Play Now Login Create Account
illyriad
  New Posts New Posts RSS Feed - Broken Lands is now live!
  FAQ FAQ  Forum Search   Register Register  Login Login

Broken Lands is now live!

 Post Reply Post Reply Page  123>
Author
GM Rikoo View Drop Down
Moderator Group
Moderator Group
Avatar
Community & PR Manager

Joined: 28 Mar 2014
Location: Mars
Status: Offline
Points: 1233
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote GM Rikoo Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Broken Lands is now live!
    Posted: 05 Jun 2014 at 21:54
BROKEN LANDS LIVE!
As you are aware, we have been working to open the gates to the Broken Lands, the new landmass directly to the south of Elgea, the current continent. Not only does this new landmass double the size of the map, but it introduces many new terrain types, NPCs and opportunities for expansion. 

The good news is that your wait is over! The Broken Lands are open for business. The bad news? The Broken Lands are no joke. You'll need to bring your best game to make it down there. 

As many of you have asked or as many of you might ask in the future: yes, we did away with the PvP-free zones. We can discuss it more in-depth in the future, but for now it's safe to say that we decided that the combat-free zones were not really worth the extended time it takes to create them, were broadly unnecessary, and did not fit within the free-for-all spirit of the rest of the game.

We are also keeping the current account limits in place. That means 10 cities per account (and only 2 accounts per player!) which translates to the need for exodus, tenaril or settling a new city in the new land. If you want to get there, it might be tough on you to do so - but it may also be very worthwhile!

We hope you enjoy the new area! We have been working very hard to get it to you in a proper way, and we can't wait to sit back and watch as all of your caravans make their way into the new land! 

Good luck. You'll need it,

GM Rikoo

Illyriad Community Manager / Public Relations / community@illyriad.co.uk
Back to Top
GM Stormcrow View Drop Down
Moderator Group
Moderator Group
Avatar
GM

Joined: 23 Feb 2010
Location: Illyria
Status: Offline
Points: 3926
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote GM Stormcrow Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05 Jun 2014 at 21:54
Hi everyone,

As GM Rikoo has said - Broken Lands is now live!

A bunch of Broken Lands (BL) updates and notes; please bear with a slightly longer post than usual.  It might even be informative!

Broken Lands Factions
All the BL factions are now loaded in and merged onto the Factions page.  You can see the list of Factions here, and we've added a column indicating whether a Faction is BL-based, Elgea-based, or on both lists (in the case of the Windseekers and the Illyriad Trade Council), though there are, ofc, linkages between (eg Tal and the Tal Colonies).

Whilst we were in the Faction page, we also tidied it up to include hub images, and an actual working Standing graph with number that shows you exactly where you and your alliance currently stand with a faction.

Please bear in mind that the Factions in the Broken Lands aren't generally as friendly as the Factions in Elgea, as they are still largely recovering from The Sundering.  

I strongly recommend that players looking to settle in the Broken Lands check their nearby hubs to ensure that their default Racial Standing with the owning Faction isn't too low for them to (eg) trade at Standing -35 or below.

Generally, I would recommend that players read the Faction Lore for the Broken Lands factions anyway.  They're a great read, and they give many indications of not only what's happened and what the current situation is, but also the way future Faction interactions, quests and story arcs are likely to proceed.  

Please note that I have not yet loaded in the default (initial seed) BL inter-faction relationships (ie relationships between the Factions themselves) as this currently has no impact on players, and is still a work in progress in BL.

As an aside, the Elgea faction "Keepers of the Golden Fields" has been renamed to the slightly more poetic "Keepers of Golden Fields".  It also, happily, fits better within width limits. Smile

Broken Lands Hubs
All the Hubs are now on the map, with their Hub Description text, and Faction assignments.  You can see their locations either on the Factions page, or on the Strategic Map if you enable the Options -> Factions On/Off toggle.

As mentioned above, please do check your Racial Standing with the Faction Hub before you choose to settle near it.  You might not be able to trade there initially, and there is currently no mechanism for altering default Racial Faction Standings.

Seeding of Resources
All resources have now been seeded on the Broken Lands map.  That's all the Wood, Clay, Iron, Stone & Food; and all the herbs, minerals etc.  We've also seeded the Lochs, Lakes & Tarns, as that's what we're moving onto (after counter-claiming sovereignty) post this release.  

Please note that the brackish coastline around Calumnex is Dead Water, and is intentionally incapable of supporting natural life.  Yes, that's a deliberate use of spooky italics. Italics are clearly spooky by default.  When used judiciously.

30+ New Terrain Types
There are a large number of new terrain types.  Most are flavour graphics to add to the Broken Lands experience (for example, Lighthouses, Fisherman's Huts etc) that dot the coast as replacement NPC squares for Coastline.


A Fisherman's Hut, Tiki pole, and a Crumbling Lighthouse on the coast of Lapo A Lua 

There is also, however, a new Overall Terrain type (for combat purposes) that specifically occupies the area surrounding Omen in Calumnex, the epicenter of "The Sundering".  

