Development Updates (2022)

January

• 1.2.22: Custom pattern forms added, as well as the CHOKE command.
• 1.6.22: Added butchering and skinning of corpses. Also put limitations on how often you can gain experience for story updates.
• 1.7.22: Added several more plants: garlic, potato, tomato, onion, dreamweed, leek, yam, and carrot.
• 1.11.22: Cooking ability and custom cooking recipes added, as well as REMEMBER command to supplement THINK and FEEL.
• 1.14.22: Garments with hoods can now have their hoods raised or lowered with the RAISE and LOWER commands. If you want a hood added to existing garments that should have it, please request.
• 1.21.22: St. Loomis now has a farm stand, a local priest and church bell ringer, and a stationery shop.
• 1.22.22: The "Loomis Loom" has opened for business, as well as a tinker shop on Post Street.
• 1.23.22: You can now sell items at stores, provided that the shopkeepers have the coin and want to buy what you have to offer.
• 1.24.22: Added the Hollyhill neighborhood to St. Loomis.
• 1.30.22: Added "mist" and "maelstrom" climate types.

February

• 2.2.22: More prompt-customization options, and brand-new less sticky "more" pager made just for Avaria.
• 2.7.22: The PLAY command now works with instruments as well as minigames, alongside twang/strum/toot/etc.
• 2.8.22: Organizational support added, along with the ORGANIZATIONS and COMMAND commands.
• 2.20.22: The fishing system has been added and refined, and the herring stall in the fish market in St. Loomis also sells basic fishing supplies.
• 2.21.22: People with hunting skills can now use the FIND GAMETRAIL and HUNT commands to find animals in the wilderness.
• 2.22.22: Certain patches of water may now freeze up over the winter. Be careful, you could slip and fall!
• 2.24.22: Tides will now go in and out, and the moons will send messages for their rising and setting.
• 2.26.22: Portable shelters now exist, and can be set up and taken down -- a new outfitter's store in St Loomis sells tents, ropes, and more! Also added the Silver Street neighborhood to St. Loomis.

March

• 3.1.22: You can buy soap at the herbal apothecary store in St. Loomis, and scented candles at the cart outside the cathedral yard.
• 3.2.22: Made things easier for builders by fixing the DIG and BUILDPUBLIC commands to copy current location settings and make the proper connections, as well as allowing clearing of exit aliases from the RMENU.
• 3.3.22: Some water rooms now have depths. If you are underwater you may dive to them, and objects may also sink to them.
• 3.12.22: You can earn reputations through stories and hear about others' reputations when you inquire with locals.
• 3.13.22: Getting struck by lightning now has a real effect.
• 3.21.22: Furniture can be made in the items menu and moved around, and carpenters can use the "carve" ability. Additionally, several small interaction bugs have been fixed.
• 3.22.22: The new shop Salter & Son's in St. Loomis now carries some furniture items, in addition to wooden planks. The tinkerer's store carries hammers and saws. The St Loomis vicinity map has been added to the webpage. Early spring weather probabilities have been added to both the Omrazir and St. Loomis areas.
• 3.26.22: The CRAFTING command has been added to provide for more helpful documentation regarding crafting designs. Checking "craft" on any object will show if you know any relevant designs.
• 3.27.22: Changed the look of the webclient. Added more maps to the Lore page on the website!
• 3.28.22: The butcher east of the fish market in St. Loomis will buy raw meat, and the hide seller in the market square will buy hides.
• 3.30.22: Bugfixes: you can no longer grapple with dead things, fall damage will not include body parts that the faller doesn't have, and the snap neck command should work properly for small prey animals.

April

• 4.1.22: You can now see the IC date on the website.
• 4.16.22: Added messaging and transitions for new squall weather type, and put in BLINK and PAT socials.
• 4.18.22: Added RUB and EYEROLL socials.
• 4.23.22: You will now break into a run if you travel over a distance of several rooms very quickly. Stacked commands will have a half-second delay, and you can STOP them. New face shapes, mouth shapes, and eye traits have been added to character generation, along with numerous other ongoing chargen tweaks and polishes. Many atmospheric additions to the Faded Zone and Otherland.
• 4.26.22: The idle timer has been implemented, and you will now be timed out if you are idle for more than fifteen minutes. GRIPE, MUSE, SUGGEST, and WONDER all added as aliases for SAY.
• 4.28.22: The "Knowledge Seeker" archetype has been added to character generation. There is now a menu in the Faded Zone cantina.
• 4.30.22: Healer spirits now wander the dream world. This means if you are injured within the pre-approval character generation area, a spirit NPC will eventually happen by and fully heal you.

