Kells Soulmud Discord - https://discord.gg/nVJwvRZhWm


Saturday, January 30th, 2021

SoulMUD: The Age of Redivivus

Redivivus means reborn, or rebirth. It fits so well.

The world moved on, and we got old. A privledge denied to many. I actually spent a lot of time on this version before it got taken down, and very few people actually played it before I moved on. Due to health reasons I took this down back in 2011 (the wife pushed me to take it down and walk away). It wasnt something I was mentally fit to deal with at the time. Technically, Kell is only 9 years old now, even though I'm 47 now. I was a lumberjack, I took a tree to the head, 27 stitches in the skull, and some brain damage later, and well, most all of my memories prior to 2017 are gone.

Soulmuds always dwelled in the back of my mind through this past decade. Kell had healed, but Kyuss, well, that was another matter. Part of the reason I put this back up, waspartly due to plagueland. What a shitty year 2020 was. I figure if I can make a few people happy along the way, maybe I can make the world a slightly better place, and if I can find a part of myself I lost along the way, then so much the better. Kyuss, on a psychological level, is sort of my super-ego, while kell is the ID, kyuss is the demiurge, he who touched the clay of creation and was damned. kyuss could invoke change, he was a strange cat like that.

On some deeper, instinctual level, I still remember so much, but, its finding a way to push the buttons that triggers the memories and muscle memories to get to that point. So, in an essence, this is me still trying to find myself, and heal myself; and oddly, it is comforting.

I dont claim to have the best internet, it is verizon dsl, not fiber, but it should do ok for the time being. I dont claim to give a damn about mud connectors any more. we've rode that wave, no need to do so again. The lag is a lot less since I re-orginized the network. It should be more than playable. I actually spent a lot of time fixing stuff before the accident with the oak tree (I was a lumberjack, still sort of am, but I dont push tree murder much now days). There's a lot been done under the hood of this big bitch, you might not notice, but I do. There are new files, and a few new things, and a much butter organized buffer system. She is memory efficient, she doesnt crash if hardly at all. The buffer over runs are fixed, the sig-pipes are fixed. A lot of shit, is fixed. Frankly, this is the version everyone always wanted, but never got to play.

Part of me thinks its silly to revive a project like this in an age of mmorpgs and other games. Frankly. Online games were killed by online games. People stopped having communities. All games companies sell now is hype. Sure, lots of games get made, but frankly, most of those games are shit. Soulmud was one of the least boring games I can play. I dont really care if people level fast, its designed to level fast on the bottom end, but hitting the top. Yea, that takes patience and dedication. Most games arent designed to last 100 hours. mmorpgs are designed to last longer, but what companies force their players to endure is a tragedy of game design. if you have to add fucking daily quests, guess what, you fucking failed game theory. that is how I see it. What is worse, is so few developers actively even play what they create. If you're going to make something, why not play it? So few do this though. It's all about marketting, not development. The people with ideas are backended, while the college degrees make decisions on things they dont even understand, and worse, these people get to decide what gets done, and when. Why does this even get to happen? If you're not making the game, you should fuck right off out the door. People who have the immagination and the ideas should be in charge, not the people who dont do shit but design hype. the entire game development cycle/system is, like everything else in 2020 and 2021, just egregiously broken.

I suppose it was inevitable I returned to the mud, because it has always been my outlet against the broken game companies which rule the entertainment industry.

Watchcasting was added. It is a list of spell buffs that auto cast when the spell falls
Snapcasting was added. It is a list of spell debuffs which auto cast along side offensive spells in a rotation
Help files, every where. Lots of help files now - if you feel a help file is missing, let me know, I'll add one
----Even better, you can write one and I'll add it in.
Practice command also lists what each ability will generally do, making the skill system far less confusing overall
The Kiosk system was added, which tracks which zones people have visited, this is multi-fold
----players receive xp on visiting zones for the 1st time
----the travel system unlocks transport to unlocked zones
----this system will likely require money or reagants to use in the future
Treasure chests are added, which contain loot from the infinite equipment system
----These chests are generally locked, and contain generally a specific style of items
----generally only found on lords and elite mobs (which are random anyway)
----the infinite equipment engine takes advantage of 1100 item affects, across 5 affect lists
Tenatively, an Auction system has been added, allowing players to sell equipment out of their player file to other players
----This system has not been readily or heavily tested yet
Added masonry skill to build golems... still need to make golems, I think there are only two available for creation
Better player backup system


Mobs still grow, the mud doesnt crash much, so stuff can be very mean over time
Events are still active.
Items still consume xp and level. Guild Masters can still give items stats when leveling
Vault system is still very functional
Quest merchant system is still very functional :)
Skills still level with use. Equipment found in chests and arks can take characters well beyond 100 and 125
squad system is still excellent, as are the auto utilities.
I tried really hard to remove some of the tedium out of the game, keeping it fast paced, but still challenging
It should function more in line with an action-rpg.
Still no equipment loss on death.
Per second regen, fancy prompts, colors, yep, still all there.
6 mortal classes, like 18 avatar classes.... yes, you can take 6 mortal classes...
or you can still dual class... the options are all still there....


what's still yet to come. Gold sinks. Expect to need more gold than you will ever have
Gold will be the most sought after thing in game.
More tatoos. Tatoos are pretty lacking, but they will get made.
the sacrifice/god system. still not sure what to do with that.
An updated equipment cache list
More than I'm ready to say, because I have a decade worth of notes to go through


Probably be a full player reset on sunday (tomorrow or later tonight)
this is to be expected as the characters are currently 500 years old
and everyone gets lost in Tupelo
We have so much to remember and re-learn


I apologize for being gone for so long.

Welcome back home

~Kell the Kyuss
kell.sims@gmail.com







Sunday, November 28th, 2010


1st. No more crashes due to sigpipes. this Issue is resolved in debug and in the exceptions handling in the code. Mud was up for 7 days time, and topped memory use at 122 megs. Astounding.

2nd.
apparently the internet will be turned off for a couple days. it was actually supposed to be off a few days ago, but alas, the dsl provider is head up the ass, so I shall not complain. rest assured, if it does disappear soulmud will return, quite soon, other bills have priority over the net though, having no food but internet, this would have flown years ago before I had a family. now days, not so much, oh how we change. If the server does become inaccessible, it will return, no worries. I havent put months of this years life into the code just to shit can it.

maybe one day, I might even advertise, but I fail to see the point in trying to have people play a broken game. Though I do give thanks to those who have played and helped me greatly in my task of fixing this cumbersome old bitch into shape (those few who argue that this is a very playable mud now). maybe, maybe not, still a long way to go, but most of the mistakes have been fixed. :) thats really been the problem, this thing is too big to find everything that doesnt work, and it doesnt help me fixing 10,000 warnings which can make stuff work, or make other stuff start to work right, or wrong. so once I am done coding and move on to rooms, mobs and equipment, then I will say its a good place to play.

objects which gain stats during the level gain process are now artifacts.
objects which pop on mobs will not always be artifacts now.
updated the output for score data on affected by spells.
watchspell caster will now cast all spells in the watchspell list
--this allows players to use clients to script watchspell change outs.
--so players can keep track of multiple spell lists for easy casting.
--2 lists of 13 spells as an alias to switch each one, cast, switch. cake.
--yes it distinguishes between casting and style performs.
--no it is not a means to rapidly recast for skill level gains.


expert identify will now show an artifact stats comparison if the object is an artifact or has had stats altered.
fixed a bug that would cause the log file to hang and stop receiving text.
characters will no longer stop sending output when using performances.
fixed a small bug with spell shield.
lower level mobs now suffer mob growth.
--they still do not turn elite etc.
raised the skill base on enchanted armor values
avatar players who have 40 level 40 avatar classes may now use the join guild command
to join into a 5th and 6th avatar class. It must be said that this is not cheap gold wise.
fledging avatar classes may still be joined by level check and level gain.
all mortal guilds have been updated to work properly.
fixed a bug with the amount of exp needed for avatar practice sessions.
using the aggression stance a second time will remove the stance now.
--as opposed to being stuck and no able to do anything if not fighting.
--people in aggressive stance may now continue to move around.
added a seperate instance of rerolls for alpha/new creation.
characters start at level 30 now, not 20, with 2 perk points, up from 1.
new characters no longer receive the divine pt


~Kell



Sunday, November 14th, 2010
holy fuck its mid november?????

one of the funny highlights of the past past month, I managed to created a mob spec that does global aoe damage to every thing in game, at once, every second. it was demogorgon. needless to say, about 1000 mobs died at once, during the 1st combat round. I also managed to make me wintin window flicker and change colors and the crash - I reverted that code and havent been back to it since, and wont.

the 3 big bugs are now gone. the code should now be more then stable.

I dont like lowering any changes I have made to players over the past few months. How ever, the health buff which dual class characters receives was just too excessive with combined with a warrior prime. As it was a couple years ago, players may now use the join command to join a mortal guild, ie: join tribe or join guild. characters created will only pick their prime class now, the rest of the classes may be picked in each mortal guild, and the class order is the guilds that you join, in that order. joining a fifth guild requires that the character have 4 classes at level 40 mortal, and the sixth class requires 5 classes at level 40 mortal. this also means that characters may pick up to 6 avatar classes now. experience tables for class 5 and class 6 mortal are expected to be obscene. avatar levels for class 5 and 6 are expected to break the cpu's math functioning ability. joining a fifth mortal guild will require 1 perk point. joining the sixth guild will cost 2 perk points. as a result of this experice for mortals changed about 5%. experience for fifth and sixth class is exponential. avatar experience rates are also exponential in their progression through the classes. the avatar levels start out small, but will very quickly ramp up with each increasing level. as a result of these changes, avatar levels are a flat 10 practice sessions per level. also, due to these changes, the bonuses which single, dual and triple class characters enjoyed have been removed. currently the fifth and sixth mortal class do NOT count towards total levels for experience splits in groups. the fifth and sixth classes are considered perks. this is still a four class mud, these 2 classes are optional. fifth and sixth class are considered forth class for all skill and damage checks. sixth and sixth class is about skills, and players will receive no hps, mana or movement, or any regeneration affects from these levels.

current task is using makefile options to find and remove warnings (which are not errors).
current warnings and errors fixed. not counting. cleaning entire fires.
---past few days I have fixed about thousands and thousands of warnings in the code.
---no wonder this bitch ran like shit. I ran with the -wall option on in makefile and literally saw 5 minutes of warning spam.
---all switches are accurate, as are brackets and parentheses, sequencing, casts and pointers.


this weeks kell award for being dumb.
the holy grail event was a myth, and the cause of many crashes over the past couple months or years. the event called a function that didnt even exist. and never returned a compiling error saying something like hey, you, dumbass, this function doesnt exist. oh. ok. im gonna run it anyway. the cosmic debris event will now run correctly, and fall a function that does in fact, exist. thanks olegas.

this weeks runner up award for kell being dumb.
player files would sometimes become unsaveable, resulting in errors and many crashes. this was due to the cron processes which called the mud on a reboot. the normal process could not read or write root process character files. issue has been resolved.

