July launch if I can finish everything up in time. This new interface is planned as part of the first 'expansion pack' for that server. It's targeting 5517 client version but will include a lot of custom content. The classic server scene is pretty much saturated and has a rapidly shrinking audience as years go by. The goal with this new project is to be able to remove all the dust and clunkyness of classic conquer and mix in a ton of new features to make it accessible to players who like classic, players who like modern and people who've never played conquer in the first place.

It's a very, very big task to do that successfully so hopefully I'll be able to pull it off but yah... short version is that spending hours logging npc locations and writing scripts for a quest no one in apex would really ever care about didn't seem like a good use of my time.

Before someone comes in and gets concerned. Apex is not going anywhere, I devote a couple days per week towards continued content and development for apex/triumph but with the saturation of the market, how different from classic it has become over time (needed to add extra content for end game) and the fact it's been online for well over a year, it's not something I can pin the next few years of my income on. The new project is designed to be easily expandable and adaptable to fit whatever needs to be done. Whatever makes the most sense, be it migrating apex/triumph to a more modern patch but maintaining classic content, continuing with my custom content/mid range patch vision or going with current TQ patch. Having a fresh code base that is properly designed with maintainability and expandability in mind is a huge, huge plus for me.

Also worth mentioning that the increased research and practice I'm getting in designing new game systems, interfaces and other stuff will help as I slowly transition into developing some non conquer related projects. My current roadmap involves another 2 years of conquer development during which time I will be gaining the required skills, contacts and setting myself up financially to start releasing some non conquer related projects.

~~pro4never~~ · 06/15/2016, 00:00

New garment design (work in progress, may be tweaked further)

I'm pretty proud of this. Both the weapon and the garment effects go together nicely. Weapons/garments with styles you can customize on the fly are something relatively unique to our server and I'm pretty damn happy with how far I've come in regards to creating client mods. Sure, it's not anything THAT impressive but I'm still pleased with the results

Outside of that I've spent much of today re-writing boss logic, tweaking damage values and other boring stuff. The goal with this weeks patch is to focus on re-vamping under utilized content in Apex. Primarily our city war system which is getting a fairly major overhaul in regards to how it functions and our Sands of time raid which is primarily just getting a slew of quality of life changes.

City War

The main concern right now is that it's too easy for a large guild to smash and dominate their way through the cities. Yes large guilds should (and still will) have an advantage but they shouldn't be so confident in their absolute ability to win. Here's the list of what we're changing and why.

No more City under attack message.

This makes it harder for large guilds to hulk up as a big group and swarm cities. Instead each city you control will have a small icon on the mini map. The color of that icon will change color based on the health of each of the cities. It will go from green orange, yellow and then red at 75+, 50+, 25+ and 0+ percent health accordingly. This means it's easier to see at a glance the state of what your guild holds but requires more teamwork and organization to properly secure cities if you take more than 1 at a time.

Superman Shrines

We already have cyclone shrines spread around the map to help with moving between cities quickly. This update will include a superman shrine outside the walls of each city. These shrines will grant 20 seconds of superman and respawn after 30 seconds (so only 1 person at most can claim a shrine at any given time. It lasts less time than it takes to respawn). This will help small guilds have a extra bit of power when attacking cities and gives the strategic decision of "should I go take the shrine as it spawns to keep them from getting it, or stay inside the walls". Obviously this will be something for us to keep an eye on and is a fairly small decision but it undoubtedly does give a small advantage to guilds with less members and makes collapsing and taking cities a bit easier.

Point Distribution

Generally what happens in city war is that when you control a city (have taken its pole), your guild will get some points every minute towards controlling that city. With the change, it will also REDUCE the points of enemy guilds. This balances out to be the same thing but makes it harder to be sure that your guild has truly secured a city (we were seeing ppl hold a city for 20-30 min then leaving the event because it was then impossible to lose). This change pushes that 'fully secured' limit much further into the event and keeps things more volatile. It also punishes the strategy of pole swapping as those points will quickly be cleared away by those who hold the pole for longer periods of time.

Treasure Chests

Every 10 minutes during the city war, a treasure chest will spawn at a random location on the map and will be added to your mini map. it will take 100 hits to kill regardless of gear/stats and will drop either a handful of +1 stones, or a db scroll. This will give a small window where guilds can choose to either

A: Use the distraction to try to collapse and take a city (using the superman shrine as a boost to do it quickly)
B: Give up on taking a city they can't capture and instead get some smaller rewards for themselves
C: Use it as a way to split the enemy forces and punish poor communication (catch them doing it, kill, take reward, swap numbers advantage to taking the castle)

~~pro4never~~ · 06/22/2016, 17:40

Long time coming and so I'm super excited about this...

