Posted November 25 Hi everyone, I’d like to update you today on all things Wurm, including what we’ve been working on, upcoming features, and some less interesting, more technical happenings behind the scenes. We also have news about the upcoming Black Friday sale. If you’re only here for that, you can click here to go straight to the sale event announcement. Building Update This Thursday, we’ll be introducing the first part of the building update into the game. You will now be able to build ceilings below floors or roofs. Using five types of ceilings, you can now cover those unsightly rafters with decorative patterns. You can rotate the ceilings to create more complex designs, and wooden ceilings will even show the wood type, so there are a lot of combinations to try out! In addition to ceilings, we’re adding an ability to hang items from them. We’ll be starting with a single new item for that, the craftable chandelier - as opposed to a skinned version which will be put on the silver shop when the Black Friday sales start. The craftable chandelier will also display different metal colors. Coming in an update early next year is the previously announced ability to build on uneven terrain. We’ve called this feature docks before, but it's not limited to placing buildings on water, allowing you to extend your buildings off various terrain slopes, making construction on hills much more interesting. That doesn’t mark the end of what we’re looking to add to the building side of the game, and among the additions, there will also be more wall types coming into the game to further expand the possibilities when building up your deed. Goblin Camps We're ready to share more details on the under-going work on Goblin Camps! This project only started full development a couple of months ago (hence the long time since the announcement of it), but it’s coming together quickly, and we should be able to deploy it to test servers soon. Goblin Camps are randomly spawning, fortified camps full of new enemy types with their own unique combat AI, and will provide a tactical combat challenge appropriate for small to medium sized groups. Camps will spawn frequently in the wilderness, away from villages and buildings, and will be able to be cleared by relatively small groups of players. Camps will vary in difficulty, with higher difficulty camps having more enemies, stronger enemies, and better fortifications, along with more loot to gain. Getting Inside Entering a Goblin Camp is the first step toward clearing it or taking its loot, and that means getting past multiple defenses. The camp perimeter is lined with spiked barriers, with only a few gaps in the defenses. Goblin watchtowers will also be keeping an eye on possible intruders and slowing down anyone who dares try to enter (or leave). More difficult camps might have locked gates blocking entry through these gaps, and are more likely to have watchtowers near them. Enterprising players might choose to brave the spikes instead, but walking them through will be painful, leaving you slow, injured, and dismounted from any animal or vehicle you rode in on. Goblins Goblin Camps wouldn't be goblin camps without goblins. Camps will be patrolled by several new varieties of goblins, each one serving a tactical purpose for the camp. Some will focus on absorbing blows and taunting players, while others focus on healing their fellow goblins or attacking at range. Meanwhile, goblins in watchtowers will attack players while safely out of range of melee combat, requiring archery or other tactics to bring them down. Rewards Camps will be stocked with well-guarded chests full of loot, some which can't be obtained anywhere else. The camps themselves will also have a number of new decorative items, which will be free for the taking once the camp is cleared. Defeating Goblin Camp enemies will also provide more Fighting skill gain at high skill levels compared to normal PVE combat, giving players a more reliable way to gain skill beyond 70. Sneaking Around Goblins, like people, have to sleep at night. While they're asleep, players will have the opportunity to infiltrate the camp without being noticed. This presents players with uses for some skills that have previously had little use outside PVP servers, such as Lock Picking and Stealing. Players with lower skill might use this as an opportunity to simply scout the interior of the camp, and players with higher skill might pick gate locks, steal a few decorations, or even pick the lock on a chest and steal the contents without the goblins noticing. However, too much commotion, or too many botched attempts at staying sneaky, might alert the goblins to your presence, and the entire camp might try to make a meal of you. Client Work and Java Upgrade On the client side, we have been focused on improving performance. Some of the performance fixes will go into the client this week already, this time focused on optimizing shadow rendering. Coming soon after, we’ll be introducing some more general performance improvements - we’ve identified many other areas that we can improve without affecting the visuals negatively, so we will be working through that, as we’re aware the performance could still be a lot better. We are also nearly ready to upgrade the Java version that the client uses to Java 21. This has taken us a very long time, as we had issues acquiring a code signing certificate, due to a lot of hassle around how strict that is, requiring back-and-forth physical mail between CCAB and the certificate authority. With the code signing certificate in place, we can now freely update the game’s launcher again, as otherwise some of the more strict antivirus software could have tagged the launcher falsely, as was the case when we first released the current launcher a few years back. That enables us to update the launcher code to support the new Java version. Provided testing shows no issues, we intend to release the upgrade in December. To temper expectations though, while it will help us with client stuttering and possibly certain rare crashes, it hasn’t shown to be significantly more performant for the Wurm client in general. Character Customization Rework We’re still in the early development phase of the character rework, so there is not much to share on that front. We are currently experimenting with a more configurable face mesh, which would mean a much more customizable player face creation - think a lot of sliders, instead of just a few pre-created options for various customization options. Forum and Wurmpedia A few weeks ago, we migrated the forum and Wurmpedia to a different host to improve performance. While we’re still going to be working on the forum, as it seems to have its slower moments, this allowed us to re-enable Google indexing, leading to the forum appearing in Google search results again. Remaining Bugs While we’ve tackled the most urgent issues after the major update we released this summer, there are still some more elusive bugs that we’ve been working on but had no luck cornering