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Updates: August 2022

Probably needless to say and as one would expect after having builders enter the world for the first time, a number of “quirks” were found, so we spent the first week of August squashing bugs and improving some commands and functionality to give builders a better experience and make their jobs at least a little easier (hopefully)!

Aside from the large amount of bug fixing, we focused largely on trying to solidify our General Skills for phase one, along with knocking out some other tasks on our roadmap. So here’s the recap of all our August accomplishments.

New Features:

  • General skill updates:
    • The Awareness skill has gained abilities to LOOK, GLANCE and SQUINT <direction> to see varying degrees of information about adjacent locations, SKY SENSE to check for others in the skies directly above you, TRACE <target> to track the target’s location and highlight them on your MAP when they’re nearby, TRAPS to discover unconcealed traps, and RESEARCH HERE to uncover historical notes found in some locations.
    • A few abilities from the Survival skill have been moved over into the Fortitude skill, which also gained entirely new abilities such as: AUTOWAKE ON/OFF to automatically wake up by reflex when put to sleep against your will, CONCENTRATE to regain control of your mind and slowly banish some mental afflictions, and DRAINS to review a list of active defense that have a sustained mana cost.
    • The Survival skill continues to grow with new abilities to set a FLEE/WIMPY health percentage for when you should automatically attempt to flee from battle, BLEEDING to assess wounds, and SPLINT or BANDAGE to forage materials for a makeshift bandage that heals small amounts or sets broken bones. Ironed out some adjustments to EAT and DRINK commands and finally got functionality implemented for PACKing, LIGHTing and PUFFing pipes. There were a few more minor adjustments here, but we managed to complete all phase one abilities!
    • The Assessment skill now allows all players access to the LOCK and UNLOCK commands, so long as they have the appropriate access and/or keys. KEYLIST can be used to review held keys and see how many doors they lock. Additionally, a new ability to CONSIDER <target> allows players to evaluate comparable combat strength of an opponent. This is another one we managed to complete all phase one abilities for with this update!
    • The Animals skill now grants commands for COMPANIONS and MOUNTS for players to see a list of all loyal animals or a list of loyal mounts. Additionally, new abilities have been added to SPUR SKYWARD to head to the skies on flight capable mounts, TROT, CANTER and GALLOP depending on the animal’s speed, COMMAND <animal> <action>, plus quite a bit more (come to Discord, nudge, nudge, hint, hint, wink, wink)!
  • Major skill updates:
    • Druids and Nemophilists and now FOREST CLAIM forest locations, provided they have high enough affinity with the forest.
    • Nemophilists can now use PACIFISM ON/OFF, which is one of their most powerful defenses and helps them stay safe against unwanted combat. (Reminder: Nemophilism is aimed to be a very peaceful skill more geared toward tending the forests and animals of Mystavaria.)
    • Elementalism updates continue with EL ICEWALL <direction> to block an exit with a wall of ice, EL BOIL in water locations to raise the water temperature to a scalding boil (searing those swimming in the location), EL SHARDS <direction> to send shards of ice as an AOE attack to all in an adjacent location, and EL GEYSER <target> to knock an enemy out of the skies above.
    • Sky Prophecy has received some minor improvements and utility commands, but because these were started at the very end of August and there is more to come in September, we’ll save the exhaustive update on this skill until next month.
  • Minor skill updates:
    • The Flying skill received another overhaul with proper checks and fail messages now in place for the FLY command. Additionally, the FLY <region> and FLY TO <target> abilities have been improved and work as expected. Those with Flying also have new abilities including: FLUTTER WINGS to gain the “flying” defense without actually flying to the skies, SPREAD WINGS to absorb warmth from the sun during daytime, capable of curing the “hypothermia” affliction, WING GUST <target> <direction> to blow a target away, WING DUST to whip up a blinding dust storm and SKY LOCALE to survey all locations under a particular area of sky.
    • The Photonics skill now has a slew of new abilities including: LIGHT WARP <direction>, allowing the player to shift into a beam of light and rapidly project themselves (move) across numerous locations in a straight line, GLOW <object> to make certain objects function as a light source, LIGHT ILLUSION <message> to project illusions in a location (we can imagine endless RP possibilities with this one!), LIGHT SCAN to send beams of light around an area to reveal less obvious and concealed objects and details in a location, LIGHT BLINK to warp to a random location within the zone, and at least seven other abilities we’re not going to bother listing out (but come join our Discord for the details!).
    • We ended up redistributing a number of former “Basic Combat” abilities into our “Attack” skill since there really wasn’t much point in having them both. Instead, we have converted the skill into a more expansive minor “Unarmed Combat” skill, with techniques such as JAB PUNCH, SNAP ELBOW, SWEEP KICK, TACKLE, UPPERCUT and more.
    • The Stealth minor skill can now officially be acquired and learned, though it is not high priority for phase one.
  • Map updates:
    • Huge shoutout to our builder Serelliwen who managed to finish descriptions for the village of Laminae.
    • LANDMARKS, NEARBY, and SHOPS commands can all be used to see a list of places of note in your current zone.
  • Communication updates:
    • We now have an internal messaging system and players can use MSG <player> <text> to send private message to other players. These can be read using MSGS. Meanwhile, TELLS can no longer be sent to players who are not online.
    • Admin can now set a MOTD for the world which will appear at login to broadcast any important messages.
    • We now have custom emotes with targeting! (Example: emote cheers wildly @aion in celebration!)
    • The HELP system has received a massive override to give it a simplified interface and bring it more inline with the rest of our world’s overall style and colour scheme.
  • Custom Settings:
    • We spent some time building out customisation options for our in game prompt, so players can now choose to see variable to show their target, status (passive/aggressive/engaged), whether they are outdoors or indoors, the location type, exits, current zone and skyzone, weather, temperature, coins held, lessons, level, XP, weight held, time of day, month and season. Additionally, players can choose PROMPT HOSTILE to only display the prompt when they are flagged as aggressive, which typically signals they are in combat. There are also new customisable settings for PROMPT PRIMARY and PROMPT SECONDARY <colour>s.
    • Players can now choose to IGNORE room descriptions, exits, objects and some types of objects within a room (like trees) to help customise how much they want to see as they move around the world.
    • Players can also choose room name colours using RN COLOUR <dynamic/static/custom>. Dynamic colour changes to match the location type (example a forest location will have a green room name), static uses our default Mystavaria colour and custom allows the player to set their own room name colour.
    • We now have an internal alias system built in which connects with our internal targeting system and allows player to create their own command aliases and string together multiple commands in one alias.

