Now Live: Teleport Rune Upgrades

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DaloLorn
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Now Live: Teleport Rune Upgrades

Unread post by DaloLorn »

As of yesterday's patch, the teleport location system has received an extensive overhaul for reliability and flexibility:
  • Virtual runes are now in SQL.
  • Added conversion mechanics between virtual and physical runes.
  • Added a number of feedback messages to various rune management functions.
  • (Not a new change, but listed anyway for visibility!) The contents of physical runes are now wiped when you acquire them from any source.
SQL Runes and their significance
Previously, virtual runes were stored as a series of local variables on your scry tool. Due to technical issues we have not yet been able to diagnose, this resulted in them only saving correctly if you hadn't disconnected from the server for any reason since its last reset.

In the current system, they are cached as a series of local variables on your player character, with inter-reset persistence being achieved via the server's SQL database. In addition to fixing the abovementioned persistence issues and ensuring that the runes should always be saved/deleted correctly, this has the added benefit of allowing your runes to persist through an RCR, as they are now bound to your PC's identity in the same way as your storage vault. (And like your storage vault, they can be transferred to a new name, or reclaimed by another of your characters, by asking a DM to rename your character.)

As with the previous system, you can hold 50 virtual runes per character at a time. This may be increased at a later date if it turns out the restriction is unnecessary, but I make no promises. (This limit is enforced by location type: Teleport and plant locations are counted separately.)

Virtual-Physical Interoperability
Some mechanics, such as using runes with the Dimension Door spell to extend its range across the entire space of a map (as opposed to a short-range, LoS-restricted teleport), can currently only be used with physical runes. However, as a general rule, we are moving to deprecate the use of physical runes to the fullest extent possible, as they do not accurately represent the IC requirements of being familiar with a teleport destination. (Neither do virtual runes, but they're the best we've got.)

As a compromise between these two stances, until we have managed to fully enable the use of virtual runes in all contexts, two new functions have been added to the Manage Locations feat:
  1. When targeted on an empty physical rune, it will pop up a menu asking you to choose which virtual rune to save to it. This will copy the relevant information from your virtual rune cache, as though you had cast Mark Rune on the item while standing in exactly the location stored by the virtual rune.
  2. Conversely, when targeted on a marked physical rune, it will prompt you to specify a name for the location held by the item, as if you had cast Mark Rune on the exact location stored on the physical rune. This can only be done if that location is not already held in your virtual rune list.
(Again, all of this is also applicable to leaf holders and the plant-specific variant of Manage Locations.)

Feedback Messages
Previously, you received little to no notification when you had done something with one of your runes, whether virtual or physical. Many functions within the new system now come with feedback messages in your combat log, confirming that you have or haven't successfully performed a rune management operation (including marking a new rune).

(Yet again, this is also applicable to plant locations.)

Rune Wiping
The DM ruling on Teleportation Runestones, dating back to the 30th of May, 2015, specifies that PCs are only intended to be able to teleport to locations that they are themselves familiar with. It also stated that a mechanical correction was on the way, and such a correction was indeed implemented.

Unknown to the team, that mechanism has never worked. Until recently. (The "Great Rune Purge" that ensued from the first attempted fix was entirely my fault for assuming an "onAcquire" event would only fire when you had, in fact, actually acquired an item. Turns out it also runs on your entire inventory every time you log in. :oops:)

The current and intended behavior is that picking up a marked rune, or receiving it in trade, will immediately and irreversibly delete the location stored in that rune, returning it to a blank slate. (It won't affect any virtual rune it may have been bound to, though.) You are also unable to use Manage Locations to convert any physical rune not currently held in your inventory into a virtual rune.

(Need I say it a fourth time? :lol: Also applies to plants.)

WARNING: This unmarking mechanic does not currently distinguish between runes acquired from other PCs, containers, etc., and runes retrieved from your storage vault. There is no current ETA on a fix, as its technical details have not yet been determined. Until this issue has been resolved, please do not withdraw marked runes from storage. (You can put them into storage, but you're not getting them back intact before this is fixed.)
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