CHANGELOG #14 - ROADMAP, CONCEPT, SKILLS, COMPATIBILITY
Roadmap, our concept, skills overhaul, compatibility and misc updates
This is our first development blog of this bumpy start to the new year! Here’s our development roadmap to showcase incoming changes and updates coming our way. I’ll be updating this as we proceed to complete steps on the way towards the goal of re-launching our server in the coming future!
One of our first steps was mainly identifying, per the amount of changes and additions to the gamemode and our rotational setting regarding HL2RP; We’ll be solidifying our concept in how we brand ourselves and approach matters different from the traditional HL2RP, paving the way towards our original vision of encompassing a HL2 RPG set in a serious environment with grounded lore. The important distinction is we utilize RPG elements for our roleplay to innovate the genre and move on from old traditions of admin-central setups and /me everything.
“A rpg-mechanics driven Half Life 2 Roleplaying server set in a serious environment with grounded lore.”
With the help of @RedHotGinger, @Fatalis and player feedback, we’ve gone back to the drawing board and conjured up a new concept for revamping skills to lessen the rather tiring grindy feel.
Attributes
Attributes are moved to being a background element to the character, with no direct player input. Indirect interactions, such as the consumption of food or drugs, still remain normal as previously intended. All attributes are defaulted back to zero, and removed from the Character Creation menu. They will still function normally in the background as your character progresses to play on the server and will be displayed as "Boosts" on the UI as shown below.
Character creation skill choices
From here on, all skills are laid out in character creation in a manner that’s easier to understand. A maximum of two skills can be focused, which provides a permanent XP boost. Aside from focusing skills, we offer 30 skill points that you may distribute throughout the skills, allowing you to specialize or spread your skill knowledge around earlier than expected. The max amount of points that can be placed into a single skill is a 25 on character creation.
Skill UI Overhaul
Skills are no longer restricted to just three primary focus points. In response to the vastly gathered player feedback, the player now has access to all available skills upon the immediate conception of the character. There is one exception, however, to faction specific skills which are gained on different grounds as per its name in relation to actual factions on the server. We’ve also moved forward and implemented a system that, to prevent characters from becoming a “master of all skills”, we’ve got a cap on the maximum levels you can acquire across all skills that’s only within reach of that character. At the moment, that’s set to a maximum level of two hundred, but that may change depending on further investigations, idea implementations or simple balancing.
Skills, henceforth, will default require a manual level up, once 1000 xp is reached, players must confirm a level up via a button selection on the menu. Players cannot gain further XP in that skill until they’ve confirmed their level up. This allows individuals to “think twice” before going up the scale, which if you have read the previous paragraph, discusses the “maximum levels” input. Players can however tick an "Auto-level" checkbox in the skill if they want to automate leveling like before.
Other skill updates
Adding onto our earlier concepts, we’re introducing a concept only referred to as “recycling” linked into each skill for your character. Like how crafting breakdowns worked in v1.0, it’s a method that looks to expand into all possible skills to have a reliable way of obtaining materials without trash hunting or calling admins in a constant fashion. Crafting will now be able to dismantle items from junk and clothes, and medicine will be able to extract unrefined chemicals including alcohol and other compounds, etc.
The medicine skill has been completely reworked from scratch, all its previous recipes are gone and replaced with a less convoluted and straight forward setup which is easier to understand with more interaction with the actions of how the player uses it.
Bartering will be split up into different permit types. Permit types include clothing, food and many others, etc, to disallow one store to offer a monopoly over the rest. Bare in mind, an effective store is one that’s active, which is the most important factor that comes into play on the server. Bartering will no longer be tied to levels.
In the next couple of days we’ll be looking directly at the cooking skill with the goal of making it less convoluted and add more value/fun overall to make it a more enjoyable experience. We’ll have more on that when the time comes.
With all the incoming changes to factions and skills, the previous database will not be compatible with our changes. This, unfortunately, means we’ll have to do a full wipe of playerbase characters, items and progress in order to make it a playable state. We’ll be keeping the narrative side of characters, so once you recreate your old character, the narrative that existed from the first launch may stick to it. Unfortunately all items and skills will be having to face a reset. As unfortunate as it sounds, the light that is shed from this is that it does give everyone the chance to begin again equally with the new systems implemented.
- Extended support for low and high resolutions across all of the UI (4k and ultrawide support)
- Added audiobooks to bartering (to learn new languages)
- Longer character descriptions (configurable), will add a extended description popup if you press E on players in the near future
- If you’ve got a combine PDA in your inventory, you may now simply type /datafile NAME to find the person you’re looking for instead of equipping the PDA manually
- Attached use of combine PDA to a flag (allows some CWU members to use it)
- Medicine skill completely revamped
- Extended breakdown recipes in crafting, you can now breakdown all of the clothing
- /adminjoingroup command
- Fixed bug where doors could be shot open even if it had a combine lock on it
- Fixed bug that didn’t save scanner spawn locations
- Fixed bug that made scanners respawn where they die
- Stat boosts now reset on death
- You can now search people without being tied with /charsearch
- Added check staff activity command
- Fixed various UI errors
- Players with pet flags can now remove their own storage containers
- Lessened propsurf ability with music radios
- Only owners of dropped music radios can pick them up
- /mapsceneadd locations now show in admin ESP
- /setjailtime command for CPs, if you detain someone it sets a timer that alerts CPs when the prisoner should be let out of their cell
- Server now saves if you’ve been tied before you log off
- Admin command to create new ID cards
- Pinned notepads can no longer be picked up unless you’re the author
- /doorsettitle changed to /combinedoor (kept being confused for something it isn’t used for)
- Fixed CA PDA unable to set ration credits
- Re-balanced all bartering clothing costs
- CWU bodygroups now save properly
Attachments
Last edited:
