Ok Idicus, lets not do anything rash.

First February update at the usual location.

This update, as usual, has new map updates, but most of all new background music and arches. There are over 40 new background sounds that can be used in new maps; see client/media for all of them.

The new arches are: elves, ancient wose, fire elemental, dwarves, ancient lich, necromancer, brazier (both lit and extinguished), elvish cloak, fire sword, golden armour, two new bows, amulet and small beholder.

Enjoy.

First March update at the usual location.

This update includes various new background musics (up to 195 different ones, a list can be found here), a few new monsters (angel warrior, lantern archon), new audio-related testmap with an NPC you can order to change map music (great for testing out music you'd want to use in your maps), map info objects (which allow changing map name/music/darkness/etc for a part of a map, overriding the actual map settings [used in Brynknot Sewers for the Merc guild, Brynknot tavern, etc]), updated client graphics for news, popup and server backgrounds, rotated ladders (to face west as well as north), new refresh button in the client server's list window below 'Play', which refreshes the list of servers if clicked, updated client SDL libraries, direction markers on the region map, map/script updates, new hole exit, fixing of bug #219, the new Python game/IRC bot, various other client features implemented/bugs fixed, Promethia Island updates, UC II updates, disallowing moving widgets off-screen (unless the option to allow such behavior is on) and more.

Perhaps the biggest update in this map maker is the experimental client-side weather effects support: if you connect to any up-to-date server, you will be able to use /effect command to trigger a map-wide weather effect only you will be able to see (as it's experimental, there's no support to do this from map settings yet). List of effects you can pass to the /effect command: snow, snow_light, snow_heavy_left, snow_heavy_right, rain_light_straight, rain_light_left, rain_light_right, rain_heavy_straight, rain_heavy_left, rain_heavy_right. To use the /effect command, use something like "/effect snow" or "/effect none" to turn off any effect being played.

Another smaller but much needed feature is the new intelligent fps capping, which supersedes the old "save CPU time with sleep" option, and automatically chooses the time to sleep depending on how fast the frame was rendered (saving CPU while still getting good fps even on more CPU-hungry operations).

Enjoy!

April fools update () at the usual location.

Changes include:

• Improved mouse movement in areas using tile stretching (such as the Giant Mountains) and complex structures (Promethia Island Volcano)
• Various new client effects options to support wider variety of effects
• Map overlay effect possibility - changing the shade of all objects on map for quests (for example), or for fog-like effect on the whole map
• Support for changing effect on per-map basis from map properties dialog, or using map info objects
• Mapset generator script in tools/mapset directory - allows creating a whole new mapset with all 24x24 maps properly tiled and named, or extending an existing mapset to specified direction and properly updating tiled paths. Must be ran from command-line (usage instructions coming soon)
• Shattered islands part of the world extended by 10x80 maps to the west to allow for easy future expansion of Strakewood Island
• New archetypes: abyss fmasks, abyss borders, lava borders, lava wall mask, lava blob, new cave walls, border floor masks (can separate walkway from water, giving the walkway a raised effect, metal fence
• Artifact mask attribute (amask), to make it easier to create (special) artifact drops (arrows of cold, for example)
• Support for movers that make creatures slide -- they move creatures in the creature's direction until the creature hits a wall or some other object blocking the way. This adds support for ice sliding puzzles
• Player's facing direction is now preserved across sessions
• Instructions how to run map checker script in GUI mode on Windows (tools/map-checker), and support to open maps with errors in Gridarta from map checker GUI (hooking into Gridarta so errors are highlighted when 'Check map' action is done)
• Fixing of broken code that sometimes made magic walls connection turning, directors turning and spinners behave in unexpected ways.
• Plane of Creation mapset, which can currently be accessed from main dev testmap, hosts various new and old tests, and will eventually replace old dev testmaps
• Ability to access player's list of known spells and command permissions from Python (using player.known_spells and player.cmd_permissions)
• Changed inventory checkers so by default they ignore non-players for blocking passage checks (allowing monsters to pass through open locked doors even if they don't have a key, but not allowing players to do so) - behavior can be changed from the inventory checker's properties (but in most cases should not be)
• Updated Gridarta, new features include: preserving z attribute of bottommost objects (floors) when they are replaced by different floor, bookmark directories, edit -> invert selection feature

Enjoy.

