Patch Notes

[Ueda]

(Admin Only) Remade All Game Editors in ImGui
Nin Online has always came with an integrated suite of game editors that allow on-the-fly changes to data such as Maps, Events, NPCs, Items, Jutsu etc. These are powerful tools that allow us to add content to the game quickly. Since 2013, we were using tools built in WinForms, which is a dated technology that is no longer well supported by Microsoft and is not cross-platform. I've remade all our in-game editors in ImGui, the same UI system that powers all our in-game user interfaces.

Just a few months ago, Nin Online contained the following UI systems, each coming with a little bit of deadweight to performance... Robin's UI system, Eclipse Origin's UI System, WinForms, WolfUI1, WolfUI2, ImGui. As of today, Nin Online only has ImGui.

This change will allow us to quickly add on features that are UI intensive features (eg. Guilds, Auctions) much easier in the future. This also cleans up our code base immensely. This also brings us closer to a Mac & Linux native release!

In order to achieve this, I had to remake the following editors while retaining, and in a lot of cases, improving on their functionality.

 

This is an example of a new Editor!

Hopefully this paints a picture of how much work was involved in doing this months long project. While it may not directly impact player's gameplay, it is important that we have the best tools to continue to create content for Nin Online.

I'm posting this also as a keepsake for the future to look back at these tools that me and a lot of developers for Nin Online have painstakingly worked with and upkept for the past 10 years. Even before that, these editors have had a long history dating back to the days of Mirage Source and Eclipse Origin (the engine Nin Online was originally built with).

Another cool thing about Nin Online's new editors (for devs) is that it all takes place within the game client now. So it can all be used in fullscreen mode without taking the players to new windows on their desktop.

The new editors are not only cleaner, but they are a lot faster and snappier. Here's a video showcasing our new suite of editors!

Once again, this is probably not the update you want right now. But it's the update we need to keep things going.

Besides the new editors, Nin Online is now also 100% free of Visual Basic code. Despite us being in C# programming language for the last few years, we've never been able to fully rid ourselves to Visual Basic code. Converting a full game over to a new programming language is a lot of work. Especially when Nin was as ancient a codebase as it was. We've now moved out of compatibility mode and Nin Online's source code is 100% that of a modern game.

I don't know how else to express how much work this took and how much this is going to improve our development going forward.

This is an example of one of many commits of me just deleting thousands of lines of code and making Nin Online's codebase way smaller and cleaner.

From the same time last month, we had 146456 lines of code in Nin Online's (client) codebase. Today, we have 90644. That's an almost 40% reduction in code.

This is a software called Gource that visualizes project codebases. This is what our source code for the client looked like just a few months ago, compared to now.

[Ueda]

Server Live Properties System
Used by Admins to be able to set server specific variables like what animations play when certain actions occur. Eg. Resting animation. Also has tons of settings like increasing/decreasing daily missions and Ninja Time Speed. Just moving a lot of hard coded variables to Nin Online to make it more flexible.

RP Live Properties System
This is used for GMs to set RP variables like whom is Kage, Council Members, Clan Leaders from in-game.

Improved Noticeboard
Notice board now displays Kage, Council Members and Clan Leaders

Council Member Improvements
Council Members are no longer just a title. They now will have all the same rights as a Kage, so they can stand in for the Kage.
As the role of the Kage will increase in the future to manage more things that council members won't, there will be a difference once again.

Clan Leaders
Clans can now have leaders set by GMs for RP purposes. For now, the only benefit to a Clan Leader is managing furniture within the Clan house. Eventually, this will increase. 

Messenger Hawks now available for sale in each Aviary
Allows players to send Village Broadcasts and even Global Messages for a price. You can only carry 5 of each at a time, so make sure to use them sparingly.

Messenger Hawks allow you to send village messages up to 80 characters.
Great Messenger Hawks allow you to send village or global messages up to 120 characters.

Signboard Furniture
There's been two new signboard items added to the Furniture shop that allow you to place signs with words written on them in your house, or around the village.
I'm eventually going to also make it so you can decorate outside your houses!

Animations for Blanks Enchanting
These animations also appear for the people around you, so you know when your friend is having a bad rng day and can comfort them.

Animations for Faming and Defaming others
This appears above the famer and famee to make things more apparent.

Storages Improvements
Added Right-click menu to Storages and Drag and Drop capabilities to match Shops, Trades and Inventory

(WIP) New Village Score System
It's on the way to becoming a proper, complete feature. It's got proper editor integration and doesn't rely on the our event system. It currently displays on the noticeboard. It'll soon play a much bigger role in in-game political systems. The old score system will soon be deprecated.

The old village score system was hackily placed together with existing in-game features at the time. It relied on giving items to players when they complete quests and then having an event in each Mission Assignment desk that would check for players with those items, remove them, and add them to a variable.

