Assignment Patch.

The newest patch is now released, which now enables the mission system, and holds many bug fixes. As most of the new features have been introduced here, i just wish to copypaste the change log, and wish you a nice game play, as always. :)

SPOTLIGHT FEATURE

The Assignment system is now active. Altogether 81 NPC-contracted offers are available on all three starter bases, currently consisting of the following variety: Military recon, Bounty hunting, Destroy & recover, Transportation, Geology assignment and Mineral exploitation. These are all low-level and open-world assignments for now, more challenging and instanced types will also be added soon.

GAMEPLAY

• Fix: Various cargo load update bugs. Also, no more 'Cargo is full' errors when trying to package an item in cargo.
• Fix: Various ammo reloading bugs (negative ammo, reloads not using ammo etc.).
• New: Reinstated the Arkhe request timer. If you request an Arkhe you will have to wait 5 minutes before you can request another.
• Change: Removed the "automatic" option from scanner modules as they work always in "oneshot" mode anyways.
• Fix: Chassis/cargo scanners cannot be activated without a target anymore.
• New: Confirmation box when emptying a robot.

BALANCING

• Change: Reduced accumulator usage of laser weapons.
• Change: The bonus of the 'Seismics' extension has been reduced to 3% per level.
• Change: Slightly increased damage of the medium sonic ballistic missile.
• Change: Slightly reduced explosion size of small and medium sonic compact missiles.
• Change: Riveler and Symbiont received an additional leg slot.

ROBOTS AND MODULES

• Fix: Bad calculations for seismic damage type on missile launchers, which caused them do to more damage than intended.
• Fix: Armor repairer tunings affect both normal and remote armor repairer modules, despite their descriptions stating otherwise. The latter has now been corrected.
• Change: As a preliminary change for the new production system, lower level items have been added to named items' component lists. Due to the large number of items not all of them received this change yet, so you don't have to report this as a bug.

GRAPHICS

• New: Added icons for auxiliary accumulator, energy injector charge and universal harvester charge.

GRAPHIC ENGINE

• New: More stable shadow engine.
• Fix: Resource leaks when having no active robot.

EXTENSIONS

• Fix: ECM modules were unaffected by the 'Long distance electronic warfare' extension.
• Change: Removed the following extensions: Bounty hunting, Advanced parallel assignments, Confidential status improvement.

CORPORATIONS

• Change: Corporation storage names are now limited at 30 characters.

GUI

• Fix: Opened extensions window is now properly updated upon deploying.

SOUND

• New: Target lock/unlock sounds.

GENERAL

• New: Corporation short ID is now shown for chat members.
• New: Current Agent's name is now shown on the top statusbar.
• Fix: A server error was hindering the reuse of deleted character names on the same account.

WEBSITE

• New: Completed the robopedia (for now).

Still alive

Hello there everyone! :)
It's been more then one week, since I last posted here... sorry for that. :(
Let's see what do I have in my treasury chest ^^

Missions
Yes I know, we talked about it. "It's coming" etc. For far too long. :) Mostly, it's just polish and extra work till we can finally release it to the closed beta server.

Sooo... Let's pick up a mission! :)

As it was told before, the first mission pack will contain 81 mission, all of them focuses on low level players, to balance out the "leveling" process. Then if it works as we want, we just add new missions in packs.

We have 6 types of mission at this very moment:

• Bounty hunting: You have to kill x piece of robot.
• Destroy&Recover: Get x piece of item, from a type of robot.
• Delivery: Transport special, Mission items (Load) between bases.
• Military Recon: Use the the chasis/cargo scanner on x piece of robot.
• Geology assigment: Use the scanner, with a predefinied geoscanner charge type.
• Mineral exploitation: Get x amount of material.
  

+ to all of this, we set position. So you have to do mining/killing/scanning on a preset location.

hmm: the radar also shows now targets.

Waypoints: new feature

Now you can send your waypoints to other players.

Lock Sound effects

Let the video talk instead of me. :) Beep Beep!

Community news

From time to time, we have some pvp action too. So I looked around for some video.
Fantastic work guys, thank you very much for crafting such videos!

Translate the Perpetuum project!
Many of you asked it previously, that would it be possible to translate the project into other languages. As the call for participation went to official state, just enough person has volunteered for the job. The game is under translating into German and Portugal! When a translation is complete, the client's language option will include it, and you will be able to use it.
To the translators: I'm amazed.. Thank you for your work! :)
(As I just wrote these lines, I heard that the devs added the new flags to the client's resources :) )

Production revamp

Due to the rising number of questions about the new production system we decided to shed some light on the general plan of things to come. This overview will not go into specifics because the system - as we're talking about not yet completely implemented and tested ideas - might still be subject to change.