This terrain type is basically Obsidian - Volcanic lava glass and magma plains; and it's nasty stuff. 

If it isn't razor sharp glass trying to cut your fingers to shreds, it's probably oozing lava beneath a thin crust, ready to melt your legs into sinuous slag.


You probably don't want to live too close to Omen, unless you really hate having units. Or towns.

As one can imagine, this is highly inhospitable terrain, and all units - especially heavy units - are very substantially penalised on this terrain, and more so in attack than defense.  On the plus side, there's not that much of it on the map.

There are also 2 new biome types, both for the terrain around The Sundering: Dead Waters &Warped Lands.

Warped Lands are the Obsidian/lava mountains.  Dead Waters is the biome for the nearby grey, brackish, foul water.  Don't expect to fish in these.  In fact, don't expect to survive if you settle near this.  The region is called Calumnex for a reason, and the Tower was named Omen for a reason.

Repairing unsightly terrain calumnies
We've repaired a number of BL weirdness from the original fractal generation.  

The few unsiegable spots (settlable spots surrounded on 8 sides by impassable terrain) have gone, and we've also done a substantial tidy-up of singleton water squares that have repaired the slightly jagged coastline.

BEFORE

Unsightly pockets of fresh water cause your eyes to ironically weep salty tears of anguish

AFTER

Beautifully smooth coastlines cause your eyes to weep slightly-less-ironic salty tears of joy

Minimaps
Water & Terrain minimaps have now been added to the main World map for Broken Lands.  One addition/change from Elgea (where Volcanoes were distributed randomly) is that the slightly more seriously Volcanic areas have been labelled in Red on the BL Terrain minimap.

Town-to-town trade cross-continent
We're not showing or permitting town-to-town trades between Elgea and Broken Lands.  By this, I mean fulfilling resource trade orders directly from your town, cross-continent.  We don't think most players who are offering direct (non-hub) trades from their towns want their caravans to be tied up for (potentially) weeks.  You can, of course, send goods directly between the continents.  In the fullness of time, I think allowing town trades to set a maximum trade distance might be the more flexible answer.

Worldmap datafile
For you data-literate technorati out there, the available-for-download datafile of the world map now shows the Broken Lands terrain on it, and those of you who use the datafiles should also get new copies of the terrain files, which contain the data on:
  • The new terraintypes (x30)
  • The new overallterraintype (x1), and 
  • The new biomes (x2)
The worldmap datafile now updates overnight, every night, to reflect (eg) terraforming changes if you're insane enough to want to track that level of detail, and don't yet work at Illy MegaCorp.

Please bear in mind that the file is large, by personal data standards: 
  • More than 8 million rows of data, every time, every night
  • A little over 300MB when uncompressed 
... and if you open the file directly in your browser, it will crash your browser. 

The reason I'm not linking directly to the file from here is simply because lemming-people will click on it and then their computer will melt, and I don't want the inevitable flood of "omgbbq illy melt my comp 11eleventy-one!! ktnxbai" petitions.  

If you currently use the data file, you know where to find it.

If you don't currently use it, but are happily familiar with XML data, downloading once (and subsequently handling and processing large amounts of data offline), scheduling cron jobs (or whatever the cool kids call it these days, with their fancy "COBOL" and their new-fangled International Business Machines FORTRAN 1401)... then you are certainly capable of finding the other posts explaining how to use the datafeeds we supply - and where they reside.

We might look at providing a "change only" overnight file in the future; but that doesn't take away the necessity for a snapshot for new entrants to the "I am an ALGOL deity and the syntax of Lisp no longer brings me night-terrors" school of illy third-party programming.  Or whatever it is that my Pathe newsreel instructs me - once I've finished threading the celluloid through my magic lantern - is really the "hip-ho, daddy-o" instruction set for today's automata.  Ah, there's the Pan-Atlantic dirigible delivering the newscast now, huzzah!

Please also *do not* link any distributed third party applications directly to this file; it'll rapidly turn up on our bandwidth reports and we'll be apoplectically unhappy.

If you're the kind of person that really knows their way around Excel and have even recorded a Macro or two in the past, then - despite your unswerving belief that PivotTables are the answer to all data analysis - this path is *NOT* for you.   Turn back now.

Exodus / Tenaril / Settlers
We've changed the code for Exodus / Tenaril / Settlers so that it works how it should - it's first-come, first-served.  

No longer can two towns move to the same location (which ends in complete weirdness).  If there are settlers heading there, or an exodus heading there... you won't be able to Tenaril.  If there is an Exodus to a location, you won't be able to send settlers etc.

Basically, the first person to actually send settlers, or a city towards a location is the person who gets the spot.

We haven't implemented the "exodus to hostile terrain = city destruction" code yet, and - no - we won't implement it retrospectively when we do.  So you can still exodus/settle in safety.

As an aside, during testing we also found (and killed) an ancient bug in Tenaril that prohibited anyone and everyone from using Tenaril to any square where either X = 0 or Y = 0.  So, no one's been able to Tenaril to the Centrum axis across the whole map, ever.  Who knew?  Now fixed :)

We also discovered that (after using Tenaril), players were forwarded to an old version of the World Map on which to see their city; this has now been fixed.

