Changelog 25/03/2010 and Server Wipe

The third time in 8 months of time, the server has been full wiped, due to client and server improvements and a fresh game economy. Also the game server will be pleased with a big content update, which includes new jobs, quests and other game mechanics. Read the full changelog below:


FIXES:
- Doctors check for poison and radiation level properly.
- Fixed waterpump in scrapheap base.
- Fixed timeouts for 'upgrades'. Check how they behave with deteriorated/broken items.
- Item dismantling not possible during combat.
- Day pass bug - day pass was becoming obsolete after bartering with some trader.
- Fixed many follower-related bugs.
- Fixed Bonus Rate of Fire.
- First aid and Doctor impossible to use during turn-based combat.
- Fixed about 70-80 more larger or smaller bugs.

FEATURES:
- We introduced the first 3d models from Interplay's canned Van Buren. These are among others: Rats, Desert Stalker, Radtoads, Deathclaws, the Venus Mantrap and more.
- There are now a few mining locations, where it's possible to mine ore and minerals.
- Abandoned mines are for sale in certain places.
- It's now possible to trade (give) slaves to other players.
- Random fetcher quests, currently only available from Monte Carlo in Boneyard.
- New quests available in Hub bar, speak to Risto.
- New job available, lifting boxes at local caravans in a number of towns. The job is tough, but the caps are good.
- Certain locations are colored by their function. For example, faction bases are blue.
- Green contours for followers (note: they are still red right after being spawned. Relog helps).
- Some new locations, explore. Smiley
- Some treasures are now hidden in the game world.
- Three new faction bases added (2 generic, 1 via quest).
- One new car is added.
- Added NCR Ranger armor.
- Various encounter and city maps overhauled.
- Added barbers to at least Klamath and Vault City (Changes male hair between short and long. Visual needs to be "refreshed" with armor change.)
- Holodisks can now be used to read and store data.
- Doors can be smashed by producing an explosion at most one hex far from it. Metal doors may require more than one attempt. Doors in towns will regenerate in 30 minutes.
- Various new quests:
* Some basic stuff for starter.
* Abandoned Bunker, Scout in Junktown.
* It came from the desert, Dr. Wong in San Francisco.
* Stranded Rust, Trapper in Klamath.
* The sad wife, Woman in the Hub.
* The Rail Line Gang, Gunther in the NCR.
* Medical investigation, Dr. Andrew in Vault City.
* A Man's Job, Hammilton in the Boneyard.
* Montag's Water Pump, Montag in the Boneyard.

CHANGES (WIP):
- A lot of item prices are adjusted.
- New instanced starting locations.
- Reputation gain for selling items at traders.
- Player can send distress calls only for 10 minutes of encounter map lifetime. Every player who dies on visible encounter forgets the location.
- New/modified TC again. Closely follows this suggestion.
- Added ~timeouts command to toggle showing of nonzero timeouts on the screen.
- Suicide command (works only when you're knocked out): ~cuttheveins .
- Limit for a sum of all profession levels increased to 4.
- Sneaking:
* Sneak penalties for angle are no longer reducing the skill by a percent of total amount, but are substracting 0, 25, 50 or 75 points from it, depending on the look direction (back, back-side, front-side, front resp.).
* When the check for seeing a sneaked opponent is being done, observer's field of view is reduced (for the purpose of checking this one opponent) by 50%, 40%, 20% and 0% depending on the look direction.
* See change for a Ghost perk too.
- Flagging and flag-related issues:
* Flags are retained, but no longer visible for everyone. All flagged individuals are valid targets.
* Stealing: guards won't attack the thief, he will be flagged if he either fails with stealing or is spotted by them, they will say if he is. The victim will be informed in such case in the log.
* Blocking: guards won't attack the blocker, they will be fine with giving warnings and flagging him. "Pushing" option has beed added, temporarily accessible only via alt+click menu (the followers menu). It will move the blocker by one hex from the previous position (one has to be on a hex next to his and the blocker have to be formally flagged as blocking).
* Attacking, holding explosives: same as before.
* Wielding weapons and drugs: guards reaction time increased to 15 seconds.
- Ghost perk: 30% sneak bonus instead of 20%, added everytime the check is made. Can increase the skill above 300%.
- Critical tables reworked again. They are now in the middle of vanilla FO2 tables and pre-wipe tables.
- Slightly decreased impact of luck on aimed critical hit bonus.
- Cumulative timeout for gathering (up to 20 minutes).
- Weakened timeout after first aid, no xp for removing it.
- Tent garbaging delay increased to 4 weeks.
- Gangs with their bases are being removed after 4 weeks of not being used (terminal not accessed by a member).
- Slaves are not counted towards encounter scaling, and other followers have two "free" slots, so each follower above that limit counts as player.
- When entering wasteland from worldmap, player may face random encounters too (with twice as small chance as normal wandering).
- The crafting mechanics have been reworked. This includes shortened timeouts, cumulative timeouts (20 minutes), high/low quality materials and lower prices.

VANILLA INHERITED CHANGES:
- Several improvements to the server performance and stability.

IMPORTANT:
- Use the Updater to get the new client and game files. After the update, you have to login at least once in order to regenerate the default.cache file. If you just see burning people, restart the client.

Jumping into the 3d era

FOnline: 2238 Announcement, Jumping into the 3d era
(or: how we learned to not be that flat anymore.)

A long time has passed since we released our last developer video and really, it was about time this changed. The new developers video features a topic that we have been working on for some months and we are proud to finally have it in a shape to present it to the public: 3D models.

We decided to move the FOnline engine from a pure 2d to a 2.5d engine, due to the fact that sprite editing is a long and tiresome job. With every change on the player characters, it is nesaccary to edit more than 10.000 single images, even if it's something simple like a different hair color or a new armor type. The use of 3D models helps us in developing more and diversified content in a shorter timer span and still keep the look and feel of the original games.

After the release of the first 3d model converter for the Van Buren models (Van Buren - the code name of the cancled Fallout 3 by Interplay, for the ones who don't know it), we thought it was a great idea to reuse the material we could get out of the tech demo that has been released in 2007. Even if not complete, the build featured character models with already more than 90 animations and a lot customisations for body type or hair and beard styles.

In the third developers video, Anton "Cvet" Tsvetinskiy, FOnline main programmer, is talking about the details of how the new 3d critters are working and will work in the future of FOnline: 2238. Check it out:



Videos & Audio - FOnline: 2238 Game - Mod DB or YouTube.

The first update-wave will introduce 3d models for the animal creatures, such as models for the rats, ants, venus mantrap, thorn slinger, desert stalker or the lovely rad toads. Also a big content update is going to hit the server, which includes new game features and quests for both, PvP and PvE-friends.

In combination with this, the server has to undergo a full wipe. This will happen in approx one or two weeks at most, when the update will be available on the public server.

As an appendix, beside the video, here are some actual ingame screenshots:





- Cvet & Rotators