These weeks in Veloren 242

The last few weeks we've been busy preparing for the release party, so here's a recap with everything that's happened in veloren during this time.

- Crab, TWiV Contributor

Contributor work

Thanks to everyone who contributed to veloren these last weeks: @miocore, @DaforLynx, @Vaga, @do-no-van, @Necti, @uniior, @Hrom, @DungeonLord, @floppy, @isse, @crab, @Tarhun, @NeuralModder, @Hgrebnednav and @horblegorble.

Thanks to the weblate contributors who contributed these last weeks: @Alerty, @ArDu, @Blesk, @bov, @crab, @fnetX, @Janez, @jecasadiego, @Jungso, @l3nemy, @loglizzy, @NeonLife, @Positron832, @spartan195, @StartaBafras, @sungbinma, @ttanesque, and @Zerotha.

Merged work

Downed State, by @isse

As preparations for the ongoing respawn rework RFC (linked here), humanoids will now enter a 'downed' state instead of being killed. In this downed state, entities are still vulnerable and can only move slowly while being unable to attack, interact, or make any inventory modifications. Nearby NPCs or players can help downed entities out of this state again.

MR: !4656

Snow Sprite variations, by @Green12 @Hrom and @do-no-van

@Green12 made a set of snowy sprite variations, which @Hrom created a MR for and @do-no-van added an attribute to the existing sprites to define whether to use the snowy or non-snowy variant.

MR: !4605

Attack timing balance and Frost Gigas summon rework, by @Necti

The Frost Gigas will now spawn 2 (larger) summons instead of a bunch, which got a reworked skill set and attack AI. This MR also slowed down the attack recovery duration for most entities, which should make it easier to land more hits between dodging and blocking incoming attacks.

MR: !4666

Sprite model updates, by @uniior

Another nice set of updated sprites:

MR: !4665 , !4660

Adding a sprite attribute to determine fence adjacency, by @DungeonLord

Instead of there being one separate sprite for each possible fence adjacency, there is now only one fence sprite with an adjacency attribute defining which model to use. This should make it easier to add more sprite style variants in the future too.

MR: !4661

Banjo instrument, by @floppy and @Sinari

A new crafted instrument, model by @Sinari and the audio by @floppy:

MR: !4658

Make empty town generation less likely, by @Tarhun

Most towns will now generate an initial plaza, which should remove many cases where towns don't generate with any buildings at all. There are still a few edge cases but we are working on getting rid of those too 🛠️.

MR: !4646

Add an indicator on learned recipe items, by @Hgrebnednav

To no longer accidentally trade a recipe you already know from a merchant or player, recipes will now indicate if you have or haven't learned a recipe yet in the item hover tooltip:

MR: !4652

Upgrading iced and other dependencies in Airshipper, by @NeuralModder

Airshipper received many dependency updates, including iced, which should fix a few graphics issues some people were having with the launcher. In addition the caching system now automatically removes images which are no longer needed to save disk space.

Note that these changes haven't been included in an Airshipper release yet, but they will hopefully soon be.

MR: airshipper!164

Fix being unable to cast abilities when wallrunning, by @miocore

Instead of getting stuck in an equip-unequip cycle when trying to use abilities while wallrunning, you can once again use abilities as one would expect.

MR: !4662

Item price and availability balance, by @uniior

Merchants will no longer sell late-game materials such as sunsilk, diamonds and other high tier gems. In addition the price of other materials has been rebalanced to better fit the recent loot changes.

MR: !4657

More changes:

• Fixing a typo and the flurry ability icon not showing when not in agility stance, by @Vaga !4670
• Legoom sounds, by @GeekyGami and @DaforLynx !4655
• Fixing the hammer/axe block animation, by @miocore !4669
• Updating rustls and idna to address RUSTSEC advisories, by @crab !4668
• Updating dependencies, by @NeuralModder !4653
• Fix RTsim NPCs dying permanently, by @crab !4650

Ongoing unmerged work

@DungeonLord is working on a new Barn structure:

@Tarhun is making airships actually dock at docks:

@uniior is working on balancing Axe ⚖️

@do-no-van is working on a fishing mechanic. Still awaiting some #game-design discussion, but here's an early preview:

RFC discussions

As a result of a few cyclic arguments in the game design chat, we're trying to move most game desing discussions off to RFCs. Here are the ones which were discussed this month (more to be opened soon):

• Respawn rework, by @isse rfcs!46
• DRAFT: Removing/Deprecating the general combat skill tree, by @DaforLynx rfcs!45

Events

@Necti hosted a sword PvP tournament on the official server in an arena made by @uniior.

More events will follow up soon ;)

Screenshots

This developer blog is based on information collected in #blog-content, where game contributors are always invited to communicate their updates or simply post a link to a different channel.