Atlas Devlogs 2021

[Iyoforeayo]

Mob Devlog #1

Written by Iyoforeayo

You probably saw in Dungeon Devlog #1 that dungeon mobs have been completely reworked - but it isn’t just mobs in dungeons that are brand new! Overworld mobs have been reworked from the ground up as well, in order to utilize more interesting mechanics and provide more varied PVE combat.

Under the old system, Atlas only had one type of “harder-than-normal” overworld mob, which we (uncreatively) referred to as Mythic Mobs. Most were random world spawns, and shared similar spawn rates and Mythic Loot drop rates. Of course there were a few varied quest mobs and world bosses, but those were rare encounters (and in the case of the old world boss spawn rate, far too rare.)

So what exactly is changing with mobs?

New Mob Tiers
Similar to how items will now have a rarity tier, overworld mobs will also have different tiers. Think of normal vanilla mobs as “common” tier, with the following 3 categories being uncommon, rare, and legendary.

Elite Mobs
Elite Mobs will largely consist of the random world spawns that previously existed on Atlas. Biome-specific mobs like Purelaker Rogues and Rebel Warlords, who are stronger than normal and have unique skills, but should be easily soloable by the average player.

Even though a lot of the old Mythic Mobs are returning in this tier, the mobs themselves have been completely reworked with true threat AI (I’ll get into this later) and new abilities. Take the new Purelaker Rogue for example:



Of course there will be plenty of new Elite tier mobs making appearances as well! Each biome on Athera now has its own 2 unique Elite Mobs that spawn only in that region.

The spawn rate of Elite Mobs across the board will be noticeably higher than the old Mythic Mob spawn rate.

Champions
Like Elite Mobs, Champions will spawn randomly throughout the world. However, they will have a much lower spawn rate (rare tier), and will have significantly more difficult and unique abilities that will require either a small group (or a solo player with a death wish) to overcome. Think of them like “World Mini-Bosses.” Each biome on Athera will have its own unique Champion that spawns only in that region.

World Bosses
While some World Bosses will have a random chance to spawn in the wilderness of Athera, most World Bosses will be unlocked by direct player activity - either a tribute of certain items at a particular location, the culmination of a quest chain that unlocks a weekly boss (like the Azurestorm), or even triggered when certain server events happen.

Not every biome will have its own unique World Boss, but there will still be a significant amount more of them to fight on Atlas.

Mob AI, Threat, & Combat Integrations
One major thing that needed to be revisited when reworking mobs was their AI. With the introduction of new combat elements through updated skill gear, magic, and new enchants, mobs needed to be improved so that they could actually stand toe-to-toe with players, and not just be simple tanky punching bags.

There’s plenty of boring backend work that’s been done to improve this, but one major difference that players will notice with new mob combat is the introduction of threat. Not only will all mobs now update their threat tables more realistically, Threat is actually now a custom enchantment that can be utilized by players to truly tank dungeons and difficult mobs.

Magic on Atlas is of course quite strong - so it only seemed fair that we give our mobs the ability to use our magic system as well. So we did! (Mobs might even have access to SimpleMagic spells that players don’t…)

New Smeltery and Tannery gear of course means new combat attributes associated with those items - and those will be utilized by mobs as well.

And in addition to all the new integrations, the mobs themselves have been redesigned completely from the ground up. Every single world mob has had every one of their abilities reworked, reimagined, or in some instances have brand new skills to try and kill you with!

Mob Loot
While there’s plenty of cool new additions to the monsters on Atlas themselves, you’re probably wondering “well what’s gonna make it worth it to kill all these new, harder mobs?” In the previous iteration of Atlas, overworld Mythic Mobs dropped “Mythic Loot” which were essentially items that served only one purpose - to sell to an NPC town vendor for gems. And while loot like that may still exist in some form, the idea of “Mythic Loot” as it existed before is being done away with. Instead, there’s plenty of different variations of drops that will encompass our new mobs’ loot tables!

Crafting Resources
Unlike the previous iteration of Atlas, certain items that drop from our custom mobs will now be Crafting Resources that are ingredients for recipes in things like Smeltery, Tannery, and Cooking. As expected, higher tier recipes will require higher tier resources that drop from rarer or more difficult mobs (either in the overworld, or from specific dungeons.)

