Agenda[list]

• Current projects
  • Pen-and-paper role-playing game in Ryzom universe
  • OP refactoring
• Recrutement: Event team, Support Team, Translation team

For some time we have been working on a role-playing game in the Ryzom universe. The goal is to be able to play outside the New Lands, either on the Old Lands, now or before the Swarmings, or in other more remote places. Places that will never be in the MMO, for example places where resurrection does not exist.
There is a playable first draft, and I need testers, initially one or two teams of four people. People to play and point out what works well and give suggestions for improvement. For the moment, the working version is in French, and my level in other languages means that I can only have people playing in French. But if a game master wants to get involved, we can also set up tests in other languages.

The outpost refactoring project is Dev's current #1 priority.
Now that GvE tests are finished, we are preparing the next tests on Atys, which will involve GvG. Like GvE tests, these ones will be performed on special outposts.
Ulukyn (Dev) will come to present this GvG part in detail during the next Ryzom Forge meeting on Monday, December 6th.

Support Team

The Support team continues its recruitment campaign for volunteers.
We need you, your availability, your technical and gameplay knowledges of the game but also your diplomacy, to expand our ranks and best meet the expectations of players.
To learn more, please consult this post: https://app.ryzom.com/app_forum/index.php?page=topic/view/22047/2 #2 .
To apply, contact Tamarea exclusively at tamarea@ryzom.com, and do not tell anyone about your application!

Event Team
We're looking for volunteers who want to help write event scripts, or who want to become actors by playing a character in the events we play.
Training is provided, and the entry into acting is done very gradually to give the recruit time to get used to it.
Join us to benefit from this unique experience!
To apply, contact Tamarea exclusively at tamarea@ryzom.com and do not tell anyone about your application!

Translation Team
We are looking for volunteers to translate in-game texts and official announcements into English, German, Spanish, Russian, French, as well as to proofread texts in these five languages.
To apply, contact Tamarea exclusively at tamarea@ryzom.com.

That was the last topic for today!
If you'd like to contact Drumel about tabletop roleplaying, you can do so on chat.ryzom, or reply to the meeting minutes on the forum when they're posted.
The next meeting will be held on Monday, December 6th!
The two main topics will be Bugs and testing, and Outpost redesign.

Agenda

• Update on recent crashes
• Feedback on the Client's beta tests
• Feedback on Boss refactoring
• Progress on OP refactoring (GvG)

Let's talk a little about the recent server problems, there have been several.
The first problem, the most critical, was quite particular and could crash any Ryzom service. Indeed, a Ryzom server is composed of many services which manage an aspect of the game: the EGS which manages the entities (NPC, creatures, actions, etc...), the IOS manages texts and chats and other smaller services but whose role is also important. Now, the bug could occur in one of these services and up to 2-3 times a day, which depending on the service that crashed could cause chain reactions (and therefore a server that crashes completely). The reason of the crash is a bit technical (I could give more details if needed) but a fix was applied and since then none of the services crashed because of this bug.
Another bug has finally been fixed. This is one of the oldest known bugs in the game. We suspected that it came from the missions and we had a hunch that it only happened with characters returning to the game after a long absence. We were able to investigate this bug because we unintentionally caused it by moving occupations into Kitins' Lair. This maneuver, in fact, unknowingly caused the aliases (identification numbers saved in the character's file kept by the server) of the missions concerned to change. Now, if a mission changes aliases and a player has kept the old alias in the character's save file on his own machine, the server will crash as soon as the character in question is loaded. This is because aliases were not originally designed to be changeable... no one anticipated that some missions would be moved from one continent to another. Finally, this diagnosis made it easier to find and fix the bug and the unfortunate player who was crashing the server every time he tried to log was finally able to join Atys without a hitch.
A third bug has been identified in the IOS, which occurs quite rarely. We made the hypothesis that it occurred when a message was sent by the server on a dynamic chat channel, at the same time as one of the players disconnected and added several checks to avoid this conjunction. For the moment, no new crashes have been reported. We keep an eye on it though.
Finally, the last bugs (which cause slowdowns and huge delays in sending messages) occur when the SU crashes (SU = Shard Unifier, a service especially useful when several servers are running - like Aniro, Arispotle and Leanon - or when Ring sessions are active). We have already fixed one of them, the fixing of another is in progress. We will strengthen the part of SU code that handles database writing.
That's it for the information about the recent crashes. Are there any questions?

See forum.
We need as much feedback as possible, because the timing of the next patch depends on it: the sooner we validate the beta client, the sooner we will patch the new features.
So, are there people who have been able to play with the beta client regularly?

See forum.
What are your feedbacks, especially about the new algorithm of spawn of Bosses?
We would like, indeed, to know if its activation in all regions of Atys is now possible or if it still needs some adjustments.

The project is pretty well advanced.
We are running the last alpha tests and the tests on the test servers (Yubo & Gingo) should start soon. At the moment they are focusing on new GvG outposts in zones 50 and will allow us to determine if the NPC setting is good (it is at its minimum, but fighting a guild and NPCs simultaneously can be a bit of a challenge).
During this GvG test, we will move forward with the rest of the project. Some of the changes that are already ready, such as reducing the duration of battles to 1 hour and lowering the cost of attacks, could be implemented quickly. The rotation of materials and the taking of outposts by hostile NPC tribes would then come in a later phase of project development.
We agreed to give the project a boost over the next two months.

