PlaneShift Team is proud to present another major milestone in the development of PlaneShift! Release 0.6.0 is now live. The release will actually happen in two phases, first we release it to you, our beloved fans, so we can test it together for few days. It's in fact available as an update of the 0.5.x release you should already have installed. Then we will release it officially also to magazines, web sites and press, with more massive advertising and full installers. For the official launch (few days away) we have some additional good stuff to release!
Here is a summary of the 0.6 changes!
User interface
- New Shortcut window. The quick spell bar has been combined with the shortcut bar. The new shortcut bar includes support for:
- Icons in addition to text
- Dragging of items from the spell book (the icon on the right) or inventory which will automatically generate use commands
- Drag and drop of shortcuts to reorganise them (this option is toggled on/off with the lock icon)
- Character specific shortcuts and key bindings. Now each char has its own set!
- New active magic window. Whenever you have an active spell (buff or debuff) an icon will show in the active magic. Much more compact and user friendly than the old one. There are some known bugs in the bar, like the display of some icons may be duplicated.
- Slight improvements to Quest book, guild window, chat window, options window.
- "Basic chat" window removed to allow for setting of visible chat tabs without restarting the client.
- Added ability to type in the chat window by just having the cursor over the chat window so you don't have to also click on it. This can be enabled in the advanced config chat window settings.
- Added a new skin "Minimatuux", feedback is encouraged. You can select the new skin from the launcher.
Games and Mechanisms
- Added engine support for mechanisms. These allow developers to add items in the world, like giant boulders, which can be moved by players by pressing a button or moving a lever.
- Added ability to "use" certain static objects in the world.
- Enhanced mini game support.
Moving objects
- Fixed support for 'sequences and triggers' to allow things like the wheels in the sewers to move again. This will allow in the future to add more interactive elements to the areas.
Big Bosses
- The game now supports scaling of characters, this will allow developers to create 'giant' or 'miniature' creatures from the current models. Hope to finally see some big bosses to fight!
Art
- Welcome the male Nolthrir! Complete with all standard animations, armour, robe, and some customization options.
- Bracers now show for -all races-.
- Icons now available for all bracers so you will no longer have a sack filled with pink rings.
- The new "Ash brotherhood" lair.
- A new map and a new creature, undisclosed at this time, will be available as part of an in game event very soon.
Crafting
- Many platinum-steel weapons have been made available for crafting (thanks to Tuathanach), you will find some of them are already available in the released crafting books (all common blades) while some (like axes and superior swords) will require new crafting books and will have to wait for a quest to introduce them.
- All crafting, mining/harvesting and the Musical instruments now support the use of higher quality tools, in the future they will be available as quest rewards.
Spells
- 11 new spells added, some will require a new quest to introduce new glyphs not yet available. New spells include: spells able to morph the spellcaster, new low level direct damage spells for azure and brown way spells. A new spell able to "charm" weak monsters, this is experimental and will be the first of a new series of spells.
Others
- Added a multiplayer minigame "Tic Tac Toe" in Kada'el tavern lower floor, right click on the right table to start playing with a friend.
Crash reporting
- Added support for crash reporting to Linux and Window builds. Whenever your client crashes, it will send a report to us with the details, so it can be analyzed. We also have a server side component which lists the most frequent crashes, so we can focus on the high priority ones. Lots of thanks to Talad, Eredin and Jilare for getting this done.
There is a lot more in this release, you can read the additional list of changes here.
