News Update: Work and Progress. Week 22

[Wossoo 1,915]

 
Hey everyone!
 
A few weeks have passed since the bridge update, and we've been thinking about one big question. What comes next? Thanks go to everyone who has ever contributed feedback to help us decide our next steps. It has been helpful to hear as many opinions as possible.
 
The Summer of Bugslaying
 
In light of community feedback, we've decided that our main focus for the next few months will be on bugfixes.
 
Over the past three years, the game has seen more major features added to it than ever before. The game has experienced huge leaps forward with changes such as mutli-storey housing, bridges, the Epic cluster and the huge server Xanadu. We've done our best to keep up with bugs, and countless bugs have been fixed along the way, but we feel that it would be most productive to spend a few months focusing on polishing existing features before we start adding any new ones.
 
You'll have to hang on for the next few months, as there won't be much by the way of new big features to report on! But we're sure that fixing a large number of game bugs will be as useful as adding anything new. And to help with the bug process, we'd love as many people as possible to get involved with the bug area of the forums. If you think you've discovered a new bug or that a bug hasn't been reported before, then please post it there; all bugs are recorded so we can look into them later.
 
Smaller Additions
 

But don't fear! We have some plans for minor cosmetic and customisation releases over the coming weeks and months.
 
Firstly, there will be a focus on continued small art updates. We have already started looking into new clothing options for all of you fashionable Wurmians out there, and are also working on an in-game Valrei map to complement the semi-recent in-game maps that we added. We will also continue to keep up the stream of smaller additions - including this planter and jar (amphora) that Saroman has worked on this week:
 

 
Secondly, there will be some client additions over the next few months. Tich has been working hard on a new permissions system, and we also have plans to make some changes to elements of the client's rendering system (which sort of falls under bugfixes but is an addition in its own right.)
 
But What Then?!

Once we've finished the Summer of Bugslaying, our aim will be to enter Autumn by starting development of our next big feature release.

 
The developers have discussed many options that must not be spoken about, ranging from rivers to 3D caves to a combat overhaul. All that we can really promise though is that we'd like to work on something new and big come Autumn, which could be one, or more, or none of what I just mentioned! Who knows! Deciding for real is three or four months away after all.
 
Maps
 
The recently released map dumps have been a huge success, and our star server admin maximusi has some interesting statistics to share with us. In the past month, 440GB of bandwidth has been used by the map site, with just over 12,000 map views in total. There's a full breakdown of statistics including the most popular server here.
 
We can't confirm when the next map dumps will be done, and the consensus seems to be that keeping a reasonable amount of mystery tied to the game's servers is a good thing. But occasional mapdumps don't hurt, and it's been interesting to see how much servers change over time.
 
Screenshot of the Week
 
This week's sea serpent photobomb is courtesy of LaRue, who joked about selling a deed with a "minor infestation problem." It made us giggle!
 

 
News Format
 
Lastly, I'd just like to mention that we're considering changing some elements of the weekly news. As such, we'd love to know below what you like the most about the current news format, and also what you'd like to see done differently. We may or may not update how we do things.

 

Treasure Hunt

The GMs have run numerous successful treasure hunts recently, and today (Saturday 30th) at 8PM GMT will mark the start of another. This latest treasure hunt is on the Celebration server, and you can find out more here.
 

 
That concludes this week's News. 
 
Happy Wurming!

[watkins141 994]

Cool, ty for update, but with new decor items....what about the new wep models that were promised?

[Wossoo 1,915]

Cool, ty for update, but with new decor items....what about the new wep models that were promised?

 

Coming in one of the next graphics pack updates!

[Lulu 601]

Bug fixes!

[watkins141 994]

Coming in one of the next graphics pack updates!

eta on that?

[Wossoo 1,915]

eta on that?

 

Soonâ„¢

[Vengus 57]

Bug fixing > new content at this point. You just gotta clean things up once in a while.

[Kegan 3,926]

Now this was your best news post to date i think well done  and i love the new planters the more vegetation we can get the better even maybe small trees and plants for indoors to make things look nice. 

[LaRue 251]

 I've worked out a deal with the sea serpent. He pays rent now. We're cool.

[Wurmhole 3,650]

BEST NEWS EVER!