Our integrated browser system is getting a complete overhaul (based on the awesomeonium framework)

Key features

HTML5 Support: This is 'mostly' a gimmick but can be incredibly useful. If we want to add a new system, we just write it as its own separate application and then embed it into the client. Any mini game or interface or sub system needed can be done through that and with a proper database backend it will allow for some really cool stuff!

Proper 'windows': This means we can drag, minimize, restore and close the windows but also break focus from them. You can still chat in game without having to close the window. This is a huge step forward to make sure that any windows we might pop up will not be overly intrusive. We're still making sure that all the required logic behind the scenes is in place (EG: Making sure that any mini game music isn't playing when its minimized) but the system is all fully working as it should.

Modern CSS/Javascript/etc: Goes nearly without saying seeing as we have HTML5 support but the comparison is night and day between the old ancient IE based framework we were using before and this. Finally we can write sites as though they weren't being used on a windows 95 machine!

Client Updates

So... some may notice this is not our classic server. This is the 5517 project I've been working on and we've brought in Angelus to help on an ongoing basis with further client feature development and behind the scenes work. The source is really close to playable now and we'll be starting into some beta tests in the next week or two. Really excited to see what people think of the project.

Obviously this includes things like our full screen/HD windowed options, improved client customization/configuration utilities and more. It also includes a fully re-written version of our client protection to minimize false positives and to maintain the server security once it's available to the public.

Xio. · 06/22/2016, 21:53

Thats it. You own the private server scene. Time to search another game for me

InsomniacPro · 06/23/2016, 07:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xio.

Thats it. You own the private server scene. Time to search another game for me

I've said the same, Chris revolutionized the conquer pserver universe with his efforts.

Egyptionl · 07/08/2016, 17:26

about .pul files . i tryed to read them but all what i get is starting path link for the ani file. and that is good . but the rest of data inside i can't make something from it so if you can explain how you made the calculation . because your project is best example of managing them

Quote:

Originally Posted by pro4never

Today's job is boring but I'm sure many players will like it.

Working on converting all of TQs new garments and effects to use as future donation rewards or for very special tournaments/events. We dont want the game spammed with laggy effects so these WONT just be in mall but still some cool looking stuff!

Edited out the hideous glows to make them less hard on the eye.

Low poly soccer ball is finished and I have the map accessibility settings all working. Now to finish up the rest of the map textures, make a minimap for it and get the event logic in place.

<edit>

I didn't want to keep placing tiles manually so I made a SUPER basic tool to let me visualize the map and edit tiles quickly. Results are actually really easy to use.

It loads a single ani file and sources all the textures you've added to it and then puzzle file to display how they are arranged. You then mouse over any tile you want to edit and use f1/f2 to modify what texture it's using. F12 then saves the new .pul file so you can throw it in your client and verify it's working as it should.

I'd offer to release it but I strongly doubt anyone would make any use of it.

Next step will be making a few more textures for the goals and then I'm 'done' and ready to start writing the event.

<edit2>

Considering this 'done'. May make some tweaks to the map to make it a bit prettier and I'd like the ball to not float so high above the ground but at this point I'm happy with it for a basic event. Next up to work on the event logic and final testing.

~~pro4never~~ · 07/10/2016, 15:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Egyptionl

about .pul files . i tryed to read them but all what i get is starting path link for the ani file. and that is good . but the rest of data inside i can't make something from it so if you can explain how you made the calculation . because your project is best example of managing them

This thread is a log of some of the work I've been doing. It's not a place for people to ask me random question about other releases.

Short version is that there's little/no public info on map structures past dmaps and what's needed for servers and bots. The PUL files though are just a jigsaw of map tile texture IDs and how they are laid out. It's like 5 min of work to structure it.

Heroes Dev

The beta for the new source is online and going really well! The issues reported so far have been pretty minor logic fixes and the base source is holding up really nicely. This week we will be adding in the team qualifier tournament, adding in the bosses for players to test fully and doing a bunch more tweaks to core combat logic and rates to get a really nice full test of this before its ready for launch.

New host is online. Got all my email and web servers moved over with proper SSL integration. Next step will be properly re-designing the new homepage (yes, we know it's still ugly. I'm not an artist lol).

