Development Update - Resource nodes, actions and more

[Samool 2,004]

Hi everyone,

 

I’m glad to finally be able to share with you all the work we have been doing to improve Wurm. This post contains both features that are going to be included in the game very soon, as well as some more longer term changes that we will release in the upcoming months.

 

Rift Update

As the rift changes have concluded testing, they will be included in an update planned for early September.
If you missed the public testing period organized by Jaytoo, here’s a summary of the changes:

• Rift Colossus
  • Four unfinished colossus, one for each god, will be placed around the rift before it starts. For each part added to the colossus, the builder will have a chance to get a rift point (to be spent for rift rewards) or a rift material.
  • A finished colossus will grant different buffs, depending on which god it belongs to:
    • Fo - one random wound healed every minute, Willowspine is applied to rift participants
    • Magranon - Mass Stamina is applied to participants every minute, Frantic charge buff is also active for players in the rift area
    • Vynora - Excel is applied to all rift participants
    • Libila - Only fight skill will be lost on death, double rift creature spawns
• Rift Points
  • Rift points will now be awarded proportionally according to damage dealt to the rift creatures
• Rift Rewards
  • Functionality of the bracelet of inspiration has been changed - this item  guarantees success on a Moment of Inspiration when improving items, while being worn. Upon creating a rare item the bracelet gets destroyed.
  • Socketed rings now give different crafting and gathering bonuses depending on the gem used
  • Artisan rings increase skill gain for a skill you select up front.. These can also be recharged with rift points when it’s close to being depleted.
  • Shoulder pad functionalities have been changed, and their effects now are more varied, with some providing new buffs such as the Tank and Berserker affinities, respectively reducing and increasing the incoming and outcoming damage at once
  • Soul stealer necklace functionality has been balanced, now triggering only on stronger enemies

 

Included in this update are also functionality enhancements to rift items - all shoulder pads should now be able to be worn on either side, and many of the items will finally be improvable and repairable. Rifts will also no longer alter the terrain significantly, instead being limited to removing trees and grass around the site.

 

More details of the implementation can be found in the public testing thread here and will also be available in the patch notes upon release.

 

We think this update will make attending rifts more rewarding and worthwhile, as we hope to see the activity around these events increase. We’ll be monitoring the changes with the release, in case we still need to iron out the balance of it.

 

 

 

Arrow bundles

Arrow bundles will be added to the game with this upcoming update, with the intention of making archery more viable.

These will allow you to combine multiple arrows into one item, so that you can improve and cast spells onto the bundle to affect all of the bundled arrows. You will be able to combine between 2 and 41 arrows into a bundle, depending on your Fletching skill.

 

We’re still planning on more changes to archery in the future, as it’s not very fun to use bows right now, but this should make it much less of an annoyance to get decent arrows.

 

 

 

Resource Nodes

 

Coming soon to the public test servers, we will be introducing a complete replacement for the existing foraging, botanizing, and snow collecting systems. Currently, whether or not a tile can be foraged or botanized, or have snowballs collected from it, is completely invisible until you try to perform the action. On top of that, the results of foraging and botanizing are very random, selecting from mostly the same pool of items no matter what, making it difficult to search for anything specific, even if you know what the possible results are.

Replacing all this will be a system where specific resource nodes, with visible graphics, can spawn on tiles randomly over time. You can then gather items from them similarly to how foraging currently works, destroying the resource node in the process. This will be an improvement over the current system in several ways:

• Foraging and botanizing resources being visible on tiles will make it easier to find what you're looking for, in addition to adding some much-needed visusal variety to the world.
• Each type of resource node will have its own list of items, so finding specific items should be easier. For instance, if you're looking for rock shards, you can keep an eye out for "rubble" nodes, or if you're looking for branches and sprouts, you might want to look for "undergrowth" nodes.
• Since there will be many types of nodes, the number of potential items has been greatly expanded. All items from the current foraging and botanizing systems will be available, in addition to many more.
• Types of resource nodes that can appear on a tile, and how likely they are, depends on many factors, including tile type, altitude, season, and more. This means that foraging and botanizing will be possible on nearly any type of tile, and that both geography and in-game time of year will have a much greater impact on gameplay. For example, you might find dune grasses on sand near the water, lichen growing on pavement, or even fungus growing in caves. Some uncommon tiles, such as enchanted tiles and mycelium, even have their own resource nodes that cannot be found anywhere else.
• Which items you find from a specific type of resource node, and how likely they are, can depend on similar factors. For example, as in the current system, woad is more common on steppe, but this also extends to certain plants being more common in certain seasons, near water, or several other factors.
• "Snow" resource nodes will not only accumulate during the winter, but also at high altitude. The minimum altitude for snow to gather will vary depending on time of year, so the tallest mountain peaks will always have some even in Summer, and some lower-altitude areas may only have any during Autumn and Winter. These altitude limits are determined on a per-server basis, so that every server should have roughly the same percentage of tiles above the snow line.
• Skill will matter more than it does now. Quality will be determined in a fairly similar way to how it is now, but the difficulty of foraging or botanizing is determined by the type of resource node, the type of tile, and the specific item gathered from it. Some special items may also require a certain amount of skill to gather at all, or may become more likely at higher skill.

 

The current foraging and botanizing system has another problem: There is currently no way to know what possible items you might find when foraging or botanizing without looking it up on Wurmpedia or some other resource.

To solve this, a "Lore" option has been added to both tiles and resource nodes themselves. When used on a tile, Lore will tell you what types of resource nodes might spawn there under current conditions, in order of how likely they are. When used on a resource node, you will instead receive a list of what items you could possibly harvest from it, also ordered by likelihood. Skill will also matter here, as some higher-difficulty items or resource nodes might be hidden from the Lore command with insufficient skill, but you will always be told when this happens. This should allow players to determine for themselves what they might be able to find and under what conditions, without needing to use the wiki or any other source.

 

This feature also replaces the current random terrain decorations such as stones on dirt or ferns, which are a common point of new player confusion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Action changes

 

The work on this has been going on for a long time now, and while the bulk of it is about making it easier and less bug prone for us to alter anything action-related and add new features, there are some gameplay things this work will immediately affect:

• Default action key functionality should now be possible to re-bind based on context, rather than be limited to the static target/action set it uses now
• New quickbar will replace the current quickbar, select bar and the toolbelt slots, creating a more streamlined way of interacting with the game world - with dedicated slots to insert tools and actions into, the quickbar is split into a tabbed top part and a common bottom area, all of which you should be able to arrange the way that suits your playstyle best
• Toolbelt will now act as a container that keeps items inside of it active at all times, allowing you to do more things without fumbling around with activating different items all the time - various systems in place will try to pick the item suited best to the action you’re trying to perform, but manually activated items will still be prioritized
• A visible action queue will be added to the UI, with the ability to change order of the queued actions and cancel any of them, rather than just the latest one
• When actions can’t be performed, rather than being hidden from display, they will now explain what is needed to be able to select that option in the context menu, such as suggesting the required tools.

 

These changes require a rewrite of most action code in the game. Converting actions to this new system also gives us a chance to go back over everything, fixing long standing issues and making things run smoother - for example making flatten and level do what they say they will do. An added bonus of this conversion will mean that all actions will be bindable without them having to be approved manually by the dev team.

 

 

 

 

Here's the original concept for the quickbar to further explain how it will work:

 

Spoiler

 

 

The action changes are not yet ready for public testing, but it will be on the test server for everyone to try out well prior to release.

 

 

Graphics and client improvements

 

We have been working on an overhaul of the lighting model used in the client.
This is going to introduce things such as environment reflections on metallic objects, moonlight and lamp shadows, and generally more believable visuals.

 

In this case pictures tell a lot more than words, so here’s screenshots of things we’re ready to show off, including some before/after comparisons:

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

The lighting changes are still a work in progress and should improve significantly before release - the reflections especially still require tweaking from the art side depending on the item.

