Milestone Announcement Alpha 2.0.0
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With the start of a new year - We think that its a good time to announce our goals and achievements over the past. The beginning development of SilverSpell started in April of 2020, with our beginning Dungeons Alpha launching in June of 2020 - we quickly realized that what our experience held at the time was not what was needed to build a successful Dungeons/RPG network. Our custom combat was noticeably slow, and with only 2 users online, we knew this wouldn't be sustainable. Thus began the Thunder Combat System as a internally developed plugin. After having the dungeons open for several months - we refined and tweaked our systems and took careful notes of how players interacted with the mobs, world, and systems. And then we closed.
After a lot of heavy internal lifting - we are ready to officially announce our Milestone Goal of Alpha 2.0.0.
If you are from the discord, you already got the quick run down of what this milestone is - but here's the dirty and technical details!
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Quests
The questing system is very dynamic and has multiple aspects that build how it operates. There is always going to be Global Questline that all players will be able to play. From there - there will be multiple factions, side quests, and tasks that players will have to complete.
Faction Name | Faction Description |
|---|---|
Adventurer's Guild | The Global Quest givers! This is the primary faction of the world |
Lawful Guild: The Watch | The watch includes city guards, militants, etc. |
Criminal Guild: The Underground | The underground is full of shady characters, full of nefarious tasks |
Criminal Guild: The Knife | The knife is known to cut things for a certain price... |
Religious | Your chosen Deity will expect you to work for them as well |
University | This faction studies the elementals and hopes to expand their knowledge |
Rangers | They stick arrows REALLY far away... |
Questing is integrated heavily with a player's reputation! The more you do positive things for one faction, the more quests and functions become available to the player through that faction - however, doing tasks for one faction may diminish your reputation with another. There are multiple factions within the world, these are are just the main ones planned at this time.
As our Guilds system develops, we hope to further integrate some questing into the guilds for guild management tasks and such.
Stats
Stats are Everything! Everything from your armor to your relationships are quantified through some form of statistic.
Player Stats
The player's primary stats stem from what they have equipped. This includes weapons, armor, charms, and anything else that the player can equip or hold. These stats are broken down into 4 major categories, and are the ones that are used in every combat interaction.
Category | Stat | Description |
|---|---|---|
Defenses | Physical Defense | Protection from swords and weapons |
| Archery Defense | Protection from the pokey projectiles |
| Magical Defense | Protection from the Elementals |
Offenses | Physical Damage | How strong your weapon is |
| Archery Damage | How strong your bows are |
| Magical Damage | Heavily relies on affinities to increase damage |
Passives | Critical Strike | How likely you are to perform a critical |
| Critical Power | How strong your critical strikes are |
| Luck | How lucky you are! or not... it all depends... |
Health | Health | yeah... pretty self explanatory |
Player Skills (Affinities)
After facing many issues with the class-based system in the Dungeons Alpha (like bards and mages not working), we've chosen to migrate to a new system that follows a more natural concept and simulated learning. The Affinity system we use has been heavily inspired by titles
like The Elder Scrolls, or plugins like McMMO. The concept is the more you use it, the better you get; a term which has been a common theme in our development. This allows players the flexibility to be any class they want, and change it on the fly with some time and effort. While late game may require more specialized skillsets, being able to fit any role you need will be a valuable asset when structuring parties and guilds.
| Affinity Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Light Armor | The armor types are tentative on the flushing out of the crafting system |
| Medium Armor | ^ |
| Heavy Armor | ^ |
| Bows | Imagine if they stuck the new Spyglasses to these.... zoomable bows... |
| Crossbows | Yep... crossbows....different from bows, don't get them confused |
| Light Weapons | Light weapons include Machetes, Swords, Dagger, etc. |
| Heavy Weapons | Heavy weapons include Battleaxes, Longswords, etc. |
| Magical Weapons | Magical Weapons are based on a player's elemental affinities (see next section) |
Elemental Affinities
While this feature didn't make it into the dungeons alpha, this system has been in our development notes almost as long as we've been developing and planning this server - if not longer. The "Magic" on the server is also a seperate affinity system that we call elementals, since its based on core elements. Each elemental has its own grindable affinity however there are stipulations.
There are 4 "Cardinal" Elementals: Flame, Earth, Water, and Wind.
There are 4 "Diagonal"Elementals: Mantle, Life, Ice, and Explosive.
There are 2 "Divine" Elementals: Void, and Light.
The Cardinal elements level off of a usage system, while the Diagonal elements level off of a relation system.
For example:
If I kill 10 mobs with Flame spells - I gain 2 levels in the Flame affinity.
however
To gain 2 levels in Mantle, I need to kill mobs with both Flame AND Earth spells.
