Well of Souls Really Old Release Notes

Well of Souls
(c) 1998-2014 Synthetic Reality Co.

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If you were looking for more recent release notes, you want: recent release notes.

Otherwise, keep reading here to see positively prehistoric release notes.

4/4/2000 ALPHA 32 INCLUDES:

* COMPATIBILITY: Overall compatible, but you'll have to re-enter your keyboard macros (new feature); Hotkeys will need to be redefined; The colors in the chat control will be slightly weird when playing with older versions; Previously hacked characters might be corrupt (probably not, but it depends on what you hacked); Text colors in the chat control will be weird with mixed versions. Earlier versions won't be able to see your 'gossip' chat; Old Guild Diary entries will be gone, but your notes should be found if you add someone back to the diary the next time you meet them... I hope.; If you have already done the Professor J quest, be sure to learn STUN before you upgrade.
* EAVESDROP SUGGESTION & BUDDIES. We seem to have quite a few people on the server these days, so the chat is scrolling pretty quickly. If you haven't done so already, you might want to think about disabling 'eavesdrop' mode by right-clicking in the chat area and de-selecting the option. This will make it so you know longer hear every word spoken in WoS, but just that chat of people 'nearby.'
A32 also introduces 'WoS Buddies' which gives you even more ways to fine-tune your communications.
* WOS BUDDIES. The right-click menu in the MAP list has a new option "Make xyz a Buddy" This actually pops open a second menu which gives you five choices: Regular (what you had before A32), Heart, Shield, Dunce, and Bones.
Everyone you meet in WoS starts out as a 'regular' buddy and has no extra glyph next to their name. But you can assign to each person you meet one of the four glyphs, which might mean: heart-someone you like, shield-someone you fight alongside of, dunce-someone you ignore but not mute, bones-someone who is dangerous. No one knows what you have categorized them as being, so feel free to call a dunce a dunce :-)
Basically this feature gives you a marker next to each member's name, and controls the color of their chat text, but there are a couple of other chat special effects based on buddies.
* DUNCE-MUTE CHAT OPTION. I hope the word 'dunce' isn't too emotionally charged. I figure you should mark as a dunce someone who you usually don't want to read the chat of, but aren't quite dismissing completely (as in the case of MUTE). I know when I use this feature, depending on my mood, I might want to mute all dunces or not. So with this option you can quickly turn off or on all dunce chat. It's in the right-click menu which appears in the chat control. For example, some people only ever seem to spout PKer challenges and often that's not interesting to me. This way I can turn it all off when I am trying to concentrate on something else, yet turn it all back on with a single command when I am feeling more interested.
* HEART EAVESDROP. Similar to the dunce mute, but the opposite. This puts you in eavesdrop mode only for the people you have tagged as 'heart buddies' Of course, this assumes you have turned off regular eavesdrop mode. Of course, the polite thing to do would be to create a /tune channel for you closest friends and stay in gossip mode on that channel. But anyone with EAVESDROP mode turned on should expect to see a lot of senseless chat (for example, people typing to NPCs in scenes! yes yes.. no.. yes.. size 5.. yes. yes.. no)
* MUTE SHOUTERS. Also in the right-click chat menu is the option to mute all shouters (heartbeat eavesdrop overrides this)
* MEM_HACK_DETECTOR. I did something simple which probably won't work in all cases, but might in fact detect some memory hacking and properly credit the 'cheat count' field. Note that mem hacking *can* lead to odd crashes, and I take no responsibility for that. Again, I appreciate the efforts of mem hackers to help expose weaknesses, but I do not condone the use of memhacking to evade the cheat counter or otherrwise diminish the quality of experience for other players. Show some consideration, even if it doesn't appear to be returned.
* SELL ALL IS FASTER. Heh heh, not that lurch was RIGHT or anything, it's just that I thought he was talking about something else.
* NEW ALIAS COMMANDS. Inspiration for this comes from Lady Gryphon who, as usual, is getting less than she asked for You know the old keyboard macros "/3=hello", well now they can have anything you like instead of just 0-9. for example "/kick=/a kicks @" If you include an @ symbol, it will be replaced by the argument after the command. For example:
Def'n: "/kick=/a kicks @ in the kiester."
Usage: "/kick guppyman"
seen: "Samsyn kicks guppyman in the kiester"
They work inside of AFK messages as well.
* NEW BOOK (OF WISDOM). Sort of a silly name, but the aliases described above get stuck into a text file called "alias.ini" and this book is just a copy of wordPad editing that file. In case you want to rummage through the current settings. Note that when you upgrade to A32, it will forget your current /n settings... sorry.
* NEW BOOK OF SKINS. This was in A31 and opens the skin browser, (same as typing /skin) but now you can browse in both solo and multiplayer mode. You can still only *change* in solo mode, but this lets you more easily check out new skins you pick up, and see their credits.
* PKER BULLY RULES CHANGED. I have taken pity on the weeny PKers. This won't take effect until everyone is using A32, but the rule is that even as a PKer, you can only be hit by another (non-cheating) PKer who is either of a lower level than you, or no more than 10 levels above you. If you hit any PKer (above or below you), you lose the protection of this rule for the duration of the scene. This is a bit tough to test at the moment, and it is likely I screwed it up. If cheating is involved, the person with fewer cheats has to hit first, in addition to the above rule.
* BOOK OF COLORS. There's a new book in town, and it lets you personalize nine different colors used in the chat window. (And this really was on the list before LG begged for it)
* PERSISTENT SERIAL NUMBER STUFF. When someone enters the game, but doesn't incarnate, I show whatever name I have laying around for them. It's nicer than nothing.
* YOU'RE THE STAR OF THE GAME! So, I put a little 'star' glyph next to your name to remind you who you are
* MUTE IS REMEMBERED. If you mute someone, they will stay muted the next time you encounter them. The mute symbol is now to the left of the happy face icon, so you can still see what sort of person they are, even when muted. The mute symbol is supposed to look like a chat bubble with a red X over it (Thanks, Ben!).
* WHISPER IS INDICATED. A pair of luscious red lips are shown next to the name of the person you are currently whispering to. This is also remembered for the next time you play, if you always end up whispering to the same person. Again, use a "/tune xxx" gossip channel if you want to keep in semi-private touch with friends elsewhere on the map.
* SKIN TRANSFERS ARE UNICAST. We won't see the benefit until I push the new server and everyone is A32. Sorry this took so long to implment, but it only became a crisis lately.
* TNL METER ADDED NEXT TO GP AND PP. Everybody started asking for this all of a sudden, go figger. To make it fit I had to play a little game. Numbers greater than 10,000 get abbreviated as "10K" etc. So your million dollars is "1000K." Hopefully, if you have over 10,000 PP or TNL, you don't really need to know the 3 least significant digits. So, a high-level character wil have something like this: "GP:523K PP:24K TNL:234K" while a weeny newbie will have something like: "GP:1234 PP:8630 TNL:4005"
* EQUIP LIST IS SORTABLE. By name or type. This doesn't seem that big a deal since you should be selling off your excess armor as you go along, and it's easy to scan for the green plus signs. BUt it wasn't too much work, either.
* ITEMS LIST IS SORTABLE. By Name, count, or typ (new column). This is actually useful since the potions and seeds now pop to the top when you sort by type (or bottom if you sort again)
* MAP LIST IS SORTABLE. By name, age, skin, serial number, versionID and cheat count. New names are still inserted at the top, no matter what sort you did last.
* HOTKEYS REMEMBERED PER CHARACTER. Your favorite FKEY bindings are now remembered inside your hero savefile itself. (So they are different for each hero). You can thank Lurch. (um, don't expect every suggestion to be accredited here BTW, my extreme gratitude to all idea-givers.)
* SCENE LOCKS FOLLOW PARTY LOCK SETTING. If you have enabled your 'party lock' feature, then only party members (and you might not have any if you are a loner), can drop into your scenes. Consider it a 'locked door' and all the XP goes to you you you.
* GUILD DIARY RE-DONE. Now two people with the same name will show up twice in the list (instead of overwriting each other). One person with several names will use a common 'notes' area, so you will accumulate notes about the human, not the character. But each character still has a single page in the diary. When you first look in your diary after upgrading, it will be empty. As you add pages, it should (I hope) recover any notes you wrote for that person..
*SPELLS CAN BE QUEST ITEMS. By which I mean that you can define a spell which doesn't appear on the 'learn spell' list (but that a scripted character can give you as a reward). First use of this is STUN can now only be obtained by solving the Professor J quest. If you have already done ProfJ, be sure to learn STUN before upgrading to A32.
* THE "HOW DO YOU" HELP WIZARD. The next time you type "How Do You" or "How Do I" in the chat control, instead of sending your question to the masses, I invoke the local help file with the rest of your sentence as the search key. (you can, by the way, also do this by typing: /help <keyword> if you want to look up something in specific). You can turn this obnoxious feature off by unchecking it in the HELP menu. It's real purpose is to get people to notice the HELP menu exists... "How do I make it stop popping up the help file?... Dang! Did it again"
* MORE CHARACTER CLASSES POSSIBLE. The details will be in the A32 quest.txt file, and old worlds should be compatible, but you can now insert the following OPTIONAL commands inside of a character class, to further define it, and limit its ultimate powers. If you don't use these commands, life will be as before:
DESCRIPTION - lets you stick a short description on the character creation dialog
MAX_ABILITY - lets you set the max for str, wis, sta, agi, and dex as 5 separate values (0-255 each)
START_ELEMENT_PP - lets you set the initial element training, in PP for a new character of this class
MAX_ELEMENT_PP - lets you set the highest allowed PP of training in elements.
START_HAND_PP - ditto, for right-hands (but remember each class has a favorite hand which always starts at level 5)
MAX_HAND_PP - ditto for right-hands.
Again, see the A32 quest.txt file for details and examples. (the examples are commented out right now, so be sure to remove the semicolons when you use the feature for real)
* INVISIBLE TOKENS. I forget who asked for it, but now if a 'token' defined in your quest file has no text associated with it, there will be no entry in your personal history for that token. This will make debugging your world a little harder. Of course, I think a well written token description is a good thing. the description doesn't HAVE to be meaningful, it could just be some literary fluff like : "We trekked many miles today, and I have the blisters to prove it"
* NEW BOOK - PERSONAL DIARY. This is a book you can use to record little notes to yourself (This was on my list, but I'll give LG credit for it anyway She suggests you use it to remember which towns had which level items, and additional clues relating to quests). It is global to the game (not per character). Only you can read it. It really just launches WordPad for you (I used wordpad here so you can use pretty fonts as you like - it's your book. The game never looks in here).
* WARNING ADDED to the avoid modified quest file option. I now popup a little (actually a LARGE) message box when you go to disable this feature, explaining the possible consequences, and encouraging you to upgrade to the latest version instead.
* MUTANTS ARE MORE INVISIBLE. Most, if not all, messages from mutants are now filtered (incarnations, join/leaves, etc.). Note that the death notices come from the scene host and are only muted if the host is muted. So you probably will get to keep reading about your favorite mutant's death.
* "DEATH SENTENCES" Instead of "Bill is dead" there are now a passle of different messages along those lines. Each includes the name of the monster or PKer delivering the final blow.
* YOU FOUND A/AN AMULET. Lurch gets his way.
* GUILD DIARY SELECTS NAME IN LIST. When you double-click or otherwise open the diary on a player name, that name is also selected in the list (was a bug) for easier deletion. Also a little asterisk appears in the list to each other name belonging to the same player.
* GOSSIP FREQUENCY REMEMBERED. that is to say, you will remain /tuned to the last freq you used.
* RED SHADOW ON MAP MEANS YOU CAN'T ENTER SCENE. Either because the scene host has a modified quest file (and you're ignoring those), or s/he has locked their party (and you aren't a member)
* BETTER SEARCH COMMAND IN QUEST EDITOR. Those four 'search' buttons do double duty as book marks and searchers, so expect them to remain a little weird. However, now the FIRST time you push one, it scans from the front of the file, ADDITIONAL pushes find next occurence. Switching to a different button starts from the top again. Like I said, it's still weird. Too bad. Tough. Get over it
* RESTORES CURRENT DIRECTORY after you muck with one of those windows standard file dialogs which tend to upset the delicate balance of nature.
* GHOSTS CAN NO LONGER.. use the join/leave party features. Nor can a ghost get quest tokens and rewards. D'oh, I can't believe that bug was in there!
* NO MORE INVISIBLE SKINS. Sorry. There are now minimum visibility limits for skins. Maybe someday we can have an invisibility spell or something. Of course, it would set your defense points to zero or something as a trade-off...
* NO MORE XP AUTO-PILOT. Try not to freak out, you knew this was coming.... If you don't take part in the fight (you just have to TRY, it doesn't matter if the monster is killed by the big tough guy before your little sword stroke gets a chance to be played out), but if you don't even try, you get no XP or GP (and everyone else gets what would have been your share). It's still not 'proportional' (I'm not convinced that's the best game decision), but you can't join a party and then go out to dinner and expect to be up 40 levels without a mouse click when you get back.
* SPAM REMINDER: If you type too much, you'll get spam-blocked and not even know people are not reading your chat. Type full sentences on each line. Don't break up your sentences one word per line or you'll get gagged for sure.

