The Hallowed Scar

An update on what I've been working on recently:

The AI functionality mentioned a couple of entries ago seems to be working perfectly; as of last Thursday I've completed all of the necessary structure and a good deal of testing. I have not put the code live yet, however; it's a big update and I have the perfect project to serve as a rigorous test before I upload it - the Hallowed Scar.

Thus, I've spent this past weekend trying to get this area into shape. This is the PvP-based Trials extension that I mentioned previously. It's basically an event triggered with each Trial win; completing a Trial grants a rally effect which allows the player to access the event.

The area itself is a fairly sizable zone, with four main subsections. The central section is a small shrine to Illanielle, the goddess of fertility; however, the shrine itself has been damaged and the land around it shattered, obliterated by the dark magic of a vengeful rival goddess, Ashabelle. The dark scar left behind by Ashabelle's bolt carves a deep impassable slash throughout the zone, splitting the land around the central shrine and forking outwards.

Illanielle's shrine serves as one of the zone's four points of control, alongside her militant disciples' garrison to the west, a flattened caldera which once held a great amphitheatre to the north, and a nearby irontree forest stretching to the east. What was meant to be a spiteful, crippling strike on Ashabelle's part has instead resulted in the rallying of the forces of both immorality and morality - the former bent on gloating over the dark side's conquest and looting the remains, the latter determined to extract triumph from tragedy and to demonstrate the resilience and drive of the light.

While the event is active, players with the appropriate rally effect may enter the Hallowed Scar and contribute to the glory of their respective sides. While there are NPCs to interact with (and combat) within the zone, the main focus of the zone is on the players themselves. Simply being present in one of the four zones of control will constantly contribute to the control points which that player's side has accumulated for that zone of control; at the end of the event, the side with the most control points in each zone of control claims that subzone. The side which has claimed the most subzones is the winner of the event. (Ties, in both control points and subzone claiming, are automatically given to the side which won the last set of morality Trials.)

Thus, it is in each side's best interest to occupy as many zones of control as possible while driving out the players on the opposing side. There are no rank restrictions to join the event, since even the smallest player can contribute to zone occupation by avoiding the enemy team (albeit at a slightly slower rate than a high-ranking player); the overall event is, however, rank-controlled to ensure that the total ranks on each side are fairly even. The event will automatically "expand" the rank restrictions to allow more people in if there are players on both sides who can't get in due to rank caps.

I'll save the reward system for another day, except to mention that it's a pretty deep and unique reward set based on accumulating favor (which is earned constantly as a player contributes to zone control, and in larger chunks for the event's winners).

Anyway, this zone is what I have been working on over this past weekend, as both a demonstration and a rigorous test of the capabilities of the new AI functionality. There's a lot to do, but I've also got a lot of it completed and ready for testing, and the new functionality greatly simplifies many of the tasks required. As of tonight, I have the barebones AI nearly ready for testing and the physical structure of the area completely built. Over this week, I'll be working on testing and adding to the AI; once that's done, it's just a matter of implementing the reward system and whipping out the final details (room names and descriptions, etc.) I expect that I will need at least another weekend to finish all of this.

Your over-100% mastery discussions are not falling on deaf ears, by the way! We have already gotten a lot of great feedback from the players, and we look forward to more. I can promise you that of your feedback, absolutely zero percent is being overlooked or ignored; even if I feel initially that I disagree with your analysis, I am still making the effort to check the code and test out your observations locally, and sometimes that ends up changing my initial opinions. This takes time, but we will get to every class. I've got a lot of exciting plans for all of the varied classes of Nodeka, and all I need to let them unfold is a little time and your patience. =) Thanks for your support, folks!