long time no update!

sadly, things HAVE been going on...i just forgot to make mention of them. durhur hurhooo good job tochi.

first off, remorting no longer nerfs your stats. now if you remort, your stats will remain the same.
also, remorting removes your tattoos.

in terms of areas, Ronin's new Cliffs of Insanity an be accessed through the low fields ...but be careful, they're not to be lightly jumped off of. and certainly not without the ability to fly! watch out for hidden exits...

also, the South Beach has finally been finished! north of the thieves' forest, south of the coral sea, this beach FINALLY reconnects the map. you can now run round the world, if you so intended! cool, huh? it's level 35-ish, so a good alternative to leveling in the mines if you need to clear that mobque.

Okay! Got the dumb little tweak done. it shouldn't have taken so long, but never underestimate the power of procrastination.

There is now an off-duty guard who appears in the tavern during a few hours of the night. i thought this might spice things up a bit. she also has a very quick miniquest involved for a doll. no killing even required! more may be done with her in terms of miniquests later, but for the moment it's just a real quick fetch-quest.

also: if you notice a spell isn't working, please tell me. i did some edits to the commands, but the 'fun' thing with smaug is that unless you edit the hard code for them, it tends to cause a lot of bugs. and i used their online edit system so...SMAUG! anyway, if you find a spell that isn't working, give me word and i'll try to repair it. until i get back my main laptop, i haven't got all the files needed for editing on-hand. if i'm not online, you can always email me at z AT demon-sushi DOT com.

anyway! the RP PROMPT this week relates to the guard. real simple, no frills, here it is:

Guards sometimes come into the tavern to relax too. What's going on with their shifts? Are they recruiting?
Have they seen anything interesting lately, have anything to report? Maybe they're related to someone
you know, maybe not. But they're Tek citizens too. What news do they have?

attention warriors!

we just ran across something really WEIRD today. apparently there's a special flag some skills can be stuck with called 'secretskill' ...secret skills don't show up on your pr list, and ar not listed on your slist. how many secret skills there are is unknown, we've only found one. that one is for warriors at level 50, and is called hitall.

i intend to remove the secret flag from hitall later, but for now, warriors can run out and practice it. hitall is like backstab in that you can only do it to start a fight.
but what it does is hit every enemy in the room.

pretty saucy, eh?

RP prompt is on hold for now because i've got something up my sleeve for the tavern. nothing amazingly special, but the RP prompt is based on it, so it needs to be in place first.

codewarrior was codewarring tonight~

some people noticed when you remort gaki, it doesn't reset your blood. well, blood now resets. if you remorted from gaki to gaki, please speak up so your blood can be fixed.

we also tested the alleged crash which was connected to remorts using mistwalk, but couldn't reproduce the crash. as such, we're inclined to think it was something else, what with SMAUG being a house of matchsticks :B

khtall also fixed a weird bug that RPers with pets/familiars have probably noticed.

before, if you ever ordered your pet to do anything containing the letters "mp", you'd be told "no..i don't think so." this is due to an old, old SMAUG bug that was probably exploited on RoD. we figured out why it was used and repaired it. now, unless you order your pet to (for some reason) MPsomething, you should be able to order your pet to emote anything. So thumping, humping, bumping, clomping, stomping, whomping, and pumping are all fair game for your pets to emote. wait, that makes it all sound dirty D:

just a tiny update (well, tiny depending on your opinion of tiny)

tonight two things happen.

Items that are higher than your level no longer vanish when you log out. This means that you can store things in your lockers. You still can't wear anything too high a level for you or buy anything too high a level for you, but if a nice level 50 gives a level 5 a bag full of level 10 healing potions, the potions will not vanish when the level 5 logs out. He will still have them. The reason for this is because of Thing Number Two.

REMORTING goes live!
( What is remorting? What does remorting entail? )

again, thank our wonderful codelizard khtall for her dutiful work in this realm. and if you are curious about coding, be sure to check out smerg_devel, Khtall's MUD codebase in progress development blog.

hey folks, long time no tweak!

sorry about the crash on the 27th- it was our host. they had an emergency situation and needed to do a split-second upgrade, so stopped all running games on our server and did so. SO! let's get down to tweaking, cause thanks to our beloved codelizard, we have lots to report with! skills, soupings to spy, commands and tweaks.