1/22/2000 ALPHA 31 INCLUDES:

COMPATIBILITY: Should be completely compatible with A30 (be sure to upgrade to A30 before upgrading to A31). High level characters will probably go UP a few levels.
* STRANGE SCENE-MATES. I guess it is the increase in the number of submaps and their layout which has increased reports of this bug (since it has been part of the game forever). Anyway, I wasn't including the submap idea in my distance calculation (hey, I didn't HAVE submaps when I wrote that!) so you were being pulled into scenes if your relative X,Y offset matched the other guy, EVEN IF YOU WERE ON DIFFERENT MAPS. Ooops.
* CUSTOM SHOPS. There is a limit to the # of items I can sell in a single shop, and A30 created SO MANY ITEMS that most of them can't be bought in the mega-store wallmarts on the A30 map. So, the A31 map has smaller shops with more tightly-controlled levels. (Port shrimpee only sells level 80-99 for example). So you'll have to travel around to find a specific item. But that's how these games usually work. Some things, like potions, are pretty universally available. Anyway, 66 new shop scenes in A31. And it's nicer this way since they provide local color, and possible plot point locations.
* ENABLE NEWS setting is remembered. Actually it was being remembered already, just on top of your 'enable map smoothing' setting instead. ooops.
* INFERNO REQUIRES FIRE BOOTS. Which means it is now unplayable until you do the fire boot quest (woo hoo, a necessary quest that already exists!) I'll do the water boot quest next, so you can get into the Sea Grotto (I think that's a pretty map, by the way). I am making it so you only have to wear the boots to get in. You can take them off after that and walk on lava without it hurting. Must be magic :-)
* QUEST ITEMS LIMITED TO ONE PER CUSTOMER. If an item is a quest item (set to cost 0 GP in the item table), attempts to give extra copies of it to a hero will reset the hero to having only one. This way, even a broken script can't hand out multiples. However, if you already have multiples, you won't get reset until the next time you are given another one - which may never happen)
* LEVEL-CHANGING RULES CHANGE AGAIN! Okie Dokie, it was too hard, it was too easy, it was too hard, now it is a bit easier again. I changed the 200K max to a sliding scale. So, XP per level is the smaller of two values. A linear value which increases with current level (with 250K needed for level 99-100, if that were possible). And a geometric value which increases a certain percentage of the previous level. So, the early levels are unchanged (easy), with proportional difficulty increases until eventually you slip into the linear section at the end. My level 87 character was boosted to level 92 as a result of this change, to give you an idea of the effect this might have on your higher level characters. Again, total XP is preserved, so we can play this game forever without really costing you actual XP :-)
* ALL BOOTS AVAILABLE. The fire, water, rubber, and various specialty movement boots are now all available somewhere or another, even if no big quest is required.
* LINK EDITOR SUPPORTS WEATHER AND FX. For each link point you can now specify the default FX and weather to be used in nearby camp/fight scenes. This means I can now have the lava bubble in Inferno and the Sea Grotto is really underwater. Plus, my favorite, snow!
* NEW GAME IN TOWN - MONSTER RACER. (Thanks to Ben for the almost-pun name, and thanks to [your name here] for the suggestion!) It's like slobber slots, but it is a 4-way race. Costs 100GP to play, you win 500GP if your horse wins, get your money back if your horse comes in second, otherwise you lose. This means that statistically it's a money-making machine. Heck, why not? I was going to make it all complicated with odds and all, but it's kinda fun in this simple form.

1/14/2000 ALPHA 30 patch includes:

COMPATIBILITY: Your old characters should continue to work, with minor degradation of level for the highest level characters (admit it, A29 was too easy!). But if you have old characters YOU MUST USE THEM WITH A29 FIRST. Upgrading to A30 from an older version may corrupt your character, and you MUST NOT DEGRADE AFTER MOVING TO A30. (well, you can try it, but don't come crying to me :-)
* AUTOMATIC NAME GENERATION. If you can't think of an interesting alias or Real World name, A30 will make one up for you. (whether you like it or not).
* SPAM FILTER. Source-side anti-spammer for chat. If you type too much chat too quickly, you get gagged for awhile until you shut up.
* PERSISTENT SERIAL NUMBERS. No longer says "Soul (shareware) Left Game" and the serial numbers make an effort to be persistent (no guarantees, however)
* CHAT SCROLL SNAPBACK. If you scroll back in the chat window, the autoscroll is disabled until either: 1.) 20 second elapse since the last movement of the scroll bar, or (NEW!) 2.) you drag the scroll bar 'thumb' all the way to the bottom.
* MIX STUFF. several MIX server changes have been made in this period, which will release with MIX 1.08 Mostly it is stuff to auto-detect various hacker attacks and reply in kind.
* NEW WORLD PUBLISHING IMPROVEMENTS. Check Online For New Worlds no longer freezes up if the INI file cannot be accessed from the web site (the [X] close button works to recover). This doesn't make the web server itself any more reliable, of course, just lets you give up waiting without a ctl-alt-delete
* FIXED WORLD VERSION NUMBER BUG. Fixed the version number handling for self-published worlds. Be sure to have the same version number in your 'public' INI file as you have in your world's WORLD.INI file. (Two INI files are required for self-publishing - see web page about WoS Worlds)
* HI-RESOLUTION WORLD MAPS. You can now OPTIONALLY provide an additional high-resolution map in tandem with any map in your world. (I mean you HAVE to provide the low-res map, but if you also provide a high-res map, I will use it for the main walking around window). Just make the high resolution map identical to the low resolution map (but exactly 4 times as wide and 4 times as tall) and give it the same name, only with "X4" added to it. For example:
evergreen.jpg (low-res 512x512 pixels)
evergreenX4.jpg (hi-res 2048x2048)
(note: high-res maps increase the download size of your world, and take longer to load)
* FIXED LEVEL 96 XP BUG. Fixed a bug where level 96 players only earned one XP per battle. Also removed the new feature which limited level 98 players the same way. So now level 98 players can accumulate XP again, even though it does them no good whatsoever. But it makes you feel warm and fuzzy.
Note that the highest levels now require a bit more XP (well, OK, twice as much!) so you might see your high level characters drop a notch or 10 after the first fight. This is called tuning. You said it was too hard, I made it easier. You say it is too easy, I make it harder. :-)
* FASTER STORY SCROLL. The World 'story' scrolls by a bit faster. If '50' is how long it was between scrolls before, now it is only '35' (units are arbitrary) It is still not user selectable.
* MAGIC-USERS GET LESS HP. Evergreen magic-users now get a little less max HP. This is a world issue and you are encouraged to set up your own world the way you like it.
* NEW HIGH LEVEL EQUIPMENT. Almost 200 new items, filling in the gaps from level 40 to level 98 for most equipment classes. Also, 'healing spells' can now be bound to staffs (world designers take note) and the Soul Staff is now bound to resurrection, which makes it a truly useful thing to have around. The cowboy boots are back in the store, as well.
* STORE CHANGES. Mostly esthetic, the descriptions of items, their effect on you, and whether or not you can use them, has been changed a bit. Hopefully this will be less confusing.
* WHISPER. Finally, there is a secure way to pass a /tune channel number to another player. It is kinda wacky, so pay attention:
1.) right-click on player in MAP list, select "Whisper to <player>". This selects your whisper target. You can only whisper to one person at a time.
2.) type "/w this is a whisper" or "; this is a whisper" and "this is a whisper" will be sent to your current whisper target.
* NEW MIDI FILES. 'Ahad' has graciously composed several new pieces for us, and they are all excellent!
* ABILITY TO 'LOCK' PARTIES. In the right-click menu of the STATS list is a new option "Lock Party" (wording changes depending on context). Basically if you check this it means "I don't want anyone new joining my party" (people who are already following you can continue until they leave your party). Bear in mind that when you try to join the party of someone who is actually following yet another person, you end up following that other person, so it is THEIR setting of the 'lock' which counts.
* STUN WEARS OFF. Man, you weren't kidding it lasted too long. It lasted forever! (well, until the end of scene). Now it wears off even faster than SLEEP. (well, except sleep wears off when you get bonked on the head)
* NO MORE SEED GIVING. Seeds are for your personal consumption only now. You could still give someone the money to buy their own seeds, of course.
* PK OPTION DEFAULTS TO ON. Not entirely sure why I did this, but as of A30 a new character starts off assuming you WANT to PK and you have to explicity turn it OFF if you don't want it. I think this better matches peoples normal expectations, but be careful if you have grown used to the other direction. Of course, this only affects new characters you create, not existing ones.
* NEW SCRIPT COMMANDS. In addition to finally writing some documentation for the individual script commands (look in the new quest.txt file), I have added three new commands: BKGND (lets you change the scene's background image), FX (lets you change the scene's current FX), and WEATHER (lets you change the scene's current weather)
* SKIN XFER LIMITS. Now when there are more than 10 people on the server at once, the skin xfers get throttled back to avoid chewing bandwidth. So if you can't get your pal's skin, try bopping over to a less overloaded server for a moment.
* ANIMATED ACTORS. The quest file POSE command now lets you specify two additional (optional) poses for an actor. If we call them pose1, pose2, and pose3, then the actor will automatic cycle between pose1 and pose2 for the duration of the scene with an occasional flash of pose3. (for example, use pose3 to make the frog's rongue lash out, or a character to wink). Josh was kind enough to provide multiple frames for most villagers, and you can use monsters as villagers as well.
* HEAL SPELLS EARN PP. Only if you cast them on another player. And sadly, only if that player is alive, so resurrection still pays nothing - sorry.
* SCRIPT COMMAND 'MOVE' HAS MODES. Now, when you command one of your actors to MOVE across the screen, you can provide an optional 'mode' number. The only mode supported right now is '1' which causes you to instantly teleport to the new x,y instead of ambling over there. Hopefully I will come up with more modes later (I kinda look forward to a 'hopping' mode). Note: this feature creates an incompatibility with earlier releases which might have wacky side effects. Since it only applies to actors for now, I think we're safe. But eventually I will expose it for monsters and heroes "Special Leap Attack" for example.
* BIGGER WORLD. I rendered seven new maps and some cool new backgrounds (Bryce2, your friend) and doubled the number of sub-maps in Evergreen (North Umbrage and Fort Roundtree are now maps, for example, plus some brand new areas including 'Inferno' where those lava boots will finally get some use. I am including hi-res maps for the prettier ones, but not all)
* QUEST AUTHORS TAKE NOTE: While I have added lots of new quest functionality, it should all be upwards compatible, so you should NOT have to diddle your existing scripts unless you want to take advantage of a new feature. Where that is untrue is the new joshMiscellaneous file which has many new (excellent) characters, but a couple old ones may have moved from where you expected them. You might want to check all your ACTOR commands to be sure your poses are correct. If you fixed them after the release of A29, you are PROBABLY already OK.
* MAJOR ART UPGRADE FROM JOSH. If I didn't already mention it, Josh has provided even cleaner versions of all his art. All the monsters, all the heroes, all the villagers. And there are a lot of new villagers, and a couple new monsters (mainly new because I didn't link them into A29 for some reason). I will be (not yet!) putting ALL these files into the A29 BASE VERSION but only including the new villager files as part of patch A30. So, if you want ALL the new art you will need to pick up A29 BASE VERSION again. [not yet!] (but don't be confused, a slobber is still a slobber, just a little prettier)
* WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE? Well, that's all you now CAN be. one million is the max GP your character can carry, if you have more, you will see it disappear in A30.
* SPELL SPAM FILTER. New option in the FILE menu "Enable News Events" Turn it OFF and you will no longer see "xyz has learned spell" messages. (Actually you both have to have A30 for it to work).
* MAJOR SERVER/CLIENT CHANGE. This is a big scary change, but the result should be more people can use a server before it bogs down. I strongly suspect this will lead to some chaos as it is a major change... but it seems to be working, and you're already soaking in half of it!
* MAP OBJECTS NO LONGER MY FAULT. As a world designer, you create a file called "objects.jpg" with all your link point graphics in it. You can now make a 256 color RLE BMP instead (objects.bmp) and I will use that preferentially. It will be bigger, but prettier. The JPG creates all sorts of fuzzy noise around each link point, PLUS recent versions of evergreen have had black as the transparent color, making the objects even fuzzier.

11/21/1999 ALPHA 29 patch includes:

Here are the highlights:
WoS is officially FREE. (But I am still open to 'voluntary donations' from rich people.)
I have added an optional 'bleeper' (right-click in the chat window to turn it on and off). It only affects what you read, not what you type. There are two 'stock' bleep words (F*** and S***) but you can add a new word by typing:

/bleep xxx

to remove a word from your bleep list, type:

/unbleep xxx

to remove ALL words (but F*** and S***), type:

/unbleep all

Bear in mind that if you bleep "ass" you will also be bleeping a large part of "pass" "lass" etc
The setting for 'eavesdropping' (also accessed via the right-click chat menu) is now remembered between session

If you turn off eavesdropping you will only hear people chatting who are near-by. As the world gets more crowded, this will be more important. You can still SHOUT (start sentence with an exclamation point) to be heard by everyone who hasn't muted you.
Just like in the real world, two people can play the game at the same time who have the same name "Bill" and "Bill" for example. However, people were recently abusing this, so I made a small change that if the current typist DOES have a name which appears more than once in the game, I append their age to their name, so you will see:

Cyrus (20:12): I am Cyrus!
Cyrus (888:43): No you aren't!

If your name is NOT duplicated in the game, then no age is shown
I fixed a small bug where returning to the well allowed you to chat under a different name than appeared in the MAP list.
I fixed a bug Lurch reported surrounding incarnating without selecting a soul first.
Upcoming server changes will address the mix mass problem. Future MIX servers will automatically disconnect such clients. However, bear in mind that denial of service attacks against the MIX servers will be treated as serious. It's rude to waste bandwidth.
Skins will no longer be shared if they are 'too large.' Your skin should be kept under 20K for optimum results. Please download a copy of PaintShop Pro and use it to set the palette correctly in your skin file. Otherwise your skin may be a 24 bit RGB file and huge.

Using Paint Shop Pro:

1. load your skin.bmp
2. from the COLOR menu, select "load palette"
3. find the palette file 'souls.pal' in the WoS ART folder
4. select SAVE AS from the file menu and save on top of current name. (if you like, check the OPTIONS button on that dialog and verify it is about to save it as an RLE format bitmap file)

You can get a demo copy of PaintShop Pro at:

[URL=http://www.paintshoppro.com]http://www.paintshoppro.com[/URL]
Hunting in Parties Gives MUCH LESS EXPERIENCE. As you know, a level one player could be raised 25 levels in a single fight by hanging around with a strong player. This seriously unbalanced the game. Now the maximum amount of XP you can absorb from a single fight is limited to approximately one level.
Also, I lowered the XP requirements per level (for everyone) so that you will probably all see your levels pop up noticeably after your first battle in A29. Also, as a new level one player, you will find the first 10 levels pretty much fly by, which actually is kinda fun. Helps get you addicted before the 'drudgery levels' kick in :-)
There is now a good reason to train your right-hand skills. A level 9 sword-user will strike about twice as hard as a level 5 sword user with all else being equal. Speaking of flying through the first 20 levels - the sword user is at a definite advantage in the early game.
The SOUND menu now has an option to disable sound completely. This releases the sound card which means it is available for the Voice Presence control to let you use speech to chat in mid-game.

