Some news

Hello everyone,

I feel like it's been a little while since I've last sat down and written a blog post, and a lot of things are coming together right now, meaning that it is probably a good time to cover some news.

1) Patreon billing changes

Patreon now allows me to charge people every ~30 days instead of on the first of each month. This is something I've been begging for ever since I first joined the platform, and I am extremely happy that it is now in place.

I instantly switched the billing method to be that. Existing patrons will not see a difference, but new supporters will no longer get blindsided by getting billed on the 1st instead of roughly one month after the sub started.

2) Goodbye Twitch (sort of)

I am looking at my Twitch analytics right now. 106 hours streamed (even though I took a streaming break for a week!), and a mighty.... 6 average viewers and $9.35 in revenue! For those wondering, I spend more in electricity for those 106h.

Now, as shocking as it might be, I don't stream to make money. I know, you all assumed I was a millionaire streamer, but the truth is I just do it for fun.

Since I do it for fun, there is no reason for me to stay locked in with Twitch. Youtube is making some big moves into streaming, and honestly I just want to get back to multistreaming. As such, I have abandoned my twitch affiliate status and will start multistreaming to Youtube as well. You'll be able to catch me live on both platforms at the same time!

3) Where's EliteMobs at?

All the way back in July a poll was put up voting for the next EliteMobs update. Instanced dungeons won the vote and I thought I would have it out within a couple of weeks.

So since then EliteMobs 8.0 has come out (as well as BetterStructures and the alpha for EternalTD), I got FrostCone and Dalio on the team and so many things changed and improved I honestly couldn't start listing them all.

And still, not really much in the way of premade instanced dungeons, huh?

I have some good news about that.

The instancing part of the instanced dungeons is already fully complete. We have two completed maps, and Bepis is putting the finishing touches on the third map for it. On top of that, there's still one map in reserve from Realm Of Lotheridon which we will be preparing soon.

The main reason why the dungeons are not out yet is because I really want to make these memorable experiences. For those out of the loop, there's two kinds of instanced dungeons: dungeons and sanctums. Dungeons are the size of some of the largest minidungeons, and sanctums are big lairs.

Taking some inspiration from FF14, we are making the sanctum fights really memorable. Agnet 75 composed (and is still composing) custom soundtracks for all of the sanctum fights, and I thought that was so cool that I decided to go the extra mile.

And that's why I've added elite scripting.

As of the latest dev build, probably the public build by the time you read this, it is possible for admins to design and customize their own powers, something that has been requested since the very start of the plugin.

There's a lot of depth to how this works. You can create your own power file, put it in the powers folder and then set bosses to use it as you normally would for any other power. You can add the script to a specific boss, giving that specific boss custom behavior. I plan to greatly expand this system in the coming weeks, and as of right now 12 of the default EliteMobs powers have been remade (and improved) with scripts. The ultimate goal is to replace nearly every premade power with a script, allowing admins not only to customize the powers but to create their own and remix the system in completely new and innovative ways.

I hope that the next update of the Frost Palace will showcase just how powerful this scripting is and just how much flexibility it gives admins. It will allow us to make truly unique and memorable fights without forcing our hand in hardcoding solutions for specific fights.

4) BetterStructures?

We are approaching the end of the development cycle of Primis 1.0, and this means that we can once again start looking at producing more varied content. Delio will start working on the first set of EliteMobs integrated lair packs probably starting tomorrow.

Since these are 150 builds in total (50 pack free, 100 pack premium), with custom scripted powers and using a completely new integration system with EliteMobs, this will probably take a little while to release, so we're probably looking at a release sometime during October.

I will also take the time to improve the pasting algorithm by no longer using WorldEdit/FAWE . BetterStructures is a very specific system and it will greatly benefit from very specific pasting optimizations, which I've simply not had the time to do thus far.

5) EternalTD?

That's taking a backseat for now, once the instanced dungeons and BetterStructures EliteMobs integration are out I will probably do another update. We have a lot of fun concepts ready for it, just need to find the time to program them.

6) Other releases?

Alright let's just do a quick breakdown of upcoming releases (aiming for the up till the end of October):

- Frost Palace (Sanctum) public release
- Dr Craftenmine's Laboratory (Sanctum) -> this one is for Halloween
- The Rise (Dungeon)
- Unnamed Sanctum
- Unnamed Dungeon
- Primis v0.7
- 9 new event packs for EliteMobs (10 events each, total of 90 new events)
- Unnamed BetterStructures free pack with EliteMobs integration
- Unnamed BetterStructures premium pack with EliteMobs integration
- Video guides for EliteMobs (installation, feature creation, etc)
-  And, of course, new versions for EM and BS with more features and fixes.

OK, you know what, now that I have it all written down in one place this looks insane. I'm somewhat confident that we will release most if not all of these features before the end of October though!

I think that's everything for now. I hope you find the upcoming content interesting, because man is it a lot of work to get it made.

Happy adventuring,

- MagmaGuy