Atrinik Map Maker Summer Version can now be downloaded from the usual location.

List of changes:

• Thunderstorm effect (thunderstorm_heavy and thunderstorm_light), full with semi-random lightning bolts and thunder sound effects
• Objects inside creators are no longer in active mode until the creator actually puts them on map (so it's possible to use creators to spawn objects that vanish after a while on the map, while previously they would also vanish from the creator's inventory)
• New archetypes: black recolor of red/blue mushrooms spot, new cacti, grandfather clock, new giant mushrooms, bones, wall sign and mirror, bush plants, pyramid slabs, new trees, animated dwarf trees, force fields in eight different colors, two new female NPCs, compass, ice fairy, cyclops, fully animated drow annihilator, captain, fighter and priestess, new cat, pig, cow, otyough, big otyough, drider, ice elemental, new priest NPC, 10 cleric NPCs (for variety in temples), better animation for king (the one used in Asteria), pirates, normal carpet and red carpet corner masks, new lost soul animation, new dwarves, dwarven teleporter, dwarven machine, dwarven statue, improved stone doorway images, stone golem (recolor of lava golem), portcullis
• New client music and sound effects
• Readied ammo (arrows, quivers, throwing daggers) is now preserved across sessions, and has F icon in the inventory
• New DM commands: /mod_shout and /server_shout
• Better server logging system (precise timestamps for each logged message, if the -ts option was passed when starting the server)
• Possibility to specify sound effect to play when a sign is applied, or magic mouth is triggered
• Updated maps: many new underground passages connecting various places on Strakewood Island, King Rhun's vault, Rockforge (WIP)
• Client rotate feature: it is now possible to rotate map objects using the rotate object attribute. This is a useful feature for various map effects, including the ability to have NPCs sleep on beds (rotated and animation turned off, so it looks like the NPC is sleeping in the bed, and not standing on top of it)
• Client UI redesign (WIP)
• Archery damage in player doll
• Music player widget
• Map info darkness now works on outdoor maps (for example, Rockforge entrance has slight indoor darkness, as it's indoors, but the rest of the map is outdoors)
• New client fonts, including one in handwriting style
• Massive book GUI performance optimization
• Statistics logging (number of monsters killed, what monsters killed, number of spells cast, time spent playing, time spent AFK, etc)
• The client's map is now a widget, so it's possible to move it much more easily, by right-clicking on one of the map's squares and holding the mouse button for a short while, which pops up a menu, which allows you to walk to that square, talk to NPC on that square (if any), or move the map widget. Targeting using the right mouse button still works as well.
• Priestess/sorceress classes (basically priest/sorcerer, but for female characters it shows up as priestess/sorceress)
• New fonts used for targeted creatures on client map, making the names more readable
• New "always draw twice" flag for wall objects, which makes the wall drawn twice, regardless where it is on the map relative to player.
• Flying monsters can now move on terrains like water/earth/etc, even if they do not have the appropriate terrain flags explicitly enabled
• New spawn setting: spawn time range, which supports in-game time range the monster can be spawned in, for example, "06:00 - 18:00" (from 6 AM until 6 PM). This is useful for schedules (making NPCs move around, so they spawn at home when it's nighttime, for example)
• Removed old backwards compatibility control characters from all NPC dialogs. It is no longer possible to use ~ and | to change text color and ^ to make links; client markup must now be used. However, it is now possible to say the control characters in chat.
• Entirely removed backwards compatibility for clients older than 2.0.
• Recently killed corpses are now shown in red shade on the map, if you have infravision

Enjoy.

This is great Cleo!

Atrinik Map Maker Resurrection Version can now be downloaded from the usual location.

Since there have been literally over a thousand changes since the last map maker over the past few years, I'm not going to spend a year figuring out exactly what changed and listing it here. Hope that's understandable.

Have fun.