These weeks in Veloren 249

Cozy up by the campfire, enjoy some animated story telling, and wind down for a rejuvenating slumber. Then refresh at breakfast with plenty of greens on the menu.

- horblegorble, TWiV Contributor

Contributor work

Thanks to everyone who contributed to veloren these last weeks: @isse, @horblegorble, @drunicornthe1, @unii, @Supa, @Crabo, @hnrq, @DaforLynx, @imbris, @walpo, @do-no-van, @Caigh, @xMAC94x, @Owill0w, @MSGanesh23, @juliancoffee, @UncomfySilence, @Gemu, @Limina, @vickyfrenzy, @marcoleric, and @olaf_ej.

Thanks to the weblate translators who contributed these last weeks:

Merged work

Take a seat by the campfire

Having smouldered on the suggestions backburner for long enough, your most requested change to campfires has finally flickered into life. Waypoints are now set by sitting down at a fire, rather than simply feeling its heat. So douse your navigational fears and get warm without worry, thanks to @isse's firewood, with kindling from @horblegorble.

Along the way was a detour in short story interface design, which promised to dispel all confusions and ambiguities. Surprisingly, this wasn't a smash hit in playtesting. Something about "I can't see a damn thing" or somesuch minor detail.

GitLab: !4891

Get better with bedrest

That latest journey left you with an open gash? Simply lay down, tuck in, and let the comfort of a good mattress sort it all out. This might sound like some kind of nonsense or unicorn magic at first, but that's Dr. Unicorn magic to you. In collaboration with @isse, here's @drunicornthe1 with your prescription:

Merged in the ability to regen health while sleeping. This will also give the ability to have other blocks give effects while mounted. Just don’t look at the buff icon yet it’s going to be reworked later

Demand has been high for these marvellously mellow mattresses, so unfortunately deliveries have only been made to forest towns so far.

GitLab: !4838

Free up your footwork

Save those ankle breaking flourishes for the dance floor, and bring the rest of your body into the swing of things. @unii made animation changes across many sword skills that bring some oomph to your strike, with no time to play footsies.

GitLab: !4847

A farmer's life for me

Lettuce be glad for the work of @Supa and @drunicornthe1, who've yielded a bumper crop of leaf-wrapped presents for us to open (away from townsfolk eyes). Unlike sprites of old, these now have separate models for before and after states, as well as for the collected item. This MR also leaves behind some internal cabbage baggage.

Now it's not all about the harvest. @Supa has been thinking ahead, and took the chance to plant some voxel model seeds for future farm work.

GitLab: !4835

UI Gooey

Throwing shades of grey

Contrast is in the eye of the beholder, so go ahead and use @Crabo's new opacity slider to tune things just right. And check out @Supa's touch-ups to PvP icons while you're there.

GitLab: !4842 + !4894

The way back

Adventures in Veloren can take you many places, including a long way from your waypoint on a good day. Among all the sights and sounds of the world, it's not always the easiest thing to recall. So @Crabo is here to help again, with an entry in the player menu (that's what a diary is for, right?). Cheers as well to @hnrq for adding translation keys.

GitLab: !4802 + !4909

Change the channel

Resident sound engineer @DaforLynx has been busy backstage at the studio, wrangling cables with minds of their own and keeping kira in check. After far too many sample rates and the odd expletive, we get to enjoy the tidy fruits of his messy labour:

I added a setting for how many audio channels are allocated for SFX. If you are experiencing lag in situations with a high amount of audio traffic, try setting this to medium or low.

GitLab: !4743 + !4916

Get your fix

No more Ratatouille

It's not unusual for a summon to hop on a shoulder for a ride, where they can feel like they're seeing the world through their boss's eyes (this may be startling to a greenhorn adventurer, but rest assured it's perfectly acceptable in dungeon culture). Now what is unusual was an upset in the hierarchy that had some upstart minions convinced they had been lifted above their station. No more taking orders - it was their turn to call the shots, and the big boss could take the back seat.

As to why their superiors were inclined to humour this apparent rebellion, some analysts suspect that it was the allure of guaranteed schadenfreude. For it wasn't long at all before these ladder climbers made the humbling discovery that they had not read the manual on doing their boss's job. And boy, was there a lot to know. With such big shoes to fill, all they could manage was some plodding around.

@isse had to climb up herself to cut the puppet strings and knock these over-influential shoulder parrots off their perch. Let's see if the so-called bosses can keep things in order this time.

GitLab: !4860

Life and death logistics

Speaking of bosses, does anyone know who's in charge of Veloren's rtsim afterlife and reincarnation? Seems they'd left it on auto-pilot in the basic mode of instant respawns at reliable locations. Guess it comes with the pre-alpha territory. Though not everyone was complaining, with some players making efficient use of the opportunity for goods that fell from the sky. It is suspected they were suffering from a bad case of loot fever.

Hopefully their temperatures start to come down with another fix from @isse, which introduces a mortality architect to ferry entities from one life to the next. That transition now takes some time, begging all sorts of metaphysical questions about life beyond the health bar.

GitLab: !4833 + !4906

Iconic looks

These clothes were made for working, and that's just what @unii did. A crease here, a smudge there, and those clean overalls finally get their 'well-loved' feel.

Bringing this work ethic one dimension down, @unii also polished off some icons that had started out as part of a personalised aesthetic mod. Shading, dithering, and that personal touch all give them a tasty flavour.