I have been making progress with a descriptor crash bug which as near as I can tell was inheritent to this version of the diku code. I have localized the bug, but have yet to crush the pesky fucker. comm's is much cleaner now, and as with the rest of the process, runs exceptionally well now, better in fact then this bastardized bitch deserves. this bug is not really much any more, as it has been ground away from almost all clients that I have tested on. how ever, with the advent of the cell phone, and the nokia and google droid mudder, has this bug resurfaced. as near as I can tell, this is the last vital bug I must crush before I finish optimizing the code and move onto help files, areas and mobs. this mud runs very well without a client, from pure telnet on a cell phone. combined with the no wait, fast pace mud envirnoment, this allows for an idea cell phone application. the day after I write this, the bug is solved. good things come in threes, and the three major bugs are now gone and squished. hurray. this was solved by disabling the sigpipe handler in the debugger, and the use of a signal action to supress and ignore the sigpipe error. to think, this bug had been around for 15 years or more. I stress had.

unbroke the enrage perform.
unbroke the movement destruction on grievance and blasphemy.
unbroke the aggression position skill command.
unbroke a couple issues with time jumps and stops.
message for weapon hurt apply values was backwards.
color set for tell messages is currently disabled til a color issue is resolved.
demon sightings have increased by those not in the bindings of such.
the exit command is now working properly.
added watchspell clear to watchspell remove #
the day of fairness holiday will now occur 2 weeks after the spring equinox of solaris.
fixed an error with mob charging, health reporter, group sac gain, range hit, planet movement
fixed several issues with improper command calls.
fixed several issues with skill exp calibrations for practice.
5th class experience will now be proper and working past 2bil.
enrage performance will now boost player damage by 10% for duration, as well as cut victim damage by 10%.
---this is still a lingering bellow, but its 10% damage :)
a room message will go off during a generosity good event which resets a zone.
travel location unlock for the golden pavillion is now correct (not black chess)
fixed a crash bug for two handed weapons loading on mobs wielding a weapon already.
sorted out some issues with day and night mobs coming and going.
dusk will now set at 6pm.(not 8pm)
the sun will now set at 7pm (not 9pm)
the moonrise is at 8pm (not 10pm)
refitted the practice command for functions outside of a guild.
---prac wa, ma, so, th, ac, cl will show only those individual classes.
---prac uw, ut, ua, uc, um, us, will show only unlearned skills for a class.
---prac xx will show all abilities learned. prac with no argument will return a default list
some look flags for phasings of emotions will no longer pollute the screen.
the stat command shows approximately 4 pages of data now on characters.
---all that stuff i never bothered to check....
update position would sometimes cause mobs to die when not dead. no longer.
fixed more bugs with the berserker act
players will no longer suffer from mob emotions (and all of the havoc this caused in the code)
passive wounding will once again work correctly.
---yeah just what warriors needed (sarcasm).
the world event gold doubling will no longer double players gold if they are in a zone that is doubled.
all of the keys leading to gral for the imp coin quest are in place.
found another holiday that did not want to turn off, thus the never ending holiday.
players with color off should not get any color poisoning now.
---though Im still finding some, not as much.
color set 8 is now the color for all general text, as well as quest channel.
---score, bonus, and stats output is still uncolorized.
extra and action descriptions on items will show better now
---this includes some forge notes out in the wilds.
fixed a couple more bugs with colors and messages.
removed all accidental digraphs and trigraphs(that I could find).
the stat rollers are feeling much better now, having been updated.
---on prismatic, omega and tet tokens, prime stat rolls have been increased by 1 over max.
mortal poisons should all follow the same rules now.
--envenom will put a poison on the offhand blade.
--each envenom on a weapon is good for approx 250 doses.
--envenom cps are eaten much less frequently now.
rewrote a portion of write_to_descriptor so it wont sigpipe now.
---it uses send instead of write, and a for loop instead of a do loop.
---this is a crash bug that been in game for as long as i have ever seen the code.
the blackguard ability nightsite is working as intended now.
the rest of the aluminum equip will load on random stuff.
lowered the perkbook % and hp rep a small bit.
for the sake of fun, elite++ mobs can now see in the dark.
characters will only start at level 20 now, with 500,000 experience.
----those of you who have played before now, treasure your characters. :)
----I have been slowing lowering the amount of starting levels.
----20 is a good starting point because theres a lot of low levels areas.
fixed a single bug with the process of liches raising from dead corpses that would cause a crash.
aoe performs will check each victim for nostab now. not just the initial victim.
messages for the falling stars event have been improved and added upon.
fixed a couple of non crash bugs with the falling stars event.
judge will now show targets
all judges are currently correct.
players now only receive one type of regen while fighting (mud ticks).
---per secon regen and tick timer regen will no longer function during fights.
added a help file for planar_travel
artifacts will no longer get stuck on boosting the 1st item stat.
---lightning flashes, artifact leveled, no stat gain or boost.
---blue lightning, top of obj is first to boost.
---white lightning, bottom stat 1st in boost.
---green lightning, finding a blank stat to fill.
---black lightning, artifact is full.
---weapon burns. a weapon stat boost.
---an armor piece hums. armor boost.
---a container shakes. container boost and armor boost.
---artifacts will now seek out blank stats to fill first, if any.
---once an artifact has 5 affects it will only boost affects.
---there is a very small chance, 3-5%, that an artifact will be struck by blue or white lightning and not gain a stat.
---if this happens the object will remain the same artifact level.
--artifact exclamation points will now have different colors over the artifacts life span.
--max level artifacts will have a black !
--White, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, Red, Black.
fixed the berserker flag so it will attack everone in the room while fighting.
--any berserker mob worthy of its name is going to require an aoe healer....
fixed an issue with multi experience gains for groups and super powered mobs.
a couple changes to reroll tokens.
----alpha tokens roll a diff reroll now, the one at char creation, which rolls based only on prime class.
----omega, prismatic and tet tokens require the player to have 4 classes in order to use.
----max stat tokens remain unchanged.
fixed an error which allow players to goto negative mana with snapcasting.
---the mana check is now correct.
---also snapcast now requires at least 100 mana in order for it to work.
---fixed an issue that some snap casted spells would reduce the ability reuse timer to 0.
fixed an issue where axxiakata had an obscene re-use rate which led to crazy dps
----its sad when krodar thunder hammer and his 20k hps dies in 5 seconds flat.
----lowered the damage on axxiakata by about 15%.
the code to check the eclipses of the two suns and 2 moons has been turned back on.
fixed an issue causing the yell perform to not reset fighting status.
increased the aoe damage for yell
the join command may be used in the chaos temple for a change of worships.
squids poison now has an attack time cap.
saints poison wont work as often now.
plane shift spell is now working properly. this opens up two zones, the abyss and the elemental nexus.
all special procedure weapons and armor have had their affect boosted by a third.
---this does not include the ravens fire weapons which proc firewind.
chars should no longer stay in combat the last half-full second after the last victim dies.
item morphs during level gain will properly check for combonations of weapons, shields and helds.
fixed a couple issues with greater mobility.
added help files for qinquire and qexchange, snap cast, watchspell.
increased damage on chaos bolt by a great amount.
slowed down both mob growths.
took some weight off of the loops which are running in most of the files.
updated the artifact equipment page


fixed a crash bug where graveyard mobs could die of bloodloss.
fixed some zone resets in niobe and the demonweb.
as a testament to the obscene
--- mobs in the cerrulean keep will now be elite/legend grown more often then not.
---so there, you have an perma quest island, full of undead elites and lords
artifacts will no only show up on lights, weapons, containers, and armor.
a couple of zone resets were not properly setting artifacts, and will now.
the infiltrator perk will now have a chance to work correctly.
a flag will show up next to the object name if it is an artifact during vault list.
---its nice being able to vault modified items.
elite/hero etc status will now show in a spirit channel during player death.
single and dual class chars will now receive their extra divine pts at 40 mortal and avatar.
sac pts were reseting at 200k, this was not intended and removed.
----sac pts do reset at a mil, and give 10 karma for the reset.
level 0 objects can no receive experience from kills. level 0 is 33k.
the hamstring ability now has messages.
added the chain performs for blackguards
--starter: shadow strike. works on nostab mobs. activates an armor drain off the victim which can last up to 3 minutes.
--secondary: shadowstrike must be active on victim.
--slowing strike: activates an attack speed drain on the victim (+3 them, -1 you), which can last up to 3 minutes.
--shadow is level 3. slowing level 4.
--third chain: kiss for the dead. level 5
--kftd: activates a health drain against the victim. equivalent to half the damage of kftd.
--kftd requires slowing strike and shadow strike be active on the target.
--once the slowing strike and shadow strike are active, the target may be continiously drained of health.
dagger dance is now level 2 assassin as well as blackguard.
---dagger dance works best vs nostab mobs.
removed ambush from blackguards ability list.
increased the stats on the dimming blade summon performance.
---was 3d4 +3+3 speed 7, stab. now 4d4 +3+3 +1maxstr and pierces.
---proc was upgraded as well.
fixed a crash bug with heros luck and conquest.
lowered the skill base for mounted combat.
increased the bonus damage from mounted combat.
fixed a bug with colors which would occasionaly eat the 1st letter of a string.
mobs which die at exactly -10 health will no longer be dead and have to wait to bloodloss and yield no exps.
expert id will now show poison doses.


Next time I see a ten day uptime, I might even start to advertise.

~Kell


Wednesday, October 27, 2010


Trying to write better code, replaced all strcat, strcpy, most of the sprintf. fscanf is next with fgets. Fixed several more crash bugs since the last update. Following is a list of all the changes in the past 30+ days. A lot of code changes but stayed the same, as I have updated a great many internal things. Buffers are much happier, the color and messaging system is also much better off then it was. Comms is still and for ever fucked. About to do an update on the server too.


