Atlas Devlogs 2021

[Iyoforeayo]

Assorted Devlog #7

Written by Iyoforeayo & Wizardteepot

Legendary Item Updates
Some progress, testing, and changes to the Grappling Hook this month - namely fine-tuning the “landing” to prevent clipping through or falling off the grapple point, and also removing the need for arrows in order to use the item.

Lorebooks
A fairly new addition to the server - players will now find Lorebooks scattered throughout the world, which will allow players to explore some Atlas lore without necessarily needing to dive into quests. Discovering all the Lorebooks in a set will also provide some rewards…






Dungeon Updates
This month’s major dungeon update was mainly back-end, as we’ve transitioned to a new third-party plugin that should not only make dungeons a lot more stable (less random bugs, less crashes) but will also allow us to incorporate some fun new mechanics.

Next month’s dungeon update should be a lot more fun to read, as we reveal a brand new dungeon (or should we say, dungeons…)

[Iyoforeayo]

Dungeon Devlog #5

Written by Iyoforeayo

New Dungeon(s): Cloudbreaker Fortress
On a series of floating islands far above the ocean southeast of Athera, the Cirilians have begun construction on the massive Cloudbreaker Fortress: a series of fortified airship construction yards and hangars across the islands. Defying the wishes of the Shen leaders of the Alliance, the Cirilians plan to use the Fortress to stage an aerial assault on the Vantian capital of Eastwind.

Unbeknownst to the Cirilians, the Vantian Empire has been alerted of the Fortress’ existence, and plans to sabotage it before construction can be completed…


Cloudbreaker Fortress is our most unique dungeon yet, in more ways than one. For starters, it actually contains two separate dungeons within the same map! Players will be able to play both the Vantian Side of the dungeon (with an entrance in Eastwind), as well as the Cirilian Side (with an entrance in - you guessed it - Cirilia.) Each dungeon will be treated separately, with its own cooldowns, mobs, bosses, gameplay, and loot.

The other unique aspect to these dungeons is the level design. Our other dungeons so far have been fairly linear in this regard - players progress through an interior level by completing objectives to access the next area. With Cloudbreaker Fortress, players will find a more open-concept dungeon, which - upon defeating the first boss - grants players an Elytra and a Grappling Hook with which to navigate the entire level while completing their objectives.



The Vantian Side
Having just discovered the existence of the Cirilians’ new floating airship factory, the Empire has recruited a team of operatives to infiltrate the Fortress and sabotage the Alliance’s airship production there. Players will start in the cargo hold of the Cirilian airship they’ve snuck aboard, and will have to fight their way to the top deck.

Sky-Captain Irving
The Cirilian Sky-Captain of this airship isn’t particularly thrilled with the stowaways that have hitched a ride with him, and he’s willing to blow the airship (and everyone on it) out of the sky in order to prevent them from reaching the Fortress. Manage to avoid his Timed Mines, Proximity Mines, and Incendiary Hand-Cannon attacks, and you’ll be able to loot his quarters, which contain an Elytra and Grappling Hook for everyone in the party. Now the real fun begins…

Sabotaging the Fortress
Now able to access the Fortress freely, players can make their way to the Armory where the Cirilians have been storing crates of explosives for their planned assault on Eastwind. What better way to repurpose those explosives, than to steal them and use them on the Cirilians’ new fleet? Through massive resistance, players will work their way throughout the fortress, sabotaging airships and undermining the Cirilians’ attack plans.

Commander Holmes
Desperate, the Cirilian leader of the Fortress retreats to the central High Tower. Players must make their way inside the main garrison and fight their way up to the top level of the tower, where an angry Commander Holmes is waiting for them. He won’t go down easily, but when he does, it’ll finally be time to escape the Fortress. Only one problem…

The Cloudbreaker
As soon as players leap out of the High Tower to fly to safety, they’ll be met with a massive aerial monster called the Cloudbreaker. Previously imprisoned by the Cirilians, the beast has broken free (and is quite mad) and is now destroying everything and everyone in its path. Players must use every tool at their disposal to take down the Cloudbreaker and clear their escape route back to the ground.

