Release Notes

[Version 0.99] - -  [Version 0.98] - - [Version 0.97] - - [Older Versions]

Version 0.99 - [8/30/03] - Click here for download page

• Many new additions to the World Editor. Most importantly, sysops can now edit/add classes and races with the ;editconfig command. An easier-to-use player editor has also been added, as well as an option to scrap the stock game world. Sysops, please read WhatsNew.txt in the Editor v0.99 zip.
• Monsters now rest in real-time when players aren't in the room. The number of HPs and SPs that a monster regains now directly depends on how long the monster has been left alone. 
• Added a /timeout command line option to specify the amount of time (in minutes) that the game should wait before booting an inactive user. Valid range is 4 min to 10 min; game defaults to 5 minutes if /timeout isn't used.
• Improved the daily log, and added a "log" command for viewing the log from previous days. Type "log" to view the entire history, or "log MM/DD/YY" to view log starting from a specific day.
• Being diseased no longer prevents players and monsters from regenerating spell points.
• Players in a PVP Arena room can now properly fight each other even if they're in the same party.
• Weapon-triggered room-effect spells, such as the spell on the Shimmering Claymore, now properly give experience points for all kills.
• After typing the "reroll" command, a player can now type "FULL RESET" instead of "YES" at the reroll prompt in order to completely reset to 0 experience, 0 gold, and no items.
• [Synchronet and Door32 Builds] Improved input routines to significantly reduce reported CPU usage.
• [Door32 Build] Now runs properly on EleBBS and Mannsoft GameSrv. Now strips telnet control characters to prevent odd input upon entering the game. Fixed a directory-detection problem that sometimes occured when running the door from a batch file on Windows NT, 2000, and XP.
• [Synchronet Build] Removed gender auto-detection for new characters, since it did not function properly if multiple players were in the game.
• [DOS Build] Added a /nosysop command line option for *nix sysops running doors exclusively in Local Mode, to prevent every caller from having sysop access.

Version 0.98 - [6/1/02]

• Added support for the World Editor add-on. Sysops, please read addons.txt for more information.
• Fixed a bug which allowed players to enter The Eye of Chaos before level 21.
• Fixed a bug in item drop logic regarding offline players in the room.
• Paladins and Warlocks now have a higher maximum strength (21) but a lower maximum dexterity (19).
• Removed the set limits on the number of creatures, items, and rooms in the game's databases.
• Added more room text clues for finding secret exits in a few places.
• [Synchronet Build] Fixed total game pauses that sometimes occured during Synchronet paging.
• [DOS and Door32 Builds] Attempted to fix extra newline problem that occurs with some telnet clients.
• [DOS Build] Removed support for the Pro Alternative Setup option.
• [DOS Build] All sysop configuration options are now accessible from the game's entrance menu, if you are running the door in local mode (dmud /l). The new in-game configuration menu replaces the old CONFIG.EXE program.

Version 0.97 - [8/1/01]

• Completed the game world -- 330 new rooms.
• Added a Druid class.
• Added PvP Arena rooms to Ancalador, Arcadia, and Hades. Players may battle each other in these rooms without the risk of death penalties, criminal penalties, or PvP level restrictions.
• Removed the concept of instant-kill effects.
• Made some changes to help prevent power-leveling.
• Limited items in shops now have a small chance of being reindexed at maintenance.
• Made slight changes to the formulas for magic resistance and stealth.
• Changed how condition flags work with cumulative spell durations.
• For weapons that cast spells, the chance of a spell being triggered on a bonus swing (at high levels) has been reduced.
• Casting harmful spells that have no effect on another player (due to safe rooms, being outside PvP range, etc) no longer give criminal penalties.
• Self-injuring items like Dark Crystal now work properly in all cases.
• Players under level 16 can no longer fully use the Mirror of Teleportation in Hades.
• Thieves and Bards can no longer rob monsters when at 0 monster fights.
• Fixed some odd glitches with spells that resurrect dead monsters.
• [Win32 Version] All sysop configuration options are now accessible from the game's entrance menu, if you are logged on a Sysop account (security 90+). The new in-game configuration menu replaces the old CONFIG.EXE program.

