This Week In Veloren 112

This week, 0.9 released. We hear about some changes that were made during code freeze, as well as some stats from the release party. A survey was sent out to Veloren players and we see some responses from that.

- AngelOnFira, TWiV Editor

Contributor Work

Thanks to this week's contributors, @Sam, @xMAC94x, @Slipped, @zesterer, @VincentFoulon80, @RedlineTriad, @aweinstock, @Sharp, @imbris, @Christof, @Snowram, @Sarra_Kitty, @DaforLynx, @TormodHellen, @Pfau, and @James!

This week Veloren 0.9 was released!

@Sam started reworking the mind flayer boss. It will have new attacks and a new AI. Any other information about it will need to be discovered through gameplay when it merges!@VincentFoulon80 worked on implementing three new skills: climbing speed, climbing cost, and swimming speed. @zesterer added a pickaxe, which can be used to collect gems and break weak rocks. @baddbad created a video to show off some Veloren gameplay, and it is being added to the website.

@yusdacra got Nix builds working again. They switched the build to use naersk instead of crate2nix, so there shouldn't have be a generated file each time Cargo.lock / Cargo.toml changes (which also means the build files should always work!). @AlbineAxolotl is working on some weapons based on ones from the Philippines. Here is a kampilan:

Feature freeze work by @aweinstock

For feature freeze week, I mainly worked on bug fixes:

• Interpolation was mistakenly being applied to the client's entity under certain circumstances, causing the player to fly away at high speed or get locked into place if they entered character select before the bug was fixed.
• Mounting was temporarily broken by a physics optimization (the player character's orientation and the mount's position would be updated, but the player's position wouldn't be locked to the mount's).
• The Agent system (NPC AI) wasn't correctly enabling fly mode, causing airships and birds to just slowly hop forward along the ground instead of flying.
• During the release party, under high server load, the physics system would get a higher-than-normal delta time value for the tick, causing gravity to be applied unevenly, manifesting in ticks where waves of people took lethal fall damage while standing still on the ground.

I also have a few fixes and features in the merge queue for once the feature freeze ends:

• Merchants previously tried to accept trades multiple times, instead of only accepting when they haven't accepted yet, resulting in lag and sometimes making it to the review phase of a trade they end up rejecting.
• Airships now fly properly without a health component, allowing them to be made invulnerable. This allows enabling RtSim airships flying between towns without players being able to hammer them out of the sky.
• I'm adding a camera clamp angle and toggle to voxygen, to make it easier to see horizontally when rapidly rolling and changing angle (e.g. not ending up pointed at the floor or ceiling in the middle of combat).

0.9 survey

We put out a survey right before the 0.9 release. It was meant to gather some insights about the player's experience in Veloren. If you're interested in filling out this survey, you can do it here

There were also some open-ended questions. Here are some key insights from them:

How well does Veloren run on your computer?

It runs good enough for my laptop without a graphics card!

Good on the NVIDIA [computer] terrible on AMD one

I think it uses 30-45% of my CPU which isn't bad.

It runs OK-ish I guess, but I struggle A LOT with high latency. FPS varies from 30 to 40-something (with medium settings, more or less). Ping 250ish to 500-something, peaking at 700, 800, even 900 sometimes.

What are you most excited for in Veloren?

Many things but you'd press me on a specific point... I would say the possibilities. I love Dwarf Fortress for a reason. I love Cube World (alpha) for a reason. And I am loving Veloren even more for the same reasons, but Veloren begs to keep offering more and more. Politics, faction wars, world generation and exploration, combat, building, the fact that all of this is possible, the fact that it will keep improving and be refined.

That it's not stable and runs on main/master. Contributors just keep adding new cool stuff and it's playable immediately. Very easy to get hyped about this.

Everything, maybe most urgently noob slaughter prevention.

Adventuring and Exploring mostly! I really like the economy aspect I've read about in the devlogs and would love to see some sort of Town Creation? Like you can start your own little town and maybe send NPCs you meet during travel there. The town expands with income

Story quests! I really like the gameplay so far but there is nothing to do other than grinding to your heart's content

During my first experience while entering the game and making a character, I thought this game was similar to WoW, especially since it allows the user to choose a weapon while making the character. And since I was playing this game with my friends, I decided to choose a role like wow, one as a tank, another as a damage, and another as a healer. My friends and I really enjoyed this style of play, especially When I used a hammer to throw the enemies into a corner and we would trap it and damage it. But since the developers weakened Sceptre in the game, my friend reacted strongly to the game developers.

An open and communicating community that listens and adjusts to feedback, without leaving everyone in the dark for years, only to change everything about the gameplay, that everyone loved.

In your opinion, what is the biggest feature missing from Veloren?

More contributors! Relating to the game... I would say world interactions. Going both way, how the world is influenced by your actions and how your actions will be influenced by the world.

Pets persisting between logins

In my opinion, the lack of a quest system is likely the biggest feature that is currently absent.

I haven't played very much yet, but I sort of wish that the tutorial mission was more fleshed out in terms of explaining crafting and combat. I crafted a couple pieces of armor with leather that I got around town and still got destroyed immediately as soon as I went to a dungeon. Maybe that was just an issue with my level, but I was getting 2-shotted and had trouble inflicting any damage at all.

NPC interaction mostly, right now the world feels a bit empty when not doing dungeons.

More item variety! Seeing just mushrooms and same loot models is really disappointing for me. I love stuff, and when there is little of variety it makes it pretty bland.

Some kind of completion mechanic, like a book for tracking all the monsters I defeated, all the fish I fish, all the insects I catch, and more of this kind of grind.

Combat. I don't find it is bad right now but I think combat needs to be improved above all of the other features. It is the top priority for me. When I use close-range weapons, monsters always beat me cause I can see neither their attack states nor if they hit me, so I can't dodge.

Procedurally generated maps. Content to do between dungeons such as camps, quests, or even a main story.

The world itself needs a little more love, it feels a little empty, I understand there are many dungeons, its the place between the big places that needs a little bit of love and detail.

Deferred rendering, GI, and LOD trees ;P kidding. Combat overhaul: Better anticipatory animations, w/ SFX. Better hitboxes. Smarter AI. Sharper movement. Combat feels clunky, and the positions/movements of entities feel totally disconnected from their combat actions -- lacking the tactile quality of (say) Dark Souls. I don't feel encouraged to "get good" when the game provides no feedback (or provides false feedback). Can't trust my eyes, and there's no sound. So it's memorizing, which by itself is really boring.

Definitely quests. But also, more bosses, especially overworld bosses, and more gear. Now that I got the complete cultist set, I kind of hit a (temporary) dead end. I heard there are legendary items but the drop rate seems to be kind of unfair (I know... it's called legendary for a reason).

0.9 release stats

We hit a new record for most players on the server at once! At peak, 133 players joined the server. However, the release party saw several problems. Disconnects were happening frequently, and the latency for players was quite high. There were also some massive spikes with incoming bandwidth. Lots of this is still being diagnosed, and tooling is being improved to simulate environments similar to release parties.