tweaks/edits:
- the garden shop now sells daisies
- the 'power up vendor' in the myche town has now become the 'spy shop' and sells flashpowder and poison powder.
-call familiar FINALLY works. REGUTTING THE CODE HORRAY.
-mysterious appearing PR will no longer be an issue. if you have an item that gives you a skill you don't ordinarily get, you won't get magical appearing practice sessions for them.
-spy was souped up. spies now get the skills: farsight, infravision, possess and flashbang.
-detect traps was removed from all classes, as SMAUG's traps are hopelessly broken anyway.
-upsy daisy and daisy daisy should once again be working. lol smaug D:

new skills
- for spies, you now have a teleportation spell called 'flashbang' which requires flash powder.
- for pooka you also have a teleportation spell called 'pbbth'

new commands
-CLOAK! ever been in an RP and just wanted to be that mysterious figure in the corner? wanted to puppet a random NPC but didn't want to create fifty alts? ever just wanted to lurk in the RP, not being forced to interact, maybe just logging? tried to do this with invis, only to find everyone immediately casting detect invis? then cloak is the command for you! by typing cloak you appear to the room as "a cloaked figure." you can uncloak by simply typing cloak again.

immortals can see through cloak, and cloak has NO battle application (cloaking won't stop monsters from hitting you/seeing you/hating you).

...and for those of you awaiting the release of pooka with twitchy little hands, it's not very far away at all now. ye olde list here says there are 3 pooka spells yet to be coded, and once they are, it will be released.

so be sure to thank khtall! none of this would have been possible without her!

if anybody wants to be a huge help and make a list of new commands/skills that don't have helpfiles, it'd be reeeeeally handy too.

nothing really major! this post is mostly for pooka beta testers.

pooka's XP gain rate has been nerfed (it is now the same as augurers) after discussing it with brass.
also, the level at which pooka recieves trance was bumped up to the 30s. ALSO you got a...

new skill
LACKADAISY - it lowers your target's HR significantly for a short burst of time.

tweaked skills
weaken - lowers the target's DR slightly for a short burst (in addition to weakening)
poison- lowers the target's HR slightly for a short burst (in addition to poisoning)

these were tweaked due to the unanimous agreement that outside of PVP, the skills were prettymuch useless.

it's deffinitly tweak-season though, so hang onto your hats. vrrrrooom!
-----------
EDIT

few more tweaks tonight! everyone thank the nice codelizard!

-you can now follow regardless of levels. level 3 can follow level 50...who cares!
-flints have been added to things you can buy in the chuian tree, so go go rangers!
-running up without fly no longer crashes sabrous in a giant fireball.
-cure serious and cure crit for rangers have been inverted to more LOGICAL levels. ie, you get the weaker one *first*...
-time played on your score actually reveals the *gasp* time played!
-the explorer's order shopkeep actually has MONEY to be a pawn shop now.

we had a visit from the codelizard tonight!

so you know what THAT MEANS :D THANK KHTALL AND ENJOY THE BOUNTY.

tweaks!
- portal has been changed so it WORKS. previously if you were not both peaceful/deadly and not within 15 levels of one another, it would fail. now it works. HA!
- polymorph reverting will not leave you with negative HP
- drain now gives the caster some of the mana drained from the target
- when more than one hidden object (or exit) is in a room, search now runs a chance of turning up more than one at once.

glory mobs!
- the oublie cathedral guardians now give glory if you are under level 30
- the fat lady and diablo now give glory if you are under level 20

pooka spells!
- MOONSHINE : that cherry screw wasting time in your inv? that lemonade just molding away? wait til cover of darkness and cast moonshine for a random different drink!
- SUPERFLAT : although no more powerful than earthquake, and working in essentially an identical way, superflat naturally involves multicoloured daisies and gets your target a little...loopy.

also, there was as i mentioned an art update to the site!
artists updated include: art (new guy!), moi (icarus), tavanaka (bogsherry), amred, phil, greenbear (tcarah), maniacTHP (roren), chukotto, anthonius (jemli), cilaw (new guy!), cypress, ruck, golaro, brassu, fax, makr (new guy!) and naturally the pchat folder.

and who gets featured artist? weeeeell...
( *drumroll* )

and, as mentioned in the comments for the last post, Mad's new map of the Queen Anne's Revenge can be found in the maps folder.

finally! ronin's new area forbidden grounds has been fully installed!

well, except for the chance of minor bug fixings needed. but basicly, you can walk in! it's off toadstool in valburg, so gear up for some spooking.

additionally, there was some light tweaking done to the valburg library to make it a bit prettier. also, progi now has a glory coupon - as does the nihilith.

well
at least
sometimes...

sorry to make two such unhappy notices in a row, but another thing has come to my attention.