The Cirilian Side
Responding to a request for aid from Commander Holmes, players start on the main floor of the High Tower of Cloudbreaker Fortress. Suddenly, shouts from the floors above alert the guards to a group of Vantian infiltrators that have breached the Fortress. Players must make their way up the tower, fighting back the Vantian assailants as they make their way to protect Commander Holmes…

Dezyrin, Blade of Shiraxis
…but it’s too late. By the time players reach the top floor of the tower, the Cirilian leader of the Fortress has been slain by the Vantian assassin Dezyrin, Blade of Shiraxis. Hoping to buy the Vantians enough time to finish their sabotage, she seals the doors and attacks the players. Avoid her deadly stealth attacks and take down the assassin to gain access to her stolen Elytras and Grappling Hooks. With no time left to lose, players must leap out the window of the High Tower and fly down to defend against the all-out assault now taking place.

Defending the Fortress
Once outside, the Vantian assault leader Agent Halkyr announces that they’ve rigged the Fortress to explode within 20 minutes - unless the Cirilians turn over the Alliance’s battle plans and airship schematics. Desperate to protect both, the Cirilians implore the players to make their way throughout the Fortress and find and disable the explosives before it’s too late.

Agent Halkyr
With the majority of the bombs defused, the Vantian leader retreats to the High Tower where he’s stockpiled one last hoard of explosives. Threatening to detonate the main garrison of the Fortress (and everyone in it), Halkyr lures the players to the top floor of the tower where they must take him down before everyone gets blown to bits.

The Cloudbreaker
Once the Vantian assault leader is defeated, the remaining infiltrators retreat - but not before one final act of sabotage: releasing the Cloudbreaker from its cage. Furious at its captors (and everything else in sight), the aerial beast threatens to tear the Fortress from the sky unless players can put it down once and for all.

[Iyoforeayo]

Fishing Devlog #1

Written by Wizardteepot

With the pursuit of polishing Atlas and all of its content, we have taken a lot of 3rd party plugins in-house to clean them up and integrate them better into our own systems. Fishing is no exception. Some of you might recall that we used and integrated a 3rd party plugin called MoreFish, but there were some issues with the plugin.

First, MoreFish didn’t use the same sort of shop systems that our other NPC shops used, which often caused issues on the backend. Second, there were features that MoreFish promised that just…didn’t work. For example, MoreFish had a “bait” system, where if there was an item in your offhand (such as bread), it should have had a chance to gain higher quality fish, especially Legendaries. Bait, however, just didn’t do anything like it promised, at least not in our testing.

So in bringing a plugin like Fishing in-house, we can clean up features that were supposed to exist, and add more features that we want to have. I actually wanted to spend this devlog and future devlogs about the fishing plugin showing a bit of the process behind the curtain, of how a plugin idea typically goes from ideation, to documentation and design, up to actual coding and polishing/bugfixing. So let’s start at the beginning!

Ideation
Technically speaking, we’ve already done ideation: we know we want a fishing plugin, and we can technically use MoreFish as a base. With that said, let’s list out the features that MoreFish has and what we want to include:

Create Fish and Assign them Rarities and Biomes
The plugin would need to handle “Fish Objects”, meaning a configurable option for generating different types of fish (such as a Bass, or Tuna, or Eel). Furthermore, this config should be able to handle the different rarities of fish (common, uncommon, rare, epic), and the biomes they get assigned to (Plains of An’She, Wraithwood, Eastwind Desert, etc).

Selling Fish
As I already talked about, MoreFish utilized its own system of Shop GUI, but thanks to Tyr’s SimpleShops plugin we already have a more sophisticated system we use to handle server-side shops. AtlasFishing would be able to implement its fish into a SimpleShop and handle the backend of selling fish much better.

Miscellaneous Lore
MoreFish included the ability to give fish more miscellaneous lore, such as how big a fish is in terms of weight or length. This could help us incorporate fishing into certain competitions like a Fishing Event Island or Tournament. Plus, adding this lore could also give us the chance to give fish flavor text, or display who it was caught by and where it was caught.

That said, we would also include the ability for players to discard this lore, allowing them to stack all of their fish together quickly to store or sell.

Additional Documentation
Now we have the basis of what must be done for the plugin, now we can add features to enhance the system. NOTE: Because this plugin is still VERY early in development, it is almost certain that aspects of the listed features below will change. That, however, is the beauty of the documentation we create here: we design what we’d like to see, and can balance and change along the way. This documentation just acts as a blueprint to lead us in the right direction.