Custom Blocks
One new addition that’s been teased in previous Resource Pack devlogs is new custom building blocks. Brand new blocks with custom textures that only exist on Atlas. And while a lot of the more common types of these custom blocks will be craftable (or easily accessible in other ways), some of the rarer or more unique custom blocks will drop from mobs (both in dungeons and Athera.) Of course being a building asset, custom blocks will drop in much larger quantities than items like Crafting Resources - but with dozens and dozens of new unique blocks to utilize, players will surely find a new market in selling various hard-to-acquire custom building blocks obtainable from a variety of sources.

Custom (Legendary) Items
Players who were active in the previous iteration(s) of Atlas probably remember our handful of Legendary Items - things like Karag’s Sabre and the Grappling Hook. Well, as has been mentioned in previous devlogs, these types of unique items are being expanded greatly!

(Side Note: We’re starting to refer to what we previously called “Legendary Items” as “Custom Items.” The only reason for this is, now with “Legendary” being an item rarity tier, we want to clearly differentiate what we mean when we talk about these items with unique abilities. For example - there will be Custom Items that are in the Rare or Uncommon tiers, yet will still have unique abilities or enchantments. “Legendary” on Atlas now refers to a rarity tier, rather than a specific type of item.)

Special Items
This is obviously a broad category, but it includes everything from special quest items that unlock certain storylines, to cosmetic upgrades, to items that trigger things like custom titles, to keys or other items utilized in summoning World Bosses or unlocking endgame dungeons!

Normal Shit
Many mobs (including those in dungeons) will still have a chance to drop normal loot like gems or vanilla items - that certainly isn’t going away. But like dungeon mobs, all mobs will now have specific loot tables that take all of the above-mentioned categories of items into account.

In Conclusion…
...have some more mob GIFs!

[Iyoforeayo]

Resource Pack Devlog #3

Written by Tyrriel

Custom Blocks
In the previous Resource Pack devlog, we teased a couple of our new Custom Blocks being added to Atlas. Of course there were only a handful in those images, as we were early on in the texturing process. But since then, we’ve added dozens of new blocks to the game (and are still adding lots more!)

Custom Blocks will be uniquely textured building blocks that are obtainable from a variety of sources in-game. Some of the more common ones will be craftable, or drop from basic mobs, or given as daily quest rewards. Rarer blocks might only drop from certain dungeons or summonable world bosses, or obtained as rewards of other mechanics. In short, these will be a brand new category of item introduced all throughout Atlas.

Here are a few of the brand new Custom Blocks you’ll be able to use in-game:




1.17 Update
Oh yea, we also updated to 1.17 for all of our development environments. So expect to see and be able to use all the new 1.17 blocks in the future!

[Iyoforeayo]

New Nauru Devlog #2

Written by teapressed

Hello! I’m one of several builders who has worked on the New Nauru project for over a year now. I want to share the process of creating what we’ve affectionately dubbed as our “boujee builds”, which are our more affluent builds scattered about in the city. I’m also going to share with you how we came up with the colour palette for the builds themselves.

I’m excited for you to see a glimpse of what we’ve been working on!

A General Concept/Idea
Our story begins in the Residential District.

Initially, I wanted these builds to stand out as something unique to New Nauru. All of the NPC towns that are currently established already have their own look to them, and I wanted these builds to stand out amongst them.

The Residential District is packed to the brim with a very ramshackle, messy style of architecture. It feels very rushed and hastily put together; like there were so many refugees arriving in the city and not enough houses to house them in.

The colour palette for these houses uses washed out and pale colours, with some browns and beige mixed in. We used sandstone as the foundation and bone blocks and sparsely placed birch planks as the walls to simulate peeling paint, and a mixture of spruce and oak planks as the roofing. To add a pop of colour we would place some leaves scattered about to spice things up.

For our grander builds I thought to choose dark oak planks for the inner walls to go against a much more solid stone brick framing, and polished andesite being the foundation. We also decided on using a singular colour for the roof topper. The idea was to have these builds made with materials that were a little harder to get, while also being structurally solid and more established looking than the standard, smaller builds.


This is the first concept that longfellow4 and I built. The style itself is inspired by Georgian architecture, which I dunno about you but I think it’s very heckin’ boujee.

