Looking into remedies for the lag. I've pushed some code I'm hoping will help reduce server/database stress initially, and over time we'll try to make some more optimizations to help deal with the current load.

We are seeing unprecedented numbers in wasteland active at the same time (unprecedented in the sense that it's been a very long time since we've had this many online) so as activity evens out, it'll get a better there as well. That + live wl = server stress.

As a volunteer dev, without direct server access, it's tricky to do deeper, more granular debugging of the server or database utilization but generally the live WL is a problem so will keep trying some fixes over the course of this week, starting tomorrow.

As a little "sorry your day sucked in WL" token, I'll be running double gains for the game November 14th and 15th (Saturday and Sunday) starting at 12:01 AM Server Time Saturday (right after midnight) and ending at the end of the weekend at night - Sunday 11:59 PM.

Please stop pm'ing me asking me what is AM and PM which part of the day is which.

The new map is live. It's a void map, so no HQs.

There's an issue with the grid inside of the WL, it's very dark. I turned off clouds and fog of war that were present on the WTF mode map, and this is the result. Aldo might know how to fix it but I can't reach him currently, so we'll have to deal with this for a little while.

Good luck everyone!

Also, here are the standings from the WTF mode map just for fun.

??? - 19690 points
Chapter - 10540 points
Outcasts - 9630 points
Dark Flame - 8510 points
Blade of Dawn - 3180 points

The latest warfare results are as follows:

Warfare: September - October 2020
1: Outcasts: 1,606,315 points
2: Chapter: 1,004,040 points
3: Dark Flame: 720,790 points
4: Blade of Dawn: 646,360 points

Congratulations to OC as well as to the effort shown by the other gangs!

Next map will start sometime around tomorrow (Sunday - 1st November) 12:00 PM ish, contingent on when Bongo and I are up.

WTF Mode will be active until then. Thanks for all those who joined in some of the manual events I ran. Right now there are halloween npcs and minimoos spawning periodically until tomorrow (with occasional world boss spawns).

This WTF mode showed the following (other than lag with the ~50+ players we had in WL all trying to attack/move/do things super fast ):

1. Maps can be ANY size now
This is one of the fundamental changes to the WL Map System I hinted at earlier and now you all saw.

2. WL NPCs can be big and occupy several tiles at once
This started out as a bug last night when I was adding the ability to show images of npcs on a tile, like we do in Raids. This turned into a feature when I thought it could be cool to attack NPCs from any tile they're on (and in the future, being able to cause damage to body parts individually for different effects). I'll be looking to add this into raids too.


3. We can have animated objects in the WL
The animations like the Off-Plane Being and the weird circle colored thing that X-Corp deployed earlier today are not gifs; I had to put some solid work into making those animations work in the WL system but they do! Even more interactive wl!

4. Fog of war/weather effects
There are weather effects and vision restrictions/fog of war-ish now supported.

5. NPC Spawner System
As many of you saw with the recurring NPCs, there is an actual spawn system for npcs now that's fully automated. Previously, stuff like minimoo and halloween npcs would rely on manual spawning or manual code for each new thing.

Happy Halloween and look out for more content and raids coming soon!

P.S: The lore implications from the ending of today's WL event are very real and tie into Domothar's storyline as well as the Hive's history. I think some people recorded it so I'll leave it to them to share/analyze.

Starting hopefully tomorrow, the dev server will have a sort of ..new version of wasteland that I've basically slogged over in ..probably ~16-20 hours over the last few days.

Video example

The dev server currently has an early draft of it live but it's not worth testing yet until the video version is live on dev (you can tell by the guard numbers being similar in style to the existing WL guard number style).

The key things to note are:

• No more page reloads
  
  
  • Yup, I'm taking us real-time with the wasteland by adapting the Raids map engine.
  
  
  • (except for going into a fight with a guard or player or when you get booted out of wl)
  
  
  
  
  
• Square control, guard counts, structures on the map, Warfare chat, Players in area are now controlled by the real-time data, which means you'll likely see eversoslightly faster information when someone comes in or leaves or other updates happen.



• Map engine supports animations/effects (see video for example ), which means greater potential for a more interactive WL.



• A much cleaner/simpler rendering process for the map allowing greater flexibility to devs (want to increase the grid view distance? want to add fog of war? other effects? animated icons? mobile-friendly WL ..etc pretty easy to do so now)



• Friendlier for mobile players since we're not reloading each time. Over time, I'd like to add an optional template that's mobile friendly for wasteland, similar to raids.

All of this ultimately means faster wasteland performance for all. This needs to be validated in testing but the simple fact that we're skipping reloading and are live updating the view like raids will save you a ton of time over time.

To note: If your connection to legacy is bad, you'll still experience a not-super-fast experience. But I believe it'll definitely be slightly more optimal than the full reloads we do today.

Imma crash, someone start a thread in WL & Raids for feedback/suggestions. As you can see with the HP bars, I'm updating some parts of the UI.

~Aldo