Aardwolf MUD Update – December 22nd 2008

This reboot brings in two completely new areas and accompanying goals, along with a handful of code changes. For players getting their Aardwolf news from the blog exclusively, please note that Santa has also made a visit and will be handing out gifts in Aylor for the next few days. There is also news further down on the merging of the test and building ports.

New Area and Goal – Realm of Deneria:

The small province of Deneria, was founded by settlers from the royal state of Fal’Shara. Many years ago, they left their previous home to avoid the invasion of the Artificiers. They finally found a nice place to settle, and the realm of Deneria was born. After some time had passed, many things popped up: The church of Miad’Bir, the druids to the south, and the secretive order of the Nuril. It was shortly after Ceol came into power that strange things started happening. People were dying, many violent creatures (such as kobolds, orcs and goblins) had invaded the forests, and an amythest dragon moving in. Things weren’t right, and suspicion was laid on Ceol.

New Area and Goal – Ketu Uplands:

Past the scarred autumn lands lies a place in turmoil. The nomadic Ketu people have wandered the cliffs and uplands for generation, making camp where they will, never staying for long. But the blight of the autumn lands has slowly begun to seep north eating at the trees, twisting and transforming it into something disgusting. Meanwhile, a great evil has migrated into the caverns, shaking the rock with its piercing cry. Its presence has brought others, lured in by its call and the prospect of blood.

The Ketu are becoming fewer in number. At first, they were safe in their uplands, free from the evil lurking below. But increasingly, the monsters become more and more brazen, staging attacks and raids on the Ketu encampments. As their people dwindle, they face a difficult decision: stay, and risk destruction; or leave, and allow their ancestral lands to fall to ruin.

Other MUD changes this reboot – December 22nd 2008:

• There are some changes to setwanted, mostly related to non-pk players using it. If you setwanted someone and you are unclanned or in a non-pk clan, you will receive a new affect that allows others to use setwanted on you for a period of 24 hours. This does not apply when you use setwanted on someone you already have revenge on, or when you use setwanted on yourself.

You can see players who have this affect using ‘who setwanted’. It does not show regular clanned players who can always be setwanted.

• The first free superhero is now a ‘quiet’ superhero. If someone particularly wants to pay for it to trigger double exp they can still use ‘superhero loud’. The banner for a first time superhero has changed slightly to reflect this.

Builder/immortal related changes:

• ‘Who builder’ now works.
• Mpdump now shows the program code with line numbers. To see the prog without numbers, append the argument ‘nolines’.
• The ‘mptriggers’ command now shows the new trigger types.

News on combining builder and test ports:
We are finally ready to start combining the building and test ports. All edit commands on the builder’s port are about to be disabled. If you have an area on the builder’s port that you are actively working, please contact me to arrange for the area to be moved to the test port.

The builder’s port tends to get neglected and usually has fewer people around to ask for help with lua and general building. As there are more people around on the test port, and the test port gets lua/building fixes before anywhere else, hopefully this will make things a little easier for the builders.

It also makes it easier to bring areas live as there we will only have to be concerned with keeping things in sync between two ports, not 3. Then there’s the obvious benefit of running one less copy of the MUD on the server.

If you have an inactive area that you’re interested in picking up again if there are more people around to ask for help then drop us a note on personal.

As always, your feedback, comments and questions on this update are welcomed.