Location: Home / Aardwolf V3

Note: This information is as-of the V3 release on March 6th 2008. Enhancements made to the game since go-live are not covered here - they can be found in the news archive or 'history' helpfiles within the MUD

What is V3?

Aardwolf V3 is a completely new codebase developed from the ground up to combine the best features of the existing Aardwolf MUD with a platform for future growth. V3 was first started mid-2003 and put on hold early 2004 after the birth of Lasher's daughter.

Pieces of V3 have been developed on and off since then - for example the Aardwolf map was created in V3 and then ported back to the ROM based Aardwolf in 2006. The project was restarted seriously in July of 2007 and is expected to go live early 2008.

Note that this set of pages are intended to help experienced Aardwolf players get familiar with V3 and assume pretty detailed knowledge of the old Aardwolf MUD.

What are the changes I need to know right away?

The style of Aardwolf is not changing - the game is basically the same. In terms of underlying code, this upgrade is massively bigger than the move to V2 was. In terms of gameplay, the change is not so big. The most important changes that a player will need to know from day 1 are listed below. These are not necessarily the biggest changes, just those you need to know right off:

Spells/Skills: Many skills and spells can no longer fail. If you have 50% fireball, you will do 50% of the damage, but the spell will cast. More on skills and magic here.

Armor Class: Armor class does not exist in the game. Armor class on items has been converted into resistances - you will notice many of your items that had AC now have additional resists. More on armor class here.

Con/Damage: Constitution is much important with the absense of AC. You don't need huge amounts of CON over your level, but ignoring it completely will probably hurt.

Align: Alignment is in the range -2500 to 2500. Your alignment will be multiplied by 2.5 when your pfile is converted to v3.

Pets: Pets can no longer be bought - they are only available to some classes via spells. Pets also do not save with you. Many other important changes to pets and followers here.

Infravision/Dark Vision: Infravision no longer exists. There is a single 'night vision' affect. All races that formerly had infravision now have night vision. The command to toggle this is 'nonight' as 'noinfra' no longer makes sense.

Charge: Charging rooms with a lot of mobs will hurt - they tend to get annoyed by it.

Mob Kills: Mob kills only count on your 'mobs killed' total and for 'gamestat 5' counter if they are no more than 10 levels below you.

Rlook/Rget: Rlook and rget no longer exist. To target your room before your inventory, use 'look sword room' for example. Same with get. More on item and inventory manipulation here.

Psi stats: Psi class bonus is now luck. If your luck stat is off a little, this is why.

Mob Immunities: Immunity to the newer damage types (shadow, air, earth, magic) does not work in V2 even if the mob is set to it. This is a bug. The same bug does not existing in V3.

Other important Differences

These are some of the bigger changes, but do not directly affect how you play the game on day one of go-live:

Weather: The weather system is a much more detailed version than the old MUD. Each area can have unique weather patterns, so no more snowing over the desert, sunshine over gelidus, etc.

Seasons: The MUD has a new calendar with seasons affecting damage and other things. More on this later.

Tildes: There is no global pfile delimiter. Feel free to use the tilde character '~' all you like. The color code @- for tilde still exists so that existing descriptions using it do not break.

Paging: Output paging is enhanced with many new options available. The new paging prompt (changeable later) will show what you need to know.

Races/Wear locs: All races now have unique bodies and wear locations which can vary from race to race. For example, a 'centaur' may have hooves instead of feet. The 'wearable' command shows the wear locations available to your race, but initially they have all converted as they were in V2.

Links to the pages containing more detailed change lists are included to the left.

What are the main changes I probably don't care about?

Behind the scenes, Aardwolf is a completely new MUD. Some of the things you probably don't care about are:

• Every room, object, mob, area header, etc is its own file. This will allow faster editing/loading/saving and lend itself more to web based building later on.
• Lua based progs are now part of the MUD. Most of the attack spells are actually written in Lua.
• There is no concept of vnums within the game. Every mob/room/object/etc has its own key. While there will still be limits on amounts available to builders these are artificial and areas can expand as needed, independently of each other.
• Although it has been simulated in the game because testing showed that people really want to see it, there is really no concept of 'ticks' - the entire game is event-driven.
• The building system is entirely menu-based and prompts builders through the process. Shortcuts are still available for building veterans, but for the rest, no more long and complex syntaxes to remember.

What about DIKU?

When V3 goes live, Aardwolf will no longer be a DIKU based MUD. More on DIKU here.

So what about V4?

There will be no V4. This is it. This is all we need to grow indefinitely. Not that there won't be major upgrades, but they will be gradual. If you ever hear Lasher talking about starting a V4 please slap him silly and remind him how much finishing V3 sucked. Kthxbye.