This update is mainly snapcast spells and artifacts.


updated the combat starter abilityes to work correctly against targets which have grown hps.
--joust, axxaxxination, impale, headspike, blackjack, backstab, dragon punches.


added a new list and command, snap casting.
---snap cast spells are debuff spells which are cast after the damage spell has been cast.
---players will unlock more snap casted spells with higher avatar levels.
---snap casted spells occur after a damage perform or a damage spell.
---snapcast show will show the list.
---snapcast remove #, snapcast off, snapcast spell name
---snap casted spells cast in order of the list.
---so if a player had 3 spells snap casted on the list.
---and casted 3 damage spells in a row, the 1st spell would cast the 1st snap cast
---and the 2nd spell the 2nd snap cast, and the 3rd would cast the final snap cast.
---snap casted spells will rotate through the snap cast list.
---only debuffs may be added to the snap casting list.
---snap spell slot #2 unlocks at level 1 avatar. snap spell slot #3 at level 20 av, level 40 unlocks slot #4
---for snap casting to work, the snap cast slot #1 has to have an ability listed, or no snap casts will function.
---snap casting a spell costs 10 extra mana (no conc loss)
---snap casting will not work from the following abilities.
---dragon punch tree, backstab tree, impale, headspike, joust, axxaxxination, blackjack.

mobs which spawn in game from events which yield quest points will now receive half damage from
---backstab tree, dragon punch tree, joust tree, axxaxxination, impale, headspike, blackjack.

a mob which pops equipment must have over 700 hps for the equipment to artifact.
rarely, a piece of equipment in a medium chest or large ark will become an artifact.
---only 2 types of the 5 arks have this ability.
artifacts now have a flag they show that they are in fact artifacts (a green !)
fixed issues with combat resync after killing something.
fixed some damage reduction skill checks which were always failing.
fixed targeting issues with about 30 spells. not listing them all.
added a new spell for level 38 clerics. aura of life. group cure critical wounds.
all poisons should have a message to room when active now.
movement regen, while excessively high, is now lower.
nightshade was allowing multiple nightshade poisons from same source. it wont any longer.
slowed down perfect cast speed somewhat (since there are no speed 3 mobs any more).
vanquish messages are sorted out now.
debuffs and damage spells are not available as watched spells.
anon command will once again hide char levels.
fixed a couple of issues with axxiakata and axxaxxination
removed the code that makes elite spawn like mad over 1st 20 minutes uptime.
players who are all elementalist (4x avatar mage), will now receive a damage buff to all elemental spells.
special abilities on dual wielded weapons will once again work.
removed the time based pfile backup.
fixed several issues with holidays, equinoxes and solstices not ending right.
para_allurement can be casted on others now.
tatoos will no longer show unlocoated when located with locate object.
the 4th avatar class will show up in who now.
fixed a crash bug with the wipe command.
envenom will only apply from melee hits or performs.
fixed a crash bug with envenom.
crane kick had its judge fixed, so it will work once again.
boost should once again work for acrobat primes (forgot an int)
ginseng and mandrake effectiness is no longer full time.
added a help file for envenoms (envenom brings up spell help)
---complete listing of all poisons and what each does.
characters who have dual wield skill but no warrior classes will now be able to offhand attack.
expert id will now tell the type of poison on a weapon.
poisons from player enevneom will no longer wear off.
the revenge spell will not break as much at higher damage hits.
memorize in excess of 30 int will now mem more spells.
30-32 int will mem 10, 33-36 in will mem 11, 37-39 will mem 12, 40 int will mem 13 spells.
the message from armor procs that says they procced will no longer show.
---hellaciously redundant. yes?
cleric mobs will no longer cast web.
poison spray was not doing per second damage, it is now.
--remove poison will now remove poison spray.
fixed a couple crash bugs with time phase and time warp resets.
some mobs were skipping out on their growth and aggro checks. they wont skip now.
revenge will now properly be removed if it the player gets hit to hard.
increased the quickening spell duration.
fixed some issues with the level 39 warlock spell magant blade.
only standing mobs will have a chance to become elite etc.
artifacts will no longer occasionally loose their artifact status.
fixed a crash bug with players entering game and saving during the process.
fixed a small bug with leveled backups of player files.
the damage on the perform frenzied beating has been fixed.
fixed several errors in abilities being targeted, also updated the command interpreter.
added the following skills for berserkers.
---attrition (level 11) and chop suey (level 26), aoe damage performs. bonus damage for avenger primes.
---warstride. level 40 berserker self only buff which increases various berserker skills.
paladins primes now receive a lancemanship bonus towards joust damage.
---the bonuses for joust are all paladin prime.
skill towards that series of joust is now awarded to damage for that joust chain
paladin summon steed is now level 4, down from 10.
paladin joust ability is now level 4.
paladins now have the spell summon lance at level 3
fixed the spell effect messages for acid blast.
saviour site and nitesite skill checks have been greatly lessened.
the function which determines who can see who has been redone.
fixed a crash bug with riposte and revenge with graveyarded mobs.
help was listing standing abilitys as not combat useable, this now just reads standing.
simplified performance targeting somewhat.
players are now always considered to see them selves.
message priroty of shatter lock, doorbash and pick locks has been improved.
only full health mobs will grow hps now. their health is updated on growth.
the exchange command has been re-enabled for mortals.
added a new command, qexchange, which exchanges quest points for karma points.
karma vendors will accept purchases in quest points if a characters karma is below 1.
ezmerelda will now be found during the night time hours in the tupelo library of legends.
---this will only happen if ezmerelda doesnt spawn else where.
items which are jewelcrafted or forged are now artifacted upon creation.
jewelcrafting, brewing, forging, scribing and masonry skill gains are a little friendlier now.
added the command jewelcraft list, forge list and brew list, which will show pertinent recipes for crafting.
warlocks are no longer granted quad attack at level 31.
--warlocks have always had ramstrike, which grants a form of quad and quint attacks
--ramstrike may still be cast on other players.
triumphant bellow, raging strength has a success message now.
tormenting bellow message to victim is updated, and there is a message to character now.
messages for tour de force, heros luck and gynkata will show before the attack now.
mobs which damage stamina and mana will only give 1 message at the start of the combat round.
took some of the cpu pressure off of one of the mob growth functions.
fixed the issue where a char who would rent would gain +2 damage.
fixed a crash bug with the purge command.
artifacts should start gaining stats better. artifacts will start gaining at level 7 now, not 8.
tatoo wear flag colors have been evened out instead of being a rainbow.
fixed an issue with dispel magic not working against objects.
was growing far to many legend mobs, they have been toned back now.
added a much better means of backuping up player files if something goes wrong.
added a vault dump command. cleans out a vault, removes the broken vault file.
if a player adds an alias called clear, watchspell reset_alias will reset all aliases.
players who login with -hitroll or damageroll will now have the values reset on entry.
---this was due to the errors in furious strength, and the bellows.
fixed an issue where accuracy and tour de grace wouldnt be added in with hitroll.
fixed a rare crash bug with riposte.
fixed problems with the furious strength, boastful bellow, tormenting bellow and raging strength, triumphant bellow.
fixed the issue with characters reconnecting. no 2nd reconnect is needed now.
fixed an issue with sockets closing and leaving behind trails.
fixed a bug with the pts command.
fixed a bug which would cause exits not to be shown if the spam flag was set.
riposte messages can be gagged by the spam command now.
the percentage rates on which players and mobs would riposte has been fixed.
the messages from the revenge shield & cabalistic screen have been removed.
the damage dealt by revenge shield and cabalistic screen have been lowered.
random chests and arks are now very, very, rare.
fixed a crash bug with dual impale and double headspike.
fixed a couple issues with players being disconnected.
evade is now correctly a thief prime skill again and even show up for thieves now.
turned off one mob growth.
players can now rent with 300 items.
spirit siphon now checks for sorcerer prime, not mage prime.
fixed a bug with prompt #7
the strakan ghost blade sold by triax the dwarf now works properly.
players will now be able to auto train prime class skills to 120.
secondary class skills will auto train up to 110.
new players will once again start with a single divine pt
mobs in the cerrulean keep may now be worth quest points.
small chests no longer spawn on trash mobs.
--elite mobs etc may still have a small chest.
lowered the cut off for medium chests and arks to load in game.
perk books will now load a little bit more often.
updated para allurement, euphpria and enchantment spells.
ethereal mobs which are cleric specced will no longer force field them selves.
lowered the skill check on the struggle skill against webs and fire webs.
lowered the skill check on the parry tree, evade tree and block tree.
the parry, evade and block trees will auto gain skills better.
codex of masonry only teaches 10 skill now, so players would need 10 books on golem making to max the skill.
maynard the innkeeper is once again a gateable npc.
equipment purchased for divine pts off market vendors will now be treated as artifacts.
4 perkbooks were setting the wrong skill, they set the right one now.
--lady killer, friar tuck, two shields, lordly might.
fixed the crash bug with the exorcism spell, adjusted the skill based on the spell also.
--exorcism will now work against balron bind, as well as demon bind.
looking at mobs to tell their health will now work right for mobs which have grown.
lowered the skill base on riposte, also lowered the skill auto gain values.
forge, jewelcraft, brew and inscribe may only train in guilds up to skill level 50.
mobs which failed to grow will now loose their growing flag.
all time phases, warps and jumps will now set to 11pm at night
annoyed and berserk mobs will no longer randomly earthquake.
fixed some minor issues with the making of corpses.
---corpses were getting more gold then they should have.
the gold multiplier event will now increase gold on a mob killed by 20%
mobs will now always drop all of the gold they have.
---no longer will mobs drop random less then amounts of what they did have.
---all gold, all the time.
fixed an issue where mobs wouldnt drop loot they had popped.
fixed a couple problems with blood lossing corpses.
fixed a problem with chars joining the assassin guild.
adjusted the damage scale for the paladin shield strike preform tree
adjusted circlestab skill.
--with enough skill, circlestab can now do three strikes.
--if the assassin is fencing, the damage on circlestab is increased by 40%
--circlestab now gains a small amount of damage from skill level.
the banish command will once again dismiss a players summoned mobs.
---ie: banish angel will banish a summoned angel
---also useable on daemons and paladin steeds.
---not useable on golems from masonry.
summoned mobs will no longer aggro anything they arent told to.
summoned mobs may no longer spawn event mobs.
joining the paladin guild as a dual class char will no longer eat 2 billion exps.
mobs will now properly stagger back when switching hp barriers.
mobs will growth more often now.
mobs will grow elite less often.
mobs can now regenerate their bonus hit points if damaged from combat.
squad autostab will now only attempt to auto stab if a player has more then half health.
colors will default better now when turning colors on.
armor can now be added to the watchspell list.
vicars now receive the condemnation spell at level 2, paladins at level 19.
zeta circle on the who list is now for characters with max avatars.
exits will show no longer try to show in color when not in color.
stacked objects will now show up in color properly.
players will now show up as their who color in look at room.
bloodletting will auto train better.