May

• 5.05.22: Late spring weather probabilities completed for both Omrazir and St. Loomis areas.
• 5.07.22: New rooms built into the Faded Zone/dream world starter area, including a library where you can access random snippets of game lore. Multiple new aliases for SAY created. SMILE, GRIN, GUFFAW, and WINK socials added.
• 5.11.22: Created new socials: BOUNCE, FLINCH, GIGGLE, GLARE, RASPBERRY. Added new aliases for SAY: BEG, DRONE, PLEAD, VENTURE.
• 5.14.22: Opened for invitation-only testing! More new socials added: SHRUG, BOO, CHEER. New aliases have been created for EMOTE (EM) and for GET (GRAB). The EMIT command now echoes the emitter's name at the end.
• 5.15.22: Bugs and typos submitted via the BUG and TYPO commands now automatically record the location in-game where they were reported -- and even more importantly, you get XP for reporting them! This is just a bugfinding incentive for pre-alpha/alpha phase.
• 5.18.22: Huntable desert animals have been added to the game. More commands now support parenthesis emoting. The SEARCH command has been fixed to properly scan the surrounding location for secrets. Characters now have the option to modify their personality descriptions and to swap stats a couple times right after chargen.
• 5.20.22: There is now a crafting workshop in the Faded Zone, in a weird little cottage in the Nameless City. You can buy things from the toolbox to try out crafting skills.
• 5.21.22: There is now an IDEA command. NPCs will no longer refer to people they don't know in elaborately unrealistic descriptive ways. People who have fled combat will get more explanatory error messages during the following writing break.
• 5.24.22: You can now replace the full text of an interaction (sit, stand, move, lean, etc) or manipulate command (touch, turn, push, pull, etc) with a custom emote by appending 'emote' and your emote to the verb you're using. There is a new CONTACT command that essentially works like touch, but for other characters rather than room objects. The verbs 'touch' and 'contact' are interchangeable, though.
• 5.25.22: There is now a FTB command.

June

• 6.04.22: You can now find different types of rock with FIND ROCK, and can start a fire with any combination of flint and steel as well as an actual firestriker.
• 6.08.22: Balance messages changes to be more clear about what exactly is happening. You're not unpoised, you're just busy doing something. A new general ability has been added: You can SHARPEN STICK to make a spear or spit. Going along with this is a new command: ROAST. You can roast meat, whole gutted fish, and vegetables -- without any knowledge of cooking! (Warning: Do not use poisonous wood to whittle a spit and cook your food.) New herbalism abilities, MAKE CHARCOAL and BOIL, have also been implemented. Read about these under Herbalism or under in the new HELP HERBALIST file in-game. Appraising consumables will now let you know if they are caffeinated or alcoholic. Herbalists can now see if a consumable object has an effect, such as if it's poisonous.
• 6.12.22: INFO and GROUP commands are now available. You can now get items out of items that are in or on other items (like a dress from a suitcase on a bench). The CHANT command has been added to accompany SING and RECITE.
• 6.16.22: Herbalists can now POWDER, DEHYDRATE, and EXTRACT items. Some herbs, mortars, and pestles are available in the kindly toolbox. The Faded Zone caravanserai has a smoking den where you can also play Hakim's Deliberations. Be warned, drug addiction can be a problem. Games overall have been updated slightly: they now take requirements (such as a hand free to play rock/parchment/penknife) and you can view the game on the board if there is a board in use.
• 6.18.22: Lockpicking is now functional. Use HELP LOCKPICK in-game for more information.
• 6.28.22: You can now LEAD or LOOSE animals if you have the requisite command over them.

July

• 7.15.22: Changes have been made to how characters are approved and modified. You can use the CHANGES command or view pending character changes on your character sheet on the website. You can also propose changes to your character sheet from your website profile page or from in the game with the CHANGE verb. You may now check OOCMAIL LATEST if logged into a character.
• 7.16.22: New configurable settings added: 'dark_shading', which will shade rooms in greyscale depending on the light in them, and 'mentalcolor' which allows you to change the color of THINK/FEEL/REMEMBER output. Check CONFIG to see how to change those configurables, if you want to. You can now see the Avarian date on titled logs when viewing them on the website.
• 7.27.22: If you leave a zone for some time, you will automatically lose your job there.
• 7.31.22: There is now a Play-by-Post system called Cutscenes, and you can earn XP through roleplay with it.

