0.2.0 is nigh

After what has been a frantic few months for our admin team we’re imminently looking to implement our 0.2.0 baseline files set patch. It’s hard to put into words to describe how much this means for our team. Essentially the culmination of a development timeline which has stretched back over 18months, and has been influenced and united by 3 ambitious Legend of Mir II projects: Legend of Mir Sagas, Artificial Mir II and most recently Nostalgia of Mir.

The latter part of 2018 was enormously challenging for me, I had complex personal issues to contend with, and our key developer Logham was incredibly invested in his relocation elsewhere in Europe. At times I had to put continuing the project into question, I’d invested a lot of time and money into this personally, which was very difficult for any sane person to justify continuing to do, given my position. The Phoenix server had remained almost completely unpatched since it’s inception, partly due to the non-stop accumulation of issues in addition to ambitious development goals and personally, I felt up against a number of unsurpassable dead ends with the files and with no release in the foreseeable future imaginable. Against all odds, the test server did, fortunately, persist in its current form, and still continued to receive regular albeit unpublished changes (more of these soon).

Completely out of the blue; in a twist of fate around November 2018, I was contacted by in my eyes another very prestigious LOMCN VIP and developer: Chriz. Chriz had been working on developing a Mir II server with a very similar end goal in mind but had been struggling to tackle a lot like us, the colossal task of pulling together viable baseline set of files using the existing C# resources on his own. After some discussion, we realised we quite quickly our project and goals were complimentary and joined forces bringing together the best of both projects, ultimately rounding out the Artificial team. Chriz has already proven the catalyst we needed to get to release standards and brought a whole host of new Quality of Life features we hadn’t even considered to live in this upcoming update

What does 0.2.0 mean for aspiring players? Essentially this is the unification of 3 major elements: Logham’s sleek new refactored pure .net codebase and modernized live DB backend; Chriz’s new feature set, bug fixes, Delphi file set emulation, general client-side improvements with other NoM enhancements; all this combined with the most recent Phoenix database and environment files bringing together our first major release candidate, and laying the foundations for many more.

Over the last 18 months, every issue reported on Phoenix server was meticulously documented during testing and 0.2.0 has sought about to fix every issue reported to us during that time, whilst adding all the much needed new features to bring us incredibly close to achieving full GamePot USA+ content standard upon release – believe me when I say this was an enormous task. There will be more posts to follow with even more technical information as well as developer notes and our complete changelogs. In addition to more information about potential upcoming exclusive testing opportunities and a formal release date for Phoenix 0.2.0.

Phoenix and Dragon Server Announcement & Gameplay Update 0.1.12

I have a big announcement to make regarding these files….

After much deliberation and consideration, we’ve decided on a new development plan. Hopefully, one which can actually deliver on a lot of promises we’ve been struggling to keep regarding the current character database. Everyone who has been following this project is likely to be aware these files are in a pretty advanced state of development already, and one of the most frequent and fair questions I’m asked is when will the server be coming out of testing.

We’ve come to the decision that this database will never come out of testing and will instead be preserved indefinitely as our public test server (Artificial Phoenix) throughout development. Currently, I want to take pressure off my developer and allow him to complete his work at his leisure, this means the big Version 2 (the full game I envisioned launching back in 2017) will probably not be coming until late 2018/2019 and will be launched as our Primary Dragon server. Everyone on the current database has shown excitement to play Dragon, and it is still entirely planned to be our A-side server.

So why keep Phoenix? Essentially we need a test server, somewhere we can prototype and is less stable but with proper meaningful data and characters. This means new and exclusive releases as we release Dragon will be first tested on the old server.

For me, this is the ideal solution as I don’t consider this database to be in any kind of dirty state, and I am really struggling to justify the removal of it long term. This message will be followed by a formal announcement and we will be moving our thread into the Live Server Advertisements this week.

Obviously, we’re aware this database is unclean, in that there have been numerous and ongoing persistent bugs through development, we’re not in a position to address this yet – but for anyone who wants a fun server to join, there is no longer a looming threat of wipe on this existing files and the squeaky clean server will be launched later in 2018/2019. I already run a test server myself, those resources will be reassigned to this server when we release Dragon which will include multi-server support.

I have coined this, the 2 server solution. It’s happening, stay tuned.

Game Updates:

Minor fixes to Guard positions and routes in BichonWall
Sabuk Conquest War Added (Unpolished)
TravellingMerchant_Damian no longer visits Bichon Wall
TravellingMerchant_Fred added exclusively to Bichon (9:30am-12:30pm and 9:30pm-12:30am)
Assigned AI to WitchDoctor
Assigned AI to HellSlasher
Assigned AI to HellPirate
Assigned AI to HellCannibal
Assigned AI to HellKeeper
Added Statue NPC to ViperMaze Floor 1-4
Added Correct Logic to SkullPile NPC (Now Randomly Teleports with [1/2] chance to same location on floors 1 and 2 of ViperMaze)
Added OldMan NPC outside SabukWall (with information regarding contesting guild and war times)
Reworked HellCave monster stats
CrystalArmour(M) and (F) now available for Sins and Archers
Rebuilt HellCave spawns
Added HellCave OverPass NPCs
Reduction in the drop of Luck Added Necklaces
Various new NPCs
Fixed Bait Prices
New Lite Client Available on Downloads Page (0.1.11)

Open Testing

Artificial Mir II is now transitioning to Open BETA testing. With our first major patch roll out we’re looking to open the gates and allow more people to experience the game we’re rebuilding. After months of hard work and dedicated testing, we’re moving much closer to having a stable and balanced game environment so we think it would be good to let new players into the game. They may try things our existing testers haven’t even thought of and bring valued feedback to our development team.

Since development to Open BETA has been a while in the making, various players are 40+ levels ahead and therefore we feel the game in its current state is due to be wiped in the initial Open BETA stages, to allow a balanced experience to all newcomers as we launch.

Although there is a whole host of undocumented changes, and adjustments, from now on we will try our best to include patch notes and updates as often as possible.

Currently, all the changes are back-end and no client updates are required, so hop in and enjoy!

 

We will be referring to this release as 0.1.0. Latest updates and changes:

Gameplay Updates:

Added Discord Server
Partial transition to SQL
Encrypted Passwords
Single Sign-on
Added Site Discussion Board
Added Site Game Credits
Added USA Premium Dungeon Levels 20-30 30-40 40-50 Unpolished
Fixed Fishing Baits
Fixed Level Glows (50 small blue-60 blue dragon-70 fire dragon)
Buffed EM
Added Lunar 1F (Rebuild)
Various fixes to unreleased hell maps
Various other stat tweaks, bug fixes and drop adjustments.
In development (Admin Access Only): Lunar 2F-3F, BattleGrounds, Ancient Ruins, AOC