A “Completed” Build (kind of)

As time went on and we made some more progress, I began to feel off about the colour palette we’d decided to go with. Not only did I feel like it was missing something, but it also ended up clashing too much with everything else we had built. There was a lot of contrast between the boujee build colour palette, and what was already established in New Nauru.

During one of our creative meetings, Desertdweller pointed out a couple of suggestions that we could use. With a bit of effort, we came up with a new colour palette that used oak planks and stripped oak logs for the inner walls.

We changed the roof to be a mixture of green and lime terracotta rather than a plain grey, and Terryn placed in some more greenery with some hanging plants to give the build a little more texture.

Overall, the colour of the build felt much lighter. The contrast wasn’t too harsh anymore, and it blended in nicely with the rest of the district.

The Final Product!


You can never go wrong with plants. Ever.

To Sum Things Up...
Developing not only a style of architecture but also a palette that compliments it can be very challenging. There was a lot of chopping and changing, and most of the time when I’m building I hardly know what to put where, or whether it’ll look good or not. The payoff when it works is what makes it worth the time and the effort we’ve all put in.

As you’ll eventually end up seeing (when we release more devlogs about New Nauru, or just building in general), our boujee builds have grown into themselves quite a bit and I’m very proud of them.

I’m pleased to have been able to share just a smidge of this with you. I can’t wait for you to explore all of New Nauru!

Thank you for reading!

[Iyoforeayo]

Quest Devlog #1

Written by Iyoforeayo

One of the many projects we set out to do during this dev period was to revisit Quests, as well as complete the base in-game storyline. Players from the last iteration of Atlas may remember that each of the major NPC factions had the first chapter of their main storylines available, and advancing through each would unlock perks like new daily quests and reduced fast travel costs. But there was some valid criticism from players about the quest system - namely that “gather” or “kill X mobs”-type quests tended to break the momentum of something like a main story questline. For the previous NPC story questlines, I tried to reduce those particular types of quests to no more than 2 per faction - but even that was too much. So while gather and kill quests won’t disappear entirely, they will be relegated to their own separately-accessible areas (regional dailies, Diplomacy War quests, etc.)

So what will be different about quests in the new Atlas? First and foremost, a lot more differentiation:

Story Campaign Quests
When Atlas relaunches, the entire base “main story” will be complete-able in-game through Story Campaign Quests. The main storyline will be split into 5 Campaigns, each with 3 Chapters (I’ll get into a bit more detail about those Campaigns in future devlogs.) But a few important details about these types of quests:

No Gather Quests
A lot of players who started the main questlines previously got derailed by quests that asked them to basically farm materials or certain rare mob-types. Admittedly, these types of quests shouldn’t have a place in main storylines - and so they no longer do. Story Campaign Quests will consist entirely of unique quests that serve only to move the overall story, characters, and world forward for individual players as they progress through them. Which brings me to the next point:

The world of Atlas will change and evolve (for you) as you advance through the Story Campaigns
As to be expected, progressing through the main story will have real-world consequences for your player, and at various points throughout your progression through the Campaigns, certain characters may die, move, defect, or any other number of other options that will update the world of Atlas accordingly. But these choices will be tied to your character specifically - so if you choose to kill a particular NPC, the world will be phased for you so that you exist in a reality where that character is dead - but that might not be the same choice a different player made, and thus that player might be in the same NPC Town as you, but seeing different NPCs or events depending on the choices they’ve made.

Story Quests will be longer
Unlike previous story quests that revolved around 1 or 2 objectives, new story quests will mostly be made up of several parts. They will also incorporate new, otherwise inaccessible areas throughout the world.

Daily/Weekly Quests
There will of course still be plenty of repeatable quests - but as mentioned, many will be separated out from the main Story Campaigns (with the exception of the NPC Battlefield Dailies, which are unlocked via story progression.)

There will be a few new types of dailies this time around. With Dungeon loot becoming a lot more randomized, Dungeon Dailies guarantee finite rewards for completing certain dungeons each day. Players will also encounter Regional Hunter Dailies across the world, where NPCs will ask for your help hunting down the Elite Mobs terrorizing that region (or perhaps the occasional Champion.)

Lots of other repeatables will be available as well (like World Boss Weeklies and Regional Farming Dailies), but for now let’s move on to:

War Quests
War Quests - the small, repeatable quests that can be farmed to increase your nation’s War Score during a war - likely won’t be changing all too much. However I bring this up because I know a handful of these were bugged last iteration, and I want to assure players that these will be re-tested and fixed for launch. Perhaps a few changes as well.

