Devblog #19 - Smuggling, Stacking, Stashes, Forum linking
Thanks to @Gr4Ss for writing todays devblog!
As you all are aware, we had only a couple of big points left on our roadmap towards the re-launch. Apartment & Shop System, Smuggling and the Open Betas, in that order… For those who have read the title, may have already deduced that Smuggling is considered done now, earlier than expected. The vast majority of the Apartment & Shop System is also done, but there was still some UI work to do before we could properly show it (hence it isn’t in this devblog). Outside of that there is only ‘nice to haves’ and bugs remaining on the todo list.
As for when the Open Betas will be held: we will now go into feature freeze first. This is the part of development where we stop adding new features onto our todo list. We will focus on completing whatever is currently on the list, addressing any bugs that come up or doing (minor) improvements that we consider absolutely necessary. That also gives us some time to test out all the new things with the (senior) staff team as an initial quality check. Once our todo and bug list has dwindled down enough, we can announce exact dates for the Open Beta(s).
Please keep in mind that this is important to ensure we can provide a good quality launch. The more bugs we find now before the beta, the smoother the beta itself will go. That means we can demonstrate and test more in the beta without being blocked by bugs. This allows us to address more shortcomings and bugs before launch, which then results in a smoother and better launch.
Smuggling has been a skill we wanted to add in for a long time now (since before the V1 launch, really). Our initial launch confirmed to us just how much this was needed to properly support the resistance, and that bartering is a bad substitute. Hence why this is an absolute requirement for the re-launch.
Originally it was planned to be done later than it is now. But by tweaking some of the design choices we managed to reduce the workload by a lot (mainly as we could use the Helix Vendors as a starting point, rather than building everything fully from the ground up).
Smuggling in a way is the resistance-equivalent to Bartering. It allows rebels to buy stuff for money. This money is ‘chips’, the rebel currency made from pre-war poker chips. This is an untraceable currency for the Combine, and completely independent from the Credits that the Combine use. Essentially the resistance is no longer fully reliant on rations and shops for their supplies.
What is different about Smuggling? Well, a few things:
- You do not order items from the skill menu, but need to go find a Smuggling vendor in the sewers.
- Items aren’t available for delivery immediately, but only after some time do they show up in a pickup cache.
- You can also sell items via Smuggling.
- There is no magic ‘ration machine’ that magically creates chips out of nowhere, Chips must be earned via Smuggling.
The last 2 points have a big impact on the rebel economy. As Credits are no longer directly usable to buy illicit goods, there is no longer as much of a problem with the massive inflation rations tend to cause. Instead the rebel economy uses Chips, which is a much more circular economy. Essentially we hope that by allowing people to buy and sell items, Smuggling will take care of inflation and deflation all by itself.
It also creates a margin on items within which rebel traders and crafters can operate. If people do not want to pay them enough, they can sell via Smuggling. If they ask too much, people will buy via Smuggling. This creates a sort of minimum and maximum price much more naturally, rather than requiring us to enforce OOC rules on anyone who picks up Smuggling or a crafting skill (like often would the base with black market and crafting flags).
The skills UI displaying the buy/sell prices of items in chips and their level requirements. You gain XP by purchasing/selling with the smuggling vendor.
Demonstration of buying from the smuggler’s inventory and selling items to the smuggler.
The UI will be slightly altered to fit the WN theme before launch
Smuggling starts with the Smuggling vendor. Multiple locations within the sewer will be set up with a Smuggling Vendor in them. Each vendor will have his own selection of goods, inventory and pool of money. They are able to sell a certain list of items for delivery into a pickup cache. This list will differ between vendors. Money you spend on them goes into their money pool.
You can also sell items to them, taking money from the pool and putting the items in their inventory. This inventory and money pool are of course limited to help combat massive amounts of money flooding the economy. Items sold to a Smuggler become available for immediate purchase by other players, without the need to wait for delivery. You immediately get your things, the Smuggler has his quick profit and doesn’t have to smuggle that item back into the outlands, everyone happy.