Bug Fixes:

  • SAY had some awful grammatical and capitalisation issues, so we made an effort to vastly improve that.
  • Entering special exits no longer tosses an error to those without appropriate permissions. Additionally, hidden locations and exits no longer display on MAP.
  • The CURE and HEAL abilities in the Healing minor skill no longer toss errors.
  • The FOLLOW command is functional once again and you can no longer follow someone while you’re asleep…
  • The Flying skill can now be appropriately learned.
  • We finally went through and fixed all misspellings of “defence” to “defense”.
  • Some shops in Arborvella had incorrect settings causing our map to go wonky. Those locations have been fixed.
  • After we improved functionality of fires last month, locations that had previous had a fire in them started erroring. We fixed as many as we could find.
  • Non-resource shops now appropriately display any goods for sale rather than offering up errors.
  • The Combat skill had some naming inconsistencies in our code which has been cleaned up and no longer errors with basic commands like PUNCH, KICK, and STUN.
  • The “bleeding” affliction is now appropriately removed upon death, resolving subsequent related errors.
  • VALUE, BLOCK and RUB commands all had various errors that have been corrected.
  • A few more bugs in the target finder ironed out – animals can now be targeted again, exits can no longer be the target of certain offensive attacks and if a target is not specified the target finder will now attempt to use the internal target instead.
  • New characters now appropriately receive the “Fortitude” skill command set.
  • Trying to move without balance no longer sends two “fail” messages.
  • Some adjustments to take into consideration mounts and animals: mounted opponents can no longer be DRAGged, FLYing while mounted on a flight capable animal will bring the mount to the skies with you, but on a non-flight capable animal, the animal will get left behind on the ground, DISMOUNTing now appropriately removes any riding based defenses, and riding an animal now appropriately removes any “flying” or “levitating” defenses.
  • Duplicate names no longer appear on certain WHO lists.
  • Fixed an error that was causing animal friendship to be overridden by certain actions, thus losing stored friendship with all aside from the person who last interacted with them.

Other Progress and Minor New Stuff:

  • Canned emotes received a slight facelift and now use words associated with the player’s gender. Quite a few new emotes have been added as well after we received some requests from the builders!
  • Worked through some of our help files to make them a little more… well, helpful.
  • Players can now mark themselves as AFK.
  • The WEAR and WEARING commands received a much needed overhaul after Tailoring was completed and we realised we had many more “body slots” to wear clothing on than before. Along with this, players can no longer give away worn objects (they must be removed first), shoes can now be removed rather than glued to your feet forever, and character descriptions now display worn clothing in a legible format again. NPCs also accept clothing items and automatically wear them if they don’t already have something else equipped in the clothing slot.
  • NPCs around Arborvella have been populated with some helpful keywords. They can tell you what topics they know about with the command ASK KEYWORDS and give more detail about a specific topic with ASK <keyword>.
  • NPCs now have access to emotes to allow us to flavour up their interactions and responses.

Okay – that was probably pretty exhaustive, but there’s always more to learn in our daily Discord updates, so make sure to come join our Discord server if your interested in even more details!

– Alora and Aion

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Updates: July 2022

The end of July came with a super exciting update, which is that we got Mystavaria hosted on an actual, real live server. We spent quite a bit of time doing some boring stuff to prepare for allowing builders access to the world, but it has been so fun and rewarding to have other people in the world and seeing how the react to what little exists already. We’re really excited to have some wonderful builders in to help out with describing the world while we continue to tackle the backend code.

With that said, there’s still much work to be done and much work that got done during July – let’s dive in!

New Features:

  • Crafting skill updates:
    • Lapidary is rounded out with a few final abilities to STONECRAFT objects from natural stone, obsidian and marble resources, as well as METALSMITH a handful of objects from our various ores.
    • The Tailoring skill received a huge overhaul to bring in much more customisation for clothing. Tailors can now SEW <article> <style> <material>, with both style and material being optional (defaulting to a basic style and cotton cloth if none are provided). Additionally, tailors can make alterations to specific parts of clothing, including options for FIT (tight, comfortable, loose), RISE (low, mid, high), LENGTH (options vary by article), POCKETS (options vary by article), PANT or SKIRT STYLE (for bottoms), NECKLINE and COLLAR STYLE (shirts, dresses), SLEEVE LENGTH and STYLE (anything that can have sleeves, including shirts, robes and dresses), BACK and TRAIN STYLE (for dresses). Honestly, this list could take an entire update on its own – needless to say, we’re super excited about exactly how much customisation is possible here. On top of all that, Tailors can also COBBLE SHOES and use FABRIC DYE and FABRIC PATTERNs to really make the clothes of their dreams.
  • Before we go into Major skill updates, I want to branch out for a second and touch on Trees. This update might not sound like much, but beleaf me, it will grow on ya! (Commence groaning now!) Like much else in Mystavaria, trees are now insanely dynamic with pollination methods, flowering months, fruits and seeds that grow and can be harvested later, heights, spreads, trunk sizes, bark, leaf and flower colours and textures, seed and fruit colours, smells, edibility (and tastes), and so on and so forth. This update holds importance as we dive into some of the Sylvan skills.
  • Major skill updates:
    • Druids and Nemophilist skills have gained a few shared abilities including FOREST ID <natural object> to gain insights into trees, fruits, flowers, seeds and herbs, FOREST LOCATE FAUNA to discover where animals are in the forest zone, FOREST WHO to see all those within their forest zone or FOREST WHO ALL to see all those standing in any forest location across Mystavaria, FOREST INTONE <message> to broadcast a message heard by all within the forest, TREES to see info and status of trees in their current location, plus innate animal affinity which improves success rates when taming and training animals.
    • Nemophilists have gained abilities a few additional abilities that allow them to tend to flora and fauna with FOREST ANIMALS and FOREST LOCATE FLORA. Also in this update are abilities for Nemos to manipulate trees, flowers and seeds, including SEEDBLOOM <seed> to turn seeds into flowers, FRUITSHIFT <seed> to turn a seed into an unripe fruit, EVOKE FLOWER <tree type> to cause a flower to blossom on a tree in their presence, EVOKE FRUIT <type> to cause a fruiting tree to grow a ripened fruit and RIPEN <fruit> to cause unripe fruits to immediately ripen.
    • Vinedreamers now have a very unique ability which allows them to create custom seeds by dream entwining two seeds together. The first seed will absorb the second and inherit properties from both seeds, which can then be planted to grow into trees far beyond what we establish as the “founding” trees of Mystavaria. In order to gain insight into what their seeds might turn into, Vinedreams can also study GENETICS <flora/fauna> to gain detailed information about the dominant and recessive genes of trees, plants, seeds and animals.
    • Druids also earn a few unique abilities dealing with the new trees, including FOREST MERGE <tree> to merge with a nearby tree. One merged, the Druid can view FOREST MERGE TREES to see trees of the same type and their whereabouts anywhere in the realm, which they can then FOREST STRIDE <tree> to, flowing through an intricate system of tree roots and arriving at the specified tree. They can then use FOREST UNMERGE to “exit” the tree. Some other new, less tree-specific abilities have also been added for Druids including: FOREST ENTANGLE <target> to trap entangle an enemy in vines and FOREST HEDGE <dir> to call a hedge to block an exit.
    • The Elementalism skill has been brought up to speed with newer functionality and gained new abilities to open elemental wells in appropriate locations (like being near a water source to for the element of water) and harvest the elements from them. Additional new abilities include levitating with EL FLOAT, creating a protective whirlwind around themselves with EL WINDSHIELD, granting themselves with an EL BUBBLE that allows for underwater breathing, leaping into the sky momentarily with EL LEAP, and finally creating a catastrophic EL STORM which makes use of all the elements combined.
  • Guild updates:
    • Guild Leaders can now GUILD PROMOTE and GUILD DEMOTE <member>s.
    • Guild Members of appropriate rank can now INVITE other players to join the guild and GUILD CHALLENGE <leader> to start an election for guild leadership.

Bug Fixes:

  • Fixed a bug in the target checker that caused an error if the target was non-sentient or had no health.
  • Made some minor fixes to the GET command to better handle dealing with seeds, not error when trying to get a non-existent object and to give improved messaging if a player attempts to get an object they’re already holding.
  • Squashed a few bugs with accolades and quest completion not giving correct output or throwing errors.

Other Progress and Minor New Stuff:

  • In order to give more importance to the Flying skill, it is now possible to fall from sky locations without the “flying” or “levitating” defenses. Falling from the sky can result in heavy damage, broken legs or even death depending on how high up in the sky you fall from.
  • The core of the Healing minor skill is now complete and healers are able to use CURE <target/self> <affliction> provided they have learned the cure for the specified affliction.
  • Edible objects can now have nutritional values which converts to a very small amount of healing when eaten. They can also have tastes.
  • Objects and locations can now have scents and fragrances and can be SNIFFed/SMELLed.
  • Fires have been reworked so that they appropriately consume fuel, with various fuel sources staying lit longer than others, and a chance to produce charcoal when the fire burns out.
  • We have new quest functionality that supports more complex “multi-step” quests and Aion has started working on one of our first major questlines!
  • Exploration accolades now exist, so finding new areas and discovering hidden locations now comes with rewards.
  • Bodies of water now actively flow with directions and speeds, meaning characters and items can be carried away on strong enough currents.
  • Players can now use SUGGEST to submit ideas or improvements and TYPO to notify us of typos in a location or object description.

As always, this is just a highlight of the monthly updates, so come join us in our Discord server to see more of our daily ongoings!

– Alora and Aion

Updates: June 2022

June was a fun month with a large focus on the implementation of our crafting skills. We have put a lot of work into making an easy to use, but highly dynamic system that allows nearly every crafted object to be further customized in some way, and we’re excited to see what players create!

New Features:

  • We are working toward accessibility support and now have a SCREENREADER ON/OFF command that can be used to enable a handful of settings to make Mystavaria more screen reader friendly.
  • We have implemented a new RP PREFERENCES system (that we’ve never seen done before, so we’ll be curious to see how this goes!). There’s too much to recap here, so we’ll plan on building out a page to explain the system soon.
    • As part of this system, we now have OSAY and OTELL for speaking out-of-characterly. Players can also IGNORE OOC, which will make it so that they do not see/hear any out of character messages, so as not to ruin the immersion for those who are heavily RP focused.
    • Additionally, players can select their own RP PREFERENCE with choices of: Minimal, Casual, Preferred or Serious. Those marked as “Preferred” and “Serious” now show up on an RP WHO list so that other players can quickly find and engage with others more interested in roleplay.
  • Guilds now officially exist and the first guild – the Mages of Praestantia – has officially been founded! Players can use JOIN GUILD <guildname> in the presence of high enough ranked guild members (including NPCs) to be initiated in a guild. Guild members can also extend membership to others using GUILD INVITE <player>. A handful of initial commands have been created for Guild Leaders to set public guild descriptions, MOTDs, choosing a divine patron and more.
  • All ranked clan commands slotted for Phase One have now been implemented. A look at some of the highlights:
    • Private clans can now make use of an application system, and prospective members can use CLAN APPLY <clan name> to submit applications. High enough ranked clan members have privileges to review, approve and reject open applications.
    • Clan Leaders now how privileges to construct new clan houses, as well as make extensions and renovations to existing clan houses.
    • Clan Founders now have a special privilege that prevents them from being ejected from the clan – they must choose to leave on their own accord, being that they have the clan’s original ideals in mind. Additionally, Clan Founders have a unique privilege to propose CLAN LEADER IMPEACHments, but they must supply a valid reasoning which other high ranked Clan Members can review. Another Clan Founder or Veteran must SANCTION or VETO the impeachment.
    • Clan Leaders have gained some new commands to set CLAN RULES, as well as adding CLAN HISTORY.
  • The Tactician skill has gained an assortment of abilities to assemble and set traps, along with other new abilities, including: PARRY, RIPOSTE, DISARM, LURE, SABOTAGE, DISABLE, JAB and DOUBLE JABbing, FLICK THROAT (with rapiers), INSPECT <target> (to assess their active defenses) and VULNERABILITIES <target> (to assess weaknesses in their defense).
  • The Artisanry crafting skill is now in play with abilities to POTTER <object> to craft pottery. Pottery objects can be kiln fired or left to dry as earthenware. These objects can have UNDERGLAZE applied to them, as well as various STENCILs painted on them for added customization. Artisans can also GLASSWORK and CRYSTALWORK <object>s and create custom GLASS PRESETS to store color patterns, primary and secondary colors to use with glass and crystal objects. Rounding out their main abilities is the ability to create PAINTings in different styles.
  • The Lapidairy crafting skill is also now in play and Lapidarists are able to JEWELSMITH <metal type> <jewellery> to create an assortment of jewellery, which can be further customized with things such as width (for thin or thick ring bands), fitting (tight or loose), style (antique, bridal, simple, etc.) and jewel settings (for jewellery that can have gems placed into them). Jewellery with settings can now have stones INLAYed in them and the stones can be RECUT to change the gem’s appearance. Additionally, jewellery can be PLATEd in different metal, ENGRAVEd with messages and RESTOREd to remove certain customizations. Lapidarists also have abilities to STONECRAFT and METALSMITH a small subset of stone and metal furniture and other objects.
  • The Woodworking skill has been completely overhauled to bring it up to the same level of customization as our other crafting skills, allowing players to WOODWORK <wood type> <object> to create objects with unique appearances depending on the type of wood used. These objects can then have their width, height, depth, shape and style altered. Woodwork objects can now also be WOODPAINTed and WOODSTAINed, or SANDed to remove paints and stains so that they can be refinished.
  • Resource/trade shops now exist to buy, sell and donate raw resources from.
  • Players can now gain and lose affinity with the major forests of Mystavaria via certain interactions (such as TENDing). This is especially important for those of the Sylvan profession, but having high forest affinity comes with benefits that even non-Sylvans can reap.
  • Birds can now be bred and start laying eggs after a short number of days. Healthy eggs hatch on their own after an incubation period, and those with high enough Animals skill can now determine viability using the CANDLE <egg> method. Mammals can also be bred and will give live birth to their offspring after a gestation period, which varies dependent on the animal type.

Bug Fixes:

  • A few bugs dealing with how NPCs acquire and find their target have been fixed.
  • The “bleeding” affliction no longer multiplies bleeding damage, and also now appropriately removes the affliction when the bleeding has stopped.
  • A handful of errors causing duplicate message output when moving have been corrected.
  • Lots of messaging output has been improved for when a player’s command syntax isn’t quite right or when they try to interact with an object not in their presence.
  • Command sets associated with skills now get appropriately attached to a player when they obtain the skill (and removed if they “forget” the skill).

Other Progress and Minor New Stuff:

  • Players can now declare personal FRIENDS and ENEMIES.
  • Poisons can now be rubbed on weapons to apply a variety of effects when the target is stabbed. Can also be used on Ranger’s arrows!
  • NPCs can now become members of the Cultist profession.
  • All basic object interaction commands – GET, GIVE, PUT, PLACE, LOAD, and DROP have been updated to allow quantities to be specified. Additionally, all these commands now work with coins, seeds, herbs and resource type objects.
  • Some basic Locksmithing commands have been implemented to fashion locks and keys, meaning doors can now have locks attached to them so that they can be locked and unlocked. We’re trying to decide whether Locksmithing becomes its own crafting skill or gets merged into something else – so stay tuned as we figure that out.
  • The “deaf” affliction now has actual affects and makes it impossible to hear SAYs, TELLs and ASKing. (We also learned how difficult it is to override Evennia’s default SAY command, so while seemingly simple, this actually took quite a bit of effort!) The “blind” affliction also has effects and makes it impossible to see room descriptions or use the map.
  • Libraries now have actual functionality can be used to research CLAN HISTORY <clan name>.
  • Built-in emotes have received a small update that now triggers small gains or decreases to friendship with animals and NPCs depending on the emote. Animals also respond differently to different types of emotes depending on their temperament, for a little bit of extra flavor.

As always, this is just a highlight of the monthly updates, so come join us in our Discord server to see more of our daily ongoings!

– Alora and Aion

Updates: May 2022

I’ve thrown myself off schedule by doing an update in the middle of April, so I’m just going to do another early recap for May. This is another massive update with lots of new functionality. Slowly feels like we’re getting somewhere!

Let’s dive right in.

New Features:

  • Major reworking and expansion of our animals, which are now highly dynamic with different genders, lifestages, colors, patterns, temperaments/personalities, and the capability to create different “designer” breeds in the future. Along with this comes the first abilities in the ANIMALS skill, so players can now ASSESS <animal>, TAME <animal>, and MOUNT/DISMOUNT <animal>. Additionally, birds now fly around on individual tickers (rather than all taking flight at the exact same time), plus they grow feathers, and players can use PLUCK <bird> to gather a handful of feather commodities from them (which, so far, ca be used to craft arrows with).
  • The cultist skill of SHADOWS now exists with its first few abilities including: MERGE SHADOWS, SHADOW STRIKE and SHADOW SHROUD.
  • The FARMING now exists and can be acquired. Some of the newly implemented abilities include: SHEAR <sheep> to obtain the fleece commodity (plus additional abilities to clean and process the fleece), PLOUGH FIELD <by hand/with animal>, FERTILISE FIELD WITH <compost or manure>, SOW <crop seed>, HARVEST <crop> and various knowledge of COMPOSTING.
  • Along with FARMING came a lot of functionality for fields, which now grow crops after seeds have been sown. They will eventually reach a ripe stage and can be harvested, with the yield amount dependent on how many seeds were planted and what the field’s soil quality is like. Dynamic messages will show in the field location based on what stage the crop is in.
  • Wooden beehives can now be constructed and players can EFFUSE BEEHIVE WITH <certain herbs> to attract bees. Much functionality has been done with what we have affectionately called “Project Beehive Simulator”, which includes many calculations about how many bees are in the hive, how much wax is produced, and when a queen bee dies off. To admire beehive simulator, players can use HIVESENSE ON/OFF to notice (or ignore) beehive activity. SCRAPE WAX can be used to collect the wax commodity from beehives.
  • Wooden and tin pans now available for crafting, and players can use SIFT PAN in fresh water locations for a chance to find uncut gems and ores. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes to determine if a gem or ore is found, and if so, which one. This is meant to be a slower (and much less efficient) way for players to obtain ores and gems without specializing in the MINERALOGY gathering skill.
  • A few other new commodities and ways to harvest/process them have been introduced:
    • Obsidian now exists in certain locations associated with past volcanic activity and players can now CRACK OBSIDIAN to gather it.
    • Soil commodity is now generated as a byproduct of digging holes, and acts very similarly to sand (in that it cannot be picked up by hand). Additionally, holes will now collapse back in on themselves after a Mystavarian day.
    • Glowworms now exist and glowing silk fibres can be collected, but we’re not sharing any further secrets about the elusive creatures!
    • Players can now SPIN <thread type>. Currently works to spin cotton lint, wool and glowing silk fibres into thread, but is flexible to allow for other materials in the future (flax, linen… we’ll see what else comes along!)
  • Various improvements made to NPCs:
    • Can now have “aggressive” flags to attack anyone who is not considered an ally, but they no longer spam attack when they don’t have balance. Additionally, they no longer heal as soon as they’re attacked (which was negating the majority of damage they took from the first hit).
    • Can be set to wander around their home zone. They will stop wandering when engaged in combat, but will return to it when they have no one left to fight.
    • Have learned more intelligent combat, including using the same skills and abilities as players, curing afflictions given to them over time and following targets that they are engaged in combat with. They intelligently capture and prioritize a list of all who are attacking them and will make choices about who to follow or attack based on that.
    • If an NPC loses track of a target or is no longer being interacted with, they will return back to their home location with all aggressions cleared after a certain amount of time.
    • Upon death, NPCs now drop any quest items they’re holding.

Bug Fixes:

  • Crafting general objects no longer errors when a player enters syntax in backward order (like “craft pan tin” when “craft tin pan” is expected).
  • Inventory no longer errors if a bad/invalid commodity name is present.
  • Fixed an error that occurred when a character earned a new accolade but didn’t have the proper attributes. The same missing attributes caused an issue with ETHOS command, which is also now patched up.
  • Flying no longer errors when rooms do not have correct zone tags.
  • If a character is somehow missing one of the general skills, they can now request to learn it from appropriate players/NPCs without it returning an error.
  • Find target function no longer errors when no target has been specified. Can also now target self, if command allows.
  • Balance and equilibrium recovery calls now survive a server reload.
  • Fixed some issues with the “idyll” affliction and made it properly execute on both commands and movements.
  • Canned socials no longer error do to a confliction with “mobs”.
  • Players can no longer follow another player if they are not in the same location and following now correctly loses the follower if the follower is off balance or equilibrium when the leader moves. Additionally, if a follower dies, they will stop following rather than have their ghost haunt the leader.
  • A negative number of coins can no longer be picked up.
  • ZONES command improved so that it no longer lags out the entire server when called.
  • Many improvements and fixes made to NPCs:
    • NPCs can no longer have multiple command sets applied to them when they die and reset. Fixing this also fixed an issue of many commands getting disabled when the NPC is “puppeted” by admin.
    • NPCs no longer get stuck in an endless loop of resurrecting themselves every 5 minutes after they have died and already returned to life.
    • They no longer stop attacking when afflicted during a very specific time window after curing. They also no longer stop attacking at seemingly random moments.

Other Progress and Minor New Stuff:

  • Fires burning in a location now emit an occasional atmospheric message and eventually fizzle out and leave a few lumps of charcoal behind.
  • New status function implemented that allows us to make checks for when the player is “engaged” (in certain actions) or “aggressive” (when player has recently used a hostile action), and prevent or disrupt certain commands based on these statuses.
  • Clan attributes have been simplified to prevent the possibility of conflicting data being stored in multiple places.
  • Improved organisation of some of our commands and command sets, along with moving certain commands into proper help categories.
  • Updated INFO WITHIN and INFO INV summaries to be more readable.
  • Soil commodity is now generated as a byproduct of digging holes, and acts very similarly to sand. Cannot be picked up with hands, must be collected in appropriate containers using FILL command.
  • Various crafting and gathering abilities updated to require and check for the presence of certain utility tools.
  • A few new zones and locations have been built, including the villages of Susurrar, Sulastella and Laminae, along with some extensive sky building for the FLYING skill.
  • A cure order for herbs/afflictions has been established and we’ve done a few overall improvements around herb and affliction functionality, including new commands like HERB LIST and APPLY <herb>.
  • Players can now pick up specific quantities of coins, seeds, herbs and commodities, rather than having to get them one at a time.
  • Upon death, players now leave behind a corpse which can be LOOTed – further progress to come on this.

As you can probably tell, we’re keeping plenty busy. Now that most of our major functionality is designed and built, we’re slowly starting to shift focus to expanding out the rest of our (non-crafting/gathering) skills. Our next update will likely reflect that.

Reminder that we’re open for more builders (particularly those interested in description writing) to help us bring Mystavaria to life. If you’re interested (or even just curious about the game), please come join us in our Discord server and give us a shout!

We hope to see you there!

– Alora and Aion

Updates: March & April 2022

We have finally gotten back to diving deep in Mystavaria. We didn’t get much done in February (as expected), but a lot has been going on the last couple weeks and I wanted to go ahead and post an early April update so that anyone who checks in here doesn’t think we’ve given up!