Other Things
  • Stuck Armies / missing troops: We've had a bit of a rewrite, and we now believe that this is sorted out (going forward).  Whilst it was a rare occurrence, we now don't think there should be any new occurrences of missing or stuck troops as a result of military action, in the future.  

    We're pretty sure about this, because the fix we made to occasionally "losing units when distributing troops between unit pool / division / army" has resulted in no further reported occurrences of this issue in the last 4 weeks, so we're pretty confident it's now resolved; and this new change for military outcomes should hopefully do the same.  Please do, of course, let us know via petition if you have any suspected new occurrence.

  • BL Faction Units need to be loaded in and set out on patrol

  • BL Nature Units need to be spawned 

  • BL Mysteries need to be added

  • BL-specific Quests need to be added (existing quests from Elgea will be available in BL)

  • BL & Elgea Quest story arcs need to be released

We'll be getting onto these as we go (Nature as a priority) but the main priorities going forward are instating the new "counter-claiming sovereignty" system and releasing Lochs, Lakes & Tarns.

We hope you enjoy this substantial update to the game world.  Of course, there may be some unanticipated teething problems with an update of this size.  We have tested as much as we can, but please don't hesitate to report anything that looks awry - via Petition please.

Many thanks,

SC
Back to Top
Aurordan View Drop Down
Postmaster
Postmaster
Avatar
Player Council - Ambassador

Joined: 21 Sep 2011
Location: United States
Status: Offline
Points: 982
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Aurordan Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05 Jun 2014 at 22:16
Looks cool.  I'll be very exited in a month when my city gets down there...
Back to Top
Rill View Drop Down
Postmaster General
Postmaster General
Avatar
Player Council - Geographer

Joined: 17 Jun 2011
Location: California
Status: Offline
Points: 7078
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Rill Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05 Jun 2014 at 22:52
So we should exodus now before they introduce the town-destroying thing ...

Overall, a MAJOR effort and very exciting times.  Thank you to our awesome developers!
Back to Top
GirlFromHell View Drop Down
Greenhorn
Greenhorn
Avatar

Joined: 08 Feb 2013
Location: Underworld/Hell
Status: Offline
Points: 52
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote GirlFromHell Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05 Jun 2014 at 22:56
Clap
~Hell_Girl_Rei / -Nyx-

Dovie'andi se tovya sagain.
Back to Top
jordigui View Drop Down
Wordsmith
Wordsmith


Joined: 20 Jun 2010
Status: Offline
Points: 157
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote jordigui Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05 Jun 2014 at 23:55
Congratulations!
Are there new t2 resources in the Broken Lands or remain the ones in Elgea (i.e. trove, silversteel, toadcap fungus, sharproot)?
When are we expecting NPCs to spwan? at 00:00?
THanks
Back to Top
Rill View Drop Down
Postmaster General
Postmaster General
Avatar
Player Council - Geographer

Joined: 17 Jun 2011
Location: California
Status: Offline
Points: 7078
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Rill Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06 Jun 2014 at 00:23
Same resource types as in Elgea.  Stormcrow said in chat that they are working on NPCs.
Back to Top
GM Stormcrow View Drop Down
Moderator Group
Moderator Group
Avatar
GM

Joined: 23 Feb 2010
Location: Illyria
Status: Offline
Points: 3926
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote GM Stormcrow Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06 Jun 2014 at 01:13
Hi everyone,

I've had some questions about whether some of the NPC terrain squares in Broken Lands are supposed to be barren (ie no Wood, Clay, Iron, Stone or Food).

An example of a square like this would be here:


I've looked into this, and the answer is "Yes" - the NPC squares in BL have the same overall distribution as Elgea.

You get the same phenomena in Elgea, just more rarely outside of Arctic and Desert terrain.

For example:


So, yes, this is intentional.

Many thanks,

SC




Edited by GM Stormcrow - 06 Jun 2014 at 01:19
Back to Top
geofrey View Drop Down
Postmaster General
Postmaster General
Avatar

Joined: 31 May 2011
Status: Offline
Points: 1013
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote geofrey Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06 Jun 2014 at 02:05
GM Stormcrow, can you finally squash the outrageous rumors that pathfinding and advanced ship speeds are not next on your list?

Back to Top
Nesse View Drop Down
Forum Warrior
Forum Warrior
Avatar

Joined: 03 Oct 2010
Location: England
Status: Offline
Points: 406
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Nesse Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06 Jun 2014 at 17:30
Originally posted by geofrey geofrey wrote:

GM Stormcrow, can you finally squash the outrageous rumors that pathfinding and advanced ship speeds are not next on your list?


No, please let the rumors live!
Nesse(Dwarven Druids) and Odd (Fairy Road Authority)
Back to Top
 Post Reply Post Reply Page  123>
  Share Topic   

Forum Jump Forum Permissions View Drop Down

Forum Software by Web Wiz Forums® version 12.03
Copyright ©2001-2019 Web Wiz Ltd.