Version 0.96c - [6/29/01]

• Expanded the size of the game world by adding 3 new areas (Cursed Village, Dungeon of the damned, and Dunes), for a total of 250 new rooms.
• Added several new spells and skills.
• Reduced the SP regen rate of Paladins, Warlocks, and Bards by 10%.
• Reduced the SP regen rate of Shamans by 5%.
• Changed some of the item drop logic.
• Re-balanced the SP cost and effects of many spells.
• Demons now have a maximum alignment of 0 and a minimum alignment of -2000.
• Healing potions and throwing knives from the newbie forest can no longer be carried effectively by players above level 1.
• Area spells cast by hostile monsters will no longer hit other monsters.
• In standard difficulty mode, the Ferryman can now be bribed (level 11+). In hard mode, he can still be bribed at level 10+ as before.
• Made confusion-type effects more irritating.
• Fixed a bug in the "wear all" command that didn't immediately apply all stat bonuses from armor.
• Fixed a minor bug in teleportation-type effects.
• Fixed a bug which caused Continue prompts to sometimes still come up when following in a party.
• NPC interaction is now immediately ended if the NPC dies, or if the player is removed from the room.
• "Get all" no longer picks up items that were stashed by other players.
• Time and date changes no longer greatly disrupt monster regeneration rates.

Version 0.96b - [3/13/01] 

• Expanded size of the game world by adding 2 new areas (Gloomy Bayou and lower level of the Dragon Cave), for a total of 185 new rooms.
• When using lower-level weapons at high levels, players can get multiple swings per round. Swing rate is based on player's level compared to the weapon's intended level, and is affected by the player's class. Also, 2-handed weapons get fewer bonus swings than lighter weapons.
• When an inactive player is deleted, all items that were hidden (stashed) by that player are now properly reindexed.
• Monks and gladiators now get a slight bonus to punching damage for unarmed combat.
• [DoorMUD Pro] Criminal penalties now last twice as long in hard mode.
• [Win32 Version] Fixed duplicate name bug.
• [Win32 Version] Fixed some invalid page faults.

Version 0.96 - [12/28/00]  

• The basic version of DoorMUD now allows 4 simultaneous users.
• The Professional version of DoorMUD now allows 16 simultaneous users.
• Made some changes to the way blocked exits work, in order to prevent power-leveling in parties.
• On games with higher monster fight settings (150+), reduced percentage of monster fights lost upon death.
• Experience charts in the basic game now vary slightly depending on the daily monster fights setting.
• More monsters now cast room-effect spells.
• Changed the color for gossip messages.
• Using a key now properly unlocks the door for all players in the room, unless the key is a limited item.
• Changes to the system clock no longer disrupt gameplay.
• Downgraded several potions and other spell-casting items.
• When following another player who is moving quickly, annoying continue prompts will no longer constantly come up on the screen.
• Added 4 new action commands: growl, glare, spit, yawn.
• Added an "emote" command for customized action messages.
• Beginning in Jan 2001, sysops will be able to register on-line by credit card.
• [DoorMUD Pro] Increased monster damage in Hard Mode.
• [DoorMUD Pro] Increased cost of bribes in Hard Mode.
• [DOS version] Made some internal reformatting to much of the source code of the game engine. If you notice any odd bugs, please report them as soon as possible.
• [Win32 version] User gender is now detected automatically.
• [Win32 version] Fixed illegal operation in the reroll command.
• [Win32 version] By default, dmud32.exe no longer creates a local display window. Sysops, please use the "-window" command line option if you would still like the game to create local windows. See readme.txt for details.

Version 0.95 - [8/10/00]

• Players who are level 5 or higher now lose half of their daily monster fights upon dying, instead of only a fourth.
• Made minor changes to a few of the races.
• Slighly reduced rest rates.
• Sysops can now set the daily monster fights as high as 1000 if desired, although setting it this high is NOT recommended.
• When killing monsters with spells cast by items (ie rune of power and gauntlets of annihilation), proper experience is now given for the kills.
• When sending mail to an offline player by using the TELL command, messages of over 160 characters are now sent properly.
• Added action commands (ie "grin", "wave", "nod", etc). These are just for the purpose of player interaction; they do not have any effect on gameplay. See "help actions" for a list.
• Changed the warning message for when players enter an area that is designed for higher level characters.
• Added support for the DoorMUD Professional add-on. DoorMUD Professional increases the maximum number of simultaneous users to 10, and adds options to configure the game's experience tables and overall difficulty. Sysops, please see ADDONS.TXT for more information.
• Made internal changes to decrease lag.

