Asherons Call: August Rollout Article is Up

[big]Rollout Article[/big]
posted on 11-Aug-2004
The Lady strode through the halls of her keep with a smile on her ageless face for the first time in countless years. Her flesh was pale, but it had the blush of youth and her hair bounced in the wind. The world was changing; the Lightbringer was gone and there was little she had to fear from the Outlanders. As she led her entourage back into the bowels of her keep, she let her mind lapse for one brief moment. That moment was long enough to allow a host of souls, bound for eternity, to slip her grasp and take residence across the surface of the island.

Nearly all had lost their minds, save one. That one waited for a shining moment of bliss. She would never be free, but she would have her revenge. The Lady would feel the pain of the death and the long years of torment. She would feel all of it.

Many of this month's changes have already been described in detail in the Letter to the Players. Here are some additional topics that we'd like to discuss in detail.

Loadfiles
There is a new command available to players this month: @loadfile [filename]. This command will load the listed filename and execute each line as if you had entered it manually into the chat bar. The file needs to be in flat text format.

Please note that for the purposes of the in-game spam filter each line is executed exactly as if you had entered it manually. For example, this means that if you create a file with 1000 lines of the word "Hi!" and load it with @loadfile, you will find yourself gagged by the spam filter.

Clothing Bug
For some time there has been a rare bug that could cause a character to be unable to wear clothing or armor on one body location. For example, players had reported being unable to wear a helmet, or being unable to put on pants. In the past when this occurred, a Developer would need to go in-game and correct the issue through careful use of complicated diagnostics commands. Starting this month, a player who experiences this bug should be able to resolve it simply by logging out and logging back in to the game.

Dungeon Textures
One of the new dungeons introduced this month uses wall textures that will not appear in Software Rendering mode. This means that if you do not have 3D Acceleration enabled, the walls of this dungeon will appear white and featureless.

If you aren't sure if you have 3D Acceleration enabled, go into your Asheron's Call folder (typically C:Program FilesMicrosoft GamesAsheron's Call) and run ACD3DSetup.

In-Development Topics
Since the publication of the August Letter to the Players, we've made two changes to our goals for the September event.

First, the Crafting Quests that we had planned on introducing in September have been rescheduled for a later month.

Secondly, we had originally announced that we would be revising the content surrounding the town of Khayyaban for September. We have decided instead to revise the content near Al-Jalima.