August

• 8.04.22: Admin can now AWARD or DOCK XP or Presence points.
• 8.06.22: Umbrellas now exist in game, and holding an open umbrella in your hand prevents you and your clothes from getting wet in the rain.
• 8.15.22: The Lookout Trail area has been added to the St. Loomis vicinity.
• 8.16.22: Glassworking has been added as a crafting skill. There is now a better mobile view for cutscenes, and a communication-capturing window on the webclient. When trying to move away from something you are inside, such as a fountain or a grove of trees, now you will automatically get out of those places rather than needing to input 'get out'.
• 8.17.22: The help index on the web page has been gussied up. Messes/wetness have been elaborated on -- now there are eight levels of possible mess that can be on a person, instead of three. Looking at a key will now give an indication of what doors it opens. Abilities gained through skills have been slightly reworked: now they can be passive. Accordingly, passive abilities have been added: detect-presence (town and wild versions), swift-track, extended-breath, hold-seat, bareback, effective-massage, and mountaineering. Those with the requisite skill in outdoorsmanship can now use the PREDICT WEATHER ability. A new MASSAGE command is also now available.
• 8.18.22: Running with a heavy load will now increase your fatigue, and fatigue makes it more difficult to move quickly. A new passive ability has been added to Outdoorsmanship and Streetsmarts: swift-flee (wilderness and city versions, respectively). The Wemble Court, Painter Street, and Tolland Place neighborhoods have been added to St. Loomis, along with the pawn shop Aizana's Rare and Recovered Goods.
• 8.20.22: Shields (wearable and wieldable) have been coded into the game. Those experienced with weapons will now be able to STUDY WEAPONS to understand the physical characteristics of all weapons they are holding. Combat has been refined in terms of stage-dependent moves and moves that involve counters and guards. New combat moves that are learned through weaponry skills have been added: feint, strike, wind up, crush, deflect, riposte, whirl, smash, counter-chance, cleave, lop, and more. HELP WEAPONRY and HELP SHIELD files have been added for anyone's reading pleasure.
• 8.22.22: You can now DISTRACT someone, in or out of a fight, and use the environment in a variety of ways for roleplay flavor (such as splashing someone from a fountain you're sitting at). Wounds that are only trickling blood will now scab over after bleeding for only a short while.
• 8.24.22: You can now edit your last post in a cutscene, and refresh the bottom of the page when viewing a cutscene. Cutscene posts also now have timestamps.
• 8.29.22: Brawling rings have been added to the game, and you can participate in ranked fights or make wagers. You can now REBALANCE to regain poise, in or out of a fight.
• 8.31.22: You can now SGLANCE, to glance without broadcasting any message, and emote parentheses work with the GLANCE command. YANK now works as well as the gentler alias PULL, and if you yank or pull someone in the same place as you while they are standing and you are sitting, you can draw them down to sit, and vice versa regarding drawing them up to stand. New swimming abilities have been added: drown-victim and water-rescue. These use the yank or pull commands when the characters are in water, and work much like sitting and standing, but make their targets treading water or underwater instead.

September

• 9.01.22: In configurable settings, there is now a particular color for groups of VNPCs, and those groups show up prominently when looking at a room. Lantern-lighting NPC behavior has been refined. Also, parentheses now work at both sides of says, you can properly HAUL up someone over a shoulder, carrying emotes have been reworked, and various bug fixes have been completed.
• 9.04.22: Breath has been added to the combat situation readout. You should now be able to target objects in other containers or items in another person's inventory using the PEER command.
• 9.10.22: New APPLAUD, CLAP, NUDGE, POKE, and TSK socials added.
• 9.12.22: TELLMOTE has been added as a command, and you can use tell tags in emotes now! This draws upon the Dissembling skill and the acuity of your observers.
• 9.26.22: The Demeanor system has been added -- you can now set trust levels for people, as well as blanket attitudes towards origins, heritages, and organizations.
• 9.29.22: Fishing rankings are here! Find your local angler's club for more information. You can SHOW OFF your fish in public and receive suitable acclaim among your fellow fisherfolk. Also, combat roundtime is now reflected properly in the prompt token 'balance_mark', and clouds will now be accounted for when considering the appearance of celestial bodies in the sky.

