EliteMobs 8.0 - Major rewrites

Hello everyone,

This is a long post. Skip to the end if you don’t want to read all the context.

What’s going on:

I’ve been working on adding the instanced dungeon content as promised, and while working on this system a few things started becoming clear.

Let me preface this by saying that I’ve been playing Final Fantasy 14 with 69OzCanOfBepis (the lead builder for all my projects) on twitch.tv/magmaguy almost every day as we research interesting mechanics and ideas for EliteMobs.

The instanced dungeons plan:

It has become clear to us that there are several mechanics that would be very interesting for the dungeons. Normal/heroic/mythic difficulty styled after World of Warcraft would seriously enhance the replayability of instanced content and make it more memorable.

Level syncing for challenge modes and unified power indicator mechanics for dungeons have really caught our attention in Final Fantasy 14 thus far, and it is something that I will also be trying to bring to instanced content.

The problem:

Many EliteMobs systems have expanded well beyond their original scope, and that is starting to cause issues both for existing content and when trying to add content.

The main culprits of this last source of trouble are the dungeon packager system and the item system.

The dungeon packager system originally simply helped you paste structures and bosses in the case of schematic files and helped you set up worlds in the case of world dungeons. The system later added unloading content, treasure chests, NPCs, custom models, loading wormhole worlds and more.

Due to the fact the system was originally designed to be far simpler, many of later additions barely function and tend to lock up or cause trouble very easily. It may just be a slight hiccup in the setup process, but it is something I really want to be extremely easy to use without any need for further guidance.

The item system is… complex. It inherited a lot of baggage from an older system, which itself inherited a lot of baggage from the fact items were originally modelled after the way InfernalMobs was doing things back in 2017 (and still probably is).

Many things have changed since 2017, including my skills as a programmer and game designer. The system was originally designed to be completely split from vanilla Minecraft and other plugins, and that has largely been of use for many if not most servers.

However, the way this is accomplished is problematic at several different levels. To make a very long story short, the plan moving forward is to move away from relying on Elite Sharpness and Elite Protection to derive your damage and armor reductions and to start using the item attributes instead.

A vote was held recently asking people if elite items should deal global damage (as in, damage all entities equally) or if the elite damage system was worth preserving (as in, elite items deal more damage to elites and usually deal near-vanilla damage to everything else). Overwhelmingly, and in record numbers, people have voted for preserving the elite damage system. As such, this will remain as one of the pillars that determine how the item system is designed.

The rewrite and its advantages:

For starters, the dungeon packager system is already halfway through getting a full rewrite and a name change to the EM Package system. This name better reflects the fact that almost anything can be distributed here – events, custom items, dungeons, instanced dungeons, arenas, custom bosses…

Furthermore, the following changes are being done to it:

- True integration with WorldEdit / FastAsyncWorldEdit for better reliability with the schematic pastes

- Fully integrated handling of the treasure chests

- Better integration of the NPCs to avoid issues such as the double messages on install

- Making the system better able to uninstall schematic-based dungeons

- Keeping the EliteMobs schematics in the EliteMobs configuration folder for better reliability

- Making installing custom models before installing Model Engine not require reinstalling the custom models

- And of course, the addition of instanced dungeons into this system

These are just the highlights of the better features of this full rewrite. More is coming, and most of all the system will be far more flexible with how it handles adding content in the future.

I also hope to create a better interface for installing EliteMobs content, though this is still just in the early planning phases.

With regards to the items system:

- While the ability to add Elite enchantments will remain in the plugin, items will first and foremost rely on item attributes to decide how much damage they do and what level items are.

    o The main attribute for weapons will become DPS (a function of damage and attack speed) and this will be the deciding factor for item level.

        § This means that adding more custom item types, such as knives with fast attack speed and low damage with be possible.

        § Enchantments will affect the base damage.

    o The main attribute for armor will be protection.

- For Elite items with an attribute above vanilla levels (which is to say, most items) the plugin will assign a special Elite attribute to the item determining how much damage it deals to mobs spawned by EliteMobs (by default, configurable). The elite attribute is added on top of the base item attribute.

-  This means that you will be able to integrate mechanics from other plugins more easily, be they related to custom items or to mmorpg mechanics.

- EliteMobs will provide an easy way (both API-based and command-based) to overlay an EliteMobs item level on top of an existing item to make it possible for items from other plugins to be used with EliteMobs natively.

    o This will essentially take the player’s guild rank, see how much damage the player should be dealing at that rank and apply the relevant elite attributes to the item, guaranteeing that the item is not underpowered for EliteMobs. It may instead become overpowered due to stacking further damage on top of it, balancing that is each server’s (and other plugin author’s) responsibility.

- Finally, and depending on how much time it may take, I will be trying to add tier sets to EliteMobs gear. This would be gear which gains additional bonuses as the player uses more armor from that set.

Please remember that these are just the highlights for my plans for EliteMobs in the coming weeks. Several other things will change and be tweaked consequently, and I may have forgotten a couple of features or may come to realize some further details would be nice to have.

Will it break things?

I always attempt to design EliteMobs in a non-destructive way, meaning that existing progress does not become irrelevant.

However, the changes to both the package system and the items system are extremely significant.

Regarding the EM package system, I will try to make old packages still compatible in general, though certain specific features may stop working – as an example, there’s a new teleportation location system for the next release which fixes issues related to spawning on top of nether worlds. Fixing this means that old packages which manually set player viewing rotations upon teleporting will stop working.

The item system change is going to look a bit weird if you don’t reset progression. I will specifically do my best to not outright require a global reset, but players will probably find that old items aren’t doing the same amount of damage as before. They will also find that new items generate under a new format. Getting new items in EliteMobs is very easy, so this should hopefully only be a weird hiccup that will take them a couple of hours of gameplay to completely forget it ever happened.

Planned release date:

It is hard for me to estimate when exactly all these features will be ready for release. The EM package system might see the first snapshot release this weekend, but it will require tens of thousands of tests before I am certain that it as robust as I want it to be.

If all goes well, I should start releasing item tests next week. It will require a lot of combat changes, and as such I am tentatively guessing it will take a week to make.

I will be working on the instanced dungeons after this. It may sound weird to do things in this order, but there are features – such as level syncing – that I want to add to instanced content, and this will only be possible if I have a robust item / combat system to work with, not to mention the packager.

The basis for the instanced dungeons system will not take very long to make. It will take longer to add all the options we are planning – normal/heroic difficulty and level syncing for a start, with mythic difficulty possibly coming later. However, the overall structure of “instanced dungeons” already works as it is mostly sharing the same feature set as instanced arenas.

In conclusion:

This is a significant leap for EliteMobs, and as such I will be changing the major version to 8.0.0.

I have continued to work on my FreeMinecraftModels plugin project in the background which hopes to make Custom Models for bosses, items, and furniture something any server can run, regardless of budget or even the quality of their hardware.

This project will, of course, play a key role in EliteMobs once it is done. The changes done today are also planned around more servers using custom models in the future, as I hope will be the case if/when the software for that is free and easy to use.

It is my hope that these changes will substantially improve both the installation process / content management of EliteMobs content and the native compatibility that EliteMobs has with third party MMORPG / item plugins.

For those wondering when they will see the next content release, several people are working on several different types of content for both EliteMobs and BetterStructures right now (and FreeMinecraftModels, indirectly). You can read a bit more about that in the note for supporters section.

For people who wanted to skip reading:

The dungeon packager is getting a completely remake and will be called the EM Packager. The elite item system and a significant portion of the combat system are getting remade to be way more compatible with items from other plugins and skills from MMORPG plugins such as Aurelium Skills or MCMMO.

A note for supporters:

I’d especially like to thank all the people supporting the plugin here. I would not be able to find the time to make such a huge sweeping rewrite to EliteMobs nor even invest the time into researching better ways of doing things without your continuous support.

This month has, by far, been the best in revenue for EliteMobs. It has allowed me to allocate an excess of $1000 into paying people for various projects which you will hopefully start seeing soon. These include more builds for BetterStructures, models for all Lairs, a significantly larger development budget for Primis and more.

Most of all, it has given me hope that the time I am putting into my FreeMinecraftModels project might not be a waste and that the project will be sustainable long term.

I hope that it is clear to you that I am doubling down on all fronts, and I hope that the new content will be to your liking.

If you are not a supporter and are reading this, you are cheating. The section clearly said this was for supporters. Get out of here, cheater.

Alright that’s everything for now.

Happy adventuring,

- MagmaGuy