Inscription progress report

It took a heck of a coding marathon and the lives of a million tea leaves were lost to the cause, but the basic structure for inscriptions is complete and fully functional. This means that, on my local codebase:

1. A new item type exists - 'scrolls'.
2. The new command 'read' allows a player to read said scrolls.
3. Players can learn new inscriptions by reading the appropriate scrolls, and view their current inscription tree (or those of other players) with the 'inscription' command.

There's a ton of unspoken detail in there, but that's the basic summary. The reward structure which I've spoken about previously involves, in part, the addition of these scrolls - different quests and events will offer access to scrolls with a wide variety of different inscriptions.

Of course, you don't know precisely what inscriptions are for, yet. That's the (nearly) last piece of the puzzle which I'm working on as we speak - the 'empower' command, which is related to the gibberish clues I've provided in previous entries. Once 'empower' is finished:

1. A player will be able to 'empower' him/herself with... something. :)
2. This empowering provides benefits in and of itself, but more importantly, it allows access to the customizations a player has chosen through learning new inscriptions.

I expect to finish testing of 'empower' tonight or early tomorrow, after which this will all go live in one major update. (I do still need to pretty up the output for these new commands - it's pretty ugly-looking at this point.) There is a strong element of mystery and the unknown built into the system, and helpfiles will be scarce at first, so the Sixth Sense will be a good resource for those of you who enjoy unraveling the intricacies and depths of a new in-game system. =)

Thanks for your support and patience. Back to coding!

Holiday cheer!

Best holiday wishes to all of you! Thank you all for your kind thoughts and concern. I am safely back at home, and hard at work on the system alluded to in the Nov. 14 post. Paper design is done, and I've made a ton of coding progress in the past two days.

In the spirit of the season, as well as the spirit of toying with you all, here's just a few pointers as to what the new system will be about:

1. The gibberish in the Nov. 14th post is part of the foundation of the new content.
2. The name of the Nov. 14th post is significant in some way.
3. Inscriptions.

Enjoy your eggnog; I'll be working hard to get you some much-needed code love!

Emergency leave

I'm sorry to push back the long-overdue content releases, but I will not be able to provide any updates this coming week. Due to an immediate family emergency, I will be unavailable until the 20th. I'll resume working on updates when I return. Until then, best wishes and good health to you all.