Below is a short summary of the latest Community Meeting, followed by its chat logs – which have been gently edited for formatting, to put questions and answers in bold for easy skimming, and to omit greetings and farewells and other such asides. Meetings are hosted by Estate owner NeoBokrug Elytis at 2:00 pm on the first Saturday of every month at The Potato Farm in The Wastelands, and the discussion is typically divided into three main topics: Estate, Game, and Roleplay & Events. Everyone is welcome to attend!
ESTATE:
➳ Fort Stygian has been upgraded to a 30,000 LI region, after a large majority of its residents approved the plan!
➳ The bonus LI has also been used to enhance the infrastructure areas with jaggier blackened rocks and glowier deadly lava.
➳ Stage 1 of the Community Gateway is still underway: most of the functional portions are now in place to teach basic movement and interactions, awaiting decor by the WLPW crew.
➳ The WLPW is still accepting applications for content creators and educators.
➳ Occupancy has increased further over the past month!
GAME:
Damage Over Time (DoT) Processing Updates
➳ Neo is working on moving the (DoT) script into its own separate script, which will free up memory for future updates to both the base HUD code and the DoTs.
➳ Currently, there are only 5 types of DoT, all of which tick once per second and last for a specific duration, and all of which expire once health reaches 0%.
➳ The new system could allow for an unlimited number of new DoT effects beyond the current five – and there could be multiple types of DoT per emitter attachment.
➳ New DoTs could trigger as fast as five times a second, and could last any length of time – including long-term effects that persist after death.
➳ DoT stacks could also do more than “deal more damage over a little more time.” A stack of Minor Bleed DoTs could become a Moderate Slash DoT; a stack of Slash DoTs could become a Severe Gash DoT.
➳ P.S. It’s no longer permanent Tuesday: Neo’s fixed the HUD Machine bug that caused Tuesday Morning rolling restart warnings on other days of the week.
➳ Saul the Food Trader is still dead.
ROLEPLAY & EVENTS:
➳ The Buzzard Hunt has begun! Kill, kill, kill!
➳ Neo has coded up a Kill Counter so you no longer have to show Irk a trophy screenshot. (You’re welcome to take snapshots for your own showing-off purposes, however!)
➳ Thank you to everyone who attended and/or performed at PROMAGEDDON! This year’s outfit contest winners were EventHorizon Darkthorne and Riccardo Blackburn.
➳ The final Faith In Ruins article on the Mutant Ways will be posted to the Press soon – after which Apo will be free to interview someone else about their character’s ruin’t religion.
➳ Reminder: The roleplay character template has been added to the Wiki – add yours today!
Weekly Event Summary:
Sundays: Storytime with Wasteland Drifter – 2pm
Mondays: Mutant Drum Circle – 6pm SLT
Tuesdays: Film Night with Wasteland Drifter – 5pm SLT
Wednesdays: Escape The Miasma! with Soda Foxen – 6pm SLT
Thursdays: Booze & Blather at the bar of The N – 6pm SLT
Saturdays: Sandling’s Evening Madness – 1pm; Fight Night – 3pm; Apo’s Audio Atrocities – 5pm
First Saturday: Community Meeting – 2pm
Second Saturday: Barrelhead Bazaar – 11am
Third Saturday: Wasted Raiders’ Raid – Noon
Last Saturday: Skull Ball – 2pm
Want to host an event? Let Neo know the event details by Wednesday night and he’ll add it to the weekly group announcements, Discord announcement, and Plurk feed!
NeoBokrug Elytis: IT’S… TIME.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: wpp
Aposiopesis Fullstop: wooo! even
NeoBokrug Elytis: Everyone must be enjoying the nice weather. :)
Drifter (wastelanddrifter) applauds wildly.
Storm Thunders: Not me! Got tired of cicadas landing on my head.
Candide LeMay: where is sandusky these days? did we finally break him with the creative builders pics on discord?
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Hee!
NeoBokrug Elytis: Anyway ~ As per the usual I’ll talk about what’s been going on this past month in The Wastelands with time for questions after each section; and then time for an open floor to discuss RP and events at the end.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: He mentioned a big project deadline.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Estate wise, this past month we’ve made some significant changes to Fort Stygian. It was upgraded to a 30k region, after I had asked all existing residents if they wanted the upgrade. A large marjority of them did want the upgrade, so I pushed it through.
NeoBokrug Elytis: It took a week for it to happen, because the Linden in charge of that was on vacation. :)
Candide LeMay: who’s in charge of that? guy? whitney?