Continuing working on Auto Chunin Exams
Changes includes handling more edge cases. GM Panel having Ryo cost setting and added a Questions setup section for RP Panel for Council and Kage to set up questions that will appear in Theory Exam. Improved UIs for Quiz.

Tournament Schedule, Ranking & Leaderboard
You can now view tournaments scheduled, your total tournament stats, monthly stats, leaderboards and a "Hall of Fame" from the noticeboards in each village.

Tournament Winner Monthly Reward
On top of being added to the Hall of Fame, you will receive a mail with a reward for being the top ninja each month! This might be expanded later to include more prizes and participation awards.

Item Cooldowns now visble in Inventory
It was previously only visible in the Hotbar, which could cause confusion.

Item Cooldowns now persist after logout
Previously, relogging in would reset item cooldowns. Item cooldowns were added hackily in the early days. It's been done properly now.

Unzipped Leaf Flak Jacket added to Chunin Shop
Unzipped Sand Flak Jacket added to Chunin Shop
Art by @Hoseki

(Backend) Cleaned up Item Types
We used to have 30 types of items and it was getting messy. Blessings, Hair Styles, Dyes were their own item types for example. They've been streamlined to just be consumables.

(Admin/Dev) Improved our Variables/Switches system
It's now all stored in MongoDB, was previously stored in .ini files. Now supports flagging Variables to be reset daily, reset on death or to retain past character resets.

Fixed keyboard input bug
Fix the year long bug where Keyboard inputs are missed sometimes when chatting or typing into UI.

Fixed double click sometimes triggering wrongly
(Admin/Devs) Improvements to Event Editor
Fixed position of shop window only loading for first shop on client launch
Fixed bug where responding to NPC Dialogues too quickly can get your stuck
Improved map loading responsiveness
Improved/fixed map loading speeds
Improved UI code when it comes to focusing on UI stopping movement/inputs
Map Editor Improvements
Smoother Day/Night Cycle
Fixed Inventory window sizing
Improved server start times greatly
Cancel transformation jutsu when fishing
Fixed akatsuki cave and corp hideouts being broken
Fixed some Corp Maps not working
Fixed Kage/Council Permission issues with RP Panel and accessing corp maps
Fixed Item Collection Mission Trackers being buggy
Allow interacting with furniture while sitting on chairs
(Admin Only) Fixes to Mission Editor
Cleaned up our server packets
Improved positioning for Amount Input boxes
Server now makes sure players are saved even when admins shut down on very very short notice (was a potential exploit)
For blessings, times blessed message now doesn't appear on screen, just the first message. The blessing amount appears in chatbox.
Fixed issue with faming
Fixed Noticeboard not launching on login
Fixed Tournament HUD/UIs (regression in last update)
(Admin Only) Editors Improvements
(Admin Only) Show Custom Script Name when selecting Custom Scripts

[Ueda]

Improvements to sorting of winners for tournament leaderboard
It was previously only sorted by Tournament Wins. When it was a tie, it was sorting randomly. Now it's sorting by Tournament Wins and then secondarily, Match wins. I still want to prioritize Tournament Wins so as to not make smaller tournaments not worth much.

Added an option to outright ban specific items and jutsu from tournaments
Previously this was a pretty hacky conditional check to see if the item/jutsu belonged to a corp or had a high index. Now we can be more selective.

As a result, some things that were previously unequipped like Akatsuki or ANBU clothes that didn't have stats will now be wearable during tournaments.

Raid Points now affect Village Scores
Obtaining Raid Points now contribute towards Village's Economy and Manpower Scores, losing Raid Points negatively contributes to your Village's Economy and Manpower Scores

Tournament messages are less obstructive now, no longer showing on screen, only in textbox
Now that the UI/HUD shows everything you need to know, it's no longer important to show it on screen

Tournament notifications with "Join" button now display again
Tournament notifications timing also increased to 20 seconds up from 10. Do note you can also go into your Alerts menu to check older notifications.

Other bug fixes/improvements
Leaderboards now show up to 30 players
Added Tournament Leaderboards in each arena
Fixed Kage/Council Members not being able to clean up Furniture in village maps
Raid Info HUD sizing fixed, could sometimes be cut off
Raid Info HUD now has a hover effect similar to MissionTracker
Fixed Intel and Manpower scores not being affected
Fixed messenger hawk message having an extra spacing
Fixed GMs not being able to trade event coupons
Fixed a client issue where holding down pick up item was spamming checking to pick up Furniture
Fixed Leaderboard All-time Statistics not updating
Fixed Inventory, Shop and Trade slots allignment (regression in last update)
(Admin Only) Fixed Non-Daily Mission Filter in Mission Editor 
Added Log File size display, Map Cache folder size display to Settings Menu
Added Button to easily access and clear Log File to Settings Menu
Fixes to Friends coming online messages sometimes showing ex-friends
Banned Items and Jutsu are now displayed on the Tournament Bracket UI (Tab)
Enforce Banned Items from the start of rounds
(Hopefully) Jutsu should not be able to have casts started until Match countdown ends
(Hopefully) If a tournament teammate leaves, the entire team will not be disqualified, unless team is dead
(Admin Only) Fixed copy and pasting event commands also pasting entire events by accident
(GMs/Admins) Added "Add Player" and "Remove Player" buttons in Tournament Hosting Menu (adds targetted players easily)

