Changes and renamed items

Dalvyn · Post by **Dalvyn** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 5:37 pm

As you might know, all objects that are in the game are described in area files. When the objects are modified in the area files, the changes are automatically extended to all the objects in the game.

That is not entirely true though ... some objects have been made different from the standard objects. The simplest example is perhaps renamed objects. Renamed objects are "standard objects" whose names (and keywords) have been changed. If those "non-standard objects" were updated each time the file was changed, they would lose their special name and keywords.

"Non-standard objects" are thus not automatically updated when changes are made to the area files.

Why do I explain that?

Well, with the recent changes to the combat system, several objects had to be modified.

For example, armor class used to be computed in such a way that the lower the AC was, the better it was (currently, it's the other way around: the higher the AC is, the better it is). That means that magical pieces of armour had "bonuses" that were actually negative modifiers to the AC. A "breastplate with -1 to AC" was actually a breastplate that improved your armour. All those objects had to be changed, and the negative modifiers had to be replaced with positive modifiers.

Another example is that we used to have only one type of "AC modifiers", while we now have 4 types (armour, shield, deflection, and natural). All the objects that had an AC modifier had to be changed to replace the old unique AC modifiers with typed modifiers. This change actually allows different items to provide bonuses that stack. Without this change, all items would still provide the same type of bonuses, and only the best amongst them all would count (the others would be ignored).

Ah... so all the standard items were updated at the same time?

Correct. When those changes were made in the files, all the standard, unmodified objects were updated.

But non-standard objects were NOT updated.

That means that your "uber armour of mega protection" that used to have a -50 armour modifier was automatically turned into an "uber armour of mega protection" with +50 armour modifier if it was standard/not renamed. But it also means that your renamed "Hector's uber armour of mega protection" with -50 armour remained "Hector's uber armour of mega protection" with -50 armour.

What should we do then?

Get your platinum coins (those who have lots of renamed magical items should be rich anyway), go visit your friendly wizard, and ask him to identify all your renamed objects.

Objects that have qn "Enchantment to improve protection" are bugged. New and correctly set armour modifiers should display something like
- increase/decrease ac armour
- increase/decrease ac natural
- increase/decrease ac shield, or
- increase/decrease ac deflection

And?

Take note of the objects that are bugged and keep that list for you for now.

In the next weeks, I'm going to go and modify the modifier values in the files (because, now that several bonuses are local, we can be slightly more generous than before). And it's better if you wait till all those modifications are done before you ask a very friendly imm to reload a new objects and re-rename it for you.

(Note: obviously, renamed non-magical items are safe.)

Hviti · Post by **Hviti** » Tue Dec 25, 2007 8:43 pm

Two questions:

a) Is it safe to assume that items have been modified to agree with current code at this time?

b) If an item is a renamed armor but does not display "increases protection" does it not need to be reloaded/re-renamed?

Dalvyn · Post by **Dalvyn** » Wed Dec 26, 2007 12:08 pm

a) Not at all. Some fixes have gone in, but they are far from complete. Yet another set-back with the tedious discussion on how to fix "teach" has completely wiped out my motivation to do anything FK-related recently ... but it will eventually get done at some point.

b) Since AC bonuses to armour pieces are now local, we can be more generous with them. It means that pieces of armour that used to be simply magical, without providing any armour bonus might now have one. If they were renamed, they won't get updated.

Hrosskell · Post by **Hrosskell** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 6:16 pm

Pieces of armor that weren't magical, yet did get renamed.. do they suffer any losses/penalties? I've compared my renamed pieces of PC-made EQ with another person's PC-made EQ of the same type, and I believe his give better protection. Not quite sure on that, but thought the renames might've been the source.