Irk (shannonwilsonbell): ppfft
NeoBokrug Elytis: While I was waiting, I started doing some cosmetic upgrades that I’ve always wanted to do — but didn’t have the LI to do with.
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): now it looks like the da da da dangerzone
NeoBokrug Elytis: I spend about a day poking at things until I got them where I wanted them to be appearance wise; I may do more updates in the future, but for now I need to keep focused on Northgate.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Speaking of, Northgate is still slowly being picked at while we install things. Right now it’s still mostly functional stuff before the real decor kicks in. I want to make sure that we’ve got function before form, because we’ll have forever to decorate once the hard stuff is done.
NeoBokrug Elytis: I gotta poke some WLPW people to see where they are in terms of their projects. I’ve been a bit lazy on that.
NeoBokrug Elytis: I think that’s about it for estate stuff, but I feel like I am forgetting something.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Any questions about any of that?
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): occupancy most likely
NeoBokrug Elytis: Occupancy is actually up since last month.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Nice!
NeoBokrug Elytis: Summer is almost here so I expect a small wave of folks to roll in.
Candide LeMay: there are some noobs in junkyard
NeoBokrug Elytis: There’s noobs alwheres.
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): dont call dexter a noob
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Haha!
Dexter Bogdanovich: if you see me multiple you should think about glasses
Candide LeMay: fewer glasses of drink?
NeoBokrug Elytis: Haha!
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): it might be the solution
NeoBokrug Elytis: Any other questions about estate things?
Dexter Bogdanovich: hehehe
NeoBokrug Elytis: Moving on to game things then…
NeoBokrug Elytis: I have been working pretty hard this past month on changing how things processin the HUD — DoTs specifically. Right now I am literally out of memory for any sort of expansion, and splitting how DoTs are processed into their own script would buy me a lot of space for updates. So that’s what I’ve been working on.
Candide LeMay welcomes miasma to the meeting
NeoBokrug Elytis: While at the same time as splitting it off, I am doing a big internal update in to how they’re processed — which will afford me the ability to define new DoTs entirely. RIght now the HUD only has 5 types of DoTs in it, and if I can finish building the system the way I want, I can have an unlimited number of DoTs.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Oooooooh….
Storm Thunders: moar dots!
Aposiopesis Fullstop: MOAR DOTS!
Irk (shannonwilsonbell): like pun damage
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): unlimited hurt. or 50 shades of wastes
Storm Thunders cackles
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): pun damage would be realy bad caus it has AoE
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Arrrrgh…
NeoBokrug Elytis: For instance: Old DoTs, only tick once a second and go away when you die, and have static durations. I can now theoretically add DoTs that don’t expire upon death, and have them tick as fast as 5 times a second and last for DAYS.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Aw, my Bad Pun DoT broke again. :V
Storm Thunders: pun-ishment!
Verity Goodnight: :O
NeoBokrug Elytis: And they can affect the Hunger and Hydration variables that are currently dormant in the HUD.
Storm Thunders: You have angered Neo, you will be dotted for a year!
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Oooh…
Irk (shannonwilsonbell): More ways to die!!
Beasil (beasil.roundfield): So many fun ways to die
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Haha, you see something grody and get a Nausea DoT that makes you barf sporadically over the next day.
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): long term radiation syndrom will be the fate of all crates runners
Verity Goodnight: Itchy Butt DoT
NeoBokrug Elytis: With this update I am also updating how a DoT is attached. I am going to try to limit how many attachments want to attach. For instance you can get multiple fire DoT attachments, and I don’t want to eat up the script limits for the game. So the emitters can emit up to 4 effects at once.
Storm Thunders: eat a shroom, gain rainbow yawn for a day
Candide LeMay: how about some good effects that last for days. like running faster etc
NeoBokrug Elytis: In the end the visual effects will probably be less — but for the player, attachment and script limits, it’ll be better.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: The D is for Damage.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Well part of the DoT update is to make room for nice things too. I don’t have the memory space to add in other effects like that Candide.
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): you now have the permanent effect of being not hurt at one time
NeoBokrug Elytis: That one fight night that I held a month or so ago, and had to cancel because the HUD broke when it ran out of memory for adding a new message tells you how low I am on memory. :C
Aposiopesis Fullstop: D:
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): will you be able to pause long term dots during events?
NeoBokrug Elytis: The DoT processing migration is tricky, because it calls on a lot of variables, and while the DoTs are running, it requires a all those variables. So I am stuck trying to not trigger scripts to work more than they should, while trying to keep that data updated.
NeoBokrug Elytis: No Cc.