Agenda

• Update on dev tools
• January patches presentation
• Silan refactoring
• Boss refactoring
• OP refactoring

I'm going to come back to the year 2021, which has been the year of consolidation if you will.

We have indeed updated quite a few things, on the one hand the servers, the webIG and the client code (with the merging of the code of Ryzom Core 4), but also the compilation process which is now based on Visual C++ 2019 for Windows. In addition a tool, Hunter, has been implemented by Nimetu (RT) to compile the whole more easily.

Beyond the tools, the past year has also seen the developer team update its way of working: we now use gitlab more for bugs, communication and patch management and we are very satisfied with it... Wondering why we didn't do it earlier! There is one last thing to do: joining our server and data client repositories with the ryzom-core repository, so that the development process will be even easier.

We have also worked on enriching our collection of generic or model-based systems.This is the case, for example, of the "shops" which are increasingly (and will be in the future massively) used to make items or services available in game (for example, purchases in Elyps, whether from Nations merchants, grooms or Allegory carvers NPCs). This is also the case for the Lessons, which are the basis of the information transmitted to players in-game, as well as for the Encyclopedia window (ctrl+E), which includes the Daily Missions, the Storyline, the future tutorial and, recently, the titles, all of which are (or will be) based on the same model.

As a result, we have (and will have) fewer systems to maintain, thus fewer bugs, and we will be able to concentrate our efforts on three main tasks. Namely:
• completion of the three refactoring projects (Silan, Bosses, Outposts) ;
• Storyline's ongoing and the addition of content that has yet to be completed (e.g. Supreme Tokens);
• bugs' fixing and improvement of the client (by the way, the year 2022 will start with a patch – currently in test – illustrating this point).

As Ulukyn mentioned, one of our goals for 2022 is to improve the player experience through fixing bugs or bettering the client. The first patch of January will do exactly this.

The first change we made was to the system for trading between player characters. More generally, we've tried to improve the process of item trading, because it's not the best at the moment. In addition to changing and simplifying the layout of the trade window, we added two more slots for items. It was mainly the exchanges of jewel sets that led us to this last change.

Another change we've made to the player trade window is the ability to drag and drop items into the window from all of your inventories. This way, if you want to trade items carried by your Zig, you won't have to transfer them to your bag first, thus interrupting the trade to complete it later. Note: In order not to clutter up the item selection window, this one won't show you items from other inventories and this function will only operate by drag and drop.

The final change to the trade window presented to each player is the addition of item bulk and weight indicators. In fact, a small indicator (similar to the one in the upper right corner of your inventories) will be displayed next to both offers, which will show the weight and bulk of the items given and received. All this in the hope of making the exchanges a little more fluid.

Then, stacking of items. Anyone who has fought in PvP knows what it feels like to have an inventory cluttered with crystallized spells. From now on, crystallized spells of the same stanza (or identical stanza) will automatically stack in the inventory where they are stored. As the same clutter currently occurs in the bag of working crafters, identical items produced will now automatically stack in the inventory.

Any questions so far?

Let's move on to fixes.
I have to say that this patch is quite big, so I'm leaving out some small details. You'll get the surprise when the patchnote will be released!

We have a lot of fixes in this patch, especially concerning the Zigs:
• fix of the bug that gave them the wrong status when they were hosted in bags;
• addition of their inventories as tabs in the commercial windows of merchant NPCs;
• addition of the ability to transfer items directly from their inventory to your apartment's and guild hall's inventory;
• fixed the malfunction of locking/unlocking items in their inventory.

By the way, the lock status of items will now be displayed in your apartment and guild hall inventory.

Any questions?

I redesigned the tutorial after several opinions from the first testers, and it is now more intuitive and interactive. The feedback about the first two lessons is quite positive. So I'm going to continue and I hope it will really help new players to get their bearings.

I take this opportunity to remind you that the test team is recruiting. So, if you want to test either the patch implementing the additions to the client, or the first lessons of the tutorial, you are welcome.

Boss refactoring will soon be applied all over Atys Atys. However, the work is bound to continue, though we haven't yet determined exactly what we'll be working on. But we'd love to make hunting for Bosses a most funny activity on Ryzom.

One of the ideas that has come up among us, so that players can escape routine and their tactical skills can flourish, is the one of providing each of the current Bosses their own defense mechanics. That's the idea which originated this refactoring project… and gave it its first name: "Boss in the Box".

If you have other ideas, please feel free to post them in the forum under the meeting report.

Any questions ?

We have been able to make progress on GvG, but its introduction seems interesting only if accompanied by the planned changes on all Outposts.

That's why we are planning to make several changes at the same time. Namely:
• reducing the duration of battles to one hour (already tested in Nexus);
• rotation of raw materials produced by each outpost every N days (to be determined), via server reboot;
• suppression of the production of Q50 and Q100 materials;
• addition of four outposts in level 50 regions for testing GvG battles.

After that, another patch will implement the last changes, as the project is well advanced thanks to the full-scale tests on the Atys server.

Any questions?