if you have custom items made specifically for roleplay and do not use bonuses these items must be TYPE: TRASH

that means that yes, you may have an item called 'a super awesome sword' but it must be TYPE : TRASH and NOT a weapon.
the same goes for 'a pair of snappy trousers' or 'a fancy hat' etc. yes, you can wear it, but it should not be ARMOR. it should be TRASH.

if you have any RP specific items you did not pay bonuses for, please have them checked for their type.
if they are NOT 'trash', please turn them in to Tochi so this can be corrected.

additionally, if you use a bonus to create a weapon you MUST turn in four bonuses to get TWO of that weapon given to you.
in other words, if you made a weapon called 'a drumstick' but wanted to dual weild two drumsticks, you would pay as if you were ordering 2 custom weapons.
the same applies to gear which can be worn in more than one place. ie, you order 'a strip of leather' that can be worn on your ankles and arms...you will pay a bonus for each copy of the item you want at one time.

...in more cheerful news, a few rooms around North Tek were jazzed up with specific indicators pointing new players to help files. IE, the north tek noteboard room desc now specifically says to look at HELP NOTE and all that jazz.

and now...back to watching movies that walk the cusp between b-horror and black and white genius.

everyone thank the SUPER AWESOME codewarrior for making tochi's idle work dreams a reality! cause this one really drove her up the wall. yowch.

the who list is a pretty princess now! you are no longer split up according to peaceful/deadly/immortal, you are now split up as mortals(all) / clan name / clan name / immortals.

also, you should not experience any more problems with 'you are lacking age and experience' if you set your age lower than 18 on your character, now. and hopefully with this next reboot, your play time will be restored.

HOWEVER! members of the order of the sun have accidentally been removed from the order! this is due to changing the order's name to fit the new who list format. if you have a character in the order and were removed, please bug me and i'll put you right back into it. chuian mafia members are just fine, no worries!

a few other minor tweaks are coming, but let's see if either the codewarrior or tochi have time this weekend to go through them.

everyone thank the nice codelizardlady!

today's new command is very RP-specific. you can now input your own character age.

type age (wanted age) and your character's age will be changed to whatever you want. other people can see your character age when they look at you, etc.

yes, you can input negative  numbers and 0 etc. THIS IS SABROUS. THATS NORMAL.

default age is 17, as that is about the logical IC age for a wee sabrousian to pick up something sharp or blunt and go out adventuring.

also while we were in there, we fixed it so NPCs don't have blank tattoo input fields anymore. |D

horray! tweaks and fixes!

all you gaki thank the nice codelizard lady now!
gaki can now train their blood. not only that, items can now be made that raise gaki max blood. i warn you, training your blood can get pretty costly. but it's POSSIBLE now.

everyone also thank the newly forming explorer's group who have created several new maps for your use. namely:
-the valburg theatre
-the pine barrens
-the nikitak mines
-the dark pooka forest

annnnd they are working on cleaning up maps of the oceans. speaking of the oceans, thanks to this group, the coral sea and cloud sea are now connected again so you can go play with harrietfish and donfish and fishrapers again if you so please.

yyyyyyup :B
------------------
EDIT

old gaki loading in will be hit with an odd bug! fortunately it's an easy fix. your bp will appear as 11, regardless of what it was before. go to an immortal and ask them to mset (you) maxblood (whatever your bp used to be). this is the only time you should be hit with this bug, theoretically, so just ...:D yeah. come ask us to fix you and it takes a half second to do.

minor tweaking...

khtall has been doing some work on the way gaki get blood, so if all goes well in the near future gaki will be able to get items that buff their max blood...or even train it!

all the keys in the pyramid will no longer disappear when you quit the game (they'll stay in your inv)

hightower no longer drops ten zillion collars when you kill him

banana ghosts can no longer crash the entire game with their RECKLESS RHUMBAING

aaaaaaaaaand i updated the wanted area list for interested parties.
-------------
EDIT
yeep! something with the blood-tweak has SERIOUSLY messed with spells. at risk of people losing their adepted/practiced spells, the game is wizlocked until it can be fixed...

fixed! it's safe to come back in.

it's a productive day! two new areas!

first, ronin's fabled pyramid has been completed. if you've already beat mourning mountain, you know the room that leads to the pyramid steps. it's an 'avatar killer' in ronin's own words, so be sure not to go alone...and be SURE to have a LOT of map paper with you. however, the reward for 'beating' it is...superb, to say the least :D so give it a shot.

