Dev Diary #3 – 12/27/2016

London 2038: Status as of 12/27/2016

Hey guys! It has been an exciting 3 weeks since my last dev diary. We have had our hands full working on London 2038 and celebrating the holidays with our families :)

First of all, I would like to welcome a new member to the team, SanGawku! He comes to us with experience in private server development and has already contributed to bugfixes and process improvements. We are glad to have him!

I mentioned in my last update that https://london2038.com would be coming soon; this is still the case–look out for an announcement of the new website with dedicated places for information on the project.

There are some updates on what has been fixed and new bugs discovered, but first, a little home movie I made…

Shulgoth Eats Lead

All of us have been hard at work addressing the issues that were known at the time of the last dev diary. Many small issues were fixed since then due to the hard work and dedication of our development team. Some additional issues have also been discovered since then as well, mainly due to our ability to test in a more in-depth way.

What Now Works In Addition to the Previous Update

  • Party members’ health displays properly
  • Power/shield regeneration rate is now correct
  • Inspection no longer crashes the game and works as expected
  • Auction house (Consignment House) now functions correctly
  • AI pathing is now correct
  • Achievements/achievement bonuses function correctly
  • Stonehenge essences (beast, spectral, etc) now drop correctly from bosses
  • Abyss-era rings can be purified in the Transmogrifying Cube
  • Zone portals now use the correct text color (allowed, quest, locked, etc)
  • Party finding/party listing system now works correctly

What Doesn’t Work/Is Being Worked On

  • Data issues causing some remaining problems
  • Issue with certain skills causing NPC lag (see video of Shulgoth above when the summoner uses Meatshield)
  • Issue causing occasional crashes related to merchants and items
  • Party member inspection from the party member portrait does not function
  • Embankment Redoubt quest cannot be completed due to bug in handling AI for the NPC soldiers in the quest.
  • Some item affixes are show twice but applied only once
  • Some specific named monster hunt quests cause issues in parties
  • Item linking has known bugs and is being fixed/improved

What’s Next

We are at a point where a few bugs remain which can cause the game to be instantly unplayable and are working hard to fix them. This means we are not quite to an Alpha state stability-wise, but at the same time our server is playable enough to get some productive testing done. So going forward, our main goals are to address the remaining known game breaking bugs, and attempt to thoroughly test the server in preparation for a small closed Alpha stage. I will update the community as soon as we are ready to take applications to become Alpha testers.

We are also working on strengthening our tooling and processes as we work towards accommodating more and more players as we expand our testing efforts.

As always, we can’t promise that there will be enough progress to share every week, but we will keep the community updated as milestones are reached on the project. As always, you can stop by Discord with any questions, and also please see the FAQ here for common questions.

Something to note: London 2038 will NEVER cost money, will NEVER have anything for purchase, will NEVER have a subscription, will NEVER have a cash shop or money transactions of any kind, PERIOD. This is a passion project for fans, by fans, and has 0 money involved. We are all volunteers, and we want everyone to enjoy the game we remember with out any cost EVER. No one will EVER make money off of this project.

Dev Diary #2 – 12/06/2016

London 2038: Status as of 12/06/2016

Hey guys! A lot has happened since my last dev diary. The team is still working hard, we’ve garnered some press attention for the project, and a name has been chosen for the project as well!

First, some housekeeping: after opening a poll to name the project, the favorite choice by far was London 2038! From now on, that is the official name of the Multiplayer reboot of Hellgate: London :D Look for a new website at https://london2038.com soon!

There are some updates on what has been fixed and new bugs discovered, but first, a teaser… ;)

Stonehenge in all its glory

Work has continued on the main issues remaining; namely our data woes. We, mainly through the genius of MMan and MarCNeT, addressed many of the bugs in the first development diary entry and have a much more stable build to test with. However, issues still remain which can crash our server, cause unexpected behavior, or otherwise make the game unplayable. All in all though, we are moving at a slow but steady pace towards an Alpha-testable state of our server. Here is an updated list of what does work and what needs work:

What Now Works In Addition to Previous Update

  • Stonehenge (see above screenshot)
  • Stonehenge quest-related essences drop
  • Trinket slot for Abyss-era rings
  • All issues with traveling between zones seem to be resolved
  • Guild formation and management
  • The Transmogrifying Cube
  • Friend System/ignore system
  • Item linking in chat now works
  • Power now regenerates
  • Shields now regenerate
  • Subscriber status and subscriber-only features are now unlocked and working
  • Boss fights now have no known issues
  • Skills seem correct, but further testing is needed

What Doesn’t Work/Is Being Worked On

  • Remaining data alignment issues causing most known problems
  • Power and shield regeneration rate calculation is incorrect
  • Rare random server pauses caused by bad data related to merchants and items
  • Party member health is not shared correctly
  • Game client crash when exiting inspect window
  • Rare and random error related to AI path scripting
  • Auction house still has one bug

What’s Next

In addition to addressing bugs in our current build, we are also working on some developer tools related to the game data that should provide some boost in productivity around fixing data-related bugs. We will be continuing our work trudging through the data alignment issues we have faced, as well as addressing and documenting any other bugs that crop up during test sessions. We are also working on automation and standardization to make our lives easier and to ease the transition out of closed development to a pre-alpha stage.

We can’t promise that there will be enough progress to share every week but we will keep the community updated as milestones are reached on the project. As always, you can stop by Discord with any questions, and also please see the FAQ here for common questions.

Something to note: London 2038 will NEVER cost money, will NEVER have anything for purchase, will NEVER have a subscription, will NEVER have a cash shop or money transactions of any kind, PERIOD. This is a passion project for fans, by fans, and has 0 money involved. We are all volunteers, and we want everyone to enjoy the game we remember with out any cost EVER. No one will EVER make money off of this project.