To Start Voice Chat:

1. from the SOUND menu, disable all sound
2. from the WEB menu, select GUILD HALL
3. On the left of the guild hall is a link called VOICE CHAT, click it
4. On the left of that page is a small picture of the 'voice presence' thingy. click where it says to and the little communicator dealy will appear
5. press HIDE on the upper right to hide the web page and return to the game, but the voice dealy should be floating around nearby, ready to be used for voice in game

Please note that really cool sound cards (like my Sound Blaster Live) don't need you to disable the sound in WoS.
I added a couple of % commands.

%3 = random insult
%4 = name of last person to type
%5 = name of last person to begin line with your name.

%5 is nice to use inside your AFK message to personalize it for the person who invoked it by typing your name.
/FIGHT nn no longer lets you level up non-cheaters. You can still use this cheat to bring a large number of powerful monsters into your scene for quick leveling. But other people in the scene no longer get the benefit of that levelling. Not that anyone was using this to level non-cheat characters...[yes, this is a joke]
Now should play the correct map music when you return to the map from another map. For example, when exiting Macguyver Castle, you should automatically hear the evergreen music again.

Also, I copped a MIDI file from... um... tleil? guppy man? uh... well anyway, they hated the evergreen music ("tant pis", as we say in french class), but this MIDI they sent me is fab, so I stuck it in macGuyver castle.

Remember, if you want music on YOUR maps, just stick a MIDI file with the same name as your map's 'terrain file' root name (that sounds confusing) into your world's MIDI folder. I mean, if your terrain file is "map1.TER", then your midi file should be "map1.MID"
Fixed another Very Old Bug which didn't pass actor 'pose changes' to the other people in the scene. So now everyone should see the truth about miranda, and Xander's arms
Fixed a bug in the world publishing so now a world author really can handle their own version numbering. As per previous instructions, you need to compose a special INI file with the version number in it.

But you then need TWO copies of this file.

One should be called "world.ini" and be placed in your world's root folder (BEFORE you zip it up). The other goes on your web site and you just tell me what it is named when you first submit your world for publishing.

When you update your world, be sure to update the version info in both copies of the INI file.
Not many scripting changes, but the soul items have all new A and D points (more sensible ones, and also much weaker.. about half as strong.. 1/3 as strong.)

9/25/1999 ALPHA 28 patch includes:

COMPATIBILITY: Should be completely compatible with A27
CRASH FIXES: Might crash a little less, you tell me.
CAN NOW CHANGE SKINS FOR EXISTING CHARACTERS. To do this, you must be running in SOLO mode first. Then type "/skin" (or maybe "/skins" I forget!) and you will be prompted for your new skin. There is no charge, and no limits of any kind. The next time you play in MULTI mode, people will find you wearing the new skin. You cannot change your name, and probably will never be able to.
NEW HELP FILE: I added some screen images to the help file, which mainly just make it a lot larger of a file. Maybe it looks a little more interesting. I'll probably pull it from future patches to save you grief. I fixed the out of date info about spells and elements.
Added quite a few pieces of armor and such to fill in gaps between levels 20 and 40.
Added button to MIX SERVER LIST page which lets you launch a new server right there and then. (This will be important pretty soon, but is possibly a distraction right now) Mainly I am setting the stage for multi-game support and Warpath97 needs this button.
NOTE: I am also release MIX version 1.05 with other changes for this multi-game issue.
Added a separate window which collects "ADMIN MESSAGES" from the server host. (MIX lets you send messages to individual players in the game, or broadcast to all. These messages appear both in the WOS chat window, and in a separate popup window. Expect to see messages like "I have to take the server down in 10 minutes, my cat chewed through the DSL line again"
Leaving a SOLO game takes you back to the regular menu, so you don't have to re-run the program to get into MULTIplayer mode again. (yay!)
Fixed a low-level communications bug which I hope was the source of a crash or two.
You can now use the % symbol in your chat, by typing it TWICE. "I am 99%% sure"
You can now use the %commands at the end of the line "You are a %3"
The town of shrimpee in the south is now a real town. And has a 'seed store'
ability seeds cost $25K and give 5 ability points.
the BOOKs menu includes the pokedex now. It's just a word.
Fixed a bug which left the MAP button highlighted after changing from scene to map or back.
You can no longer join a ghost's party. this may be a mistake, not sure.
I would have pushed this last week, but I spent the weekend writing a little flight simulator. It's cute. I'll put it up in my synToys section when it is ready.

9/1/1999 ALPHA 27 patch includes:

COMPATIBILITY: Fully compatible with A26. This is a small update
Fixed terrain blockage around Gregor's cave
(Also, you can no longer walk 'off the map' into the blackness)
Fixed '1 point damage' problem when equipped with more than one soul item (or any combo leading to very high A points)
Fixed 'auto-save-changes' bug when 'switching maps' in link editor
Fixed nasty low level bug which led to world mixing (picking a different world than the one being played on the server)

8/22/1999 ALPHA 26 patch includes:

COMPATIBILITY: You should be able to still use your characters from A25 (older characters will run into the same problem as in the A25 patch where suddenly your equipment is all weird until you buy new stuff.). However, all knowledge of previously accomplished quests will be lost. This is not so bad since there were not many quests before (A26 has a few new ones) and the old quests have changed a little so it is good to do them over again (good for me, I mean!)
Several New Quests. I won't say too much since it is less that I had hoped for in A26, but every step forward helps.
Temple of Fog in Westin lets you forget quests so you can do them over again when you like
Rune Ruins Stone Ring lets you obtain each of the soul items with a single boss fight. (Test purposes only)
LARGE FONT SUPPORT (for you, radz.) So crank up those monster font sizes and let me know what I missed (but if it ain't unplayable... well..., you *know* how I feel about large fonts...)
New World Design Limits: 4095 tokens, 4095 monsters, 4095 monster groups, 768 spells, 1023 items (this is mainly to let you pick more creative numbers. I don't think you want to make a world which uses all of these)
Fixed the quests I broke in A25 (goblin army, Professor J) and the stores (no armor, no potions, etc.). Probably broke some new stuff in the process, of course
Element/Right-hand training screens include #PP req'd for next level.
CONFUSE spell should work (you hit randomly)
SLEEP/PARALYZE, etc spells wear off after awhile. SLEEP/CHARM/CONFUSE also wear off if you get hit. I think all the specialty spells work in A26 except: CHARM, POISON, and SAP
Death spells now hit all other elements equally hard.
I lowered the XP required between levels at the higher levels, so you probably will level up a bit.
Were you guys seeing the 'disease' signs in A25? It looked like I left the file out, but then somone commented on the 'drowning man' so I guess it was OK in A25
Fixed a bug which let you incarnate into a corrupt soul
Fixed a bug which let you 'pick the world' even though the world had already been picked.
Some new effects in the effects.bmp file (thanks!) and the effects.bmp file can now be overridden in the MAP/ART folder
When you scroll the chat back, it should not snap forward on new lines of chat unless it has been over 20 seconds since you last clicked on the scroll bar.
Link Editor now auto-saves changes when you switch maps (this was the source of many headaches!) Also, the link editor includes a button to change the image of the current link without a lot of screwing around.
Quest Editor has an additional menu: TOOLS which has shortcuts to the /VILLAGERS, /POKEDEX, and /RELOAD commands.
And a large amount of fiddling
You'll notice this list does NOT include: "finally fixed the crash on dropin to multiplayer game" because I haven't. Keep sending those reports (A26 only)
they travel around. While HAUNTING a player, you get two new buttons: CURSE and BLESS. You can click them to toggle on and off your blessing or curse on the haunted player. On the MAP screen you will now see a little face next to each player in the game. Yellow (happy) faces are for incarnated players, while white (ghost) faces are for haunting spectators. If a ghost is cursing YOU, its face will be frowning. If it is blessing YOU it will be smiling. Otherwise it's smile will be flat. Of the happy faces, if you are MUTING someone, their happy face will have no mouth at all. If they are a player killer, their happy face will be cranky looking. This means I now tell you all the time who the PKers are.
If you think there is someone invisible in the scene with you, type "/seance" to toggle the seance spell on and off (I will have to fix this up a bit) and they will appear. I need to make them shimmery though and make seance a real spell.)
The MAP screen listbox has some new fields for each player in the game, including which version of WoS they are using and the number of times their current soul has 'cheated' (used one of the cheat codes, like "/give") I figure this might be interesting in any deathmatch tournaments people do...
I made a generic messagebox which has the 'standard border on black' so fewer of the popups are regular windows gray dialogs.
The Create Character dialog has the standard background now.
The Link Editor shows a gray background around all link objects, which makes it easier to have invisible link objects as you might like to do. Mayne this was in A9...
No longer says "Found a pair of flute" (that cropped in when I added the right hand stuff)
You get nice messages now when other players drop in and out of the world, or return to the well of souls.
Death now costs you ALL your experience points to next level and HALF your accumulated PP
I try to remember the appropriate panel when dropping you into a fight scene so your last selected item, spell, or weapon will be selected again.
I added F-Key support to let you quickly select an item or spell. To program an F-Key, select an item or spell, and then press CTRL-Fnn (F5 through F12, but not F10). Thereafter, pressing Fnn re-selects that item or spell. F1-F4 are hard-wired to HELP, ATTACK, SPELL, ITEM and just do the same thing as pressing the EQUIP/SPELL/ITEM buttons. F10 doesn't work right, so avoid it for now.
While in a scene, clicking on the little map will NOT exit the scene
the tick-tick-tick sound when actors are speaking has been toned down. On my new SB Live it sounds ike a machine gun!
Add command line support for different connection styles. So if you make a shortcut to "souls.exe" you can now add the following commands:
"souls.exe /mix" -> automatically goes to public mix server

7/25/1999 ALPHA 25 patch includes:

COMPATIBILITY: You can continue using old characters, but all the items they were carrying will turn into something else (and you may experience odd quest behaviour). You can play against other versions of the game, but some features only work when all players have the same version. Once a character has been played in this version, it probably cannot go back to an older version (and doing so may render it unusable in this version as well.... move forward, my children, step not backwards) I called it 25 since there were several A24 releases in an effort to track down the crash on entrance.
This is mainly a SPELL release, though even so not all the new spells are working. World designers can give spells any names they like, but the following extra spell 'categories' are now supported (at least partially, if not completely). I call them DISEASES. They are: POISON (drains your HP, and not yet working), SAP (drains your MP, and not yet working), PARALYZE (you cannot move), NUMB (cannot user right-hand weapons), GAG (cannot cast spells), STUN (can't move or fight), SLEEP (so much the same as stun as I can't describe the diff), CONFUSE (makes you attack wildly - not working), CHARM (tames wild animals - not working)
Plus there are 5 spells to reduce abilities (wisdom, strength, dex, agil, and stamina) and 5 to raise them (these have an accumulative effect, so casting 'raise stamina' 5 times is better than just once.)
All diseases wear off when you leave the scene. (and I don't prevent you from leaving the scene yet, so it is easy to get cured)
The SPELL SELECTOR makes it easier to find the spell you want. Also it remembers your favorite of each element.
CRASH ON ENTRANCE is probably still there. I may have made a little progress, but never found the actual cause, so I don't think I have cured it. I made a pretty radical change to the timer architecture (there are no more timers!) which could make the game unplayable on YOUR machine, so let me know.
"ALL" spells now split their power over all the affected enemies (so they are weaker than before), but the spells themselves are also a little stronger than before. This is more fair
Experience Points and Gold Pieces are now shared amongst the winners - hence you get a lot less when fighting in groups.
Faster movement in towns. re-layout of MacGuyver castle shops
right-click menu appears in chat window.
Guild Diary info includes counters for #kills, #deaths, and other stats
New characters start with 500GP instead of 200 GP
potion shops really sell potions
all items got renumbered, so expect your pockets to be empty. the good news is that world designers can now create over one THOUSAND items.
party followers cannot press CAMP button (only the party leader)
Sell ALL no longer lets you sell quest prizes
some sound effect changes
monster 'death throes' (first version)
No longer get training for bashing NPCs
fixed some problems around corrupted souls
minor changes to turn-taking in multiplayer mode
you no longer hear "X learned spell Y" if X is a cheater
fixed oddity with lizard seed
scrolling STORY can have additional colors, fonts, sizes
death only takes HALF your accumulated experience points to next level
OFFER2 script command accepts arbitrary number of "triplets"
monsters with non-zero WISDOM will cast spells in their element and level

6/21/1999 ALPHA 23 patch includes:

COMPATIBILITY - This is an 'emergency patch' so it is not as complete as I would like it to be (for example, I haven't done my spell work yet), so you should expect some new rough edges. I am particularly interested to see if this solves the problems some people have seen with crashes just after connecting to the server. It should be compatible with version A21, however some features won't be apparent (or work correctly) unless everyone in the scene has A22.
RANGE ATTACKS - This includes the first cut at range attacks, a humble cut indeed. While it is your turn, if you are on the EQUIP list, a 'range circle' will appear at your feet whose diameter varies with the class of right-hand weapon you are equipped with. If a monster is within this circle, you WILL NOT MISS. (assuming all players are A22. It will have no effect if the scene server is A21)
MORE EXPERIENCE - The tougher monsters now pay quite a bit more XP than in A21. Lower level monsters are about the same. Let me know if I am now paying too much XP at the higher levels. The Gold paid is also increased as a result of this change (I'll work on that separately, later)
COSMETIC CHANGES - I made some gratuitous changes to some screen display elements and sound effects. I wasn't completely done with this when I felt the need to ship A22.
NO NEW SPELLS - Aside from fixing the reported bugs in certain spells, this release does NOT include the enhanced spells I intended for the next release. -- these spells are now deferred to A23
SIX NEW MONSTERS from Josh have been added around the countryside. Mostly intermediate level (to fill in the gap between too easy and too hard)
BORN IMPURE bug should be fixed in this release, which is a good enough reason to release it sooner rather than later.
CAN NO LONGER "SELL ALL" the important items who have $0 price were able to be lost via the sell all command, but not anymore.
Clicking on an item in the EQUIP screen highlights the equivalent item that you are wearing (clicking on any shield highlights your current shield, for example). It just felt sort of empty that nothing happened before :-)
STORES HANDLED DIFFERENTLY. While I did not complete my re-deployment of stores on the map, I did change the way they work so that now stores can be easily defined to include all items of a particular class between a set range of levels. Hence without a lot of looking back and forth at numbers, the world designer can make an 'intermediate level shield shop' and have it automatically keep up to date as s/he adds, removes, or renumbers items in the +ITEMS list. I *think* that all items are now available in a store SOMEWHERE on Evergreen.
ELEMENT ANTI_TRAINING has been reduced a little. It still happens (training in fire, untrains you in water), but the effect is not so stark in A22.
MAGIC RATIO changed for bow and music user classes..

