What's New

Spellcasting and Particle Effects

The largest amount of time spent on any feature this release was getting the spell particle effects reverse engineered and implemented into Unity. No information about the classic particle format existed so it had to be (painfully) deciphered. The spell casting routine and casting logic have also been added. Data effects (i.e. how the spells affect the player/targets) will be implemented with the combat system.

NPC Pathing

The base logic for NPC pathing has been implemented and you are now able to see patrollers (NPCs that follow a specific path) and wanderers (NPCs that move randomly in a predefined area). NPCs will also open doors when they encounter them. There is still additional work to do in the future involving NPCs pathing to players.

Looting

NPCs can now be killed with the /kill command and looted. If they have loot which is visible (weapons, shields, etc), the equipment models will appear on the NPC.

Zone Fixes

One of the goals for this release was to have all zones loading and looking correct. The Lantern Beta team spent a great deal of time going through each zone and identifying dozens of bugs. We're happy to report that most of them have been fixed and as a result, we are now able to load into all 124 zones supported by the client. This includes special cases like the Loading Zone, the Tutorial Zone, and the GM only Sunset Home. Thank you to everyone on the Beta Team for your effort!

Delayed Zone Instantiation

One of the biggest performance issues in Lantern has been loading and rendering zones with a large number of objects. In most zones, the overhead (especially on modern hardware) is negligible, but in some Kunark and Velious zones there are upwards of 24k objects. Creating these objects all at once, especially as most of them are animated, has a huge performance impact with load times taking upwards of 30 seconds and the framerate dipping down into single digits. Objects are now intelligenly pooled, and stream in as you walk around the zone, eliminating both loading and framerate issues.

Debug UI

We've added a debug UI which can be accessed via the backtick (`) key. This UI is always loaded, is separate from the game UI, and houses both a debug console and a canvas for custom editor windows. You can try them out by typing /zone or /spawn without any arguments. Expect more functionality to be added in the coming releases.

Full Changelog

• Added spell casting routine and visual particle effects
• Added NPC patrol and wander pathing
• Added NPC looting + item/money tables
• Added weather system (rain only - /weather 1)
• Added delayed zone object instantiation and pooling to improve load times/performance
• Added /kill command
• Added /resetui command
• Added Forage skill
• Added Sense Heading skill
• Added Social animations and associated chat messages
• Added in-game screenshot ability via keypad minus key
• Added debug console window, invoked via back tick key
• Added zone picker when /zone has no parameters
• Added spawn picker when /spawn has no parameters
• Added Sunset Home (cshome) to list of valid zones
• Added NPC spawn batching to speed up zone load
• Added collision to spawned boats
• Changed zone spawning to use spawn groups and spawn percentages
• Changed doors to be streamed in on zone load vs created on zone import
• Fixed dozens of issues and verified that all 124 zones load correctly
• Fixed raycast logic to correctly place NPCs on the floor and light dynamic objects
• Fixed raycast to allow for casting against non solid surfaces (e.g. water, lava)
• Fixed spawning under the world when zoning into a handful of zones
• Fixed incorrect appearance of some Kobolds
• Fixed Shadow Men not being invisible
• Fixed missing zone objects in some Kunark zones
• Fixed missing light instances in some Kunark zones
• Fixed issue with mismatched number of vertices and vertex colors
• Fixed issue with many zones using incorrect fire material
• Fixed a few issues with the zone loading sequence
• Fixed incorrect collision on objects with skeletal animation
• Fixed random hang on start due to incorrect SQLite DLL (thanks mixxit and kicnlag)
• Fixed character placeholder to be lit correctly
• Fixed sound issue when moving quickly past NPCs

Download

Windows, macOS and Linux builds are available here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1C9W4mtIOQJ4y2-UwA9VxjIW-AljPlivO?usp=sharing

Asset Bundles

The following asset bundles have been added:

1. sprites (external) - Contains item, spell gems, spell icons, and spell particle sprites.
2. ui_debug (external)

The following asset bundles have been updated:

1. construct - 0.1.4 (included in build)
2. equipment - 0.1.4 (external)
3. shaders - 0.1.4 (included in build)
4. startup - 0.1.4 (external)
5. characters - 0.1.4 (external)
6. ui_dev - 0.1.4 (included in build)
7. ui_titanium - 0.1.4 (external)

New Team Member

We're happy to welcome Landon, community member and Discord server host, to the Lantern team as a Community Manager. Landon deserves special recognition for not only being an early supporter of the project and allowing us to use his server as a home, but for helping us create the type of positive community we want to be a part of. Welcome!

New Website

A new website will be up shortly, (finally) containing a roadmap, guide to getting the client set up and an FAQ page. Stay tuned.

- The Lantern Team