Updates

The following is the record of public game progress for August 5th, 2021 through October 31st, 2021.

  • New/updated helpfiles: containers, drink, fill, furniture, liquid containers, lock picking, NPCs, pick, recall
  • Updated items: fishing poles
  • Permanent rooms, such as tents and housing, now remember the coordinates of their contents between reboots, and permanent objects in non-permanent rooms remember where in the room they are in the same situations. Non-permanent object behavior remains the same. Due to the nature of this change it may not be perfectly reflected across all permanent objects at first; players are welcome to submit reports via "note bug" to ask for objects in their current room to be moved and assigned updated coordinates.
  • Players can now use the "recall description <nickname>" syntax to see brief physical descriptions of other players who they've named. This requires no skills or stats to use but does require a few seconds for the character to collect their thoughts. The syntax only works on players, not staff, and said players must be online and not in an OOC area; it's safe to assume that if their name is visible on one's "who" readout, this syntax will work on them. Descriptions retrieved via this method are similar to those shown by glancing at someone, with the exception of named concealed characters, who will only be remembered by their disguises.
  • Repairing metal objects using a forge without having a sharpening stone on hand will now use slightly clearer language in the message displayed once the object has been restored to whetstone-only levels of repair. The new message is "Having repaired the base body of a [metal thing], you pause your work." Repairing also now uses slightly more efficient distance-determining code. Difficulty, skill use, etc. remains untouched.
  • The "bait fishing pole" syntax (with no mention of what one is actually using as bait) is now a little smarter when looking for valid bait. It will first look for anything with "bait" as a keyword that the character is holding, including most fishing lures, then for anything edible, then any leftover lures, then corpses. If no bait is found in a character's hands, the command will then check the ground nearby for bait in the same order as above. If a character wants to use a particular object as bait, "bait fishing pole with <bait>" works as usual.
  • Using the "remove bait from fishing pole" syntax on a fishing pole with bait on it will now remove anything currently on the target pole, regardless of whether or not it has "bait" as a valid keyword. The "get bait from fishing pole" syntax works the same way. Trying to remove bait from unbaited fishing poles will still fail.
  • Looking at furniture now involves slightly more natural messaging to display who (if anyone) is using it and how much space remains. Most notably, this has unoccupied objects that don't even have enough room for an observer to stand on to say as much, as well as stating whether an occupied piece of furniture has enough space for an observer to sit, lie down, or (barring one or both of these) stand on it. Vacant furniture with room for the observer to sit, or occupied furniture that doesn't have room for the observer to stand on it, won't print any extra messages. The previous cyan-colored "On a <furniture type>: " prefix has been removed, though the actual listing of what furniture a character is using is listed in the same place, as well as mentioned in the room brief. Characters with unusual room descriptions due to the "posture" command, combat, nudity strings, etc. will be mentioned on their own lines. This change is purely cosmetic and has no effect on the capacity of furniture.
  • The displayed room brief when using furniture now mention's a character's base posture; for example, "lightly wooded forest (on a chair)" will now be "lightly wooded forest (sitting on a chair)." This ignores any custom strings applied from skill use, combat, the "posture" command, etc. Like any other conditional room brief, this is only visible to the furniture-using character themselves.
  • It is now possible to use the syntax "drink from here" or "drink from nearby" to drink from rooms with abundant local liquids, such as riverbanks; "fill <liquid container> from here" can also be used. These work the same way as using "drink" or "fill <liquid container>" on their own and the original syntax is untouched.
  • The "pick" command now recognizes trying to pick more than one object at a time; at the time of this writing, the maximum is five. It also understands "pick all from <plant>" and "pick everything from <plant>"; if this would result in trying to pick more than five objects at a time, it will reduce the target number accordingly. Picking messaging has also been updated to better reflect where picked things are going, be they in a character's hands, on the ground, or a mix of both.
  • Using "get <part> from <plant>" will now behave the same as trying to "pick" something from said plant.
  • The "pick" command is now a little smarter if used with shorter syntaxes. "pick <object>" used on a plant, with no other arguments, now knows to look for the first pickable thing growing on said plant (i.e. "pick apple tree" will look for a piece of fruit on the first apple tree the game finds in the room), whereas "pick <object>" used on a lockable object will automatically try to use the first found pair of lockpicks to jimmy the object's lock. These behave otherwise identically to their more specific versions. It is also now possible to use "pick" with full hands; things picked in this state will be placed on the ground nearby.
  • Rooms that are particularly dry or humid will now mention this in their room briefs in the same place light and unusual temperatures are reported. Note that this currently does not apply to wilderness rooms. Underwater rooms of any sort are exempt from this for obvious reasons.


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