6/13/1999 ALPHA 21 patch includes:

COMPATIBILITY - This is a major upgrade, but you can continue to use your old characters and play with people running older versions. However, you are encouraged to start new characters to best test the overall 'pacing' of the game. Some oddities will occur using old characters - first you will need to raise your weapons and element training since you will have none. Until you do that most spells will not be able to be used. You may find some of your EQUIPMENT is no longer equippable until you get yuor levels up. Also, it is possible your level will change (up or down) since experience points are handled differently. If you had any abilities > 255 points they should get knocked down to 255. Note that on the world map, people whose quest file differs from yours will have RED SHADOWS. If you cannot enter a scene, this is why. If you select 'avoid modified quest files' not only will you not drop into 'red shadows' but they will also not be able to join YOUR scenes (this is new behaviour)
MAJOR CHANGES to the way weapons, spells, and monsters are set up. Please check the 'feel' of the game in the early stages. It is harder, in general. However, there are more 'easy' monsters immediately around the Gateway, and the monster level grows smoothly the farther away you get. The tough monsters are MUCH tougher. Spells cannot be cast without prior element training, and the opposing element matrix is different. Forget all you knew about elements. Now Fire fears water AND water fears fire. There are 8 elements, which are defined by the wolrd designer in the quest file (new comments in quest.txt). They are arranged as the points of a compass (thanks, Jabla!) and are most effective against elements as far away as possible on the compass. Although each character class begins skilled in a single right-hand weapon, ANY character can learn ANY weapon (or ALL) weapons via the weapons training screen.
MY EXPECTATION is that an emergency A22 patch will probably be necessary since I made so many fundamental changes. At the very least, Josh provided several excellent new monsters which I have not placed on the map (but whose art *is* included)
ELEMENT TRAINING. Press the 'Practice' button on the SPELLs list. Click on an element name to train a little. It costs 200 PP per training. The early levels are MUCH easier than the later ones. Training in one element causes you to LOSE TRAINING in the elements on the far side of the compass, so it is much easier to specialize in one quadrant of the compass than it is to learn the whole thing. But with enough PP (lots) you *can* learn it all. Each spell has a required element level and you cannot learn or cast a spell unless your training is at least that high. Note this means you can LOSE THE ABILITY to cast a favorite spell if you don't keep your training up. The element names are in the new +ELEMENTS section of the quest file
WEAPONS TRAINING. Press the TRAINING button on the EQUIP list. Click on a weapon name to train in that weapon. It is similar to element training (200PP per training) except that learning one weapon does NOT diminish your skills in other weapons. Once yuo reach level 5 in a weapon, you can equip it. (this will probably change to meeting the individual weapon's training level someday). Training above the min level for a weapon or an element will someday improve your use of it, but in A21 it doesn't. In A21 it just controls whether you can use the thing at all. The right-hand weapons names are in the new +HANDS section of the quest file.
By the way, once you can use a weapon or element, you also get some additional training each time you use it in battle.
ATTACK/DEFENSE etc. is all new. The formulas for stamina etc have all been tweaked again to try to keep things fair, hard, and balanced. Monsters now have the same sorts of abilities that you have, so they are no longer the zero stamina pushovers they once were.
BOOTS. There are a zillion boots now, and the terrain crossing boots work. (not a lot of trrains yet, but the elven flying booties are kinda nice.) Also boots can be given 'monster repellent' and 'riding' (fastwalking) skills. I think the boots look pretty good, in general.
EQUIPMENT. All equipment has minimum levels now, so you probably won't be able to wear your favorite stuff any more. The SHOP screen has been augmented with all the bells and whistles of the EQUIP screen so you will know before you buy whether something can be used and/or would enhance your strength. In addition to the GREEN PLUS SIGN which means you should equip something immediately, there is now a RED PLUS SIGN which means you will SOMEDAY benefit from this item, once you level up. As opposed to the RED X which means as things stand right now, you will never be able to use this and might as well sell it. (although even that is negotiable if you use the WEAPONS training enough)
ITEMS. I removed the useless items and reseeded the stores a little better. In the quest file, an item whose cost (in GP) is ZERO is now an item which: 1) can not be sold in a store, and 2.) once gotten can not be sold or given away. This is for things that you win as a result of a quest and which might be otherwise impossible to recover.
WORLD WIZARD. The New World Wizard is now a working wizard. (start the game in SOLO mode, then select 'create your own world' then select the new world wizard, or open the link editor for an existing world. The link and object editors are now covered in the HELP FILE, which you can open via the F1 key, or by typing: "/help <subject>"
ABILITY LIMITS. Your stamina, strength, etc. were always meant to be limited to a max value of 255 each but I was accidentally allowing them to go higher. However, when you then entered a scene with other players, they were truncated to 255 anyway leading to confusing displays (256 --> 0, for example).
Gossip mode works better, and supports shouting.
You no longer earn PP by bashing other people, only by bashing monsters. And no longer by bashing dead monsters.
CHEATING. Additional anti cheat measures are in place (specifically to make it impossible(?) to zero out your character's cheat counter). Also the 'avoid modified quest file' option now really keeps you completely separate from people whose quest file differs from yours (either because you or they are using a modified or out of date file). Also, MONSTER EXPERIENCE AND GOLD REWARD is NO LONGER SET IN THE QUEST FILE. I determine these now automatically from the actual difficulty of the monster. So no more 20K experience point slobbers. The fields are still in the quest file but either do nothing or have been repurposed (see quest.txt comments). This is not to say you cannot modify the quest file to pay unrealistic rewards, but you will have to do it a different way.
Encountering a monster whose skin you do not have no longer results in an invisible monster.
MONSTER KNOWLEDGE. I added the monster's element to the health meter which appears which you point to a monster. It is still my intention to defer such knowledge until some later date (say, after you have killed one such monster, or only if you have a special SENSE spell). But for now it is there for all to see and it is quite useful since picking the wrong spell means making almost no damage to the monster.
GUILD DIARY. Now includes a 'pedigree' of the player indicating how much 'quest file hopping' they have done. Just something to keep in mind. Also, I added a bit of the quest CRC to the VERSION column of the MAP LIST so you can see what versino of the quest file the other guy has, if it is different from your own. I suspect you will soon recognize 'legitimate' mods (earlier versions which track the software rev level) versus hand-modifications. Remember, I am 100% in favor of you fiddling with quest files, but IN YOUR OWN WORLDS, PLEASE. Show us what you can do!
Someone noticed (sorry I forget whom to praise... Chron? MasterChoe?) that the combination of /weather 3 and /fx 6 is totally cool. I need to set up a spell to use it.
Buying an item no longer switches you to the ITEMS LIST. But if you are already on that list, it DOES select the newly purchased item. Also, equipping something makes its info appear in the area above the EQUIP LIST. It feels nice I think.
The integrated web browser has various improvements. It remembers your URL list and can handle long URLs better. Also the buttons and menu commands are renamed to make it (hopefully) more obvious how to return to the game.
HOTKEY TOOL WINDOW. I didn't go so far as to implement the 'please play the game for me while I catch a nap' functionality some people were asking for, I *did* make it so it remembers your last FKEY 'hot keys' and the FILE menu has an option to bring up the hotkey tool list every time you drop into a scene. It is a little floating window which just reminds you what each FKEY is currently bound to. You can also click on an element of the list to have the same effect. Use the FILE menu to turn this off it if bugs you.
TURN OFF ENVIRONMENTAL SOUNDS. Certain people (I won't mention Josh's name) have requested the ability to turn off the various bird calls, rushing streams, etc that I love so much. I added a SOUND menu option to do this. but you'll be sorry!
And to punish everyone else, I have added a zillion extra sound effects. Some of which you will soon tire of, I am sure. I *like* sound effects, so there!
Too many little things to even mention.

5/21/1999 ALPHA 20 patch includes:

Fixes the Level Up crash! (Well, ok, it fixed it on MY machine, let's hope it fixed it on YOURS!)
Item and Shop screens distinguish between "you can't use that yet because your level is too low" and "you will never be able to use that because your character class just can't"
Receiving items while on the level up ability point screen should no longer get lost.
The FLEE button now alternates between FLEE and EXIT depending on whether or not you are actually in a fight. FLEE is still 100% successful, but that will change someday
Seven new monsters from Josh! (ogre, parasite, kelp crab, bone ghoul, devil bone, giant flea, and creeper). A little regrouping of existing monsters to fix a couple illogical spots (more illogical groups remain, of course)
It is statistically more likely to encounter larger groups of monsters at a time now.
If you attempt to JOIN PARTY which is led by someone with a modified quest file, and you have not turned off the "avoid modified quest file" option (in the file menu), then you will see a dialog box explaining this to you, and you will NOT join the party. I think people get rightly confused when they can't enter scenes (hosted by modified quest files)
Also, If someone was in the Well when you first entered the game, I had a good chance of marking them as (MOD) when really they weren't.
New chat option "/g" (gossip) toggles gossip mode on and off. While in gossip mode, every line of chat you type is sent to your gossip channel (set by /TUNE nnn). Actually, this even supersedes the shout character (!) I think... have to fix that. Anyway, gossip mode is for people who don't want to start each line with the single-quote character.
I got rid of the DROP ITEM commands on the EQUIP and ITEMS right-click menu (what was I THINKING?) In their place is the long-awaited SELL ALL command.
I implemented the "but he hit me first!" rule. Only PKers can hit other PKers. But normally a cheat PKer cannot hit a pure PKer. However, if a pure PKer hits a cheat PKer, then the cheat PKer can hit back for the remainder of that scene. The pure player remains pure (he just gets his B*tt kicked by the cheat PKer presumably.
To help you stop yourself just before doing this, the name which appears above a players skin in a scene is now green for a pure, and red for a cheat.
Also, the character you are pointing at will also show a remaining HP meter. Eventually I will make a spell "SENSE HEALTH" which will turn this on, but for now you get it free. lucky you!
A new quest is in place. It's the goblin army quest, originally inspired by a short story from Josh.
5/16/1999 ALPHA 19 patch includes:
Quest #3 Really Should Work Now, I promise.... (The tree of life should no longer take you to wet mesa!)
Monsters are all tougher (they have stamina and levels just like people)
Defenses are much weaker all around. (no more invulnerability at level 20)
There is a lot less money lying around (except for the sellable items you find, of which there are still too many)
If your party leader returns to well, or quits the game, you now stop following automatically
Monster and Hero skins have tighter guideline restrictions (see art submission page)
Master Server address is now taken from the web, so don't configure it manually in the Network Options dialog unless you are in a panic
Funky Speech Compression Test... To try it out type "/speech", then "/mic" and a dialog will appear. As you speak into the microphone, you should hear your voice. If you click the TRIANGLE checkbox you should hear a tone instead. If you click the COMPRESS checkbox you should hear your voice (or the tone) in its compresses format (i.e. hard to understand, but consuming less bandwidth). I'm still just doing this for fun....
Some more hacker-proofing... please try the cheat-o-matic cheat count hack and see if you can still keep your cheat counter 0 in spite of cheating...
Staffs can not be linked to ALL spells... that is to say they shouldn't be. Hopefully I fixed the ones which were.
Battle damage now includes a random component, so not all blows have the exact same hit points
You have a one in fifty chance of a "magnificent" attack which is amazingly strong.
HELP menu includes an option to take you straight to the 'quickstart' instructions
I added a time stamp to the messages documenting people entering the game. I hope it isn't irritating... I just like to know when I have been AFK :-)
It used to be the SETUP dialog on first installation could leave the sounds playing if you pressed CANCEL.
typing "/HELP <keyword>" will search helpfile for that keyword (like "/help fight")
PKers with non-zero cheat counts can only bash other PKers who have cheated as much or more than they have... this might be too weird.
PKers can, in general, deliver much more damage to other PKers.
use the /TERRAIN command to toggle the terrain overlay display. It's just a diagnostic, not a cheat, but could be useful if you find yourself stuck and unable to navigate past an obstacle.
Shops now have representative BOWS and INSTRUMENTS for sale
Monsters pay only 1/3 as much Gold, and even that is somewhat random now instead of fixed.
Miscellaneous minor bug fixes

5/10/1999 ALPHA 18 Patch Includes:

This is a compatible upgrade, including all patches so far to A16 (so you need A16 first, then apply this patch to it). Your old souls will continue working.
Includes new monsters and skins from Josh
Includes a full set of Bows and Musical instruments for archer and musician class characters
Fixes the Tree of Life Quest
Total Rewrite of the code which animates the little numbers over your head when you get hurt. Now it should also say things like "+5 MP" or "+2 Agility" when other attributes change. This was a bigger change than it appears, and I suspect some things are probably broken as a result, so be on the lookup for things like "health potions don't work when I am in someone else's scene" or "I can't give stuff to people any more." Hopefully I have improved the underlying architecture however so these problems can get fixed one by one without causing additional issues. NOTE: "pain annotation" will be weird when playing against people who have not yet taken the patch!
Gryphon Seed no longer shows up as equipment!
NOTE: If you had the old Bow or the Old Flute, they will have bogus pictures. I will be removing the old bow and flute, but thought it would be nice to let you keep using them for now.
EXPERIMENTAL SPEECH CODE. I am ruminating on some speech-based features. If you wouldn't mind running a test for me (basically to see if it crashes, or if it depends on DLLs you don't have) please try the following: "/speech" to turn on the speech output, then "/mic" to begin recording. Thereafter anything you say into your microphone should eventually be heard along with the other WoS sound effects. (only you will hear it, not the other players... yet) "/nomic" turns of the mic, but the speech will continue playing the last 4 seconds in a loop until you shut down WoS (or go insane). This is just test code for now and I haven't decided what all sorts of features I want to do with it. First I have to hear if it seems like it is going to work on most people's machines.