experience changes, this applies to the newer experience tables, and the old tables. the old tables are only used during the experience pt event. the new table is used full time. this hasnt been rewritten, but I did go through and correct some greivous math errors in the section of code which handles experience point assignments in both pieces of code. experience pts for non elite grown mobs should not have changed. the changes today only deal with elites and lords which are obscene for no reason
at all other then bad math.


elite grown mobs
-doubled the timer in that grows mobs to be elite, lord etc.
-removed one of the growers for elite mobs (there were 3).
-removed the spawning of elites on a reboot.
-this makes it easier to track and adjust the rates at which mobs grow.
-the cap on lord and legend attack times is now 4 (hero and elites were already capped at 4).
-heros and elite attack times are capped at 5 now.
-converted mobs to reflect attack speed changes.
-mobs will now have a cut off at speed 6.
-mobs can still go below 6, but there will not be near as many doing so.
-small mobs now have no chance to grow elite, lord etc
-mobs in the cerrulean keep will still have a chance to grow elite off a reset.
-these are the only mobs that can grow elite off a reboot besides innkeepers.
-the amount of ingame elite, lord, legend and heros may not exceed 2200 now
-the amount of mob growth has been scaled
--ie on a fresh reboot it will pick new elite mobs faster then when there are more ingame.
--it will distribute the proper levels of elites, legends and heros in game over the 1st 10 minutes or so.
--elites will receive a hp bonus.
--hp bonus for heros decreased some what.
--hp bonus on legends decreased some what.
--hp bonus on lords decreased vastly.
--only lords will receive their full hps as a bonus, elites, legends and heros now get less.




~Kell



Saturday, September 18th, 2010


As it stands now, I think I have nailed every crash bug I can find.
--I know of 1 crash bug thats only repeatable by me.


My next step this weekend will be updating all of the web page here.


fixed an issue with corrupting inventory items on rented characters.
---this bug was years old, and caused much grief, to many people.
Turned off drinking and eating.
added a few spells to the watchspell wont watch list.
disabled firequakes and earthquake events these are now quest only events.
fixed a crash bug with player file backups.
legend, lord, etc will not show twice for no color chars, only once.
new characters will once again start with a perk point.
added 2 new performances for thieves.
--vanquish, prime thief. duration 2 min, 15 min cooldown. increases skill mods for crit hit and crit attack by 100.
--whirlwind, aoe damage perform. non prime.
--thief mobs will now begin to use whirlwind in their performance sets
fixed some skill issues with players who ended up with skills that didnt need them.
famine and drought will no longer show up in the event data
thieves who dual wield will now apply a coat of poison to their secondary weapon.
--this includes avatar thief prime poisons as well.


thief backstabs will no longer stab multiple things in a room.
---how ever cool this was, it was also deadly when things went wrong.
not that it matters, but level 1 mobs will be able to turn elite now.
dolor and vampiric touch will gain better through use.
expert identify will now show if a weapon is poisoned or not.
perfect cast cooldown is 20 min, instead of 25
last rights and vanqish will now show cooldowns properly in score.
fixed a bug that was making acrobats gynkata not work.
lowered reuse timer on rejuvenation from 16 to 11 and seraphim is 21, down from 31
the price of nightshade has been cut in half.
fixed an issue with characters logging in with negative max stats.
---this only affected a couple people.


time stop event will only last 3-4 minutes now, not 20+
the draco lich xerxes will no long spawn in a random town during the night of terror event
fixed a crash bug with the event night of the long knives.
the grim reaper from the death comes to town event will now despawn after an hour in game.
fixed a crash bug involvings trying to wield multiple weapons on zone resets.
--to remedy this, mobs are now allowed to dual wield.
--this crash bug could only occure during the generosity good event.
there was a debonus for characters doing damage for every month that was not their birth month.
---the debonus is gone. so characters do normal damage now. (and still do 10% more dam in birth month).
NPC breath weapons will now do extra damage to characters of the proper birth signs.
npc breathe weapons should work properly now. acid spitters, or anything which breathes is now deadly.
fixed a couple of non crash bugs in the damage function.
removed a tidbit of code from the generosity bad event which made players do one 3rd less damage.
generoisty events how ever do imply an exta 10% damage bonus.
this applied also to mobs. these 2 tidbits have been removed.
new command. qinquire. for checking stats of objects in shops.
---qinquire works in sac shops, divine shops, quest shops, normal shops, and karma shops
---qinquire is fairly useless in a karma shop.
fixed a couple issues with big group experience and group experience.
fixed a bug with improved channeling where spells would cost 0 mana.
reduced much of the channeling code to be much more efficent.
channeling is more skill based now in whether or not it works to reduce mana.
all inns are safe zones.
lowered the damage on blizzard by about 20%
fixed an isse where army ants in night of the long knives didnt want to despawn.
all dragons once again have their breathe weapons back.


Kell the Kyuss



Tuesday - Sept 13th, 2010 - 3:05am


Posted a new story. 1st in a series of 3 dealing with the man of the sunset shadow. He is in fact one of the many forms of deadsoul, the astral dragon, and an unavenged polterghiest phoenix. He is actually an escapee from Mentalicusa, which is the astral asylum for the magically insane, headed by a society of beholders and mind flayers whose purpose is twofold (this shows up in my forgotten realms book which will never see the light of day). Mentalicusas purpose is dual fold - 1: protecting the weave of magic from those powerful enough to use dire magic, but whos minds are fractured and untrustworthy to use this dire magic, and 2: protecting the Oversoul, which is a primordial entity composed of all souls in the universe from harm from the warped minds of those who control dire magic. The man with the sunset shadow has plagued me for many years, and has never quite left me alone, the same can be said with some of the other people whom haunt Mentalicusa. For those that remember me as Diazz, he was a half-elf from Forgotten realms, who had actually spent time in Mentallicusa magic asylum. These escaped characters haunt my writings, and have for over 20 years nows. I cant tell you why. I dont know. I just write what shows up on the page.

~Kell the Kyuss




Saturday - Sept 11th, 2010 - 16:35am


Well, so much for being done. Hah.


All abilities in games now have help files. Help ability name must be spelled correctly.
--Any spell, skill, performance.
--Practice will no longer show min and max mana or movement values.


Added a new prompt. #11. for players with screen readers.
Added a command called pts. allows characters to pull small data sets as an alias.


New command in, called watchspell.
---watchspell off, watchspell spellname.
---watchspell remove #1 kills #1.
---watchspell show will show the list of spells.
---any spell on this list will automatically refresh itself.
---the spell reinforcement will cost the min mana cost of a spell.
---there are only 13 available spells to watch.
---if a spell is watched, but when the spell would tick and the player has no mana the spell will fall as normal.


werewolves will only spawn on a full moon until sunrise.


the niobian mailman will no longer crash the mud during a morning reset.
colors have to be enabled by color on now.
new characters start with prime max stat rerolled already.
dragon punch has been added to the auto stabber.
--alias tar squad target (must have alias now).
casters no longer have any choice abilities.
--all casters may practice all trees of concentrate, meditation, channelling and arcana.


~Kell the Kyuss



Friday - Sept 10th, 2010 - 10:51am


Whoa rightly righty then. Words I dont think I have ever spoke before with any Soul Cypher Project. I am done, at least I think so. Not done as in I am walking away, no, to the contrary, I am done with coding, my plates clear. I have a couple of projects to finish up in the future, but the system is in place now. Loot, combat, skills, events, resets, comms, mob emotions, growth, elites, treasure, pvp, done. Projects that need finished, more travel destinations, this will happen after I deal with all of the zones (which I am about 20% done with now), more treasure chest loot, I can add this as needed. Artifact procs, when someone actually has an artifact item that is level 10 that can accept a proc, we'll talk. Specs, when someone hits 3x40 on a hardcore, we'll talk. New perk books. There are some 40 perk books in game now. I have another 30 perks that I can do, but these will be avatar perkbooks, and are not essential for some time. So as of today, I'm only putting on my coding hat if someone actually does crash the mud, or need spell checked. I actually get to mess with zones and mobs full time now, it feels wierd, sort of scary. Oh and I also get to update the web page, of which half the data on this site is not irelevant thanks to the past 2 weeks of coding, lowering, altering and in general trying to make this place more hospitable.

Bank point offer has now been recinded. I need to update the mud connector to reflect this.
--Players will now begin with a single level 40 and 700 practice sessions.
--Players will now start with 10mil exps to cover practicing and recall scrolls.
--Lowered and adjusted the sliding scale for avatar experience.
--Avatar levels are far cheaper now at lower levels.
Characters who die and resurrect will now regain three quarter life.
--spells will still be stripped.
Stat rollers (alpha and omega) are much more friendlier now.
---this includes new character creation roller.
---Max stats are currently 40, but can go as high as needed.
New characters now start with glance at skill level 100.
Added more spell descriptions to the practice window.
All performs will work against no stab mobs now.
---Nostab is merely a damage halver.
---Tacusa will do full damage against a nostab mob, cycosa half.
---vice versa on normal mobs. or vice versa on tacusa and cycosa.
Artifacts work now for all prime classes. --Artifacts are equipment which loads on out of a zone on a mob.
--Artifacts will begain to gain artifact stats when the object is level 8.
--An Artifact at object level 10 (artifact level 2), may now have a proc added.
--Artifact procs are jewelcrafted forges, and may be interchanged on an object.
--Artifact stats are based on the characters prime class.
--Artifacts will only roll useful stats for a character.
--Artifacts may gain a total of 8 powers.
--Artifact powers are random.