Also, we did our first “live demo” in our Discord server with a handful of people that have been kind enough to volunteer to help us with some of the front end aspects of MUD building, from writing room and object descriptions to coming up with entire quest ideas. We had TONS of fun during the demo, and it was really exciting and motivating for us to hear the responses and have other people excited about some of the customization features we’ve implemented to really make the world feel truly immersive and alive.

We would love to host more of these, either to potential builders and to those that might actually be interested in our game as a player. Even though we’re still in pre-pre-pre-Alpha phase, it already feels pretty amazing to step back and see how much you can already do in our little world.

Alright, enough babble, let’s dig into the latest updates!

New Features:

  • Perhaps most excitingly, we have been doing work to get more quests implemented. As a result (and props to Aion for taking this on), we now have “Exit Quests”, which can trigger rewards or secrets, or initiate another quest when certain hidden exits and locations are found.
  • Another one of our biggest features for the month is the preparation of having friendships between players and NPCs. Friendship can be improved (or impaired) through certain interactions, and also earned as a quest reward.
  • Shortbows and longbows are now fully functional with the SHOOT <target> <direction> ability in the RANGED skill. Shortbows can hit a target up to three locations away, while longbows can shoot up to six locations away.
  • A few other new abilities have been implemented in the RANGED skill, including TWINE VINES and FLING <target>, which launches a surprise attack on a target (within the same zone).
  • Most sky locations slotted for Phase 1 have been created (though not described) and all are now accessible with the FLYING minor skill.
  • Barebones of BEAST, DRUID, NEMOPHILISM and VINEDREAMING Sylvan profession skills now exist in the world.
  • We have a lot of new attribute possibilities for objects, including setting a weight, declaring whether the object can be used as a seat, if the object can contain other objects (even down to the specifics of only solids or liquids), and if they are a container, how much they can hold.
  • Along with the new object attributes, players can SIT <seat> to sit on objects defined as seats, and also FILL <container> WITH <liquid> or EMPTY <container>. Players can also no longer pick up any object with a weight that exceeds 200. We’ll be implementing further weight limitations, though they are not necessarily prioritized for Phase 1.
  • Also, hold onto those seats that you can now sit on, because I know everyone was anxiously waiting for this next ability! Players can now PICK GRASS from fields, meadows and grassland locations (which are all new location types in preparation for expanded farming and harvesting abilities).
  • Also in the realm of highly exciting updates, players can DESEED COTTON to prepare it for spinning into thread and cloth.
  • New “ocean” location type added, and when containers are filled with water from ocean locations, the water will be saltwater instead of freshwater. We may be revising this to create a “deep water” location type with the ability to tag “saltwater” or “freshwater” separately (since large rivers and lakes are also a thing), but that is currently TBD.
  • Implemented a number of new dynamic description tags that can be used to describe locations. These tags can change entire location descriptions or just singular sentences or words depending on time of day or current weather conditions. Super excited to have these, as it should be a great way to both make the world less static AND hide little Easter eggs and quest hints in a very unique way!

Bug Fixes:

  • Our “damage view” function (which displays damage during combat) needed to be patched up to take into consideration ranged attacks when the attacker and target may not be in the same location.
  • Adjusted error messaging when players try to LEARN a skill that does not exist, or when either the player or the teacher do not have the skill to learn/teach.
  • QUIT PROFESSION command now appropriately removes profession skills, however it does not refund lessons as appropriate yet.
  • When a player acquires a new skill, the appropriate command sets are applied now so that the player can actually access the abilities IN the skill. On the opposite end, if a player FORGETs a skill, access to that skillset is now appropriately removed.
  • Fixed an error message that was occurring when the TIME command was used.
  • FINALLY got a solution implemented to store maps on locations (so they don’t have to be drawn every time), as well as had some help from a fellow Evennia developer to find and fix a bug in our map logic. This has completely resolved our lag issues when a player moved through a location with a large number of exits, and was one of our main goals to have fixed for Phase 1 release. We’re both proud and extremely relieved to officially check this one off.
  • WOODWORKING skill has been brought up to speed with our latest standards and reformatted commodities.
  • Players can no longer drop objects they’re wearing without first removing them.
  • Discovered some of our previously built commodities and gathering commands never made it over from when Alora’s laptop died last year. Fortunately, we were able to track down that code and get them all back into the world again (papyrus, sand, clay, etc.).
  • Corrected a bug that caused your inventory to error if you were holding a commodity that is no longer recognized. In this instance, we updated the name of “cloth” to “cotton cloth” (since we’ll have different types of fabric eventually). This bug wouldn’t have likely happened often anyway since our commodities will be solidly in place and unlikely to change once we launch, but better to be safe than sorry.
  • Fixed a bug in the CONSTRUCT command that was causing exits not to build between rooms.
  • We’re working on developing an internal targeting system so players don’t necessarily need to create extensive settings in external clients. This system will also handle determining differences between when a target is another player (percentage based damage) vs. when the target is an NPC (fixed damage).

Other Progress and Minor New Stuff:

  • WIELD and UNWIELD commands are now stopped if the player has broken arms.
  • Previously, players could only learn skills from NPCs. That has been adjusted so that players can now also learn from other players. Same goes for teaching skills. Added a LESSONS command for players to quickly review the number of lessons they can currently learn.
  • Admin now have a command to forcefully redraw a stored map in a location, which will occasionally need to be updated when new exits are created (because the map is stored and doesn’t recognize there’s been an update yet).
  • RATIO command received an improvement update and now shows kills, deaths and what you were killed by (or what you killed with).
  • NPC combat is being worked on to adjust so that they use actual skills when fighting rather than just some basic default brawling attacks.
  • DROP and GET commands have been updated to reference commodities by keyword. Previously, if the player held a “papyrus reed” but tried to drop “reed” instead of specifying the entire name, it would inform that that they were holding no “reed”.
  • Spent some time updating files and resources for our Builders as we prepare to bring on more people to help us out. We’re reaching a point where most of the difficult coding systems are in place, but the world is lacking descriptions, quests and general things to do. We’re trying to even that back out so we can keep momentum going on both sides of the project at the same time.
  • Players can now use CONTAINERS to view a list of “liquid containers” and their contents (like buckets, bottles, jars, etc.). These containers can also be used to pick up the sand commodity, which would otherwise just slip through your fingers.
  • PROBE command has been updated to provide more detailed information based on an object’s attributes.
  • Coal has been added as a new commodity and now spawns in quarries with flint and marble.
  • We went through the world and updated some of our zone names as well as the names of our seasons, which were revised from our original names as we developed a version of “Old Mystavarian” language to give some consistency to naming within the world.
  • On the lore side of things, we finalized the details of Mystavaria’s creation story, which details the first geographical features of the world and explains certain things like warmth, cold, night, day and how the seasons came to be. Additionally, we created a world calendar and brainstormed holidays, festivals and other ideas for realm events.
  • Character arrival and departure messages (when they enter and leave a location) have been updated to be less clunky.
  • Clans are being revisited and attributes associated with them are being improved and simplified in preparation for when we introduce functionality to convert a clan into a guild. Clans can also be flagged as dissolved/closed, which will remove all members from the clan and prevent any new members from joining. The original clan deed will be preserved for historical records.
  • Brainstormed around 100 abilities to be worked into various dream magic skills (with a particular focus on the Mage’s DREAMWEAVING ability).

