First Month of Alpha

We’ve survived our first month of alpha testing. We have a good starting playerbase, some good storylines, a lot of great players getting involved in keeping things active as well as reporting bugs. I may already be introducing our first new area this weekend, Gannor has been keeping up with typos and area fixes, and Cedric has been hard at work keeping up with the code. In fact, his first month of code notes are as follows:

10/02 (Cedric) Fixed a bug with clone names in combat
10/02 (Cedric) Fixed a bug with HP/mana/stamina displays for new characters in score and prompts
10/03 (Cedric) Made several improvements to the repair code
10/03 (Cedric) Looking at a subdued target now shows its inventory
10/03 (Cedric) Increased the frequency of autosaves
10/03 (Cedric) Offensive skills and spells can no longer be used on subdued targets
10/04 (Cedric) Pets/mounts now have infinite stamina
10/04 (Cedric) Fixed a bug with items in containers affecting item carry count
10/04 (Cedric) Fixed a bug with sleep/sit using no argument
10/04 (Cedric) Birthdays now correctly affect stat maximums
10/04 (Cedric) Fixed a targeting bug when a player had a raised hood
10/05 (Cedric) Made gold/silver amounts on sentient NPCs consistent throughout the MUD
10/06 (Cedric) ‘repair’ with no argument now shows costs for broken items in inventory
10/06 (Cedric) Fixed a major bug with spells not casting using the correct Principle skills
10/06 (Cedric) Fixed a bug with spell prerequisites not allowing them to be practiced
10/06 (Cedric) Fighting with a sheathed weapon now increases unarmed, instead of the sheathed weapon’s skill
10/06 (Cedric) Sheathed weapons no longer take durability damage
10/06 (Cedric) Melee accuracy when fighting with a sheathed weapon now goes by the unarmed skill
10/06 (Cedric) Players can no longer parry while their weapons are sheathed
10/06 (Cedric) Players no longer lose stamina while riding mounts
10/06 (Cedric) Removed gold costs from unlearning skills/spells/schools
10/07 (Cedric) Adjusted the rate at which natural trains are given
10/07 (Cedric) Removed the afk command
10/07 (Cedric) Fixed a few bugs, you know how it is
10/07 (Cedric) Reworked chances and other affects of steal and pickpocket
10/08 (Cedric) Finally fixed a bug causing stats to lower when affects wore off
10/08 (Cedric) Limited the max number of items a shopkeeper will hold (frickin snake scales…)
10/08 (Cedric) NPC shopkeepers can no longer be stolen from
10/09 (Cedric) Improved the examine and browse commands
10/09 (Cedric) Reworked the ratings for the ‘consider’ command
10/09 (Cedric) Added sellable parts for winged, feathered, and tailed creatures
10/09 (Cedric) Changed the gold worth of animal parts around
10/09 (Cedric) Hidden/invisible/camouflaged players now show up on the who list and OOC channels
10/09 (Cedric) Banks now auto convert silver into gold when depositing
10/09 (Cedric) Fixed a bug with raised cloaks showing a person’s true identity
10/09 (Cedric) Fixed a bug with the ‘shield attack’ skill
10/10 (Cedric) Capped passive skill points at 200%
10/10 (Cedric) Quiet mode no longer affects beta, newbie, and clan channels
10/10 (Cedric) Fixed a bug where being drunk lowered your language skill percentage
10/11 (Cedric) Fixed a bug prematurely limiting growth HP
10/11 (Cedric) Subdued players are now invulnerable for a shorttime after waking up
10/11 (Cedric) Guards no longer attack prisoners
10/11 (Crystal) Paid for Advent for the month of October
10/15 (Cedric) Fixed a bug with steal coin amounts
10/15 (Cedric) Fixed a bug with steal success rates
10/15 (Cedric) Fixed a bug with tumble/drive/dash/pursue/etc and autofollow
10/20 (Cedric) Skill prerequisites now work correctly, as far as higher ranks not counting for the prereq
10/20 (Cedric) Lower rank skills are no longer practiceable if a character already has the higher rank
10/20 (Cedric) Dual wield now lets a character throw punches with free hands
10/20 (Cedric) Using $t (or $-anything) in channels no longer causes problems
10/21 (Cedric) Tweaked prerequisites for practicing skills a little
10/21 (Cedric) Fixed bugs with the ‘swap’ command
10/21 (Cedric) Fixed a few other minor bugs not worth mentioning
10/22 (Cedric) Using speech in emotes will now reveal hidden speakers
10/22 (Cedric) Fixed a couple li’l bity bugs
10/23 (Cedric) Opening/closing doors while sneaking now opens both sides correctly
10/23 (Cedric) Stats for different weapon types were adjusted for better balance
10/23 (Cedric) Combat damage for high power characters was drastically reduced
10/23 (Cedric) Gave torches and maps to newbies when they are outfitted
10/23 (Cedric) Fixed bugs with the ‘unlearn’ command
10/23 (Cedric) New characters now start with their appropriate language skill at 100%
10/24 (Cedric) Fights involving too many combatants no longer crash the MUD
10/24 (Cedric) Call backup NPCs no longer wander on their own
10/24 (Cedric) Immobile characters can no longer whisper to other immobile characters
10/25 (Cedric) Fixed the order command for pets
10/25 (Cedric) Lowered kick damage
10/25 (Cedric) Altered when hide and camouflage are usable
10/26 (Cedric) Changed how weapons, armor, and trainer’s skills save, to avoid future issues
10/27 (Cedric) Fixed pour
10/27 (Cedric) Fixed fill
10/27 (Cedric) Added ‘sip’ and ‘chug’ commands for versatile drinking
10/27 (Cedric) Rotten food now has effects on players when they eat it
10/27 (Cedric) Fixed a capitalization issue with NPCs and characters in disguises
10/27 (Cedric) Fixed many minor issues that aren’t cool enough to get their own line
10/29 (Cedric) Fixed a bug with disarm, and a bug with browse
10/29 (Cedric) Fixed a builder issue with the ? menu
10/30 (Cedric) Fixed an issue with drink and chug
10/30 (Cedric) Adjusted the fundamentals of magic damage
10/30 (Cedric) Touched up all pyromancy spells for balance
10/30 (Cedric) Examining a spellbook now shows the list of spells it contains
10/31 (Cedric) Fixed a bug with month/season names in weather and time