Divine Elements counter balance each other. For every point in one divine element, you lose half a point in the other.
This means that you can actually LOSE levels from not closely monitoring your spell usage and equipment.
Reputation
Reputation is a dynamic system that revolves around your interactions with the world and its various factions that inhabit it. Inspired by systems like Dungeons and Dragons's alignment system ("Chaotic Good" or "Lawfully Evil") it can go both positive and negative. This allows players to play as certain character Archetypes or build parties and guilds around pure chaos.
As previously mentioned, there are a few things that go into determining your reputation. Doing quests and tasks for members of certain factions will certainly raise your reputation with them, while failing tasks will partially lower it - however, abandoning a quest is worse then failing one, for the false hope you instill in the NPCs is disheartening to them. You can also lose or gain reputation for your affiliation with other factions. For example - a player who is affiliated with The Underground (see factions list) might find that they have a lowered reputation with The Watch or other similar factions. Getting caught doing wrong things in the presence of NPCs can also lower your reputation depending on development timelines and who the NPCs are aligned with.
Religious Affinity
Similar to Reputation - following a deity will unlock perks (in the future) as well as give players access to certain graveyards within the world. This can cut down on the time it takes to travel back to where you were on death. Religions can be changed at any time with loss of affinity. Players may also be required to do religious tasks for their deity or be requested to pay a tithe.
| Influence | Name | Pronunciation |
|---|---|---|
| Melee | Sera | S-air-uh |
| Ranged | Mistera | Mist-air-uh |
| Defense | Opaoll | Oh-pal |
| Elementals | Rhea | REE-uh |
| Light | Suze | Sue-zz |
| Void | Desha | Day-sh-uh |
| Health | Dietoraph | Detour-af |
| Stamina | Shreme | Sh-ream |
| Mana | Iodespion | ee-oh-des-pee-on |
| Luck | ionysdius | eye-oh-nis-deus |
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Combat
It should go without saying that while combat is a section of its own - its heavily tied to the affinity system. The players core stats are influenced by the things that they wear and choose to equip. Custom weapons, armor, charms, items, buffs, spells, and anything else you can think of generally influences a player's stats and abilities in the combat environment.
Custom Items/Armor/Weapons
These all fall in the loot tables of mobs and dungeons around the world. Some armor, weapons, and items will be craftable, however the easiest place to find loot is going to be from slaying mobs or purchasing equipment from other players. While these are subject to change - we thought it would be cool to share some of the items we have been testing with:
Graveyards
Like previously stated - graveyards are mostly tied to religions, while some will have no requirements to use. There are 3 major types of graveyards:
Combat
It should go without saying that while combat is a section of its own - its heavily tied to the affinity system. The players core stats are influenced by the things that they wear and choose to equip. Custom weapons, armor, charms, items, buffs, spells, and anything else you can think of generally influences a player's stats and abilities in the combat environment.
Custom Items/Armor/Weapons
These all fall in the loot tables of mobs and dungeons around the world. Some armor, weapons, and items will be craftable, however the easiest place to find loot is going to be from slaying mobs or purchasing equipment from other players. While these are subject to change - we thought it would be cool to share some of the items we have been testing with:
Graveyards
Like previously stated - graveyards are mostly tied to religions, while some will have no requirements to use. There are 3 major types of graveyards:
| Graveyard Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Forced | Certain situations may require a specific graveyard to be set - ie a dungeon instance, or quest objective. The server can override your preferred graveyard in cases like this. |
| Preferred | This is your home graveyard! If you are close enough, you will almost always respawn here if it is set. |
| Default | If you do not have a set graveyard - you will respawn at the nearest graveyard to you, and the nearest discovered graveyard in future updates. |
Fall Damage
We decided to boost fall damage since, well... you know... it doesn't make sense that you can fall out of atmosphere and survive so... just don't jump off of 10 blocks or higher...
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Collections and Crafting
Players really seemed to enjoy the collections and the crafting system from the Dungeons Alpha - so we're bringing it back with LOADS more content!
Thunder Resource Control
In addition to Thunder Combat System, we now have internally developed TRC, which concluded our replacement of MMOCore. MMOC was a great resource to get us started out on, however its functionality was limited in the ways that we wished to use it, so we just had to replace it unfortunately. With our own control over resource collections and regeneration - we can further tweak and develop the collections systems to their peak abilities!
Integrations
Collections also have their own affinities and levelling system! The higher your collections statistic is - the better recipes you unlock, the more fish variants you can catch, and more! Its still very early on, but the customizability of TRC is enabling us to do more than before, and we can't wait to show you guys more as it develops.