 

Thank you for listening and making a move to focus on bugs. I am so encouraged by this!

 

Now, what would I like in the news format?  Maybe something like this, added to your colorful stories, down at the bottom, as a quick summary of the week's progress/changes:

 

Features added this week:

1. bridges

2. stairs

 

Bug fixes:

1. wagons no longer flying

2. walking on cave ceilings fixed

3. etc

 

Certainly with more detail on specifics, but just a good quick summary like that.  Seems we really don't get all the patch notes for every fix and addition, so those are useless to me.  You could make the weekly news the most anticipated thing in forums, if we start getting ALL the change details, rather than hints and a lot of nothings.

 

Keep it up Wassoo!

[Huntar 1,692]

Are the planters stone, or pottery? Curious as to which skill I'll need to be grinding to make them

[Killroth 352]

work on developing traders and merchants into a cohesive trading system so the economy can grow. 

 

maybe people will stop whining about bugs now.

Edited May 29, 2015 by Killroth

[Slickshot 1,195]

Soonâ„¢

My favorite trademark of all time.

[Fawkes 1,567]

Will there be attempts to address the memory leaks and other weirdness while traveling/fighting? That'd be worth more than any content update.

Edited May 29, 2015 by Fawkes

[Ikeprof 182]

Bugfixes are more exciting than one would think!

[MrGARY 12,421]

"Combat overhaul" scares me in many, many, many ways, especially with past mentions of twitch style/related combat systems

 

I assume we wouldn't get any information on what overhaul actually means?

[ownerpure5 322]

I'm pretty curious about that combat overhaul too.

 

Otherwise +1 for bug fixes.

[Namekat 1,753]

Nice pots.

 

Glimmer halberds please.

[Oreo 5,793]

"Combat overhaul" scares me in many, many, many ways, especially with past mentions of twitch style/related combat systems

 

I assume we wouldn't get any information on what overhaul actually means?

inb4 twitch based combat like warband

hah

[Ayes 3,715]

New smaller additions such as the planters and pottery being added frequently will keep things interesting enough for those of us who like to enhance our deeds and the surrounding environment. Massive undertakings if shadowing out these smaller delights are not so desirable. A small stream quenches the thirst better than a raging torrent, at any rate.

 

Summer is the time for bugs, so seems an appropriate approach there to squish them.

 

=Ayes=

[Fawkes 1,567]

I assume we wouldn't get any information on what overhaul actually means?

We're finally getting Glocks.

[Tipper 260]

Super news!

 

On future news:

 

It might be cool if there was a participatory element, such as, every Monday a thread is opened to allow players to post questions (like previous dev chats), and Rolf, et al pick four or five to respond to in the Friday news.

 

Also ... it would be cool and enlightening to receive more detailed information on stuff that's further up the pipe. I hope we're all adults (or pseudo-adults) and can accept if a feature or item just doesn't work and never reaches completion. The little teasers, like the autumn stuff you talked about today, help to keep me hooked.

 

Lastly, any community-type news is great to have in the mix, as you did with Fight Club. Anyone who follows the forums closely sees that stuff, but also having it in the weekly news makes it all feel like part of a greater endeavor. The endeavor of Wurm.

[McDaniel 342]

FINALLY a focus on bugfixes!!!! (I hope performance will get proper attention to)

This is the best wurm news I probably ever read!

[Trepper 78]

absolutely awsome choices here bugs have needed to be attacked.  Might I mention that many wold like to see some kind of under ground construction to include doors in mines, other thoughts have been mushroom farming in caves and many be a cave animal that can pull carts or even some kind of mineing carts and wood tracks.

[Gaustyrr 119]

"Combat overhaul" scares me in many, many, many ways, especially with past mentions of twitch style/related combat systems

 

I assume we wouldn't get any information on what overhaul actually means?

Doesn't have to be twitch, just something more intuitive and excitement.

Fly out damage/heal markers with actual hitpoints instead of percentages, and animations that actually match what the person is doing.

Better team targeting for heals and assistance communications.

The combat system right now is stadn infront of the target and wait till it is dead. [22:31:32] You pierce Adolescent mountain gorilla deadly hard in the chest and damage it. Rinse and repeat.... no excitement.

Better priest usage, with faster cast times and a larger mana pool.