 

Client performance is something we consider a priority with all of this, so we’re making sure these new features don’t impact it significantly. If we include any heavier visual changes that do affect performance, these will be optional, to be toggled in the game settings.

We have also identified some of the current performance issues and these should be addressed soon as well, improving frame rates and reducing stuttering across the board.

 

We are also looking at upgrading our version of the Java runtime soon, which is likely to alleviate some of the issues players have been experiencing, mainly visual hitches and stuttering often caused by the Garbage Collector, which is significantly improved for real time low latency applications such as Wurm (or rather, games in general) in the newer Java versions.

 

 

Development direction

After these changes are out, we plan to continue on improving the new player experience and working on more quality of life improvements, as our main goal currently is to bring more players to the world of Wurm and keep them with us.

With all that’s planned now, we aren’t actively working on large content expansions, but that’s not to say we have canned the previously planned work - features like the goblin camps have had work started on them and they are still coming soon after we’re done with our current plans.

 

We’ll be including some smaller content additions in our various updates, such as new craftable decorative items that we nearly have ready for launch.

 

 

 

That’s it from us for now. Despite the recent troubles around staff departures, the development team continues to work on the game, and we can’t wait to have these things out for you all to play with.

 

As always, keep on Wurming!

[Atndy 385]

I like all the changes but I do have to say it looks like it's moving into a more Runescape 3 graphics and UI

[Aelha 187]

2 minutes ago, Atndy said:

I like all the changes but I do have to say it looks like it's moving into a more Runescape 3 graphics and UI

gosh i hope not

[Akuzic 136]

Wow these are some awesome changes!

4 minutes ago, Samool said:

Resource Nodes

Spoiler

 

Coming soon to the public test servers, we will be introducing a complete replacement for the existing foraging, botanizing, and snow collecting systems. Currently, whether or not a tile can be foraged or botanized, or have snowballs collected from it, is completely invisible until you try to perform the action. On top of that, the results of foraging and botanizing are very random, selecting from mostly the same pool of items no matter what, making it difficult to search for anything specific, even if you know what the possible results are.

Replacing all this will be a system where specific resource nodes, with visible graphics, can spawn on tiles randomly over time. You can then gather items from them similarly to how foraging currently works, destroying the resource node in the process. This will be an improvement over the current system in several ways:

• Foraging and botanizing resources being visible on tiles will make it easier to find what you're looking for, in addition to adding some much-needed visusal variety to the world.
• Each type of resource node will have its own list of items, so finding specific items should be easier. For instance, if you're looking for rock shards, you can keep an eye out for "rubble" nodes, or if you're looking for branches and sprouts, you might want to look for "undergrowth" nodes.
• Since there will be many types of nodes, the number of potential items has been greatly expanded. All items from the current foraging and botanizing systems will be available, in addition to many more.
• Types of resource nodes that can appear on a tile, and how likely they are, depends on many factors, including tile type, altitude, season, and more. This means that foraging and botanizing will be possible on nearly any type of tile, and that both geography and in-game time of year will have a much greater impact on gameplay. For example, you might find dune grasses on sand near the water, lichen growing on pavement, or even fungus growing in caves. Some uncommon tiles, such as enchanted tiles and mycelium, even have their own resource nodes that cannot be found anywhere else.
• Which items you find from a specific type of resource node, and how likely they are, can depend on similar factors. For example, as in the current system, woad is more common on steppe, but this also extends to certain plants being more common in certain seasons, near water, or several other factors.
• "Snow" resource nodes will not only accumulate during the winter, but also at high altitude. The minimum altitude for snow to gather will vary depending on time of year, so the tallest mountain peaks will always have some even in Summer, and some lower-altitude areas may only have any during Autumn and Winter. These altitude limits are determined on a per-server basis, so that every server should have roughly the same percentage of tiles above the snow line.
• Skill will matter more than it does now. Quality will be determined in a fairly similar way to how it is now, but the difficulty of foraging or botanizing is determined by the type of resource node, the type of tile, and the specific item gathered from it. Some special items may also require a certain amount of skill to gather at all, or may become more likely at higher skill.

