Free & open source RPG 'Veloren' update compilation - weeks 233 to 241

As usual, this is a compilation series from recent updates provided at the Veloren blog, the free and open source voxel action-adventure RPG and a follow-up with compiled information from the "Two/Three Weeks in Veloren series”. Please also visit the Veloren blog for a more detailed view of these items.

Since the Merged section on this compilation series tends to be the biggest one, I’ll group relevant updates into logical groups. Here they go:

Merged:

• Gameplay: Finisher combo fixes, debuff balancing, learnable recipes, hammer balancing, fix for the give command, multiple sword animation updates, single player server name and invites, fixed black minimap bug, fixed crash on server list removal, chat clear command, trade request limitations, trading fixes, spellbook renamed to diary, better recipe tooltips, Hardcore characters, /spot command to search for locations without teleporting to them, procedural glider courses, stealing items owned by villagers will trigger insatisfaction from them, some farm plots implemented.
• Mobs: Rock Snapper attacks, Gnarling attacks speed fixes, world boss AI fixes, large bird route fixes, harvester, wood golem and chieftain rework, arthropod animation restructuring, Hydra 🐲🐲🐲 mob, transform on death effect for multi-stage bosses!, multiple minor mobs added(goblins, legooms, cactid, etc).
• Items: Curious potion naming more consistent, wood log price fixes, item image export fixes, armor pricing, recipe pricing, charm recipes in crafting, display learned recipes, fix modular weapons crafting instruction text flow, freezing potion and effect cancelling, more detailed potion descriptions, golemite armor set,
• Audio and Visual: New chest models, animation restructuring, multiple animation fixes, vertical scaling crash fix, new noise patterns, recommend OpenGL instead of DX11 in panic message, repair UI rework, fix of UI flickering in crafting, fix wrong button highlight in interface settings, remove help window, chat message length limits, proper ring initialization and assets manager update, beam collisions now make raycast particles adding some visual eye candy for beams, towns now have nice themed airshipper dock but captains haven’t learned how to actually land them, audio framework swap from Rodio to Kira because the later is a more polished product feature and bug wise, water splashes and river particles.
• Dungeons: Cultist dungeon tool balancing, Shagin dungeon fixes, repair button activeness, Vampire dungeon merged, reworked Myrmidon dungeon implemented.
• Rust and toolchain: Multiple fixes for newer toolchains, plugin load optimization and Rust nightly, RustTLS update, kiddo, hyper and dependency updates, partial archive upgrades in airshipper, cmd_doc_gen update
• OS: Multiple macOS fixes, Windows build fixes, correcting the NixOS Wiki link
• i18n: Internationalization of prompt dialogs, updated translations, translation script fixes, localize item amount, localize skill window texts, localization of pseudo recipes, translatable message on give_item, removal of unused translation keys, command description translation, control window translation,
• Others: Vroom admin glider with jet propulsion, Multiple changes made due to recent moderation incidents (check Week 241 blog).

Admins now go Vroom.

Ongoing improvements (not merged yet):

• Gameplay: Multiple gamepad bindings updates being worked, parrying, sword animations, melee combo recovery fixes, moon phases, armor balancing and scaling, NPC animation in plugins, some NPC going to bed at night, adding beds to houses, glider courses and loops for flying challenges, stopping beams at terrain level, farming, entity to terrain tethers (grappling hook), improved climbing, hired NPCs in groups and vampire castle.
• Mobs: Menacing AI, Five Gigas,
• Items: New potions and potion rework, bow rework,
• Audio and Visual: Repair UI overhaul, updated fence(gate) sprite, creating a consistent set of themed sprite variants for all town kinds, pumpkin sprites update.
• Dungeons:Mage tower, Sewer Styled dungeon
• Rust and toolchain: Winit update, Web tokens.
• Others: Updated contribution guidelines, Moderation database,

Developing improvements (under heavy development or still under discussion on Discord/Gitlab):

• Support for Feral GameMode and MangoHUD built into airshipper (the game launcher).
• Admin glider looks like an accelerating glider (resembling a small turbine + airplane).
• Plans to add NPC sleeping habits, and make houses accessible to them.
• Unfortunate issues with TLS QUIC and RusTLS as per this thread.
• Wiki page for learnable recipes.
• Partial downloads work was resumed. Thread 1 and thread 2 with more details. Differential updates were implemented with a fallback to full downloads and you should definitely check Week 237 blog entry, subtitle “Airshipper Partial download”.
• Ongoing work on glider courses.
• A strong disagreement that started with a discussion about instruments and sounds led to a spiralled misunderstanding, misattribution and hurt feelings between long term developers. It is an unfortunate event, but this conflict lead to the creation of a consensus with multiple statements regarding resolution of such situations. Please read the entire content of these tips at the Week 235 blog entry, subtitle “Helpful tips and things to know for contributors”.
• Necti and unii contributors created YouTube guides on how to solo the Mindflayer boss.
• Sewer dungeons being worked on.
• Farming lands around towns are being reworked.

Airshipper server queries:

This is a huge one that deserved its own topic here since it also features an entire blog entry.

Player counts is a long-requested feature in the server browser section of Airshipper. Now, the query server allows for clients to query status information about servers more easily displaying accurate ping information, player count, version information and global battlemode. There is a bit of manual work required for server owners to enable that on existing servers, and if you own a Veloren server, please check out the following issue on Gitlab: List of servers without a query port.

Source: Compilation of the "Two Weeks In Veloren" blog series, weeks 233 to 241.