New Quest Tracking
We’ve mentioned this in previous devlogs, but it bears repeating here - there is a brand new Quest Journal! One that’s been built in-house (thanks Tyr) and will not only be a lot more visually appealing, it will be a lot easier to navigate for players.

View Active Quests and All Quests
Remember the quest tracker menu you could bring up in last iteration by pressing “L”? Well that’s going away… because it’s now part of your Quest Journal! Not only will you be able to view your current active quests, you’ll be able to see every quest available on Atlas, its prerequisites, and where to start it!

New Journal Functionality
The Quest Journal will also now be a GUI, rather than a book - and will just be a button in your inventory screen, rather than an item - so it should be a lot easier to navigate.

You’ll also be able to actively track quest objectives in a brand-new menu on the right-hand side of your screen!

[Iyoforeayo]

Dungeon Devlog #4

Written by Terryn

Howdy folks, Terryn here, one of the builders for the Atlas Dev Team. We’ve been working on a lot of cool looking stuff lately, and I figured we could give a behind the scenes thought process on how we purpose-make some of our builds.We’ll go over some of the recent and older dungeon changes we made as a build team and give some insight.

Some of you who played in the dungeon test period might recall the changes we made to some of the levels in the Shen Catacombs, most specifically the water maze and follow up mini-boss room. When going back into the dungeon, we felt neither of the rooms really were up to standard or practicality anymore.

For the Water Maze area, we scrapped the maze idea altogether. While a maze can be tricky your first, second, or maybe even third time playing through a dungeon, after that you can clearly know the exact way to get through it and avoid any of the obstacles. Which isn’t that fun or engaging. So in our redesign we endeavored to expand the section and make it a proper underwater cavern that we could fill with more exciting mobs and areas to fight them in.






Running off the same idea for the next level, the previous mini-boss room was poorly sized, especially when you consider the new boss that dwells there, and it’s harrowing abilities. So clearly a redesign was in order, one that would allow the players to have enough space to avoid abilities while still offering variations in terrain to promote a good fight. We settled on a room roughly four times as big to fit those criteria.




Moving off the Shen Catacombs into the Kairos dungeon, we had yet another mini-boss that required a better arena to combat her in. We went with a similar design to the rest of the dungeon, as if the corruption had cleared this area out for us, but was held together with fragments of the roots from above. This area let us have enough space to fight the new boss, while still providing cover and maneuverability to its combatants.




And of course, if you have an option to make a slime skull pit, you always take it.


Moving even further away, probably as far as you can get, to the Fall of Devshire dungeon, in some changes even players who participated in the dungeon test haven’t seen. In an effort to provide more cool bosses, we once again ran into the problem of our previous arenas not holding up to the task. Of course we were going to fix those.

First up we have a new island for a certain mini-boss, that has some rather interesting mechanics. Suffice to say you will need a good deal of space to deal with this one. So what else than to create a ring of islands surrounding your arena in order to progress throughout the fight? With each connected by a bridge, it should provide the land you will need to defeat the boss.






Ah but of course, what good would this all be without a backdrop to see it in?




Finally, also in the Devshire dungeon, we have a pair of pocket realities that each needed their own twist to let the players experience something almost alien.

Our first was a corrupted forest of sorts, with a raging battle going on in the background. Our block choices allow the area to seem out of this world, as perhaps it is. Strange things happen when you mess with the Void.






Secondly we have an icy underwater cavern populated with some *fun* mobs you have to work around to escape. Perhaps the shipwreck is your salvation. We chose blocks here that would exemplify the blue shades of the ice above, and provide a feeling of cold in this frigid water.






And that’s it for now on the dungeon front, though certainly not everything. I hope to see you all enjoy these changes we made, and also now see how and why we made them.

[Iyoforeayo]

Assorted Devlog #1

Written by Tyrriel

This month has been particularly productive in terms of backend system improvements, unfortunately that means there isn’t much to “show”. However there were a few significant new features / reworked features from previous iterations of Atlas that we wanted to share with y’all.