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): need to be carefull before saturdays than
NeoBokrug Elytis: Haha yeah
NeoBokrug Elytis: One of the under the hood things most folks will never see or appreciate is the fact that new DoTs can be added to the KVP database, and the HUD doesn’t NEED to know them all, it can look up how they’re supposed to behave from the KVP, and cache that data in the HUD.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Which makes the whole “Unlimited types of DoTs” possible.
Verity Goodnight: fancy
NeoBokrug Elytis: I just have to be really forward thinking about how all the data is structured.
Candide LeMay: spaghetti is the most efficient form of data packing
NeoBokrug Elytis: Right now I *THINK* I am doing an okay job of migrating the old DoTs to the new system. I have yet to actually test more than a few bits of it.
NeoBokrug Elytis: So, while it sounds as simple as “Move Dot processing to a different script”, it’s a lot more involved — mostly because of updates.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Any questions about any of that?
Aposiopesis Fullstop: It sounds like this should be a more flexible system, though – the KVP thing would mean you can add more later on, more easily?
NeoBokrug Elytis: Ideally, yeah.
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): is there plans to have experience stuff like for example race influence the new dots at any point in the future?
NeoBokrug Elytis: When I roll this out, I am just going to focus on observing how the update/upgrade handles current DoTs. I want them to be the same.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Eventually Cc, absolutely I want folks to pick their own races — but the lack of script memory prevents me from doing that.
NeoBokrug Elytis: And DoT processing takes up a lot of script, because it needs to be in there twice in the current iteration of the HUD code.
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): irk, we gona be dot buddies
Irk (shannonwilsonbell): Woo!
Candide LeMay: yay longer dots for mutants
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): yes very long but also very mild .. mutant strong
Irk (shannonwilsonbell): So like, ghouls could actually be more flammable that other races.
Irk (shannonwilsonbell): than
Storm Thunders may have to test that idea
Dexter Bogdanovich: if that means release of flamethrower we can discuss
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Hahaha
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): radiatin dot works the other way around on mutantsa of course. i know that from all the super hero origing stories ever
NeoBokrug Elytis: Some mechanics are going to change immediately though — out of necessity. For more script memory friendliness — if you get a DoT it will immediately “aggravate” the other DoTs, causing another potential “tick” of damage. It depends on if that Tick is supposed to happen or not.
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer) untangles fingers
Irk (shannonwilsonbell): This whole tick thing has gotten out of hand already.
NeoBokrug Elytis adds a new DoT, “You’ve got Ticks.”
Candide LeMay: what does that mean… say radioactivity will trigger bleeding too?
NeoBokrug Elytis: Yeah, anything that successfully applies a DoT, will cause all the other DoTs to see if they should trigger. I think with as fast as the newer script runs though — it shouldn’t be all that noticeable.
Candide LeMay: what does it mean “if they should trigger”? why would radioactivity trigger anything else besides radioactivity?
NeoBokrug Elytis: It causes the dot processor to start.
Storm Thunders: tick, tick, ooh it’s rads time OW, tick
NeoBokrug Elytis: Pretty much
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Would that pose an issue with the long-term ones? Like, if you’ve gathered 10 long-term DoTs that each do 5% damage, but they trigger once a day – and you can easily enough heal from each 5% when it triggers…. if you get a Radiation DoT from a crate, would all 10 fire at once, plus the crate, for 50+% damage at once?
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Or it would just trigger the check to see if they SHOULD fire?
NeoBokrug Elytis: If it’s time for it to trigger, it’ll trigger. DoTs with long durations inbetween ticks won’t be as affected.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Right now Old DoTs kind of upgrade into a worse DoT, and extend their time — but not by much.
NeoBokrug Elytis: One thing I want to do after everything is running smoothly after the transition to the new system, is speed up the pace of the older dots, while reducing their damage per tick — for a smoother drain of health.
NeoBokrug Elytis: And I want to change bleeds entirely. The subsystem I have setup is if you get X amounts of New DoTs they can morph into a whole different type of DoT
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): smoother drain of health .. true car salesmanship :-D
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Haha!
NeoBokrug Elytis: Lets pretend you get a bunch of small cuts, it could upgrade into a moderate slash or something.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Get three moderate slashes, it could upgrade into a serious gash.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Stuff like that. The system is in place, I have yet to test it.
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): ohh like wound levels? that sounds thrilling
Aposiopesis Fullstop pats the top of Ccindy’s head. “This Mutant can fit SO MANY RADIATION DOTS in ‘er!”