the other is my hightower hotel, a level 20/30ish area in ew ork which replaces the training park. haunted hotel - CHECK! IS THERE SOMEONE HERE WHO WOULD LIKE TO COMMUNICATE? while not so big, this area has a ton of details (so many that i forgot all the ones i put in and it spooks ME out from time to time) so be sure to examine, prod, poke and mess with everything...CAUTIOUSLY. if you hear the elevator about to fall? i highly reccomend HAULING BUTT OUT OF THE SHAFT.

some highlight items at hightower include:
a TAPS hat
plushes of the star wars RP crew
a new Stone Man
an item that allows you to use the 'wolf' polymorph
an edible dead rat
the long awaited MANA RESTORING BANANA

also i noticed that the stone men were no longer telling their stories. well, they do now. so now if you take their items you get to hear a little about the pre-history of sabrous. only one more stone man is left in the realms to be added...dun dun dunnnnnnnn...

HAPPY POLE DAY!

What's pole day? Well, it's the SABROUSIAN NEW YEARS! it'll last from today through to the 4th of january.

What it really is is a backdrop for the roleplayers to have some fun. like to freeform RP? feel silly? feel like getting a prophecy from a snow-white grring peen? head up to the hotsprings. tare and i have been laughing our butts off all morning (well, evening too) getting this ready.

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!

In fact this update is almost entirely roleplayer-centric. Thismorning i went about and added programs/mobs/items like the lounge rope to several popular RP hangouts so that you don't have to worry about dying of thirst/hunger while at them. These spots include the Sun Temple Pond (an apple tree, PULL BRANCH) The Sandbox (look at the waitress for her commands) the hotsprings (give tera one gold) and the mansion pool (look at loki for the commands). also, the hotsprings now have a portal-anchor with this. Tera is only level 10 and should be easy to port to for easy RP access.

on top of this, the Sun Guard got a program to check for locations of RPers. If you say 'roleplayers' to her, she checks popular spots (like the tavern) and tells you if anyone's in them. that way, you can easily track down the RP if it's on the move.

also, there were some minor tweaks which include...
-the backpack now is actually WORTH its price...kinda.
-the gizmo shop sells tons of party gear
-the gizmo shop's hours are the same as the tavern's
-new players arrive on the STAIRS of the sun temple, not right on the altar
-call familiar got shut off AGAIN. it seems to have gone back to its old ways of crashing stuff...sorry guys :<

and, last but not least, we've got our Pooka Beta Testers!
Brass, Cypress, Redmoon, Phil and Jakrian.

Yes, i know i said 4, but i'm a softy. Okay guys, make newbie characters and then post their usernames here and i'll pooka you all up.

ha, i told you i'd start doing stuff once i got home! ...now to keep from dying of jetlag if i can. we got a bunch of stuff.

new skills for pooka:
upsy daisy. invokes some daisies :D we're working on fixing the next pooka skill right now.
possess. not actually a new spell, just discarded and nonfunctional. use a daisy + charm to possess an NPC.
daisy daisy. HOW WOULD YOU LIKE A GIANT MOBILE SENTIENT DAISY? NOW YOU CAN CREATE ONE.
pooka pinch gets you ready for a fight by buffing your hitroll and damroll...and giving you an aetherial dose of LIQUID COURAAAAAAAAGE that'll last the duration of the spell too. DRUNKEN BAR BRAWLING ANYONE? (the level for this isn't set yet, still waiting for feedback)

skill modifications to:
helical flow - now takes less mana (about 60)
cook - you now learn from failures
poison weapon - poisoned weapons don't disappear over time

area modifications to:
the valburg mayor's office - the mayor now invokes guards that DO NOT ask for your badge while battling.
the razordemon tower - the teacher now has a name (Isk) and can be used for teleporting.

general tweaks are:
statreport is now availble from level 15 up.
the server reset messages were modified to be a bit more sabrousian.
the server clock now reflects its actual time (mountain something time)
sabrecats, cythid and muti are FINALLY required to be GOOD ALIGNED.
polymorphed characters do not get the (MORPHED) flag to mortals. you'll just see the polymorph's desc.
avatars pkilling avatars will not set off the alarm bells immortals see. if this becomes an issue (i HIGHLY doubt it will) we'll put it back but since all pkilling has been consentual for as long as i can recall, this seems fine to me.

aaaaaaand there's still lots of other stuff to get through, but i'm braindead exhausted. so let's just stop there for now :D

ENJOY THIS MASSIVE POST THAT'S BEEN A LONG TIME COMING!