Attribute Changes

Magic Resistance - First of all, Magic Resistance actually works with our Magic system. Actual Magic mitigation! We have slightly changed how Magic Resistance “works” in order to make it clear as to what exactly it does. Magic Resistance is now only a positive value attribute, meaning that the lowest value it can have is 0. When you have Magic Resistance, magic “effectiveness” is lowered against you. (The exact formula will probably revealed in the wiki later)

Magic Vulnerability - This new attribute will essentially replace what was previously negative (-) Magic Resistance. When you have Magic Vulnerability, the effectiveness of negative magic effects are increased against you.

There have also been some QOL improvements to the Reach Attribute. Basically it works more consistently now.

“New” Weapons

Sickle - Not really a new weapon, but new functionality. When holding sickles in both your main and off hands, you attack with both (left clicking at an entity will swing your main hand then your off hand). The swings are exactly 7 ticks apart and player i-frames when hit by the first hand will be set to 5 ticks (basically it hits twice if within range). Keep in mind that the range for sickles is still 2.2 blocks.

Battle-Axe - Basically just a distinction between the tool axe and the weapon axe. This was to resolve a complication with enchanting. All tools now only do 1 damage.

Both of these have new crafting recipes, as pictured below.





Tridents - Again, not a new weapon, but new functionality. We will talk about mounts in a later devlog, but hitting a mounted player with a thrown trident will dismount the player and push them away from the mount. Basically Atlas now has jousting, it’s pretty fun.

Territory / Outpost New Systems

Short Term Block Regen - Does not in any way interact with World Regen. This only applies to territory that your nation owns. When a foreign player breaks a block in your nation’s territory, that block will not drop anything and it will come back after a couple/few hours. This was to allow nations to build infrastructure within their territory without it being greifed too heavily.

Territory Alerts - When a foreign player enters your territory, you now have the ability to send a pre-configured message to that player. Whether you want to warn or welcome those that enter your territory is entirely up to you.

Enchanting Updates

Moar Enchanting Slots - The maximum potential enchanting slots on an item have been increased to 10 (5 is still the maximum attainable from a player perspective). This means that legendary items will have the ability to have up to 10 enchants on an item.

Legendary Enchants - “Overcharged” Enchants is another term for it, basically Enchants have the ability to go over their max level. Again this will primarily be seen on Legendary Items.

Curses - Added the ability to add various curses to items. At the moment only the vanilla curses exist, but there are plans to add some custom ones in the near future. Again this is primarily tied to the Legendary Items.

[Iyoforeayo]

Nether Devlog #1

Written by Iyoforeayo

One of the biggest projects being worked on in this dev period is the creation of a Nether Continent! The Nether Continent is something we’ve planned for awhile, and we’re excited to finally be making it a reality on Atlas. There’s been a lot of discussion on the specifics, how it will be incorporated, etc - so in today’s devlog, let’s dive into that a bit.

With the continent still being built, we wanted to give you a rough idea of what the map will look like. So without further ado:

So what exactly is this continent, and how does it tie in?

Xar’akul
Centuries ago, the world of Xar’akul was a lush and fertile landscape not unlike Atlas. Now it is a twisted nether world, shattered and broken over ages by the corrupting powers of the Void. Inexplicably linked to Atlas by the rifts created through the use of Atlian magic, Xar’akul is currently home to Arkayos, the God of Chaos.

Long ago, the world of Xar’akul belonged to a people known as the Xeronians. Splintered into tribes, the warlike Xeronians fought one another for centuries, using increasingly devastating magicks, and unknowingly unraveling the thread between their world and the Void. Then one day, the many rifts across Xar’akul tore open, and the Void began warping the world unrelentingly. Fertile land soon became a fiery hellscape, and the oceans soon turned to lava. The Xeronian people found themselves mutated into horrific beings - some driven completely mad, while others perished at the hands of the many nightmarish beasts and demigods that slipped into their world from the Void (including Arkayos himself.) Fewer still managed to cling to their last vestiges of sanity and stood to oppose their new Voidborne oppressor - but whether any rebels or their descendants still survive to this day remains to be seen…

FAQs

How big is the nether continent?
Xar’akul will be roughly a third the size of Athera.

Can I found towns there?
No. Building is of course allowed in the wilderness of Xar’akul, but won’t be block-protected and will regenerate quicker than on Athera.

How do I reach the nether?
There will be a single access point on Athera - a portal within the fallen dwarven capital of Valderkal City. Valderkal City will likely be accessible from a couple different locations on Atlas, which are TBD.