Characters who are connected to the game, but not ingame, will face an inactivity timer.
Fixed the strength bug with newbie equipment for new characters.
Fixed a bug with chaos screen where mages would do less damage with it up.
Travel system is very set now. Travel zone desitnations work to all unlocked zones now.
Color default will now reset all colors to default ansi colors.
Fixed a bug with perk book stat books giving their max stats after the cap.
Fixed issues with cleric mobs having multiple spell shield.
Increased caster prime mana regen.
---Increased wisdom gaining mana regen as a whole.
Expert Id will now show which slot the object is worn in.
Player kills are now tracked in the info command.
Dispel magic is now more friendly to multi caster class orders.
---Dispel Magic skill will now apply to the dispel magic.
Mobs using performs have had their damage scaled back by about one third.
Warrior Primes may now practice damage reduction and critical hits.
---End, Agg, Swift and Acc are now the only choice skills.
Damage reduction will gain better, and work more often now.
Exceptional skills have had their cost lowered by 260 percent.
Headspike, Impale, Blackjack, circlestab now do half damage against no stab mobs.
--No stab mobs are now gone, its a damage cut only, but it does not cancel damage out.
Acrobat and Thief primes will now have access to 2 critical hits.
---One at level 20, one at level 39.
Karma gains are now better for all character difficulties.
---This is done as the need for potions is huge now.
Squad autostabber now works flawlessly.
Mobs who are paranoid or cowards will only flee in combat now.
--This should cut down on mobs roaming when they shouldnt.
No kill flagged mobs (town stuff), is now immune from mob emotions.
Firequakes will no longer affect towns.
--Imix the fire lord will no longer spawn in a firequake (or town).
--Imix was replaced by a balrog demon.
--Magmaderms will no longer spawn in a firequake.
--Magmaderms were replaced by lemure demons.
--Magma sharks are still in a firequake, the elephants are out.
Tupelo is now zoned as a city.
Fixed a couple bugs with idling characters.
Object number will show correctly in expert id.
In an effort to tone down some of the super ripshit mad elite mobs.
--Elite mobs will now only boost level and damage (no hitroll or health).
--Hero mobs will now only boost hitroll and health (no level or damage.).
--Legend mobs will now only boost damage and health (no hitroll and no level).
--Lords still get it all, so fear a Lord.
Mob stats may now go as high as 35 (old cap was 25).
--This is mainly too semi boost elites and such just got nerfed.
No mage class, mage quad and tert will no longer suffer a cast speed debonus.
Windmill man in Tupelo was lowered.
Arbo was disconnected from west of BH, boat now.
Jungle of Jumanji was disconnected from west gate of Thremiscyra.
---Boats work fine and are very, very quick.
Several of the Frost zones were reattached very far north of north gate in BH.


PvP
Characters who are an avatar, may apply at the following.
Remus in Jahnesta, is the master of chaos.
Sutekh in Jahnesta, is the master of order.
Flagged players may now attack each other without penalty.
Khardan the Mapmaker in Tupelo will remove the flag.
Players may not fight on some boats, but can others.
Players may not fight in safe zones.
Class vs class is not to be balanced.
---Each class can take care of itself.
---Each class has its own strengths and weakness.



~Kell the Kyuss



Monday - Sept 6th, 2010 - 12:10am


Sorry about the outage last night. Guess when I went to bed one of my cats managed to unplug the router for the server. Almost caught up, hate starting multiple projects at once, starts out so small, then, ohh, no, its not. at this time Im about to tear into players warping to continents, so I can finish that up, then finish up some finite level artifacts.

innkeepers (except maynard) are now listed as epic.
guild entry has been redone, last time. fuck you mr guild file.
---level command will tell you to either use level check or level gain
---characters may now avatar in 40's in the back of their class order even with out class 2 and 3 being 40 as long as its prime 40 and the 40 you wish to avatar in.
avatar experience tables are now far more linear and exponential.
---the cost of everything dropped about 50%
---single class did actually stay about the same dual, tert and quad came down.
---level check tells the entry fee for the guild.

avatar arcana and med skills are unlocked for practicing
all quests can be turned in and completed at level 40 now (and level 46).
----some quests are still class restricted.

colors will default to off during character creation now.
---players may enable colors with the color command.
normals now have the same health, mana, movement, and regens as roughnecks.
the speed of boats has been increased.
you may sometimes gain experience for finding a magical room in each zone.
---these magic rooms are kiosk keys for unlocking zones.
---once a zone is unlocked, you may travel back to it with much ease.
---innkeepers in each city are the travel dwelvers.
---type tour in any inn.
equip that loads on a mob in game, can now gain extra stats on its own after the object is level 5.
---objects may grow a total of 6 times, and they will not always gain stats on a level.
---randomly made equipment will NOT suffer this fate, the only way it can level is in a guild when you level.
---static items may still level in a guild when you level.
---if the static equipment piece has empty stats, it can gain stats.
---if the static equipment piece has stats already, they can increase.
---equipment will not always gain stats each level.
----equipment can have nearly unlimited levels.
----this form of object stat gain is based upon a characters prime class
----warriors will only roll warrior stats. mages mage stuff, etc.


hardcore bonus is still retained at 15% extra.
legend, lord etc will show when a char looks at the room.
mobs will now be allowed for their performances to hit
---mobs had been using performances, they just hadnt been allowed to do damage
---swamp troll sort of hurt now.
perfect cast will now show up in score
cut the xp cost for avatar entry in half. (avatar level costs remain the same)
one of the random events for the 3 fates was spawning a volcano event, it wont now.
rewrote saving throws some to adjust for mobs bonus levels from growth.
off hand weapon speeds will be 1 sec quicker now (was 2 sec slower, now just 1).
growing mobs will now show up on scan.
quad or no class thieves will no longer loose 1 sec delay in attack times.
shatter lock will fail less
prime class spells will cast 20% better damage wise then 2nd class.
---there is no more debonus for having a class further in the class order.
---ie: prime class or base class, 2nd or quad mage, 2nd or quad sorcerer, etc.
the followering cleric avatar spells had their damage increased for both prime class and non prime.
--score, word of wrath, vengance, retaliation, retribution, wrath of god.
damage on deathward is no longer cut by 25%.
damage on catalepsy increased 15%
elemental bugs with the following spells were fixed.
lightning strike, frost cone, lightning bolt, absolute zero
skills which remain completely class order based.
backstab, dragon punch, healing
earthquake will receive the proper skill bonus now.
vigor now correctly raises max str
fixed a bug with tsunami where it wanted everyone to be a mage prime in order to deal any damage.
performances which do damage will no longer suffer the 1st bare thac0 check with no bonuses what so ever.
sanctuary lasts longer now for skill level.
the blitzkreig performance will no longer hit the person unleashing the ability.
basicaly a great un-nerfing of classes in the back of the class ordering.
especially spell durations and spell damage.
a hard enough hit will once again properly destroy a revenge buff, and trolls are doing just that.
---revenge hit strength may be increased in the future.
reordered how chests spawn initially in game.
---mobs can still pop chests randomly now, but not multiples as much now.
---also, there is a hit point requirement for a mob to get a larger chest.
---so easy lords wont always have large chests now, just small chests
plane shift will now work in any room.
plane shift will work more often when cast now
planar junction will work more often when cast now.
planar junction can be cast in any room
plane shift is still 40 mage prime only, junction is for anyone.
monk barehanded damage is now sickening.
took 3 days but took 300k off the compile size by using lint on every file.
frenzied beating will now the proper messaging for itself.
all performs will either do half damage to no_stab mobs or half against mobs that arent no stab
performs will work against nearly all mobs now though.
--this exludes paladin shield performs, which work full damage again all mobs.
the following performs retained the original thac0 checks for attack.
---joust, axxiakata, axxination, gloom strike, chain kick ,
non caster prime class damage on performs has been increased via skill bonus which is now normal and uncut.
non primes also focus skill bonus to performance damage now.
tacusa will now use its own skill bonus instead of montoraig.
ido the druid in the order temples hps were cut.
found and fixed why following chars wouldnt auto stab if they were flagged.
fixed an issue with consider that was showing less average damage then real.
new characters will start with autoloot and sac turned on.
new characters will start in non color mode.
duration on summon daemon for mage is extended.
fixed a crash bug with summoned angels and daemons being sent back to their home in hell or eden.
mobs born on night of the living dead or plague will not be near as mean.
---spectres and shades were lowered 30%
---phantasms were lowered 40%
--revenants are the biggest loss of undead, down about 60% in toughness.
--the remaining 18 types of undead were lowered between 10-25%
fixed a bug that was making mobs attack quicker then they should have.
fixed a crash bug with npcs using the lunge perform.
removed some skills from mobs in attempt to tone some down.
---removed weapon skills, 1 crit hit and 1 damage absorb.
normal prompts 1-7 will show duration hps as part of total when looking at condition for look at victim/mob if mob has grown.
chaos screen will be better for single, dual and triple class mages.
mage screens and cleric force fields will now show up in prompts.
----this is only the remaining value left until the shield is gone
----when the shield is gone the value will disappear and you will be taking damage.
----this value will only show up in color mode....
mortal levels have been re-set value wise, they are noe better set exponentially.
avatar level exp costs have all been reset as well.

Busy month, pretty soon Im gonna run out of stuff to do, and start to actually advertise for players. Has to work before you can tell people its cool right?

~Kell the Kyuss



Monday - August 30th, 2010 - 11:50am


Even without perfect casting, players can now match spells round for combat round with mobs. Perfect casting will allow a 2nd spell every other combat round over normal casting. This means once every 15 minutes, a caster has the ability to fully obliterate a lot of stuff. This assumes things like swiftness, arcana, and cast or attack time equipment, but it can be done, wil relative ease, but hey, its quite possible.

This will be my last day of sweeping code changes, at least for a while. I want to see how long this beast will stay up. This will also bring about the last of the regen changes. No one should ever get to complain about regen values again. If anyone finds means to be upset with quick regen, I will anvil them, and probably wipe them. No one will be able to say regen is slow, more like, oh, Im ready to go again, so quicky, but my noodles arent done yet. So you go out and kill, and burn your noodles. Yea. Its like that, thats how I roll now. Mana regen tick timers are lowered a 2nd time if players are resting or meditating. Sitting and relaxing players will take 2 tick timers off move regen, while sleepers will update twice as fast for sleeping regen for health. This effectively halves regen timers for that health stat. Players must go out of their way to regen, as whimpy aggro mobs will attack players attempting to regen. It should be noted that bashing mobs can trigger wimpy aggro on bashed players, because they think your trying to regen. Also, the speed on the mob parser was turned up a lill bit.

As for how I also roll, todays changes removed most of the wait for players. Negative cast time and attack time gear is still really important, as are the arcana and swiftness skills, and perfect cast is still cool. The cap for perfect concentration casting is now 1 second. The cap for casting is now 2 seconds. Performance caps are now at a 3. Prime class casters will not receive the 2nd lost concentration on a spell if fighting. Non caster primes will no longer get the 2nd lost conc using performances. The shadowblade perk will still remove the 2nd lost conc for fighting and performsn, while the pyrokinetic perk and the mudsex perk will remove this boon for non casters casting spells and casters using performs. As a whole, 2nd lost conc is a 1.1% chance of occuring on a spell cast, and a 2% chance on a perform. To obtain the best out of this new casting system, players will have to precast a little bit (in to the streams as it may be). But It can be done. Perfect conc casting is now sickly and obscene. Perfect conc healing is the way to keep a tank alive. Thats all I can say.