 

The current foraging and botanizing system has another problem: There is currently no way to know what possible items you might find when foraging or botanizing without looking it up on Wurmpedia or some other resource.

To solve this, a "Lore" option has been added to both tiles and resource nodes themselves. When used on a tile, Lore will tell you what types of resource nodes might spawn there under current conditions, in order of how likely they are. When used on a resource node, you will instead receive a list of what items you could possibly harvest from it, also ordered by likelihood. Skill will also matter here, as some higher-difficulty items or resource nodes might be hidden from the Lore command with insufficient skill, but you will always be told when this happens. This should allow players to determine for themselves what they might be able to find and under what conditions, without needing to use the wiki or any other source.

 

This feature also replaces the current random terrain decorations such as stones on dirt or ferns, which are a common point of new player confusion.

 

 

Love this change, this makes botanizing and foraging much less of a boring skill. Sounds like it will actually be worth it, and engaging to use. I'm curious though, how will this impact the ability to find rare coins? Will that feature just be gone now, or will the same chance carry over to working with the new nodes? It's a pretty important feature for alot of newer players so I do hope that source of income isn't taken away
 

Spoiler

6 minutes ago, Samool said:

Action changes

 

The work on this has been going on for a long time now, and while the bulk of it is about making it easier and less bug prone for us to alter anything action-related and add new features, there are some gameplay things this work will immediately affect:

• Default action key functionality should now be possible to re-bind based on context, rather than be limited to the static target/action set it uses now
• New quickbar will replace the current quickbar, select bar and the toolbelt slots, creating a more streamlined way of interacting with the game world - with dedicated slots to insert tools and actions into, the quickbar is split into a tabbed top part and a common bottom area, all of which you should be able to arrange the way that suits your playstyle best
• Toolbelt will now act as a container that keeps items inside of it active at all times, allowing you to do more things without fumbling around with activating different items all the time - various systems in place will try to pick the item suited best to the action you’re trying to perform, but manually activated items will still be prioritized
• A visible action queue will be added to the UI, with the ability to change order of the queued actions and cancel any of them, rather than just the latest one
• When actions can’t be performed, rather than being hidden from display, they will now explain what is needed to be able to select that option in the context menu, such as suggesting the required tools.

 

These changes require a rewrite of most action code in the game. Converting actions to this new system also gives us a chance to go back over everything, fixing long standing issues and making things run smoother - for example making flatten and level do what they say they will do. An added bonus of this conversion will mean that all actions will be bindable without them having to be approved manually by the dev team.

 

 

 

 

Here's the original concept for the quickbar to further explain how it will work:

 

  Hide contents

 

 

The action changes are not yet ready for public testing, but it will be on the test server for everyone to try out well prior to release.

 

 

Really excited for this, from the looks of it, it seems like a much, much more intuitive and streamlined process. The UI also looks alot more modernized, I really like it. I do wonder how this will affect things technically; the rarity system and skillgain were pretty well known from the old action system; I wonder if those will change much from these changes?

 

9 minutes ago, Samool said:

We are also looking at upgrading our version of the Java runtime soon, which is likely to alleviate some of the issues players have been experiencing, mainly visual hitches and stuttering often caused by the Garbage Collector, which is significantly improved for real time low latency applications such as Wurm (or rather, games in general) in the newer Java versions.

Best change ever, thank you so, *so* much for this

[Aelha 187]

Very excited tho

[Beastwolf 652]

PvP PvP PvP !

 

Also, nice work. It looks really good.

 

 

 

Edited August 29, 2023 by Beastwolf

[user 608]

I loooooovvvveeeeee the visual action queue

[Atndy 385]

3 minutes ago, Aelha said:

gosh i hope not

[Pukaria 201]

reserved

[Muse 2,232]

2 minutes ago, Akuzic said:

I'm curious though, how will this impact the ability to find rare coins?

 

I echo this.  

Interesting changes to foraging and botanizing overall and LOVELY graphics.