Can’t I just make a nether portal in my town?
No. Nice try, though.

What is there to do in the nether?
In addition to being the location of the final Story Campaign, Xar’akul will contain an endgame dungeon, and a whole host of new and unique mobs with rare drops and materials. Not to mention a handful of other secrets waiting to be discovered…

Will there be open world PVP there?
Open world PVP rules in Xar’akul will be the same as on Athera.

Are there “protected” areas in Xar’akul?
There will be 2 NPC Towns on the continent, which will act the same as their Atlian counterparts. There are also a handful of block protected quest areas.

Do I have to do quests to access the nether?
No. While completing the main questline will certainly help make navigating Xar’akul easier, players won’t need to complete any quests to access the continent.


Hopefully I’ve answered at least some of the questions you might have about the Nether Continent. Stay tuned for future devlogs on the subject as we get closer to launch!

[Iyoforeayo]

Quest Devlog #2

Written by Iyoforeayo

In the previous Quest Devlog I talked a bit about how the new Story Campaign quests will differ mechanically. In this devlog, I wanted to reveal the main story chapters, but also show how their progression will work.

When players first join Atlas, they will now have a choice of 2 tutorials: the Story Tutorial, which is an extended questline that delves deeper into the story - and the Abridged Tutorial, which skips the story bits and fast-tracks the player to the docks of New Nauru. Regardless of which tutorial players choose, completing it will unlock access to the first 4 Story Campaigns. They can be played and completed in any order, but all 4 must be completed to access the 5th and final campaign, Xar’akul:

Each of the Story Campaigns is made up of 3 chapters, of which there will be about a dozen quests each:

Campaign #1: New Nauru
Chapter 1: The Arson
Chapter 2: Infiltration
Chapter 3: The Night It Happened

Campaign #2: The Purelaker Republic
Chapter 1: Unrest in Telaria
Chapter 2: Rallying the North
Chapter 3: Enemies at the Gates

Campaign #3: The Vantian Empire
Chapter 1: Making a Name
Chapter 2: The Eye of Kazius
Chapter 3: The Prophecy

Campaign #4: The Shen-Cirilian Alliance
Chapter 1: Echoes of the Tas’Akram
Chapter 2: The Greymar Syndicate
Chapter 3: The Dawnfleet

Campaign #5: Xar’akul
Chapter 1: A World in Chaos
Chapter 2: Last of the Xeronians
Chapter 3: The Second Summoning

[Iyoforeayo]

NPC Devlog #1

Written by Tyrriel

SimpleNPCs

The Problem
For those that have even remotely been in the server development scene, you would have probably heard of a plugin called “Citizens” or as it is now known as “Citizens2”. The premise of the plugin is relatively simple; provide a system in which server developers can introduce NPCs (Non-Playable Characters) into the game. In practice this is a very complicated, high-maintenance (from a code upkeep standpoint) plugin project which involves intricate knowledge of NMS (directly interacting with net.minecraft.server aka obfuscated Mojang code). Basically every time there is a change to the NMS version, you have to slightly rework the plugin to make it work. Thankfully there is a team of developers that have dedicated themselves to maintaining this monster of a plugin. Unfortunately there were larger issues that forced us to move away from this seemingly convenient plugin.

Since 1.13 Citizens has been the primary source of server lag on the server, regularly taking up 30-40% of each tick. The reason this is the case is because each NPC is effectively a fake player entity that exists on the server. Meaning those NPCs get ticked like players get ticked. Generally this isn’t an issue for servers that have at most a couple of hundred of NPCs at most. However Atlas has around 1000, with the exact number being north of that estimate. As you can probably imagine that is a pretty significant performance impact. The first solution that I implemented was maintaining our own fork of the plugin that contained a patch to effectively not tick the NPCs that were in loaded chunks without players near them. And while this did help a lot, meaning we could actually run the server without the server going to <10 TPS, it became quite cumbersome to maintain from version to version of Minecraft.

The Solution
I decided to write my own NPC plugin, aptly named SimpleNPCs. The plugin uses a well maintained open source library that uses packets to provide NPCs instead of the NMS method. Which has a number of benefits such as; not having to have extra integration to “phase” NPCs, less load on the server as the entities don’t actually exist on the server, and easier maintenance for future versions of Minecraft. There were some nifty tricks that I was also able to pull off that allowed us to basically import all of the NPCs from Citizens into our own in-house system.