Even without perfect casting, players can match spells round for round with mobs. Perfect casting will allow a 2nd spell every other combat round over normal casting. This means once every 15 minutes, a caster has the ability to fully obliterate a lot of stuff.

arcana will gain quicker now.
spells below 100 will gain 50% quicker through use.
spells will no longer fall during a time stop.


event updates and removals.
the event fortune revoked is now gone.
---fortune bestowed is fortune major
---the revoked event now runs a lesser fortune event.
---these events improve the chance of equipment loading.
---famine and drought events are removed.
---no melee event is unchanged, its so cool now.
---time stops will end in 6 minutes now, down from 24
---magical prowess event will now activey boost healing as well as magic.
---no healing event will now boost healing.
---no magic event will now boost magic and give a holiday.
---full armor event will now boost melee power.
---better exp event also activates no exp caps.
---random holidays will active no exp caps and gold boost.


wait states on the following commands have been lowered. This is to facilitate a faster combat experience.
-axiakata now 2, down from 6.
-perkbook and skillbook reading, now 3, down from 10.
-throwing mobs will now throw faster.
-hit is now 1.25seconds, down from 3.5
-removed wait state on assist.
-disengage, now success is 4, fail is 2 (down from 7 and 7)
-bash is now 2 (fear bash mobs, really fear them).
----mobs which bash will drop you below fighting or standing, and can cause mobs to attack you, because they think your, trying to regenerate.
-the following skills are now 3, down from 7.
--relax, meditation, berserk
--conquest, fencing, defend, evasion, aggression


~Kell the Kyuss


Saturday - August 28th, 2010 - 7:00pm


Marathon Coding Spree! Hot damn, when your on a roll, dont stop, and going through hell, dont stop either. I dont wanna hear anyone gripe at me for helpfiles. That situation has been fixed. Type prac.
Still have some more fine tuning the messages but the system is inplace for mortals and avatars. For more advanced help, its available on the appendix a-z listing here on the web page. But in game, you got it made.

spell imparchment removed.
spell malnourish removed.
mana cost on expert id lowered.
unspiritual retirbution is now unspiritual agony.
tier 3 concentration renamed crystal throught.
tier 4 concentration renamed diamond mind.
lesser globe of invune renamed globe of power.
spell functions will now show up in practice listings.
this applies for all abilities.
ability reuse timers have been adjusted through the entire parser.
ability reuse timers are in practice now.


~Kell




Saturday - August 28th, 2010 - 1:00pm


Lots of reading for past couple days. Wow did I fuck up.

Server is feeling better now, switched out a stick of ram, and one of the small psu connectors for the video card fizzed out. So the server is feeling better now. I also learned that objects only have an in room assingment if they are no on a character. Wheee. Learn new stuff here all the time.

Onwards with my fuck up. Apparently performs all has a base reuse time of 12 because I used the wrong value. This is since the inception of the perform system and the acrobat and sorcerer trees. Apparently, why I loved my sorcerer, is drain soul has a spell speed of 0, as did sap soul. The prac command will show more and less information now on abilities, whether its a passive skill, a perform skill, a spell or a command skill, and perform and spell reuse times per spell are also shown in prac if they have values for such. Only gotten as far as mortals yet, but I got to review all the mortal abilities this morning. So now all cast times are going to be double checked again.

Spell timer bonuses from equipment show up in score now.
Fixed several issues with some mage spells which would half spell damage if used against a target which wasnt the key element of the spell.
--affected hail stone, lightning storm, shocking grasp, lightning bolt, icewind, iceray, disintegrate.
thieves now get backstab mastery at level 40 now.
using a much simpler hit or miss system for backstab now.
--ie backstab will hit more often at lower skill.
double stab will fire off more now.
tert stab will hit more often if its learned now.
all players learn planar junction at level 37 now.
----this opens up several more elemental areas for all classes.
all screens, fields, partitions, shrouds, shields can have 60 mana added into the spell now, up from 40.
all mortal practices will learn 5 skill pts per prac, up from 3.
all avatar practices will learn 4 skill pts per prac, up from 2.
increased max damage of holy fire.
increased disintegrate damage for all mage classes.
upped the max damage for chaos bolt now.
(below winds, even with disint, non elemental).
magic rope is now 22 mage, sorcerer or cleric.
----not just 22 cleric.
upped the rate at which characters auto learn spells below 100 by 20%
all characters get forge at level 5 now.
all characters get brew, inscribe and jewelcraft at level 25 now.
performances jun jun, jumni and nedirs will hit better against armor class vs skill now.
---rest of performances coing up.
blitzkreig will now do more damage based on skill.
blitzkreig will now miss less.
the reuse speed of blitzkreig, icewind and firewind is being tinkered with.
pending full review of the reuse system.


~Kell the Kyuss



Friday - August 27th, 2010 - 11:00pm


Having some network bullshit going on. Not quite sure yet what this is. I cant even bitch at verizon any more, as they dont own my dsl. sigh.

Practice session cap is now 1000, up from 500.
Expert identify is now level 40 for everyone but sorcerers, who get it at level 25.
Mortal exceptional skills are down from times 33 yesterday to times 7 today.
Dual wield is now level 40 for all caster classes (still mid 20's for non casters)
Casters may now practice both arcana and meditation. My level 40 mage prime with level 20 cleric quad nets over 200 mana a minute without meditation.
--Regen is NOT an issue now.
Thieves will receive a critical hit at level 12 and level 35.
I am contemplating giving warriors absorbs and crits.


~Kell


Friday - August 27th, 2010 - 7:00pm


Wheee. Such fun, this progress thing. Lots of bullshit fixed, and even some other stuff thats half way nifty. Firstly, Im writing my 1st new zone in ages, and years. It will be a town, which will replace Tupelo and its surrounding outskirts. There will also be some area rearrangement, but I have yet to full decide on how things will be yet.

Firstly. No stab mobs were rather unfair to stabbers (it was supposed to be). How ever, enter Acrobat, who dont really care about no stab mobs. Avatar first strike skills will still not work against no stab mobs. How ever, dragon punch, and its successors, as well as backstab, will. Dragon Punch has always worked against non-no-stab mobs, but at a 40% damage cut. Backstab will now work against nostab mobs, but at a 40% cut. So both classes are currently equal in that reguard. As noted, the avatar first strike skills remain currently unchanged (but will prob be made the same sometime in the future). Chests and ark loot has been evened out, there should now be no cross looting of tables. Added in a couple more ark tables as well. All said and done theres another 200 objects in arks now. next goal will be medium chest table loots, then quest table loots.

Secondly. Mage health has been increased some, its now the same as sorcerers in health reguards. Mage prime and secondary lost a little bit of max mana, but mages did gain health (all 4 types of mages). Avatar health was un-changed.

Thirdly. Regeneration.
--Sleep will now regenerate 3 health per second (1 mana and 1 moves).
--Resting will now regenerate 2 mana per second (1 health and 1 moves).
--Meditate will now regen 3 mana per second (1 health and 1 moves).
--Relax will now regen 3 moves per second. (1 health and 1 mana)
--Sitting will now regen 2 moves per second (1 health and 1 mana).
--Standing characters will regen 1 mana, health and moves.
This is cumulative with minute tick regen provided by the mud.
This is cumulative with player tick timer regen.
10-15 minute regen is prehistoric and outdated.


warrior skills. lunge is now level 12 warrior, visceral lancet is now level 1 warrior. jun jun is now level 20 warrior, apex 30 warrior and blitzkreig is now level 36 warrior. blitzkreig will now check its own skill for hit or miss rates.



assorted stuff
player deaths will now up in the stats command.
player deaths will now show in color mode.
the moon lunat-zo will recycle gravity on 30 days now, not 13.
started to remove targeting for area of effect spells (not performs).
the percent chance of items morphing stats during level gain has been increased by 25%.
anarchy alignment will now show up in stats command.
treasure arks and chests which are empty and on the ground will be removed.
weight on randomly created objects is now less.
increased the amount of physical items a player can carry now.
--this is subject to character level and dexterity.
increased the weight that characters can carry from 5 strength to 19 strength.
boats now give proper messages to rooms at right time.
grown mob counting of spawning and killings tracks better now.
--elite, legend etc.
elite legend etc kills are moved from info to growth command.
blizzard events can now affect cities. (no where inside though).
fixed a crash bug with mob growth.
night of the living dead will always end at 6am.
removed the level restrict for mobs to grow elite etc.
---some mobs below level 20 would say lord but wouldnt be.
werewolves which spawn under the light of a full moon are now given less pcp during creation.
lowered the quest mode damage bonus by 5%.
mobs which cast chaos screen will only do so once.
--some mobs were casting 15 screens on them selves.
guild masters will give up less when morphing an item.
lowered cost of mortal exceptional skills by 1/3.
fixed a couple crash bugs with world object updates.
fixed a couple crash bugs with world mob updates.
fixed a bug with extraction of empty arks and chests.
the chance for a non flying player to fall down a crevice during earthquakes and firequakes has been lessened.
players will once again suffer room affect and water breathe checks now.


I think thats it for right now.

~Kell the Kyuss



Wednesday - August 25th, 2010 - 1:00am


One of those hell freezes over type of days. I need a job, but not bad enough to go back to the bakery which tried really well to break my spirit and body. To Top it off, Makaveli returned. The oldies are starting to return. My big question lately has been what is the proper time of regen. There are lots of ways to regen in game, and some classes excel at some types of regen. My big question is, as a gold sink, should nurse ratchet in the infirmary, sell healing of some sort. Infirmaries already work for all characters, and even work really well for characters below level 20, though the way things stand now, that is not an issue. This is a game about advanced classes, not nessecarily mortal classes, which have been played into the ground. This is a realm of avatars. I would hate to add in purchaseable healing only to find it out balances everything, even though gold is really scarce. Unknown as of yet. A lot of online games, and games in general, offer very fast regen, and the prehistoric I am just gonna sit here for 10 minutes and regen, seems rather outdated and cruel, at least to me. Then again, I played a Sorcerer, so regen is a different orange there.