5/2/99 ALPHA 16 includes:

This is a *compatible upgrade* (other than the quest CRC changing)
Two new minor quests. Now Evergreen has three whole quests in it (woo hoo!)
Supports Direct Publishing of third-party worlds, so it's almost time to start writing some quest files of your own! I'll have to formally document it eventually.
New HELP FILE actually has some information in it. No pictures, though. Give it a lookover and tell me what's missing or inaccurate
Won't let you use characters in new soul names which are unacceptable to the file system (this led to a nasty surprise when you went to save your soul.)
Won't let you try to buy the 101st item.
New speech bubbles (white ovals) cover up less of the skin.
/bubbles toggles player speech bubbles on and off
quest file can use #include directive, as in "#include monsters.txt" so you can break the quest file up into pieces.
You get a warning before the first 'cheat' on a new character. Helps you avoid accidentally getting your character flagged as a cheater.
Fixed the bug where a scene client could not use a magic potion on themselves (and similar errors)
Changed the Quest CRC computation for no particular reason.
Long player names no longer 'wraparound' on the STATs screen
Added 'fallback' directory support for all world folders, except MAPS. So if you want to, you can make your own world and only have to come up with your own MAPS and quest.txt file, while re-cycling all the base assets from the root folders of the same names. For example, if a sound effect is not found in the world's SFX folder, then the root SFX folder is also searched for it.
Slot machine looks a teensy bit better...
I guess everything else is behind-the-scenes stuff.

4/11/99 ALPHA 15 includes:

What a difference a day makes, eh? The only change from A14 to A15 is the removal of the 'transparent non-rectangular window boundaries' for the popup dialogs. Apparently not enough versions of windows support this yet for it to be a viable feature addition. It didn't look all that great anyway, so no big loss.

4/10/99 ALPHA 14 Includes:

First a word about versions... Lately I have been trying to spare people the full download for each new release, but it has taken me a couple releases to get my process down. From now on the patch name will always include the actual version # after the patch. In any case, version Alpha 12 was the previous patch and didn't get formal release notes. I skipped A13 out of proper deference to superstition, so this is version A14 and is a patch to be applied to Version A11 or any patches therefrom. So, in case that's as confusing as it sounds... You will never have to download more than 2 files to get the latest version.. First install whatever the base version is (the BIG download, which is currently version A11). After that, download whichever the current patch is. If you miss a patch, don't worry. The newest patch will always have what you need, so long as you installed the base version sometime in the past.
That being said, Version A14 has lots of new stuff and starts its day with a clean slate. Not only can you NOT play against people with older versions (you simply won't see them, even if they are playing on the same server), you might actually crash them (but they won't crash you, so everyone is encouraged to upgrade to A14 asap)
The other bad news is you have to start new characters. This may be the last time I do this to you (fingers crossed), but of course no actual promises can be made. This is due to some additional security features added to make hacking at least SLIGHTLY difficult. I'm interested in hearing your success tales about hacking the A14 characters. It's not impossible :-)
I changed the way experience points work (as I have been threatening) so that levels go up more slowly now. Actually, the early levels still go up pretty quickly (coz that's fun) but after level 40 or 50, it should get pretty difficult to raise levels. So a level 98 character should really mean something special now (unless it has a non-zero cheat count, of course!) Even as I type this, I know the cheat which makes that a lie, so more work is required.
Josh has drawn up a batch of cool new monsters to fight. Use /Pokedex to check them out.
Guild Diary -- This lets you record an entry for people you meet in WoS, and write little notes about them. Each person can optionally provide information about themselves, including a couple URLs. One URL is available to link to a Guild page. To add someone to your Guild Diary, right-click on their name on the MAP list and select "Add to Guild Diary." To review your current diary use the new BOOKS menu option and select it. It will always open initially to your own page in the diary where you can set your own guild and home URLs. Note that the "biographical" information actually is set on the "Where do you want to play today" screen since it is common (will be common) to all Synthetic Reality games. Along the right side of the diary is the name of everyone you have added. Click on a name to review its information. While displaying someone's diary page, you can add notes about them (only you will see those notes) and even alter their biographical information -- however if you click "Add to Diary" for this person again, your bio notes will be overwritten by their settings. I think this will make more sense when you actually use it. The purpose of the diary is to help you remember stuff about people you meet in WoS, and to share Guild URLs. You are, of course, encouraged to create your own guilds and make web pages for them even though WoS doesn't really know the guild exists... sort of a game beyond the game. If you click on the button next to a URL, it will display that web page in the integrated browser. The diary stuff is held in a new folder called "Bio" which you are welcome to rummage in to see how simple the concept is.
Also in the new BOOKS menu is your "Personal History." This keeps track of the quests you have worked on. So, for example, if you have completed the only quest there is in evergreen, your personal history should say something like "Met king felafel and he asked me to slay the dragon. Killed the dragon and got the scale. Gave the scale to the bootmaker. Got the boots from the bootmake, but Zanf stole them. Found Zanf's hiding place. COnquered Zanf and got the fire boots" Presently, you can only read your own personal history, but it is conceivable I could let you see other player's history.... But maybe that's not a good idea.
/TUNE <channel #> -- This lets you tune to a particular subchannel of communications. Then any line of chat starting with a ' will be sent as a subchannel and only seen by people tuned to the same channel. This is as close to 'whisper' as WoS is going to get. For example, if you and your friends all type "/tune 47" then any lines of chat you type beginning with a ' character will only be seen by your friends. If you don't start with ' then the chat is seen according to the normal rules. Note that even turning on eavesdrop does not let you hear these subchannels if you are not tuned in. You can only be tuned to one subChannel at a time.
To recap the changes in chat... As of A12, you had the ability to turn on the normal chat rules. To explain this, I must first mention the "/eavesdrop" command (this is not a cheat). Giving this command toggles eavesdrop mode on and off. While ON, you hear all chat in the game. While OFF you only hear 'nearby chat' The default at present is ON, so you have to manually turn it off if you want to try out the normal chat rules
You can always hear chat if: 1) the person is in the same scene with you, 2.) you are members of the same party, 3.) the line of chat begins with your name, 4.) the line of chat begins with a ' and is on the subchannel to which you are tuned, 5.) the line of chat begins with a ! (shout), 6.) You are both on the map, and you can see the other person on your map screen. 7.) It is an automatic response (as in AFK)
Again, when you start up the game, it comes up with eavesdropping turned ON, so none of those rules apply (except the one about /TUNE).

/n chat macros
/0 to /9 now send chat macros, which are simple sentences you compose in advance (not currently remembered between sessions). To define one, do this:

/3=This is chat macro 3

then if you type:

/3 [enter]

it will send "This is chat macro 3" to everyone. You should be able to include modifiers in the chat macro, as in:

/4=/a is sleepy

will then send "Samsyn is sleepy" when invoked. Oh cool, it even works with the new subchannel stuff, so you can have chat macros sent to your current channel, as in

/5='Hey, let's gang up on Samsyn!
/AFK is now official
Type /AFK <some message> and your smiley face on the MAP screen will go sleepy. Anyone starting a sentence with your name will get your message sent back automatically. For example Samsyn gives the command "/AFK Out to dinner." and then someone sends chat starting with the word "samsyn" and they get back "Samsyn: Out to dinner"
resurrection requires a special spell
Healing people will no longer ressurect them, if dead. They must visit a town well, or get resurrected by someone else using a resurrection spell on them. There are no resurrection ITEMs, so only magic users can do it.
You can now give MONEY to each other
Click on your money meter in the lower left and a dialog appears to let you load your hand with money. While your hand is full of money, click on somone else in the scene and give the money to them. Cheaters cannot give money (neither can they give items). I am tempted to let cheaters give stuff to other cheaters, just for fun. Note, you must be in the same scene (fight or camp)
Fancier spells possible
I added some stuff to the SPELL table so you can trick up your spells with gravity, more paths, and things like weather and FX during the spell. This is documented in the new quest.txt file itself. I more or less randomly applied some of these (try QUAKE and SPIDER), but you might want to play with it if you are a quest hacker.
Seeds now work. There are 5 'seeds' which you have been finding around after battles. Using a seed now boosts one of your five abilities (strength, wisdom, stamina, dexterity, or agility) and there is a sixth seed which brings up the abilities screen and lets you pick where to assign the points.
Monsters will no longer attack before they are completely on scene. Also, if you die and the monsters walk off scene and someone new drops in, the monsters will walk back on scene before attacking. Also, monsters will occasionally walk towards their prey.
I believe people will appear and disappear on the map a little more correctly when crashing and/or returning to the well of souls. Also, standing too close to someone (or being a member of their party) when they return to the Well should no longer drag you along with them!
I am putting up a newer version of the MIX server which you should get if you are a server kinda person. Nothing radically new -- I still have to make it so the server host can boot individual players as desired, per your suggestions.
If you use a staff with magic bound to it, everyone should see it animate correctly now.
If you disable sound effects, it should shut off the environmental sounds, as well.
Ghosts (spectators) are no longer affected by terrain and can float anywhere they are pulled by the person they are haunting. (however, after haunting someone, you still won't actually follow them until they next time they move)
Cheaters cannot give money or items to non-cheaters. (I have not yet enabled their giving stuff to fellow cheaters, but I am still thinking along those lines)
Reincarnating into a new soul no longer remembers the cheat count of the previous soul
New Spell RESURRECT allows magic users to raise the dead
The Abilities Dialog won't let you throw away unassigned points. Instead it assigns them at random.
<some of the following was also in A12, but not documented>
Quest files are now version controlled and a new option in the FILE menu allows you to avoid camping/fighting with people whose quest file differs from your own. "Avoid Modified Quest Files" in the FILE menu. If this is checked, you won't be able to let such people act as 'servers' for your scene. On the MAP screen in the Version ID section will be the word "modified" if their quest file is different from yours.
Bandwidth measurements imply up to 64 people could play in the same world over a 28.8 modem, so I increased the maximum allowed players to that level.
Skin files are transferred reliably. (But if you make a skin file, be sure to keep its size reasonable by using the "Souls.Pal" palette and saving the file as an RLE bitmap - a skin file should be under 20K bytes in size).
Fixed a crashing bug where packets from other players could crash you if you were still at the world selection screen when they arrived. Fixed another bug which crashed you after a level up.
Your hero file is periodically updated even without returning to the well of souls (to make you more resistant to loss of data after a crash). For example, it is auto-saved after each level up.
You can no longer give people equipment until after you unequip it. (oops)
Zillions of little things

3/18/99 ALPHA 11 includes:

This is a fairly minor update. I advise you to upgrade to ensure compatibility, but it WILL let you play with mixed versions (but older players will be missing the new monsters which will probably lead to confusion)
I added several great new monsters from Josh, and made monster groups to include all existing monsters and repopulated the map such that ALL monsters should appear somewhere. The down side of this is I renumbered some monster groups, so some of the intelligent placement is gone (for example, the cemetery no longer has ghoulish monsters in it)
Fixed a mondo bug which resulted in a scene server sending scads of packets at the end of a fight scene (or when the scripted part of a scene had completed).
Fixed the bug where in Multiplayer your MAP list could show the names of people who had already left.
Added a deadman heartbeat, so people who crash (don't leave politely) also get removed from the list. (hint is: "has disappeared" instead of "has left this world")
I think I fixed the bug where when a new player entered, you got a lot of redundant packets saying people had just entered.
I fixed the bit with new characters not getting any new HP until level 5
When you bless or curse someone, it now only tells the person you actually are blessing or cursing, instead of EVERYONE
Ghosts no longer get cash and experience points when lurking about in scenes (oops!)
Some changes to the MIX master server, most noticable is that 'dead' servers now get removed from the list. (duh, I *knew* they were dead, I just forgot to tell the GAME, so they still showed up as available places to play)
Using the "/fight N" diagnostic no longer leads to cascadingly larger money and experience payoffs (I hope - forgot to test the change)
The 'fight bug also led to a condition where your cash reward could be negative! That should be fixed now.
After you get your level up, you now report your 'recharged' HP and MP to the other players
Disabling sound effects should also turn off any THEME sounds. But frankly it looked like it already did this, so maybe I fixed the wrong bug. Let me know the conditions under which you hear unwanted themes (wind whistling, rain sounds, etc.)
Installation should now create the 'savedGame' directory so that you can save your heroes.
In Macgyver castle is a place called CASINO which puts up a 'game button' Press it and see the worlds ugliest slot machine. 3 slobbers earns 10,000! 2 slobbers earns.. um.. 100? 500? I forget. Only the middle row counts.

3/7/99 ALPHA 10 includes:

NOTE: Yet another completely incompatible release. Your old heroes will no longer work and trying to play against people with older versions should fail horribly. I changed the format completely on several important packets, so mixed versions will get confused quickly
In anticipation of the permanent MIX Master server, I have been adding tons of connectivity stuff. Hopefully you won't even notice. But one thing you might notice is that I removed the 'terminal emulator' step when using a public mix server. The real purpose of the terminal emulator is to let you navigate the site you connected to. This makes sense for modem and telnet calls, but MIX is a known commodity and it just added an unnecessary step.
I found and fixed a rather major bug which led to oddities such as 'not everyone in the party got healed when we entered the scene' and "even after I got healed, I stayed dead-looking." Again, this was a pretty big bug and probably showed up in lots of multiplayer odd behaviour, especially when using 'parties'
If I am asked to load a non-existent monster skin, I handle it more gracefully.
Fixed a bug which allowed monsters to spend huge lengths of time not actually fighting you. Result will be they will bonk you more frequently now. Also, they occasionally move around now. But they still don't "stalk" you and there are no weapon range constraints yet.
The Thief's men no longer look like Stingtails, but there is not much new in the plot in this version. Nothing really. This is another engine upgrade release. I did create a couple other shops, however, selling intermediate and advanced items.
Purchasing something flips the ITEM panel to show the thing bought.
I return your pose to READY after resurrecting you.
I reduced the maxHP/MP per level since by level 32 or so you had already reached astronomical strength.
I spread out the level name changes over the entire 99 levels for wizards and warriors, and added a little more structure to the provisional muse and archer classes.
The Title Bar should now show the correct map name.
The 'reward' phase after winning a battle with a physical attack is no longer delayed until the end of the pain animation.
'ghosts' are now drawn with a ghosty sort of thing going on... simple animation effect.
an 'actor' wandering off screen no longer leaves his speech bubble on screen.
I added a silly 'hero finder' feature on the MAP tab. When viwing the MAP tab, click on a player's name and a little arrow will appear for a few seconds in the small map, pointing towards that player. (if it is you, you will just see a little circle)
The little campfire which appears on the map when someone is 'camping' now has a different look if they are actually 'fighting' (a shield with a sword banging on it) and I am set to be able to show yet additional states. (A 'locked camp' comes to mind...) I was going to do an 'imprisoned by sysop' sort of thing, but this game can't really support sysops (since there is no secure way to define who is and is not a valid sysop). As a result, I am focussing on different solutions to social problems.
One such feature added is a MUTE feature (right-click on name on MAP list an select MUTE - you will no longer hear that person)
HAUNTING now works, though setting it up is a little clumsy. You still need to select an old hero soul, or create a new one, but then instead of INCARNATING, you flip to the MAP list, select a living hero and
- "souls.exe /ipx" -> automatically goes to IPX LAN
- "souls.exe /listen" ->automatically listens for incoming TELNET from one other player
- "souls.exe /connect 1.2.3.4:5" -> automatically TELNET connects to ip 1.2.3.4 port 5
- TWELFTH birthday, not TWELTH birthday
- Should no longer be able to 'miss' when giving items to other players (you should not be able to gve items to ghosts, however)
- VASTLY IMPROVED map transition times. First time you enter a map is only time it should be slow. (same speed as before) Thereafter should be nice and fast.
- Fixed some terrain problems from when I moved the Wyrm Cavern
- New Souls should start with zero PP instead of PP you left off previous soul with
- Mix connections collect some optional BIO info from you which I will eventually show to other players. (your handle, real name, and email address - only put in what you feel comfortable telling people - it is entirely optional)
- Hopefully I have fixed all the zillion ways in which your final 'pain color' was not updated correctly.
- STAFFs can now have (and most d) a spell bound to them (spellbound, get it? :-) and when you use such a staff in your right hand and select physical attack, it actually casts that spell (for free). character classes could be allowed right-hand to hold staff but no magic per se and still use magic in this way. it's cool and I hope you like it :-)
- if you lose a fight, the monsters wander off screen after killing you and your buddies. This adds a lot of character to the monsters :-)
- Don't know if I mentioned this but typing "/a weeps openly" will send chat which looks like "Samsyn weeps openly" as opposed to "Samsyn: Weeps openly"
- as a convenience when scripting scenes, the command "/villagers" opens a very simple image browser which helps you easily find the filename and image number you need for the ACTOR opcode in the script.
- The OK button on the Ability Points dialog is no longer set to fire on ENTER. We had some accidental loss of Ability points when people typed their line of chat just as their level went up
- And, best for last, five cool new monsters from Josh.
- Which brings us to: WOW this sucker is 9 megabytes already (4.4M compressed download).
2/1/99 ALPHA 9 includes:
- NOTE: This is another INCOMPATIBLE VERSION upgrade. Your saved games will no longer work, nor will you be able to successfully play against people with other versions.
- New 'P' points (play points) are earned every time you successfully hit something. (with magic or weapon). Your current 'PP' is shown next to your gold (GP). On the SPELL window is a new button 'learn spell' which lets you learn spells by 'spending' P-points. Spells are NO LONGER AUTOMATICALLY LEARNED WITH LEVEL UPS. The only way to learn a spell is by using P points. The greater your WISDOM, the more P points you earn per 'bash' of a monster. with WISDOM=0, you get 5 PP per bash. With WISDOM=200, you get 40 PP per bash.
- Character Class tables in the Quest file now let you specify both a 'magic ratio' which controls the effectiveness of your magic versus weapon ability (if you have 80% magic, then you only get 20% of the weapon strength, for example). Also, each character class is assigned a specific 'right-hand-weapon' of which there can be EIGHT POSSIBLE. The first four are generally assumed to be SWORD, STAFF, BOW, and MUSICAL INSTRUMENT. But you can set the tables up any way you like. More details in the comments in the QUEST.TXT file
- So you can now make quite a few combinations of character classes (for example a Bow-User, and a Magic-Bow-User, where the latter *can* use a bow, just not very well, while their magic skills are great). Any character can apply ability points to its wisdom and eventually be a powerful spell caster (but with a 20% magic ratio, that character will always be inferior at magic (and superior with weapons) than an 80% magic ratio character with the same equipment and levels)
- DEFENSE points are now handled CORRECTLY AT LAST! So it is much more satisfying in fight scenes (no more of those '1 hit point nightmare eternal battles') It remains important to get some defensive clothing right away. Sorry I don't let you shop before incarnating yet.
- YOU ARE NOW PUNISHED FOR DYING! You lose all the experience points you have earned for your next level (you don't drop a level, though, you just go back to the 'start' of that level, experience point-wise)
- DEXTERITY and AGILITY now work. If your enemy's agility is greater than your dexterity, you now have a chance of MISSing them in fights. The greater the difference, the greater the chance of missing. It maxes out at 50 points (at which point you will miss them 50% of the time) so if my agility is 140 and your dexterity is 100, then you will miss me 40% of the time (because the difference in our values is 40).
- When you get a LEVEL UP, you get a free recharge of your HP and MP to your new level's maximum points.
- If someone else kills the monster you picked before your spell gets cast, I now try to apply your attack to a remaining monster. If none are available then you are still screwed and you wasted your MP.
- Added SFX for Sell item, ability points, and various other spots
- You can supply growl and pain sound effects for all monsters, but if you don't, I assign them randomly (so it will vary from game to game) I made some additional forms, so you should get more variety now (instead of just OW OW OW OW OW OW).
- You can no longer use inappropriate items on yourself (for example if you 'use leather vest' on yourself it used to throw the vest up in the air and then it would disappear. If you really want to dump something, use the DROP command in the right-click menus on ITEM and EQUIP screens.
- You can now SELL items via right-click on ITEM screen as well as on EQUIP screen.
- There is a neat CHIME sound when a new soul enters your world (actually you will hear it each time they announce their skin name)
- You can not attack dead people.
- Using a health potion shows the number of actual HP you got, not the max amount possible. Using Magic Potion shows a zero still...
- Getting a Level Up redraws the EQUIP screen with the proper PLUS signs indicating what you could now improve yourself with by equipping. Also, the new character class stuff required a reqrite of the 'would this thing be better' logic. It is now much cleaner since each character class has to choose only ONE of the eight possible right-hand weapons.
- Fixed the BOG SHARK oddities
- Fixed the Carnivorous Hat and Disco Freak monster frames...
- I gratuitously moved some stuff around on the map, but there is nothing really new on the map. It might make a little more sense, but really I was just using some editor refinements. For example, the link points are now always outlined with a dim gray rectangle (while using the editor) so you could now use 'invisible' link points more easily. The scene preview window is now half size, and when you point in it, it gives you X,Y coordinates suitable for using in a SCENE to place actors accurately (though it is still a manual operation)
- I made all the monster link points 'guarded' so you run into more monsters the CLOSER you get to 'the tree' It makes more sense this way and you can avoid more monsters.
- The animation of the use and giving of items has been sped up considerably.
- I boosted the standard walking speed on the map a little.
- In addition to saying "CAN'T USE" on the shop screen when you click on an item you cannot use, I *also* challenge you with a messagebox if you try to buy it anyway. So it shoud be difficult (but not impossible) to accidentally buy something you cannot use. (you could then give it to someone else)
- A bunch of other minor stuff.
1/24/99 ALPHA 8 includes:
- NOTE: THIS IS ANOTHER INCOMPATIBLE UPDATE. So make sure anyone you play with is running the same version.
- Hard to document the specific changes in this build. It started out as a 'tuning' build (I think the hit points are more satisfying now... I have tweaked the experience points a little for testing purposes, so you should fly through the levels a bit faster than in the final product. Picking the right magic element makes a BIG difference now.
- I also made a lot of changes to the level editor, and worked on the 'Map Wizard' (still non-functional) which tries to render the process even simpler (but lo, still not simple enough!)
- I finished the base functionality of the integrated quest editor. Type "/Q" to invoke it at any time. After saving your changes, type "/reload" to recompile them such that they can be used.
- I made some joke scenes in the 200s just for fun. type "/scene 200" to see one. I think I did a 201,202,203,204, and 205. Use the integrated script editor to view the text of those scenes - they are intentionally very simple.
- I added some art framing to the store dialog so it looks marginally better (or worse, depending on how you feel about it). It also tells you if an items level means you cannot equip it (BEFORE you buy it), but you have to watch out for the warning (no pop-up dialog about it)
- I advise beginning a new character, buy some armor right away. Earn some money close to home and pack some health and magic potions before heading off into the wilds. There is still only the one well to get recharged for free. (And I think there is only one other store, in scene 50 in the east). There are tons of new link points and all the monsters have been placed 'logically' (sort of), so you should experience a more gradual shift in monster difficulty as you move from easiest (near well) to hardest (far south).
- Each map now has its own MIDI file (or, rather, CAN have) and I restore the proper music when you leave a scene.
- The link editor now uses drop-down lists showing the available files (MIDI, JPG, etc.) instead of making you remember their names. Likewise, thinks like monster groups are shown as a list of the actual monster names instead of the group number. This helped me a lot. That's why I was able to add 60 link points in an evening. There is also a 'scene preview' window which pops open but doesn't do much yet except show you the background image you selected for the scene (which helped me a lot, but I would like to be able to use it to place characters graphically, as well)
- On my list forever and finally done: When you create a new soul, it TELLS YOU that you already had a soul of that same name! (rather than just overwriting the soul you invested nine million hours into)
- The Player Killer option seems to work! Also, I added a marker to the STATUS screen for your OWN character, so you don't have to remember if a particular soul is a PKer or not. You still are not told if the OTHER guy is a PKer, however.
- You can now use items in scenes even when you are not the scene 'server'
- I made BIG CHANGES to the MIX server so that I can now support MixMaster servers, which should answer the question: "how do I find someone else to play with" I'm very pleased with this, but you'll have to ignore the option for now (until I get my permanent IP address set up)
- I put in a little easter egg for josh... we'll see if he notices ;-)
- I added some more menu bar items: Disable Music, Disable Sound Effects, and a couple other web page choices.
- There is a little musical fanfare when your level goes up, and I think the Ability Points dialog now looks almost nice. Maybe I had that in A7 as well.
- I *think* I fixed the 'dangling theme' transitions (where if it was raining in the scene, you still hear the rain on the map) Since I am not 100% convince what I want here, I won't claim to be finished with that..
- I fixed the latest long name bug. (this was a long character name bug, as opposed to the previous long skin name bug). Obviously I must never use long names (I'm against them on principle :-) In general, I advise things under 16 characters and without spaces in them....
- Fixed a bug which couldn't figure out which sword/staff was better for classes which could use either.
- Fixed the 'earth element' archer fish (um, we call it Dirt Fish!). Keep checking out that pokedex!
- I dumped most of the annoying red text during battle. I don't know WHAT I was thinking, other than I put that in back before I had anything else to look at. It's completely gone right now, but I will probably need to meet a middle ground. There are probably some spells you would like to know about when they are about to be used on you. (I don't want to clutter the chat area with too many automatic statements because I want MOST of what you see there to be chat from other players (or scripted stuff))
- I probably shouldn't mention this, and just wait to get feedback.... In fact, that's what I will do. I changed something else - see what you think!
1/10/99 ALPHA 7 includes:
- NOTE: THIS IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH EARLIER VERSIONS. All players must upgrade to play in the same game. Your old saved games will no longer work. (You can try out the new DELETE SOUL button..) There are quite a few changes in this version, but I am afraid most of them are not visible (other than the fact I have probably introduced some new bugs into code which was somewhat stable). I really haven't tested this enough to ship it, but I promised a new version last week.
- A command to delete an old soul (old saved game)
- Split the Well of Souls into two separate scenes. The REAL well of souls (not on any map) which is where you pick you soul and skin. And the "Temple of Dreams" (name in limbo) where you first incarnate into the world. This changes with each world. You can not get recharged and resurrected here.
- Miscellaneous Fiddling with the background art on dialog boxes and the like
- a huge new set of Josh skins, monsters, and villagers! Woo Hoo!
- When the SHOP button is present, the right-click 'sell item on equip screen' option will work.
- Reworked the spell damage algorithm to use A points differently for magic and sword users
- Created the concept of "magic-ratio" (0-100 %) A high ratio means you are a magic user, can carry staffs but not swords. A low value means you are a sword user and can carry swords, not staffs. This ratio is defined in the QUEST file in the +LEVELS section. I think this finally closes the 'user-definable character' type issue. Everything is now table-driven (I think)
- When you return to the WELL in a multiplayer game and pick a soul with a different skin, the other players should see the skin change correctly.
- The QUEST file allows you to provide two sound effects per monster (GROWL and PAIN) or use the randomly-selected default sounds.
- The HP and MP area on the button bar now includes simple meters (red for HP, blue for MP)
- Giving items to other players should now work.
- Creating a new soul now asks UP FRONT for the soul's name, class (available classes taken from LEVEL are of QUEST file), and whether or not you want to be a PLAYER KILLER. (Player KILLER not finished yet -- the idea is that only player killer characters can hit other humans (and only other PKers). So if you want to opt out of PK, you can.)
- You can use the ARROW key on the pokedex, item, spell, etc list boxes to step through available entries, and the current entry is remembered more reliably in general.
- I lowered the probability of your finding fabulous items lying around (sorry!), and most items now have a 'minimum level' assigned so that even if you find one, you probably can't use it. use the ITEMS list to review.
- I added the first baby step towards an integrated QUEST editor (the QUEST button on the 'make you own world' thing). Use it at your own risk...
- By moving the character selection to the popup dialog when you create a new soul, I was able to switch the class and skin selectors from combo boxes to list boxes, so you can see more items at once, and I hope everything is a lot more obvious now. (I do want the game to be easy to play, by the time it is finished)
- You might not be able to hurt yourself anymore, but I forgot to check. It's all part of the player-killer logic, which is not yet complete.
- There is a LOT of new art from Josh, so let me mention it here again. a LOT.
- The SHOP dialog, in addition to being marginally more attractive, now shows a description of the item you are about to buy.
- It no longer says "You find a leather boots"
- The Pokedex is new and improved. If you click on the image it toggles between life-size and zoomed in. Also, it is now possible to define monsters with zoomed artwork. So you can have both a SLOBBER and, for example, a GIANT SLOBBER using the same art file. The pokedex shows each monster's ID # (at the bottom), so if you want to try fighting a particular monster, just camp and then type "/fight N" where N is the monster ID. Type it again and add another monster to the fight...
- Monster tables, item tables, etc have been considerably tweaked and I hope everything now is CLOSE to making sense.
- If you get enough experience points to go up several levels at once, you SHOULD get your fair share of ability points to apply
- the FORMS button in the world editor now saves the forms as RLE BMPs instead of JPG which makes a lot more sense. (also the forms set the upper left transparency pixel for you)
- If you want to test the registration stuff. The game accepts Warpath 97 activiation codes at the moment (enter the code "shareware" to revert to the unregistered version. You don't need to register, it just is there to test the code (a registered player has a unique 'soul number' which will probably be good for something someday)
12/17/98 ALPHA 6 includes:
- Ooops, I forgot the new sound effect files in ALPHA 5, so here they are in ALPHA 6!
- Also, I left in a debugging thing which turned off pain animation for swords (oops)
- I was sick, ok? (I wonder what my excuse will be this time)
- I made some minor tweaks to the A/D settings for swords, etc. (butter knife no longer has 5 defense points, for example)
- I added link points for the thief's cave (scene 13), the shoemaker(scene 12), and the Wyrm's Lair (scene 11)
- A spell which affects ALL should make all flicker
- minor art changes
12/16/98 ALPHA 5 includes:
- This is another INCOMPATIBLE UPGRADE. Your saved games will fail and you won't be able to play (reliably) with alpha 4 players. BTW, the MAP screen should show the version everyone is using.
- I added a monster library to make it easier to view monster strengths for testing purposes. Just type "/pokedex" after you have incarnated and it will list ALL monsters in the game. I have tweaked the monster list a bit to assign somewhat rational elements.
- I 'fixed' the attack/defense/attribute engine. I turned off all randomness to make it easier to test. Your raw sword hit power is your current 'attack points' modified by your strength and level (an increase of 100 in either category doubles hit strength). With no A points at all, you should hit 5 units. Your defense points are how much is subtracted from the hit. Defense points are modified by your stamina and level (again, an increase of 100 in either will double your defense. Defense works against both swords and magic. In the Quest file, a monsters A points is how hard it will hit. It's D points are what will be subtracted from your hit on it. I removed MISS for now (I was doing it based on attack and defense and now I think I will do it entirely on agility/dexterity/level), and it should be impossible to deliver less than a 1-point damage. More tuning will be needed, but this should be better. Note that I let you pick up lots of swords that a real world would hide for later. So if you get a A+78 sword, your hit points will rise amazingly.
- I added a 'fallback strategy' for sounds and monster skins (not hero skins). So you will find SFX and MONSTER folders both at the 'root' level and the 'world' level. When I need an asset I first look in the world, and if it isn't there, then I look in the root.
- I added a whole bunch of sound effect hooks, so that spells and monsters can be given custom sounds (or just use common sets of sounds as you see fit.) For each monster you can (optionally) specify a GROWL (when it is attacking, actually) and a PAIN (when it is being hurt) sound. For each Spell you can specify a SUMMON (when it is aggregating over your head), a TRAVEL (when it is moving to the enemy) and a STRIKE (when it is hitting the enemy)
- I implemented the SOUND opcode in the script engine. (note: it can only play WAV files which are part of the world, not random wavs on your machine that other people might not have (only you will hear those))
- I added a "/a" command to the chat. As in "/a sinks slowly" --> "Samsyn sinks slowly" Silly, but well. there you are.
- I added some sound effects for chat. (And I made some crappy initial sounds). A chk-chk-chk sound when text is appearing in a speech bubble. Also a "Listen!" (yeah, I have been playing Zelda 64!) when new chat comes in from a human player. And an "Ahem" when new stuff comes in from a scripted actor.
- I changed the 'look' of the speech bubbles. Also, in scripted scenes I now only allow one actor's bubble to appear at a time (no such limitation on human players). I think this helped the scripted scenes a lot (try "/scene 10" for an example). The bubbles now include the name of the speaker.
- I drew some more buttons (which had been using the campfire as a placeholder) WELL, SHOP, HAUNT, FLEE and I changed all the button text to the same color. I made a few other gratuitous art changes as well.
- I fixed an odd thing which clipped your skin when you walked to the extreme edge of a scene.
- I increased the size of the area you can point inside of to see a hero's name on the big map.
- I added place names to the small map. I will have to make it so you can only see the names of places you have visited, but that's "too hard" for this version :-)
- Links without names no longer appear as white boxes on the small map.
- Creating a new character after playing an old character should now correctly zero out the new characters ability points and other settings which used to be accidentally inherited from the previous player
- Using a 'good' potion should no longer make the OW OW OW sound, and you should blink WHITE, not RED.
- Walking around on a map while dead, should no longer let you get pulled into a fight scene. (gameplay issue here since we can't have you simply walking around dead to skip fight scenes)
- Dead people on the map show up as red now. (looked nicer than black)
- That silly store in the Well on Evergreen now sells a couple cheap swords and shields, so you don't have to start the game with no A/D points at all.
- I fixed a couple drop-in bugs (where you would get sucked back into a scene you were trying to leave, or get sucked in while walking near a scene (as opposed to STOPPING near a scene). You will STILL get sucked back into your leader's scene if you are following someone.
- You can now use ITEMs on other players. (It just GIVES them the item). And there is a simple animation during item usage. You can still use items on yourself which make no sense.
- The Shop no longer picks up additional copies of items each time you visit it.
- And probably some other stuff, too.
12/10/98 ALPHA 4 includes:
- More MIDI files for fight scenes etc.
- Battle now includes you attack and defense points (warning: you are too weak before you get your first piece of equipment, and too strong thereafte.) Also, the 'elements' should have effect when using magic on monsters (not that I tell you the monster's element yet. I think I will add a 'pokedex' next. Also your character attributes (strength, wisdom, etc) matter now.
- It is now possible to 'MISS' in a fight scene (deliver no damage)
- the GIVE command can now give 'health' as in "GIVE H33" gives 33 hit points and "GIVE M33" gives 33 magic points. This allows scripted scenes to include 'healing pools', 'inns' etc. Since it is a script command, you can have an inkeeper ask "It's ten gold pieces for the night" and then ask the user a yes/no question, and then "TAKE G10" to take gold and then "GIVE H1000" to recharge user (use a huge number and it will fill them to the top... 32767 is probably the hugest number)
- I don't know if I mentioned these before, but heroes (monsters to, defined statically in the quest file MONSTER table) now have 'character attributes' STRENGTH (enhances sword attack), WISDOM (enhances magic attack), AGILITY(helps avoid attack), DEXTERITY (helps you not miss), STAMINA (enhances defense against both magic and swords)
- At the start of the game (when you create a new character) you get 20 Attribute points to assign as you see fit. Each time you get a level up, you get 5 more points to apply. You can buy/find items ('seeds') which also give you points to apply.
- After winning a battle, the monsters drop useful items for you. (in multiplayer, everyone gets different random items) Scripted items are given to everyone in the scene. This is probably the first you will realize there even ARE any items in the game. (Cheat code "/gimme" gives you ALL items, spells, etc.)
- Using a Health potion or spell on someone no longer makes the OwOwOwOw sound, and they flash WHITE instead of RED. Still need to make a pleasant sound for it.
- I think I have finally fixed the "shows both a sword and a staff in your hand on the equip screen" bug.
- I give a new character 100 gold pieces to spend at the store.
- Cheat code "/summary" opend WORDPAD with a summary of the tokens you are carrying. This wil someday be turned into your 'personal log'
- ITEMS screen was drawing outside its rectangle a little, showing some lines here and there
- Character Classes are handled differently in the quest file now. You can have up to 99 levels per class. Documentation is in the quest file.
- Dropping into a fight, or choosing to camp no longer leaves you body wandering on to its original destination on the map. You now STOP.
- The script opcode "SAY" has been changed to "SELECT" though I still accept "SAY" and "SEL" Also, if you have several actors in a scene, there is a shorthand to do a select just before talking. For example "0: hi there" is said by actor 0. (and 0 is thereafter selected.)
- Restarting the game doesn't leave the last spell selected.
- Magic potions no longer can fill you above your max MP level.
- The Spell table in the quest file has been totaly redone to provide a balanced set of intial spells, with somewhat appropriate art effects for each spell. Your existing saved characters probably won't work in this version, but if they did, they would know a different set of spells.
- Spells now really use their elemental status
- Characters now uniformaly begin with 20 HP and 10 MP and it is not undoen by the first level up. Experience points needed for next level is now computed automatically (no longer in quest file).
- Which spells you learn at which level is now defined in the character class table in the quest file, not the spell table. This allows different classes to learn different spells
- FunPak is now limited to only 2000 lines. (used to consume infinite memory after a long session)
- Cheat code "/fight N" brings monster N into the scene to fight you. (You have to be incarnated and camping first). N must be an actual monster ID from the quest file MONSTER table. This is to simplify play balance tuning.
- Some other stuff, but I only started keeping good notes towards the end
11/10/98