Version 0.94 - [7/15/00]

• Added support for command syntax "get all" and "wear all".
• Added criminal penalties for actions such as unsuccessful thievery and instigating player-vs-player combat. Criminals cannot recall, use banks, buy items, sell items, etc. Penalty wears off after a few minutes.
• You can no longer exit, rest, or recall if you have been engaged in player- vs-player combat in the last 25 seconds.
• Added new preferences options to block gossip, block tell messages, and disable auto-talking. See "help preferences" for more information.
• Added a new preference option to allow fast movement through the number pad. This option is OFF by default so you must intentionally set it to ON via the preferences command to use it. Num Lock must also be on.
• Players who are inactive for several weeks are now deleted entirely.
• Added support for gold to be on the ground in a room, and added command syntax "get <#> gold" and "drop <#> gold".
• When a monster dies and more than one player is in the room, the gold now falls to the ground, instead of having one player auto-grab it.
• Fixed bug in Gnome Nobleman's quest reward for non-spell-casters.
• Reduced abormally high rest rates for low-level characters.
• The "rank" / "topten" command now lists only 10 players by default, but you can specify a parameter for more/less players (ie "top 20" or "top 5").
• Slightly changed the layouts of the Forest, Hades, and the Catacombs.
• Changed the names and command shortcuts for several martial arts skills.
• The order of player attack rounds now alternates, to make player-vs-player combat more fair. Previously, older characters always attacked first.
• Players who hang up in player-vs-player combat can now be attacked while offline. This is to discourage players from hanging up to avoid death.
• Reduced the amount of experience kept when rerolling. You now maintain enough experience to re-train half of your levels.
• Fixed bug that sometimes caused players to not gain experience from area effect spell kills.
• The bridge troll now allows level 1 players to pass if they do him a favor.
• Invisible characters no longer generate movement messages.
• Added an "instructions" option to the main menu.
• Added "kill" command as alternative to "attack" (does the same thing).
• Balanced/weakened the monk's meditation cap item.
• Moved the sysop game-reset options directly to the Config program.
• Added internal timeslicing routines for better performance on most systems.
• Fixed a few minor bugs that came up in odd situations.

Version 0.93 - [5/21/00]

• Increased the damage on the Gnoll race's head butt attack.
• Changed the Movement Point system to a Monster Fights system.
• Limited the rate at which players can run through rooms, depending on the area and on the player's encumbrance.
• Added new commands: say, gossip, tell, who, follow, leave, party, break.
• Removed the "-maint" command line option.
• Changed the syntax for the Give command; see "help give".
• The game no longer needs to reload from backups in case of a crash.
• When viewing help files, the pause prompt now has options to abort the display or view it in nonstop mode.
• Added a pre-game entrance menu, with options to view top ranking players, see who is playing, etc. Please note that the player ranking list is only updated every 10 minutes when viewed from this menu.
• Removed the "settings" and "releasenotes" commands. These options can now be viewed from the entrance menu instead.
• Made some changes to decrease the rate at which players gain gold.
• Raised the experience tables for levels 4 through 20, but significantly decreased the experience tables for levels 21 and up.
• Changed the duration and SP costs of a few spells.
• Changed item drop logic. Rare items only drop once per day now.
• Changed the shop restock chances for uncommon items.
• You can no longer attack, rob, or cast spells on offline players.
• The game now runs fully in real-time; each round is 4 seconds long. Combat, resting, monster regeneration, maintenance, and many other aspects of the game now happen in real-time.
• Trolls can no longer rest in combat. Instead, they have a faster rest rate than other races.
• Players can no longer exit the game while in combat.
• Changed several aspects of the stealth/backstab system: the game now shows you whether or not you succesfully snuck into a room; the stealth formula has changed; medium and heavy encumbrance now lower your stealth; sneaking players now have a better chance of being able to outrun monsters.
• Changed the color scheme for some combat messages.
• Players with heavy encumbrance now suffer a -10 armor class penalty.
• Looking at a piece of armor now displays what body part the item is worn on and how much it adds to your armor class.
• Nonhostile monsters now hold grudges against players that attack them.
• Modified several aspects of the thievery system.
• Area spells now hit all monsters in a room for equal damage.
• Looking at a weapon now displays how much damage the weapon hits for at your current level.
• Players cannot gain more than 25000 experience points if the game is unregistered.
• Killing a player with an extremely high or low alignment now results in more drastic alignment shifts for the killer.
• Player killing is no longer rewarded with experience points.
• Players who are killed by another player do not lose MFs for that death.
• Hoarded quest items now vanish entirely from your inventory.
• Limited items on inactive players are now reindexed back to their original holding monster. A player must be inactive for 2 weeks for this to occur.
• When rerolling, items stay in your inventory instead of appearing on the ground in the Temple of Tolaria.
• Character names can no longer contain spaces.
• Hundreds of other internal changes.