Sounds all too easy? Then you would be right. There is one very big caveat to make here: only ONE Smuggler is active at the same time. All the others will be invisible and unusable. Every so often (a few hours), the active Smuggler will change. When they change, their inventory and money pool reset. For basic items this is not a problem, but if you need specific items that are only available on specific Smugglers, this will make things a lot harder. Especially combined with the fact that all Smugglers will be in the sewers, and the gas system ensures you can’t just keep on walking in there.
This is done to create room for crafters and player-to-player trading. Smuggling makes it very easy to get items, but it is unreliable. Crafting is reliable if you can get the ingredients. Crafting will also be cheaper. Upgrading items before selling them will also net you more money. Trading with players will also benefit both parties over them trading with the Smuggler: the profit the Smuggler would make on the trade, can now be split between the players. Should there be excess supply or demand, that is where the Smuggler should be used.
Of course, not everything is available via crafting, as some items will remain exclusive to Smuggling. Also, Smuggling does not depend on having large amounts of tools and workbenches ready to go. In fact, it does not require anything more than finding a vendor and having some chips or items to trade.
A small note to make: the UI still needs to be reworked, it currently is still based on the default Helix Vendor UI. Functionality-wise this will not change anything, but we still want to bring this UI in-line with our other UI’s and improve quality of life a bit (e.g. making it clear what is buyable/which buttons will work).
Admin view of smuggler setup. Every smuggler can be set up individually with their own selection of items, maximum total stock. Current money pool and current stock can also be set.
Selecting delivery location and ordering for delivery.
The pickup caches will also be hidden in the sewers. These can take on the form of any prop. Before buying goods from a Smuggler, they first have to select a pickup location. This location will remain locked in until the active Smuggler changes location, and all items ordered from the current active Smuggler will go to that location.
Once items are bought and paid for, there is some delay before they become available in the selected Pickup Cache. There is some randomness to this, but the delay remains the same as long as the active Smuggler does not change. The Smuggler will also notify you what the delay on delivery will be.
Pickup Caches currently have an infinite amount of storage in them, so there is no real hurry to pickup items. As they do not really form a convenient form of storage due to their locations, and the fact that items can only be taken out, this is ok for us for now. If it becomes an issue in the future, we can change it.
Should a pickup cache with items in it cease to exist, all items that you had in that pickup cache will become available in the first new pickup cache you open.
Picking ordered items up from a cache.
Basic item stacking at work, combining stacks and splitting them.
A selection of items have been made stackable. This allows you to combine these items into stacks by dragging them onto each other. Partial stack combination is also possible to fill up another partial stack. Split stacks back into smaller stacks or individual items via the options on the item.
Stack limits vary per item. In general, more common items have higher stack sizes. The introduction of stacking is mostly done to better deal with the limited grid inventory, which doesn’t deal well with extremely common small items. Items need to be at least 1x1 in size. Stacking overcomes this by putting multiple items into one 1x1 slot, freeing up more space. Storage was also a big issue on our initial launch, and this should be a very big contribution to make it less of an annoyance. A large 9x9 container can now hold nearly up to 650 crafting materials (vs 100 max in a 10x10 container before).
Crafting and smuggling have been updated to work with this as well. Both will recognize stacks properly, and can give stacks in return as well.
There is also support for ‘junk’ items. To split a stack, you will need the relevant junk item. When combining stacks, you will get given one of these junk items. This junk item represents the container that is holding the item (e.g. empty bottle).
Items currently moved onto the stackable base are all crafting components, medical components, ingredients, medicine items as well as zip ties.
Splitting and combining with a junk item. First aid kit requires 1 cloth and automatically acquires your cloth item when splitting up a stack. If you combine the kits together, it returns your cloth to you.
Using a stash, and being locked to a specific stash as long as there are items and/or money inside of it.
To further alleviate storage issues, we have introduced stashes. These are meant as personal storage containers, and aim to replace having ‘hidden’ containers all over the map for individuals to use. Stashes are 6x4 in size, the same as your main inventory (so slightly bigger than the small filing cabinet that was commonly used as personal storage, being 5x3). Stashes can also store an infinite number of chips.
Stashes will be set up around the map, and all players are free to select a stash to use. Once a stash has items or money put into it, the players can only use that stash going forward. Once a stash is emptied out, players can freely start using a different stash.