Fixes over past couple days.
Fixes a bug with thief and warrior spec procs which could give a character huge amounts of a skill learned.
---Anyone who logs in with this should be fixed before they even notice it.
During a night of the living dead event, the last section of the event is a 15 minute time stop.
---Mobs will now properly arise from the dead during the time stop.
character squad experience and skill data is reset to 0 upon renting or exiting from game completely.
updated the online magical appendix with the following skills.
---dragon fury, masonry, exorcism, bloodletting, mystical knife.
the perk group fiend will now properly receive xp bonus from following in a group, not just leading.
removed the level requirements for objects to gain experience.
removed the cap that kept objects at level 5.
---objects may now level finite.
---rumors abound in the mages guild about really high level objects gaining new powers at about level 20.
accelerated tick timers for players. this should increase regen by about 30%
item number of an object is now included in expert identification.
---olegas has a new item listing page, included on the right side menu by equipment menu.
---this list is mainly for treasure chest and treasure ark loot.
for non caster primes, the stamina skill will now increase hp and movement regen some what.
---up to 15 pts at 115 skill.
players exiting a magical rope room will now send a message to the room the enter while leaving.
shatter lock is no longer sorcerer prime.
---two skills which are fairly must have on soulmud, are shatter lock or pick locks.
---so i do reccomend that a player take one of these 2 classes.
---but I also say cleric should always be included as well.
---there is no perfect class order. good luck.
mystical knife will now properly disappear when it is removed from use.
anarchy characters, who lead a really hard life, may now wear any alignment restricted equipment.
---levels still apply, as do zodiac restrictions, if any, on an object.
immortals can now see characters rerolled max stats on showstats.
---what immortals. its just me. hah!
the cooldown for changing sacrafice gods was cut from 61 ticks to 16 ticks.
the equipment command will once again work in merchant shops.
characters who are not in ansi color will now see player levels on the who list.
added an anon-o-mouse command, when active, will only show players prime class on the who list.
removed a few defunct office mobs from prior immortal staff.
---some emotions would make these mobs move through window rooms to places in the realm.
---some event mobs would spawn off these mobs, and abuse the same window rooms.
---finding a locust captain in the inn is NOT fun.
characters may now track how many mobs they have killed in the stats command.
this tracker will reset at 25000, a seperate track will track 25k increments.
the info command will show how many elite, lord, legend and hero mobs have died this run.


~Kell the Kyuss




Sunday - August 22nd, 2010 - 3:00am


Nothing major, just bug fixes and assorted changes.
All levels are now 5% cheaper.
New characters will once again start the game with drinking cups.
---apparently I random object statted a cup. bad me.
Mobs will no longer grow if they are fighting.
Blitzkreig will now use the blitz attack message instead of apex.
shop keepers will display a message on what each symbol next to an item can mean.
fixed a cpu bomb bug with the blood rise event.
added 2 more locusts to the fire nugs event.
---infantry locust and a locust captain (both meaner then scouts)
added several more blood elves to the blood rise event.
added several more bandits to the bandit wars event.
the assassins for the long knife event have disappeared.
---they have been replaced by army ants.
---these army ants do not play well with others.
increased the percentage of mobs that can spawn the aforementioned events.
avatars only gain 2 skill pts per practice, down from 3.
melee masteries and grand masteries require the level 10 proficency in order to train.
---ie: need level 10 slash skill to train slash mastery and grand mastery.
blackguards now gain backstab mastery at 36 (assassins already had it).
ninja's no longer have access to swiftness.
aquamarine rings are now given at level 20 instead of level 10.
---aqua rings, when worn, keep the ghul-kin in jahnesta from being aggro.
guild masters will now give a single max-stat reroll token to a level 40 character.
---to save the trouble, these tokens are no_sell and no_trade.
---the guildmaster will only give one, and only to prime class 40's.
increased the amount of practices per level which single and dual class characters get.
redid the check in experience for anarchy aligned characters.
---anarachy alignment is now 10% cheaper in all levels.
the following skills are no longer warrior prime only.
---doorbash, apex, jun jun, blitzkreig.
single class cleric exp per level has been brought back down to normal.
fixed a buggy door in the demonweb.
lolth now has a chance to load 2 spider-shaped keys at once.
---this is due to the 2 doors to get to Diablo and King Demogorgon in her vault.
lowered the mortal experience cost for training exceptional abilities between 25-100.
lowered the avatar experience cost for training abilities by 70%.
avatars no longer have exceptional abilities (all skills cost the same).
sorcerer shatter lock spell was lowered from level 32 to 5.
the steal command is only trainable by roughneck and hardcore thieves.
---if anyone wants to steal, their char can and will be permadeathed.
---its only fair.
any master of meditation may use any type of reroll token now.
---alpha, omega, prismatic, tet token or max stat token.
character resurrections are now tracked in the stats command.
added in a new command, colorize. colorize will toggle on and off.
---changes all characters color schemes about once per 2 seconds.
added in color schemes for the color command.
---color (scheme) (where scheme is red, blue, green, white, purple, black, yellow).
mobiles in rooms will now show up as mob color (option #13 in color set).
black is now a supported color for score, stats, and the bonus command.
black is now supported for objects and mobs in room as well.


~Kell the Kyuss




Friday - August 20th, 2010 - 4:00am


Characters may now reroll their max stats. Yay.
Character max stats still increase by leveling in mortal and avatar guilds.
Each guild has a prime max stat that the guild raises.
There is 1 perk book for each max stat.
Equipment can still modify max stats.
No max stat may exceed 40, by any means (spells, perks, skills etc)
---Characters must be level 40 to use a max stat token.
---Max stat tokens may be dropped off of event and quest mobs. ONLY.
---Tokens are a light source with stats to any level 20 avatar.
---stats level 1 - stat, level 2, max stat, level 3 1 stat, level 4 max stat, health
---so the dexterity token, at level 5 would 2 dex, 2 max dex and 30 moves.
---the constitution token, at level 5 would be, 2 con, 2 max con and 30 hps.
---NO class gets max con as a stat. Thus max con is the hardest max stat to raise.
-------mafia tribe token rolls dexterity.
-------mind tribe token rolls wisdom.
-------dogs of war token rolls strength.
-------arcane magi token rolls intelligence.
-------council of warfare token rolls constitution.
---sorcerers and mages are intelligence prime.
---acrobats and thieves are dexterity prime.
---warriors are prime strength, and clerics wisdom.
-------prime stat classes roll 2 pts higher then off stats.
-------rolls for off stats are 19-25.
-------prime stat rolls are 21-27.
-------------the roller is biased to rolling LOW. 27 is possible, but unlikely.


Event Fixes
The following events were re-enabled with new and much less laggy code. The mobs in these events will also yield quest points and other quest mob rewards (they didnt prior to now.
--Werewolves during a full moon.
--Bandit Wars random event.
--Night of the long Knives random event.
--Night of the Blood rising random event.
+++the grim reaper from the death comes to town event is now aggressive. you have been warned.


Help file topics have been added for sorcerers, adcrobats, avatars, max stats, vaults, boats, (a typo was blocking the mage help topic), masonry, squad, autoloot, autosac, autosplit, spirit channel. More help files forth coming, how ever, they will mainly be commands, as I have no real desire to go through and add an index for 21 classes worth of skills and spells.

-slightly lowered the amount of elite mobs in game. Legend, lord and hero percentages were fine.
-fixed a crash bug involving cleric mobs casting spell shield and force field.
-cosmic math has been re-enabled, eclipses are once again functioning.
-messages for spells about to fall, and spells falling are synced again.
-Added in 4 more treasure tables of loot for small treasure chests.
-elite mobs may now occasionaly have small treasure chests.
-lowered the percentage chance for elite mobs to load a codex of masonry.
-perkbook load chance decreased 10% for all mobs.
-legend mobs may now have medium treasure chests.
-lowered the amount of gold in chests and arks.
-mobs are once again properly extracting themselves from game.
---this refers to an instance wednesday where there were 600 locusts
---and 400 werewolves in game for most of the day and night.
-the pray command has been removed from game for the time being.
---holy equipment will be redone soon, and it will be returned.
-zodiac powers which activate through combat will now have the proper messages for when they stop affecting a char.
-the command lag from the order command has been halved.


~Kell the Kyuss



Sunday - August 15th, 2010 - 3:00p


Started this project friday morning, it didnt occur to me that it was the 13th. I hate knowing that something isnt right. ocd is a mofo, and caused me much stress friday. by saturday evening things were getting better. the problem of course is loops, and i can find myself with 5 windows up chasing down a single function. after a while its fairly chaotic. the violence issues below should have been addressed years ago but I was lazy, it took me 3 days to straight everything out properly. bug hunting through multiple files is fun, but its a pain in the ass. reguardless the issues have been fixed, and its running better now. these notes cover the past 2 days of that time (though, I was into 13 files yesterday, and there are some things I didnt get to note down) that is the danger of multiple file edits. worse is editing a file thats open just for looking at. damn im good.

"lightning storms are natures way of saying you shouldnt be coding that, dam power outages." -Kell

stress test hovers at about 90-99 megs now.
---averages 1000 mobs dead per minute with plague mode on.


3 days worth of bug fixes
increased the amount of elite, lords, heros and legend mobs in game.
restructured mobile to act smoother as a string of functions instead of a gutter slush of code.
mobs can now occasionally hunt people who have attacked them (pissed them off)
wimpy aggro mobs will aggro you if your resting or sitting. be careful where you regen.
anarchy players will now draw aggro mobs from quite a distance.
it is now assumed that all mobs over level 43 have ultravision.
consitution bonus has been reworked in a simpler fashion and should be more noticeable
intelligence for mana will now benefit players with no magery levels.
intelligence for mana has been reworked to be more noticeable at higher stat levels now.
score now tells you that you have a billion xp when you have a bank point.
spells will last much longer now
mobs will no longer attempt to auto loot and sac corpse....
seperate processes for mob regen and pc regen.
fixed a couple issues with the generic damage spec proc.
evened out the time flow of pulses and loops.
fixed some issues with mobile emotions.
for the hell of it, i fixed a bug that was blocking several from working right.
found and fixed 14 corrupted rooms which held invalid data as doors and sent mobs into the unknown.
did find and fix several corrputed objects
did not find any corrupted mobs.
the 2nd mob growth formula has been turned back on.
fixed several issues with the 2nd mob growth.
2nd mob growth occurs every day at 9am.
---only affects static mobs which arent yanked around like day and night mobs.
---only mobs that survive each day over and over begin to be of any merit.
fixed a bug with drink containers
mob extractions are much much cleaner mob
--affects zone resets, day/night mobs, daily mobs, quest mobs and event mobs
fixed a bug in violence which was killing mobs which were only morted.
players and mobs will no longer stop combat when someone goes below 0 health and just stuns.
--chances for death are better now.
fixed an issue with mobs bloodlossing.
time is fixed. turns out i doubled the speed of it some place back when.
corpses update much quicker now
mobs will properly stop fighting when told to do so now.
fixed an issue with mob help proc
fixed an issue with gater procs
spent a few hours fixing some fight violence issues
dropped another 100k off the compile by remove the 2nd damage function.
redid the way that data after an opponent dies is handled.
--exps, charmed master exps, karma and quest values, alignment changes
--changed how items gain xp some what.
item degradation has been reactivated.
auto stab will now look for backstab (the avatar stabs worked).
some memory issues lost over time has been righted.
with the 2nd damage removal, offhand damage from dual wield will have increased by about 25%.
---which is to say, equal with that of mainhand damage
autostab has been disabled for group leaders
---this is due to leaders killing mobs on a backstab etc before the rest of the group is in the room.
---leaders, let someone else stab, its a target away.
perk books will no longer disappear as soon as you get one.
perk books are still no rent and no vault and no save.
fixed many issues with mob aggro (completely redone)
fixed many issues of mobs calling bad spec procs.
mob emotions and aggro are also heavily redone
casanova will properly block more aggro
fixed an issue that could corrupt player equip files on a crash.
wimpy aggro now includes sitting and resting.
hyper aggro on mobs has been fixed
- to say that it works is akin to a dick missle at a cunt convention.
night of the fire nugs is less laggy and cpu heavy to run (locust events)
there are slightly more locusts now.