PHEW! That was a lot to cover, and the crazy thing is we’re not even all the way through April yet, so there’s likely still more to come in the next few days!

We’re officially on the hunt to find more builders (particularly those interested in description writing) to help us bring Mystavaria to life. If you’re interested (or even just curious about the game), please come join us in our Discord server and give us a shout!

We hope to see you there!

– Alora and Aion

Updates: January 2022

After having a rollercoaster ride through the second half of 2021, things finally started settling down in December and we were able to brush off the dust and get back to work on some code.

Here’s a recap of our late December and January updates.

New Features:

  • Furnaces have been introduced to the world and are required for smithing armour and weapons. They can lit by using FUEL <furnace> WITH <fuel> or extinguished with DOUSE FURNACE.
  • Adjustments were also made to the LIGHT command so that things aside from just fires can be lit.
  • Added some new accolades for players to earn.
  • Added a REBALANCE command, which is a forced balance recovery (with a long balance recovery time to prevent abuse). This is in case things ever go wonky and a player somehow gets stuck without balance.

Bug Fixes:

  • Unwielding weapons did not correctly update the character’s attack stat. That has been fixed.
  • If a player tries to SMITH something that is not a weapon, it now gives an appropriate message rather than spewing an error.
  • INVentory command no longer bugs out if you were wearing any armour that decayed.
  • New characters no longer join the “NONE” profession, so they don’t have to leave it before they can join one of the actual professions.
  • Fixed incorrect prompt values showing up when health goes under 0 HP (aka dead, aka overkill).
  • The welcome script no longer gives a “destination does not exist” error when trying to find “limbo”.
  • Fixed a few commands to make them work with NPCs.
  • Recovered a copy of our most up-to-date database (from right before Alora’s computer died) and got that back online, so we have minimal loss of room descriptions and locations that had been built.
  • Sorted out missing government attributes on Praestantia.
  • Added some checks and balances to SUPPLICATE command so deities cannot patron themselves (let’s not talk about which arrogant deity found this bug… 😉 ).
  • When deities bestow a skill on a player when they already have the skill, it no longer resets all their lessons in it! (Oops!)

Other Progress and Minor New Stuff:

  • WIELD and UNWIELD commands are now stopped if the player has broken arms.
  • Consolidated a help file for God/Admin Commands so we can easily reference helpful syntax.
  • Admin commands added to review rooms to check what season the location is a part of and if the location is part of a cityhall. Also for Gods to review the skills of any player.
  • We have been doing some more behind the scenes planning, working on the details of “desert zones”, defining a complex system of taming, training and breeding animals and mounts, concepts for lockpicking, thievery and NPC locksmiths, plus brainstorming birthday presents for milestone player birthdays in game (this may sound a bit silly, but we really want our long term players to feel some sort of “thank you” for their loyalty).

Alora started a new job in January, plus her mom is coming to visit us in February, so we’re expecting to have a slow month development wise. We’ll check back in soon with more updates though, and we’re always available in our Discord server!

Join us here: https://discord.gg/D5uxs52

– Alora and Aion

Updates: End of 2021

Hard to believe the end of another year is approaching already!

We had a HUGE first half of 2021, implementing many of our key objectives and functionality features for a phase one release. The second half of 2021 wasn’t very productive development wise, though. In May, we were finally freed from COVID lockdown, which meant less time with nothing to do. In September, Alora’s dad came to visit and her laptop died (which Mystavaria was all saved on – (we were able to retrieve the files from the hard drive, don’t worry)), then in October one of her immediate family members was sadly diagnosed with Melanoma, which coincided with the week we were also moving into a new place.

Needless to say, a lot of ups and downs the second half of the year, so we took some personal time to step back and attend to those things. That said, we still wanted to take a moment to celebrate and highlight some of our biggest accomplishments from this year.

New Feature Highlights of 2021:

  • Loads of new skills have started to become functional in the world: DRAWING MAGIC, ALCHEMY, TAILORING, WEAPON SMITHING, ARMOUR SMITHING, MINERALOGY, GENERAL CRAFTING and GENERAL GATHERING.
  • The beginnings of quests have been put in place, with a functional QUESTLOG for players to review and implementation of simple “find and retrieve” quests (where an NPC tasks a player with finding them a certain object and rewards them with gold and/or experience upon success). Additionally, we’ve added “keywords” to NPCs and “details” to rooms, which are both ways to incorporate potential quest hints or other useful information.
  • Players can now CHOOSE <profession>, which then gives them the ability to specialize in a selection of skills that they get to choose.
  • Realm commodities (or raw resources/materials) now exist in the world. A number of the new skills mentioned above deal with abilities related to harvesting and collecting commodities and processing them for use in crafting, building and other item creation.
  • Holy Orders are in the works in the form of a DEVOTION “skill” (which is really just an organizational way to contain the relevant commands). Holy Orders are a way for players to directly connect, interact and bond with a particular deity in Mystavaria who’s ideals and values they relate with.
  • Functionality has been implemented for players to create their own Clans (with no divine intervention involved)!
  • City government structures have also been implemented, with elections for city officials, who can then appoint someone to be recognized as the city leader.
  • We have also created functionality for “lots”, which players can buy and sell, then construct buildings and personal houses on.
  • Characters now have ETHOS and ACCOLADES, which are sort of like an achievement system, but also a way to see and define your character’s morals and ideals.
  • Our weather system was reworked for the third time (we’d say final time, but every time we think it’s done, we find another way to improve it). This time we have implemented seasons, which cause the weather to shift and rotate gradually around Mystavaria. The major driver for this update was to make sure skills like farming and planting can *always* be used somewhere in the world, so that players don’t have to wait a real life week for the seasons to change in the game before they can use those skills again.