GitLab: !4903

Voxel housekeeping

Although they're made of blocks, it isn't hard for voxel models to become disorganised over time if you're not careful how you stack them. Taking up the task of tidying up our boxes was @Supa and @imbris, who faced no shortage of paperwork in changing a slew of names and addresses in the assets/voxygen/voxel/ directory. This primarily concerned the item/, object/, and sprite/ folders. So if you're playtesting or debugging with /give_item and can't find an item's path, don't forget what's in your toolbox: tab completion from a hash (#) prefix and a search bar in the F7 menu (Admin Commands -> Give Items). For those in the modelling business, do check out the assets/voxygen/voxel/README.md file that has been provided as a guide on the intended arrangement going forward.

It wasn't all a re-boxing match - other work included cleaning up rusty (the bad kind) code structures, as well as mediating disagreements between visuals and physics for some sprites. With all of the voxel fort building tactical logistics, it's important not to risk getting buried under a tumble. So the original effort was split across 3 merge requests, with 2 extras from @horblegorble to settle some of the dust kicked up in cleaning.

GitLab: !4774 + !4826 + !4863 + !4864 + !4899 + !4913

More changes:

• resolved security warnings and a vulnerability + updated conrod_core - @Crabo - !4907
• updated badges and restored cover image in README.md - @walpo - !4897
• miscellaneous fixes to changelog entries - @Crabo - !4885
• synchronised battlemode state with existing character data - @do-no-van - !4902
• added and improved documentation for voxygen/src/cmd.rs - @Caigh - !4900
• more precise and well-formatted doc comments, plus some more descriptive variable names - @xMAC94x - !4910
• decoupled stun duration from baked in attack speed modifier - @do-no-van - !4898
• price reduction for gold and silver ore to better match rarity - @Owill0w - !4922 ✨
• more badge updates in README.md - @MSGanesh23 - !4915 ✨

Ongoing unmerged work

Gone fishin'

What's that tugging on the line?

It's us, nibbling on the bait of @do-no-van's splash into fishing mechanics. Over the horizon there's the lure of rtsim fisheries, but for now the net is cast close to shore on basic functionalities.

Discussions

Pet projects

It started with a suggestion on the discord for pets to have unique abilities, including (but hopefully not limited to) carrying backpacks. From there, folks were busting open their chalk packs for an assault on the brainstorming blackboard. Across the pastel spectrum, the final scrawlings featured @juliancoffee, @Gemu, @UncomfySilence, and @isse. With honourable doodles from @Supa, @Alley_Oop, and @horblegorble. For those after the big picture, this discussion was later followed up with by a summary from @Gemu. But that's enough preamble, let's get into the (thematically embellished) details.

It was a memorable bass line that played throughout: creatures come as they are. Some leather strap wound through a hunk of metal isn't going to transcend their existence into new realms of verticality. No, their trials shall be our triumphs. Their glories, our grit. Tracing the orbit of independent souls learning to turn together through the twists of fate.

Bound in life, but not in mind. A choice at first, tended with care to blossom in time. The many finesses of cooperation weaving ever tighter the whats and whens of chosen tactics. With vigilance to crossed threads and slipped knots, dancing on to new patterns of harmony. Far and away from the discordant rhythms of summoner and thrall. Some world that is: command, control, expire.

So not with thoughts in sync, but still things shared. Such as the physicality of body. We know well our own adornments, of all manner of utility and aesthetic. Do we forget these material crafts are best shared? Be it buttressing headgear, flowing fabrics, or a double saddle for the burly hearted. Then coming full circle to personal gear that blends trade-offs between player and pal.

Now indeed, this light ahead may shine most brightly. But know well - it stands against the looming shadow of mortality. And from this darkness rise these spectres of doubt: Do all good pets go to heaven? Or do they share in our unyielding tethers to the world? What damages would be done to the relationship? Can such wounds be mended, or will things inevitably tear apart? Tough questions don't always have sound answers, so for the moment we have some tonics that may ease a disquiet mind:

• waypoint respawning (straightforward, but not ideal)
• more nuanced downed states and revival mechanisms
• downgrading of player-creature bond (and associated skills/controls)
• soulstone item that needs transferring into a new creature of the same species

So that's what's been sketched out. As you ponder these various hues of thought, consider a closing thought from @Alley_Oop, who said what we've all been thinking: "giant bunny mounts when"

Community showcase

Concept art

First-hand accounts of various explorations in voxel space. A mix of things intended for use in-game, and more experimental ideations.

Sort it out

Inspired by inventory management in other games, @drunicornthe1 made an expedition into the world of sorting controls for Veloren. Here's a demo of their findings featuring a variety of modes with a single sorting button.

GitLab: !4807

Pirated goods

@Supa went off treasure hunting in the #aesthetics upload folder to dig up some swashbuckling goodies. A quick dust off, some colour touch-ups, and they're as good as new.

Legends of Vintiry

Forget orichalcum and sunsilk, we've got a legendary tier video trailer to feast our senses on. Whether French speech is close in reach, or only close in spirit, this server event will be the place to follow in this party's questing footsteps. Will their bonds of friendship stay warm through the icy chill of mountainous foes? Watch on, and heed the call of @marcoleric:

I can now spill the beans. We cooked a little server for an event and we've been working on a logo + trailer for it

Credits go to @Limina for camera control and @vickyfrenzy for weather wrangling by, all to realise the screenplay of @marcoleric. Scored with music by jonathanymusic.

Lost in transit

Fellow public transport enthusiasts can enjoy a game of connect-the-dots when planning their next trip, thanks to the regular geometry of maps and tables shared by @olaf_ej.

Beat the heat

Leaving all your armour behind is one way to stay cool under fire. But if it helps you feel the rhythm of combat, we can't argue with results. So get ready for some roly-poly tactics here from @unii.

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.