PlaneShift 0.5.9 released!

Talad

We are happy to announce a new PlaneShift release! 0.5.9 has finally arrived! This release has a graphical update for some of the main areas, better lighting, new sounds and music, better NPC day/night cycles and many new features on the PlaneShift Engine which will allow us to add new content in the next coming weeks and months. A big thank to all the developers who dedicated endless hours to make this happen!

Note: please remember PlaneShift is made by volunteers with community based development.

Here is the detailed changelog:



Art

• 
  Updated laanx temple geometry and textures
• 
  Performance improvements to hydlaa plaza
• 
  Updated hydlaa jayose with new houses and other new art
• 
  Updated tutorial area with new houses
• 
  Updated hydlaa winch with new houses and added bump maps
• 
  Added new magic staff items, three for each magic Way!
• 
  Updated the lighting and skybox of all levels to have a more realistic day/night effect
• 
  Changed the speed of walk and run to be more realistic, and allow better animations
• 
  Added blending of walk/run to smooth the transitions
• 
  Fixed trasparency problem on all outdoor maps (terrain)
• 
  Added harnquist shop's interior
• 
  Added grass to all outdoor/terrain maps (experimental)

Engine - graphics:

• 
  Added support for GLSL shaders. This should improve compatibility with intel graphic cards but could give problems with old drivers so: update your drivers!
• 
  Added the first iteration of a new NPCUI for npc interactions
• 
  Fixed some issues with pictures in help windows and books (they should start to appear soon)
• 
  Added a lock/unlock function to the quickspell bar (you can enable the bar with "/show quickspell"
• 
  Fixed texture loading order on character which fixes problems with klyros/enkidukai skin colour being wrong and disappearing armor

Engine - rules:

• 
  Overhauled the music rules support to work by limiting the amount of notes instead of making them wrong. Additionally several problems regarding musical instruments have been fixed.
• 
  Added information about quality when a new item is created through crafting

Engine - Artificial Intelligence:

• 
  Merged gsoc2011 work on tribes and expanded from there by adding several functionalities to NPC which should start to show in the next months, making them more immersive and able to act as tribes.
• 
  (for devs) several improvements to functionalities to handle npc paths in order to allow an easier change of them directly from the client
• 
  Added support to the npcclient to handle spell casting
• 
  Added several perceptions and scripting options in the npcclient to allow to check for more conditions and act appropriately
• 
  (for gm/dev) added suppport for /percept to trigger perceptions on NPC and additional information about the NPC status in /info

Engine - Infrastructure:

• 
  From now on clients will just authenticate with sha256 passwords (if you cannot login you can restore the password from the registration page or input your password from scratch in a 0.5.8.1 client and get in-game, then try logging back in 10 minutes later
• 
  Desura clients now will ship with the updater functionalities disabled, you can still enable them by changing the pslaunch.cfg (Update.Enable option) but we suggest to use the desura client update functionalities.
• 
  Now the linux client will run again old older distributions (GLIBC 2.7), additionally several libraries have been updated.
• 
  Improvements to the updater which should be more stable after this release.
• 
  (for dev) added support to restart the npcclient directly from an admin client /quitnpcclient
• 
  Added a button in pslaunch to allow easy deletion of the shadercache
• 
  Fixed a bug which could show the server as unreachable after logging out (for example after deleting a character)

Engine - general:

• 
  Added some command line commands to set character descriptions (/setdesc , /setoocdec , /loaddesc , /loadoocdesc )
• 
  (for devs) mathscripts and paths can now be reloaded from the database at runtime allowing an easier development, and restart-less fixes. (/reload path, /reload mathscript)
• 
  (for devs) added support for buff-able variables on a character
• 
  (for devs) several places are now more script-able: when damage is applied to a character, when a new item is created from crafting, etc. Additionally several ways to change things regarding items and inventory have been added to scripting support.
• 
  (for gm) fixed a crash when using names of offline entities as target.
• 
  (for gm) now it's possible to see mana in the detail windows of characters.
• 
  Fixed dangling alliance/guild data being kept in the db even if they were effectively not existent any more.
• 
  (for devs) Allow multiple crafting patterns to be within one book.
• 
  Removed book xml being printed to stdout when opened.
• 
  (for devs) Added support for restrains in the loot item modifiers (black/white list and no check mode support)
• 
  Fixed crash when using label on target function.
• 
  (for skinners/dev) It's now possible to show and hide windows with pawsscripting using WindowName:Show()/:Hide()
• 
  Fixes on the quality options in pslaunch not being set correctly sometimes
• 
  Languages are now sorted by name in pslaunch and don't show duplicates anymore
• 
  Fixed error shown when opening books written by others
• 
  Fixed take and stack all on action location items
• 
  Fixed selection of skins with dots in the filename
• 
  Fixed issues in dictionary handling with the spellchecker

Engine from crystalspace:

• 
  Several fixes in shader management including crash fixes.
• 
  fixed support to recent openal libraries (which have now been used)

Setting:

• 
  updated many NPCs to have all base dialogue triggers (like greetings, how are you, tell me about you, goodbye, ...)
• 
  Updated the cooking quest chain to allow earlier access to basic cooking books and more logical quest progression.
• 
  Continued improvements and bug fixes to current quests.

Audio:

• 
  New 15 minute ambient music for Hydlaa Plaza, Magic Shop
• 
  New Battle Env Sounds
• 
  Fixed water sound on Bronze Doors Fortress

Known Bugs:

• 
  Fog and rain can be rendered wrongly on certain platforms (big white areas on screen)
• 
  Grass is experimental for now, a bit too tall and enabled only at short distance. You can enable/disable it in pslaunch.
• 
  While speaking with NPCs you may get a double bubble (one from the new system, one from the old system)

Revofire

is this a sandbox type game? im really interested in  a Runescape alternative which has magic but medieval but not too much of both.