Land of the Rair Dev Blog #6

Hey all, it’s been a productive week! This week I have some exciting updates and some pictures to go along with it. First off, lets take a look at the UI as it is today, in it’s most recent form. Then we can dive in to some of the finer parts!

Now, there are some things of note here 👀

1. First, in the top left, you can see that the NPC view has been re-added. For the most part, I believe this works and is done!
2. Second, in the bottom left, you’ll notice the adventure log got a few subtle changes. The categories are a bar now instead of free-floating buttons, and there’s a new “All” section.
3. Third, you’ll notice that there is a macro bar! You can’t create macros or bars yet, but the default one is in.
4. Fourth, notice some new buttons on the My Equipment window. I’ll be posting some screenshots of that soon!
5. Fifth, notice that there isn’t a command line in this image. The command line hasn’t been removed, but it’s not necessary by default anymore. I’ll go more into how that’s possible soon!

Some other, less obvious things that got completed this week:

1. Doors - I forgot how difficult doors really were to implement
2. The say command
3. The privatesay command (for PMs and talking to NPCs)
4. Stairs, teleports, falls, and climbs (and the corresponding commands)
5. The active target UI
6. Everything now fits into a 1280x900 resolution, which is the official minimum that the game supports at this time
7. Syncing NPCs with the client
8. NPCs can spawn and walk around in the world (and chase you!)
9. A convenient developer tool to link up Content with Rair to develop more quickly

Deeper Look at the My Equipment Area

Okay, so there are 3 buttons here. One of them is highlighted. What could it mean? 🤔

Alright. Well, if you haven’t taken a guess right now, here’s some images:

Yes! Stats and skills have been consolidated. Drakkar’s way of doing it was … dated, and a bit clunky. And my previous copying of that was a bandaid for the real problem: these windows took up too much real estate for such little value. So, I’ve moved them into a general “my character” view area. They’re tabulated in a list now instead of being a grid, and there are a few other nice surprises that will be more evident with gameplay!

Diving Into the Lost Command Line

A long-requested function of LotR was to have NPC dialog not be strictly command-line based. With the rewrite, I’ve come up with a mostly no-nonsense way to script NPCs, and as a bonus, we get this beauty:

All NPC dialog can now be traversed through popups! There might still be hidden dialog options down the line, but the average NPC will walk you through their dialog tree with a simple click.

It took a lot of work, but it was worth it. And it’s still not done. I think right now, we’re at a point where I can talk next steps, too, and talk about what my TODO list looks like from here. So…

TODO

There’s a lot of important things to do yet, but I’ve been trying to prioritize them in a way that lets folks contribute more effectively, while also letting me get the critical path of the game done. My order for what’s coming next is as follows:

1. Moving items between belt, sack, hands, equipment
2. Adding some GM commands to create items
3. Finishing off the dialog options in the tutorial that are item-based (Hermit)
4. Adding spell effects (TrueSight)
5. Finishing off the dialog option to cast spell effects (Hermit)
6. Melee Combat

It’s a pretty stacked week coming up, but I think I can do it. There are a few other things that I’ll end up tackling too, like the macro editor, macro bar editor, other options popups, and a few other popups I’ve been neglecting. After that, man, there’s so much to catch up, but we’re getting there.

Special Mentions

As a bonus, Sarimash has been contributing to LotR! This past week he crossed off a few small issues related to warning users about their screen resolution, and re-adding the subscribe banner (although that’s a long time away). Thanks!

Until next time,

• Seiyria