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer) sharpens the knife
Aposiopesis Fullstop: “You buy now, we’ll throw in some Bleed for no extra charge!”
NeoBokrug Elytis slaps the top of the corpse.
NeoBokrug Elytis: You can fist so much blood in here.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Hahaha
NeoBokrug Elytis: *fit
Storm Thunders laughs
NeoBokrug Elytis: I could rant about this forever — I figure I have a few more days of full time work on this to get it done to a testing phase. Pulling the code out without breaking anything existing is hard, but I’ve made a ton of progress.
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): death by a thousand cuts sounds so much more badas than slayn by butterknife
NeoBokrug Elytis: Keeping the code lean and ugly is saving memory.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Any questions about any of that?
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): will it require updates to the weapons too or does it still work with the old code?
NeoBokrug Elytis: No it will work with old code. There’s a specific section dedicated to the processing of old DoTs. But there is a point where I will require weapons updates. Mostly to fix old bugs, and improve them if I can.
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): or arenatraps for that mattert
NeoBokrug Elytis: Old DoT code has a special section to handle it. :)
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): k
Candide LeMay: hey if you want to convert the prim guns into mesh so that they don’t break so often let me know, i think i could handle that
NeoBokrug Elytis: Old DoT upgrading if the same DoT is applied is where I am now in terms of working on things.
Candide LeMay: once there’s a forced weapons swap
NeoBokrug Elytis: I’ll just keep ’em prim for now, probably convex-hull them to save LI.
NeoBokrug Elytis: After 15 years, we’ve lost some inventory about their textures.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Okay! Open floor for RP & Events discussion… Then we’ll have War zone in The Great Fissure!
Irk (shannonwilsonbell): The Buzzard Hunt is on, kill kill kill!!
Aposiopesis Fullstop: The final installment of the Faith In Ruins profile of the Mutant Ways / Old Ways should be up sometime tomorrow! If your character has their own homegrown ruin’t religion you want to share, get in touch and Apo can interview them next! :D
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): do it!
Sandling Honey: Thanks! :D
NeoBokrug Elytis: (Oh yeah, I coded something up to help keep track of buzzard kills for the Buzzard Hunt — no need to prove it this year)
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Also – thanks to everyone who attended / performed at / dressed up for PROMAGEDDON last week! Everyone looked and sounded awesome; I hope it was a good time!
Irk (shannonwilsonbell): I may be forced to kill a buzzard myself just to get the messages.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Yes. Also magic buzzard killed messages!
Verity Goodnight: :O
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Oh dang. I didn’t notice that after I killed mine the other day…
Storm Thunders: So, is there a sign or something we can look at to see the current kill numbers?
NeoBokrug Elytis: No. You find out at the END.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Ahhhh.
Storm Thunders: sneaky!
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): you can brag with your kills tho
NeoBokrug Elytis: Just kill to your best ability.
Irk (shannonwilsonbell): and then double it
Irk (shannonwilsonbell): For me.
NeoBokrug Elytis: You get to know your own kill count upon a kill though.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Oh! Checking my chat logs – I did get a message, but overlooked it. Neat!
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): sloppy
Drifter (wastelanddrifter): Attendance has been dropping at the live readings and I don’t know if it’s the time, lack of interest, or lack of awareness.
Candide LeMay: maybe it’s the DOTs
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Sunday tends to be a Catch Up On All The Meatspace Crap day for me, personally.
NeoBokrug Elytis: If I am being honest, I think it’s just that time of the year. People graduating, finding new jobs. Pre-summer, and the end of summer are very busy for folks.
Drifter (wastelanddrifter): It may be so
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): i would not say its lack of awareness. even i know when its happening and i was never there
NeoBokrug Elytis: Plus as more people get the vaccine, they’re going to be more active not-inside.
Verity Goodnight: >.>
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Oh, they make an OUTside now?
Irk (shannonwilsonbell): I don’t recommend it.
Candide LeMay: i got my second jab jab today and now i feel like subscribing to ms office
Irk (shannonwilsonbell): The floor is made of dirt.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Which flavor?
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): isnt that where the pizza guy lives?
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Hahaha!
Drifter (wastelanddrifter): https://mediaproxy.tvtropes.org/width/350/https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/outside_mmorpg.jpg
Beasil (beasil.roundfield): That MMORPG is so hard
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): i bet its pay to win tho
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Totally is.
NeoBokrug Elytis: I haven’t died yet Beasil.
Beasil (beasil.roundfield): I have a few times
NeoBokrug Elytis: Okay folks! I am going to head to the Fissure and set up for War Zone. Wonder if we’ll have enough players.