World Map Feature rework (+ World Map Editor)
I've reworked the World Map system completely. It's been one of last UI elements that needed a severe rework.
New players will now have a much easier time locating quests and locations in general in the future.
It comes with a fancy editor for us to make maps. It also supports maps for separate locations, the toad mountain area, indoor locations. etc.

We're still working on the actual map though!

(On the backend side) World maps are now our first list based data type instead of using fixed arrays.

Tournaments Leaderboards Pages
All players who participate in tournaments are now visible on the leaderboards, leaderboards are sorted into pages.

Other changes
Texture dictionaries now support subdirectories

Toad Arc now has a proper map

New version (v4.5.4) has been released with an update to the World Map
After @Erox completed filling up the world map, I realized the world map really needed to be bigger. In order to encompass this, I've added dragging to large world maps. Also, Admins/GMs can now double click on the icons on maps to teleport to those locations.

v4.5.5 has been released with another update to world maps
World maps now have lines to show the direction of the linked maps, making it a lot clearer.

(Admins) Improvements to Editor

v4.5.5b is out with the following changes
Testing improved weather effects for rain/storm

Also improved regular walk animation for NPCs
Fixes to Localization (regression in recent versions)
Minimap Keycode no longer triggers while typing in chat
Toggling fullscreen shortcut (Alt+Enter) no longer triggers login on Login Screen
Fixed Quick Screenshot Keybind defaulting to Backslash instead of F12
Improvements to Footsteps SFX (Added some pitch variation to sound less repetitive)

(Admin) Fixes to Map Properties Boot Map Input boxes
(Admin) Fixes to deleting World Maps causing crash in some cases

Major server hanging issue solved
Fixed the issue where removing an online corp member would hang the entire server until the player logs out. 

Added a flying animation option for NPCs/Mobs
This means creatures like birds, hawks, insects will now flap their wings properly.

 Before (Beefore)

 After

Added a Keybind for PvP Toggle
By default it's set to P

Other changes
Improved rain splash animation to not spawn in walls/blocked tiles
Fixed mailbox item amounts rendering

A hotfix for Bubble Clone Technique (Exploding NPCs) not triggering properly when attacked from downwards direction has been pushed live.

Medcorp Jutsu Changes
Name: Hundred Healings Mark > Hundred Healings Orb
Description: A medical technique that allows the user to collect chakra and concentrates it into an Orb which amplifies the power of their techniques by 12%.
Visual: changed from the purple aura to a blue orb that floats next to the player.

Neo Akatsuki Changes
Visual: Changed the Red Aura to the Purple Aura (It seems more menacing, also give me room to work on something else which is TBA).

Kage Clothing
General: The colored version of each set is now locked to the "Kage" Rank and of course the respective Village, this is so the active Kage can stand out among the crowd (Unless of course someone transforms into them)

(Note: Due to the hierarchy in the class editor missing nin are still able to wear the colored versions of the kage clothing, theres nothing i can do to fix this.)

The Ambassador: An NPC has shown up in Takumi seeking former leaders (Ex Kage), if you have the original Kage drip and still want to wear it you can get a version of the original from him. 
 

Puppet Brigade Changes
Member limit increased from 10 to 12

Medcorp Jutsu Changes
This isnt so much a change but a grammar fix, the jutsu has always been useable by Special Jonin but the text said "Must be Chunin or Higher to use", it has been changed to "Must be a Ranked Ninja to use" to avoid any confusion 

Added 3 new Headband/Forehead Protector Styles!
Backwards Bandana Protector (All Villages)
Single Horned Forehead Protector (Mist)
Double Horned Forehead Protector (Mist)

Kage Requested Title - Unit Leader
This will be given to leaders of official Corps (MPFs and Medic Corp will retain their separate titles)

Added new Rare item "Spotted Arm Sleeves" to Alpha Snow Leopard drop table

Added new Hokage, Kazekage and Mizukage Cloaks
Can only be worn by current reigning leaders, and can no longer be equipped after their term.

Added new Premium Hairstyle - Bolt Premium Hairstyle

 

Added new Premium Hairstyle - Minerva Premium Hairstyle

 

 

New Premium Hairstyle - Nobara Hairstyle
Added a new hairstyle by a player named Minerva!
Thank you, we need more female hairstyles (we have twice as many male ones)

It's now available in the Cash Shop