First off: patents and licenses will become obsolete. This doesn't mean that the NIC you invested in them will go down the drain, we'll set up some means to compensate the owners of such items. (probably in the form of npc buy orders)

In the new system we split production into two parts: mass production and prototype production.

Mass production will function in a similar manner as the current system, however instead of being based on patents it'll be based on reverse engineering existing items. You'll be able to take any item and combined with a research kit you'll be able to create a calibration program. (This process will destroy both the item and the research kit. Also, the research kits will have varying quality, and different items will have different minimal requirements from a research kit to be reverse engineered) Calibration programs will be used to configure factory assembly lines to mass produce the desired item. Factory calibration will however get out of alignment with each run (reducing the time/material effectiveness of production) so from time to time you'll need to recalibrate the assembly line with a new calibration program.

So mass production is based on reverse engineering. But reverse engineering of course requires an already existing item, so we'll also be introducing a new form of item creation system called prototyping. With this system you'll be able to create any item out of thin air with very high material costs. An item created this way will be just like any item except for the investment it takes to actually produce it. These prototypes will most likely be taken to mass production via the reverse engineering/factory system.

To ensure that not every item is available for prototyping for everyone right at the launch of the new production system we're introducing the knowledge base - a sort of encyclopedia where you'll be able to collect information about Nia, the technology there and possibly more (lore, mission info, we have many ideas). By researching a type of loot taken back from npcs you'll be able to expand this knowledge base. Once you have sufficient knowledge of an item you'll be able to create that item using the prototype system.

This way we can introduce new items into the game without the items actually dropping in the form of loot. As players expand their knowledge base some of them will be able to build the newly introduced item, build a single prototype and then take that item to mass production. Others will then be able to buy these items off the market, reverse engineer them and start mass production on their own.

This is the basic material and item flow of the new system, the specifics are still being worked out as we're implementing it. Any thoughts on the ideas here are welcome in the comments section.

work-work

As always. Specially, I worked a bit on missions, and it's just looks like cool. We going to have missions! ^^ Soon.

What else do I have to share with you? :)

First of all, as we updated the live client with new rocket animation, every1 was like "wow that's cool". Actually, it was just a rough, not perfectly configured animation. So we worked on the details, so now... its just looks like much better.

I had to check out some npc flock, and then I found a whole group of players farming it :) So i quickly made some movie... The trick is, that its captured trough the developer client, which already has the new rocket animation. Turn HD on!

GM|Mancs looking around in his messy harddrive, full of useless things...

Community news. He-he.

Did you ever heard of YARR? Well, M2S did. Perpetuum's first pirate corporation actually works hard to make everyone else life a bit... yeah harder. So bring up the Grog, reload the cannons, (I mean lasers) do the Three Trials, and u can be a Pirate. Be aware to step on the Outer Islands without proper defense.

Each day, our community grows bigger and bigger. Actually, Black Widow Company is one of our fastest growing corporation, with many members trying out the game. Hello there guys! :)

What do I have what do I have? Oh yes, Ta-ta-ta-da! Symbiont, HeavyMech category harvester robot.

Now if you take a closer look, u can have two guess. That thing in his left shoulder is there basicly, or What is that?! Even more: Whats on his right shoulder?!Well, its looks like we have a medium industrial aoe weapon.(for clearing the plants etc) And... Small Artillery weapon. GM|Mancs uses thermo-optical camouflage, to disappear into the fog, leaving many mysterious questions for another time. Later ;)

Arena Event

Yesterday, me and BoyC had a bit fun with the online players. :)
We quickly created an arena, and made some player Vs npc rounds :)

New patch, exploit fun! :)

The first days of 2010 were pretty interesting so lets see what did we fix... in today's patch. :)

-Our dear testers found two speedhax exploits, which have been now fixed.
-We heard many testers complaining that the resists ain't working... So we tested it, and found out they are working perfectly. But every ammo type shot kinetic damage instead of seismic. Ouch. Fixed. :D
-We even had a reload exploit. We like to fix these exploits, as this type of testing requires the most thinking/hardwork to find. ^^
-We had a bit of client fps slowdown, because the lazy shadows went to party. The party's over, so we forced them back to work. Fps is back now. Hamsters are healthy in the server room too.
-Rockets now have a nice smoke effect! Check it out asap! :)

We tried to have a bit of brake, but still, we allowed around 100 players into the game during the holiday, invitation based. :)

Dehrios has become GM in the last days, as a reward for his hard work on player support. He's really helpful for us, because he's even available, when we are sleeping or having a party... in the middle of the night! (at least for us.) You can contact with him in English language, only. Cheers ;)

Our Online player record has been now 72, and We have a new statistic on the blog, representing player death per hour. We all pray for the lost souls of our brothers, fighting for a better world, and for an enslaved Nia. Don't worry, these are just robots. Shhh, move along citizen.

Update: BoyC just told me that we accepted 200 new beta registrations. Check mailbox ;)