As a close out, we just want to assure everyone that Mystavaria is still always in our minds. Even when we aren’t actually implementing any new code, we’re still brainstorming features and ideas every day with each other.

We hope to have a little more time and normalcy in 2022, and look forward to continuing our progress and sharing our little dream world with you all.

Happy Holidays!

– Alora and Aion

Updates: July 2021

I’m going to just admit that Mystavaria has been less of a focus for us since getting out of lockdown. We’ve been living in a new country since November of last year, but we’re only just now able to actually experience it, so we have been taking more time to get outside and do things and have spent less time with our heads in our computers.

We do have a tiny July update, but no outstanding new functionality to announce this month.

New Features:

  • Players with the skill can now PICK, PLANT and PREPARE <herb>s. Actually, players could probably do this before now, but we changed some attributes around how herbs are collected and stored, which led us to reworking these commands.
  • Locations now show any herbs that have been dropped in the room.
  • LOOK <herb> has been updated to display an appropriate herb description. Also works for LOOK <commodity>.
  • Players can now GIVE <herb> TO <target>.
  • INVentory updated to display both prepared and unprepared herbs. The quick lists INFO HERE and INFO INV have also been updated to display herbs and quantities held.
  • Script created for trees to grow branches which can be trimmed for wood commodity using TRIM <tree>.
  • Also created a script for sandy locations to replenish fine sand, which can then be collected using SHOVEL SAND.
  • And another script to start growing papyrus in water locations. Players can SCYTHE PAPYRUS, CUT REEDS, then PRESS REEDS to create papyrus sheets (our equivalent of papermaking)!

Bug Fixes:

  • No real bug fixes this month, just bringing a few commands up to speed with revised/improved code ways of doing things.

Other Progress and Minor New Stuff:

  • Location name colors tweaked to be dynamic to match the location type and map display (green name in forest location, blue name in water location, etc.)

– Alora and Aion

Updates: May & June 2021

Our April laziness carried over into May (and June), but we have an excuse as we finally got out of lockdown!

Since we didn’t get much done in May, I’ve decided to combine those updates with our June accomplishments.

New Features:

  • Equipped armor now take into account magic and fortitude modifiers and updates character stats accordingly.
  • Started work on the ALCHEMY crafting skill, using herbs and ingredients to mix potion recipes.
  • Vials and glass bottles can now be crafted for ALCHEMY potions. Bottles hold more sips than vials, but require higher skill to craft. Emptying a potion bottle now sets it to an empty state so that it can be re-used to mix another potion in.
  • Pick axes and spades can now be crafted with use of the GENERAL CRAFTING skill.

Bug Fixes:

  • Fixed a bug in the WHO list that didn’t show all characters if a player was connected but sitting at the login screen rather than in character.
  • Also fixed a small bug with the HISTORY command erroring when a player’s gender didn’t case match with “male”, “female” or “other”.
  • Fixed an error that triggered when a player attempted to EXCAVATE a mine in an invalid direction.
  • Lots of minor error fixes in MINERALOGY, ALCHEMY, ELEMENTALISM and RANGED skill abilities (mostly dealing with bringing them up-to-date with new success checkers).

Other Progress and Minor New Stuff:

  • Players can now MAKE FIRE, LIGHT FIRE, and DOUSE/EXTINGUISH FIRE. Not a whole lot of other functionality surrounding fires yet, but hey, it’s a start.
  • Our “death checker” function now remembers player kills, deaths, who killed who and who was killed by what in preparation for having ratios and Kills/Deaths stats.
  • The city of Praestantia has been moved to its official resting place on our map.
  • Certain afflictions (such as broken arms or being stunned) now affect a player’s ability to use RANGED abilities.

– Alora and Aion

Updates: April 2021

April was pretty quiet code-wise, especially compared to all the new features we introduced in March. But, we were doing a lot of behind the scenes planning and developing of our various skills and abilities so that we know what we need to code before we code it! (Game Design 101!)

That said, we did still squeeze a few new things in, so let’s dive in!

New Features:

  • A few ease-of-use updates this month, for example, players can now reference objects with a keyword, like GET POTION, rather than having to type the exact and entire name (“a white health potion”) out. Players can also refer to objects by their unique ID number, so if they have two “a white health potions” in their inventory, they can distinguish a unique one using GET <id number> instead.
  • NPCs can now be assigned “keywords”, which are words – or topics – that they can respond to when a player ASKs about them. Keywords are meant to help give NPCs an interactive way to share knowledge about skills, lore or certain quests.
  • We have our first functional mob which will fight back and heal itself when provoked. They also now have a death sequence that will resurrect them after 5 minutes, which is a temporary stop-gap for now until we determine how long we really want mob resets to take.
  • Potions now have a short balance/cooldown recovery time so that a player can’t spam sip them to immediately cure themselves of all afflictions.

Bug Fixes:

  • Proper weather messages display for indoor locations again.

Other Progress and Minor New Stuff:

  • Players can now MAKE FIRE, LIGHT FIRE, and DOUSE/EXTINGUISH FIRE. Not a whole lot of other functionality surrounding fires yet, but hey, it’s a start.
  • Our “death checker” function now remembers player kills, deaths, who killed who and who was killed by what in preparation for having ratios and Kills/Deaths stats.

Okay, well, that seems pretty wimpy compared to last month. But hey, we deserved an easy month after that. 😉

– Alora and Aion