down. We ask for your patience as we’ll continue to work on the fixes. Older Maps Map dumps for live servers from previous years went missing from our Google Drive folder. This most likely happened due to a misconfiguration of the Drive folder when we were uploading the 2024 maps. We have now addressed this issue and most of them should be back there now. Here’s a link to the folder where all of the maps are available: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B6J_aGQ6URL8UURFN2VadWxtSWs?resourcekey=0-DuurGPuGLSABmTTu7-999g&usp=sharing A huge thank you to Xallo and Lisimba for sharing the files. Recruitment Apologies for the silence in the last couple of months resulting in this info dump. Currently, we all focus on development and are left without someone in a communications role, so I’d like to use this chance to remind you we are still recruiting for the Community Manager position. As always, we’re looking for a contractor, though if you want to contribute at a smaller scale as a volunteer, we could use that help as well. For the Community Manager role applications, please reach out to @Pomonahere on the forum or at pomona@wurmonline.com. We also have various openings for other volunteer positions in the Wurm staff - make sure to check it out and apply if you’d like to help Wurm out! Black Friday 2024 We’re also running a Black Friday sale again this year, with even more goodies to get from the silver shop and a free gift for all premium players. Here’s a separate announcement about that: We hope you enjoy these upcoming changes to Wurm and the sale starting this Friday. Happy Wurming from the Wurm Online team! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted November 25 Very exciting news! I'm waiting for the building updates. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted November 25 Welp, I certainly did not see this coming, amazing updates. (Goblin Camp was far in the distance 😅) Nothing else I could write would justify how I feel right now, so I will leave it at a "Thank you, not just for keeping the lights on, but steadily improving the game." Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted November 25 I am so excited for this! Going to have to come up with some unique ways to incorporate the uneven terrain into my castle build! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted November 25 Ceilings and hanging lights! Lets gooooo! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted November 25 Holy crap that all sounds so amazing. HOWEVER I no longer trust any development update that includes Goblin Camps. You can only dash away my hopes so many times before I simply don't have them anymore Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted November 25 Nice update! Will build new ceilings everywhere! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted November 25 Came for the Black Friday Sale info and got blown away by the rest. Ceilings and the other building upgrades sound wonderful and the goblin camps stole the show! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted November 25 Great work 🥰, Thank you so much for the beautiful update 👍 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted November 25 Holy smokes, all of these planned updates are amazing! I never even realized how badly I wanted roofing. > In addition to ceilings, we’re adding an ability to hang items from them. Phenomenal work, team! I'm already thrilled at having different wood types be visible on ceilings, here's hoping we can put some colorful carpets up there too Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted November 25 Quote Rewards Camps will be stocked with well-guarded chests full of loot, some which can't be obtained anywhere else. The camps themselves will also have a number of new decorative items, which will be free for the taking once the camp is cleared. Defeating Goblin Camp enemies will also provide more Fighting skill gain at high skill levels compared to normal PVE combat, giving players a more reliable way to gain skill beyond 70. hmm, we'll see Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted November 25 1 hour ago, Sidereal said: Holy smokes, all of these planned updates are amazing! I never even realized how badly I wanted roofing. > In addition to ceilings, we’re adding an ability to hang items from them. Phenomenal work, team! I'm already thrilled at having different wood types be visible on ceilings, here's hoping we can put some colorful carpets up there too *Massive yawn* "Chests full of loot" 41 minutes ago, Finnn said: hmm, we'll see I'm guessing it'll be silver, haha ya right. Probably potatos or something equally meh. There's nothing they could put in there that won't wreck some other aspect of the game or take away their income. Though I do like the idea of new combat options, I have to give this a normal *yawn* Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted November 25 (edited) With this new ceilings update, will we be able to finally build roofs in mines? otherwise its pretty useless. at least to me lol. I primarily live in the mine. Otherwise everything else looks good! Edited November 25 by Saiyan Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted November 25 Love it!!!!!!!!!!! Very excited about the goblin camps. Great to see the additional options on building as well. Great job!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted November 25 This is great news! The ceilings have been requested for so long to hide the roofs. I see lot's of rebuilding in Wurms future after this goes live! But not just the ceilings, it's overall all great news. Super excited for the possability to build on the side of a mountain in the future! No more need to cut of the tip of my mountain. It'll stay the way it is now! Thanks for the lovely update and all the work you do! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted November 25 Hello, So many good news! Quite the long list! *runs of to grind lock picking and thievery* And finally so many ideas coming soon to life 29 minutes ago, Saiyan said: With this new ceilings update, will we be able to finally build roofs in mines? otherwise its pretty useless. at least to me lol. I primarily live in the mine. Otherwise everything else looks good! I've the exact same question. Thanks! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted November 25 This is indeed great news. Finally a use for lockpicking and steeling on pve side Just one small questions, but you do not need to answer it. 😉 Once alarm is trigger, and all goblins are after you. Do all locks, lock including the gate lock? Leaving you trapped fighting the horde of goblins inside. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted November 25 Just wow! Can’t wait to get home and see this when it’s released , ceilings and a dock for the Villa woot! Fantastic news update, massive thanks to all the wurm teams for keeping this game updated and alive. long live Wurm! now where’s my passport….. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