sorry for the radio silence guys. i've been psychoticly busy lately and even if i have been doing things, i haven't had a chance to come back and tell you about it :B

new maps:
the wastelands, the thieves' forest, the mayor's office (this is my building map, it's NOT clean), the lizardman port, crateria and the cloud sea!
HUGE thanks to nical, keech, rachella and roren for their infinate patience and care in all these maps. be sure to thank and compliment them when you see them!

new art is up by me, brass, chukotto, hatz, cypress, kilo, maniac/roren, tarendol, tcarah/greenbear, amred and TAV :D

glory for the catacombs quest has been awarded! some people did not get glory but MOST did. if you really, really want glory but you weren't awarded any  just come talk to me and we'll see if we can work something out.

new skill:
-call familiar finally works for druids! rock.

bug fixes:
-the scholars once again speak all languages. ayep.

tweaks:
-the pooka morph strider is completed.

once again, if you have a roleplaying journal put the username for it here! the list of currently known journals is here and if you're not on it, tell me here so i can add you! if you could also be so kind, when posting in sabrous_rp add the names of the participants as tags. ie, if the RP included phil and velesti, add the tags 'phil, velesti' to the entry. just for quickref for us immortards. i've fallen so behind on the RP community that basicly, i'm just going to start asking tarendol who should get PR XD sorry. what i mean to say is practices for RP journals has been awarded. other PRs have not been awarded YET, i'm counting on kentrin to give me a list of people who need it. 8D

WELL. THAT WAS A LONG WAIT FOR NOTHIN HUH. oh you're still here for a featured artist?
( this time around i honestly could not decide who to pick )

awriiiiiiight here's part 2 of this weekend's tweakfest.

tweaks
-(UNCLANNED) flag removed from deadlies not in clans. this isn't a pkill game so :B
-fixed (again) the falling object damage calculation. behurhurhururrrrr

new skill
-pacify has been given to clerics, paladins and monks (in descending order of highest adept/earliest recieved). if successful, the fight stops. (this is one of my frankenstein babies, IM PROUD OF IT SHUSH :<)
-call familiar for druids...ohgdotired summons an npc to fight for you (due to crashybugs disabled til we can fix it)

new command
-roleplay flags you as [RP] on the who list. this lets everyone know who's RPing or looking to RP. turn it on or off just by typing roleplay.

for immortals
-set players who are being recockulously bad in the RP (annoying others, god moding, generally jerking it up) with the SUNFISH flag. it's just a kind of a warning to others that THIS PLAYER CAN'T RP VERY WELL 8D

aaaaaaas usual everyone bow down for the CODEWARRIOR lizard khtall, because seriously without her i'd just be exploding things left and right (not that i don't anyway...). khtall's minisabrous has been instrumental in testing sheit out. :> there's another skill for druids that should be done sometime in the next few days, and we're working on a general ability everyone will get (primarily for RP purposes) and a few silly abilities for pookas. uuuuh huh.

not QUITE the regular tweak update...not nearly as coherant but man it's 2am and i been building since i got home from work.

there is a new skill coming for clerics, monks and paladins this weekend. prep yourselves :O it's just. being proof'd by the codelizard since it's one of my frankenstein creations and all crawling with bugs and undeclared variables |D

tweaks
-the damage calculated by falls/dropping items now relates more to WEIGHT than ...the moon or whatever. <- thank khtall cause i can't even THINK of this math
-the max damage cap (2400 dmg) was removed. now superboss mobs hit as hard as they ought to/want to.
-pookas had their hp per level gain adjusted to be more like mages.
-monks had dual weild moved up several levels.
-druids got meditate
-items worn on faces, ankles, backs or missile weapons now take damage in battle
-spinkick, leap, etc etc all those moves now have miss messages.
-a very tiny tweak to the Earth temple.

new skills!!
-FUU for pookas (basic attack ability, but very pookarific...if you don't get it, just watch this)
-hippocrates serpents (heals for a ton of hp. requires a special item.)

and!
NEW AREA! the valburg mayor offices are now open for beez nees. if you head south from the valburg noteboard (where the training arena used to be) you'll find a level 30ish area. this area's not real big but is FILLED with items. EVERYTHING can be examined (even things mentioned in room descs like windows or doors). there's item trading quests to get all the way around. nothing is agro, so you can wander in as a level 5 to explore and you'll be safe...even if you can't use anything. i had a ton of fun doing this area so i hope you'll enjoy it 8D

WAIT
SUDDENLY IT'S 8.30 AM AND I STILL HAVENT SLEPT
WHAT JUST HAPPENED