You can preview the new release at

Jewels

So I've not been posting about this on epvp/our forums because there was no point building hype before details were finalized but we're at the stage now where informing people is suitable.

Jewels are a cryptocurrency that will be used in apex, the new heroes server as well as in standalone mini game/gambling apps available across all of the servers, on their own dedicated website and through mobile apps. This will involve re-structuring how donations are processed and rewarded but here's the VERY basic description of how these jewels will work.

-We will be creating a secure, scalable backend for the website to handle all jewel transactions.
-We will be creating a jewel shop viewable through the website and in game where players can use these jewels to purchase their donation rewards. Instead of having X$ tiers with fixed rewards, you use the jewels to buy whatever specific reward(s) you want.
-We will be launching a series of gambling mini games playable with these jewels (cash gambling) and using in game currency (gold/cp, same as a 'free play' approach).
-Those mini games will then be bundled into their own mobile apps so that you can gamble using your apex/heroes accounts using cp/gold/gems while you're on the go. This can later be extended to include various in game market tools like auction houses, server to mobile chats and much more.

It's pretty ambitious but it's also very exciting. Here's the thread on bitcointalk concerning it (they wanted a reference to show that I was indeed involved with the project, aka why it's being posted here).

~~reivon123~~ · 07/10/2016, 20:43

pro4never nice work man...

~~pro4never~~ · 07/27/2016, 19:33

Not bothered updating this in quite a while but the new source is coming along really nicely. Working on extending the content a bit more right now with some daily quests and some more depth to how those systems are managed.

Today's mini task was adding npcs which expire and fire actions when they do so. This lets us make the world feel a bit more alive. In this case seedlings bloom into trees which eventually die and respawn elsewhere as new seedlings. It's a silly little farming quest but the options it brings for future development are pretty cool. I also like how it makes the game world feel a bit more alive because it actually changes over time rather than always being the same.

Some of the more astute viewers may notice the flower stuff... flower system and mentor system are now both finished and in place for testing on the new server. Same goes for qualifier, team qualifier, horse race, quiz show and a bunch of other stuff.

isma33 · 07/28/2016, 02:28

You are really wasting money and splitting your comunity by creating 797 domains

As i told u, it'll be easier and better for you to keep things into a single name

It just looks like someone opened yet another server instead of saying, "oh look TheBestConquerServer is going to open a new server, i love his work, that's cool!"

You'll get your fans to join for sure, but you'll have to fight to grab new players, over time it'll end up in 6454 server with just few people playing on each of them

focus on one name, branding is important

~~pro4never~~ · 07/28/2016, 02:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by isma33

You are really wasting money and splitting your comunity by creating 797 domains

As i told u, it'll be easier and better for you to keep things into a single name

It just looks like someone opened yet another server instead of saying, "oh look TheBestConquerServer is going to open a new server, i love his work, that's cool!"

You'll get your fans to join for sure, but you'll have to fight to grab new players, over time it'll end up in 6454 server with just few people playing on each of them

focus on one name, branding is important

That is the plan the new project everything is under the conquer heroes name and domain

SirGuenther · 08/01/2016, 04:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by pro4never

Jewels

So I've not been posting about this on epvp/our forums because there was no point building hype before details were finalized but we're at the stage now where informing people is suitable.

Jewels are a cryptocurrency that will be used in apex, the new heroes server as well as in standalone mini game/gambling apps available across all of the servers, on their own dedicated website and through mobile apps. This will involve re-structuring how donations are processed and rewarded but here's the VERY basic description of how these jewels will work.

-We will be creating a secure, scalable backend for the website to handle all jewel transactions.
-We will be creating a jewel shop viewable through the website and in game where players can use these jewels to purchase their donation rewards. Instead of having X$ tiers with fixed rewards, you use the jewels to buy whatever specific reward(s) you want.
-We will be launching a series of gambling mini games playable with these jewels (cash gambling) and using in game currency (gold/cp, same as a 'free play' approach).
-Those mini games will then be bundled into their own mobile apps so that you can gamble using your apex/heroes accounts using cp/gold/gems while you're on the go. This can later be extended to include various in game market tools like auction houses, server to mobile chats and much more.

It's pretty ambitious but it's also very exciting. Here's the thread on bitcointalk concerning it (they wanted a reference to show that I was indeed involved with the project, aka why it's being posted here).

just hook a food delivery app in there and we never have to leave our home again