Bait
When held in the offhand while fishing, bait will be consumed to up the chances to catch higher quality fish. Baits could come in tiered qualities themselves, each with a different boost. For example, if the rarity rate for Fish is something like 50% common/40% uncommon/9% rare/1% Legendary, a common tiered bait could change it to something like 40%/ 45%/ 13%/ 2%

Alternatively, bait could be used for “Critical Catches”. Say a certain legendary fish such as “The Vampire Tetra” from the Wraithwood requires a “Naurulian Gol'' as bait to catch, instead of the same Catch Rates being used for Common/Uncommon/Rare/Legendary, a Critical Catch would apply. Something along the lines of, if the correct bait for that fish is used, it is instead a 50/50 chance to get that fish at the cost of the correctly used bait.

Extra Catching Parameters
While we could leave fish catching parameters at what biome and bait are being used, we could also expand it a bit to add a few more things: what time of day is someone fishing? Perhaps a certain fish only comes out at night. Is it raining or not? Perhaps a Sunshine Fish only likes clear weather, whereas a Stormcloud Sturgeon prefers the rain? If we even wanted to, we could differentiate between whether or not fish got caught inside of towns/outposts, or completely out in the wild.

Fishing Power and Luck
To make things like bait a bit more concise, and add a bit more to the idea of Tiered Fishing RNG, we could add a mechanic called fishing power using the minecraft system of Luck. For example, when a player casts a fishing line, all the luck on their person is added together. They could get Luck from a few sources, including bait, new Armor Attributes, and the Fishing Rod they are using. For every iteration of Luck they acquire, they increase the looting table of fish RNG that they get. For example:

No Luck: 50% / 40% / 9% / 1%
First Tier of Luck: 40% / 45% / 13% / 2%
Second Tier of Luck: 30% / 50% / 17% / 3%
Etc…

While under this system, “Critical Catches” as described above could still apply.

Fishing Enchantments
This would change certain Vanilla Minecraft enchantments to work under our system or add new ones entirely.

Lure - Decrease the Time between fish bites
Luck of the Sea I/II/III - Adding to your Tier of Luck by some amount.
Lucky Catch I/II - Instead of catching one fish per cast, chance to catch two/three fish.
Frugal Fisher I/II - 10%/20% chance not to consume bait on cast.

Like I said above, all of these features are very rough right now and subject to change, but this is often how our plugin documentation gets started! In a future devlog, I will show you a bit of the research that gets done to start coding, and what the early stages of coding actually looks like!

[Iyoforeayo]

Influence Devlog #1

Written by Tyrriel

Influence is (given that you are in a nation) the single unifying mechanic that everything you can do on Atlas ties into. Smelt an ingot? Influence. Complete a dungeon? Influence. Join an alliance? Influence. Win/lose a war? Influence. You get the idea.

But, what exactly is influence? Mechanically speaking, Influence is a “fixed”, resetting, arbitrary value that nations fight to control during each Council Cycle (a period of about 4 months.)

As I mentioned, influence is a “fixed” resource system. Which means that there is only a given amount (with some variance based on the number of eligible nations) of influence at any given point in time. This naturally means that there is loss associated with Influence.

Every nation starts out with a given amount of influence based on the level of the towns divided by the maximum town's level. Basically this incentivizes maxing out the level on all of your towns. 

This is what we call “base” influence that can be gained or lost through wars. More into that later.

After this, depending on whether or not you are a vassal or overlord, a modifier is attached to your nation decreasing or increasing your influence. If you are a vassal, your influence goes to your overlord. If you are an overlord, all of your vassal's influence comes to you.

Every other gameplay action on Atlas can be gained by nation monthly statistics or influence pools. Think similar to the leaderboards mechanic that we used to have. For example, let’s say there are 100 influence points in the Smeltery pool, and your nation has crafted 51% of all the Smeltery alloys. As long as your nation maintains the 51%, it will be entitled to 51 influence points at the end of the cycle. (Obviously these numbers are NOT final and the Smeltery pool as I have described it is only for sake of explanation)

Here are some of the preliminary influence pools (they have been grouped for ease of development and display):

Adventuring
Gained by venturing out into the world of Atlas to complete PVE milestones:

• (Dungeons) Completing a Boss Encounter
  
• (Dungeons) Completing a Dungeon
  
• (Quests) Completing a Quest
  
• (PVE) Killing a Champion mob
  
• (PVE) Killing a World Boss
  
• (Trials) Completing a Trials Floor
  

Culture
Gained by holding events and producing artisan goods:

• (Grand Feasts) Hosting a Grand Feast
  
• (Grand Feasts) Points for each guest of a Grand Feast
  
• (Grand Feasts) Points for each unique Cooking dish consumed
  
• (Grand Feasts) Points for each unique Brew consumed
  
• (Smeltery) Smelting a Masterwork Ingot
  
• (Tannery) Tanning a Masterwork Hide
  
• (Cooking) Cooking a Masterwork Dish
  
• (Brewery) Brewing a Masterwork Brew
  

Power
Gained by enforcing your Nation’s military prowess through PVP battle and land acquisition:

• (Territory) Points for each Territory controlled
  
• (Territory) Points for each Territory gained
  
• (Diplomacy) Winning an Outpost Battle
  
• (Diplomacy) Winning a Siege
  
• (PVP) Killing a Player in World PVP
  

Statecraft
Gained by improving the quality of your Nation’s Towns, as well as achieving diplomatic milestones with other Nations:

• (Towns) Leveling a Town
  
• (Towns) Unlocking a new Landmark, Citizen, or Perk
  
• (Diplomacy) Completing a Trade Deal
  
• (Diplomacy) Creating an Alliance
  
• (Shops) Buying an item from an NPC Merchant
  
• (Shops) Selling an item to an NPC Merchant
  
• (Smeltery) Selling a Masterwork Ingot
  
• (Tannery) Selling a Masterwork Hide
  

Now back to “base” influence and how it can be gained or lost. Specifically wars, the only way to lose influence.

When a War is declared both sides of the war put up 100 influence. The two sides duke it out as usual, but this is where things get different. The influence is not just distributed to the winner of the War. Rather it is distributed to both sides in the War, with the amount varying depending on the percentage of War points that you accumulated during the War. For example, you can win the War with 51% of the points that were generated during the War, and so you’d walk away with 102 influence (a grand total of 2 Influence profit).

Also introducing; War Sanctions, a Diplomacy option that all eligible nations (excluding the attacking side) can apply to the attacking side. Basically determines the unpopularity of the war. Given that the attacking side “wins” the war, ((number of war sanctions / [number of eligible nations / alliances]) * 75) Influence will be deducted from the attacking side and given to the defending side. Which in certain scenarios would mean that the “winning” side actually loses in the bigger picture they lost Influence.

(All of the numbers are subject to change.)

With these new features, we’re aiming for a more holistic playing experience that ties back into what we define as our “core” gameplay loop: nations.

[Iyoforeayo]

2022: State(ment) of the Server

Written by Iyoforeayo

As we approach the end of 2022, we wanted to take a moment to talk about the server, and the state of development as a whole. As many of you know, we took the server down and began this latest dev period on November 21, 2020. At the time, our plan (as stated) was to be down for “some months” - a specifically vague timeline, as we had a number of major gameplay mechanics we wanted to rewrite from the ground up (for reasons I’ll get into momentarily) and a fair amount of optimization we felt the server needed in order to be self-sustaining upon re-release, and weren’t 100% sure how long those things would take. Admittedly, “some months'' wasn’t meant to be longer than 2 years (a milestone we just recently passed) - however we still feel strongly that this downtime has been necessary to get Atlas to a place where we won’t ever have to bring the server down for an extended period of development again.

So why have we had to take Atlas offline for such an extended period of time this time around?
Atlas has been a labor of love for over 6 years now. We started this project on October 30, 2016, with the goal of creating a truly unique Sandbox MMO within Minecraft. During that time, we’ve had the server open to the public for an Alpha period (3/11/17 - 8/21/17), a Beta period (12/16/17 - 10/8/18), and an Initial Launch period (3/23/19 - 11/21/20.) Each of those periods has provided us with invaluable feedback and knowledge on ways to make the Atlas experience not just more fun for different playstyles, but more balanced and long-lasting. Nothing kills the fun of in-game player politics and events more than admins having to step in and reverse things that were bugged or broken unintentionally. Our main goal during this dev period has been to create a server where (ideally) neither of those things needs to happen - and to do that, it’s required a fair amount of revision on some of our core mechanics, as well as building some mechanics in-house in order to control their overall functionality better.