Collection Branches
| Collection | Description | Collection | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mining | Resources gathered from quarries, mines, and surface locations | Blacksmithing | Affinity for working with metals and tools hammered in forges and refineries |
| Farming | Resources gathered from farms and cultivated locations | Cooking | Affinity for utilizing ingredients to make tasty foods for adventuring |
| Gathering | Resources found about the world, either on shrubs, ground, or hidden in sands | Carpentry | Affinity for woodworking and building new things |
| Fishing | Resources found from fishing! | Stoneworking | Affinity for shaping stone in to utilizable materials |
| Hunting | Resources gathered from animals and mobs across the SilverSpell landscape | Artisans | Affinity for putting extra details, care, and minute inspection of items and goods |
| WoodCutting | Resources gathered from Trees and logging | Elementation | Affinity for magical arts and crafting |
Levelling your collection branches unlocks new drops, new recipes, and more.
Crafting
We are going with the same crafting system as before - and can be seen in the #updates-and-sneakpeeks channel on the discord - but we're going really wild with it this time. Each crafting level has several stages to it - from raw resource to end produce, there has been a lot of research into the methods used to create end products. From this research we are building a crafting system that is very open ended and can easily be up or downscaled as needed.
Instead of using EVERY block type to have a crafting station - like in the Dungeons Alpha - we are implementing Multi-Block structures to trigger the stations instead, as to not limit the construction and decoration abilities of the builder/build team in the future.
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Mounts
At the time of writing this - we have a lot planned for mounting - however we still are not positive on what really is or is not possible. IF we learn more before the Internal Alpha Test, then we will post a seperate announcement on the mounting system - or update this section and post an announcement.
At the very least, players will have the ability to summon and store mounts - as well as select the ones that they wish to ride. They will kick the player or despawn whenever they are attacked by a mob - but can be summoned with a horse whistle as long as they are selected.
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Communities
We are also going to be implementing Parties and Guilds! They will be very rudimentary at the beginning as we are waiting on 3rd party APIs to be updated in order to fully implement the functionality that we wish to see in the future.
Parties
While in a party - expect a challenge that has been raised to meet the new difficulty that they face. Mobs will dynamically become more difficult when presented with groups of players and loot will be dispersed accordingly.
Guilds
Guilds are the resource that is more heavily impacted by the outdated API - we have some really awesome features planned for Guilds that we can guarantee that have never been seen in Minecraft before - and we're keeping those secret until we move into the Persistent Beta.
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If you have actually read this far - this if for you: Prize
if you have RTX then this is for you: Prize-ButRTX
We hope that you will continue to follow our development as we post more about what we have been working on and what you can expect from us. The best way to support our development is to get your friends in on see what we do! We really need quality builders and people who aren't afraid to learn new things.
Crafting
We are going with the same crafting system as before - and can be seen in the #updates-and-sneakpeeks channel on the discord - but we're going really wild with it this time. Each crafting level has several stages to it - from raw resource to end produce, there has been a lot of research into the methods used to create end products. From this research we are building a crafting system that is very open ended and can easily be up or downscaled as needed.
Instead of using EVERY block type to have a crafting station - like in the Dungeons Alpha - we are implementing Multi-Block structures to trigger the stations instead, as to not limit the construction and decoration abilities of the builder/build team in the future.
===== « | » =====
Mounts
At the time of writing this - we have a lot planned for mounting - however we still are not positive on what really is or is not possible. IF we learn more before the Internal Alpha Test, then we will post a seperate announcement on the mounting system - or update this section and post an announcement.
At the very least, players will have the ability to summon and store mounts - as well as select the ones that they wish to ride. They will kick the player or despawn whenever they are attacked by a mob - but can be summoned with a horse whistle as long as they are selected.
===== « | » =====
Communities
We are also going to be implementing Parties and Guilds! They will be very rudimentary at the beginning as we are waiting on 3rd party APIs to be updated in order to fully implement the functionality that we wish to see in the future.
Parties
While in a party - expect a challenge that has been raised to meet the new difficulty that they face. Mobs will dynamically become more difficult when presented with groups of players and loot will be dispersed accordingly.
Guilds
Guilds are the resource that is more heavily impacted by the outdated API - we have some really awesome features planned for Guilds that we can guarantee that have never been seen in Minecraft before - and we're keeping those secret until we move into the Persistent Beta.
===== « | » =====
If you have actually read this far - this if for you: Prize
if you have RTX then this is for you: Prize-ButRTX
We hope that you will continue to follow our development as we post more about what we have been working on and what you can expect from us. The best way to support our development is to get your friends in on see what we do! We really need quality builders and people who aren't afraid to learn new things.