Apologies to anyone who downloaded the 4meg version, when really it was only 2.5Meg when I removed the stuff that had snuck in by accident. But today it is 3meg for real, so the size is creeping up there. I'll probably have to separate the engine from the world download pretty soon, if only for the exercise.

Still no plotline, but I made some significant enhancements to performance (20 frames per second now instead of 10 - still runs on a P90) and added some cool special effects for animated water, earthquakes and weather (snow being my favorite). Get into the game and then type "/scene 10" (or any number from 4-10 I think) to get some quick demos. Or use the "/fx n" to select effect #n (0-5) or "/weather n" to select weather #n (0 to 9)

Aside from setting the environmental 'ambiance' these effects can also be used to make spellcasting more interesting.

There are the usual micro-improvements (for example, the flying text now resizes dynamically with the window which makes menus and the like nicer for those of us who resize constantly). One of the speed enhancements came from adding an additional work buffer to hold the scaled version of the background image. This made it unnecessary to do a stretchblt every frame (an expensive operation). It also gave me a modifiable copy of the background which is how I am able to make the snow 'stick on the ground' and I can also use this for more gruesome effects (like blood spots from battle, which also get covered by the healing snows :-)

The 20 fps really enhaces the 'magic dripping from the wand' IMHO.

Hope you all had a great Halloween!

9/27/98

OK! I am finally putting up a new version. Must have been a long time since it has practically doubled in size (it's 4 megabytes now! Wow!) unzipped it is only 5 meg, so I am not getting much compression. Either that or I accidentally included something unexpected.

I didn't meet my goals still (to have a coherent plot in this package), but it's overdue, so here it is, still just an engine demo, not a beta test.

OOOPS! My apologies to anyone who downloaded in the last couple hours! Turns out there was a reason for that 4 megabytes after all. The REAL zip file is still only a bit over 2 Meg still. Also, the interim build didn't have 256 color support enabled. Ooops. Anyway, I am putting the correct version up NOW

Well, I put up an even NEWER version on 9/29. The previous push didn't include the necessary script file changes to fully appreciate all the art Josh created. This push does that, plus I cleaned up my own object art files and added some cheesy animation (the little campfire on the main map when someone is in a scene (you have to be in multiplayer to even see this).

9/20/98

I am getting ready to put up a new version of the demo, but didn't quite meet my goals yet. Loads of changes this time around. Probably the most significant is that it is now chock full o' monster and hero art, mainly due to the prodigious brush of Josh Worts.

I also have moved to the 'real interface' which is a bunch of animated buttons along the bottom of the screen (instead of the 2 separate groups of 'buttons' I had before). I haven't finished drawing all the buttons, which is why I didn't publish tonight, mainly. Might as well wring as much out of the 'first impression' that I can.

There are the usual million little feature changes and total rewrites. Some cosmetic glitz was added in this pass to start moving along towards the eventual moment in time that this looks like an actual game.

I've been working with several writers and we've been mutually discovering just what it means to write a Well of Souls 'quest' file. Lots of engine changes to reflect real-world issues. I am trying to generate some simple (?) guidelines which I will link to from the Art Submission page, as well as some support tools to make it easier to generate assets.

Oh, I finished the 'terrain editor' at long last, so the link editor now also lets you paint an 'overlay' on each map indicating what sort of terrain it is. (The player doesn't see this overlay, but it controls which terrain bits the player needs in order to cross a particular terrain. terrain bits are associated with objects. For example, the Fire Boots would include the fire terrain bit and would allow you to cross lava on the map)

I reworked 'monster groups' (which was a lot more fun given Josh's great art), and dumped the 'fight buttons' which I crammed into the previous version. Now the same buttons which let you open the spell, item, and equipment panels to review what you've got, ALSO select the appropriate 'fight cursor' (spell, item and equipment). This feels better, and required fewer buttons overall.

The Link editor is much nicer than it was. Next I will probably add drop-down combo boxes to let you select from things already in the quest file. Right now you still have to look back and forth a bit too much for my tastes. This will be particularly nice for setting scene background, music, etc.

Evergreen, the world, is still plot-less, but there is an overall structure to the monsters now, increasing in difficulty as you proceed to the south.

6/7/98

I did some more work on the fight scene (it *is* after all probably the most important element, and I know it is still pretty weak.) I wiped all the original lame monster art and mapped ALL the monsters to a single skin, which, while still lame, at least incorporates all the monster animation states. So, while it is sort of a step backward in overall art density, I think it better captures the feel. I sampled myself making some growling noises and then pitch-shifted them down until they actually sound pretty animalistic. You'll find that everyone sounds the same right now (and they say "ow" even if you are casting a NICE spell (like heal)) and you'll just have to trust me that is temporary. Likewise, all spells are using the same SFX at the moment, so try to get past that, too :-) Basically hero attacks will eventually make a sensible SFX, and monsters basically growl just before biting you, then everyone has their own pain noise. I like the monster growl part.

The plan is to let you bind unique SFX to each monster, hero, spell, etc. (not *too* many combinations probably). The lame sounds I put in really did help a lot (I think) in capturing more of a sense of danger.

I also messed with my unique 'real time turns-based' algorithm (which is basically the fundamental difference between this game and every other RPG). Which isn't to say it's a *great* idea, but I am going to pursue it to its logical conclusion. You should now find it peppier to enter your own combat commands, and yet the monsters aren't quite so predictably relentless in their own onslaught. The combat balance is still not tuned (all monsters die after 5 hit points or so, and never hit you more than 1, etc.). Overall, it's probably still too frenetic (no pause in this game)

I finally decided how spells would be learned... I went the easy route. No spell stores. No master trainers. (although you CAN use a script to learn special spells as part of a scripted dialog), for the most part you just automatically learn a spell each time your level goes up. In the quest file you specify a minimum character level for each spell. As soon as the character reaches that level, they learn the spell. It's a little bogus that fighters learn the same spells in the same order as magic-users, but I will try to address that later.

