State of Combat 3/13/05

[HR-Marduk]

Just a quick note on where combat stands on my side of the fence, as Trevor is going through weapon, attack, damage calculations and such.

Engagement System: The engagement system is, for all intents and purposes, done - and has been for some time. The last major hurdle was teaching creatures to use it properly, which is now in the final testing and debugging phase. However, due to the nature of the system, once it is live, it will be very difficult to make any changes or enhancements to the core mechanics. For this reason, I have been phasing it in slowly, and will continue to do so over the next few weeks. During this time you can expect to see a few new hunting areas with different variations of creature combinations, and old hunting areas brought online with the ES. You are encouraged to hunt in these and give any feedback you feel may be useful. Once again, it's unlikely that any major changes will be made after the system is fully live, so now is your time to comment.

Creature AI: Extensive updates to creature AI have been necessary to implement the engagement system, and a few (likely more noticeable) updates are on the way. Creatures will gradually become more intelligent over the next few weeks, using a bit more strategy when selecting their targets and attacks. In addition, creatures will act differently based on level and other unseen factors, so one will have to be careful when selecting and scouting hunting grounds. During this time, it's likely that several creatures will not function properly; while this should only occur in a handful of creatures, certain abilities will not properly use the engagement system (for instance, royal guards will only use blood siphon at melee range). I'm already fully aware of when and why this is happening, so please refrain from filing any bug reports or posts on this phenomenon.

New Attacks: Several new attacks for various professions will be released following or coinciding with the release of the engagement system. As none of these have yet been developed, I'm going to refrain from mentioning any specifics here.
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HR-Marduk

[the blue fairy]

thanks for the update Marduk
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