October

• 10.1.22: Added an avalanche of adverbs, because apparently there can never be enough adverbs. REM now works as an alias of REMOVE. There is a new instruction log in the Guide section of the website, with a colorful log example of catching and roasting a fish.
• 10.2.22: Dice have been added to the game. Use the TOSS verb to play with them! You may now also challenge people to an Omrazi street-dice game called Kholabi's Eyes. (PLAY KHOLABI'S EYES WITH OPPONENT)
• 10.4.22: The crafting cottage in the Faded Zone has been updated with a back room, where a mentor can be found to teach crafting skills. Opium is again available for purchase in the Faded Zone's den, and mortars and pestles at the kindly toolbox. DISASSEMBLE has been changed to DISMANTLE when it comes to the dissassembly of tents and other impermanent shelters, and the Dissembling skill now has explanatory lessons written for it. When asking an NPC to teach a lesson, the NPC will double check with you if you haven't got the experience to learn it. Herbalism and foraging can be practiced alone if outdoors or in the right environment.
• 10.5.22: Dreams can now be added from the website. (On your character profile, check 'Story Overview' and there will be a button on the lower left for adding a new 'experience', which can be a dream, vision, or hallucination.) A few bugs with dreams have been fixed, principally the inability to properly add dreams to developments in one's personal story. Dreams are also now split into three types: Dreams, Hallucinations, and Visions. Visions can be had any time, while hallucinations are triggered by hallucinating (on opium, or other such substances).
• 10.19.22: A research library system is now in place, along with rankings for scholarly sorts who publish at those libraries. While anyone might have a personal library composed of works that they have put into shelves themselves, the formal library system requires a group of scholars for upkeep. The PUBLISH, RESEARCH, and REVIEW abilities have been added as special abilities for those who have levels in both Education and Investigation skills. You can make copies of raw research or published works at libraries as well. It is now more difficult to stop your fall on a continuing slope, the steeper the slope is. Climbing has become more difficult in general as previously its ease was boosted by a blunt measure of strength - but that boost is now more dependent on fatigue and encumbrance as well. Remember to assess exits while climbing so you know how steep they are (measured in the difficulty of the climb).
• 10.24.22: Some rewrites have been made to the research system, including: a way to set a research narrative, a timer on doing research that varies according to your skill roll, and the necessity for published works to be approved before becoming available in libraries.
• 10.24.22: You can now use a tourniquet when trying to stop someone's bleeding. When a tourniquet is on a body part, wounds on that part will not properly heal, so it's still important to get the bleeding wound properly stitched at some point. Leaving a tourniquet on for over 24 hours will also begin the development of a worsening pressure bruise. Things that will work as tourniquets should include bandages, any kind of cloth, belts, and ropes. Cutscenes have also now been updated in a few noticeable ways. All cutscene logs will be automatically saved, and now there is an easy button to click on logs to unsave them so that they can expire. You can now properly edit the first post of a cutscene. Some of the aesthetics on the cutscene detail have been slightly edited. And lastly, there is no longer a length limitation on exposition for the cutscene description.

November

• 11.2.22: Anyone who has a metal object and a lit fire nearby can now cauterize another person's bleeding wound. This works much like stitching, but it can cause the victim to faint, and it causes immediate burn scarring. The REVIVE and RESUSCITATE commands are now available for those who have the requisite skill in First Aid.
• 11.3.22: Cutscenes now have an optional interior narration that one can add to their posts, much like the think/feel/remember commands.
• 11.4.22: Drowning or nearly-drowning will now cause a long-term effect of water building up in the lungs, which will make breathing difficult. Going along with this, the SUCTION special ability has been added to the repertoire of an educated medical professional, allowing the withdrawal of blood or fluid built up in the lungs. The ADMINISTER ability has also been added to the First Aid skill, so that healers can administer antidotes to patients who are unconscious or asleep.
• 11.6.22: Earning titles from groups of virtual NPCs will now enable you to have specialty abilities. For (currently nonexistent) example: if you traveled to Riendu and participating in a brawling club and won their championship, you may gain a few abilities related to locally-practiced martial arts. There is at least one such special ability coded in as of now, but they should be secret surprises. Life events have been instituted which can also grant you special abilities: these will mostly be added by staff through the course of stories, but some happen automatically. Currently existing example: if you have survived a bite from a zsimik in the past, you will have immunity to their venom.
• 11.12.22: Mobile view for cutscenes and forums on the website have been made neater. Light GMCP support has been added for Mudlet players, default UI package coming eventually.
• 11.20.22: Finished building the Via Maris in Omrazir from the intersection with the Via Magna to the Maysa Gate.

December

• 12.12.22: Added the town green pond to Plew-on-Sea. This can be swum in during the warmer months of the year, and skated on in the winter! Turned off GMCP (temporarily, maybe -- it's causing webclient issues). You should now dry off a little quicker, in order to make up for increased levels of drenched-ness!
• 12.30.22: Added the ACCUSE command, and tightened up NPC personality variance regarding witnessing criminal acts. For instance, a criminal NPC will never call the guards and accuse another criminal, even if the crime is against their own self. Guards should now also properly come when they hear a shout for help.
• 12.31.22: Changed the skill name Blowdarts to Blowguns.

More Updates

• Development Updates (2021)