And I think I have decided how I will do the 'inn' recharge (which I think is kinda boring in a multiplayer environment for the group leader to have to shepherd everyone to the inn and pay, etc.) I am going to have recharge happen in the following way: Visiting a well of souls (one in every major town) is instant rebirth, if dead, and/or recharge. So the leader can take the party into the well, and maybe say "yes" to the blind sage and bob's your uncle everyone is OK again - no charge. Likewise, the leader can CAMP, drawing everyone into a monster-free (usually, at least) scene where they can heal each other with spells and items. Some scenes will have 'healing pools' and stuff like that) And there *will* be stores to sell items, and the moral equivalent of treasure boxes (these will be 'different' I think)

As far as death is concerned. I am tempted to let death just take you out of the fight, as it were, but otherwise you are still around, still part of the team (and in some cases are still the team leader). You just can't fight, cast spells, use items, etc. You're a ghost until you and/or your team visit a Well, or someone in your party (or someone you meet along the way) uses the right magic or item on you. If the entire party dies, I will probably have to warp you to the last Well, just to prevent people intentionally killing the party just to be able to walk long distances unmolested.

So, at the start of the game, there will be the promised spectator mode where you are 'haunting' incarnated players. But once you incarnate, that is your character for the rest of the game (unless you specifically quit), and death doesn't take you out of that vessel, just renders the vessel broken until you get it fixed. S, the Well you see at the very beginning is different from the regular Well you encounter on the road.

6/1/98

I added a lot of stuff which I have more or less forgotten about. Let's see what I can recall. I reorganized the folder hierarchy and added some readme.txt files to describe what each directory is for. I added support for MIDI music files and composed a couple ditties using JAMMER (which is a really cool program and I'll have to make that a hyperlink to their site)

I re-did the fight engine a little to facilitate 'prompting' for your action. Still have to do SFX and 'growling' in general. I re-did the way the cursor works in a fight. You can now use magic, sword, items, or flee. There is also a CAMP button if you want to drop into a campscene with your group (say you want to cast HEAL on each other or just chat).

For the most part, PARTIES are now working (you can choose to follow another player, and actually do so). Except when switching maps (sorry), which I have finally implemented. So links may now be to maps OR scenes which I hope will reduce some confusion from people who thought it was only scenes. Evergreen has one such link (around the easter island head) just to give the flavor. The link editor was augmented as a result. A link which has no other designation is a 'back' link (takes you back to where you came from).

I made some nicer link art pieces of villages, towns, etc. I made some example sub-maps (nothing spectacular). Still need to work on scaling issues. Sub-maps are bigger than I thought (which is good) so they should make nice caves, towns, etc. A Normal Hierarchy is now: World Map, has 'village image' links to sub-maps which show layout of town with links to scenes for weapons shops, etc. Plot points are always delivered in a scene, not on a map or sub-map. (so far, at least)

You now encounter monsters as you walk around the map (but you can always FLEE from a fight at this point). Each link has a monster group number associated with it (or zero, for none, to be used around 'safe' towns). In the quest file, you enumerate all the possible monster groups (this allows you to group logical monsters together in the quantity you like). It's all horribly complicated of course... say for example that monster group 1 consists of the following list of monster IDs:

1,1,1,1,2,2,2,3,3,4

This means that when encountering monster group one, the WORST you will find is 4 monsters of ID 1 (say, small jelly slimes), 3 of ID 2, 2 of ID 3, and one of ID 4 (for example, some giant eyeball that is healing the other monsters). But USUALLY when encountering monster group one, you will see a semi-random subset of those monsters. The closest link point to you controls which monster group you will encounter. Normally, the number of monsters from the group will INCREASE the farther you are from the link point (think in terms of a town which keeps you safe while you are close, but gets more dangerous the farther away you get). If you use a negative value (like -3) in the link's Monster Group number, then it uses the same list (3, in this case), but the monsters instead get HARDER the closer you get to the link. Use this when the monsters are logically 'guarding' the entrance to something. Link points are generally towns, caves, etc, but can be just trees, rocks, or even invisible (though that makes map editing a bit more challenging) so you should be able to set up the monster difficulty grid to your liking.

I'm going to have to do the terrain editor soon, so as to make those water boots worth acquiring. Right now you can still walk/float over anything.

By popular demand, I moved the 'experience points and character levels' stuff into the QUEST file so you can now tweak it as you like. Each character class (wizard or warrior, today... maybe archer tomorrow) has its own matrix relating experience points to LEVEL. Each LEVEL is given a name, so, for example, wizard levels 1-3 might be APPRENTICE, 4-7 might be MAGICUSER, 22-23 might be NECROMANCER, etc. It's just a word, but it makes people happy. Your skin is still supposed to be unique (draw your own and auto-share with others, is the plan) and doesn't change with your level.

I think I have decided to video-sample clay models for the initial set of skins/monsters, but I am still putting that off, hoping someone will generously donate a bunch of cool art!

The Quest file lets you specify a MIDI song to play during the world's credits/opening sequence. Not all sound cards support nice-sounding (as opposed to FM Synth) MIDI at the same time as the sound effects. For example, mine does NOT. (grrr). You can also bind MIDI files to fight scenes (this is where they are cool) and eventually to maps.

I did a bunch of other stuff too, but it might not be apparent.

4/5/98

just added a bunch of stuff. Most obvious will be the EQUIP and ITEM screens (use the /gimme cheat code to give yourself all the items). On the ITEM screen you can see how much of each thing you are carrying and what the special properties of an item are, if any. At this time you still cannot USE an item. But play with right-click on list items to see what commands appear. Some of them even work.

On the EQUIP screen, it shows what you are currently wearing, and its net effect on your ATTACK and DEFENSE capabilities. If you rest the mouse over an item you will see additional info about that item. In the list below are all the items you are carrying with an E next to the ones you are equipped with and a PLUS sign next to any item which would improve your current A/D rating. Rightcliicking on said item tells you how it would affect your A/D. Also each item has a glpyh dividing it into the categories: BOOTS, HELMET, SHIELD, ARMOR, SWORD, STAFF, RING, and AMULET. Only wizards use STAFFs only warriors use SWORDs.

My favorites are the leather toupee, leather mask, and the amethyst ring. There is a separate BMP file for each class of object which can be extended to the right as needed to accomodate additional items.

Also, I now keep the list of players in the STATUS screen up to date so as to show people who are 'local' to you (either because they are near you on the map, in a scene with you, or a member of your party). Ultimately you will only chat with local people. Right-Clicking on a name in the STATUS list lets you choose to join that person's party (meaning you will be a follower of their leader) The actual LEADING isn't implemented yet, but see if you can figure out what the flags mean.

I have to rewrite the fight engine (mainly so you can cast heal spells outside of battle). I will try to improve the UI for entering 'your move' at that time. Now that I have implemented multi-imaged monsters, I see I have abug which explains why the monsters appeared so relentless. They are never pausing to 'growl' they just bash and bash and bash.

Quicky Manual
- Unzip into its own sub-directory
- Run The Game (souls.exe)
- Admire the Title Screen or click on it to make it go away faster
- Read the humorous main menu instructions, then click PLAY NOW
- Select a mode of multiplayer play, or choose SOLO if you are by yourself
- Admire the server-less name-space synchronization
- Select "EVERGREEN" as the world of your choice
- You start off in the Well of Souls (the provisional well, at least.) There are four balls in the lower right. they are:
  1. Start Game (wait on this till you have a character)
  2. See who is online (list of other souls in game and map position)
  3. Pick an Old Soul (restore saved game, as it were)
  4. Create a New Soul (mini-soul editor)
- So, pick and Name your soul (it will silently overwrite any old soul of the same name) and don't forget to pick a skin (not much variety). Then press the far left sphere to start the game
- Wander around on the map. Instead of the 4 spheres, you will now see 5 triangles (all placeholder art, of course) which ae (left to right)
1. MAP view - displays the world map. click on the world map to exit a scene.
2. EQUIP view - will show your current EQUIPPED stuff.
3. MAGIC view - will show available spells and info about them
4. STATUS view - shows info about member of your party
5. ITEMS view - will show info about items you are carrying
- Note the LINK art here and there. some of those link points will take you to other maps (purely as technical achievement, nothing wonderful about other maps yet)
- Several link points will take you to fight scenes or scripted plot scenes.
- Click in it again and you pop back out to map.
- Select MAP VIEW and click on the world map to exit a scene.
- In multiplayer, when X drops into fight, you see his icon on map change. If you walk on his face, as it were, you will drop into same fight scene.
That's about all there is to do right now.

Cheat Codes

If you type into the chat window a line beginning with a slash, it is a cheat code. Currently these are:
- /inn recharge yourself, as if you visited an inn
- /scene N drop into scene #N (as defined in the quest.txt file)
- /theme N play sound them #N (1-7, I like 1 the best)
- /funpak opens the diagnostic funpak
- /scope opens the packet scope
- /gimme gives you one more of every possible item
- /give <code><id> gives you one thing of the specified code and id. for example
  (G23 is 23 gold pieces, I15 is item 15, S2 is spell 2. etc. see the quest.txt file)
- /take <code><id> removes the specified object
Quest.txt

Each World has a script file "quest.txt" which contains the overall information about that world. More than any other, this is the file you edit to define your world. You enumerate monsters, spells, items, equipment, etc. Then you define scenes, with optional characters who can deliver dialog and take action based upon your responses. The format of the script language is pretty basic, hopefully simple (though tedious) and don't expect any great documentation soon. I tried to document in-line in the quest.txt file itself. Feel free to send me entertaining snippets of your work.

Hero and Monster 'Skins'

This is now described better HERE and again, HERE.

Borrowing from 'quake' terminology, a skin is a graphics file which contains the onscreen depiction of a character. Human players are always 'heroes' (independent of their true motivations) while computer generated opponents and villagers are 'monsters' Each character is assigned a skin file (the skin files can be shared amongst characters.) The goal is to make it simple for people to design their own skins and share them with each other.

The best way to explain a skin file is for you to open one up. Hero skins are stored in the 'skins' directory in the root of the Well of Souls file system. A skin file can be as tall as you like (it is just drawn to the screen, so a taller bitmap will mean a taller character. 64 pixels high is a pretty tall character.) once the height is set, the skin file is assumed to be 5 square images in a row. Left to right, these images are:

[MAP] [READY] [ATTACK] [WEAK] [CHAT]

the MAP square contains 9 little images of the character, used to draw the character walking around the big map. The other images are all used in scenes (such as a fight scene). usually a character will be READY, switching to CHAT whenever you type something. The ATTACK image is used when you are doing your thing in a fight, and the WEAK image is used when you are being hurt (it flashes red), are weakened/paralysed/poisoned, or dead (it turns black). Hero characters should be drawn looking up and to the left (as though the camera were behind them and they were confronting an enemy ahead of them on their left.) except for CHAT which should turn back to look at the camera.

Monster skins also have 5 square images:

[???] [READY] [ATTACK] [WEAK] [GROWL]

Try to ignore the first one for now (monsters don't walk around on the map... yet) The rest are the same as for a hero, except GROWL. A monster will shift randomly between READY and GROWL while not attacking. A sound effect is played when it GROWLs. MOnsters should be drawn facing the viewer and a little to the right (i.e. as if engaging a hero).

All character art is left/right flipped as needed to get an approximately correct display during motion and attack.

All character art should be created in RLE BMP format, using the "souls.pal" 256 color palette.

Level Editor

In solo mode, you see another selection below Pasty Shelves... Create Your Own World. This is a bit of a misnomer, since you have to mess around with the file system manually to actually CREATE a new world. But this menu selection opens a set of specialized editors. Currently insufficient to do anything great, but you will get the idea for what is coming.

This is now described more accurately in the HELP FILE which comes with the game itself (press F1 from within the game)

To actually create a world, think of a unique name and then make a folder of that name and place it inside of the WORLDS folder under the Well OF Souls directory. Now you need to fill that new folder with resources describing your world, including:
- MAP0.MAP this is a JPEG file (512x512 pixels suggested, but any size OK) 24bit color. It is your main world map. Put a lot of effort into this one.
- MAP0.MOB, another JPEG file. This is your grab bag graphic. Pick a useful color for xparency (WHITE maybe) and fill a large JPEG with it. Then create small art assets (like a picture of a little village, or a dangerous looking cave... things which would look nice on your big MAP file) Just cram as much stuff into the MOB file as you can. Grow it as necessary. Be consistent with the background color (you will need it for xparency) Make sure the bounding rectangles of any two objects are non overlapping.
- FIGHT.SCN, a JPEG currently used as the backdrop for the fight scene. All scene JPEGs should be exactly 360 x 256 pixells. Eventually I will support a variety of SCN files for different purposes. Including fight scenes varying with local map texture.
Then run the program, select CREATE NEW WORLD and you will get a little popup control panel. Select your new world from its combox box (hopefully it is there), then select the OBJECT EDITOR. This will display your MOB file and another floating dialog which is pretty confusing. You will find you can drag a rectangle on your MOB zoom. Then type the name of the thing you selected and press ADD OBJECT or whatever I called it. Do this for each object in your MOB file. Be sure to SAVE the mob file. it never saves it automatically.

Then open the LINK editor. Select an object on the floaint object palette, and then click in the zoomed map area. It will place that object (well another of that object) on the map, as a link. You can then customize that link by saying if it is a link to a scene (not implemented) or another map. You figure it out. Don't forget to SAVE your links. If you carefully click on an exisiting link on the MAP, you can pick it up and move it around.

It is anticipated there will also be a CITY editor which will be a more classic 'tile based' editor making it easier to generate .MAP files for the insides of cities, castles, etc.

DISCLAIMER

Anyway, none of this is binding. Please don't develop anything too elaborate with these tools as all is liable to change and then you will be mad at me.

COPYRIGHT

Well of Souls (the RPG) is the copyrighted property of Dan Samuel of Synthetic Reality Co. All rights reserved. Eventually this will be a shareware program which will require a registration fee to be played longer than a certain evaluation period.

People contributing Worlds will probably not see any return on their investment short of their credits (and my gratitude). My intention is for the game to make it easy to share worlds with friends. To the degree this web site can be used to facilitate that, I will make my own best effort. I will try not to exercise any censorship, but I might have to provide some sort of rating system for worlds deemed to contain offensive content.

Let me know what you like, what you hate, what you'd like to see, and any other feedback you might have. I'm not in any rush to finish this. It will be done when it is done, and hopefully the development copies will become more enjoyable throughout the process.

Thanks again!

Dan Samuel