This Week In Veloren 143

This week, we hear about improvements that are being made to the stealth system. Worldgen is also getting some work done.

- AngelOnFira, TWiV Editor

Contributor Work

Thanks to this week's contributors, @IsseW, @Demonic, @zesterer, @Slipped, @Kemper, @AngelOnFira, @Snowram, @Qiu, @antoniomuso, @Sam, @ubruntu, @UncomfySilence, and @DoctorKompot!

This week, we hit 10,000 members on our Discord server!

Stealth by @ubruntu

Since the last blog post, I added the stealth attribute to armors. It was sort of already there, but set to 0 on all armors. I basically added values for the craftable armors and added the logic to make the numbers correspond to stealth effectiveness. It can be understandably opaque what the associated number means exactly so I want to explain it a bit here. I'm hoping to convert it to a more understandable number like a percentage, and show more details with tooltip information about it in the future!

Currently, the way stealth works is that your character is considered sneaking when they are crouched down, or rolling when previously crouched. Right now sneaking only affects the perception distances (both sight and hearing) in the agent system, meaning that sneaking characters must be closer to NPCs before they are detected.

The stealth stat specifically affects the perception distances of NPCs, and here's how:

• With no increases to the stealth stat, sneaking cuts the perception distance in half.
• Additional stealth from armor is added to the denominator of this fraction, so 1 / (2 + n), and this number is multiplied with the agent's perception distances. Reaching a percentage around 20-25% is probably enough to avoid most confrontations.
• The stealth stat is currently intended to be the highest value on hide armors, half as much on cloth armors, and mail armors aren't intended to have stealth bonuses. I didn't add the stat to rings and necklaces because those were recently overhauled, but I'm not opposed to those having stealth bonuses as well.

A few other things to mention about stealth:

• All agents have the same perception distances and that might change.
• Using a lantern does not affect stealth yet. Caves and dungeons may require more light sources before this changes.
• I am by no means 'the stealth dev', so I won't prevent anyone from improving this fun game mechanic.

Worldgen by @Demonic

This is my first blog post since I've returned to the project. I've been working on adding Spots, Sprites, Ships, and Shrubs, "Holy that's a lot of S's" to our current world generation system. I've been working with @zesterer to improve upon the current river world generation. He's teaching me about how a bit of the backend works.

Newly added:

• Shrubs - Added to Jungles/Forests, Savannahs, Grasslands, and Taiga biomes.

Spots:

• Added Gnarling Tree - that can be found in jungles and forests.
• Added Troll Cave - Spawns in Jungles, Forests, Grasslands, and Taiga biomes
• Added Shipwreck - Spawns within lakes and coasts

Ships:

• Added Galleon class ship - spawns naturally or can be spawned by a Game Moderator (Drivable)

(WIP Un-merged) Sprites:

• Added Lilly pads and new Reeds to rivers and lakes.
• Added new Ferns, Red Grass, and Flowers to Jungle, Forest, Grassland biomes

Massive thanks for most of the Assets contributed by @Gemu.