It’s important to understand the distinction between Citizens NPCs and SimpleNPCs NPCs. Citizens NPCs are actual entities that exist on the server. Basically there is only 1 version for every person. SimpleNPCs NPCs are instead packets that are sent to each player. Meaning that each NPC is specifically tied to each player.

This change over also required a fairly small change to our quest system to allow it to interact with our new systems. But as that plugin does not use any NMS it is far easier to maintain. We hope that this has provided some insight into the projects that have taken some time but are very much required in having a functioning server.

[Iyoforeayo]

Atlas Development: 2021-2022

Written by Iyoforeayo

As we approach the end of our first full year of devlogs, we wanted to take a moment to look back on the progress we’ve made in 2021, and talk a bit about what we’re expecting in 2022.

2021
This was a hugely productive year for Atlas development across the board - in case you missed any updates, here’s the full list of devlogs from 2021:

Art Design Devlog #1

Assorted Devlog #1

Dev-Devlog #1

Dungeon Devlog #1
Dungeon Devlog #2
Dungeon Devlog #3
Dungeon Devlog #4

Enchanting Devlog #1

Itemization Devlog #1
Itemization Devlog #2
Itemization Devlog #3
Itemization Devlog #4

Magic Devlog #1
Magic Devlog #2

Mob Devlog #1

Nations Devlog #1

Nether Devlog #1

New Nauru Devlog #1
New Nauru Devlog #2

NPC Devlog #1

Quests Devlog #1
Quests Devlog #2

Religions Devlog #1

Resource Pack Devlog #1
Resource Pack Devlog #2
Resource Pack Devlog #3

Skills Devlog #1
Skills Devlog #2

2022
So what should players expect in the new year? Firstly, we plan to hit the ground running in January with a date for our next Live Test Server - this time based around Nation Territory & Outpost combat! Players will be able to found Nations on a vanilla world, and try out the new Territory/Outpost claiming system - while also having access to new and updated combat-related mechanics like Smeltery, Tannery, Magic, Enchanting, and Custom Items!

Combat
While the individual elements that tie into combat were a major development focus in 2021, this next year we’ll be focusing on tying the whole system together. We’ve spoken previously of the “Combat Triangle” (Melee -> Ranged -> Magic ->) and now that a lot of the combat-related elements are coming into place, we can begin the work of balancing it all. The Live Test Server will give us a lot of needed feedback on this aspect, and we’re looking forward to seeing all the new and creative ways players find to kill each other!

Territories/Outposts
One of the biggest new mechanics being added to Atlas, Nation Territories will be a major focus of early 2022. Obviously a lot of progress has already been made on this mechanic, and our first LTS of the year will be focused around it, but we’ll undoubtedly have at least one more beyond that in order to get plenty of player feedback on the system.

Event Islands
This past year brought a lot of discussion and planning for Event Islands (from their content, to how World PVP would tie into them.) This next year we’ll be focused on developing the islands and mechanics themselves.

Mounts & Pets
Goodbye to our old third-party plugin SimplePets - and hello to our new in-house plugin that will support not only pets, but summonable (and collectable) player mounts! A lot of this mechanic’s development happened during 2021, but we’ll have some share-worthy news about it shortly!

New Website!
Something else that’s been in the works for some time, but won’t be revealed until next year - we’ve got a brand new website to go along with a brand new server! In addition to being just, well, better-looking, the new website will offer a lot more functionality for things like the forums, the wiki, the shop, and player profiles!

Xar’akul
Work has of course already started on the nether continent, but we’ll see it come alive in 2022! Expect some updates (and maybe an LTS?) related to Xar’akul shortly…

The Atheran Council
The true Leaderboard award - the more Leaderboards your Nation tops, the more you’ll be able to affect world politics and edicts.

A Release Date Announcement
Some of you may be reading this thinking “is this gonna go on for another full year?” The answer is No. While we’ve still got a good amount of work to do before being launch-ready, we intend to release the new Atlas server before the end of 2022. We don’t have any more specific details than that currently, but rest assured as soon as we do, we will announce a release date.

And on that note, we want to thank you all for your patience during this development period. We’re confident that this new version of Atlas will be the game we always envisioned it to be, and we can’t wait to release it! 

Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday, and we’ll see you all in the new year!