~Kell the Kyuss




August 11th, 2010 - 2:15p


SoulMUD should be listed soon on TMC. (again).

Lots of web page work today. Updated lots of things, even some of the ability help files. Mud still up, in debug, hoping for a crash of some type, but no, Just gonna let in run for a while with no debug, since windows wants me to reboot. Next day or so will just be more note taking, and playing (gasp).

Enjoy, no more wipes, and things are running damn good.
~Kell



August 11th, 2010 - 2:15p

Silly fact. Without mobs and objects, the mud is only 15megs.
Orkhis has moved into the shop below the Tupelo scribe.
--He deals strictly in potion and envenom components
Autoloot, Autosac and Autosplit are one again useable.
Squad commands are all working, this includes autostab functions.
--Squad Autostab dexterity check has been lowered for now
--Squad exp tallys are also back in.
--Squad hit point reporter and damage reduction reporter also work
Sentinel mobs are no longer roaming.
Anarchy mobs will only attack if they have at least one half of your hps.
Treasure chests and arks are no longer buyable when on a shop keeper.
Drop kick now has combat messages.
Added a purge world command.
Fixed a crash issue with perform style targeting.
Fixed a crash issue with the envenom perform
Sorcerer shatter lock will now work on chests and arks
Lowered shatter locks skill base functionality


~Kell



August 10th, 2010 - 6:15p

If by chance your reading here, you may wish to re-read the 2nd and 3rd paragraph(s) just to make sure your not hallucinating.

The state of the code is quite good. added a stress test option to allow the debugging of the entire combat system, at once. fixed many bugs today thanks to the stress tester option. i was happy when it lasted 20 minutes in stress mode, then a crash, then 25 min. had to work with plague and night of the living dead a bit, but I considered it done when stress tested plague event mode for over 30 minutes. during stress test mode, all mobs move, and all mobs aggro other mobs. during plague mode, there are some 8000 mobs in game, all of them are in combat after the 1st 2 minutes stress mode is on. it consumes about 3 megs per minute that it is even active, and the cpu on the box idles at 11% just for the mud program. all in all some 10,000 mobs died in 30 minutes during plague mode.

-added a yuku forum for griping. only use foul language, please and fuck you very much.
-no more character wipes. (that i know of - feel free to level and play).


-this is not a newbie friendly mud, never has been - likely never will. with changes coming in next week, it will be less so. the following keeps people on even footing. (explanation). many of the people who have played here over the years, are loathe to re-level again. frankly I dont blame them. ive wiped so many people over the past 11 years - its not funny. when I added the event system in, it was during a period where there was already higher level players. the global event system, combined with mob emotion and mob growth, make this mud NOT newbie friendly, and now that the mud doesnt crash much, its even less so. everything about this mud is confusing to a person who has played here before, let alone someone who is not used to the system. gold is currently very hard to get at lower levels, equipment is not bad to attain, and wont be given freely. im not trying to make it simple, but by allowing everyone an equal chance to have fun, in a system that has been hard to reach for a long time now.

-all characters start with 1 bank point (1 B as in Billion experience).
-Decreased single class exp by 10%, dual class by 5%.
-Increase triple class by 5%, quad class by 10%.
-This is enough to net a single level 40, and a single avatar class in triple or quad class.
-this is enough to hit level 36 on a single class character.
-non anarchy aligned avatars will cost 10% more exps to level.
-infirmarys will net a 60% bonus to players under level 19
-infirmaries will net a 25% bonus to players over level 19
-you will not have enough practice sessions to learn everything, dont try.
-almost all low level mobs will be refitted during the next few days.
-lowest level mob will be approx level 20, and be worth 20k exps.

bug fixes and other assorted shiznit.
-fixed several issues in the spec procs file itself.
-fixed multiple issues in the cyclers procs (avatar, priest, sun cycle and ice cycle).
-fixed a few typos in char creation and new char titles.
-increased amount of lifestats gained from basic karma potions.
--cap on potions is still 10 each, cost remains the same.
--health potions - raised from 20 to 35 each.
--movement potions - raised from 25 to 35 each.
--mana potions - raised from 15 to 27 each.
--health and movement regen raised from 2 to 3 each potion.
--mana regen potion raised from 1 to 2 each.
-reset sacrafice tables
-increased spell durations on detection spells
--- magic, undead, good, evil, invisible
-weapon skills are once again trainable in all guilds (level 10).
----remember, you may only train one weapon skill now.
-fixed a bug in the spawning of the death comes to town event.
-dragon punch will only give one message when attempting to use during combat.
-sit position will once again net a bonus to regen movement.
-warriors were added to the movement regen listing (melee classes only).
-increased bonus health regen for sleeping by 8%
-found and fixed a bad room along the docks west of tupelo.
-alignment will now show up in last player.
-dispel magic will now be a little more friendly dispelling targets over your level.
-fixed a crash bug with passivle abilities striden and nightwalk.
-fixed an issue with saving throws for npcs over level 50.
-fixed a couple of issues with the wyvern spec proc
-for shits and giggles, fixed even more issues with the cycler spec procs
-make corpse and make corpse ethereal will work better now
-fixed multiple issues with reanimating of corpsed during plague and living dead events
-plague and living dead are functioning correctly now
-fixed some issues with load_mobile
-fixed some of the messages dead bodies give off
-fixed an issue with messaging to rooms
-fixed an issue with worn equipment gaining experience


All for now.
~Kell



August 7, 2010 - 11:30pm cst

Fixed a couple more issues with boats. Fixed a crash bug with night time extractions. The dns updater is also back on, so the ip address will correctly point to the right place now. Updated the web page here, touched up most of the old active pages, and added a page on mob growth and emotions. Some of the data in these pages way quite old, and is defunct now, as that stuff has been removed from the code.

~Kell


August 7, 2010 - 3:00am cst.

AFter about 30 hours memory useage tops out at 125 megs. I like that!

Daily fixings.
-fixed bug with earthquake event.
-fixed 2 stat roller errors. c/t/w will now roll str, and s/w/c will roll dex now.
-the speed that boats travel at has been doubled.
-upon reaching a destination dock, boats will kick everyone out onto the dock.
-ethereal mobs which are fighting ethereal mobs will blow them selves up after so long.
-mobs should loot gold and objects off the ground better now.
-the blitzkreig performance now has a miss message.
-characters may only train ONE weapon skill at level 10 now.
-characters must train wep skills in the warrior guild.
-blackjack moved to avengers and monks
-offline characters werent voiding into the idle. they will now.
-triple kick works during combat now.
-moved 3 para elemental spells from wiz to warlock.
-speeded up the regen time of incapacitated and mortally wounded characters.

-the 3 fates will run time length based events now, depending on how long the mud stays up.
---the 1st 15 ticks, gold is doubled.
---the 500th to 520th tick will involve a plague.
---the 1000th to 1020th tick will boost magic and melee powers.
---the 2000th tick to the 2020th tick will be an aether phase.

-anarchy aligned characters wont draw mob aggro til level 12.
---anarchy aligned characters should be prepared for hell.

-max movement was lowered by 20%
-all characters will now properly be rerolled the 1st time at creation.

-roughnecks now permadeath at -5 karma, up from -10 karma.
-normal characters will start with 2 karma now, up from 0.
-roughnecks will start with 5 karma now, down from 8.
-hardcores will start with 7 karma now, down from 10.
-anarchy aligned characters will start with an extra 6 karma now.

--removed guild code for bards, samurai, mafioso, bishops and channellers.
----merged spells and abilityes into other remaining classes.

-fixed several errors with permadeaths and resurrection.
-fixed an error in player bloodlossing (which is really hard to do now).
-fixed several errors in permadeaths and file deletion.


I'll be listing this mud for connectivity on the mud connectors this weekend.

~Kyuss








August 5, 2010 - 4:29am cst.

Why hello there. Fancing meeting you here, in the strangest and forgotten of places. I actually spent four and a half days trying to take classes and levels out of the mud. Needless to say, it can be done, how ever, im not patient enough to try to do it any more So i reverted that code back, and went back to lookin for stuff that didnt work. One day I will run out of this stuff but not anytime soon. At least so I tell myself.

I have been steadily working towards removing code which is of no use, or only little to no use. The Tough difficulty was removed, as well as vulgar capture the flag code (ctf will return in some form) I spent some time sifting through the player files, and managed to drop the memory useage buy about 40%. all said and done ive trimmed about 700k off the compile size, and i hope that the pfile c orruptions are now at an end. character creation has been altered slightly, everyone starts with adjutor as a base god now (if you want a diff god or bonus, find one). menus have been adjusted some what. removed a great deal of the planet math. redefined age loss on ressurrection after level 20 to be 15% chance per death.

fixed crash bugs with exp assingments, astral body, and the perk armaghedonist. added a new character alingment, anarachy. the difficult thing about this one is that all mobs which are not flagged no kill (which is everything from chickens, town guards, demogorgon, mir). is all aggressive, all the time. any hardcore anarchist who reaches level 40 will be given a vorpal sword. this is only for experienced people who are looking for the most challenge.

I'll be listing the mud for connectivy in a week or so (when all goes well). As is, its running quite well.

soulmud.doesntexist.org port 4242

Kyuss Creator of SoulMUD.org
kell.sims@gmail.com