I've finished my grind, but now wondering how the changes may affect those people currently still grinding very close to 100.

[Akuzic 136]

16 minutes ago, Samool said:

Skill will matter more than it does now. Quality will be determined in a fairly similar way to how it is now, but the difficulty of foraging or botanizing is determined by the type of resource node, the type of tile, and the specific item gathered from it. Some special items may also require a certain amount of skill to gather at all, or may become more likely at higher skill.

This is kind of minor, but can we please have some sort of indication of difficulty? That was one of the best recent changes, with more things showing a % success chance, really hope this new system does as well

[Aelha 187]

3 minutes ago, Atndy said:

 oh gosh....

[HawkHawk 301]

32 minutes ago, Samool said:

After these changes are out, we plan to continue on improving the new player experience and working on more quality of life improvements, as our main goal currently is to bring more players to the world of Wurm and keep them with us.

With all that’s planned now, we aren’t actively working on large content expansions, but that’s not to say we have canned the previously planned work - features like the goblin camps have had work started on them and they are still coming soon after we’re done with our current plans.

 

We’ll be including some smaller content additions in our various updates, such as new craftable decorative items that we nearly have ready for launch.

As exciting as big updates are, I think the creative side of Wurm could really benefit from a lot of smaller updates with new craftable and decorative items, the more options available the more space for creativity in deed design. That said I would love to see an extension of the building materials one day, its great to choose between Marble, Slate etc. But having 2 or 3 different designs of doorframe, window, oriel etc, for each material would really allow people to make their builds unique. For example The doors are very similar on all buildings, maybe the option to add a door with a window in it, a metal bar door, etc.

 

The darker nights on the graphics overhaul look great as well.

 

  

32 minutes ago, Samool said:

I'm hoping this is a sneak peak but would be really cool if we had wall mounted lamps to go at any height and without the need for a pole. I love the idea of a doorway with an inviting lamp hanging above it

Edited August 29, 2023 by HawkHawk

[Akuzic 136]

2 minutes ago, Aelha said:

 oh gosh....

to be fair, any game with an action bar looks like that, its a pretty generic thing

[Aelha 187]

Just now, Akuzic said:

to be fair, any game with an action bar looks like that, its a pretty generic thing

ya you got a point. And I will come to terms with it if it works. Just don't wanna think about RS lol

[Legios 497]

I'm genuinely impressed with this information dump. I'm actually freaking excited!

[Aniceset 506]

Exciting! Great work Dev team!! ❤️

[Votip 1,621]

damn not bad

 

 

edit arrow update very good update

Edited August 29, 2023 by Votip

[Xallo 2,599]

These are some good updates. Great work!

[MrCoolMan 261]

Good work with the Graphics, and this starting to look good now but the game is the difficulty as it always been 😃

[sleepys 182]

Seems the team is getting some great work done. Thx for the new updates.

[Raix 100]

Exciting stuff!

[Guvna 110]

@Samool can you add roles to buildings. So for example a Building that is on deed can be assigned to be a "church" if certain items are within them - this will then give a faith bonus or perhaps require 1 less person at a sermon. This can be done to workshops, black smiths and other buildings.

[Tukodama 316]

55 minutes ago, Samool said:

For instance, if you're looking for rock shards, you can keep an eye out for "rubble" nodes

 

This all looks great and should make for some nice changes. 

 

The only complaint would be, do we really need more ways to get rock shards?  Who isn't swimming in shards now?  Will "rubble" nodes supply a different resource than we get from basic mining?  Perhaps adding limestone to "rubble" nodes, that combined with sand and ash to create glass? 

 

Thank you

Edited August 30, 2023 by Tukodama
added suggestion

[DaletheGood 1,073]

Looks good. Appreciate the efforts being made. Still salty with the ham-handed C-suite actions from a couple months ago, but glad to see the devs and the rest of the team are still bringing out new stuff. Really glad to see you're doing some serious back-end work with the actions. While the rest looks really nice, that back-end cleanup will (I believe) benefit the game immensely in the long run. Thanks devs!