As stashes are replacing hidden individual containers with an admin password on it, they are quite safe. Other players cannot search your stash in any way without admin assistance. This may break RP a bit, as the stashes will be placed out in the open, albeit out of the way. That is a tradeoff we chose to accept. Should any major issues arise around this after launch, we can look at implementing specific measures to address those (or if there are any concerns already, feel free to post them).
Some of you may have already seen that we moved away from Patreon and are now using Xenforo to handle our subscriptions. One of the reasons behind this was that our server now is integrated with the forum’s group system via the Xenforo API.
Players can use the /LinkAccount command in-game with their forum username, id or e-mail to link their in-game steam account to their forum account. A PM will be (immediately) sent on the forums with a code to verify their identity. Upon entering that code in-game, the accounts are linked.
Once linked, the server will check your forum groups and link those to various benefits on the server. This includes ranks and permissions, flags and whitelists. This largely automates all the workload for our premium members, meaning they get their benefits as soon as they charswap/(re)join after subscribing or upon linking their account. Their premium status also shows for admins in the admin ESP. We are hoping that this will bring some major improvement to how our premium members are handled. They will automatically and immediately get what they paid for, and there can no longer be any discussion or confusion as to someone’s status in-game.
This system is also in use for our admin ranks and a few of our whitelists (namely OTA and vortigaunts), avoiding having to do a double administration in-game and on the forums. As a result of this, commands to give flags have been largely restricted to CM+. The whitelist command remains available to everyone for whitelists not done via this system yet.
Starting a link by forum name
The forum PM you get after starting a link process.
Completing the link.
And done! Automatic assignment complete.
On top of the major changes above, we’ve also been at work to go through some of the smaller items on our list. These do not really require their own section with half an essay of explanation, but they are important nonetheless. Especially as we approach our first beta, we’ll be turning more to fixing these small things and ensuring that what we have is of the highest quality.
New features
Implemented smuggling skill- Smuggling vendor
- Smuggling pickup caches
- Automated forum whitelist system
- Personal containers added (stashes)
- Admins now have a view container option to check containers without knowing the password
- Added support for (high tier Xen) food items fully healing a character from everything (bad eyesight and gas included)
- New Charcoal Refill item added (for filters)
- Stackable items
Improvements
Big refactoring of how skills are stored to remove the underlying concept of experience. This was no longer used due to the changes made to how skills worked, but still existed and was making it harder to code skill stuff. As it was also causing bugs, it was time to remove it. And then retest all skill stuff to make sure we didn’t break anything and fixed all the bugs.- Tempspawns plugin added from event server
- Item ESP tweaks
- Added gas and AFK to admin ESP
- Don’t show healing on admin ESP if only passive healing is going on
- CP death sounds were improved (now contains CP death sound before dispatch voice lines, which makes it sounds much more satisfying)
- OTA chatter on code blue with limited set of lines and long interval
- Some changes to death drop plugin to better support dropping CP suits on death
- Radio channels of CP’s are now tied to their suit rather than faction
- CP suit reactivates if it gets equipped by the owner (in case they pick it back up after accidental deaths)
- Combine suits now show the name on the suit if the person has their mask on
- Container password setting now has a special permission, as we intend to restrict this heavily (only CM+). Passwords should be set via the container lock item in most cases
- Context menu was reworked somewhat with new/different options
- Biggest container size was decreased to 9x9 now that item stacking is a thing
- Item changes related to updated contraband list (item descriptions mostly, removing some items from bartering, etc.)
- Minor recipe balances based on price calculations done for smuggling
- Gas Death Points now no longer exist, merged into Gas Points so only one value tracks how much gas someone has/how long they have left once they reached lethal levels
- Filters can be broken down now
- Yellow solvent is used to clean the bandana rather than alcohol
- Players with the t flag will now bypass prop whitelists
Bugfixes
Fixes for dispatch ESP- AFK status text no longer conflicts with injury text
- Fixed C flag being used for Combine stuff and Vehicles (Combine stuff is now U)
- Fixed /combinedoor command not showing up
- Player names no longer shown in the desc boxes
- Fixed a bug allowing you to enter god-mode with armor
- Fixed admin esp hp bar width for >100hp
- + Lots of smaller bug fixes
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