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