Third-Party Plugins vs. In-House Plugins
If there’s something that’s been true to Atlas for its entire existence, it’s been that we have a lot of mechanics. From Nations, to Quests, to Dungeons, to Magic, to various Crafting tracks, Atlas has always had a fair number of different gameplay mechanics - some of which have been created in-house, while others have utilized third-party plugins created and maintained by independent MC developers.

One of the major lessons we’ve learned throughout Atlas’ existence is: no matter how good a third-party plugin is, unless it’s maintained by a major entity, we cannot rely on it being maintained. A large number of Minecraft plugins are created and maintained by singular developers that are making them as hobbyists - and while those developers graciously release their plugins (and updates) to the public, they’re also dealing with Mojang/Microsoft constantly throwing a wrench into their code with new version releases. So it’s little surprise when a developer stops supporting whatever the newest version of MC is - which, in the past, has required us to create a fork of that plugin that is basically an Atlas-maintained version of said third-party plugin - which, as you’d imagine, requires nearly as much work as simply creating a plugin for that mechanic in-house (maybe not initially, but as an out-of-house plugin becomes more and more depreciated, the more new maintenance is required to keep it working until it eventually becomes wholly unusable.)

In the previous iteration of Atlas, we had Magic - but it was based in a third-party plugin (which means as much as we wanted to customize its use in-game, we were always beholden to a developer that was not beholden to us.) We felt that Magic, along with Enchants, was too major of a gameplay mechanic to Atlas to relegate to a third-party plugin - and so Tyr created new in-house plugins to manage those mechanics. He’s done the same for Mounts, Pets, Titles, Status Effects, NPCs, and a plethora of other mechanical aspects that may or may not be immediately apparent to players - but certainly improve Atlas’ ability to maintain itself without relying on outside developers.

Additionally, we have moved Dungeons to a third-party system that we know will be significantly more reliable moving forward. In the previous iteration of Atlas, our Dungeons used the DungeonsXL plugin (which, while a great plugin, is maintained by a solo developer that didn’t always stay up-to-date with fixing known bugs.) We’ve since updated all our Atlas dungeons to MythicDungeons - a plugin maintained by the same company that created MythicMobs, and has a large and active staff maintaining a suite of plugins that will be worked on in-perpetuity. For players, this will mean a lot fewer disconnects and soft-locking issues when running Dungeons.

This year in development
2022 has been a very productive year in terms of development overall. A quick recap of the year’s work (chronologically) in case you missed any of our devlogs:

• Started the year with our second Live Test Server to test and balance our brand new Combat and Territory/Outpost Battle systems.
  
• Combat Devlog #1
  
• Nations Devlog #2
  
• Balancing Devlog #1
  
• New Nauru Devlog #3
  
• Quest Devlog #3
  
• Assorted Devlog #2
  
• Cooking Devlog #1
  
• Resource Pack Devlog #4
  
• Skills Devlog #3
  
• Quest Devlog #4
  
• Assorted Devlog #3
  
• World Regen Devlog #1
  
• New Nauru Devlog #4
  
• Assorted Devlog #4
  
• Itemization Devlog #5
  
• Assorted Devlog #5
  
• Agriculture Devlog #1
  
• Assorted Devlog #6
  
• Mounts & Pets Devlog #1
  
• Quest Devlog #5
  
• Assorted Devlog #7
  
• Dungeon Devlog #5
  
• Fishing Devlog #1
  
• And of course today’s other devlog: Influence Devlog #1
  

So when is Atlas actually releasing?
To be fully transparent, our current rough internal goal is a Summer 2023 release. We’re working hard towards getting everything prepped, polished, and tested - and as soon as we feel confident in a specific date, we’ll obviously announce it ASAP. But until we feel the server is in a stable, fairly-balanced place, we won’t be making that decision.

We understand that the waiting can be frustrating, and we sincerely appreciate players’ continued patience as we revamp Atlas. Our goal is (and has always been) to create a fun, engaging, and unique game experience that doesn’t feel like “just another Minecraft server.” We want Atlas to feel like a cohesive game - not just a bunch of random plugins slapped together with a coat of paint on top. To do this properly has taken time, and a whole lot of effort from our incredible team of volunteer developers who we can’t thank enough for their continued vision and awesomeness.

With the holidays approaching, we won’t be doing January devlogs - but we’ll be hitting the ground running in the new year internally, and will have updates for you in February!